Prophecy / Umbridge's quill and Harry's fist / Dementors / Sectumsempra

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 187656

Potioncat wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187587>:

<< I've worked out a way the prophecy could work with only DD hearing it. Neither Snape nor LV would need to know about it before Godrick's Hollow, although some steps would be the same. It would happen like this ----hey, where did everybody go? >>

Go on, go on. Would it require DD being even more manipulative than he was in canon?

Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187595>:

<< How would anyone except the students (only two that we know of, Harry and Lee Jordan) know about the quill that used their own blood to write lines? >>

I can't figure out just how close Lee Jordan is to his best friends Fred and George -- in which book do the Twins say they must hurry off to see the secret passage that Lee just found, but they think it's the one they found first year (implying that they never told Lee about that one)?

However, it seems to me that Lee Jordan is more outgoing and less secretive than Harry. Even if he and the Twins keep some secrets from each other, I don't know a reason why he wouldn't tell Fred and George, and maybe a number of lesser friends, about Umbridge's quill. Maybe he even told his parents during the summer holiday. Word could have gotten around widely starting with Lee. Is it possible that Arthur could have told Molly about the widespread gossip at the Ministry about Scrimgeour having kept Umbridge on despite what Lee Jordan's parents said she'd done to their son, or would Molly inevitably have revealed to her kids, Harry, and the readers that she knew about it?

Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187631>:

<< the raised fist is just one more instance of the miscommunication motif that appears in all the books >>

It never occurred to me as a reader that Scrimgeour didn't correctly understand Harry's fist, until you said so. We need Rowling to tell us (if we can believe her answer) what she intended. If she intended that Scrimgeour understood, as does the reader, that Harry's fist meant: "Remember what Umbridge did to me", then we allow as how Scrimgeour somehow knew about Umbridge's quill and kept her on anyway. I don't think it's so hard to believe that word got around starting from Lee Jordan. 

If she intended Harry raising his fist to Scrimgeour to be yet another miscommunication, should she have put in something somewhere to make it clear that Scrimgeour didn't understand? Was she counting on perceptive readers and literary scholars to figure it out and tell the rest of us? Has anyone but you published this interpretation?

Bart replied to Carol in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187596>:

<< Do you really think that Harry would have done that if he didn't believe that Scrimgeour knew damned well exactly what it was? >>

But Harry's beliefs are not always correct.

<< Can you give any logical reason why Harry and/or Dumbledore would not have told the Ministry about her sending the dementors? And, if there is one, why we weren't told about it? >>

Harry didn't tell the Ministry because he thinks that the Ministry is his enemy. 

Dumbledore probably knew way back at Harry's trial that it was Umbridge who had sent the Dementors, shown when he, as barrister, said something about either the Dementors had been sent to Little Whinging by a Ministry official or this was a case of Dementors acting not on instructions from Ministry officials. He might have neglected to tell Scrimgeour because, in a somewhat spiteful way, he thought Scrimgeour ought to be able to figure it out himself, or else not deserve to know it. More likely, it was part of Puppetmaster Dumbledore manipulating everyone as I mentioned at the top of this post.

Harry has some valid reasons to think that the whole Ministry except for Arthur and Perkins is his enemy, altho' he appears to believe that the whole chain of command knew about what Umbridge was doing. After all, in a Muggle government, there would be some kind of paper trail, albeit highly classified, if the White House Chief of Staff or even the CIA Director borrowed a couple of Dementors to sic on one of our nation's enemies (implication: Fidel Castro, real meaning: some teen-ager with a smart mouth on him). 

The wizarding world is so very poor at organizational skills that there probably isn't even a log of when Ministry officials visit Azkaban to 'inspect'. I was thinking that a human witness could give testimony about what wasn't logged: "The Minister's deputy came on inspection on Aug 1 and took two Dementors with her when she left", but then I realized she wouldn't even have to kill a witness, just Memory Charm him. Anyway, if the Dementors could shrink small enough to hide in her handbag, all the witness could say was that she had been there.

But then I realized there might not be any human witness. Surely there is no human official stationed at Azkaban - being surrounded by so many Dementors could be fatal. Maybe there isn't even a human ferryman to transport whoever to Azkaban - they Apparate, they Floo, they could have enchanted a boat so that when not anchored, it just back and forth between Azkaban and the mainland. Is it possible to Apparate to Azkaban? If so, one would think that more prisoners would have been rescued by their outside friends. But if only one fireplace can Floo to Azkaban and that fireplace is in a secure area in the Ministry building, then they wouldn't feel any need to guard it, and any Ministry employee could just wander over there and Floo to Azkaban with no permission and no witness ... which would have been a simpler way for Barty Sr rescue his son, no?

Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187637>:

<< I just don't see how Lupin could have known about Sectumsempra or called it Snape's signature spell when there's no way that Severus could have used a full-blown Sectumsempra at school and he (Lupin) didn't even know that Snape had become a DE until after GoF. >>

I acknowledge that this is a real problem, unlike how Ron and others had seen Draco around school with the Hand of Glory. That latter is just so obvious: Draco had bought it by Owl Order during second year, soon after he first saw it at Borgin and BUrke, and long before students and parcels were being searched with Dark Magic detectors, and he showed it off for bragging purposes.

It is possible to make up a story to explain away Lupin's knowledge of Snape's Sectumsempra. Maybe in seventh year at school or in the year or two after leaving school, Snape became involved in high level competitive sport duelling which allowed Dark (but not Unforgivable) curses and THAT is where Sectumsempra became known as Snape's trademark curse. Even tho' Snape casts it silently, duel fans would ask 'Wow, what was that curse?' and Snape might answer 'Sectumsempra. I invented it'.