Steeple Warlock

Snape's motivations in HBP

2005-08-02T18:09:02Z

There's a very interesting discussion here about Snape's motivations here.

Narcissa Malfoy - more speculations

2005-07-20T09:54:02Z

I wonder if it’s struck many people quite how scary Narcissa is in Chapter Two of “Half Blood Prince.” Don’t be fooled by her “tear-stained face.” Fiercely protective as she is of Draco, and of Lucius too, there is a genuine steel in her. She’s capable of hexing (and silencing) Bellatrix. And Bellatrix never uses more than words to attempt to stop her, even though she believes that Narcissa’s actions are a betrayal of their master. The way Narcissa trapped Snape into an Unbreakable Bow, once he’d made a vague offer of help to Draco, and then trapped him in that very last vow to finish the job – the one that would finally commit him to killing Dumbledore – was very smoothly done, regardless of whether he had intended to be trapped – or had talked it over with Dumbledore. The way she set about it suggests cunning, subtlety, and some real knowledge of Snape’s character, and considerable ability to act. And it’s like her, too, I think, to keep in the background. This is the woman who, for all Lucius’ political intrigues and respectable front (as a Governor of Hogwarts) had never met Cornelius Fudge, until they were introduced at the Quidditch World Cup. And as I’ve said before, I suspect the subtle nature of the Chamber of Secrets plot, whereby everything was done through intermediaries so that nothing could point back to the Malfoys, was probably Narcissa’s doing. Lucius’ style is to be more “up front.” Lucius didn’t hesitate to show his face at Hogwarts, and take on Dumbledore in his own den.

Springing the Unbreakable Vow on Snape is very suggestive, to my way of thinking. Does it mean that maybe (despite appearances) she didn’t really trust Snape that much more than Bellatrix? An assurance in words was “not” enough.

I still haven’t completely dropped all my old suspicions about Narcissa. That she really was in the crowd at Flourish and Botts in Chamber of Secrets, making sure Arthur Weasley rose to Lucius’ bait; that she “was” up to something at the Quidditch World Cup; and that she “did” turn up as Griselda Marchbanks to oversee the taking out of Harry’s allies – though that last theory is weakened a bit by the fact that there’s been no report since of anything happening to Griselda.

And I’m starting to wonder if she really was “Tonks” in the “Half Blood Prince.” We’re told that Metamorphmagi are born, not made; but if magical gifts do run in families, I suspect it’s not unlikely that they can crop up now and again in the Black family – though if Narcissa is one, I would imagine she guards that secret “very” closely. And a lot of things about “Tonks” would make sense if she were someone else – and especially if she were Narcissa. Alternative explanations have been provided for her new difficulty in metamorphing, for her sudden lack of clumsiness, and (indeed) for her sudden change in Patronus, but I do find it very suggestive that (when Harry had Draco trapped in the Room of Requirement) it was Tonks’ mysterious reappearance that enabled Draco to get away. The excuse was a lame one, for Tonks, as the seventh floor “was” an odd place to find Dumbledore – but it really would make sense for a protective mother like Narcissa to find a surreptitious way to help her only son Draco herself – and “Tonks” being posted to Hogsmeade meant that she was in the “ideal” place to be able to help him! What was she teaching him in there? Draco seemingly has learned a lot this last year – occlumency and wordless spells (the very things Harry “didn’t” learn) – but maybe he’s learned some other things too.

And was it really an accident that it was “Tonks” that found Harry in the train, hidden underneath his invisibility cloak? Or did Draco tell his mother? When she came back to the castle, she “was” rather taken aback that it was “Snape” who came to the gate, and who saw her changed Patronus – and commented on it accordingly.

And was Lupin being dosed too, all year, with the love potion of the first potions class? Draco made liberal use of the polyjuice, but did someone else make use of the “love” potion? Slughorn did say that it was the most powerful of the three potions brewing in the class! But Remus (in resisting the pull of being a werewolf) knew how to resist an obsession, and so he “did” resist, all year? It’s just, just possible!

And was it really Bellatrix (as Draco thought) that taught Draco to block out Snape’s thoughts, and encouraged him to distrust Snape (after six years of trusting him, whereas he didn’t know Bellatrix at all?) Or was it his “mother” who encouraged him to keep his mind closed, and to pull off, as much as he could of the plan by himself? Draco was absolutely livid the one time Harry criticised his mother. I think he does defer to her.

If there were a substitution, I’d guess it took place in St Mungo’s Hospital, right after OOTP. The massive charitable donations that Lucius Malfoy made to the place probably gave the Malfoys a lot of pull there, and people working there who owed them favours, or were actually under their control – which was useful in murdering Broderick Bode.

Of course, I’m probably just being “much” too suspicious. I really do have a penchant for complicated conspiracy theories! I’ll try and sort out these ideas later, and see if they make sense. Probably I’m overdoing my suspicions!

