The green liquid in the basin

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 165679

> Mike:
> > 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,..." <snip> 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. <snip>

Jen: I don't know about that, the Voldemort I've been reading can't 
seem to pass up a chance to toy with others at the expense of having 
his plans go awry.  Giving Harry his wand back in the graveyard and  
attempting to possess Harry in the DOM to taunt Dumbledore led to the 
greatest defeats of his life.

No matter that Voldemort can't personally enjoy the suffering in the 
cave, he would still arrogantly assume the Horcrux was perfectly safe 
and relish the idea of a totured soul acknowleding in his last 
moments before death that Lord Voldemort had outsmarted him.


> Carol:
> I *never* thought it was a likely story. To me, it sounds like
> something DD invented on the spot to make sure that Harry, who
> wouldn't be thinking logically at this point even if logic were his
> strong point, would accept as a reason for making him drink what he
> knew was going to be a horrible potion, whatever its effects. But I
> agree absolutely with this part of your post. All the protections
> are designed to deter the seeker from getting to the Horcrux and to
> punish him horribly if he succeeds. Voldemort has no intention'
> whatever of interrogating the drinker. He wouldn't even know he was
> in the cave.  If being in the cave set off an alarm bell, Voldie 
> would have been summoned and neither Harry nor DD would have gotten
> out alive...<snip>

Jen: I don't see the problem with what Dumbledore said.  If you take 
it perfectly literally, yes, Voldemort wouldn't be lurking in the 
cave at that moment or have magical alarm bells ringing.  But Harry 
does learn that magic leaves calling cards, you can't perform magic 
without leaving information about yourself behind.  In Voldemort's 
mind only the most clever and powerful of wizards would even make it 
to the cave to begin with, let alone get near the Horcrux, so he 
fully expected to have a posthumous record revealed by the magic used 
(which is the only information Voldemort would care about).

Carol:
> I'm with you on this one, Mike. Someone please give me a plausible
> explanation for "I can only conclude that this potion is supposed to
> be drunk." Once DD has conjured the goblet and dipped it in, how can
> the potion know whether it's being drunk or otherwise disposed of?

Jen:  I can only speculate since we can't know what would have 
happened if DD poured out the potion.  I would imagine something 
similar to what happened when Harry attempted to conjure water by 
means other than the lake would occur, i.e., throwing out the potion 
would have a safeguard on it such as the potion level never dropping 
in the bowl or rousing the Inferi.  There's magic going on in the 
cave that Harry can't explain like locating the exact location of the 
entrance to the cave, or finding and raising the boat and drinking 
the potion fits in here, Voldemort believed he'd created only a 
terminal means to get to the Horcrux--I think it's meant to be 
ingenious and not a plot device!  

If I jump outside the story I understand what you two are saying, 
that drinking the potion was only a means to an end.  To me that's 
assuming we know what the end *is*, that you can draw a straight 
narrative line from the potion to Dumbledore's death and conclude the 
first had to happen in order for the second to take place.  I'm not 
ready to draw that line and say there is no C factor out there to 
mess up this nice equation.  There's plenty of information left, 
including Dumbledore's past and Harry's link to Voldemort, that could 
shed new light on the cave and the tower and bring them together in a 
new way.

Jen R.