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I have a stunning and revolutionary new Avery theory to share with you all!
But first, some ambushes.
Much Ado About Ambushes
Cindy wrote:
Oh, you want me to speak as a List Elf instead of a Spinner Of Wobbly Theories?
::corner of mouth twitching suspiciously::
No, not really. I just wanted to see what you'd look like in an oven mitt.
I was also rather hoping for some Jar-Jar Binks-style dialogue, but now I suppose that I'll just have to die disappointed.
Oh, my. This is just making me feel all squishy inside. Finally, someone else (besides George, who I still don't fully trust) buys on to the Ambush idea. ::dabs at eyes::
Good lord, woman. Suck it up, won't you? Think of your reputation!
I wouldn't trust that George guy as far as I could throw him, by the way. Every time I see him, he's changed his clothing, or his hair style, or his glasses have new frames... You ask me, he's still trying to find himself. I wouldn't commit myself to anything until he's grown up a bit, if I were you.
Elkins, can I offer you a few cheap trinkets that probably won't give you a bad skin rash if you remember to take them off at night?
Welllll...I don't know. You're selling those things from off of the deck of that <supreme distaste> ship these days, aren't you?
I'm not getting on board that thing. You bring those trinkets of yours down here onto the beach, then maybe we can talk about it.
Actually, Dolohov is in my ambush as well, and I'm willing to let Frank Longbottom have a bit of the glory. I will note for the record, however, that I think there were three Death Eaters in the ambush (Dolohov, Rosier and Wilkes). That makes my ambush bigger.
<eyes Cindy reproachfully>
Well, really now, Cindy. Was there ever any doubt that yours was bigger?
Dolohov, eh? I suppose that makes sense, given Crouch's exchange with Karkaroff in the Pensieve scene. Any chance I could convince you to off Wilkes in an entirely separate scenario?
See, (where's the canon, where's the...) Wilkes was probably in a different cell, right? Because otherwise Karkaroff would have named him at the Pensieve hearing, along with Rosier and Dolohov. The fact that he didn't name him leads me to believe that either Wilkes was already dead by the time of Karkaroff's arrest or that Wilkes and Karkaroff were in different "cells" of the DE organization, and so didn't really know each other.
Either way, you need a separate scenario to account for Wilkes' demise.
And besides, big ambushes make me nervous.
But look on the bright side. This way, you can have two ambushes! Smaller ones, yes, and perhaps a tad less Great-And-Bloody than you like—but two of them! Or, if you prefer, you can take one Small-But-Bloody-Ambush and one...oh, I don't know, Entrapment Scenario Gone Terribly Wrong, say. or perhaps a Hit Wizard Sniping. You can take your pick.
Or do you only like ambushes?
Cindy's ambush theory
This is shades of Eric, in a way, but maybe not.
Eric? Is he a friend of George's? I...Oh! ERIC! That Eric! Yes, yes, all right. Do go on.
[Moody's attempts to talk Rosier down go horribly awry, whereupon Frank Longbottom single-handedly takes down three DEs, thus not only ensuring his popularity, but also establishing beyond a shadow of a doubt his Toughness credentials]
Mmmmmm. I rather like that. It has the advantage of maintaining the Alastor-Moody-Was-the-Most-Civilized-of-the-Aurors thing, while still allowing Longbottom to be—if slightly more trigger-happy and reckless than Moody—still most decidedly not one of those Judge-Dredd-On-Acid types. Dolohov was taken alive, right? So there you have it. Judge Dredd would have wasted the guy.
You still need to replace Wilkes with somebody else, though. Perhaps, uh... ::sound of flipping pages:: Travers? How 'bout Travers?
Of course, if it's Travers, then your ambush is a tad less Bloody, as Travers would seem to have been taken alive. But that would make Longbottom all the more impressive, wouldn't it? (If somewhat less dripping with DE blood.)
Much as I like Longbottom-takes-down-three-DEs-single-handed, though, I'm still going to keep on plumping for Rosier-dead-at-Moody's-hands, because I like what it does to Snape's interactions with Crouch/Moody all through GoF. Although, really, I suppose that if you gave Moody Wilkes, you could get much the same effect. You just wouldn't have quite as much canonical suggestion to back it up.
Longbottom, like Moody, is quite Tough.
<quiet satisfaction>
Was.
<sudden horrified look>
Oh my God. I didn't really just say that out loud, did I?
Ahem. Yes, well. Sorry 'bout that. But somebody recently levelled accusations of "the Longbottoms had it coming"-itis against me—at least, I think they were levelled against me, although they might have been levelled against Eric—it was sort of hard to tell—and you know how suggestible I am to that sort of thing.
