Yaxley and the Ministry WAS: How we read HP books

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183899

zanooda:
> > 
> > No, Yaxley didn't have access to the Minister - Thicknesse was
*only* :-) Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement back
then. If Yaxley had access to the Minister, he wouldn't have needed 
the help of Thicknesse and other high-ranking officials to overpower
Scrimgeour. Yaxley's plan was to Imperius Thicknesse so that 
Thicknesse could Imperius other heads of departments.  <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I did mean Thicknesse though! Not Scrimgeour of course. I did not 
> realize that I even needed to specify that.

Carol responds:
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds as if you think that Thicknesse
was Minister for Magic when Yaxley Imperiused him. But he wasn't
Minister yet; he was the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, the position
that Yaxley took over when Thicknesse became Minister after
Scrimgeour's death. Sorry to repeat myself, and I apologize if that's
already clear to you. At any rate, as zanooda said, Yaxley had access
to Thicknesse but not to Scrimgeour, which is why he needed to
Imperius Thicknesse, who did have that access. Whether Yaxley was at
that point a Ministry official or only became one after the coup is
not clear, but he certainly had Ministry contacts (like Lucius Malfoy
before him, only Malfoy was friends with the Minister himself).

> Alla:
> 
> I cannot find it now, I thought maybe in the first chapter of HBP, I
even did something that I did not do for a longest time ever, went to
Lexicon. Lexicon says that Yaxley was never captured or sent to
Azakaban, which I agree with. But I also have to say that I think
Lexicon quotes the wrong chapter for that or maybe I missed it. 
Lexicon in Yaxley entry says that he was never captured and went to 
Azkaban. I agree with it, to me it makes a great deal of sense that he
could infiltrate Ministry by working there and that means to me that
he never went in Azkaban. But Lexicon gives HBP2 as support for 
> that proposition and I cound not find anything in there.
<snip>

Carol responds:
Yaxley is not mentioned in HBP chapter 1, which is largely a set of
conversations between Fudge and the Muggle Prime Minister. The only
minor official who gets mentioned there is the Muggle Herbert Chorley,
who has been made comically dangerous by a badly cast Imperius Curse.

The quote in HBP2 is not a mistake by the Lexicon. it's the one I keep
referring to about Yaxley and the Carrows escaping Azkaban the first
time around. I guess I'd better just quote it instead of just
referring to it. Snape is speaking to Bellatrix:

"You ask why I did not attempt to find him [Voldemort] when he
vanished. For the same reason that Avery, Yaxley, the Carrows,
Greyback, Lucius and many others did not attempt to find him. I
believed him finished" (HBP Am. ed. 26).

Now granted, this quote doesn't specifically say that Yaxley got off
by pleading the Imperius Curse, but we know that Lucius and Avery did
(they're named in GoF as having escaped Azkaban), and Snape, of
course, was protected by Dumbledore's testimony. So Yaxley, Greyback,
and the Carrows are listed with DEs that we know did not go to Azkaban
after VW1, and it would have been difficult for them to search for
Voldemort if they'd been sent there.

Which tells us what we already know or deduced--the Lexicon is right
that Yaxley was never sent to Azkaban (unless he had a brief stint
after Dumbledore's death). But it gets us no closer to whether he was
a Ministry employee.

Carol, who is not arguing a position here, just trying to put the
facts on the table