The Sting: Lucius sent Bella (was:Re: LV: Where'd He Go and How did Frank...)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 150968

Neri wrote: 
> <snip> Note that the critical word "sent" may not have been
originally introduced by JKR at all, but by the fan who wrote this
question, and she may have used it only because that fan did. Both
question and answer aren't very clear, due to being written in the
passive tense and because JKR at the time had to hide Snape's
involvement in the prophecy (it was before HBP was published). But it
now seems to me that JKR's main (and perhaps only) objective here was
to squash the theory that the Longbottoms were attacked because of the
prophecy.
<snip> 
> It is not clear at all that JKR meant to make the words "were sent"
less ambiguous in her answer. From the context it seems to me that by
"very definitely" she was actually refering to "after Neville's
parents" rather than to "the Lestranges were sent". So interpreting
this answer as "JKR said the Lestranges were sent after Frank and
Alice by someone other than Voldemort or themselves" is kind of shaky.
It depends a lot on whether you think JKR weights very carefully every
word she writes in her website or not. Based on some recent examples I
personally tend more to the "or not".
> 
> Now, regarding the Lucius' sting theory, while it generally works
well with the canon (especially with that shaky "the Lestranges were
sent by someone other than Voldemort or themselves") the problem that
I see with it is that it has low BANG quotient and doesn't advance the
main plot much. <snip> I see very little that a revelation of a
Lucius' sting in Book 7 can do to advance the story. It certainly can
cause a nice feud between Bella and Lucius should the plot demand it
(though we don't know that it should) but plotting the Longbottoms
affair throughout the series mainly in order to cause a feud between
Bella and Lucius in Book 7 strikes to me as a bit of an overkill. 
> 
> So my guess is that, if the reason for the attack on the Longbottoms
is going to play in Book 7 (which isn't certain at all) it would be in
the service of solving a big standing mystery. An obvious possibility
would be the location of one of the Horcruxes. Based on Bella's little
slip of tongue in Spinner's End ("in the past the Dark Lord had
trusted me with his most precious...") it seems that she was entrusted
with the safekeeping of a Horcrux shortly before GH, about the same
time when Lucius too (according to Dumbledore) was trusted with the
safekeeping of the Diary. It also appears that Voldy isn't very
satisfied with Bella's safekeeping performances. Perhaps Frank and
Alice, working as aurors and/or Order members, stole or confiscated
that Horcrux from Bella, probably not knowing what it really was. In
this theory the attack on the Longbottoms was Bella's attempt to
retrieve this Horcrux, and it looks like she failed. While this theory
isn't more canon-based than the Lucius sting, solving the Longbottoms
mystery in Book 7 would be considerably BANGier that way and would
directly advance the plot by leading to the discovery of this Horcrux.

Carol responds:
I agree with you that JKR is often (intentionally or unintentionally)
vague in her responses both in interviews and on her website and that
 she picked up the phrase "were sent" from the question (just as she
picked up "offered" in relation to Voldemort's not originally
intending to kill Lily), but I disagree that she's not deliberately
using it to conceal the identity of the sender. As a native speaker of
English, I can confidently state that people don't "send" themselves.
Someone else must have sent them. And that someone could not have been
the vaporized Voldemort. Nor, as we know from "Spinner's End," could
it have been Snape. But Lucius, whose behavior in CoS shows him
capable of exactly the Sting tactics that Talisman described, remains
a viable candidate. And as an important minor character, if you'll
pardon the oxymoron, we can confidently expect that he still has a
role to play. Why not, in part, a connection with the Longbottom
incident, which also needs to be resolved?

As for the mission of Bellatrix and her male cohorts, Bella makes it
clear in both the Pensieve scene and "Spinner's End" that only she and
her faithful followers tried to find and rescue Voldemort. *That* was
her mission, perhaps self-imposed after Lucius dropped his hint (in
which case "were sent" is indeed used loosely but nevertheless implies
the involvement of someone not present at the scene), and for some
reason she wrongly thought that Frank Longbottom had information about
it, again most easily explained if she was deliberately misinformed.
Killing Frank would not have suited her purpose as it might have done
if she were merely after something in his possession. Not being a
Legilimens or having Veritaserum at hand to forcefeed him, she tried
to torture the information out of him, and failing that, tortured his
wife to make him talk. Had he merely confiscated some object that she
wanted, these measures would have worked, but since she wanted
information that he couldn't provide no matter how long she and her
followers tortured him and his wife, the only consequences were the
Longbottoms' insanity, the fury of the WW, and the life sentences in
Azkaban of the diehard DEs. 

I agree that Bella is connected with a Horcrux, but it makes much more
sense for it to be the one that Regulus stole. After all, they're
cousins and Kreacher is devoted to Bellatrix, suggesting that she was
a regular guest at 12 GP before it became Order HQ. (This idea is
reinforced by the fact that the last time Sirius saw her was at the
end of his fifth year, long after Bella had left Hogwarts. It must
have been during a visit to Aunt Walburga.) I doubt very much that
there's a Longbottom/Horcrux connection. Bellatrix has clearly stated
her motives at least twice. She was trying to find her master and
bring him back. Her devoted followers, her husband, her tagalong
brother-in-law, and fanatical little Barty Jr., would have shared her
motive. Torturing the Longbottoms for the sake of some object that
they didn't know was a Horcrux makes much less sense.

As to why or how Lucius's sending his sister-in-law and her "cadre of
maniacs" (winks at Talisman) to get themselves captured by Aurors
could play into the plot later, it would show that Lucius, unlike his
mad sister-in-law, is not a diehard DE and very much out for himself,
in keeping with his actions in CoS, his relations with Fudge in
OoP,and Voldie's own characterization of him as "my slippery friend"
in GoF. Unlike most of the other DEs involved in the MoM fiasco,
Lucius was not already serving a life sentence for his activities as a
DE during VW1, and it's possible that he could be released from prison
in Book 7. A certain black-haired friend of his who recently rescued
his son from either committing murder or being murdered and who
conveniently happens to be a Legilimens could easily determine where
Lucius's loyalties lie, taking advantage of Lucius's gratitude to
himself and his resentment of Voldie's treatment of himself and his
family. (Probably he already knows that Lucius is no friend of
Bella's, and if the Sting theory is true, he may even know that Lucius
set her up.) Even if Snape isn't DDM!, just committed for reasons of
his own to overthrowing Voldemort, he could easily manipulate the
whole Malfoy family, from the grateful Narcissa and the indebted Draco
to the disgruntled and perennially OFH!Lucius, into secretly siding
with him against first Bellatrix and, ultimately, the Dark Lord himself.

Much bangier, IMO, than Bellatrix Crucioing the Longbottoms for a
confiscated Horcrux, and much more in line with canon so far.

Carol, who is now going to finish her much-delayed income tax return.
Really.