[HPforGrownups] Re: Cabinet first

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 157804

I probably should never jump into a thread such as this at the eleventh
hour, especially since I'm not at all sure what the players' positions are,
though I've tried.


Carol wrote:

>   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.
>

Debbie:
If the objective were to kill the boy, why bother at all with the pretense
of the tower.  Why not just take Draco out into the forest and kill him
now?  Expecting Draco to fail, and forcing him to fail, are not the same
thing.  I suspect that at some level Voldemort would have been quite pleased
if Draco had succeeded in killing Dumbledore.  He'd have to find some other
way to punish Lucius, but if Draco had succeeded, he would have gone back to
Voldemort in a blaze of glory.

Carol:

>   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.
>

Debbie:
If the Cabinet was only a means to an end, and one Draco chose to pursue
because (i) he wanted backup, and (ii) proving that the Hogwarts defenses
could be breached would increase his glory, then there is an explanation.
Whether or not Voldemort knew of the Cabinet plan, there's no evidence that
Voldemort was micromanaging anything.  It was up to Draco to provide the
ways and means.  If he wanted to fix the Cabinet and bring in backup, he'd
have to figure out how to do it himself.  Therefore, the simple reason for
the DEs' reluctance to take out Dumbledore -- or Draco, for that matter --
is that Draco was in charge of this mission, and the other DEs were
following Draco's orders.  Their job was to clear Draco's path to the tower
so he could kill Dumbledore.

The notion that the orders came from Draco, not Voldemort, also explains the
oddity that at least one of the four on the tower, and perhaps more, weren't
much inclined to follow them.  As you pointed out earlier, I believe, Fenrir
is salivating to get Dumbledore himself, and Amycus is jumping the gun a
bit as well.  I suspect that they wouldn't be so trigger-happy if Voldemort
had issued their orders.

I think "suicide mission" should be interpreted very loosely.  Voldemort did
not need to send an escort to kill Draco on the spot if he failed in his
mission.  It's consistent with Voldemort's modus operandi to arrange for him
to be punished later, at a time and place, and using a method of his own
choosing.  A young follower who was resourceful enough to get DEs into
Hogwarts and gutsy enough to kill Dumbledore would be a great asset to
Voldemort, and Draco got plenty of time, both throughout the year and on the
tower, to show what he could do.
Debbie



 
>


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