New Harry Potter questions and theories, w/ spoilers to Ootp and spec beyond...

Cafe Society
1

Part I, The Over Favored Traitor

In GoF, Voldemort is walking around his circle of Death Eaters, commenting about one who has fled (Karkarov) and one who has left us forever: which we presume to be Snape, the Death Eater turned Order member. If so, then Voldemort knows that Snape is a traitor. He says as much in front of the Death Eaters, including one Lucius Malfoy.

The question is: why then does Draco continue to trust and loook up to Snape? We know that Lucius confides a great deal in Draco, not necessarily every last DE plan, but plenty of general information.

So why hasn’t Draco been clued in to, at the very least, not trust Snape?

Part II, the Percy angle.

This has cropped up on several Potter theory threads recently, and the authors of the published clue books have even chimed in to support it.

The theory is this: Percy has in some way been compromised by the Death Eaters, and is either under the Imperious Curse, or being impersonated with Polyjuice Potion. Peter Petrigrew (who is otherwise strangely absent from OotP) may be behind this particular assignment. While I think the later theory is a big strech, there actually are some interesting clues. These are the strongest mentioned:

  1. First of all, remember way back in Chamber of Secrets where Draco calls Percy “Peter Weasley”? This doesn’t seem to be a mistake: Ron actually corrects him. What was that all about?

  2. Throughout OotP, Percy never looks anyone in the eyes: as we learned from the fake Moody in GoF, this is the one way to tell whether or not someone is being Imperioused: a strange vacant look in their eyes. Barty Crouch Sr., indeed, hid his eyes in shadow whenever he was out in public, while being controlled by Wormtail. Percy wont even look his mother in the face when she visits his house: the door is slammed right in her face.

  3. Percy’s letter to Ron is peppered with references to eyes and sight (“Away from prying eyes” “See if you can spot yours truly” “See more of you” “Open their eyes” “Blind you” “Seeing a lot of Harry Potter” “Looking too good” “Spotted anything”). In one instance, he starts a sentance with “I feel bound.” He mentions Sturgis Podmore. And at the end, he tells Ron to consider his words carefully. Now, all of this has a perfectly reasonable explanation. But it could also function as a double meaning.

  4. There was plenty of potential opportunity: after Crouch Sr. escaped, Voldemort and Wormtail could have decided that they needed someone under their control to continue monitoring their scheme if Crouch couldn’t be retrieved. Percy might well have called on Crouch’s house to see what was up at any time, thereby getting ensnared. And after Percy’s disgrace, not to mention his connection with the disreputable Weasleys, Percy then goes on to get a prime job as Fudge’s assistant. A little odd no? But Lucius Malfoy would have been able to arrange this quite easily.

  5. Percy is in a good position for a spy. Too close to the Order, and the powerful Legilimens among them would ferret him out quickly. But Fudge’s inept Ministry is both a powerful tool and very easy to fool. While Lucius can influence the Ministry, it would be far too suspicious for him to be monitoring everything Fudge does: his power is to recommend things, not to spy. As a mole, Percy can get up to the minute info about things like everything the Ministry knows about Harry’s whereabouts (which is key for Voldy’s plan to work).

  6. Percy owned Scabbers before Ron, and thus Wormtail would know just about everything he needs in order to successfully impersonate Percy. Where did Percy get Scabbers anyway? Why did Scabbers go to hide out with the Weasley’s of all people?

Part 3, Snape’s worst memory?

This is another bit from the unofficial speculation book.

Basically, the main problem is that we don’t know enough about how the Pensieve works. It seems that memories are physical things that can be taken out of ones head, because Snape’s motive for removing it is to prevent Harry from seeing it if Harry breaks into Snape’s mind. But how can people have memories of things that they weren’t actually there for? Maybe this is part of the power of the Pensieve… or maybe, they can’t.

