Lockets

[dungrollin]

> Carolyn:
> 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?

Dungrollin:
If some very clever person managed to find the cave, get through 
what appeared to be a solid wall, find the very cunningly hidden 
boat, get across the lake and swallow all of the potion, but then 
got hauled into the drink by the inferi, Voldy wouldn't want another 
very clever person to get across the lake and just be able to pinch 
the locket without having to drink the potion. I'd assume he put a 
refilling charm on it.

Carolyn:
> 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?
 
Dungrollin:
Yup. Or he's making a mistake. I think he's lying, though. Seems 
highly unlikely that Voldy would be able to get information once 
someone's been ripped to shreds by inferi. Voldy's arrogant, he 
thinks in terms of his kind of magical power. If somebody had found 
out about the Hogrollocks and was trying to destroy them, he'd 
assume it would be a worthy challenger, a powerful dark wizard who 
worked alone, like him.

Voldy set up those defences himself, if there's a way through them, 
he knows it. Why would he risk keeping such a powerful potential 
enemy alive? I don't think he would.

Carolyn:
> 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.

Dungrollin:
The potion would be a barrier to him, because his body was not 
immortal. It would have killed his body and reduced him to Vapour!
Mort (again). I don't see why he couldn't have taken along a handy 
Muggle to force-feed it to though.


> 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?
> 

Dungrollin:
I think the Peverell ring *was* surrounded by protections, and that 
was what nuked DD's hand. I don't think it was destruction of the 
Hotcakes that did that. DD was wearing the ring, and he had a 
blackened hand in Chapter 3. In chapter 2 Snape mentions DD being 
injured because of slow reactions. At the end of chapter 10, DD and 
Harry's first trip into the pensieve, we get this bit about the ring:

"But how come -? Have you always had it?"
"No, I acquired it very recently," said Dumbledore. "A few days 
before I came to fetch you from your aunt and uncle's, in fact."
"That would be around the time you injured your hand, then, sir?"
"Around that time, yes, Harry."
(p204 UK ed.)

Then, at the end of chapter 13:

"The ring's gone," said Harry, looking around. "But I thought you 
might have the mouth-organ or something."
(p260 UK ed.)

Then in chapter 23:

"You are forgetting ... you have already destroyed one of them. And 
I have destroyed another."
"You have?" said Harry eagerly.
"Yes indeed," said Dumbledore, and he raised his blackened, burned-
looking hand. "The ring, Harry. Marvolo's ring. And a terrible curse 
there was upon it too. Had it not been – forgive me the lack of 
seemly modesty – for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor 
Snape's timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately 
injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a 
withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh 
of Voldemort's soul. The ring is no longer a Hamsandwitch."
(p470-1 UK ed.)

Now, admittedly, that doesn't outright tell us whether DD tried to 
destroy the Hedgecrack as soon as he found it, or whether he got 
injured finding it, and brought it back and destroyed it later, but 
I think both interpretations are valid. And the fact that the ring 
disappears at some point suggests that that was the point at which 
it was destroyed.

He continues about the ring:
"He hid it, protected by many powerful enchantments, in the shack 
where his ancestors had once lived." Protected by enchantments and 
with a hand-nukingly powerful curse on it (à la Opal necklace wot 
nearly got Katie Bell), I reckon. 

Kneasy:
> In any event, would Voldy trust a beginner-DE (if it was Reggie)
to perform this important errand unsupervised? That doesn't sound
like Voldy, he'd use someone he trusted. (See below for a canon hint
that this was what he intended but his 'trusted' hench-wizards -
Bella and Lucius -may have cocked it up somehow.)
 
Dungrollin:
Voldy got hold of the locket while he was working for Borgin and 
Burkes, ten years before he came back to ask DD for the DADA job. In 
the interview with DD, Harry notes that Tom's features were waxy, 
burned and blurred, suggesting he'd made a Hoatzin or two in the 
intervening time. We don't have a date for Tom leaving Borgin and 
Burkes, nor do we have a date for the interview with DD (I don't 
think it can be figured out, correct me if I'm wrong). 

I doubt that he could have worked for B&B for more than five years, 
or Harry would have noticed the difference in his age in the Hokey 
memory of Hepzibah Smith. So the interview with DD takes place at 
the latest in about 1960. Why would he then wait 20 years to install 
the locket in the cave? DD says "It seemed that once Voldemort had 
succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul inside it [the ring], he 
did not want to wear it any more. He hid it, protected by many 
powerful enchantments, in the shack where his ancestors had once 
lived..." This is supported by no mention of Voldy wearing the ring 
in the DD interview. I don't see why he would have waited with the 
locket.

Which means we're back to Regulus being clever, or being helped by 
someone cleverer who didn't necessarily want their name on the note. 

Hmm.

Dungrollin