Puppetmaster DD (Was: Question about the prophecy and a thought about Ginny)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 171195

lizzyben wrote:

> Well, this is a pretty good reconstruction, but it still doesn't
resolve a number of contradictions. First, DD says that he had already
turned to leave the room when the prophecy occurred, while T says that
Snape "interrupted" in the middle of the interview. Second, DD implies
that the spy was detected & "thrown from the building" before the full
prophecy was given, but T says that Snape was outside the door the
entire time. Finally, I have to ask why it is even necessary to jump
through hoops trying to resolve the conflicting versions. Why do they
conflict at all? JKR wasn't making a mistake here; by relating T's
version of events, she's highlighting all the things that D
"misrepresented", failed to mention, or mis-characterized in his
earlier rendition. Why? IMO the conflict is meant to suggest that DD
wasn't telling the entire truth about his role in the prophecy. DD
isn't just covering up for Snape, he's covering up for himself as
well. Even if you believe that Snape only heard the first half, you
still have to wonder why DD allowed him to leave w/that vital
information after being presented w/the eavesdropper. <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree with you that the two versions are contradictory and I'm also
not satisfied with reconstructions that attempt to reconcile them. But
I'm not so sure that Trelawney's view is the accurate one. For one
thing, she's obviously unaware of her own Prophecy, but, more
important, IMO, she attributes a motive to Snape that we know is
inaccurate: whatever he was doing (and I'm assuming that he was a
loyal DE spying on DD because that's the closest we have to a
canonical explanation) he wasn't listening for job interview tips or
even looking for a job at the time: It was at least the end of October
(Harry and Neville would have been conceived around Halloween) and
perhaps as late as April--a cold, rainy night, according to Dumbledore
and not at all the usual time for job interviews (the divination
professor must have died suddenly and created a vacancy). Moreover,
young Snape didn't apply for the DADA position and receive the Potions
job instead until almost two years later (Snape has been teaching for
fourteen years as of OoP, Trelawney for "almost sixteen"). So, like
Hagrid overhearing the argument between Snape and DD in the forest and
assuming that Snape is just overworked (and at least a dozen other
instances of characters mistakenly explaining each other's behavior),
she's providing an explanation that she considers plausible.
(Obviously, she still doesn't know that Snape was ever a Death Eater;
to her, he's just a pushy young man whereas she's a consummate
professional.) At any rate, I'm not sure that Trelawney's version is
any more accurate than DD's (though I'm pretty sure based on what DD
chose to show Harry of Trelawney rising out of the Pensieve that the
Prophecy itself was not interrupted). 

And given the fairly numerous inconsistencies in her books (for
example, Ron's somehow knowing that Draco has a Hand of Glory, which
Harry only saw him look at in CoS or Lupin's transformation when the
moon comes out from behind a cloud in PoA, which means that he only
needs to stay indoors and he won't transform), I don't discount the
possibility that JKR herself is inadvertently responsible for the
inconsistencies. Her point in having Trelawney innocently recount her
version of events is to reveal to Harry that Snape was the
eavesdropper (funny how he didn't think the eavesdropper's identity
was important until he found out that it was Snape) and, IMO, prepare
him to see the events on the tower in the worst possible light. But to
privilege Trelawney's version over DD's is like believing Snape's
halr-truths in "Spinner's End"--JKR is *not* giving us the full truth
in HBP, IMO. She's saving the revelations (and reversals) for DH, the
denouement of the series.

lizzyben wrote:
> 
> What I'm drawing attention to is the fact that DD refers to it as a
"stroke of good fortune" that LV heard the first half of the prophecy.
 Now, why would he say this if he never wanted LV to know this
information? If Snape told LV half of the prophecy, wouldn't that be a
stroke of "bad fortune" instead? DD doesn't seem to think so. He
states that it was "good fortune", because it inspired LV to act upon
the prophecy & attack Harry. If LV had heard the entire prophecy, he
would have known the danger in attacking Harry, and waited. If he
hadn't heard any part of the prophecy, he wouldn't have personally
targeted the Potters at all. Instead, LV decides to personally attack
the Potters immediately, and is defeated in the process. Just as DD
planned. 
> 
> Because LV knew only the first half, he was 1.) now aware of the
prophecy of his defeat, 2.) inspired to immediately attack the
prophesied vanquisher - thus ensuring LV's destruction & also creating
a "chosen one" w/equal power to defeat LV. 3.) obsessed w/hearing the
second half, which allows DD to use the full prophecy as LV-bait. All
accomplished w/one small action. Pretty effective work on DD's part.
He's pretty proud of his brilliant plan.
> 
> And this is where the second slip, DD's use of pronouns, comes in.
We hardly ever hear DD stutter, or rephrase something mid-sentence. So
IMO DD's decision to stop mid-sentence & change the pronoun here is
significant. I think, in the first moment, DD is only thinking about
himself. He's inwardly gloating at how he trapped LV, smug at how his
"brilliant plan" worked - who knows, maybe there's even a "gleam of
triumph" in his eyes. He starts to say it was "*my* stroke of good
fortune" that LV only heard the first half of the prophecy.
> 
> But then he remembers that that "stroke of good fortune" killed the
parents of the boy he is talking to. He considers that Harry might not
approve. And he rephrases to - *our* good fortune, as if he was
thinking about Harry all along. But he wasn't. HOW was it fortunate,
for Harry, that LV only heard the first half of the prophecy? DD
himself says that LV wouldn't have attacked the Potters if he'd heard
the whole prophecy. Meaning, the fact that LV heard only half the
prophecy was a stroke of very BAD fortune for Harry & his parents. 
<snip>

