CHAPDISC: DH32, The Elder Wand

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 184749

> Zara:
> What, we don't all have the books memorized yet? What sort of fans 
> are we, anyway?! <bg>
> 
> (Actually, I needed to look up the precise wording myself!)
> 
> > DH, "The Elder Wand":
> > "No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter."
> 
> > "You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as I do. 
> He does not need finding. Potter will come to me. I know his 
> weakness, you see, his pone great flaw. He will hate watching the 
> others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it 
> happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come."
>

Montavilla47:
Thanks.  I don't see this as much of a comparison with Lucius.  
He's simply saying that they are both annoying him by wanting to
go look for Harry when "he will come to me."

And, of course, they both have ulterior motives for doing so.  Lucius
really wants to look for Draco (something Voldemort see through
immediately) and Snape wants to deliver his message to Harry (which
Voldemort doesn't realize).

So, I suppose you could gather from this the difference in Snape 
and Lucius's abilities in Occlumency.  Snape does it successfully,
and Lucius doesn't.

Looking closely at this dialogue, I realize that I have been a bit
too hard on Harry (gasp!).  I've voiced annoyance that Harry and
Hermione don't do a damn thing when Snape dies, beyond 
gathering the memories.  (This, when Hermione was able to 
save Harry from Nagini's bite, and heal the splinched Ron.)

But, from Harry's perspective, here's Snape beggging Voldemort
to let him go fetch the person Voldemort is bent on killing.  
I have to excuse Harry if saving Snape's sorry life wasn't the 
first thing on his mind after that. :)

I think the problem was that I read this passage *knowing* that
Snape was good.  I didn't know why the heck Snape was insisting
on bringing in Harry, since I didn't know Dumbledore's big plan.
I suspected that Snape was lying and just wanted to go do 
something else.  But I knew he lying to Voldemort.  So, I think, 
because I wasn't buying an evil Snape in any shape or form, the 
twist of having him act all evil and then turn out to be good was 
lost on me.  

Had I read this with the assumption that Snape was evil, or 
even wavering, it would have been a very different experience.

Heh.  Looking at this passage *again,* Voldemort seems even
stupider than before.  Okay, he *wants* Harry dead, and he wants
it badly enough to try and attack him as soon as that 
blood protection thing wears off.  And, he doesn't want any of 
his followers to kill Harry.  How picky.  But, suffice it to say, he
wants Harry dead in a very bad way.

And, he knows that Harry's big huge flaw is that Harry won't want
to see people killed for him.  Harry wouldn't ever let that happen.
Especially the people he loves, right?  I mean, that was the whole 
trick behind pretending to torture Sirius.  

So... does nobody ever tell Voldemort that Harry was dating 
someone?  Two someones?  This was, remember, the talk of the
school a few months ago.  It was more interesting to the student
body than the fact that Harry had almost killed a fellow student.
Why didn't Draco drop that little bit of information?  Or Goyle?
Or Crabbe?  Or Pansy?

And, even without that information, wouldn't Voldemort know
that Harry's best friend was Ron Weasley?  It seemed known
that Harry was staying with the Weasleys before the wedding.
Wouldn't Harry have come running if Molly and Arthur were 
being tortured?

So, what was Voldemort waiting for all those months?  If the 
Ministry was under Voldemort's control, and the Ministry was
rounding up Muggle-born, what was to stop them from 
capturing the guy who went to the Ministry every single
day?  The paperwork?