ACID POPS and Teenager Draco

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 157523

> bboyminn:
> 
> While I am not discrediting all the things that have been 
> said so far, but let us not forget that Draco went to 
> Voldemort with the Vanishing Cabinet Plan. 

Magpie:
No, he DID NOT.  I'm sorry to be so vehement but I can't stand 
having this presented as canon.  Voldemort discovered Lucius had 
destroyed the Horcrux.  His anger was terrible to behold.  He gave 
Draco the task of killing Dumbledore as a response.  Draco could 
kill Dumbledore any way he wanted.  Because he's not supposed to 
succeed in killing Dumbledore.  He's supposed to get himself killed 
trying to kill Dumbledore.  This is the only story anyone gives us 
in HBP.  People on both sides agree on it.  The Cabinet plot is 
never anything but Draco Malfoy's secret plan for carrying out this 
task. 

Steve:
I suspect Draco 
> thought he would get big time credit for bringing this info 
> to the Dark Lord, but he didn't necessarily expect to have 
> to carry out any plan. 

Magpie:
No, no, no.  Draco's carrying out the plan of killing Dumbledore is 
Voldemort's plan.

Steve: 
> Suddenly, Voldemort leaves it up to Draco to fix the cabinet 
> and as an added special treat decides to induct him into the 
> Death Eaters.

Magpie:
We don't know if Draco is inducted into anything or not.  What we 
know is that Lucius destroyed the diary and got put in jail after 
the MoM.  He is safe in jail.  Voldemort gives his son the suicide 
mission of killing Dumbledore.

Steve:
 I'm not sure that's what Draco expected, but 
> fixing the cabinet and letting the DE's do the dirty work 
> might not be so bad. Plus, he has alway assumed he would 
> eventually be a DE, so it is just coming a little sooner.

Magpie:
Yes, Draco wanted to be a DE.  But there was never any question as 
to what was expected of him.  He was to kill Dumbledore.  He didn't 
expect that killing would turn out to be horrifying and that he 
wouldn't have the stomach for it.  

Steve: 
> But Voldemort is a master manipulator with his own agenda, 
> once Draco is in too deep, Voldemort present Draco with 
> the extreme priviledge and treat of killing Dumbledore 
> himself. I doubt Draco had bargained on that, but now that 
> he was in, he knew he couldn't refuse and he knew he couldn't 
> negotiate.

Magpie:
Of course there was no negotiating. But Draco was not coming to 
Voldemort with any agenda except proving himself and being a DE.  
Voldemort's agenda is that he is giving Draco the honor of the task 
of killing Dumbledore.  Draco enthusiastically agrees, this being 
the fantasy life he's always been destined for, he thinks.

Steve:> 
> I further think that only involved people knew specifically 
> what the plan was. Narcissa may or may NOT have know the 
> plan. 

Magpie:
Narcissa seems to know "the plan"--the plan being that Draco is to 
kill Dumbledore, perfectly well in Spinner's End.  She has no idea 
how Draco is planning to carry it out.  

Steve:
Yes, I 
> know some will cite 'Spinners End', but no one in that 
> scene actually reveals what they know. 

Magpie:
The words "Draco's got to kill Dumbledore" never come out because 
the author's keeping it secret, but when I read it I had no doubt 
that's what they were talking about given what they say.  If nobody 
actually knows what Draco's supposed to do the scene loses a lot of 
meaning. I think everybody knows what the plan is in the scene, that 
Draco's supposed to kill Dumbledore.  I think the lines should be 
different if they don't know.

Steve:
> Draco fancied himself getting into Voldemort's good graces 
> with the information about the cabinet, but I suspect 
> Voldemort, step by step, raised the stakes to far beyond 
> what Draco ever imagined. 

Magpie:
No.  Draco fancies getting himself into Voldemort's good graces by 
succeeding at the task of killing Dumbledore that has been assigned 
to him.  His ace in the hole for doing that, he thinks, is the 
cabinet.  When Voldemort raises the stakes it's to make greater 
threats of punishment if he doesn't kill Dumbledore.

Steve:
Yes, part of that was vindictive. 
> He was putting tremendous pressure on Draco, perhaps even 
> putting him in harms way as a way of tormenting Draco, his 
> mother, and his father. But that was not the objective, that 
> was just a side benefit.

Magpie:
Everyone in canon thinks it is the objective.

Steve:
 Naturally with a completely secret 
> way into the castle, the Dark Lord would want to use it. 
> The School and Dumbledore are prime strategic targets for 
> Voldemort; he simply couldn't pass it up.> 
> I think he kept Snape out of it because he didn't want to 
> compromise Snape's spy status. By leaving Snape out, no 
> suspicion could fall on him regardless of the out come. 
> That way he would always have his inside man at Hogwarts. 
> Also, if Draco really did fail this year, he could always 
> come back next year, and with Snape help then, fix the 
> cabinet. Or have Snape fix it over the summer. Draco's 
> failure itself doesn't close the door. Although Draco 
> getting caught most certainly would.

Magpie:
I have to ask: do honestly remember scenes in the book that support 
this story?  Because they're not there.  This is a completely 
different story with a different meaning than the one in canon.  The 
canon story is that Voldemort is giving Draco the task to kill 
Dumbledore in order to get Draco killed to punish Lucius--sins of 
the father, a strong theme in canon.  It's perfectly in character 
for Voldemort, and carefully set up throughout the previous five 
books with both Lucius and Draco.  Yet here again, just as with the 
alternate "Snape/Narcissa is making Draco act on his own" this story 
is being dismantled so that it's no longer the clear, strong arc 
that it is.  JKR did not choose to write the story that begins with 
Draco going to Voldemort with the Cabinet plot, despite that being 
the story a lot of fans think he deserves.  She went for a different 
story, one that builds towards the scene we get on the Tower.

-m