Subject: Re: Potion in the Cave

[xcpublishing]

No: HPFGUIDX 146017

Carol responds:
>What I actually meant was "The potion would deter anyone who got 
past the other magical protections from reaching the locket by 
torturing them. Anyone who actually succeeded in retrieving the 
locket after drinking the potion would be forced to drink the water, 
arousing the Inferi, which would prevent it from being taken from the 
cave once it was retrieved."

I did get that point (even with all the parens - see, I do it, too!) 
and I think that was JKR's intention with the potion, also.  However, 
the potion has always annoyed me for two reasons.  1)  It was meant 
to torture and eventually kill the drinker, and yet DD managed to 
drink the whole thing and make it all the way back to Hogwarts WITH 
the locket.  Admittedly, he's the most powerful wizard alive, but 
he's still an *old man* and his constitution should have been weaker 
than many people LV would have expected to retrieve the Horcrux.  And 
LV should have expected that DD, of all people, might be one of those 
to retrieve it.  I just can't accept that the potion didn't kill the 
drinker faster.  Unless LV didn't test it enough first.  I suppose he 
couldn't have killed off too many people in the early days and keep 
it hushed up!  And 2) why didn't DD at least try to dump one 
gobletfull on the ground or into the lake?  I'm sure it wouldn't have 
worked and the basin would have just refilled, but any logical person 
would have at least TRIED it before drinking the nasty stuff!!!

>And in the unlikely event that the Horcrux thief actually got past 
the Inferi and out of the cave, he would die painfully, without the 
physical strength or magical power to destroy the Horcrux.

Probably, but who would know how far they had gotten with the Horcrux 
or where they might have hidden it?  Unless LV has a homing device 
attached to the things, I would think he wouldn't want them wandering 
far from where he left them.

>But I don't think LV expected anyone to get that far.  They'd drink 
the water and stir up the Inferi before they took more
than two or three gobletsful of the horrible poisoned memory.

The problem I have with this theory is that LV expects a single 
person to try to retrieve the Horcrux.  It bothered me a bit that DD 
only took Harry with him.  Why not take Harry, Hagrid, McGonagall, 
and a couple of Order members?  And Madam Pompfrey standing by 
outside the cave?  He knew how dangerous the Horcruxes were (witness 
his hand) - why was he so careless and/or reckless to take only Harry 
along?  Ego?

>I'm actually more interested in reactions (including yours) to the 
Bellatrix scenario I proposed, but I'll wait for more responses 
before returning to the thread.

I think it is entirely possible that Bellatrix knows about the 
Horcruxes and I'm not dismissing your theory about her putting it 
into the cave for LV, but in my opinion she just seems to be too much 
of a blabbermouth for LV to take the chance of telling her his 
deepest secret.  To me, she's pretty much a typical fiction 
villainess - "Prepare to die, Potter!" that loves to toot her own 
horn.  It would be very hard for someone like that to keep the 
Horcruxes a secret.  Which might actually be how Regulas found out 
about the locket, lol!  What I don't like about your theory is 
Kreacher.  If he was with Bellatrix when she put the locket in the 
cave, he would recognize it when they discovered it in 12GP.  
Wouldn't he tell Bellatrix?  LV would have known the Horcrux was no 
longer in the cave and would have gone there to see who had gotten 
through his little traps.

CH3ed writes:

>Well if Regulus was killed by LV or his DEs then there would have 
been a dark mark hovering over his body, ay? That is how DD knew the 
DEs hadn't ambushed Slug when DD and Harry found his house in a 
busted state.

True.  Canon just states "Regulus was killed by Voldemort" but it 
doesn't go into any detail.  I'm wondering where he was killed and 
who found the body?  Timewise, I'm picturing Regulus taking the 
locket, hiding it at 12GP, then being summoned by LV and blasted.  
That way, he had no time to even try to destroy the locket.

Nicky Joe