Anyway, I’ll try and revise my Patronage Essay soon, in the light of Half-Blood Prince. I’m especially intrigued that “Dumbledore’s” patronage network not only didn’t die when Dumbledore died, but survived with Dumbledore still in charge of it, still ruling it from the tomb! Harry is still “Dumbledore’s man, through and through,” even when Dumbledore is dead, and Dumbledore’s network are still committed to doing what Dumbledore would want them to do!

-----

Oh, one more possible explanation. Isn't the peculiar tired look common to both Draco and Tonks at all like how Hermione was, during the year when she was using the Time Turner - or am I remembering it wrong? Of course, all the "Ministry's" collection of Time Turners were destroyed in the battle in the Department of Mysteries.

More on the twins

2005-07-20T09:13:38Z

ajhalluk’s post on the Weasley twins in HBP very much completes what I was saying before the book came out. I’ll post later, though, on how they (and probably Lee Jordan and his father) seemed to know the likely World Cup result in advance – and on what I am guessing may have been going on behind the scenes at the Quidditch World Cup. Though in the last case my penchant for conspiracy theories may rather get the better of me!

Snape and Lily, a reassessment

2005-07-18T15:40:33Z

One of the things I was most glad to see in The Half-Blood Prince, is that at least my thoughts on patronage networks seems to have been borne out – even if a number of my other speculations have proved rather further from the mark! Slughorn’s club (and it’s after-school connections) was beautiful in this regard – and especially the way that Riddle learned from it!

Now, about Snape and Lily.

We know from what Remus Lupin said in Order of the Phoenix that Lily did not become especially close to James until his last year, though it seems that he had always liked her. But it’s only in reading this last book that I’ve started to believe that until this, she really could have been quite close friends with Snape.

They would definitely have mixed socially. They were both members of Slughorn’s club, and (with what Horace said about Lily, and Snape’s potions genius) they were his favourites in their year. “And” he had a consistent practice of setting up connections between his various protégés. I am quite confident (given that Gryffindors and Slytherins take Potions together, and all houses do, in the last two years) that Slughorn paired Lily and Snape together for potions, consistently – perhaps for years.

Which could explain why, although the book was defined as Snape’s by the name of the “Half Plood Prince”, and many spells in it are “known” to be Snape’s own inventions, and Harry was convinced that it belonged to a boy, Hermione was also convinced that the handwriting in it was a woman’s. If Harry had shown the book to Remus Lupin, would he have recognised the handwriting as Lily’s? If they had worked together in Potions, using the same textbook together, and adding in their additional refinements, I think this is entirely plausible. And actually, the strange sense of humour that Harry observed may owe something to Lily too – the sort of Lily that liked playing practical jokes on Petunia. I can imagine the wry humour with which, when Snape referred to the book as his own, she wrote (in place of his real name) she wrote inside, that it belonged to his "preferred" name, of the Half Blood Prince.

Perhaps "half blood prince" is not a mark of ownership, but a "dedication?"

Could this also explain how James got hold of Snape’s spells. Was it through Lily? Or did Snape think that it must be through Lily? (Probably James watched him practice, through his invisibility cloak). Does this account for some of Snape’s reaction to her in the pensieve scene? A mistaken sense of betrayal of secrets?

Oh well! Just an idea!

More detailed post to follow, about the rest of the book!

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Screwtape and the Weasley Twins - non-spoilery reassesment

2005-07-15T06:53:23Z

Some months ago, I spotted a passage in the Screwtape Letters which, to my mind, explains the Weasley twins - and Harry's (and the readers') reaction to them too.

The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their "sense of humour" so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful-unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour."

It does describe them, doesn't it?

Actually, there's a passage from Pride and Prejudice that (if one takes a more cynical view) also reminds me of the Weasley twins - and indeed, explains the name of George. You see, the twins are different. Most of the more callous statements and acts invariably come from Fred - but it's actually "George" that scares me most. You see, Fred genuinely doesn't realise the consequences of what they do. George does. George must do. George is the one who keeps them popular. He's the one that can see "exactly" where they must stop. He knows the point at which things will no longer be seen as a joke by the people they've got to keep on their side, and he restrains Fred accordingly.

Anyway, here's the passage:

"As to his real character, had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of enquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors, under which she would endeavour to class what Mr. Darcy had described as the idleness and vice of many years continuance. But no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more substantial good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess."

In other words, the twins are good chaps. Why? Umm, well, everyone knows it!

Think about it. That actually does describe the twins, and may even explain why one of them is called George - and we know that JKR is a fan of Jane Austen. I think that Harry's self-awakening about the twins is going to be exactly like Elizabeth's about George Wickham in the paragraphs that follow this. In fact, the first clue came in OOTP, when he compared them to MWPP, and then pushed away the idea.