Take Avery, for example...
Much Ado About Avery
Yes, Avery is a difficult case to sort out. Still such a blank slate, and only three books to go.
Right now I imagine he's hanging out in the Green Room, preening himself and bouncing excitedly in his chair and lording it over all of the other guys who spend their time down there—you know, Mundungus Fletcher and Arabella Figg and the Longbottom family and that lot, all of whom are beginning to finger their wands and squint speculatively at him—but he hasn't even noticed that yet, not our Avery, nope, he's still far too wound up, he's all smug and gloating and babbling uncontrollably: "I had an appearance. I had a line of dialogue! Seven whole words! And Harry was watching me—not even in a dream sequence or anything like that, no, in real life! And the Dark Lord even spoke to me, he addressed me by name, he said, 'Avery,' he said, he...well, er, actually what happened there was that he, er, sort of, well, you know. Tortured me. A bit. Which wasn't really all that enjoyable, now that you mention it, I really can't say that I was all that terribly keen on that part, to tell you the truth, and...well, I do rather wish that I had been able to take that wretched mask off. I mean, it's all rather awkward, isn't it, not even knowing what you look like? And I still don't have a, well, a, you know. A first name. Not, at any rate, yet. Not as such. But! Still! I've had an appearance! And a line of dialogue!"
<Elkins pauses for a moment to contemplate the notion of young Severus Snape forced to share living quarters for an entire seven years with that version of Avery, shudders, then shakes her head and moves on>
Unlike Hagrid, I can't write Avery off as insufficiently Tough, though.
<tonelessly>
You think that Avery's Tough.
<shakes head very slowly>
Oh, sure, he doesn't have the good sense to keep his head down when Voldemort is looking for an opportunity to polish his Crucio skills. Yes, he writhes and shrieks, but who wouldn't?
Cedric Diggory, that's who. Diggory just yells. And gets right back up on his feet afterwards, too. Ah, the resilience of youth!
Then, I don't suppose that Imperio'd Krum's Cruciatus was really all that powerful.
What Avery needs is a compelling backstory.
Well, I'm sure that JKR has one all worked out for him. He is a terribly important character, after all. I myself won't be at all surprised if Book Five proves to be all about Avery!
Cindy's Avery Theory
No, Avery is and has been head of DMC since the Potters were killed.
He was head of a Ministry Department by the time he was twenty-one years old?
I mean, we all know that Avery's a misunderstood genius and everything, but don't you thknk that might be a little...much?
[Cindy then goes on to attribute Avery with all manner of marvellous things: recovering Voldemort's wand from Godric's Hollow, tampering with the evidence to ensure the success of Pettigrew's framing of Sirius Black, and so forth]
Wow. Well, that theory would clear up a number of contentious plot points, wouldn't it?
It has the drawback, though, that it drifts quite far away from my original premise that Avery Is Not All That Bad A Fellow, Really. I mean, you've just made him a...well, a fairly seriously committed Death Eater, actually. That just won't do at all.
Besides, I think that if Avery were heading the DMC, then he wouldn't occupy nearly so low a rank in Sirius' evaluation of threat to Harry, do you? The head of a Ministry Department is obviously Dangerous, even if he is Not Tough.
Now that things have settled down, Avery is leading a quiet life as a middle-aged bureaucrat...
::shriek::
Middle-aged? MIDDLE-AGED?
Cindy, if we assume that Avery is Snape's age, which I think is quite strongly suggested by the text, then he is only around 35 years old!
And 35 is not middle-aged! It is not! THIRTY-FIVE IS NOT MIDDLE-AGE! THIRTY-FIVE IS THE PRIME OF LIFE!
<Elkins takes a few deep breaths, trying not to contemplate her own mortality>
Besides, it's especially not middle-aged for wizards. They, uh, live a long time.
Yes, why does Avery become unhinged in the graveyard? After all, Avery did nothing more or less than Lucius did....But maybe Avery's behavior can be explained another way.
What, you didn't like my "Avery Has Recanted Deep Down Inside and Has Been Leading a Virtuous and Muggle-Loving Life" theory?
That's okay. I've got a new one, and this one doesn't even require that you accept Avery as virtuous or at all good. This is a theory that allows him to be utter scum, although it also allows for a Virtuous Avery variant. Okay? Ready?
But first, a few words of explanation as to why it is clear that Avery really is an important character, and not merely my own personal cause.
(You there in the back! Stop sniggering! This is serious!)
