Frank Bryce's Death - query

[mooseming]

Pippin wrote:
I don't think it's an error, any more than it was an error for DD to 
say
that Voldemort killed Cedric when he knows it was actually Wormtail
using Voldemort's wand. Nagini told Voldemort that Frank was
eavesdropping, and one may surmise that she devoured the body
after it was dead. So Voldemort did use her to kill though she was
not the physical instrument of death.

Mooseming:
I have several problems with this explanation. Voldy *told* Wormtail 
to kill Cedric he did not instruct Nagini to kill Frank. Also, we 
know that Nagini was eavesdropping but DD doesn't, I'm not sure 
anyone does. In the opening chapter of GoF we see the scene from a 
narrators pov. In the next chapter Harry wakes after his scar hurts 
and recalls a *dream* in which he simply remembers that "there had 
been a snake on a hearth-rug". He then sends Sirius a letter telling 
him that his scar hurts but not about the dream. DD knows about the 
scar hurting because Sirius tells him but at no point does he 
indicate he knows anything about that particular dream. In a 
subsequent dream that Harry has in Divination he tells DD about a 
snake by Voldy's chair and also about him Crucio-ing Wormtail with 
his wand. DD is very interested in the fact that Voldy can *hold* a 
wand. At the same meeting DD tells Harry he knows of Frank's 
disappearance because he reads muggle newspapers. Subsequently Harry 
reports seeing Frank during the Priori Incantatem incident. So DD 
has all the relevant information to deduce Voldy killed Frank and 
none to assume that Nagini did or was otherwise responsible. 



Eustace_Scrubb wrote:
A minor quibble, this (and without the book at hand, I am relying on
an increasingly feeble memory): At the end of GOF doesn't Dumbledore
tell Harry that he (Dumbledore) had read of Frank Bryce's murder in
the muggle papers (and also imply that no one in the Ministry paid
attention to such stuff). Had Nagini consumed Frank's corpse, he
probably would have been on a missing persons list at best (if anyone
in Little Hangleton had bothered to notice he was missing), not
written up as a murder victim.

Makes one wish we had a paragraph somewhere about what the locals 
made
of old Frank's demise...did they notice the same look of surprise and
fear on his features that had been noted on the Riddles' faces 50
years earlier?

Mooseming:
The chapter you recall is `The Pensieve' in GoF, DD states that 
there have been three "disappearances": Bertha, Barty and Frank 
(which he reads in a muggle newspaper). None of their bodies have 
been found at this point, I think Pippin is correct in believing 
Nagini ate Frank's corpse and probably Bertha's too! 

Kneasy wrote:

Options:

1. It's not Frank Bryce he's on about.

2. DD's guessing.

3. For reasons yet unknown DD's pulling the wool over Harry's eyes 
again.

4. For reasons yet unknown Jo's pulling the wool over our eyes.

5. Jo's lost the plot.

Mooseming:

1. If not Frank then who?

2. Guessing what? That Nagini is a HRX. Fair enough but that Frank 
was the catalyst for the idea, why? Frank's death might have been 
the `soul-splitter' used to make Nagini!HRX but I cannot see that it 
would have prompted Voldy to consider the inadvisable and risky 
business of confiding "a part of your soul to something that can 
think and move for itself".

3. Ah you mean he's lying! ;-) Attempting to divert Harry's thoughts 
from what *would* make using a living being an attractive, indeed 
achievable, option. The thoughts that might lead to wondering if it 
had been done before, perhaps by accident. Those thoughts.

4. AKA a clue?

5. I sincerely hope not!

Regards
Jo