If so, then there is a pretty intriguing possibility. This isn’t Snape’s memory at all: it’s originally James’ memory, and Snape just has it in his head for some reason. Harry tells himself, constantly, that this is Snape’s memory. But he’s just speculating. And note that while Harry rationalizes it simply by his desire to hear and see James, everything that happens makes much more sense if it was observed from James’ perspective. The memory tells us that Snape was engrossed in his work: he wasn’t paying attention to James and pals at all. So how does Snape “remember” everything they were saying? He even “remembers” James and pals using their secret names, names Snape almost certainly DIDN’T ever know until much later in his life. Further, we see what James writes on a piece of paper: how could Snape have seen this to “remember” it?

We also never see the end of the memory, since it gets interupted: could there have been more to it. The memory is certainly interesting to Harry, but why is it the ONE memory Snape removes from his head? Surely Snape and James tusseled at other times in Snape’s recollection, and we are told that James made sport of him many many times: so why is this particular memory so important to keep from Harry? It’s certainly humiliating to Snape, which is reason enough, but in many ways it just confirms everything Snape has already told Harry about James. Even more importantly, it clearly ISN’T the only humilating memory in Snapes’ head: we even get to see some of them when Harry breaks inside. Why didn’t Snape pick out the memory of himself crying like a little wuss while he was at it?

Suffice to say that, even if this theory is totally nuts, there’s a heck of a lot about Snape that we don’t even begin to understand yet.

Part 4: Vocab

Just a fun thing I didn’t realize: anyone notice how JK uses the words that the various charms and magical objects are named for with suspicious frequency? People are always looking around pensively, scowling imperiously, and so on. These descriptions seem to happen too often to fully be coincidental: she’s pretty obviously trying to teach kids higher level vocab words this way. Pretty neat.

2

Thats… thats… thats actually a very interesting set of theories there.

3

The Snape thing bothers me too - not only because Draco does trust him, but because Harry does not, despite Dumbledore’s assurances that Snape is on the side of the “good guys.” And it goes in both directions - why does Snape continue to favor Draco in class, when he knows that Lucius’s influence over the boy is decidedly Voldy-centric? We’ve seen that Dumbledore has some control over Snape’s actions - Snape makes Lupin’s potion despite the fact that he clearly hates Lupin, for example - so why isn’t Dumbledore aware of or in control of Snape’s favoritism where Draco is concerned? The ony thing I can think is that part of Snape’s mission is to keep Draco close (in the “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” sort of thing.)

Then again, if Dark wizards are consistently being turned out by Slytherin house, I can’t figure out why Slytherin isn’t just eliminated completely. Has there yet been a Slytherin student who wasn’t a nasty sort of kid?

As for Percy - I am convinced that he’s being set up for martyrdom in some way. Or possibly for redemption? His slide from pompous overachiever into Ministry tool has been pretty quick and fairly thorough. He MUST know now about Crouch’s takeover by “the dark side” so why his continued alliegance to principles he knows are suspect?

The Pensieve - there’s a fair bit of artistic license here. If you recall, Harry could see Dumbledore in Dumbledore’s memories, and that’s just silly - why wouldn’t he be seeing through Dumbledore’s eyes if it was Dumbledore’s first-person experience? I think you have to make the leap here into suspension of disbelief as far as this particular magical object is concerned. Maybe the Pensieve simply records, and so “unspins” memories that way. Or maybe Rowling’s not so skilled that she can do the Pensieve plausibly.

Which ties into the vocabulary - my personal feeling is that Rowling is a good storyteller, but not such a good writer. There are all kinds of “writers’ rules” that she either ignores or is unaware of. In fact, I’ve read several reviews that call her technical skills into question, and her overuse of adverbs is frequently mentioned. I’ve noticed while reading her books aloud that Rowling has a HUGE problem with run-on sentences. Still (shrug) she’s writing for kids, really, and the story is cool enough that her somewhat sloppy technical skills as a writer can be tolerated.

4

I’m pretty interested by your theories, much like smiling bandit.

