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

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 150979

> 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.

Neri:
Not in the active form, perhaps, but what about the passive form, when
the identity of the sender isn't mentioned? And with some vagueness
regarding the fine line between the strategic and tactical sending?
I'm not a native English speaker, but JKR is, and this seems to be the
way she interpreted "the Lestranges were sent to kill Neville" in the
question.

Note that JKR's explanation as to why the Lestranges couldn't have
been sent to kill Neville is that "they were not in on the prophecy".
Strictly this isn't an explanation at all, because the Lestranges
could have easily been sent to kill Neville without knowing a thing
about the prophecy. Voldy could have simply issued a command: "if
something happens to me, you should get rid of the Longbottoms' baby"
without giving any reason, and then the Lestranges would have been
properly "sent". Yet this isn't the scenario that JKR seems to be
addressing in her answer. From the words "the Lestranges weren't in on
the secret" she appears to be addressing a hypothetical scenario in
which Voldemort told the Lestranges about the prophecy, yet didn't
strictly send them to do anything. Only after he disappeared they used
their knowledge and deduced that he'd want them to get rid of the
second boy implicated by the prophecy. They believed that the Dark
Lord would have sent them to do that if only he could contact them.
This is the scenario that JKR seems to think the question had meant,
and she addresses it in her answer, and yet the words "the Lestranges
were sent" appear both in the question and in her answer. So is JKR's
English as bad as mine?  

In my Horcrux scenario Bella's actions are actually similar, in this
sense, to her actions in the above scenario. She was entrusted with
safekeeping a Horcrux. She wasn't strictly "sent" to retrieve it by
all costs, but she obviously knew that this was what her master would
have told her to do if he was able to contact her. So this theory
interprets the words "the Lestranges were sent" in the same sense that
JKR seems to interpret them it in her answer. 


>  Carol:
> 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.

Neri:
Well, this is her official story, and very likely the story that she
gave the other members of her cadre of maniacs, but she could hardly
give the *real* reason if it was a Horcrux, could she? Voldemort would
surely impose the highest degree of secrecy on this, whether Bella
herself knew that it was a Horcrux or not.

And note that when Voldemort speaks about the Lestranges in the
graveyard in GoF he doesn't say they tried to find him. Instead he
commends them for going to Azkaban rather than renouncing him. He also
says that they "will be honored beyond their dreams" when they are out
of Azkaban, and yet somehow it doesn't look like Bella is honored
beyond her dreams in OotP and HBP. In the MoM operation Voldy gave
Lucius the command over her, and this must have been after he had
already learned about Lucius' blunder with the Diary. One might
suspect that by that time he had also learned that Bella was guilty of
a similar blunder.  


> Carol:
> <snip> *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), 

Neri:
You seem to agree here that it *is* after all possible to use "were
sent" loosely.


> Carol:
> 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, 

Neri:
Unless Frank and Alice did guess at that point why the object they
confiscated is so important to Bella, and refused to tell her where
they'd hidden it. They were both aurors, after all. It doesn't seem
far-fetched that during three years of advanced DADA training aurors
are also told about Horcruxes, perhaps even some clues for identifying
one. And if the Longbottoms believed that Voldemort, like some other
Dark wizards in history, had made only one Horcrux, they would think
that this Horcrux is the only thing that prevents the final
vanquishing of Voldemort. There are some things worth dying for.

 
>  Carol:
> I agree that Bella is connected with a Horcrux, but it makes much more
> sense for it to be the one that Regulus stole. 

Neri:
I'm not sure what is your theory regarding Bella's involvement with
the locket Horcrux, but her words in Spinner's End don't seem to fit.
The Regulus affair happened the year before GH. If Voldy trusted her
to find the locket *then* and she failed him, then he should have stop
trusting her before GH. Yet it sounds like Voldemort had become
unsatisfied with her only "recently". And anyway it doesn't appear
like Voldemort is even aware yet that the locket was stolen, because
the R.A.B note was still in the cave by the end of HBP. 

IMO Bella's words in Spinner's End sound like she was entrusted with
safekeeping a Horcrux (most probably not the locket) before GH, yet
she's not trusted since recently. Now, did Voldy recently took this
Horcrux from her and hidden it somewhere else? If he did, then her
slip of tongue is useless to us as a clue to its location. This trail
is broken. The only ways I see for this clue to be helpful to us is if
(1) she's still in possession of this Horcrux, but her words seem to
deny that, or if (2) she had lost it to someone that *we* would be
able to guess. Now, who might such someone be? 

Yup, Frank and Alice.   


> Carol:
> 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.
> 

Neri:
Well, BANG is a subjective thing, but in your scenario the whole
Longbottoms affair happened merely as a side effect of one of the bad
guys betraying some other bad guys, just so that in Book 7 it would be
merely one out of several reasons why this bad guy and his family
might defect to the side of the good guys, although said bad guy is
already in Azkaban and at odds with Voldy right now, and it doesn't
look like he or his family have much valuable secrets left in their
possession anyway. YMMV, but I feel this scenario kind of sells Frank
and Alice cheap. I'd feel much better about their horrible fate if
their heroism would somehow turn out worthwhile in the end.
 

Neri, who sent his own tax forms yesterday and so has time now for
more important things.