Carol responds:
First, my apologies for not snipping more, but everything I've left
here seems important to Lizzyben's argument. Second, I, too, am
disturbed by DD's unDumbledorean behavior in HBP, praising his own
brilliance and seeming to encourage Harry's desire for vengeance
against Voldemort when at other times he implies that Harry's weapons
are a pure soul and the superpowerful magic of Love. (I have no
problems with DD's trust in Snape, but I wish he'd done more than
credit him with "timely action" in treating the ring curse. We never
get to hear that exciting story.) I can only account for his behavior
as being prompted by the knowledge that he has only a short time to
live and being in a hurry to educate Harry on Horcruxes and
Riddle/Voldemort without undermining his plans for Snape, who will
surely be "outed" as a DE by the DADA curse.

I also agree that from the perspective of the WW (which celebrated
Voldie's first downfall with wand sparks and parties without much
concern for the murdered Potters), the events at Godric's Hollow were
a Good Bad Thing (as the authors of "1066 and All That" would say), or
perhaps a felix culpa (fortunate fall), however sad for the Potters
and for Harry. It's certainly true that they resulted in eleven years
of peace for the WW, the vaporization of Voldemort and the arrest of
most of his followers (and the deaths of at least three), and the
creation of the one with the power to defeat him. We are led to
believe that these events result from a particular sequence of events,
most notably: Snape's revelation of the partial Prophecy to Voldemort,
Voldemort's interpretation of the Prophecy, Peter Pettigrew's betrayal
of the Potters, Lily's sacrifice, and Voldemort's failed attempt to
kill Harry, which simultaneously vaporized him and gave Harry the
power(s) enabling him to vanquish Voldemort later. The entire
sequence, along with the Potters' refusal to choose DD as their SK and
the later SK switch, leads to the inevitable confrontation between
Harry and Voldemort which will, presumably, be the climax of the
entire series. While we will certainly learn more about these events
(for example, how DD knew to send Hagrid to Godric's Hollow to rescue
Harry and how anyone knew that Voldemort was vanquished but not dead),
I doubt that we'll find that the wise old mentor, for all his
emotional mistakes, engineered those events. At least I hope not. I'll
send my books to Lupinlore to be mulched if it turns out to be true. :-)

Regarding the change in pronouns and your explanation: It makes no
sense to me that DD would switch from "my" to "our" out of a sudden
realization that the death of the Potters and his own selection as the
Chosen One was *Harry's* good fortune as well as Dumbledore's. Surely
not. Nor was it the Potters' good fortune. "Our" must refer, IMO,
either to DD and the Order or to the WW as a whole, not to Harry and
DD. The quote again (taken from one of your posts upthread, with your
ellipses) is "My - our - one stroke of good fortune was that the
eavesdropper was detected only a short way into the prophecy and
thrown from the building... Consequently, he could not warn his master
that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you.
So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you."

So the good fortune is not that Harry's parents were attacked but that
the eavesdropper heard and related only part of the Prophecy, so that
neither he nor Voldemort knew that to attack Harry was to create his
own Nemesis. Had he heard the whole Prophecy, the Potters might not
have died (but as members of the Order, they would still have been on
his hit list and Harry might still have been orphaned or lost at least
one parent), but the WW would have had no respite and no Chosen One
who could ultimately vanquish Voldemort.

But I very much doubt that Dumbledore knew at the time what would
happen if Voldemort heard all or part of the Prophecy. He had no more
idea than Snape did who would be involved or how Voldemort would
interpret the Prophecy (or even that Snape was a DE who would report
it to LV). I very much doubt that he expected Voldemort to attack a
baby; he seems to have taken action only when Snape reported to him
"how Voldemort interpreted the Prophecy." And his hands were tied by
what Snape calls James Potter's "arrogance" in trusting Sirius Black
over Dumbledore. Had DD been able to protect the Potters (and the
Longbottoms?), Harry would (possibly) have grown up with his parents
as an ordinary wizard boy with a talent for Quidditch but no
extraordinary powers or destiny, but the WW would be a much worse
place to live, especially for Muggleborns and House-Elves and the
dwindling number of Order members, with no hope for the defeat of the
apparently immortal LV.

Fortunately for DD and the WW at large (though not for the Potters or
Harry or Voldie or the DEs), matters were taken out of Dumbledore's 
(and DDM!Snape's) hands by the choices of other people--the Potters, 
Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Voldemort all contributed in one
way or another to the "Good Bad Thing" that occurred at Godric's Hollow.

Carol, vaguely recalling that "Good Bad Thing" in "1066 and All That"
refers primarily to the Battle of Hastings, which was a Bad Thing for
poor Harold the Saxon and his army but a Good Thing for England, which
became a part of Europe rather than a Saxon backwater (Please correct
me offlist if I'm misremembering!)