Draco's task (For Magpie and those who agree with her)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 157741

Carol earlier:
> 
> > I think, regardless of whether Draco went to LV or LV came to him,
that the Vanishing Cabinet plot was in place from the beginning. Draco
would fix the cabinet, allowing the DEs into Hogwarts.
> 
> Sydney:
> 
> I don't think so, otherwise Snape would have had an inkling of it.
Snape seems to have no idea what's going on, aside from Draco flailing
around with unknown plans to kill D-dore.  <snip>

Carol again:
Not necessarily. I think LV has told Snape only as much as he wants
Snape to know--that he's assigned Draco the task of killing
Dumbledore. He doesn't want Snape to know the details, either to help
Draco or to hinder him. It's Draco's job to fix that cabinet and lts
the DEs in, lead them to the tower, and then kill DD. Or at any rate,
that's Draco's *plan* from the first moment we see him in Knockturn
Alley with Borgin, threatening him if he doesn't cooperate in fixing
or helping to fix the broken cabinet (or cabinets?). 

Sydney:
> Why does it indicate the DE's are aware of it?  To me it indicates
that Draco has been given his assignment and is stocking up with
whatever he can think of-- the necklace, the Darkness powder, hey! 
the cabinet that can bypass Hogwarts security!  That could come in handy!
> 
Carol responds:
Draco buys the Peruvian Darkness powder at that time, AFWK. He
doesn't, however, buy the necklace until later. It's still there when
Hermione walks in to see if she can figure out what he bought. (I'm a
bit confused as to when he acquired the Hand of Glory--certainly not
in CoS. If he bought *it* at that time, that would be another
indication that his plan was already fully formed.) I don't think it's
nearly as random as you seem to think. Look how cocksure he is on the
Hogwarts Express. He thinks he has everything under control. And he
later tells Snape that he has a plan but that it's taking longer than
he thought. The plan is clearly to fix the cabinet and let the DEs in,
Peruvian Darkness Powder, Hand of Glory and all. And then, of course,
to dispatch the old man, but he's not thinking about that part yet.

Carol earlier:
> 
>  The pressure on Draco begins when he hasn't finished his seemingly
minor repair job before the Christmas holiday (he panics and resorts
to the mead and necklace ideas) and intensifies throughout the year,
with death threats to his family by the time that Harry finds him
crying in the bathroom.
> 
> 
> Sydney:
> 
> See, I'd always tied the crying in the bathroom in to Draco reacting
> to the near-deaths of Ron and Katie-- that is what wraps up the
> storyline with Dumbledore's "You're not a killer" line.  The
cabinet, the necklace, and the mead, all have in common that they are
ways for Draco to avoid directly being a killer-- he gives the
necklace to someone, who gives it someone else, who will give it to
the murder victim... he'll fix the cabinet so someone else will
magically appear.

Carol:
Look again at "the Unbreakable Vow." That chapter occurs just before
the Christmas holiday, and Katie Bell is already in St. Mungo's
(having been saved by Snape). Draco expresses no remorse or regret
whatever regarding her, instead denying involvement and telling Snape
that "that Bell girl" must have had an enemy." Ron's poisoning occurs
on his birthday, March 1. I don't recall any reaction from Draco
regarding it. Since he stated back in CoS that he hoped "Granger" will
be one of the "Mudbloods" killed by the monster and actually wants to
help the Heir of Slytherin, I doubt that he'd feel any grief or guilt
if the poison went astray and accidentally killed another of Harry's
friends, the "Blood Traitor" Ron Weasley. The scene where he's crying
in the bathroom occurs on April 21, the day of the Apparition test,
seven weeks after Ron is poisoned and about six weeks (IIRC) after his
full recovery.

At any rate, Draco isn't crying about Katie and Ron or about being
unable to kill Dumbledore because he's not a killer. He's crying
because he thinks that he and his family will be killed if he fails to
fix the cabinet and get the DEs into Hogwarts so he can kill
Dumbledore with them as backup--the only seemingly foolproof method of
killing a wizard who has already defeated Voldemort in the MoM. 

He cheers ("whoops") when he's fixed the cabinet on the night that
Harry and DD go Horcrux hunting. *Finally* his plan is working and he
can finish his job (the task of killing DD, which is the only part
Snape knows about--he know the goal but not the means for achieving
the goal). He leads the DEs, with his Darkness Powder and the Hand of
Glory, both obtained for exactly that purpose IMO, from the RoR toward
the Astronomy Tower, where Gibbon is to set off the Dark Mark to lure
Dumbledore. Things get a bit messy when the DEs encounter the Order
members--Draco hadn't planned on that and he's used up all his powder,
as Ginny tells Harry--but he's still confident as he heads up the
stairs and shouts "Expelliarmus!" The impossible has happened. Not
quite seventeen-year-old Draco Malfoy has disarmed the old
Muggle-lover Albus Dumbledore. He's showed everybody, especially
Snape. He boasts to Dumbledore that he's going to get all the "glory"
and Snape will get none. He tells Dumbledore that he's going to kill
him, and at first I think he really believes that he will.

But then something Draco didn't anticipate happens. Here's
Dumbledore--weak, disarmed, totally helpless--and Draco can't kill
him. He finds out then and only then that killing isn't as easy as he
had thought it would be--exactly the same lesson Harry learned when he
stood over Sirius Black with a wand in PoA.

BetsyHP was talking about the poignancy of this scene. I think the
poignancy is spoiled if he's already learned that he's not a killer.
It's Dumbledore's mercy which teaches him that lesson.

Carol, hoping that Sydney will rethink her reaction to the
"Sectumsempra" chapter given the timeline