'Clue to his vulnerability' (Coming to a conclusion )

[pippin_999]

> Carolyn:

> It seems to me the debate's really about how specifically he
planned  certain incidents, or how much was a matter of luck 
and judgement on  the day. 
<snip>
> Then there is the whole Peter-the-spy business, which once you take 
 it apart, gets more and more incredible by the minute. Just look at 
 it from the Lily angle if nothing else. She, James & DD carefully 
discuss how best to protect their family, he even offers to be
their  SK. Yet she apparently keeps her husband's and his friends'
secret, that they are animagi, which surely she'd understand could be
useful  and relevant info for DD - not least for the work they are
doing for  the Order if nothing else? She's apparently a sensible
woman who took  no nonsense from James or Sirius. She'd think 
nothing of getting them  to own up if it might help protect Harry. 
No, DD knew, and the information was factored in to his planning. 
It was no accident that  Peter ended up in Hagrid's hut, or that he 
escaped that night.

Pippin:
Did  Lily know they were animagi? It's a staple of fan fic, but I
can't recall any canon. It's also still secret what James and Lily
were doing for the Order (have to add that to my list), so no
idea whether being an animagi would have helped or not.

Peter hid in Hagrid's hut because he knew Crookshanks wasn't
welcome there and it's a blind spot on the Map. Of course his
escape was no accident -- ESE!Lupin arranged it. 

My take on Puppetmaster!DD is that at any given moment he knows 
more than we think, but less than we'll know by the end of the volume.

Harry mistakes his motivations easily and often. Forex, I
think  DD did indeed plan for Harry to find the mirror and gave
him the cloak for that purpose.  It was of vital importance to him
to know what Harry would see in it. What else would he have been 
doing there? 

But I believe him when he said he had no intention of sending Harry 
to tackle the stone, certainly not at the age of eleven. The
obstacles were weak because they were  a feint -- the real trap was 
the mirror, in which, as JKR has now confirmed, Voldemort would 
have seen himself all-powerful and eternal. As Dumbledore says,
people have wasted away in front of it, and Voldemort, quite 
conveniently, was wasted away already and couldn't have been
distracted by his bodily needs.

Most of the plot holes, especially in regard to Peter, resolve nicely
with ESE!Lupin, as does the lack of any moral dilemma that would
interest adults. Is nice the same as good, and if it's not, how do 
you tell the difference? How do you reconcile the moral superiority 
of good, implied in the existence of good and evil, with the moral
value of tolerance? Can one believe in good and evil and not
divide the world into good guys and bad guys?

For those who just want to see the bad guys thrashed, I think
they may be disappointed, not because JKR is going to go all
soft and loveydovey, but because she thinks goodguys/badguys
blinds you to evil that isn't twirling its mustache. 

Of course to view the series that way you have to start seeing
ESE!Lupin as more than a game, and that's dangerous at this
point for anyone who minds getting egg on their face. I 
obviously don't. <g>

I take the last three books as a three part novel,  which is why 
so many things seem unresolved at this point. But I really don't 
think she has introduced plot elements randomly as she went 
along with no idea as to how she was going to resolve them. I
think that she, like Dumbledore, has a plan, perhaps with
some of the same weaknesses that Dumbledore's plans have.

I do think she lets Harry lose interest in people in a way that's 
probably seems like bad writing if you're not detached the way she 
is. It doesn't bother me that Harry isn't keeping up with Neville 
and Luna in HBP -- I'd probably act just the same way. 

Kneasy, if you're still reading, I loved Flash Gordon too. I rarely
got to see it as a child, since it ran on Sunday morning TV and my
parents, atheistic Jews to the core, insisted that I attend Sunday
School (this probably explains a lot.) I seldom got to see more 
than the last five minutes of each episode (the most exciting part,
of course), except when I was wandering in fever. Naturally the
serials took on the lustre of forbidden fruit, and I was ever so
disappointed when I finally was able to watch the shows in their
entirety on videotape, and discovered that, um, they weren't all
that good. 

I still have a weakness for Princess Aura characters.

Pippin