I believe the idea behind delving into someone else’s memories via a pensieve, is not that you relieve their memory through their eyes, but that you watch it occur as an invisible, powerless bystander. I believe it is mentioned at least once during the ‘Snape’s Worst Memory’ scene in OoTP while Harry is fascinated with his father, that he knows he can’t stray too far from Snape, as it is his memory, so he tries to stay at a distance where he is between Snape and his father, still able to hear and see James etc. I don’t think he lived the memory from Dumbledore’s pensieve ‘as’ Dumbledore either, he just entered into it as a spectator. (Don’t have the books with me, can’t check.)

So he isn’t supposed to see EXACTLY and ONLY what Snape saw. That’s what I thought, anyway.

The question that arises from that is 'But it’s Snape’s memory, how did it record things he never saw/heard/experienced first-hand. The answer, to the best of my ability, to that is: Magic.

(Which isn’t to say that I don’t find you idea that it’s actually a memory of James’ that Snape has for some as-yet-unknown reason intriguing. It’s a good idea. I’m just seeing what arguments there are.)

Also, do we know it’s the only memory he removes? He may have removed others besides, including other occasions on which he was harrassed by James. As for the ‘crying’ memory, perhaps he didn’t remember that that memory was there. (lol) It would be extremely difficult to recall all or even most of the humiliating/embarrassing situations of your life in one sitting - even though you do actually have memories of a lot of them, it might take certain stimuli to bring them to the surface. He probably wasn’t expecting that to come up if Harry ‘broke through’, because he hadn’t remembered it existed.

And I absolutely agree with Part 4 :slight_smile:

I’m tired now, and one of my eyes is so sore I can barely see from it - so I hope this is all clear, and correct - spelling and grammar wise.

5

I don’t think Voldemort was talking about Snape when he mentioned the one who had left him entirely. I thought that was in reference to Karkarov, and the part about one who has not come back and will be punished was about Snape. Otherwise, how could Dumbledore possibly expect Snape to work as a real mole in Voldy’s camp?
It seems like Snape has to continue being nasty to Harry and nice to Malfoy because that’s exactly what a fellow Deatheater would do. I’m sure it hardly pains Snape to do this, but if he were to suddenly be kind to Harry and start slappin’ Malfoy around for the stupid punk he is, Malfoy Sr. and Snape would have some words at their next Deatheater convention and Snape’s cover could be compromised.

6

I think the technical problems with the Pensive are due to Rowlings’ limitations as a writer, I’m sorry to say. She makes the exact same mistake in Chamber of Secrets when Harry enters Tom Riddle’s memory – it plops him into the Headmaster’s office before Tom enters. She does it for the laugh: Harry starts to talk to the Headmaster and tries to leave but can’t, and then Tom enters, when it would have explained the situation better for the reader if Harry wound up, say, on the stairs with Tom, and we saw him knock and say he’d been summoned, etc. And that would have made sense, because Harry would be in Tom’s line of sight, rather than in a room Tom wouldn’t enter for a few minutes. Rowling just doesn’t self-edit; she includes everything she thinks of in a scene.

(Which is not to say that I don’t love her to pieces, all the same.)

As for the plot point of the Pensive in OotP, I think Snape was removing that one memory because he wanted Harry to see it – otherwise, why would he remove that memory right in front of Harry every week, and then leave Harry and the Pensive unattended? Snape knew Harry wouldn’t be able to pass up the opportunity. It was the perfect way to knock Harry down a few notches by showing him his dad being a jerk.

7

I read a fanfic where this was done with PW being a secret agent for Dumbledore.

8

Percy is a Puppet for the Dark Side

If this is true, there is not much common sense to it. Why would “Percy” alianate himself so much from his family -and subsequently, the Order- if the main reason for polyjuicing him or whatever was to get inside? He has moved out of the house and he’s avoiding the people he’s supposed to spy on. It seems hardly worth the effort. There is something about that letter though.

Snape

I’ve always had a nagging feeling that Snape is not actually a double agent, but is doing something entirely different for Dumbledore. No real basis for this, except that (AFAIK, and please correct me if I’m wrong) Rowling never comes out and says that Snape is a spy.

