[HPforGrownups] Re: Ginny Haters/ a bit of Draco

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 152205

 Carol writes:
As I read it, he figured out that the Vanishing Cabinets were linked
while he was still at school in OoP. After the incident at the MoM,
when his father was arrested, he determined to get revenge by joining
the DEs. During the summer, he went to Voldemort to give him this
information and volunteered to fix the Vanishing cabinet, at which
time Voldemort took advantage of the opportunity to punish Lucius
Malfoy's mistake and simultaneously take advantage of Draco's
Vanishing Cabinet idea by assigning Draco to murder Dumbledore, with
or without the aid of the Death Eaters.

Or that's how I see it. I doubt that Voldemort came after Draco to
recruit him. It makes more sense to me that Draco went to him,
especially given Draco's mood at the end of OoP and the precious
discovery that he wanted to share with the Dark Lord to impress him.
So the whole fix the cabinet, get the DEs into Hogwarts, and kill
Dumbledore became merged together as a kind of initiation for the new DE.

Debbie:
While I agree with you that Draco joined the DEs voluntarily, and that
Voldemort then assigned Draco his task to kill Dumbledore, I'm not convinced
the Vanishing Cabinets had anything to do with it.  My reading of the text
has always been that Draco was planning to surprise everyone with his
cleverness *after* he succeeded in killing Dumbledore, which was why the two
were linked in his mind.

I think Draco offered himself up to Voldemort to take his father's place,
perhaps with a view to avenging those who were responsible.  And, typical
teen, he was thrilled to have been given an adult task (Bella said he seemed
"glad at the chance to prove himself, excited at the prospect").  The matter
of how to execute the task, however, was left up to him.  It was at that
point, I think, that he decided to use his preexisting knowledge of the
Vanishing Cabinets to execute his plan.  But this wasn't an essential part
of his job; it was an extra that would make him "Voldemort's favorite", if
he could only figure out how to fix the cabinet.  It wasn't really necessary
(except to provide backup for an escape), though, because Draco could have
killed Dumbledore anytime, but for a perceived need for backup or cover.

If the repair of the cabinet had been part of his task, i.e., there was a
single plan to breach the Hogwarts defences and kill Dumbledore, there would
have been no reason for Draco to resort to the cursed necklace or the
poisoned mead.  Draco became increasingly focused on the cabinets as an
essential element of the plan to kill Dumbledore after his other two
alternatives failed; Voldemort was not going to kill him if he didn't fix
the cabinets, only if he failed to kill Dumbledore.  Thus, Draco's anguish
over his failure to repair the Vanishing Cabinet was because he felt he had
run out of options.

It doesn't appear that Draco needed to tell Voldemort his plan in order to
secure DEs as backup.  The text suggests that he may have recruited his
assistants on his own, because if he had asked Voldemort, wouldn't Snape
have been aware of it?  (At least if you take at face value, as I do,
Snape's statement that he was told about Draco's task before the UV.)  He
tells Snape the evening of Slughorn's Christmas party that he had assistants
for his task, and better ones than Crabbe and Goyle.  It's unclear who gave
the DEs their orders to let Draco take care of Dumbledore himself.  Maybe,
since it was Draco's operation, those orders came from him.

Carol:
Meanwhile Snape was informed of the general plan (Draco was assigned
to kill Dumbledore) but not the details (fixing the Vanishing Cabinet,
which was Draco's secret plan in HBP).

Debbie:
The fact that Snape was unaware of Draco's plan for the Vanishing Cabinet,
in my view, creates an inference that it was not part of Draco's task.  It
was Draco's creative idea which, as he brags to Dumbledore, he withheld from
Snape purposely so that all the credit from its success would belong to
him.

Draco's statement about being the first to realize the possibilities of the
cabinet is interesting, but he may have been referring only to the DEs he
recruited to assist him, or even merely Montague and the other Slytherins he
told about his experience.

Carol:
Do you see a different sequence of events, with Voldemort actively
recruiting Draco? Certainly LV assigned him the job of killing
Dumbledore ("It''s my job; he gave it to me"), but I'm not aware of
any canon evidence that the original contact between Voldemort and
Draco was Voldemort's idea. Draco was proud of his discovery and eager
to share it with LV, both for his own "glory" and revenge against
dumbledore and Harry.

Debbie:
The full quote is, "It's my job, he gave it to me and I'm doing it.  I've
got a plan and it's going to work, it's just taking a bit longer than I
thought it would."  The job is to kill Dumbledore, and the plan is to use
the Vanishing Cabinets.  I don't see the plan as preceding the job.

Carol:
I can't see Voldemort coming to Draco, saying, "I have an assignment
for you: Murder Dumbledore," and Draco saying, "Oh, I have the perfect
way to do that. I'll fix the Vanishing Cabinet and create a passageway
between Hogwarts and Borgin and Burkes." At which point Voldemort
would either need to use Legilimency or require an explanation to know
what he was talking about.

Debbie:
No, but I can see (i) Draco offering himself as a DE to avenge his father's
arrest, (ii) receiving the task to kill Dumbledore, (iii) realizing that he
can use the cabinets if he can fix them, (iv) telling Voldemort that if
given time, he can get DEs into the castle (or perhaps Voldemort picked this
up through legilimency), and (v) feeling pressure to make that means work in
order to secure the glory he craves.

Debbie


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