Cabinet first

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 157797

> Betsy Hp:
> I'd love the canon that proves so decisively that Voldemort knew
> about the Cabinets at the time Spinner's End occured. <snip>
>
> Since you're so certain this is what actually happened. <g>
>
> Though honestly, I'm really wondering how you explain Voldemort
> sending the keystone cops to back Draco while keeping Snape out of
> the loop. I mean, Dumbledore's death is a bit of luck isn't it?
> There's no way Voldemort could have known Dumbledore was off to
> collect a horcrux and drink some poison while he was at it, is there?
>
> Betsy Hp
>

Carol responds:
I know this post wasn't addressed to me, but it's as good a place as
any to fire my last few shots before retiring from this discussion,
which unfortunately is going nowhere. It's hard to argue when the
other side is so sure it's right that it won't even make a concession.

No one on the cabinet side of the argument has ever presented that
idea as proven. Compatible with canon, yes. But we haven't called it
"canon." It is only a possibility that of course can't be proven, any
more than your side can show that it didn't happen.

I do think, and only think, that Voldemort must have known about the
cabinets from the beginning. For one thing, he's a Legilimens. He
would know when the cabinet idea sprang to Draco's mind and ask about
it even if Draco didn't eagerly volunteer. it. And why wouldn't he,
considering how eager he is for the job? For another, someone (we
don't know who or how) is keeping tabs on Draco and pressuring him
from at least the time of the first Hogsmeade weekend, when he resorts
to the necklace idea (not part of the cabinet plan, just a desperation
measure, IMO.) Presumably the DEs want to know why he hasn't finished
the cabinet, which is his plan for accomplishing his mission (killing
Dumbledore).

Let me politely ask you for the canon you mentioned about Voldemort
approaching Draco. I searched for it and couldn't find it. Here's
Draco on the train (after he's been to see Borgin, which means that
he's acting on his cabinet plan and making the necessary preparations):

"I might not even be at Hogwarts next year, what's it matter to me if
some fat old has-been [Slughorn] likes me or not?"

Pansy asks what he means and Draco responds with "the ghost of a
smirk": "Well, you never know. I might have--er--moved on to bigger
and better things."

Pansy asks, looking "dumbfounded": "Do you mean--*Him*?"

Draco shrugs and says that his mother wants him to complete his
education, but he doesn't think that NEWTs and OWLs will matter when
the Dark Lord takes over. "It'll be all about the kind of service he
received, the level of devotion he was shown."

Blaise ask scathingly whether Draco thinks he'll be able to do
anything for Voldemort: "Sixteen years old and not even qualified yet?"

And Draco responds, quietly this time: "I've just said, haven't I?
Maybe he doesn't care if I'm qualified. Maybe the job he wants me to
do isn't something that you need to be qualified for" (152).

This is all we get. Whether Draco is just talking about killing
Dumbledore or is including fixing the cabinet in the job description
is unclear. Neither, of course, requires him to have passed his NEWTs.
He's being extremely evasive. And he hasn't said one word about being
"approached" or "chosen" or why Voldemort has assigned him the job. (I
think we can at least agree that *he* doesn't think it's a suicide
mission at this point and seems confident that he can accomplish it.
And there can be no question of his loyalty to Voldemort in this
scene. He's still the old Draco from the end of OoP except for his new
indifference toward education. He hasn't yet felt any pressure, and
either Bella or Voldemort has apparently given him the honor and glory
line since he expects to be rewarded for his services.

No suicide mission canon here that I can see.

