Umbridge as catalyst

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 162076

montims:
I've been thinking again about OotP, and realise again just how much DD
miscalculated LV at the beginning of the book...

If Umbridge had not sent the Dementors, Harry would likely have just spent a
very long, lonely and frustrating summer holiday, then gone back to school
knowing nothing about 12 GP, the Order, or anything else (Hermione and Ron
would presumably have still been forbidden to tell him, for the same
reasons).  He would have understood even less the purpose of the Snape
occlumens lessons...

Unknown to DD, his guard on Harry was a waste of time and energy, as LV was
focused elsewhere - on getting the prophecy.  For that matter, if LV had
targeted Harry, what good would Dung (assuming he was still at his post)
have been?  And as for the Dementors, Umbridge had no idea that Harry had
any way of stopping them - she had probably heard the Malfoy stories of his
fainting, but very few people knew he could produce a Patronus.  Were they
just intended to scare him, or had she really meant for him to be Kissed?

In any case, Umbridge actually was a catalyst to the whole thing - her
actions got Harry to 12 GP, reunited, however briefly, with Sirius; he
learnt about the Order (and Snape's involvement in it, which saved them all
in the Ministry battle); he (under Hermione's inspiration, of course...) set
up the DA in response to her curriculum, etc.

Under DD's plan of inaction, Harry would have quietly gone mad (or not so
quietly, and his madness documented by the Prophet), isolated from DD and
the Order members for their safety, believing Sirius was still in hiding
somewhere unreachable, and unknowing that he was being covertly guarded from
the threat that he was expecting any moment.  And when the dreams came, who
would he have told?  Oh yes, and Ron and Hermione would have been further
isolated from him by being made prefects when he wasn't, with no explanation
from DD.


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