[HPforGrownups] Voldemort's Plan for Draco ... (wasRe: Ginny Haters/ a bit of Draco)

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 152289

Okay, let's try this again.

bboyminn:

Obviously, you see my 'plan' as being as irrational as I see your
'plan', so be it.

Magpie:
No, I do not see your 'plan' as irrational.  The point I keep trying to make 
is that whether or not you or I find something irrational is irrelevent. 
It's not about the two of us presenting our theories and voting on it, as if 
the books have nothing to say on the matter.  I don't have to answer why the 
wacky scheme instead of just punishing the Malfoys for it to be the way it 
went down in canon, though I am happy to do it below.  But first, let's get 
back to the GoF plot for a second.  I've snipped your explanations for why 
that plan is very logical.  I'm happy that you find it a logical plan and 
it's satisfying to you, but that is not what makes the plan canon.  I find 
it a plot device created more to make sure it lasts all of Harry's fourth 
year and has a lot of exciting things for Harry to do during the book than a 
good plan, but the fact that I find it an incredibly silly, risky plan, does 
not make it not canon.  All the holes anyone can poke in the plan does not 
make it not canon.  It's canon because the book is over and all the reasons 
for Voldemort choosing that plan that I'm going to get are there and that's 
the answer I get. I could come up with a much better plan that incorporates 
all the stuff in canon, but without it being presented there in the book, it 
doesn't matter.

It's the same with this Malfoy plot.  As to the question of why a wacky 
scheme just to punish someone, that's completely in character for Voldemort 
as we've met him.  He's never been a villain who's about strategy over 
everything.  He works on personal resentment and symbolic gestures. Giving 
Draco this task is a brilliant lesson for Lucius that reflects exactly the 
ways that Lucius has betrayed and let Voldemort down.  He's not just a 
random DE who needs a Crucio to put him in line.  He needs a far more 
dramatic lesson, the type that to me it seems Voldemort loves to give.  He 
often chooses the symbolic importance over the strategy.


You have suggested some important things happening in the books.  In order 
for me to think this stuff happened in the story I read in the books I don't 
need it told to me in a way I like or sounds logical, I need references to 
this stuff that the author put in, even if it's a reference that there's 
something important she's leaving out. I see plenty of places those 
references should be or imo would be if those scenes happened, but all 
you're giving me are reasons you reject the answers we're given.  The final 
revelations of HBP are, according to this theory, neither revelations nor 
final.  So even if I say I don't believe this explanation about Voldemort 
giving Draco the task to kill DD because he's punishing Lucius (which I 
really do because it's exactly the kind of operatic sins of the father type 
stuff that these books are full of) you still haven't given me positive 
evidence of this big turnaround Voldemort pulls on Draco, or everything 
being different on the DE side this year because of this thing Draco told 
Voldemort.  The big question for me isn't why Voldemort would come up with a 
plan for Draco to kill Dumbledore, but why on earth, if Voldemort came up 
with the plan for Draco to kill Dumbledore only because Draco himself 
brought a Cabinet plot to Voldemort,  JK Rowling did not share this 
important part of the story with the readers.


> bboyminn:

> But I can speculate on a logical and likely sequence of events based

> on what I read in the books. What I read is that Draco spent the

> entire book trying to fix the cabinet, not trying to kill Dumbledore.

> Everything truly hinges on fixing the Cabinet, and the Cabinet is the

> bases for my sequence of events.

>

> Accept it, or reject it as you please.



Magpie:

Sure you can speculate all you want, but we're still left with the same 
book, one which contains not a mention, not a reference, not a hint of the 
scenes described in this theory.  It's not the book's job to prove that 
Draco didn't go to Voldemort first and have his first plan turned back on 
him, it's your job to show that the book says that did happen.  If this 
story shows up in Book VII I'll be glad to accept it and give people credit 
for guessing this was what really happened--and probably I'll say I wish 
they could have pointed out lines in the book that were clues.  If JKR 
reveals it in an interview I'll probably also accept it as having happened 
and still wonder why on earth she accidentally didn't write that.  But as it 
is it's just like many other theories that rely on the premise that the 
revelations at the ends of books are never final, just things waiting to be 
overwritten in the future.  It also takes a story that, imo, deals with the 
things that seem to interest Rowling (revenge, one generation's mistakes 
being visited on the next, personal resentment and grudges) and makes it 
into a story that turns on things that don't interest her as much (strategy, 
technical magical stuff).