Once we get to Hogwarts, the Draco plot focuses, as it did in "Draco's
Detour" (only we don't know that on a first reading) on the cabinets.
We have constant references to Harry checking the Marauder's Map and
not finding Draco on it, to Draco in the company of first-year girls
(or little girls dropping things in the hallway) and Draco giving up
Quidditch to do something he considers more important. We have Snape
"angry and a bit afraid" when Filch finds Draco in an upstairs
corridor after hours, we have the plan that's taking longer than he
expected (much longer--it takes the whole year), we have two desperate
attempts when the cabinet plan seems to be failing but Draco keeps
coming back to it, we have Harry finally figuring out that he's been
in the RoR all these times and trying to get in to figure out what
he's doing in there, and then we have the "whoop" when Draco finally
succeeds in repairing the cabinet, and of course the DEs coming out of
the cabinet into Hogwarts to act, or so he thinks (based on his talk
with Snape), as back up. (Certainly, he never attempted, or thought
about attempting, to kill Dumbledore face to face without them. Even
Draco knows that would be impossible.) 

If the cabinet isn't important, at least as central as the "suicide
mission" idea that motivates the *adults* in "Spinner's End," why is
so much page time devoted to it?

As for the scene on the tower, about which I also have a lot of
questions, I have a question for you (as a group). Why do the DEs,
primarily Brutal-Face, just keep telling Draco to kill Dumbledore
without taking any further action? I realize that they're interrupted
by Snape, and I proposed my own (tentative) explanation in another
post, but I want to know what you and Magpie and Sydney think. Surely,
if it's a suicide mission, their orders wouldn't be to let the boy
kill Dumbledore. They would be to make sure that he kills him or is
killed himself. I think the DEs would ultimately have resorted to that
solution if Snape hadn't entered the tower at that moment, but it
doesn't seem as if their orders included that crucial provision of the
suicide mission theory. It seems to count on Dumbledore to kill Draco.
(Snape would not have been worried about Draco if he thought that DD
killing him was the chief danger. He'd know that wasn't going to
happen. He and Narcissa, rightly or wrongly, seem to have feared that
Draco would be killed by DEs or LV himself if he failed to accomplish
his mission.) And DD's statement that he thinks Voldemort expected
Draco to fail isn't proof of a suicide mission, either. He wasn't
present at the initial interview any more than snape was, and he can't
know whether the plan was to kill him or kill Draco or both. I see no
reason why LV wouldn't be happy with either outcome.

What's really odd, IMO, is that the DEs don't seem to have planned to
kill either Draco or Dumbledore themselves. They seem to have expected
Draco to kill Dumbledore and their job was to make sure that he did
it. They don't hesitate to Crucio Harry or burn Hagrid's house once
their leader, Brutal-Face, is incapacitated, so I doubt that the'd
have hesitated to kill either DD or Draco if Brutal-Face hadn't
restrained them by reminding them of those orders, which, to me, don't
seem to fit with a suicide mission at all.

On a side note, this group of DEs does seem to have only one
reasonably competent member, Brutal-Face (Yaxley?). But Gibbon is
already dead, and, aside from the big blond (who is certainly a
liability), we don't know how competent the DEs who remain downstairs
fighting are. (Aren't there two, not counting Brutal-Face and
Greyback, that don't make it to the door?) The DEs can't have expected
to encounter Order members and they're outnumbered, so I'm not sure we
can judge the competence of the group as a whole based on Blondie and
the brother and sister (Amycus and Alecto)--or Fenrir Greyback, a
known murderer with no scruples whatever but no capacity for
leadership, either. But even if we can, who does Voldemort have now
that he can send? Bellatrix is in disgrace, not to mention that she's
a wanted fugitive, and Lucius, Dolohov and the rest of MoM crew are in
Azkaban. He can't send Wormtail, who must be wanted for some fourteen
murders by now since Black has been cleared. Who's left? Goyle wasn't
in the MoM unless JKR omitted him by accident, but he'd be no better
than Blondie. (Maybe he *is* Blondie.) Maybe Voldemort was counting on
Snape to step in and finish the job.

Or maybe he just sent the best people he has left.

Carol, who still has more questions than answers and is not at all
persuaded that the suicide mission theory fills up all the holes or
that is' consistent with all the available canon