What Came First: Task or Cabinet?(was Re: ACID POPS and Teenager Draco...)

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 157552

--- "horridporrid03" <horridporrid03 at ...> wrote:
>
> > >>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. ...
> 
> > bboyminn:
> > Sorry but your wrong, or at least as wrong as I am. What 
> > is the very first thing that occurs chronologically in 
> > the book? Not the first thing the books reveals to us, 
> > but  the first thing that occurs chronologically. Anwer: 
> > Draco figures out that there are two connected Vanishing 
> > Cabinets; one inside Hogwarts, one outside. ...
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> I think your time-line is wrong, Steve.  Draco tells 
> Dumbledore that he got the idea about the cabinet after 
> hearing Montague's story. That can't have occured at the 
> end of the school year because Montague was too sick ....  
> So the visit must have occured over the summer.


bboyminn:

Sorry, not so, Montegue returns to the school around Easter, 
and is at the school for a minimum of two full month 
recoverings. Yes, in the beginning, he was confused and 
disoriented, but otherwise uninjured. 'Dazed and confused' 
doesn't sound all that sick to me. It seems reasonable that
over the course of two month he gradually recovered, and 
that Draco visited him while he was in the school hospital 
ward where he was regaling his friends and admirers with 
tales of his adventure. 

All indications are that Draco had the plan figured out 
before the end of the school year. When Harry landed Draco's 
father in prison, I speculate that he saw the abinet as a 
way to attack Hogwarts. Certainly, he would realize just 
how valuable a secret way into Hogwarts was to Voldemort.

I admit a huge amount of speculation in my version, but the 
books only provide us with the result, so we can only 
speculate how we got from the beginning to that result.

I still say the first event is Draco's realization of the 
Cabinet as a means of attack. Given his feelings about Harry,
Dumbledore, and the Ministry, he would have certainly wanted 
his revenge. Telling Voldemort about the cabinet was his 
revenge. 

I don't deny Voldemort's anger with Lucius, but it wasn't 
about the diary, it was about the muck-up at the Ministry. 
But again, the scene at Snape's house is the end of the 
events leading up to Draco's task. I speculate on how Draco 
got to that end, and the logical and canonal starting place 
is with Draco's prior knowledge of the Cabinet.

Draco's on-going and unrelenting task (activity) from 
beginning to end, is the Cabinet. It is not the diversion, 
the two failed attempts on Dumbledore's life are the 
diversion. They are desperate attempts at an alternate 
action that Draco felt necessary because he saw he was 
failing at his primary task. 

Even early in the summer, Draco is already working on the 
Cabinet (Draco's Detour). The books seem to make it clear 
that the task was to kill Dumbledore, and the means was 
the Cabinet. However, the attack on Hogwarts didn't go as 
planned, DA and Order members interferred. If things had 
gone as planned, no one would have known the DE we in the 
castle. They could have set and sprung their trap, and 
carried on from there. Unfortunately, the were met with 
resistance the minute they stepped out or the Room of 
Requirements. 

Perhaps their greater plan was to kill Dumbledore, and take 
and hold Hogwarts, but the element of stealth was completely 
lost, so the operation was scaled back to kill Dumbledore 
and get out alive. 

It seems clear to me that the Cabinet always was an integral 
part of the master plan. It was the mean to the end.

If it was not the means to the end, then why have it at 
all? Why not just have Draco kill Dumbledore and run for 
it? Why? Because there was a plan from the very beginning, 
a plan to get Death Eaters into the castle, secure the 
perimeter, and lay and spring the trap to kill Dumbledore.
Remember, Dumbledore under normal circumstances in not an
easy man to kill.

You heard it here first.

Steve/bboyminn