"He felt as though the memory of it was eating him from inside. He had been so sure his parents were wonderful people that he had never had the slightest difficulty in disbelieving the aspersions Snape cast on his father's character. Hadn't people like Hagrid and Sirius told Harry how wonderful his father had been? (Yeah, well, look what Sirius was like himself, said a nagging voice inside Harry's head... he was as bad, wasn't he?) Yes, he had once overheard Professor McGonagall saying that his father and Sirius had been troublemakers at school, but she had described them as forerunners of the Weasley twins, and Harry could not imagine Fred and George dangling someone upside-down for the fun of it... not unless they really loathed them... perhaps Malfoy, or somebody who really deserved it."

The more I look at the Weasley twins, the less evidence I can see that they have any moral sense whatsoever. They are capable of being very callous, but this is masked by their "genuine" loyalty to Harry, and the fact that they sided with him when no one else would. And they "did" give up the map to him - although it occurs to me that that was "immediately" after the holidays where they learned (from Ginny's experience) how dangerous these sort of objects could be! But still, it probably "was" a bit of a wrench to let it go. (Actually, I wonder if the map doesn't have some means of trying to get back to its true ownership? The way it somehow got from Filch's office (through the twins) to Harry, James' son - and ultimately to Remus Lupin, one of the four - who then made Harry the rightful owner by giving it back to him? And does it somehow have a way of detecting - and helping along - kindred spirits? Which is why the twins noticed it, and found how to use it?)

Even so, when they seem to do Harry a favour, in many ways they often don't. Their spectacular display on leaving Hogwarts left Harry alone and without allies, in enemy country, while they not only won the approval of the school and a big new market, but got away themselves, after helping to push Umbridge so far over the edge that she was soon willing to perform Unforgivable curses in front of students. The things they have always done to amuse themselves (like turn the child Ron's toy into a giant spider) only have one parallel in the book. When Harry asked why the reason behind the Death Eaters Muggle-baiting games at the World Cup, he was told by Bill, "Harry, that's their idea of fun!" I'm afraid that the twins' idea of fun is all too like the Death Eaters'. It's just that it "seems" different, because their on the right side, and they're all good chaps, and anyway, whoever gets hurt probably deserved it.

Besides, they attached themselves to a rising star like Harry early on, and didn't desert him. Their loyalty has "already" been rewarded, in getting the capital for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes!

But it's not just Hermione that's disturbed by the Wizard Wheezes. "Only, most of the stuff - well, all of it, really - was a bit dangerous," said Ron. And "we've been looking for someone to test them on all summer."

The creepy thing is that whenever they indulge in casual cruelty (like the continued tormenting of Percy over several books, which effectively drove him out of the family, or nearly killing Dudley Dursley) it's in such a way that Harry and the reader invariably approve. When Snape taunts Sirius with always staying at home, Harry remembers it, and blames Snape for pushing Sirius towards risking his life, although in reality that's the sort of thing that Sirius would have expected from Snape, with whom he had a long history of mutual hatred. On the other hand, I think this got through to him.

'And how are you going to explain how you knew Arthur was attacked before the hospital even let his wife know?'

'What does that matter?' said George hotly.

'It matters because we don't want to draw attention to the fact that Harry is having visions of things that are happening hundreds of miles away!' said Sirius angrily. 'Have you any idea what the Ministry would make of that information?'

Fred and George looked as though they could not care less what the Ministry made of anything. Ron was still ashen-faced and silent.

Ginny said, 'Somebody else could have told us... we could have heard it somewhere other than Harry.'

'Like who?' said Sirius impatiently. 'Listen, your dad's been hurt while on duty for the Order and the circumstances are fishy enough without his children knowing about it seconds after it happened, you could seriously damage the Order's-'

'We don't care about the dumb Order!' shouted Fred.

'It's our dad dying we're talking about!' yelled George.

'Your father knew what he was getting into and he won't thank you for messing things up for the Order!' said Sirius, equally angry. 'This is how it is - this is why you're not in the Order - you don't understand - there are things worth dying for!'

'Easy for you to say, stuck here!' bellowed Fred. 'I don't see you risking your neck!'

The little colour remaining in Sirius's face drained from it. He looked for a moment as though he would quite like to hit Fred, but when he spoke, it was in a voice of determined calm.

---

And then, of course, while Harry and others suffer from the genuine spitefulness of Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad, the twins casually leave one Slytherin as a permanent mental vegetable for the crime of docking some points from Gryffindor - and to remove an inconvenient witness to these lost points - in spite of the fact that the House Cup doesn't really matter now, with a civil war brewing, even in the school, and since everyone knows House Points have been rigged. The boy showed no signs of recovering at the end of the year - and this is something Draco and co have "not" yet done, for all their vicious and spiteful words).

----

And Hermione was right. Ron's Quidditch "did" improve no end the moment the twins disappeared from the team! They were undermining him "far" more than Draco's gang did. Once the twins were gone, he could ignore the Slytherin jeerers.