Why Avery Is Very Important, Really
Okay. It's quite clear to me that JKR wants us to notice Avery. She's obviously setting him up for some secondary villain duty in future books. He alone of the named DEs in the graveyard scene is neither someone we have met before nor (as far as we know) the father of a student at Hogwarts. Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, MacNair...all these names at least ring bells. We know Lucius; we've met MacNair; we know Crabbe and Goyle's kids; and we've at least heard the name 'Nott' in a Sorting Ceremony, and so know that he has a child in Harry's year at school. Avery stands out as the notable exception.
Furthermore, JKR went out of her way to prime our curiosity about him before we even got to graveyard. In "Padfoot Returns" she gave us the intriguing notion of Snape's Old Gang, and then she went on, both in Padfoot and in Pensieve, to let us know what happened to Rosier, and to Wilkes, and to the Lestranges. Avery, however, is strikingly omitted. Furthermore, we are told that he is still 'at large.' This is a set-up. It's laying the groundwork so that when Voldemort addresses Avery by name in the graveyard sequence, we will prick up our proverbial ears. We're meant to reach that line and say to ourselves: "Ah-hah! Avery!"
And finally, she tortures him. Torture's always an attention-grabber, and it's often a sympathy engine as well.
So. JKR wants us to notice Avery. She wants him to be rooted in our minds. And yet—and this is an important point, so you there in the back: pay attention!—she never actually shows us his face. He is masked in the graveyard scene, and no hint is even given as to his overall body type. We—or, more to the point, Harry—would be able to walk right past him on the street and not recognize him.
She also partially obscures his voice. While he does have one line of dialogue, it is a histrionic plea for forgiveness screamed out in what appears to be a state of near-panic. Thereafter, of course, all he can do is shriek and gasp. Would Harry even recognize him from his normal speaking voice? Quite likely not. Unlike Nott, for example, who is given at least one hint of physical appearance ("stooped") and whose voice is heard, Avery remains utterly camoflaged.
So I therefore predict, with the cheerful confidence of one who has no actual money riding on any of this, that Avery will appear in some future volume—very likely in Book Five—and that it will be an important plot point that Harry Not Recognize Him. Either he will be masquerading as someone else, or Harry will encounter him in whatever social roll Avery normally fills and be horrified when he first hears his name.
That's my prediction.
(I also predict, by the way, that Ali Bashir's illegally-imported magical flying carpets will play some small but vital role in the plot of Book Five, and that a switcheroo with one of the twins' trick wands will save one of our Protagonists—probably Harry—from a sticky end at the hands of a Very Bad Wizard at some point in the story.)
(But I digress.)
Now...
The New Avery Theory
So. Having established beyond an question of doubt that Avery really is a Very Important Character, and not merely my own strange little joke (I said stop that sniggering back there! Do I have to ask you all to put your heads down on your desks?) I will go on to elaborate my most recent Avery theory. I hope you were paying attention before, because some of this builds on earlier stuff.
Okay. So we have Avery, whose most notable quality so far is his peculiar blend of seeming-irrelevancy and authorial emphasis. We know his name, we've even heard his voice (albeit only screaming), but we don't actually know anything about him. He hasn't actually done anything—he's never even had a child mentioned at Hogwarts. It's really all very odd, don't you think?
So where in Goblet of Fire do we find Avery's counterpart? Where is his opposite number in the text? What we are looking for here is a character who is of some importance or relevance, who has done something of some interest to the reader (and to Harry), and whose face we have seen—but who nonetheless suffers from a mysterious and seemingly inexplicable anonymity.
No, seriously. Think about this for a minute. Who have we seen who fits this description? Who is it who has both a face and a role—but no name? Who is Avery's double? Who is Avery's other half?
Are you with me here?
Yes! That's right! Avery was actually...
::dramatic chord::
...the Mysterious Fourth Man In The Pensieve Scene!
This was in fact the "trouble" that Avery "wormed his way out of" by claiming to have been acting under the Imperius Curse: his life-sentence in Azkaban alongside his old friends the Lestranges and young Barty Crouch. Yes, we've all been assuming that Avery never actually did any time - but there's no reason that this must be so. Sirius does not, after all, say when Avery wormed his way out of trouble - only that he did so. And life in Azkaban certainly counts as "trouble," while wrangling a pardon after only a year or two served would still qualify as worming ones way out of it. This would also explain why Sirius mentions Avery's name right after the Lestranges': they are linked in his mind by virtue of their common crime, just as Rosier and Wilkes are linked by virtue of their common fate.
