LV's bigger plan / Trelawney at the funeral or not?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 166423

Dana wrote:
> <snip> [Trelawney's] absence would be something that would register
> unconsciously and what would be thought about later. More like "now
> that you mention it, I indeed haven't seen her at the funeral" then
> something actively thought about at the moment itself.

Carol responds:
And yet, if that were the case, surely Harry (or more likely,
Hermione) would have mentioned it in HBP itself. As a comparison, when
the narrator mentions that the teachers are all undermining Umbridge
by sending her to their classrooms to deal with escaped fireworks, the
only teachers specifically mentioned are McGonagall and Flitwick. We
don't have to conclude from that specific reference that some
teachers, say, Snape (whose resistance to Umbridge we see elsewhere)
are not doing the same thing. The narrator simply mentions two (whose
loyalties happen to be unambiguous) to illustrate the point.

Other staff members besides Trelawney are not named but are presumably
included in "the staff." Does ghost Binns attend? Perhaps not. But
what about Sprout and Flitwick? Surely, they were present, but they're
not mentioned. The only staff members specifically mentioned, IIRC,
are McGonagall, Hagrid, Madam Pince, and Filch.
> 
> Ceridwen:
> > This was an important funeral.  The funeral of Hogwarts'
headmaster, Trelawney's boss; the funeral of the former head of the
Wizengamot and the (former?) head of the International Wizarding
(Council?); the funeral of a headmaster murdered by one of the
teachers.  Which of the staff would dare to stay away?
> 
Carol:
Especially given that DD had been reinstated as Chief Warlock of the
Wizengamot and a member of the International Confederation of Wizards
(OoP Am. ed. 846).


> Ceridwen:
> > This was also the funeral of the man who saved Trelawney from
being turned out of Hogwarts not much more than a year before.  It was
her information that was at the front of Harry's mind when he and
Dumbledore set out for the sea cave.  I think he would have noticed
her missing.

Carol responds:
I agree. Even Harry, who is not the most psychologically astute person
in the WW and was to some degree preoccupied by his own grief, would
have understood that Trelawndy had a motive to come down from her room
(her own prediction of calamity had come true) and realized that
Trelawney owed more to DD than she knew. He certainly would have
noticed her missing, and he would have noticed an empty chair in the
staff section, as he does whenever a teacher is absent from the staff
table at a feast.
> 
> Ceridwen:
<snip> In my opinion, the funeral would have been the perfect place to
set up the Missing!Trelawney mystery for Deathly Hallows, but it
wasn't set up.

Carol:
Exactly. After all, we've been informed of the disappearance of the
seemingly inconsequential Florian Fortescue and of Ollivander. I
expect a follow-up on those mysteries (and perhaps on the Vance and
Bones murders). And Harry is (I hope) going to figure out eventually
that the barkeeper at the Hog's Head, whom he sees at the funeral, is
the mysterious Order member, Aberforth Dumbledore. But there's no
reference to Trelawney, not a hint that she's missing. "The staff"
(minus Snape) are all present, or even Harry would have noticed.

> Dana:
> Well I do believe [the missing Trelawney subplot] was foreshadowed
when Umbridge tried to remove Trelawney from Hogwarts the previous
year and DD stepped in to prevent it, JKR makes a big scene out of it.
Also Harry even meeting her that night foreshadows the prophecy still
has an active role to play. <snip>

Carol responds:
Certainly, the Prophecy and Trelawney have a role left to play.
Personally, I think that Prophecies are likely to come in threes, and
we'll hear one last Prophecy. All Ceridwen and others are saying is
that we have no hint that Trelawney has been kidnapped as of the end
of HBP. As Ceridwen says, the funeral would have been the perfect
opportunity to note her absence.

