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

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 151043

Neri:
> I have explained what is the way she seems to interpret the question
> in my very next paragraph, which you snipped. I'm starting to repeat
> myself, but I guess I'll just have to paste it here again:
> 
> 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? <snip>

> Unless she didn't even think about the issue of who did the sending.
Because maybe her mind was totally occupied with the *why* rather than
the *who*. So she just repeated the word "sent" in the question
without thinking about it. 
> 
> I assure you that there is no need to quote the dictionary to me. I
> really know what the word "send" means. But I keep coming back to
the *context* while you continue to focus on the single word. 

Carol:
Actually, no. I'm looking at the meaning of the words *in the context
of the quotation.* But you're not looking at the meaning of the words.
You're building a speculative house of cards on what you think she may
have meant because for some reason you object to the words "were sent"
and somehow think that, despite the phrase "very definitely" coming
between "were" and "sent," it somehow refers to the rest of the
sentence. I'm looking at what she actually said, which makes perfect
sense both as a sentence and in the context of the paragraph. 

My apologies for the dictionary definition, but my point was that a
person or group can neither send nor be sent by themselves. Sending
requires a sender who is someone other than the person or persons sent.

We seem to agree that JKR is answering the question about the
Lestranges and Barty Jr. being sent to kill Neville by saying that
she's saying, no, they were not sent for that reason. She provides the
additional information that they weren't in on the secret, which I
take to be merely a further clarification as to why that's not the
reason they were sent. They *were sent*, as she says. I don't see any
need for them to speculate about the Prophecy they didn't know about.
JKR's English is perfectly clear here. Let me put this another way,
pretending that I'm JKR: "No, they weren't sent to kill Neville. They
knew nothing about the Prophecy. They were sent after Neville's parents."

The phrase, the sentence, and the syntax together rule out 1) their
sending themselves, which is impossible, and 2) their being after a
Horcrux. The sentence states quite clearly that they were sent after
Neville's parents. IOW, someone other than themselves sent them, and
that person sent them after Neville's parents, not Neville himself.
That is the only possible reading of that sentence, and it matches the
available canon. 

Now granted, the wording is vague and we don't know who sent them
after the Longbottoms or exactly why, but canon provides the reason:
to find out what happened to Voldemort. Whoever sent Bellatrix either
had reason to believe or wanted them to believe that Frank Longbottom
had information on Voldemort. (The Crucioing into insanity was not
necessarily part of the original mission. That seems to have happened
because they persisted in torturing the victims long past the point
when they could have provided any useful information.)

It seems that you now agree that they "were sent" (or is it "would
have been sent"?), but you think it was Voldemort who sent or would
have sent them. I don't see how that's possible given the fact that
he's Vapor at this point. He can neither have sent them nor made his
will clear to them, nor could they have guessed the existence of the
Prophecy, which JKR clearly states that they knew nothing about.

I can understand the objections to Lucius as the sender, butI can'tsee
it being Vapormort. Nor is it Snape, whom Bellatrix makes clear did
not go looking for her dear master. I don't see how it could have been
Wormtail, either, since he would have quickly gone into the sewers
after the confrontation with his old friend Sirius Black.

Pippin:
> > Um, no. "The Lestranges were sent to kill Neville"  is coy as to
the identity of the sender but definitely indicates there was some 
agency involved. By repeating the verb, JKR confirms that part of the
rumour was correct. 

> >   JKR seems to be saying that the Lestranges would have certainly
gone after Neville if they had known about the prophecy, but they 
didn't. She leaves open the question of whether the mysterious sender
knew of the prophecy or not.

Carol:

Exactly. Thank you, Pippin.

> Here, I'll paste the whole question and answer again while stressing
> the parts I think JKR's mind was on:
<Neri posts the whole quotation> 
> *************************************************
> Rumour:
> The Lestranges were sent AFTER NEVILLE to kill him.
> 
> Answer:
> No, they weren't, they were very definitely sent AFTER NEVILLE'S
> PARENTS. I can't say too much ABOUT THIS because it touches too
> closely on THE PROPHECY and how many people KNEW about it, but the
> Lestranges were NOT in on the secret.
> *************************************************
> 
> When you read it like this the whole "sent" issue kind of fades into
> the background, and JKR is totally occupied with squashing the
> prophecy as the Lestranges' motive (keeping with the whole point of
> the Rumors section, which is to squash erroneous theories). It's
only when you take the first sentence of her answer out of context
that it might sound like: 
> 
> No, they weren't, they were VERY DEFINITELY SENT after Neville's
parents. 
> 
> But like I said, it's depends on whether you generally tend to think
> JKR weights every word in her website. I know you think she not merely
> weights every word, and also gives it double and hidden meanings.
<snip>