More to the point, though, this theory (which I hereby dub "The Fourth Man Theory") serves to explain why that mysterious fourth co-defendent goes so suspiciously unnamed throughout all of GoF. It is a set-up, you see, for the Great Shock Moment of Book Five, when it will be revealed that not only is newly-introduced Character X (who will have always struck Harry as vaguely familiar, but he will never quite be able to figure out why...) actually Death Eater Avery from the graveyard scene of the last book, but that he is also one of those mad fiends who tortured the poor Longbottoms. O, horribile dictu!
But how (I hear you all cry), how, how, how, how could any of those four prisoners ever have wrangled a pardon after that trial, with its hissing mob, and Crouch's stirring denunciation, and all the rest of it? How could the public mood ever have allowed for such a thing?
Well, you have to remember that not long after that trial, the public mood began to change. According to Sirius, Crouch's popularity went into a sharp decline not long after his son's trial and subsequent death: people were beginning to think poorly of his excesses and those of his Aurors in the last years of the war. And Crouch himself, as we know, got shunted off into the Department of International Magical Cooperation—thus leaving his position open for a successor, who would likely have been eager to distance himself from Crouch's legacy.
So let us say that a year or two after the trial, the Wizarding World's Bleeding Hearts (HA!) all began to crawl out from the woodwork, calling for the reexamination of some of Crouch's more dubious old cases, the ones in which justice might not really have been served. Crouch has by now been shunted off into the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and the person who has replaced him sees in this an excellent opportunity to ensure his own political reputation by taking a second look at some of Crouch's more notoriously shaky old cases. So...
Eh? What's that? Oh. Why didn't Sirius Black's case ever get reexamined, you ask? Well...um...
::thinks hard::
Because Bleeding Hearts don't like Sirius Black, that's why. They all think he's a brute; he reminds far too many of them of those popular kids who used to pick on them in school. And besides, Dumbledore himself had never expressed any doubts about Black's guilt—and as everybody knows, Albus Dumbledore Is Never Wrong About Anything. ::snort::
Dumbledore did, however, seem to have held some doubts as to the actual guilt of Avery and young Crouch (who unlike the Lestranges didn't shoot their mouths off at their trial, but instead continued to insist upon their innocence), and this fact emboldens the Bleeding Hearts. They pressure Crouch's successor to allow for a retrial. It's too late for young Crouch by that time—he's already "died" in prison ::snicker::—but Avery is still there, spending his days rocking back and forth, moaning, banging his head hard against the walls, screaming in his sleep, and all of that sort of thing. He cuts a truly pitiful figure at his trial, which sways the court's sympathy, and this time he manages to pull off the Imperius defense—his claim, let us say, is that the Dead Sexy Mrs. Lestrange was controlling his mind. He is granted an official pardon and allowed to walk free.
Traumatized, twitchy, and Having Had Quite Enough Of That, Thank You Very Much, Avery then goes home to live in his mother's basement, where he takes up coin-collecting. He never pursues a visible or prestigious career, stays as far away from the public eye as he can manage, and whenever he gets an owl from one of his old DE comrades, scrawls "Return To Sender" hastily onto the outside of the envelope and owls it right back unopened.
More to the point, he never makes the slightest effort to seek out Voldemort. Like I said, Avery Has Had Enough.
And this is the reason that Avery is in such a nervous state when he gets to the graveyard. Not only because his stint in Azkaban has left him pretty twitchy to begin with, but also because he knows that his degree of infidelity is not really analogous to Lucius Malfoy's, or to that of any of the other acquitted DEs. All those other guys just wanted to be on the winning side, and the Big V can understand that—he was in House Slytherin himself, after all; he knows how that works—and besides, they can all defend themselves by claiming that they just didn't know how to go about looking for Voldemort: they had no leads, they had no clues, they had no ideas, "had there been any sign of you, any whisper of your whereabouts...," and all of that.
Avery, on the other hand, was in with the Lestranges. He did have some leads, and he could have continued to try to pursue them on his own, just as young Crouch did before Daddy Imperio'ed him. But he chose not to, and for no better reason than Not Being Able To Take His Licks Like A Man.
Voldemort just hates that. Like Cindy, he values Toughness.
Also, Avery begged off on the claim that he was Imperio'ed by a peer. Not by the Great Dark Wizard of the Ages, not even by a much older and more experienced wizard, but by a peer. And even worse, by a girl peer.
And Voldemort hates that sort of thing even more. He doesn't really have very much respect for women—which is why there are so few female Death Eaters—so to his way of thinking, that is just plain despicable.
So that's my Fourth Man theory. It explains Avery's hysteria in the graveyard. It explains the otherwise inexlicable anonymity of that mysterious fourth co-defendent. And it also explains Voldemort's utter lack of mention of the Fourth Man during the graveyard scene.
