« Previous Post | Index | Next Post »
Aesha (Welcome!) was bothered by a number of GoF's more troublesome plot points.
She wrote:
Firstly, and not as annoying, is the fact that Wormtail escaped from the gang at the end of the term in PoA. Wormtail, who has been a rat for 12 years, escapes and in less than 3 months makes his way to Albania, runs into our friend Bertha, finds his master (who he's had no contact with), they kill Bertha, hatch this elaborate scheme, find Barty Jr., and get to the Riddle house. Wow.
Wow, indeed. ;-)
Yes, it does seem fast work, doesn't it? And for Wormtail to have happened to run into Bertha Jorkins in Albania, of all places, certainly was quite a fortuitous coincidence.
Well. Not really fortuitous for her, I suppose. But you know what I mean.
I have always believed that, no matter what Sirius implies in the Shrieking Shack, Pettigrew would never have returned to Voldemort had his masquerade not been uncovered in PoA. He returns only because he believes that he is now a hunted rat, and that Voldemort's protection is therefore likely his only chance for survival or safety.
So I'm not unduly bothered by the fact that after twelve years of passivity, Pettigrew was able to find Voldemort after only three months of searching. I suspect that he could have done it years before, if he had ever been given any real incentive to make the effort.
But how did he manage to find Voldemort so quickly?
David touched on this issue a few days ago, when he wrote (in regard to the Spying Game Theory's claim that a number of the DEs really are loyal to Voldemort):
Voldemort really is unable to contact the DEs and they are unable to find him. In that case we have to explain how Pettigrew could succeed where others had failed.
Well, I think those Death Eaters are a bunch of disloyal worms, myself, but I can see that Pettigrew does have two great advantages over all of the rest of them when it comes to finding Voldemort:
1) As Scabbers, he has been privy to Harry and Ron's private conversations for the past three years. He has also had the freedom to roam Hogwarts unnoticed for even longer, as he was there as Percy's pet before he was passed down to Ron. He has therefore had ample opportunity to learn that Dumbledore knew Albania to be Voldemort's hiding place.
2) He can both speak with rats and assume rat form. He is therefore privy to the rumor mill of the rodent population in a way that no other wizard ever could be.
I have always assumed that Pettigrew knew where Voldemort was likely to be found from having overheard either Ron and Harry or one of the professors discussing the fact that Vapour!Voldemort was hovering about somewhere in Albania. This is admittedly pure speculation, but I don't think it an unreasonable assumption. The timeline alone suggests to my mind that after his escape at the end of PoA, Pettigrew likely headed straight for Albania.
Once in Albania, he would have had a far better chance of finding Voldemort than any of the other DEs for the simple reason that he was privy to the local verminous rumour mill. In the graveyard, Voldemort reports that while in his vapor form, he could only possess small animals. He also states that Pettigrew found him by following the fearful rumors of other rats. Even if someone (an Auror, a loyal DE, whoever) had known to look for Voldemort in Albania, it is most unlikely that that person would have thought to interview the local rodent population. Only somebody travelling in rat form would be likely to gain access to that information.
Aesha wrote:
I'm not a big fan of CoS anyway, but it seems maybe she should have had a story like that for a year before the Tournament- that way there's a year to find Voldemort, Bertha and BartyJ, figure out this plan in such precision that it flows perfectly for almost 9 months, even under the eye of (presumably) one of Mad-Eye's closest friends...
I agree with you that the plot would have seemed more plausible that way. Structurally, however, it makes sense for the plot events of Book Four to take place at the midpoint of the series. They constitute a turning point both in terms of the overarching plot and in terms of Harry's development. They therefore belong in the middle; for them to have happened in the fifth book of a seven-book series wouldn't have had at all the same effect, IMO.
Aesha:
Secondly, the part that I really get a little confused with. In the Death Eater Circle, he rants about how none of his death eaters went to find him, about how the LeStranges were loyal to him always, etc... but then also speaks of his loyal servant at Hogwarts. Here's my problem. In my opinion, the moment that Barty Jr. started crying and screaming to his daddy that he didn't do it, and so on and so forth- well, he denounced the Dark Lord. How is that loyal?