Even more speculations

2005-07-14T10:36:38Z

And I've added a few "more" (non-spoilery) speculations, to my HBP post of yesterday!

Hermione and House-Elves - another non-spoilery reflection

2005-07-13T19:19:21Z

Another thing that intrigues me is... is Hermione ever going to be reminded that all of the actual reasons that pushed her into the cause of House-Elf liberation were actually misconceptions of one kind or another? For instance, when Winky talked about obeying orders and being afraid of heights (up in the top box at the Quidditch World Cup) she was actually lying through her teeth, but Hermione took what she said at face value. And Crouch's interchange with her later was pure theatre (we really don't know how it would have really ended, because the very next day Crouch was placed under Imperius) - and Harry's idea that Winky's strange movements back and forth as if wrestling with an unseen force must be a conflict of loyalties too (something which completely outraged Hermione) was "also" a misconception: Winky really "was" wrestling with an unseen foe! And far from her blithely taking orders, Crouch had been giving way to "her" wishes in indulging his son, to the point of near-disaster.

That's not to say that house-elves are not disgracefully treated sometimes (Diggory's bullying of Winky, given his area of responsiblity in the Ministry, is itself disturbing, among other things) - it's just that all the particular events which actually influenced Hermione were in fact misconceptions.

Not that I altogether blame Hermione for these sort of mistakes. She's trying to fit the magical world's behaviour in terms of the Muggle parallels she's been brought up with, and she simply cannot grasp that House-Elves, for all their apparent servility, actually have a lot of pride, and it's their very "pride" that she manages to unintentionally insult. Moreover, Harry observes (as Hermione does not) that House-Elves are in fact oddly successful in getting their own way, if they really, really want to. Dobby half-succeeded in betraying Malfoy (though his hints didn't help as much as he'd hoped). Winky had talked Crouch into an indulgence of his son (against his better judgement) that was to end in disaster, and Kreacher not only frustrated his nominal master Sirius at every turn, but he even managed to contrive his death, and the betrayal of all he held dear. For all their apparent servility, the irony is that many, perhaps most House Elves are not nearly as subjected as most wizards would like to think - and certainly, nowhere near as stupid.

My wilder HBP suspicions (non-spoilery, of course) - just revised!

2005-07-13T18:36:12Z

Well, I thought that my last hope of posting HBP predictions and arguments disappeared when my computer gave up on me yesterday, although I knew, of course, that it was already too late, since all sorts of spoilers are (now) already out.

Still, these are only guesses on my part, and NOT spoilers - I've been careful not to even "look" at any spoilers so far - and they're mostly my wilder guesses: i.e. the ones most likely to be proved wrong! So please don't reply with any spoilers, if you "have" come across any!

Oddly enough, most of my curiosity is not about things like the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, but lies more in the direction of whether some of my wilder notions are right. Is Lucius Malfoy's wife Narcissa actually much more dangerous than she seems, for all her penchant for staying in the background until the present? The plot in Chamber of Secrets, with its clever use of intermediaries, so that nothing could be proved if it went wrong, seems more like "her" style to me than her husband's. She, after all, is the one whom Cornelius Fudge had never even met until the night of the Quidditch World Cup - whereas Lucius sounds rather more hands-on. He makes no secret at all of his beliefs, and is only too happy to try and face down Dumbledore in his own den.

Here's another thing I'm really curious about. Could the Quidditch World Cup in book four have been rigged? There are lots of clues, in retrospect, though they may be all coincidence. Because it's "odd" that Krum should choose to end the match, when there was "still" a chance of winning. In fact, he chose to end the match the very "moment" when it would no longer mean a victory for his own side. Well, we know that Krum is unusually susceptible to the Imperius Curse, and as for the Irish Seeker, Lynch, on both occasions when Harry sees him, his appearance (especially his eyes) matches exactly Crouch/Moody's description of the Imperius Curse only a few chapters later. And the Irish team as a whole work seamlessly together, as if they have a single mind or will. Is this a genuine case of the use of the Imperius curse in Quidditch? Is that the secret of the Irish team's success that season?

Not that Krum need have been under control. Now that I come to think of it, only "two" things would have been needed to make sure of the result. One is to keep "Lynch" under control, so that he didn't by some fluke catch the snitch first. The other is to have a "rogue snitch" - one that wouldn't even appear until 160 points had been scored: enough to ensure Ireland of victory.

And Narcissa Malfoy is there, all the time, in the top box, in perfect "line of sight" of them all - which seems to be how mental magic works. And judging by the way the former Death Eaters were celebrating a few pages later, they'd done rather well on their bets. Of course, she could also have been focusing on Cornelius Fudge, and possibly one or two of the Weasleys. Was she (or someone with similar gifts) in the crowd in the bookshop in Chamber of Secrets, making sure that when provoked by Lucius, Arthur would resort to violence?