Carol:

Exactly. To have Voldemort assign Draco the impossible task of killing 
Dumbledore *before* he knows about the passage into Hogwarts that can be 
created if Draco repairs the cabinet is (IMO) an absurd coincidence.


Magpie:

Of the best literary kind, yes.  Voldemort gives Draco a task that's 
supposed to be impossible, but thanks to Rowling planting the Montague story 
earlier, Draco has a way to make it work. Since many characters seem to tell 
us that Voldemort expects the plan to end in Malfoy's death, the fact that 
it ends with Malfoy alive and Dumbledore dead is a surprise, not a 
coincidence.


Carol:

To have Draco present his discovery to LV *first*, having been motivated to 
join the DEs by vengeance against Harry and Dumbledore for his father's 
arrest, followed by Voldemort's *taking advantage* of that discovery to get 
DEs into the castle to kill Dumbledore if and when Draco fails in the 
attempt, is simple cause and effect, a logical sequence of events and an 
illustration of the way Voldemort's mind usually works. (Look at the way he 
handled the information he forcibly extracted from Bertha Jorkins.)



Magpie:

Yes, look at Bertha Jorkins.  Specifically, look at the way we HEAR about 
this story of Bertha Jorkins' information in the book as part of the answer 
to the mystery.  Now find some similar scene in HBP where we hear about 
Draco's information being the thing that set off the revenge plot and how he 
only meant to offer Voldemort a way to get DEs into the castle for whatever 
reason, but instead Voldemort told him to kill Dumbledore.  It's not there. 
What's there instead is something different.

The author is the one who should be telling me how much more logical it is 
to think Draco went to Voldemort first etc. is than it is to think Voldemort 
is punishing the Malfoys, and she should be telling it to me in the book.  I 
can't be expected to finish the book and say, "Voldemort couldn't really be 
punishing Lucius Malfoy only to have Draco turn out to have something up his 
sleeve.  I'm sure if I imagine scenes in my own mind I'll hit on what really 
happened."

If that's what I was supposed to do then unfortunately, I didn't.  I came 
away from the book thinking "Gee, Rowling did a great job of slowly letting 
Lucius do one and another thing to anger Voldemort.  And look, Voldemort has 
found a way to punish him that perfectly fits in Voldemort's trademark 
dramatic and symbolic way: Lucius has destroyed Voldemort's precious horcrux 
(a piece of himself living outside himself and a symbol of his immortality) 
and failed his Dark Lord.  Now Voldemort will watch as Lucius' precious son 
(a piece of himself living outside himself and a symbol of immortality) may 
also fail LV and be killed in the process. And how clever of her to as usual 
find a way for the younger generation to zig when the older generation 
expects them to zag and wind up surprising everyone, thus pulling all the 
adults into trouble with him."

I feel like the very basic thing I'm saying never seems to come through, 
because, as I said at the very beginning of this post, how well anyone can 
make "Draco went to Voldemort with a plan to get DEs into Hogwarts and 
Voldemort turned around and told him to kill DD with that plan" work is 
irrelevent.  There's plenty of theories that can be made to work and will 
appeal to people.   For something to have actually happened in canon I need 
to see the author writing that story.  It's true that there are sometimes 
things left open in the story where we can imagine what happened.  We don't 
know just how the Rosemerta Imperius went down.  All we needed to know was 
that it did.  So we're free to imagine how that happened.  However, this 
theory is more than that, filling spaces that aren't left open, and the plot 
that it's intentionally trying to push into the background is actually the 
one that's had a lot of work put into it--the Malfoys have been groomed for 
this for books.  We've got the diary plot in CoS, the many echoes of that 
book in this one (in that book Draco says he wants to help the Heir and 
Lucius is intentionally keeping him out of the fight, in HBP he's forced to 
help the Heir and is no longer out of it), we've got Lucius introduced as 
the DE who "got away with it" and escaped punishment.  GoF has Barty Crouch 
giving us a foreshadowing of Draco being punished for his father's 
"slipperiness," which LV himself also notes in that book.  And in fifth year 
we've got Lucius put in jail and Draco itching to make things right.

So yes, I see how this alternate theory is supposed to work.  I see that 
it's more satisfying on a strategic level in the way it makes Voldemort act 
out of smarts and opportunity rather than having him make a big symbolic 
gesture.  I see the appeal for many of an HBP where everything's that much 
more Draco's own fault.  But I still see nothing in the actual books of that 
direction in the story, while I see a lot of careful buildup to the revenge 
story, many references to the revenge story, and far more familiar thematic 
territory with the revenge story.

-m