It isn't, very. I agree with you. I don't think that Voldemort knows about it.
Judy, on the other hand, suggested:
Perhaps Barty Jr wanted to stay out of Azkaban primarily so that he could find Voldemort and return him to power. It is in fact canon that Barty Jr. was much more interested in helping Voldemort than in staying safe and sound outside of Azkaban; this is why his father put him under Imperio.
Yeah, that really wasn't very clever of little Barty, was it? Not very sneaky. He couldn't have managed to feign conversion—or at the very least submissive gratitude—at all? Not even long enough to get the chance to slip away once his father's back was turned? For heaven's sake, what kind of a master manipulator is he, anyway? What happened to all of that intellect? Where were all of those brilliant thespian talents?
This, by the way, is the main reason that I've never been able to accept the suggestion (which a number of people have proposed on this list in the past) that young Crouch's hysteria in the Pensieve was just another one of his Oscar-winning performances, designed to manipulate his parents' emotions. I just can't buy that. After all, if he were really that emotionally controlled at that point in his life, then why on earth would he have allowed his father to realize that he "thought of nothing" but restoring his fallen master to power?
No, I think that it took Barty a good decade under the Imperius to develop quite the degree of identity loss necessary to be that good an actor. His behavior in the Pensieve was manipulative, all right. But I don't think that he was precisely acting, either. That was a genuine crisis of nerves.
But this leads us to an interesting question. If Voldemort did know that Barty had denounced him at his sentencing, and if he believed that Barty had done only in an attempt to manipulate his way out of prison so that he could continue his service, would Voldemort consider that "loyal" or "disloyal" behavior?
Judy thinks the former:
I don't think Voldemort would mind being denounced if it increased his chances of regaining his body.
I don't know if I agree. I certainly think that Voldemort would put up with it, but I don't really know if I believe that it would qualify Barty for designation as someone "whose loyalty has never wavered."
Judy also wrote:
And in fact, one could argue that Barty Jr's denouncing him did just that. If Barty Jr. had proclaimed his undying devotion to Voldemort, as the woman in the Pensieve scene did, his parents might not have helped him escape, and he would not have been available to help Voldemort regain power.
True enough. But then, we generally assume that the woman in the Pensieve scene is Mrs. Lestrange, don't we? And Voldemort praises the Lestranges to the skies in the graveyard scene. He praises them even more fulsomely than he does his "loyal servant at Hogwarts," and unlike his servant at Hogwarts, they haven't done squat for him in over a decade.
Voldemort strikes me as overall more megalomaniacal than tactical, more proud than pragmatic. He can recognize the value of Lucius Malfoy's "slipperiness," but I don't get the impression that he really likes it all that much. I don't think that he cares much for his servants renouncing him in public, even when it is strategically wise for them to do so.
I tend to agree with Aesha when she says:
On page 10, US hardback, it says: "Wormtail, I need somebody with brains, somebody whose loyalty has never wavered, and you, unfortunately, fulfill neither requirement." Curious. I suppose one could argue that Voldemort knew that Barty Jr. had been to Azkaban and not how he had acted at the trial.
That's my interpretation. And after all, how would Voldemort have learned about it? It happened after his fall, and after Peter had fled into hiding as a rat. Even if the Weasleys knew about young Crouch's pathetic appearance at his trial, would they really have mentioned it in front of Percy (or his pet rat, for that matter)? I rather doubt it. And I'm absolutely positive that young Crouch himself never breathed a word about his unfortunate little crisis of nerves to his newly-returned baby master.
The only way that I can imagine Voldemort having learned that Barty denounced him at his sentencing would have been from Bertha Jorkins. Given that Bertha (or, rather, her Memory Charm) was more concerned with Barty's loyalty than with his disloyalty, though, it's quite likely that the subject would never have come up. I rather imagine that what Voldemort learned from Jorkins was merely that this group of people had tried to seek him out after his fall, that they had been caught and sentenced to life in Azkaban, that Crouch had secretly rescued his son, and that said son was still loyal and currently kept enslaved by the Imperius Curse in his father's house.
All of which would suffice to designate Barty as a person whose loyalty had never wavered.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on June 25, 2002 8:01 PM
« Previous Post | Index | Next Post »