And it's interesting that the twins were willing to bet their life savings on their results - right after seeing Lee Jordan too. It's almost as if they had heard something in advance. Lee Jordan is the Quidditch commentator at school - is his Dad a big wheel in national (or international) Quidditch, and in a position to know something? If there really had been some attempt at cheating on their own side, is that why the twins were willing to settle for their original money back from Bagman? And why George felt that it was very unwise for them to blackmail him?

Or am I just being too suspicious?

And I really do wonder whether, as Risti once suggested to me, the Griselda Marchbanks who turned up isn't entirely what she seems either. For someone who speaks loud (and oddly stupid) pro-Dumbledore things the moment she sees that she's in Harry's hearing, it seems very strange that Umbridge, who is apparently a bit in awe of her, should take out all Dumbledore's known allies among the staff while "Marchbanks" is still in the school. Umbridge had waited all this time. Couldn't she have waited one more day? Or is Marchbanks really what she seems, and was Umbridge doing it under her "supervision?"

Moreover, we know that legilimency and mental penetration does work by line-of-sight. Did the image planted in Harry's mind of Sirius Black being tortured really come directly from Voldemort? How would Voldemort have known exactly when Harry's potential allies at school would be removed, so that he'd have to go and rescue Sirius himself, unaided? Or was the image planted in his mind by someone a good deal nearer at hand? Given the way the desks were facing, the "only" person in Harry's line of sight at the time, was Griselda Marchbanks, again. And it would have made sense to have someone at the school, to make sure that Harry would have nowhere else to turn, before giving him the vision.

On the other hand, all this is rather odd behaviour for someone who had resigned from the Wizengamot in support of Dumbledore. Unless, of course, it "isn't" Griselda, but someone else, who has stolen her identity. In support of this, there's some indication that she hasn't been seeing her old friends and collegaues much lately, or not socially, at least. Professor Tofty only heard of Harry's Patronus charm from a "different" ex-member of the Wizengamot, Tiberius Ogden - not from his colleague at work, Griselda Marchbanks. And then there's Draco's odd assertion that Griselda had been seen at his home, when we know from Neville that she certainly "used" not to have any connection with the Malfoys. Also, it's just possible that Harry's reading of her hand in the exam was actually right, and the real Griselda really "did" meet her death last Tuesday.

If she "is" someone else in disguise, I think it's unlikely to be an example of the use of polyjuice, because she's not always drinking from a flask, like young Barty Crouch did. I would guess that the enemy has a Metamorphmagus on his side, and if such things run in families (as they're born, not made) my money would be on Narcissa.

And if the enemy really does have his own Metamorphmagus, whoever it is, then there really could be havoc. Anyone could be anyone. And if one of them takes the place of one of the twins for a bit, and twists their scarily irresponsible products just a little, there could be a catastrophe among the children who buy them. The twins will probably blame each other, and wizarding Britain as a whole will probably be out for Weasley blood!

And if the real Griselda is her friend, Mrs Longbottom might relax her guard when she shouldn't. Could Neville Longbottom be going home to a "little red riding hood" scenario, in which his "grandmother" is someone else? After all, the only way the enemy can "still" get the prophecy is by getting hold of one of the two people who were present when the glass broke, going into his memory (perhaps by draining it into a pensieve) and then reading the movement of Sybil's lips. The two who saw it were Neville and Harry, and it's pretty obvious that anyone would see Neville as by far the easier to catch! There was a sort of foreshadowing of this in the Prisoner of Azkaban film, actually, when the "grandmother" came out of the cupboard.

Was Sybil Trelawney's comment "is your grandmother well? ... I wouldn't be so sure..." a real prophecy, perhaps?

Another notion: do the seven potions in the sixth task in the Philosopher's Stone really represent the sixth book, and do they represent the seven Weasleys? Two of them are described as "twins."

Or am I reading too much into everything? Well, I'll find out in a couple of days.

Anyway, one last idea. I haven't read any spoilers yet, but with regard to the identity of the Half Blood Prince, I do note that only twice has there been any reference to a prince in the Harry Potter canon. A Chocolate Frog Card refers to Merlin as the "prince of enchanters", and Quirrel's turban is supposed to have come from an African wizard-prince. Of course, my hope is that there really is a remnant of the magical nobility, that various canon sources do suggest at least "used" to exist!

-------

Oh, here's yet "another" idea! It's not just Mrs Longbottom that would trust Professor Marchbanks - the goblins almost certainly do as well, given her longevity. Judging by the Chocolate Frog cards, one can get a fairly clear idea of usual wizarding lifespans in both the middle ages and the present day - and the only people with significantly longer lives either are friends of the Flamels (like Dumbledore - and he's a very powerful wizard in any case, that knows many secrets) or else they have something to do with goblins, whether they're a long time ally of goblin pressure groups (like the real Professor Marchbanks is), or at the opposite extreme, they're a serial killer of goblins, like the notorious Yardley Platt, who lived nearly twice as long as most fifteenth century wizards on Chocolate Frog Cards.

