What Came First: Task or Cabinet? - The Plan v1 & v2/Bigotry or Not?

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 157685


> Magpie:
> We know Draco is looking into fixing the Cabinets. We don't know 
that 
> he 
> has the Dark Mark on his arm. He is indeed under the assumption 
that 
> it 
> would not take full qualifications to kill the headmaster, and is 
> cocky 
> about it. Draco isn't saying he can kill Dumbledore without 
*skill.* 
> He's 
> saying it's something he doesn't need to be "fully qualified" for, 
> and he's 
> right.
> 
> Snow:
> 
> You are not forgetting that Harry has stated in canon of his 
> suspicions that Draco indeed has shown his arm to be a sensitive 
and 
> yet a pants-wetting threat to Borgins have you? Let me remind you 
> where you can find these quotes: HBP pgs. 114 and 125.

Magpie:
No, I'm not forgetting.  Draco's having a Dark Mark is raised as a 
distinct possibility--it's not canon that Draco *isn't* marked.  But 
it's still just a possibility at the end of the book.  In Madam 
Malkin's Malkin tries to ignore the fight brewing and pin up Draco's 
sleeve. Draco yells, "Ow!  Watch where you're sticking those pins, 
woman!" and pulls the robes over his head.  Harry remembers Draco 
jerking when Malkin touched his arm, but we saw the scene ourselves 
and in it Draco gives an alternate reason for jerking his arm--she 
stuck him with a pin.  Harry doesn't reference that fact when he 
brings it up.  And Harry doesn't not see what Draco is doing at all 
with Borgin that suddenly makes him go pale.  So while Draco having 
a Dark Mark is a possibility raised in canon absolutely, but so is 
Harry's being mistaken.  Since a mark on Draco's skin doesn't effect 
events one way or another it could go either way.  
 
> Snow (previously):
> 
> Even Dumbledore himself notices upon reflection to Draco that his 
> feeble 
> attempts at killing him seemed almost like his heart wasn't in it. 
> That 
> would be because at the point that he attempted to kill Dumbledore 
> via the 
> necklace and mead, Draco was more interested in the cabinets.why 
> would that 
> be unless he was yet to be informed of his actual mission?
> 
> Magpie:
> Good lord, the entire plot is unraveling before my eyes! Draco is 
> confronting his not being a killer and the reality behind his 
fantasy 
> of 
> being a DE. His attempts to kill are not half-hearted because he's 
> more 
> interested in fixing furniture, but because he doesn't have the 
heart 
> of a 
> murderer. This is a transformative story, Draco's not just 
passively 
> reacting to off-page plot complications.
> 
> Snow:
> 
> Wow! Are you really attempting to find out what happened or are 
you 
> more concerned with your own ending? I'm not even sure where you 
are. 

Magpie:
I'm relating the events of the book.  You claimed that when Draco 
made the attempts to kill DD with the necklace and poison it was 
half-hearted because he was "more interested in the cabinets."  You 
then said that this was because he had yet to actually be informed 
of his actual mission, that mission being to kill DD.  Which 
unravels the plot, because that's the mission Snape has agreed to do 
if Draco fails at it--and it's also what Draco is trying to do with 
the poison and the necklace.  If he hasn't been informed of his real 
mission of killing DD and is just fixing the cabinet, he wouldn't be 
trying to kill DD in alternate ways.  It also veers away from the 
central act of the story, which is committing murder and splitting 
the soul. It replaces the character's emotional arc, which is what 
it leads to in the book (ending with the choice) and which is talked 
about and dramatized in the book with a series of complications 
external both to Draco and to the text.  The whole conversation at 
the end with Dumbledore is about exactly how Draco's heart wasn't in 
it and why.  He's not a killer.


> 
> Magpie:
> Mediocre? No, the issue isn't that they're mediocre. They burst in 
at 
> the 
> moment when Draco was lowering his wand, accepting that he did not 
> want to 
> kill. And once they show up and he can't do that, they're there 
> waiting for 
> him to kill and he knows now he isn't going to for sure. The back 
up 
> is now 
> preventing the back out. The arrival of Fenrir just piles on more 
> horror--he's not mediocre, he's terrifying. When DD says he's 
> surprised 
> Draco would bring him to the place where his friends are, Draco, 
for 
> the 
> first time in all of canon, actually wants DD to think him a 
better 
> person 
> than someone who would do that. It's not the story of a school-age 
> Death 
> Eater reacting to practical difficulties between and his goal to 
kill 
> DD and 
> attack the school.
> 
> Snow:
> 
> OK! If that's what you wish to believe but I guess we are reading 
> things way differently here. 

Magpie:
I actually think we're doing different things entirely.

bboyminn:

Again...no. Your argument is completely flawed, because no
one is doubting that Voldemort gave Draco the task because
he was angry at Lucius. I never said that wasn't the story.
I never denied Voldemort's anger. I only denied that it was
exclusively based in the Diary. Canon gives little support
to that idea. In fact I repeatedly said that was definitely
the story. What I have said is that it is not the /whole
story/.

Magpie:
I do understand that this is what you are saying.  However what I, 
and I think Betsy, are pointing out is that that beginning to the 
story can't just be stuck on before what's written, because it 
raises issues that are not dealt with in the story.  I wish I could 
think of some metaphor to illustrate it.  A Draco who goes to 
Voldemort with the Cabinet plan and gets assigned this task is a 
perfectly compelling beginning to a story.  So compelling that it 
has to be played out.  Every second of the year you have to 
substitute that beginning for the beginning we get, and that brings 
up different issues that he has to struggle with and re-think just 
as canon shows him struggling with the issues of this story because 
it's important to the story.  

Another poster brought up Voldemort reading LotR and his seeing 
Draco as Bilbo or Frodo.  I find that bizarre (Voldemort has the 
exact same kinds of blindspots Sauron did), but where I will bring 
in LotR is to say that it's important how Frodo gets the Ring.  It's 
important how Frodo decided to try to destroy the ring as opposed to 
the way Harry got roped into having to try to destroy Voldemort.  
Both characters go back to these reasons when they can't go on to 
push themselves forward.  That's what Draco keeps explicitly doing 
in canon as well. JKR hits the things that are driving Draco hard 
right from that first chapter--chance for glory, threats to family, 
with ultimately the threats to family being the one left standing 
when he rejects the glory one and lowers his wand.  In this version 
neither of those things set events in motion.  On the contrary, 
Draco is was seeking petty revenge from the safety of a child's 
position.  He didn't want to be the man, he wanted to be the clever 
child manipulating grown-ups into taking revenge for him.  In the 
case of Draco's story it's even more important because Draco isn't 
the Quest hero in this book, his story is all about a personal 
change and emotional development.  

Ken:
If you *must* see a deeper meaning to Hagrid's choice of words in 
this scene why not consider who, among the known Hogwarts staff, is 
most Squib-like and who might have a burden of self doubt because of 
it. The answer is Hagrid. Is he being a bigot here or is he 
expressing his inner feelings of inadequacy by attacking someone 
else at exactly the source of his self-doubt?

Magpie:
And again, you describe something completely stereotypical of the 
way bigotry works as if it somehow proves it can't be bigotry.  
Hagrid has self-doubt, so asserts his dominance over someone even 
lower on the totem pole.  To me this doesn't seem like a deeper 
meaning, it's the surface meaning, the literal meaning.   

-m