I would not be at all surprised if an attack on Hogwarts is in the
works now that Dumbledore is dead, and kidnapping Trelawney would be
one motive of many for such a plot. But to suggest that Trelawney, who
was denied her opportunity to speak with Dumbledore by Harry himself
in OoP, was spirited away by Fawkes while the DEs (whom DD thought
could not get into Hogwarts) were invading the castle is simply
unsupported by evidence, as is kidnapping Trelawney as the primary
objective of Voldemort's plot. Surely, Dumbledore or Draco or the DEs
would have mentioned Trelawney if she were involved in the matter, but
all we see is Draco explaining his Vanishing Cabinet Plan, saying that
he has no choice but to kill Dumbledore, and the DEs urging him to do
it (and offering to do it themselves).
> 
Dana:
> The encounter told us three things:
> 1) Snape was the one who relayed part of the prophecy to LV
> 2) It was his reason for remorse (or at least part of it)
> 3) Snape saw who made the prophecy and therefore we know there is
> still an opportunity for LV to get his hands on it.

Carol responds:
1 and 2 I agree with. But 3 is your inference from the available
information. Yes, young Snape saw Trelawney, but there's no indication
that he knew who she was at that time or that he gave her name to
Voldemort. To be sure, Dumbledore seems to assume that Voldemort knows
who provided the information and is protecting Trelawney for that
reason, but we can't infer that Voldemort has arrived at the same
conclusion, much less that he is focusing his efforts solely on that
objective. And if LV had thought about Trelawney earlier, I doubt that
he'd be so upset about the broken Prophecy orb. It makes much more
sense, IMO, to clear away the primary obstacle between himself and 
Harry, Albus Dumbledore, before he does anything else. And if it
occurs to him to kidnap Trelawney as an alternative way to learn about
the Prophecy, then surely Dumbledore's death is a necessary
prerequisite to that, too. 

As Snape tells Harry in OoP, the staff and students are protected by a
variety of ancient spells, and it's unlikely that a Death Eater could
just climb up that rope ladder and kidnap Trelawney even if they knew
where her office was (she wasn't teaching when they were students).
And there's no indication that Dumbledore anticipates any such scheme.
If he did, he's stay there to deal with the DEs himself, not
commission Fawkes to do the job.

Dana: 
> The prophecy itself has always been a part of the main plot
throughout the series. It is the reason Harry being a marked man, his
parents' death, Snape's defection, Sirius imprisonment and death,
Wormtail's betrayal, DD's choices regarding Harry and of course the
driving force behind LV's reason for wanting to destroy Harry, his
downfall and his comeback (the PoA plotline) <snip>

Carol responds:
No one is questioning this point. I'm quite sure that both the
Prophecy and Trelawney herself will play a role in DH. We're simply
saying that there's no indication that Trelawney is already missing at
the end of HBP. That she is in danger from Voldemort is not in dispute.

Dana:
<snip> him knowing the prophecy in full will eventually still not be
enough to destroy Harry. 

Carol:
Exactly. That's part of the irony of OoP. If Voldemort had succeeded
in stealing the Prophecy, it would not have helped him--except to
realize that he himself had "marked" Harry as the one with the power
to defeat him. But Dumbledore didn't want Voldemort to know that.
Better to stall him for as long as possible, making him concentrate
his efforts on obtaining the Prophecy instead of starting the second
war. And, of course, kidnapping Trelawney and obtaining the memory
from her won't help him, either, but that wouldn't keep him from
treating Trelawney as he treated Bertha Jorkins.

Dana:
Just a thought of course but I still hope DD thwarted LV because
thinking about what LV would do to Trelawney to retrieve the memory is
such a horrible thought but I would not put it pass JKR to put it in.

Carol:
Nor do I, if she can find a way to do so from Harry's pov. (The mind
link seems to be blocked, fortunately for Harry but unfortunately in
terms of the information the link provided to the reader.)

I agree that Voldemort will go after Trelawney at some point. But I
don't think that he's already made an attempt or that Fawkes has
snatched Trelawney out of harm's way. She's still very much in danger,
and with Dumbledore out of the way and Hogwarts virtually empty, now
seems to be the time.

Carol, noting that absence of evidence of Trelawney's presence at the
funeral is not the same as evidence of her absence