Carol responds:
JKR has indeed posted many an ambiguous response, starting with "Snape
wouldn't be caught dead wearing a turban"(quoted from memory). But as
Pippin and I have both stated, there is no ambiguity here other than
the identity of the sender. She doesn't want to tell us who knew about
the Prophecy, true, but she makes clear that Bellatrix et al. didn't.
It's possible that the sender did, but if so, wouldn't he or she have
sent them to kill Neville?

Neri:
> <snip> I'm not saying the Lestranges *weren't* strictly sent by
someone other than themselves or Voldemort, but personally I won't be
surprised or disappointed with JKR's integrity if it turns out they
weren't. It's a rather vague canon detail and I would hesitate to
build a whole theory on it.

Carol:
But isn't that exactly what you're doing, with your Horcrux theory and
your "They believed that the Dark Lord would have sent them to do that
if only he could contact them"? Or are you just speculating for fun as
Talisman and I were doing with Lucius as the sender?
> 
> > 
> > Carol again:
> > <snip> And in the graveyard, Voldemort says much
> > the same thing, speaking of the Lestranges as a couple, "They alone
> > were loyal; they alone tried to find me." 
> 
> Neri:
> To my knowledge, the above words aren't canon. As I wrote in my
> previous post, Voldemort does not say in the graveyard, nor in any
> other place I know of, that the Lestranges tried to find him. His
> exact words in the graveyard (GoF, Ch. 33, p. 650 Scholastic) are:
> "they were faithful. They went to Azkaban rather than renounce me
".

Carol:
Good point, but if you put thpse words together with Bella's from the
same book "The Pensieve"), the case is a bit stronger:

"The Dark Lord will rise again,Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban; we will
wait. He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us
beyond any other of his supporters. We alone were faithful! We alone
tried to find him!"(GoF Am. ed. 595-6). Fits together beautifully, no?
And Bella is headed forAzkaban with an escort of Dementors. Not likely
that she would lie under those circumstances, is it, unless, like
Barty Jr., she's trying to get *out* of her sentence, which is clearly
not the case.


> BTW, in Spinner's End too Bella doesn't say that she tried to find
> Voldemort. Her words there (HBP, Ch. 2, p. 27 Scholastic) are: "He'd
> have me! I, who spent many years in Azkaban for him". So AFAIK the
> only place where Bellatrix proclaims that she and her friends tried
to find Voldemort is once in the Pensieve trial, and even there she
doesn't actually announce that they tried to do that by attacking the
Longbottoms. The only one who says *that* is Crouch Sr. (GoF, Ch. 30,
> p. 595): "the four of you stand accused of capturing an Auror –
Frank Longbottom – and subjecting him to the Cruciatus Curse,
believing him to have knowledge of the present whereabouts of your
exiled master". <snip stuff on Horcrux theory>

Carol:

Ah, well, you've just presented the evidence yourself, Barty Sr.,s
words, which I don't doubt he has good cause tobelieve are true. The
court has already presented a guilty verdict. Again, his source of
information is probably Bellatrix herself, and she has no cause to
lie. It is also possible that Dumbledore extracted an undamaged memory
from one or both Longbottoms as objective evidence. Rather than having
the court enter the Pensieve, which would admittedly present a
tactical problem, all he needs to do is have Bellatrix and her friends
rise individually from the Pensieve, speak their threats, their
taunts, and their curses, and voila!Incontrovertible evidence.

So we have three sources of information here, Bellatrix herself,
Voldemort, and Crouch, with no contradictory information and no reason
to doubt those sources. Certainly one of the other DEs, particularly
Barty Jr., would have contradicted her story if it weren't true. If
JKR wanted us to doubt the truth of Bellatrix's words, she would have
presented her as shifty. But Bellatrix's one virtue, if it can be
called that, is straightforwardness. She says what she means.

So, what I come up with is what we already have, a clearly established
motive that would have to be contradicted if we want to go with your
Horcrux speculation and which does not require any distortion of the
words on JKR's website. It appears that we'll find out who sent the
Lestranges, and if I'm right, we already know why they were there. All
that remains to be discovered is who sent them and whether the sender
had any ulterior motive.

Carol,  who is through with this thread unless someone wants to put
forward another candidate for "sender"