Lockets

[carolynwhite2]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, Barry Arrowsmith 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:

>A surfeit of lockets.
>Just how many are we dealing with here?

Carolyn:
Rats

just in the middle of a long reply to Talisman, which makes 
many of the same points as you raise here, so I will respond to both 
of you jointly.

On lockets, don't forget the other two given to Ron and Molly at 
Christmas. Just JKR's little joke, I'm sure.

Talisman:
While there are any number of alternate theories, my preference for 
Reg springs from what I consider the greatest weight of the evidence. 
I just don't think the possibility of other relatives with matching 
initials is as strong as the evidence for Reg.
<snip>
Rowling can make up any scenario she likes. But at least with Reg, 
she's got less to make up than if she goes for a character whose 
story doesn't yet place them as a defecting DE with the right 
initials, access to both the cave and the place the locket ended up 
(GP), not to mention a certain informative elf.

Kneasy:
What doesn't help is the absence of a time-line. When did Voldy put 
his soul fragment into the locket? Most probably during the First 
Voldy War if his graveyard boasting about having got closer to 
immortality than anyone else is anything to go by. When was the 
locket placed in the Cave? Roughly the same time? All this would 
encourage the theory that RAB is Reggy - he stole the genuine item, 
substituted the duff one before coming to a sticky end.

The stumbling block here is how a neo-DE, someone very junior in the 
ranks, finds out that Voldy is soul-splitting, finds out what item 
contains a Voldy soul-fragment, gets said item in his sweaty paws, 
lays his hands on a not very convincing substitute and switches, a 
switch that is never detected by people who should be able to tell 
the difference. See, there's the other Hearseclick, the Diary. Voldy 
gives it to Malfoy for safe-keeping - but even Malfoy, deep in the 
confidences of Voldy as he is, doesn't know what its secret is. So 
how would Reggy know what the locket contains?

There's an awful lot of loose ends floating around.

Carolyn:
You bet there is. Whilst I don't disagree that we are being given 
anvil-sized hints as to the true nature of the locket at 12GP, and 
that Kreacher has a role to play in discovering where it is, or that 
Regulus is involved in the story somehow or other, I do think there 
are substantive problems with the cave aspect of the heist. Of 
course, if you are meta-thinking, JKR will find a solution to them, 
but nevertheless they seem to cry out for our attention now.

1) What is the point of replacing the locket with an imitation one, 
and replacing the potion after emptying out the first lot? The note, 
yes, can understand that. RAB wants Voldie to know he did it. But the 
rest of it just seems ..superfluous. Why not just concentrate on 
getting the hell out of there and destroying what he's found, since 
judging by DD, RAB has only a very, very short time to live?

2) And RAB didn't destroy it, did he? Shades of the One Ring? It 
wouldn't let him? Didn't have the power to do it, and/or was murdered 
before he found out how to destroy it?

3) Plus, not for the first time, I am puzzled by Lord V's ineptitude. 
DD says: `[he] would not want to kill the person who reached this 
island.' `He would want to keep them alive long enough to find out 
how they managed to penetrate so far through his defences 
'

So far as we can understand it, this has now happened twice, and 
although both the intruders have died, Lord V hasn't the slightest 
idea who they are, or even that they have nicked his precioussss. So, 
is DD lying?

4) Alternatively, let's assume that Lord V is not so incompetent. 
Surely, the very first thing he would do after being rebodied is do a 
little tour of his horrockses. He finds out that the diary is 
destroyed, and Lucius is suitably punished, but presumably all the 
rest past muster. How can this false locket fool him, since he of all 
people must be able to know the real thing, and obviously the potion 
would be no barrier to him? Do we really believe that he took a quick 
look at the green surface and didn't check further, or couldn't 
actually sense whether or not his own soul was in there? The only 
possible explanation would be that the locket was still ok that 
summer of 1995, and has been subsequently swapped.

Kneasy:
Then there's the whole Cave set-up.
What's it for?
The Diary wasn't surrounded by no-touch spells, nor presumably was 
the ring with the black stone, nor (if the theorisers are correct) is 
the Tom Riddle Cup in the Trophy Room. Only when their contents are 
accessed do the spells appear. Why should the locket be different?

Two possibilities that make some sort of sense - it wasn't Voldy that 
surrounded it with all that protection - it was whoever stole the 
original. 
<snip>

The alternative is that Voldy set up all that protection, and when 
some little gofer drops the locket in the bird-bath it somehow causes 
the spells to activate. But why? Why would Voldy hide this particular 
artifact behind a screen of Dark Magic? Is it special? And would the 
spells activate for a fake?

Carolyn:
Only Snape (or another potions master with an interest in the Dark 
Arts) would seem to have the necessary expertise to whip up the gunk. 
It seems to ensure that the person drinking it will re-live their 
worst nightmares; it is sort of essence of Dementor/boggart (maybe 
all you do is put them through a liquidiser and add a dash of green 
colouring).

But why would Snape or anyone else leaving the replacement potion 
assume that Voldy would drink it in order to retrieve his locket? 
He'd just vanish it or some such. Those properties can't have been 
important. Perhaps what was added to the replacement gunk was 
something that would fool Voldie that the real locket was still there 
unless he looked really closely ?

Really annoying plot points these. Ahem. A bit like the portkey in 
GoF


Ok, leaving that lot on one side, did DD realise at any point that he 
had been fooled? Did he suddenly realise that someone had got there 
before him, and that the potion had been tampered with? After all his 
contempt for Voldy's style of magic, he ends up gasping to 
Harry: `The protection was...after all
well designed'. `One alone 
could not have done it.'  And the only person he wanted to see was 
Snape.

And on the topic of the DADA professor, Talisman commented:

Well, you won't be surprised to hear that I think DD used the jinx, 
including the fact that it cycled through visiting Profs, to further 
his own Plan.

In each year, DD hired exactly the Prof he wanted. The fact that they 
would be revealed worked to his ends. The fact that they couldn't 
stay more than one year allowed him to put in the right person for 
the next step in the project.

Carolyn:
I agree on the ulterior motives behind his choice of DADA professors. 
There can be no other rationale for the curious mix of no-hopers and 
the very competent. Further, bear in mind that Voldie cursed the job 
in 1955, so DD has had to find at least 40 new people over the 
intervening years. Even if he didn't start out with a plan, any 
Headmaster would have to devise a strategy to cope with that.

But I also wonder whether each time he appointed someone, in some way 
he re-sealed the curse that Voldemort had put on the job. But, either 
way, I'm sure Snape knew what was entailed when he took it on at 
last. Question is, how far did DD realize what he was asking? JKR 
made this comment in the recent Mugglenet interview:

`But I would say that I think it has been demonstrated, particularly 
in books five and six that immense brainpower does not protect you 
from emotional mistakes and I think Dumbledore really exemplifies 
that. In fact, I would tend to think that being very, very 
intelligent might create some problems and it has done for Dumbledore 
[
.] I see him as isolated, and a few people have said to me rightly 
I think, that he is detached.'

Carolyn