He's overflowing with praise for Crouch, and for the Lestranges, and yet he never even mentions the fourth guy? Even if the fourth man had died in Azkaban, wouldn't you think that V would have mentioned him by name? "And so-and-so, who was loyal, who died a martyr's death in my service, blah-blah-blah..."
Well, Fourth Man explains why Voldemort says nothing of the sort. It's because the Fourth Man is Avery, who is right there grovelling at his feet already, and because Voldemort has already made it perfectly clear what he thinks of him: namely, that his performance was shoddy beyond any hope of forgiveness, and that he now owes thirteen years of faithful service to make up for it.
Fourth Man also offers the possibility of a ::shudder:: SHIP, for those who like that sort of thing. One can, for example, contemplate the possibility that Avery was hopelessly in love with the Dead Sexy Mrs. Lestrange, and that he remained devoted to her even after she threw him over for his classmate and romantic rival. Tragic, hankie-worthy speculation possibilities abound.
Really, the only problem that I can see with Fourth Man is that it does absolutely nothing to support the notion that Avery Is Not All That Bad A Fellow, Really.
In fact, it kind of makes him even more loathsome than he was back when he was just a grovelling toady, doesn't it?
::long silence::
Oops.
Wait...wait...I can do this.
::even longer silence::
Okay. How's this? Avery really was under Imperius. He's a hopelessly weak-willed but Not All That Bad Really a fellow, who...uh...who only really became a DE in the first place out of his desire to impress the Dead Sexy Future Mrs. Lestrange. Alas, once within the ranks, he found that murder and torture made him sick. All of the other guys made fun of him, and there seemed a good chance that the Dark Lord might simply have him killed. So...uh, the Dead Sexy Mrs. Lestrange took, uh, pity on her oh-so-pathetic admirer and placed him under the Imperius to help guide him safely through the ickier aspects of the lifestyle he had so unwisely chosen for himself.
::short pause::
No. No, all right. I'm not buying the Dead Sexy Mrs. Lestrange as the pitying type either. Well, okay then. She just found him amusing. It entertained her to keep him around as a pet, and she particularly enjoyed forcing him to commit terrible atrocities that she knew he found horrifying and distressing. That seems rather more in character for her, really.
There. Now we have an alternate version of Fourth Man that maintains the whole "Avery Is Weak But Not Really Evil To the Core" theory. We call this one "Redeemable Fourth Man."
You pays your money, and you takes your choice.
Cindy wrote:
Really, all Avery needed in the graveyard was a good . . . lawyer. Someone to say, Avery, don't answer that question, and whatever you do, don't admit guilt.
Unfortunately, it was impossible for him to bring his advocate along with him to the graveyard. And while he had indeed been advised against the admission of guilt back at the office, without the support and comfort of that smooth-tongued fellow constantly leaning over to whisper in his ear, he just couldn't handle the pressure.
Uh, would it be a fair assumption that S.Y.C.O.P.H.A.N.T.S. members are not Tough?
Er...not as a general rule, no. But some are. In fact, a few of our members have even been known to do things like sever their own body parts, although they are generally only able to manage such feats of Toughness when the plot demands it.
As I've said before, though, there really is a great deal of diversity within our ranks. We are, after all, an umbrella organization of sorts for those members of the fictive world who are what we like to call, er..."reader sympathy challenged." So while it is indeed true that our Abject Neurotics are, almost without exception, Not Tough, quite a number of our Yes-Men are very Tough Indeed. Young Crabbe and Goyle, for example, currently show every sign of growing up to be Reasonably Tough Yes-Men.
It is a sad truth, however, that our Toughest members are also often our very least articulate. As a result, they do often find themselves shockingly marginalized, even within the ranks of our own organization. We hope to address this problem in the future.
Do they watch a great deal of daytime television and read a lot of self-help books while they eat pint after pint of high-fat ice cream? :-)
Well, many of our members currently hold 24/7 positions as Minions to various Evil Overlords, which doesn't leave them very much time at all for daytime television and the like. Really, you know, it's very hard work being a SYCOPHANT. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of mental and physical energy...it can be draining, you know, it really can be... and all too often it leaves you with nothing left over for such frivolities as self-help books and the like.
No, at the end of the day, most of our members really just want nothing more than to go home and take their anti-anxiety medications, and their sedatives, and their anti-depressants, and their antacids, and their many many pain-relievers, and then go to bed, secure in the comforting knowledge that Tomorrow Is Another Day -- And Quite Likely To Be Your Last.
And as for the ice cream...well, minions rarely get very much of that. Evil Overlords are notorious for bogarting the high-fat ice cream.
Damn them.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on February 11, 2002 9:40 PM
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