Why Leave Harry at HW at the End of HBP?

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 148303

Jen: Hey Dung! Hope you're still there as it took me a couple of
days to get back to this one.

Dung:
Yes, still here. And since there's nowhere else to put this comment, 
kudos to Shaun for having filled the message index with more 
repetitions of the word Snape than I've ever seen!

Jen:
Still, why didn't Voldemort take advantage of Dumbledore's death to
swipe Harry when he was unprotected? Voldemort said in the graveyard
Harry is protected at his relatives because of Lily's sacrifice and
protected at Hogwarts by Dumbledore. So you'd think the moment he
got Dumbledore out of the way would be the perfect moment to take
Harry away to an undisclosed location again even if not planning to
immediately kill him.

Dung:
Well, he's tried that, and it didn't go very well, both at the end 
of GoF, where it seemed that Harry wasn't just lucky, there was 
something intrinsic about him that was going to make him difficult 
to dispose of (which, since Voldy believes the prophecy, he may have 
suspected, or desperately hoped against). At the end of OotP: he got 
Harry away from DD *again*, and still failed to get the job done. So 
he decided this time to make it very easy for his half-witted 
minions, and give them one simple instruction at a time. 

Voldy (and I'm betting the other DEs agree with him) didn't think 
that Draco was going to be able to kill DD, Draco was expected to 
die in the attempt; could you imagine the guffaws if someone 
suggested that he be put in charge of a joint kill-DD/Kidnap-Harry 
mission? It would never work. And you couldn't expect Snape to pull 
something complex like that out of the hat at the last minute when 
Draco fails, it's the sort of operation that would have to be 
extremely carefully planned. Harry was supposed to be asleep in his 
dormitory the night that DD was killed, not gallivanting around 
after Horsecrutches, it was definitely not a part of Draco's plan 
that Harry and the DA be anywhere near the tower.

Jen:
Unless Harry's many escapes are making Voldemort wonder if he *can*
kill Harry. I still think it's plausible he's wondering about the
prophecy and whether there's something in there to explain Harry's
many escapes from certain death, or what his protection may be
beyond Lily.

Dung:
Well... I think it's quite reasonable after the duel with DD at the 
end of OotP (where DD saved Harry's skin) for Voldy to decide that 
he's not going to get anywhere with all these plans until DD is 
firmly out of the way. Once DD's gone, both Trelawney and Harry are 
much easier targets. 

Voldy *could* have set up a plan to do the whole lot in one go, but 
it would have *had* to involve Snape if he wanted it to succeed, and 
Snape could have slithered out of action again (with DD's help) by 
making sure that the plan failed. One of Voldy's goals was to test 
Snape's loyalty; a plan like that could easily have ended up with 
DD escaping, Snape having kept his true allegiance under wraps 
*again*, and possibly even with Draco not getting punished for 
Lucius' mistakes. No, Voldy's a Slytherin!

I'm also 99% convinced that Voldy prompted Bella and Cissy's visit 
to Spinner's End – not explicitly, but Bella could easily have been 
lying when she told Cissy "I know the Dark Lord trusts him". Voldy 
may have hinted that Snape might need an extra motive to make sure 
that Draco didn't mess up too badly. Cue the sisters.

See, I reckon Voldemort's been reading the evil overlord handbook in 
the holidays. No "bring him to me so I can challenge him to a duel 
and have the pleasure of proving myself to be the stronger", 
no "give him a long and painful death (from which he can heroically 
escape) so the old fool can really appreciate just how much I hate 
him"... Just a nice and simple "get the job done and I won't kill 
you and your family" to Draco, and a "you'd better be on my side 
after all Snape, or you're dead," via Bella and Cissy.
Neat, no?

Using Draco to set up the plan to kill DD, while keeping what he's 
doing from Snape (I think Draco was prompted to do that by Bella, 
who taught him Occlumency, and who was prompted to do that by Voldy) 
and making sure that Snape knows he's got to finish the job, but 
can't interfere with the plan at a more fundamental level is a good 
way to test his loyalty. Voldy didn't bank on DD willingly giving up 
his life though.

> Dung, previously:
> Many posters (or perhaps just a few – it's so difficult to tell,
> sometimes) want to make Snape unaware of Draco's task. They read
> him as bluffing in Spinner's End when he said that he knew what it
> was, trying to get Bella and Narcissa to give him information. I
> don't buy that at all. I think Snape knew all about it before
> Narcissa came to visit him, and he'd already discussed it with
> Dumbledore. ("He intends me to do it in the end...")

Jen: Do you mean Snape was actually referring to Dumbledore there
and not Voldemort when he said 'he intends me to do it in the end'?
Now that would shed a new light on the tower! I may be misreading
and you are simply using that quote to back up that Snape did know
the task. 

