What Came First: Task or Cabinet? - The Plan v1 & v2

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 157652

Sorry, had to repost this due to old bits of sentences hanging 
around confusing things:

> Carol responds:
> Actually, no. Canon doesn't say that Voldemort's anger at Lucius
leads
> him to give Draco the task of killing Dumbledore. What we have is
> Narcissa's speculation that that's the case and Snape's
confirmation
> that Voldemort is angry at Lucius.

Magpie:
Yes, I understand where it comes from. And this kind of speculation
from Narcissa, plus Snape and Dumbledore's confirmation of the fact
that Voldemort is angry at Lucius is a perfectly acceptable way for
JKR to give us this information while staying within the limits of
the pov she uses. Just as it would have been acceptable to actually
make it a question as to why he would give this task to Draco with
people asking why, and the solution finally given to us. 

As Alla said, sure we could find out all these people were wrong or 
lying for some reason in the next book. It's still physically 
possible for JKR to do that. But within this book the question of why
Voldemort would give this kid this task has only one answer
offered in the scene that lays out the groundwork. Obviously 
everyone is free to not accept that answer just as they can reject 
any information in the books so far.

Carol:
> As I said upthread in a post you didn't respond to, neither
Narcissa
> nor Snape knows anything about Draco's Vanishing Cabinet idea, so
> neither of them can know whether Draco went to Voldemort with his
idea
> for getting into Hogwarts and was assigned the task of killing
> Dumbledore as a resort or Voldemort ordered Draco to come to him.
We
> just don't know, and you're concluding a bit too much from the
canon
> we're presented.

Magpie:
No, they don't know about that. And that's why Draco would need to
tell Dumbledore that at the end, when he told him about figuring out
the Cabinet. And Draco would probably have also had some line that 
got close to revealing it in the conversation with Snape. JKR wasn't 
constrained to this version of things when she started out.  If he 
reveals this is Book VII I will certainly accept it in ways I don't 
accept, "But think how much better it would be if..."

Carol:
> Carol, whose mind is foggy from a cold and doesn't want to present
her
> arguments all over again

Magpie:
In a nutshell: Provide a bit of canon where this set of events--
the part where Draco went to Voldemort with a Plot to get the DEs 
into Hogwarts and Voldemort turned it around on him and made into a 
double plot of getting DEs into a different thing. Actual words from 
canon referring to this. Not an argument that as long as nobody says 
it didn't happen it couldn't. Not an outline of how it could work 
given when Draco heard Montague's story and when Spinner's End 
happens. Not explanations for how logical this would be if this were 
the story of Voldemort the great strategist instead of Draco's 
story. Not individual explanations for each scene of this story 
about how nothing in that scene could refer to it either.  Not 
musings on how can we really ever know anything going on in the 
story.

Carol:
At any rate, having Draco approach LV with the Vanishing Cabinet idea
in no way diminishes his danger and it adds to the irony by having
his whole predicament result from his own action. Maybe you want to
see him as a pathetic victim, but he is also, at least at the
beginning of the book, an arrogant sixteen-year-old who threatens
Borgin and brags about his mysterious assignment and who has already
stated to Harry that he's bent on revenge for his father's
imprisonment.

Magpie:
Now we're getting more into the subtext of the discussion. I don't
see him as a pathetic victim. I see him thrilled and eager to rise
to the challenge of being given an assignment--I've tried to steer
clear of anything that smacked of "Draco is just being punished and
doesn't really want anything to do with these people at all!"
because obviously he does want this. I see him as very arrogant in
the beginning of the book, something the author clearly put there.
The victim aspect in terms of this being an intended suicide mission
is important to me in the story in its way (i tis a suicide mission, 
after all). This is the victim aspect mentioned in the text by 
Narcissa. How important is that irony you mentioned to you? Because 
yes, this storyline would be painfully ironic for old Draco which is 
why the author would have put it in the story. Just thinking about 
the scenes of the story with this information in my head they re-
write themselves to accomodate the information. The "Maybe you
want to see him as..." is shaky ground to get onto I think. Draco
tends to bring that out in people.

Carol:
Maybe, as Alla says, we'll never get an explanation.

Magpie:
You mean we might not get a different explanation besides that
whole "he wants Draco to die to punish Lucius" idea Narcissa brings
up in Spinner's End. It's not really presented as a mystery.  This 
isn't never knowing who Imperio'd Rosemerta, it's saying we don't 
know she was Imperio'd.

-m