[HPforGrownups] Was Snape asleep? (was Re: What Came First: Task or Cabinet?...

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 157834

 Carol responds:
> I see. Thank you for finally explaining your interpretation. However,
> as I've said, we don't know Voldemort's motivation, and I've never
> denied Draco's character arc though I see a larger role for
> Dumbledore's mercy than you seem to.

Magpie:
Yes, in your version, as I read it when you described it, Draco is a Jr. DE 
would-be murderer going along in his task (to fix the cabinet in order to 
kill DD), his only anxiety being that Voldemort will kill him if he fails to 
get that Cabinet fixed and it's hard.  He almost kills two people but has 
little reaction to that because he doesn't have a problem having the blood 
of two Gryffindors, especially a blood traitor, on his hands.  He'd kill 
more bystanders if Snape didn't warn him off it for purely utilitarian 
reasons.  He shows up on the Tower as ready to kill as he was in September, 
and is shocked to discover he's not doing it. Dumbledore's mercy, as I 
understood it, is almost like a magical spell or gift (metaphorically, not 
literally).  It reminded me--and I don't mean this sarcastically--somewhat 
of the turnaround of "How The Grinch Stole Christmas."

In my version, the arc is about Draco's growing realization he's not that DE 
and never was, and that killing is actually not as easy as he, an innocent, 
believed (and not just for practical reasons).  Former allies like Snape 
become threats because he is not one of them.  He shows up on the Tower on 
the edge of a breakdown already, and meets with a Dumbledore who understands 
and offers him help he's only earned the ability to understand and 
appreciate through what he's been through. I think the storyline over the 
course of the year prepares Draco for being able to accept and understand 
Dumbledore's mercy.

Carol:
>
> However, IMO, this business about the job being to kill Dumbledore by
> any means possible is inaccurate. It's definitely about killing
> Dumbldore with the DEs as backup, which is only possible if he fixes
> the cabinets. The meas and the necklace are not part of the plan; they
> are desperation measures, and once Snape warns him off using such
> clumsy and amateurish measures and lets him know that he's already
> suspected in the necklac incident, he stops.

Magpie:
See, but why not take the fact that the mead and the necklace happen as 
proof that they are part of the plan?  That way you don't have to explain 
them away.  It just seems completely backwards.  I also don't think Draco 
stops these kinds of measures because Snape warns him off them because the 
necklace was poorly done.  That gets again to the heart of the arc--my 
version looks to Draco himself for a reason not to continue to try these 
kinds of things despite threats from Voldemort.  In your version he stops 
because Snape told him not to in a conversation where Draco was openly 
defying Snape. And there was no reason for him to try them anyway because 
it's supposed to be about fixing the cabinet.

Also as I said in the other post to Pippin, the Voldemort Cabinet Plot means 
Draco's drawing confidence from fulfilling Voldemort's orders rather than 
being an individual responding uniquely to Voldemort's orders in a way that 
Dumbledore can praise.

Carol:
He concentrates on the cabinet. Why?
> Because that's the plan. that's what Voldemort expects him to do.

Magpie:
I disagree completely.  If Voldemort is expecting him to do it via Cabinet 
he had no reason to try the mead and necklace to begin with.  I think he 
stops trying these things because he really didn't like the results.  That's 
why DD can confidently tell Draco he's not a killer from the beginning of 
the Tower scene and Draco is already defensive about it.

Carol:
>
> And here's the canon. The "Sectumsempra" chapter takes place in May
> (not April 21, as I said earlier, sorry), at least two months after
> Ron's recovery and seven months after Katie's encounter with the
> necklace. Katie has just returned to school. Draco has no reason to be
> concerned with either of them.
The cabinet is still broken after all
> these months. Harry passes it on his way to hide the HBP's Potions
> book, but of course, its importance doesn't register. (Nice ironic
> touch, by the way. He's been trying all this time to get into the RoR
> the way it looks when Draco is in there, and here he is, but he
> doesn't know it. Lovely the way JKR works.) Draco is crying in the
> bathroom. Here's what he says to Moaning Myrtle:
>
> "No one can help me. I can't do it. . . . I can't. . . . It won't
> work. . . and unless I do it soon . . . . he says he'll kill me" (HBP
> Am. ed., italics in original).
>
> Read those words any way you like to fit your theory. I read them as,
> "I can't fix the cabinet and Voldemort says that if I don't fix it
> soon, he'll kill me."

Magpie:
I read them, as "I can't fix the Cabinet and this is what I have fastened my 
hopes on as a way of killing Dumbledore because I'm not doing anything else. 
If I don't kill Dumbledore soon, Voldemort says he'll kill me."  It fits 
with everything we see in canon.  He's got to kill Dumbledore.

Carol:
>
> Voldemort's motives are open to interpretation.
 Here's this possibly workable
> plan with the cabinets, a chance to get DEs into Hogwarts and just
> possibly succeed in killing Dumbledore once he's caught off guard and
> wandless, and, if not, he can kill the boy for failing. (I do think
> that the DE's orders were botched, whatever Voldemort's plan.)

Magpie:
Voldemort's motives are open to interpretation if you reject the only 
motives we're given in the text.  But the version where Voldemort's focused 
on his plan to kill DD via the Cabinets is acknowledged even here to be 
flawed: the DEs orders have to be botched somehow to explain how what 
happens really doesn't make it look like Voldemort's focused on a great plan 
to kill Dumbledore by getting his DEs into the castle.  It fits fine with 
the idea that he just said Draco had to kill DD, and Draco came up with the 
Cabinet plan, which surprised Dumbledore, who'd been aware of the orders to 
kill him all along.

Carol:>
> But regardless of how we interpret Voldemort's motives, my point is
> that Voldemort not only knows about Draco's cabinet plan, he's in on
> it and is pressuring Draco to keep up his end of the bargain. Nothing
> about killing Dumbledore by any means possible.

Magpie:
But I just don't understand why you would want to make this point when we 
see Draco attempting to kill Dumbledore via other means.  Those plot 
developments wind up just dangling from the story as a mistake on somebody's 
part instead of directly leading towards the climax.

Carol:
I'm surprised that he
> gave Draco till may before he started personally issuing death
> threats. (I realize that I'm interpreting here, but there's a lot of
> difference between crying hysterically in the bathroom and defying
> Professor Snape. He was under pressure before, but it couldn't have
> been death threats from Voldemort himself or he'd have broken a lot
> sooner. Just IMO.)

Magpie:
I think the pressure he felt earlier was his growing awareness that he 
didn't have the nature for this sort of work--Voldemort's threats may have 
started in earnest once Draco was beginning to see things more 
realistically. This fits both why Draco makes the attempts with the mead and 
the necklace and also why he makes no more attempts after that and 
concentrates on the cabinets.

-m