My Own Half-Baked Little Theory

Why is it that, in the course of five years, Harry learns absolutely nothing about his father’s side of the family? There is none of the casual name-dropping of relatives Rowling likes so much. In fact, we don’t even get a general idea of who these people are, whether they’re alive or dead. I believe that this is a setup for the Potters being a family of dark wizards. After all, isn’t the James in Snape’s worst memory likened to Draco? And what about all that money in Harry’s vault? Rowling has said that the money was inhereted, not earned by Harry’s parents, and all the very rich families we’ve met so far have been populated by Dark Wizards.

9

I think that this is a very plausible theory. But do you mean that both of Harry’s parents were dark wizards? Or just his father?

I suspect from the way Aunt Petunia’s character has been developed that she’s a Squib. She knows way too much about the wizarding world to be an ordinary muggle.

10

On the other hand, James Potter was in Gryffindor house (IIRC). Are all dark wizards automatically put in Slytherin? Are there exceptions?

James bullying Snape doesn’t reflect well on him - but it does show that he is a normal person after all. Harry basically had him on a pedestal before and acted like he was completely perfect. No one is. I guess you really start to grow up when you realize your parents have flaws just like everybody else.

11

Well, the Sorting Hat was very ready to put Harry in Slytherin, and from what we know it was Harry’s requests to the contrary that kept him out. Although Rowling generally says broadly that “the Slytherins” are laughing at Harry, and things like that, I don’t think it would be a direct contradiction to discover later in the series that not all Slytherins are just plain wicked bastards.

12

Snape calls Lilly Evans a mudblood. Assuming that this is true, there is no way the Evans, including Lilly, were ever Dark Wizards.
And I don’t mean that James was a Dark Wizard either, just that his family might have been. It would have probably been a situation very similar to Sirius and the rest of the Black family.

Maybe, but we do know by virtue of Hermionie that there are muggle families with wizard children who are able to somewhat assimilate into the wizarding world.

Hagrid says this in the first book, and I think it’s true, as far as he knows.
Although his family might have been Dark Wizards, James may have decided not to be like them. The books have a strong theme of “you are what you chose to be.” James’ choice to stray from his roots would be another example of that.

13

Perhaps because he ends up by calling Lily a mudblood, a word he doesn’t use anywhere else in the series as far as I can recall. I am not usually a proponent of warm-and-fuzzy-Snape theories, but I can certainly imagine that this memory rankles because of shame at what he said, not at how Sirius and James treated him.

As for James Potter’s family being dark wizards, they certainly seem to have treated Sirius decently after he was kicked out by his family for not being a dark wizard, so I don’t know that there’s much in that.

14

I think we should all remember that while it’s implied that Slytherins are the bad nasty mean ones, not all are evil.

Gryffindors - bravery
Ravenclaw - intelligence
Hufflepuff - loyalty and honesty (although it seems the trend that the “leftovers” are put there also)
Slytherin - ambition

Amibitious is not necessarily evil. I think it’s been mentioned that because the wizards were amibious, they will stop at nothing to get what the want. And I guess they thought following Voldemort was going to yield great results. But while a lot of Slytherins thought that way, some of them must have realized it wasn’t the best choice, and they chose another way to fufill their ambitions.

As for the Percy angle in the OP, it’s interesting, there aren’t many Percy theories that are plausible as far as I’ve seen. However, there are some holes in it as it has been mentioned by the previous posts.

15

Definately, but remember, Harry didn’t learn this from anyone: it’s just what he assumes to be the case. And Harry has, throughout the series CONSTANTLY been wrong in his assumptions. So we can’t necessarily trust his reasoning.

Well, we don’t know that it’s a mistake. It may well BE that the magical memories are indeed more like slices of history than memories, and the theory I put forth is based on a false premise.

I don’t think he does. I thought that Snape’s current Order job is talking to old dark side wizards to prevent them from going over to the dark side. It’s almost certain that Voldy knows about Snape’s treachery: Snape didn’t come when called, he works closely with Dumbledore (who is a powerful legilimens), and, most importantly, Barty Crouch Jr seemed to already know that Snape was a traitor.

