That Bloody Man Again WAS Re: The curious incident of the Felix Felicis

[pippin_999]

Pippin:
> > Snape is claiming credit for Kreacher's information, in front of
> > the very person it was given to. How did he expect to get away
> > with that?

Nora: 
> You're not being very sneaky here, Pippin--Law of the Excluded 
> Middle?  How do you know that Snape wasn't *also* passing
information  to Voldemort, which helped in the whole scenario 
at the Ministry as  well as the murder of Emmeline Vance?  Narcissa 
may well be thinking  at that point: "You too?  WTF?"

Pippin:
Even if you were right, Bella would think it was lame if
she knew about Kreacher.

 "You've sunk to a new low, Severus, claiming credit for a 
House Elf's work!"


He has to know that she doesn't, and that can only be if he is certain
that  only Narcissa knows who her source was, ie, he and Cissy are 
already in cahoots. That fits with Dumbledore's statement that Sevvie 
is watching over Draco on his orders, which corresponds 
with the actual vow much better than with Draco's claim that
Snape swore to help him.

Nora: 
> I suppose that someone else could have betrayed Emmeline Vance and 
> Snape took the credit for it, or maybe she's not dead.  That last
is  a cop-out, it seems to me.

Pippin:
Why a cop-out? Dumbledore states that the Order can convince Voldemort
that Draco and his family are already dead. That's an anvil-sized
hint that at least some of the murders Voldemort thinks he's gotten
away with are faked. We even saw how it could be done. Slughorn shows 
us a fake crime scene, something the press would surely describe as a
nasty murder, and Dumbledore  reminds him that he should have set the 
Dark Mark over it to be convincing.   Snape would know how, of
course.  

If a live body can be transfigured into an armchair, surely
an armchair can be transfigured into a corpse. We've seen illusory
corpses before, in OOP.

The would-be murderers would have to be convinced that they had in
fact committed the crime, and Dumbledore tells us that can be done,
too. Morphin was convinced that he had killed the Riddles.

While Dumbledore expresses his grief over the loss of Amelia Bones,
you'll notice he never says anything about the Vance murder. 

Nora:
> I do indeed think that Dumbledore is trying to make a point here
with  Draco, and do things in a particular way.  I don't think that 
 invalidates the point that it may well have gone very, very wrong.  

Pippin:
But when did it go wrong? Would it take  Dumbledore any
longer to realize this was the wrong locket than it did Harry? He
would know he'd been decoyed, or at least that there was a good chance
of it. Which, as I've said in another post, almost guarantees that
the potion has no antidote. Voldemort doesn't need to find out how
the drinker managed to find his way to the cave. He already knows.

His victim will be  allowed to live just long enough to realize that
he's been snookered. I suspect only Dumbledore's great magical
power allowed him to survive as long as he did. 


Nora:
> The Dumbledore who is all "Let me help you out, Draco" suddenly (in 
> some theories) becomes the dying-all-book-kill-me-now-from-mercy, 
> Severus, Dumbledore.

Pippin:
That's not my theory of what happened.

I suspect Rowling believes, as  many successful people do, that you
never really fail until you've stopped trying. IMO, that's just
the sort of catch-phrase  Portrait!Dumbledore would say, with, 
perhaps, a fleeting, possibly imagined twinkle in his painted eyes.
If so, then Draco truly failed only when he lowered his wand and 
didn't respond to the DE's orders.


Meanwhile, Draco had to be allowed his near misses.
Fortunately as Snape told us, there are many spells
of protection on Hogwarts and its students. Only one student has,
as far as we know, ever killed anyone at Hogwarts, and it took the
king of serpents and the Heir to do it. Draco just isn't in that 
class. 

The text of the vow is if it *seems* Draco will fail, so if it
*seemed* Draco had succeeded, Snape would be off the hook.
It was really the arrival of the other DE's that clinched things,
assuming that Snape would have been able to cure Dumbledore
and that DD could have faked his own death if he'd had time.

Which brings us to another mystery: How did the DE's know it was 
time to attack? Draco didn't have time to send owls,  only Rosmerta 
had a coin ("she had the other") the floo network must be watched, 
Draco didn't tell Snape about the attack, Draco didn't know Fenrir
was coming, so who was his contact? Must  be an Order member, 
doncha think? Of course it could be a House Elf at B and B's or 
something, but in that case, why not tell us?

Nora:
> Draco does a pretty good job at getting off two near-misses, as 
> well.  I'd say that Dumbledore actually seriously underestimated 
> Draco in this book, and for once Harry was really dead-on right.

Pippin:
I agree that Dumbledore underestimated Draco. He
didn't think Draco would be able to get the DE's into the castle,
and he probably thought that Draco would have to admit failure
at that point, allowing Snape to fulfill his vow without killing
anybody. 

But if Snape is innocent, Harry should be looking for
someone who'd already demonstrated
a capacity for betrayal, someone whom it would thus  be reckless 
to trust -- wonder who that could be?<veg>

We have canon that Dumbledore didn't trust Snape recklessly --
Jo told us that although there was another reason, he didn't
give Snape the DADA job  because he feared
it would bring out the worst in him.

> > Nora:

> I also point you to elsewhere, that I'm not convinced Snape's model 
> of emotional repression is going to be Harry's ultimate path to 
> success.

Pippin:
I agree. So why bother to show the reader that Snape can pick up
specific intentions from someone's mind? Why bother to show that 
Dumbledore's corpse is in a very different state from every other AK 
victim we've seen? It's not because it happened that way -- it's
because Jo decided that it needed to happen that way.

Pippin
wondering what the Faith contingent thinks of Jo's admission that
she's subverting the fantasy genre
http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2005/0705-time-grossman.htm