If someone else "was" impersonating her, and used their trust to steal their gold, or something like that, purportedly for the Order and Dumbledore's friends, before she disappeared... Can you "imagine" how furious the goblins would be? And would they believe any denials on the part of Voldemort's enemies. Could they somehow be manipulated into joining the enemy side, by some such manoever?

This would be potentially fatal, quite apart from the fact that they have their hands on everyone's gold, because there does seem to be a sort of "underworld" beneath wizarding Britain, in which goodness knows what monstrous creatures live (the sort of creatures the Basilisk lived on, and had possibly kept away from Hogwarts). Unlike the crust of the earth as we know it, these caverns get "colder" as you go down, like in Dante's inferno. The Vaults of Gringotts are in a corner of it well below London (and that network of caves has its own valleys and ravines and underground streams, its entrances guarded by dragons); but so, probably, are the caverns of the Chamber of Secrets, and the underground chambers too where Dumbledore had hidden the Philosopher's Stone.

And of course, if the Goblins do turn, I wouldn't like to be in "Bill's" shoes!

Well, I don't know how much of these speculations are near the mark (or if the whole lot are way out) but I am fairly sure that we'll see a lot more of this "underworld."

Oh, and I wonder if Yardley Platt "did" bake the goblins he killed in pies, as the secret of his longevity! Is there a grain of truth, deeply buried somewhere, in "all" the Quibbler's eccentric stories?

And one further thing I suspect. When Karkaroff mentioned to Victor Krum that he'd be telling Hermione where to find Durmstrang if he didn't look out, he wasn't "just" being paranoid. Victor had actually told Hermione quite a lot, reading between the lines. The combination of northerly altitude, mountains, forests and lakes does not actually exist in many places. Russia, for instance, is too flat. As far as I can make out, it narrows itself down to northern Sweden - the very place where (by some strange chance) the Lovegoods are taking their summer holiday, in seacrch of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack! And I think I recall that there "is" a Muggle legend of a "loch-ness-monster-type" creature in those parts, with horns as well, if I remember right.

----

And I wonder if there's going to be any development of all the hints about space travel. And more on Ali Bashir and the flying carpets?

*Goes back to waiting for the book.*

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Appendix)

2004-01-24T23:55:14Z

Notes on the Wizengamot
It is important to say something here about the Wizengamot. For etymological reasons if nothing else, it is likely to be of pre-Norman Conquest origin. This suggests that it chooses the Minister of Magic, probably from its own number, just as its original Muggle counterpart the Witanagemot chose the king.

The similarity of names is not accidental, because it was with the fall of Anglo-Saxon England and the separating out of wizards and Muggles in the eleventh century, and the retreat of the wizards to form their own communities in the countryside (no doubt to avoid the massacres, enslavement and cultural genocide that was the Norman Conquest of England) that the "separatist" tradition of wizardry in this country seems to have really got under way - and it's not an accident that all the early Chiefs of the Wizards` Council whose names we know are of Old English (as opposed to Norman or Celtic) origin. The Hogwarts Founders had prepared the way, but their school was probably controversial and certainly vulnerable to begin with, which is surely why it was built as a fortified compound in a very remote location: an even more remote location in those days before Apparating, Portkeys or Floo, when broomsticks were slow and extremely uncomfortable. Before the Norman Conquest I would guess from its name that the Wizengamot advised the Old English kings on magical affairs, just as the Witanagemot did on Muggle ones. It was the generation after the Conquest that saw the invention of Quidditch and a whole separate wizarding culture, trained in Hogwarts and living in their own communities, separate from the Muggle world, appearing more or less simultaneously: an independent wizarding community which came to be ruled either by a surviving Wizengamot, or else by a recreated one.

In fact, the Wizengamot was almost certainly the same body Harry's school textbooks call the Wizards' Council, the ruling authority of the "separate" wizarding community of the British Isles in the Middle Ages, which actually means the same thing and (tellingly enough) begins to be referred to under that name in the mid thirteenth century, in the very generation when Anglo-Saxon and Norman French merged to produce a "Creole" Middle English - an early form of our own language.

In place of the Old English Kings the Wizards' Council chose a Chief of the Wizards' Council, who seems to have acted like a king: he certainly enforced summary justice, and also had a court of advisors. The Wizards Council itself at this time was probably a larger and more fluid body than the Wizengamot is now. There were even attempts (abandoned in the fourteenth century) to bring in other non-human magical peoples and give them a place in the Wizards' Council. These were abandoned, apparently for ever, due to the intransigence and sabotage of the goblins, who, to be fair, had no desire to put themselves in subjection to the Council by making it the legitimate authority of all the magical peoples in the British Isles, even if they were represented within it.

