The green liquid in the basin

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 165665

Illegal Top posting to add my welcome to Paul and commend him for 
his good topic with an excellent post, one of you first, no?

> 
> Carol responds:
> If RAB refilled the basin with a different potion altogether, then 
> he must be a powerful Dark wizard himself, intent on torturing and
> killing anyone who retrieved the fake Horcrux--not to mention that
> drinking the horrible potion not only made the drinker suffer, later
> to weaken and possibly die, but also caused a terrible thirst that
> forced the drinker to drink the water in the lake, releasing the
> Inferi. The whole diabolical chain reaction has to be Voldemort's
> plan, not RAB's--unless RAB is as murderous and powerful as 
> Voldemort.

Mike:
A big me too on the quality and bent of wizard capable of doing all 
that stuff.


> Carol:
> I'm pretty sure that RAB is Regulus, who would have been about
> nineteen years old at the time, and he was clearly opposed to
> Voldemort's evil reign. It's unlikely that he would have employed
> similar tactics. 

Mike:
I'm not yet certain that we can credit Reggie with anything other 
than being opposed to Voldemort, for whatever reason. His note 
said, "... that it was I who discovered your secret...", but we don't 
know which "secret" inflamed Reggie enough to spark this rebelious 
act. Was *the* secret that Voldemort wasn't pureblood? Don't know, 
but if that was it, then Reggie wouldn't exactly be rebelling for a 
more noble reason, would he? My point is that Reggie could be alive 
and in hiding and DDM, all that, while still having a temperment and 
personality to rival Snape's.


> Carol:
> All he wanted to do, according to the note, is to steal the real
> Horcrux and destroy it, making Voldemort mortal (or so he thought).
> So either he used a spell to refill the basin simply to trick 
> Voldemort into thinking no one had entered the cave, which seems
> rather pointless since if he went to check on the Horcrux, he would
> know how to get past the potion without drinking it and would 
> quickly discover that it was fake in any case, or the basin was 
> enchanted to fill itself with that potion the moment a Horcrux or 
> any other object was put into it. (The basin wouldn't know a fake 
> Horcrux from a real one.) It doesn't refill itself when it's 
> emptied, or it would have done so when DD scooped up the fake 
> Horcrux. I think it only covers over an object placed in it so that 
> the object is irretrievable unless the seeker, or a companion, 
> drinks the potion.

Mike:
I didn't know where to snip, so I left this paragraph intact. :)
This seems like a good place to air my whole objection with the logic 
surrounding that Birdbath of Doom and how JKR wrote it. Or how JKR 
had Dumbledore treat it which leads me to a red herring 
interpretation of the whole cave storyline.

One can't even touch the potion in the basin, right? But put a glass 
in your hand and you have no problem dipping into the stuff. So why 
doesn't DD put a glass into his hand and when he gets into the potion 
simply reach to the bottom and grab the locket? Sheesh, do I have to 
tell him how to do everything? ;)

Next, DD says "... this potion is supposed to be drunk." Huh? How 
does the potion know that it's being taken out a cupfull at a time 
and being drunk? Conjure a pail and pour it into that! Don't drink 
the stuff! Where's the logic that DD "can only conclude" that 
drinking is the solution?

And what about the "He [LV] would want to keep them alive long enough 
to find out how they managed to penetrate so far through his 
defenses,..." It sounds like a *likely story* for Dumbledore to tell 
Harry. Until, of course, you read it again. Then you're left with 
another big 'Huh?'. How about, wouldn't Voldemort prefer a fast 
acting potent poison that kills the drinker so fast there would have 
to be a hundred of them to get to the bottom? He wants to question 
them? Not the Voldemort I've been reading. He wants his Horcrux safe 
and the intruder or intruders *Dead, dead, dead!* He wouldn't give a 
damn *why* they were there, he would only care that they didn't leave 
there with his Horcrux. So did Voldemort have anything to do with 
that potion in the basin? Was it always there, or did somebody else 
(Bellatrix) turn it into the potion that acts like a liquid Dementor, 
forcing you to relive your worst memories?

For me, it's the difference between making it work for the storyline 
and writing a storyline that works. For some reason JKR needed 
Dumbledore to drink that potion (and have Harry force him to drink 
the last 7 or 8 glasses). Was it to pressage the parallel to Snape on 
the tower? Was it to weaken Dumbledore to make Draco disarming him 
seem plausible? Was it to have Dumbledore utter all those incoherant 
pleadings; that is, are there clues in Dumbledore's pleading to "... 
don't hurt them, please, please, it's my fault, hurt me instead..." 
and the like?


> Carol:
> I'm convinced that JKR has already provided all the hints we need as
> to what happened. Bellatrix must have hidden the Horcrux and known
> what it was (but not about the others). She says that the Dark Lord
> has trusted her with his most precious (presumably secrets or
> treasures), and she knew that LV wasn't dead or she wouldn't have
> tortured the Longbottoms for information. Quite possibly, she took 
> the devoted Kreacher along to help her. (He would obey any Black 
> other than renegade Sirius and he adores "Miss Bellatrix.")

Mike:
My conviction on the Locket Horcrux runs counter to yours, as I've 
previously posted in my sig line on the "Harry's accio in the cave" 
thread. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/165619
Which is why I consider the whole cave adventure to be a red herring. 
There was nothing there, and if Reggie is still alive and hidden by 
Dumbledore, then Dumbledore knew the locket Horcrux was not in that 
cave. So why did Dumbledore take Harry there? I have speculations, 
but that's for a different thread.

Besides, I'm not convinced that one can borrow somebody elses 
house elf. Sirius says that Kreacher is "supposed to do whatever 
anyone in the family asks him ...", but it seems to me that taking 
someone's house elf out on an adventure goes beyond the normal 
obeying requirement when in a family member's presents. JMO :)

> Carol:
> Regulus would somehow have got wind of Bellatrix's mission, possibly
> by questioning Kreacher, whom he could have ordered to show him the
> cave and help him get to the island. Not being quite a perfect hero
> with a sense for the rights of house-elves, he would have ordered
> Kreacher to drink the potion (as Slughorn had a house-elf drink test
> his mead for poison). Kreacher's brains could have been addled in 
> the process (not that he's completely crazy--he's still quite 
> cunning--but "he is what wizards have made him"--not a normal house-
> elf). 

Mike:
If I'm wrong on how the locket came to be in 12 GP, then this 
explanation of Kreacher and Reggie retreiving the locket together 
seems the most reasonable to me. It does answer a few questions 
regarding Kreacher and could easily be the reason how the locket got 
back to 12 GP.


> Carol:
> We almost certainly saw the real locket, unopenable and intact, in 
> 12 GP when the Weaselys, HRH, and Sirius Black were house-cleaning. 
<snip>

Mike:
Yep :)

> Carol, who is more interested in whose memory Dumbledore was forced 
> to relive and hopes it was not his own

Mike, on the same wavelength as Carol on this one

BTW: That theory I posted on the other thread -- where Reggie is 
sleeping with the inferi, with a locket in his pocket -- I don't know 
if I made it clear that I was only passing it on. It wasn't my theory 
and I was not a proponent of it.