Draco and Dumbledore

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 160176

> Dungrollin:
On the other hand, Harry wouldn't have had the chance to test 
Sectumsempra out on Malfoy. However, I think we could confidently 
say that he would *still* have tried it out. On who, though? And 
Snape would have been too dead to save the victim. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I do **not** share your confidence that Harry would have 
necessarily tried Sectusemptra. Yeah, he wanted to try out unknown 
curse, which was really stupid of him, but he does **not** trying it 
out even on Malfoy till he is forced to defend himself from Crucio, 
so for all I know if nobody wanted to try Crucio on Harry, he may 
have resisted his urge to try Sectusemptra and no Severus Snape had 
been needed.
> 

Dungrollin:
"Harry ignored her. He had just found an incantation (Sectumsempra!) 
scrawled in a margin above the intriguing words 'For Enemies', and 
was itching to try it out, but thought it best not to in front of 
Hermione. Instead, he surreptitiously folded down the corner of the 
page."
- HBP The Unknowable Room p419(UK)

"Harry was about to put his book away again whe he noticed the 
corner of a page folded down; turning to it, he saw the Sectumsempra 
spell, captioned 'For Enemies', that he had marked a few weeks 
previously. he had still not found out what it did, mainly because 
he did not want to test it around Hermione, but he was considering 
trying it out on McLaggen next time he came up behind him unawares."
- HBP Sectumsempra p484 (UK)

It's a mere four and a half pages after this that he uses the spell 
on Malfoy. And the main reason he hadn't tried it out yet was that 
he didn't want to do it in front of Hermione.

Yeah, I'm fairly confident he'd have tried it out on someone like 
McLaggan, though perhaps not *in the back*, the way he considers 
doing in the second quote.

> Dungrollin:
>  Additionally, the Order's most 
> > useful spy, in Voldemort's inner circle is unable to continue 
his duties because he's dead. The Order has by now had no 
> foreknowledge of Voldemort's intentions for over six months,<SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> And now of course Snape ( if he is indeed not a traitor) has 
plenty of people who trust him to pass the information to?
> 

Dung:
You miss my point. I'm saying that in HBP there is over six months 
between Snape's talking to Draco and the Tower during which time 
Snape and Dumbledore are aware of Voldy's plan and what his goal is. 
If that plan were to be foiled by apprehending Draco (killing Snape, 
Draco is 'killed on paper' and smuggled away) Voldy would move on to 
a new plan, and DD wouldn't have a spy in Voldy's inner circle to 
tell him what that plan was (as he did in HBP and OotP). He'd be 
working in the dark for the last six months (15 chapters) of HBP. 

As it happened in HBP, they could be fairly certain that while Draco 
was under orders to kill DD, that was where they needed to 
concentrate their attention, and Snape was always around with news. 
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know. Do you see 
what I mean?