So I’m pretty sure that Snape has been exposed (I mean, Dumbledore says in open court that Snape switched sides, in front of Karkarov, a Death Eater!). Snape isn’t pretending to hate Harry. The question really is whether or not his attitude towards Draco is sincere. Certainly, the Malfoys are powerful people that it pays to be deferential too. But even if Snape respects them to some extent (just because he turned on Voldemort doesn’t mean he isn’t a elist pureblood snob: Sirius tells us that MANY such people didn’t realize that Voldemort was as evil as he turned out to be), how can the Malfoys respect HIM? Why does Lucius speak highly of him (even to Umbridge)?

I really doubt it, because seems sincerely furious and, more importantly very very embarassed. This memory isn’t just something that he can use to torment Harry: it’s also something that pricks him at his most sensitive core. Remember how insanely furious he was at the end of PoA? And that was about a different memory/grduge.

We know that there is a big part of the Snape story that we are missing. Why did he come back to the good side anyway? There has to be more to it than just Voldemort going too far.

My guess, and this is just a guess, is that Lily is somehow involved. Has Snape ever said anything nasty about Harry’s mother? Ever called her a mudblood ever again since that childhood memory? Doesn’t that seem a bit odd considering how much he obviously despises everything about Harry, constantly insults Harry’s father and, as we see in the memory, resented Lily’s concern for him during school? Seems a bit odd, eh?

Ah! But you are forgetting: Dumbledore is a very powerful legilimens, perhaps second only to Voldemort! That means that the Death Eaters CAN’T safely get a spy in directly with the Order. That is precisely WHY the spy must fulfill not one but TWO important conditions:

  1. he have access to important information worth the bother of spying at all
    and
  2. he cannot be in close personal contact with Dumbledore or Order members, because they are being very careful now, and would very easily find him out.

(Remember, the imperious curse can be recognized by a legilimens or even by looking someone in the eye, and a polyjuicer would be very suspicious, having to drink the potion all the time: a polyjuicer definately couldn’t get away with it living with the Weasleys or in Grimauld Place: he would need his own private space to keep the real Percy tied up and to store and drink his potion)

Look at it this way. The Death Eaters need to spy on Harry and Dumbledore and basically keep track of what’s going on at the school. They already have influence over the ministry via Lucius, but Lucius can’t be too overt, and he certainly can’t demand that Fudge tell him everything that’s going on. Lucius can get a wing of a library named after himself, but he can’t demand to read Fudge’s mail. So they need a spy too.

Now Umbridge would be great, except that Dumbledore and the Order would be pretty darn suspicious of her. And indeed, in OotP they’ve checked her out thouroughly. However, Umbridge does send constant updates to Fudge about what’s going on at Hogwarts and with Harry, so she’s a great legitimate mole to be part of the scheme. Now, controlling Fudge more directly would also be great for seeing all the important intel, but again, the Order is HIGHLY concerned about Fudge being imperioused or impersonated: so he’s too high profile.

Percy is thus the best option. He’s off to the sideline in terms of power, but he has access to everything Fudge does, all his private conversations, maybe even reading all his mail as well. Plus, once Percy is severed from his family, he never has to get close to a member of the Order. And, as OotP mentions several times, he never looks in anyone’s eyes.

So, at least in my opinion, the fact that Percy has alienated himself from the Order is in fact a strength of the theory, not a hole in it!

Given that we already know that Wormtail has done Imperious duty before (Crouch Sr), and given that he is totally absent from Book 5 at least in name, I think it’s a fair bet that Voldy has more active schemes than just the giants and luring Harry or other wizards into the Dept of Mysteries (that’s Lucius’ operation). So what is Wormtail up to? I think this is the only plausible Wormtail scheme I’ve come across, especially given his strong connection to the Weasleys.

Having someone in Fudge’s office to keep up the hate for Dumbledore, as well as spy on Hogwarts, would definately be a Voldy worthy ploy, and Percy definately is a powerful source of enmity in both his own family and the ministry.

16

Maybe Snape had a crush on Lily?
One thing that interests me is the constant competition between the Houses, even though it’s getting to be pretty dangerous. Why wouldn’t they just eliminate it-especially with what’s going on with Slytherin?