Dung:
No that's not what I meant – but I like it!

Jen:
My guess is Snape was placed at Hogwarts as a spy way back
when 16 years ago for the eventual purpose of killing Dumbledore, so
he was well aware what his use to Voldemort was. Narcissa and
Bellatrix weren't giving him new information except perhaps the part
about Draco being involved. Not sure about that.

Dung:
Oh yes, I'm in complete agreement there, except that I think Snape 
(and DD) knew about Draco's task already, before Bella and Cissy's 
visit. It would mean that both Snape and DD had had an awful long 
time to ponder what would happen when Voldemort returned and asked 
Snape to finish the task he'd been put in place to carry out. 
(I'd still love to know why Voldy was so insistent that Snape spied 
on DD while teaching DADA rather than potions; I'm sure that's why 
Snape applied for the position year after year. It's probably either 
something to do with the nature of the DADA curse, or the same 
reason that Voldy himself wanted to teach DADA.)

Dung:
> As for orders to leave Harry alone, it seems perfectly plausible
> that Voldy had had enough of failing to kill him, but was angry
> enough about it to not want anyone else to have the pleasure.
> Going at it piecemeal, getting rid of DD The Protector first
> sounds sensible to me. Plus the fact that Voldy's now using
> Occlumency against Harry, makes it rather look like The Harry
> Problem was put on hold for a year.

Jen: So getting rid of Dumbledore with the eventual plan of getting
to Harry. It seems almost too rational for Voldemort. He obsesses
about the prophecy, about killing Harry. I guess he was shaken up by
not being able to possess Harry and thus is employing Occlumency
against him. But it seems like that would make him even *more*
intent on a way to kill Harry, which leads back to the prophecy in
his eyes, which leads back to.....Trelawney.

Dung:
Too rational for Voldemort? Hmm. It seems to me (off the top of my 
head and after absolutely no perusal of canon) that Voldy's evil 
overlord mistakes are always in the heat of the moment – giving 
Harry back his wand, turning up to the MoM in person etc. His 
planning doesn't seem to suffer too much. The GoF and OotP plans 
were really remarkably clever, they failed through last minute 
problems, not through being badly organised. But you might 
disagree...

Dung:
> Regarding the prophecy, it does seem a little odd, doesn't it? To
> spend an entire year and a lot of effort trying to find out its
> contents and then the next year petulantly stamp your foot and
> shriek "I didn't want to know anyway, and I'm going to have the
> man it was told to murdered, so there!"
>
> Has Voldy got over his obsession? Has he decided it doesn't matter
> any more? Or has someone already told him what he needs to know?
> Argh, don't ask me to fathom the way an evil overlord's mind
> works...

Jen: Hehehe. Now we do know how his mind works, though--very
irrationally and with fixations to say the least. He was
irrationally obsessed with the prophecy and I still think he very
much wants and needs that information. In his mind it holds the key
to Harry's ability to defy him four times because he sets so much
store by it.

Dung:
Fixations, certainly, but has he not shown that he can be remarkably 
patient? Got any good canon for the irrationality? Not that I think 
you haven't, I just think that given his goals, his fixations and 
obsessions are really quite rational, but he's cunning enough not to 
let them obscure his other goals. 

Dung:
> Btw, can anyone tell me off the top of their head whether the
> following has been proposed:
> Instead of Time-Turned!Ron = Dumbledore, Time-Turned!Gred&Forge
> are Albus and Aberforth. 'Spect someone must have done, but
> thought I'd ask, becuase it would turn DD's comment about G&F's
> beards when they crossed the age line into a fine bit of
> foreshadowing.

Jen: I read that on another site but not here--you have a theory? I
think it was at Leaky Lounge. There was actually quite a bit of
canon for it including all the muggle things Fred/George included in
their magic shop and Dumbledore's sweet tooth in there somewhere.
More I can't remember. The counter was that both Fred and George can
read. :)

Dung:
Well, no. Not a theory... though some thoughts occur. It would make 
sense how DD knew some stuff but not other stuff, much more sense 
than Ron being DD. And the 'but I'm not sure he can read' would be 
exactly the sort of thing one twin would say about the other, 
particularly if in book 7 the twins stop acting as a unit and take 
different paths (choices etc). But didn't JKR say that no characters 
had returned from the future? I'm too lazy to look up the quote, I 
think it's somewhere on her website. 

I just have this suspicion that in the way that HBP was all about 
Snape, Harry Potter and the Key to Everything will be all about 
Dumbledore. But just what we're going to find out about him is 
anyone's guess...

Dungrollin