This may have been a mistake on their part, since the following century saw unpunished goblin-killings on a large scale (Yardley Platt, the serial goblin killer, lived to a very ripe old age) and their subjection was eventually accomplished (without a compensating place in the power structure) some time in the next few centuries. It is by no means clear whether the goblin riots or rebellions were an attempt to throw off the yoke, or simply resistance to its imposition.

Either the Council was self-appointing, or they were chosen with a restricted franchise, because in 1269 (in a letter to her sister) Modesty Rabnott made it very clear that Barberus Bragge, the then Chief of the Wizards' Council, would have lost her vote if she had had one. It is unclear whether she meant she had no seat on the Wizards' Council (who would have undoubtedly chosen their Chief) or no vote to influence any of those who did have seats on the Wizards' Council.

The Ministry of Magic seems to be a very much later invention - probably a feature of the seventeenth century. It is commonly admitted (for example by Hagrid in Philosopher's Stone) that its chief purpose is to keep the magical world hidden from Muggles, and the Wizards' Council seems to have delegated the bulk of its executive authority to the newly created offices of the Ministry of Magic as a direct consequence of the Statute of Secrecy. The decision to keep magic hidden from Muggles (and the growth of their technology) had in effect created a State of Emergency which ad hoc meetings of the Wizards' Council were no longer sufficient to manage, and the whole bureaucracy of the Ministry of Magic became a real necessity. The Wizards' Council was at some point restored to its old name of Wizengamot - possibly a symbolic throwing off the Norman (or Muggle) yoke as the wizards adopted a policy of total separation - and membership of the body became (if it was not always) a part-time occupation, for all its power and prestige. It is certainly a part-time occupation now: Dumbledore was able to combine presiding over it as Chief Warlock with the headmastership of Hogwarts and the Chairmanship of the International Confederation of Wizards, and (for Fudge's first years in office) being the power behind the throne in Wizarding Britain. Griselda Marchbanks combined an active role on the Wizengamot with being head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority, so it clearly not an onerous position. Their meetings may not have been unlike the old JP's Quarter Sessions which ran the affairs of English counties, before the reform of local government: pleasant society gatherings, where everyone knew everyone else, and as often as not were related.

It is not unlikely that Fudge's poor showing at Harry's trial developed in no small part from the understandable irritation of fifty eminent and important people being dragged out of bed early one morning at the Minister's whim (quite without warning) to judge something as trivial as a simple matter of Underage Magic. They would not be used to this.

It is a common misconception that the Wizengamot is primarily a court of law. In fact it is not. Harry's trial before the full Wizengamot was clearly an extraordinary exception, and Old Courtroom Ten hadn't been in use for years. For minor offences (like underage magic) judicial authority has clearly (in nearly all cases) been delegated to the relevant officials of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, while more serious offences, such as the Death Eater trials over which Harry saw Bartemius Crouch preside in Dumbledore's pensieve, seem always to have been tried before the Council of Magical Law - where Wizengamot members seem to preside, but the actual verdict is made by a jury - and (as Bagman's trial displayed) not a biddable jury either.

The Wizengamot's real role was originally (no doubt) a matter of interpreting (and enforcing) traditional wizarding customary law (until comparatively recently real law was understood to be immemorial; legislation was thought of as tyranny) but there is no doubt that its principal functions have been legislative for centuries. All Fudge's new laws with regard to Hogwarts had to be carried through the Wizengamot, a body which (however suspicious it was becoming of Dumbledore) had no very great regard for the Minister. That is why Fudge had to proceed in such a slow and piecemeal fashion in trying to remove Dumbledore from Hogwarts, first proposing Umbridge to fill a vacuum in the staff - a seemingly innocuous move - and then (when the Daily Prophet had presented that as a success) gradually passing more and more laws to whittle away at Dumbledore's position. All this had to pass through the Wizengamot, a surprisingly independent body which Dumbledore had only recently presided over (as Chief Warlock) and where he still had a fair amount of support, and that is why two of the oldest and most eminent Wizengamot elders (Tiberius Ogden and Griselda Marchbanks, of whom even Umbridge was visibly afraid) resigned from the Wizengamot over the appointment of Umbridge as High Inquisitor. They took this step because it was the Wizengamot that had created this post (and the consequent reign of terror at Hogwarts) and they wished to show their disapproval and publicly undermine its prestige.

It is probably in his role as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot that Dumbledore would have helped draft wizarding legislation, as he explains in the filmed version of Chamber of Secrets.

"I am well aware of our bye-laws, Severus, having written quite a few of them myself."