Snape could be playing the Malfoys for fools-or maybe he’s trying to save Draco from his father’s fate?

17

Well, it does seem like a unification of the houses will be a major plot point moving forward, given the sorting hat’s new song. But I think that, in normal circumstances, the competition is basically considered just normal adolescent cliquely fun, no worse than school sports rivaleries. It doesn’t seem like any permanent harm is often done, at least in the peaceful years. It’s only now, with the real tense situation of the post Voldemort truce, that the competition is getting truly dirty. And it’s clear that politics is a big issue: some families really DO support Slytherin’s philosophy to the exclusion of others. To hold the school together, the house system, and the related competitions, are part of a compromise going back to the founders.

If Snape is trying to save Draco from being a spoiled evil git who basically looks up to Voldemort as his hero… well we haven’t seen Snape accomplish or even attempt anything on that score.

I think even the scene in OotP could be read as Snape having a bit of a thing for Lily (it certainly would make him hate James all the more in the end), though there’s nothing necessary or obvious about it. But I think if there is some BIG thing that explains how Snape got from Death Eater to Order member, and it does involve something beyond Dumbledore, merely a crush on one of the good guys wouldn’t cut it. There would have to be more to it.

18

One thing I’m eager to see in the series is a Slytherin house member of decent character. It seems ridiculous to set up an entire house which is nasty and evil to the last member. Surely, somewhere, there’s at least one Slytherin with typical Slytherin lofty ambitions, who roots for the Slytherin Quidditch team and is certainly willing to compete fiercely for the House Cup, but isn’t a total prick about it. Ambition is one thing, but mean for the sake of mean is quite another, and all the Slytherins are just mean. Can’t Harry meet one fellow from that house who doesn’t hate him on sight, who might be a good study partner or even a good friend while saying, “Look, Harry, I’m sorry the rest of my house are such pricks, I’ll help you out when I can but I can only do so much against my own house, oh and good luck on Saturday even though we Slytherins will be catching the Snitch first ha ha see you later old pal”?

I know, it’s probably too much to ask for out of a book series that’s still generally considered “for children”, but I think that Book 5 took great strides in moving away from simple black-and-white morality toward a more complex system where not everyone is totally good or totally evil, or even on a side at all. Exhibit A, in my opinion, is Dolores Umbridge, who I see not as a force of evil but rather a petty, power-hungry bureaucrat. The way I see it, she has no side but her own, and I was glad to see a character like her pop up in the Potterverse.

That wouldn’t really explain his violent reaction to discovering Harry viewing the memory and subsequent refusal to give any more occlumency lessons, though. He was furious, not ashamed.

Now that could be interesting. Perhaps the “one who left entirely” that Voldemort referred to was James Potter, eh? But I’m inclined to think not, because of one of the initial prime premises of the book: that Harry is famous and loved by the wizarding community, before he even finds out that there is a wizarding community. I suppose there’s an outside possibility that James’s identity as a Death Eater might not have been known, but from what we’re told in the early books, James and Lily were quite popular, and it’s hard to imagine them pulling off double lives. Besides, if the Potters turned on Voldy, you’d think the remaining Death Eaters would have turned on the Potters after Voldy’s “demise” and spread the story of Potter’s parents being dark wizards, if just to make orphaned Harry’s life as difficult as possible. Besides, as you note, Hagrid says that “there’s not one wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin.” Maybe not all Slytherins are evil, but it seems all evil wizards are (former) Slytherins.

19

I agree. Seeing as how Harry was almost a Slytherin, there should be someone shown to be a good guy from that house. Just to show they aren’t all evil and lead people to ask why the House still exists then.

This also could be Hagrid exaggerating. I’d love to see some Ravenclaw or even Gyrffendor Death Eater who no one suspects because of their House (maybe Percy).

20

Isn’t cleverness supposed to be a Slytherin virtue? If Rowling really wants to screw with us, she could have it turn out that Dumbledore is a Slytherin.