Get Fuzzy comic & RAB

[carolynwhite2]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:

But I like Susan's idea about Bella having the locket, combined with
mine about Voldemort discovering the theft. Suppose that Voldie
entrusts the locket to Bella. She throws her tongue a bit (she is,
after all, Draco's auntie) and Regulus guesses what it is. He steals
it,putting a magically disguised fake in its place, and conceals the
orginal at GP. He tries to destroy it, but only succeeds in grinding
off the Slytherin mark before the henchmen of doom catch up with
him.

Carolyn:
I think this theory suffers from many of the original objections to 
RAB being Regulus. 

- Even though a junior DE and brought up in a household obsessed with 
the Dark Arts, it stills seems unlikely that he would have acquired 
enough of a thorough-going knowledge of hxs to understand what the 
locket was. Even 16 year old Tom had to ask Sluggy about the theory, 
and he was deeply immersed in evil by that stage.

- Further, we know that Tom trusts no one. Would he really have been 
stupid enough to give Bella enough hints as to what she was holding 
in her hands? We have been told he has never loved, so he can't even 
have been blinded by her rabid charms.

- And how could Regulus create a fake item that would fool Voldie? 
This would take very advanced magic, surely?

- And why was Voldie hiding the locket in the lake this late in the 
day (1980s)? As far as we can work out, he'd got hold of the trinket 
a year or so after leaving school. Why put it in the birdbath of doom 
some thirty-odd years later?

- Finally, surely the hxed locket would be alarmed in some way, and 
efforts to destroy it would not only damage Regulus in the same way 
that DD got his hand blasted, but would alert Voldie to the theft?

Pippin:
The theft goes undiscovered until after Voldemort's return, when he
discovers that Lucius has blown the Diary, and decides he'd better see
whether Bella's horcrux is okay. Well, it isn't. But Voldemort is
confident that a pup like Regulus couldn't manage to destroy a
horcrux in the little time he had. The greater danger is that someone
besides Bella will realize that he's made more than one and go
hunting. So he uses the fake to set a trap, which Dumbledore walked
into.

Carolyn:
Surely LV would have realised by now that DD knew about the multi-
hxs, what with the diary and the ring destroyed? I agree that he 
would then see it as a race against time against DD finding the rest, 
and protect the locket accordingly. But surely, if he left this 
elaborate trap, he would have also taken steps to find the original?

If he had read the note, he'd know instantly to check at 12GP - and 
who better to 'force' (hardly) to do this, but Kreacher? Simplicity 
itself to get Bella or Narcissa to instruct him, if for some reason 
he could not gain access to 12GP himself. [And I can't see why he 
couldn't - it didn't become the Order HQ immediately after the 
graveyard scene, LV could have apparated there any time in the 
intervening few days or weeks]. Kreacher could have been hording all 
those items on direct orders right from the beginning, and it wasn't 
just misplaced sentiment for his dead family.

<snip>

Pippin:
I don't think Dumbledore planned to die. But he might well have
planned to fake his death. He would know that eventually Voldemort
would demand that Snape *who knows the prophecy*, do
*something* to prove he did not see Team Dumbledore as stronger.
Merely sniping away at Harry in classes would not be enough.

The plan was not to prove Snape's loyalty to LV -- as Dumbledore
says, nothing could do that. The plan was to demonstrate thoroughly
and unconditionally that Snape was *not* loyal to Dumbledore or
Harry. IMO, Dumbledore didn't die the way he did to secure Snape's
position as a spy. He did it to secure Snape's position as Harry's
backup in the final showdown.

Carolyn:
There certainly has to be some really good explanation for DD's 
ludicrous actions in the cave. As I said in earlier posts, there 
wasn't the faintest need for him to sacrifice himself on the spot, 
possibly endangering Harry's life by leaving him to get out on his 
own. The pair of them should have just left, and had a think about 
how to get the thing out some other way - possibly consulting Snape 
on the nature of the potion and its antidote, if it transpired there 
was no other way to get it out than drink it. Also, if they'd left 
sooner, they'd have got back in time to foil Draco's plan. Ok, it 
risked Voldie removing and hiding the locket someplace else, but 
since there are at least four other hidden hxs, big deal.

So, I'm being a spoilsport. JKR wanted a nice brave dramatic scene to 
kill off DD, but it really creaks if it has to be taken at face 
value. I am doubly suspicious because DD made no effort to take Harry 
on the ring-destruction outing - why not?

The whole cave scene is so bloody stagey, with laughable explanations 
as to why LV might want to keep people alive for a short while after 
they drank the goop and so on - only a prat like Harry would believe 
any of it, and to give him credit, he did think it was dumb.

The only explanation that makes sense to me was that DD knowingly 
engaged in the charade for some reason - a double, double bluff for 
LV to think his plan had worked, whilst the real locket was safe 
somewhere with Aberforth, having been lifted from 12GP by Dung. DD 
just didn't think the poison would be that effective. Hubris.

But that still leaves how the real locket was removed, and how a fake 
was substituted apparently by a frightened teenager and the pilfering 
of a crucial chunk of his soul was not spotted by the greatest evil 
wizard of all time.

Gloom. We're back to GOF-portkey explanations...that is, we'll just 
have to accept it, because She Said So.

And she apparently spent three months working on the fine details of 
this book's plot.

Carolyn