The Cabinet Plan...again (was:Re: The UV (was ESE, DDM, OFH, or Grey?)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 162792

 
> a_svirn:
He spent an entire year learning and *teaching* the defence magic.
 I find it completely implausible that his experience and his training 
failed him during a perfectly trivial (if dangerous) alteration with 
Draco Malfoy. 

Pippin:
Really?  What would you expect from a quarterback who  hadn't 
actually played or practiced football for a year?

It's been pointed out that Harry didn't need skill in the past and
reacted correctly by instinct. But he had help. In the bathroom 
there was no Fawkes to pass him the diary as a hint,
no time-turned memory to serve as a guide, just "your own brain 
or guts or whatever--like you can think straight when you know 
you're about a second from being murdered or tortured, or watching
your friends die--". That, as Hermione pointed out, was why
they needed to practice. Harry stopped practicing and he
screwed up. Nothing unbelievable about it. What would be
unbelievable is if he had known just what to do.

> 
> > Pippin:
> > The necklace and the poison illustrate Draco's subconscious
> > conflict. 
> 
> a_svirn:
> What does it mean "subconscious conflict"? Does it mean that 
he wasn't conscious about possible consequences of his actions? 
Not likely. 

Pippin:
The relationship between the conscious and the subconscious
has been compared to a boy riding an elephant. But Draco 
doesn't know he's on an elephant -- he's not aware that most
of his mind (Dumbledore calls it his heart) isn't with the program. 
Consciously, he's pleased with the necklace and the poison. 
They can get the job done and won't be traced to him. 

Unconsciously, he's pleased with them because they put him at a 
distance and haven't got a great chance of success. Draco's 
subconscious mind  doesn't fill him with fears about the failure of 
his plans, so he doesn't feel pushed to scrutinize them. Reason
(or a friend like Hermione) would tell him to think it all through
carefully anyway, but Draco doesn't have any friends like that 
except for Snape, from whom he's feeling alienated.

Draco doesn't have to make a conscious effort to push things out
of his mind because his subconscious is doing a bang up job
of making sure they never get there in the first place.

Magpie:
But the Cabinet Plan perfectly illustrates what you described above
as the teen mentality and Draco's conflict. The Cabinet plot makes
perfect sense as Draco's idea in that mindset, because it puts
something between him and the murder. He can work so doggedly at
fixing the Cabinet precisely because it is supposed to be a way to
do murder but it clearly isn't. It's just getting DEs into the
castle. It's only after they're there that he has to face the actual
murder part.

Pippin:
I agree that Draco is able to work diligently on the cabinet
because he doesn't associate it with the murder. What I'm 
questioning is whether he would be have been able to
avoid the association if  it was his idea to use the cabinets
as an instrument of murder. 

There's also the idea that Draco thinks he doesn't need to
be a qualified wizard to do his task, and that he doesn't
want to share any of his glory with Snape. If that's his 
mindset, why would he think of using the cabinets for
adult backup at all?

Pippin