Just how the Minister of Magic is appointed has not been made completely clear, but it isn't merely on etymological grounds (the parallel to the Witanagemot) that I suspect that the Wizengamot appoints him. The phraseology of Sirius Black's description of the political manoeuvrings which allowed Cornelius Fudge to "get the top job" and Bartemius Crouch to be "shunted aside" doesn't seem easily compatible with any form of direct election to these posts: it's more suggestive of private deals behind the scenes by members of the Wizengamot - there's no other body that could do it, either, especially none with such a promising name. Also, the Heads of Department seem to be chosen independently of the Minister; they are probably chosen by the Wizengamot too, again in all likelihood from among their own number. Nor do there seem to be fixed electoral terms: According to the Daily Prophet, Fudge became Minister after Millicent Bagnold "retired" - as opposed to coming to the end of her term: and there has been no hint of elections in the last few years, or that they are imminent now. In fact, the probability is that the Wizengamot not only appoints the Minister of Magic but can remove him too, at will - as the Muggle parliament can replace the Prime Minister. That would explain why Cornelius Fudge feared that he would be quickly removed from office if he followed Dumbledore's advice - and indeed Dumbledore's suggestions (leaving dangerous criminals unguarded, making alliance with murderous giants) were the sort that Sir Humphrey Appleby would have called "courageous" - not to say "novel." They were clearly political suicide, which Fudge understandably began to think that Dumbledore had intended him to commit.

The Wizengamot clearly has the right (perhaps on the Minister's recommendation) to remove individual members from its number (like Albus Dumbledore) and indeed to reinstate them - much as the Muggle House of Commons could to until the Wilkes affair in the eighteenth century. Where its members are drawn from is another matter. Some of its members are clearly appointed: high officials of the Ministry like Senior Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge seem to be automatically Wizengamot members by virtue of their official positions. So are the Minister of Magic and all the Heads of Department, but as their appointments are clearly political, that may simply be a case of the Wizengamot choosing high political officials from among its own number. If this is nearly always the case (and it follows the practice of both the British parliament and the Roman senate) it would explain how Fudge got to be Minister. With most of the Wizengamot too old for the job (as they clearly are) or with other interests as well, like Dumbledore, then if one rules out Crouch and his allies, there may not have been very much choice. Some choices, indeed, could have seemed far worse. After all, could anyone imagine Ludovic Bagman as Minister?

So how are the rest of the Wizengamot chosen? Some are clearly appointed officials, and it is always possible that the rest are self-appointing, choosing eminent wizards to fill a vacancy in their number. I suspect, however, that this is unlikely. Quite apart from the direct references in Quidditch through the Ages to voting for members of the old Wizards' Council, the fact that general popularity is a major factor in deciding political appointments suggests that the Wizengamot is by and large an elected body, albeit probably not by the sort of election which now exists in the Muggle world. Nor would Tiberius Ogden and Griselda Marchbanks have resigned from so influential a body if their replacements were simply to be chosen by the anti-Dumbledore majority there. Probably they were fairly sure that people like themselves would be elected in their place.

Another factor to consider in guessing how the Wizengamot elders are chosen is that they are clearly all "independents" and do not belong to any formal party structures, which do not seem to even exist in the politics of wizarding Britain: patronage networks and factions yes, but not formal political parties - a bit like the Muggle political world as it was before the Statute of Secrecy - or indeed that of the Roman Republic. The Wizengamot elders also seem to be genuinely independent, and make up their own minds over how to vote, as was the case in Harry's trial. For another, by and large (apart perhaps from some appointed officials) they are very elderly indeed. Albus Dumbledore is over 150 years old, and Griselda Marchbanks some decades older: by far the largest recorded ages of any wizards that do not possess a philosopher's stone. (Look at the dates on the Chocolate Frog Trading Cards to see how wholly exceptional these ages are.) By and large, it is an elderly legislative body. The Daily Prophet actually refers to its members (or some of them) as elders. Evidently, it is possible for a Wizengamot elder to be replaced, but it does not occur very often: in practice membership is either for life or very nearly.

In consequence the Wizengamot is a small and largely elderly body, with only fifty members or so, nearly all of whom must have known each other for decades. Clues as to how they might be elected are sparse. There certainly seems to have been a restricted franchise of some sort, at least back in the Middle Ages, as we see from Modesty Rabnott's letter. Members of the Wizards' Council were probably chosen by important families or communities. If they were a self-appointing oligarchy then, that is unlikely to still be the case, because it is clear from the words of both Cornelius Fudge and Sirius Black that popularity is a major factor in who becomes Minister of Magic, and in whether he survives.

Still, even now, whatever voting system there is must be weighted in some subtle fashion towards pure-blooded wizards, marginalizing the Muggle-born. After all, J K Rowling has said that pure-blood and Muggle-born witches and wizards are roughly a quarter of the wizarding population each, while the remaining half have both Muggle and pure-blood ancestors, so unless the political system was weighted towards the pure-blood families, there is no way Araminta Meliflua could ever have hoped to have a chance of pushing through a bill that could have made Muggle-hunting legal, even a generation ago. On the other hand, they clearly aren't "in charge", because that was the (unfulfilled) aim of those who originally supported Voldemort. In fact, they seem to be very much in retreat, as Borgin pointed out to Malfoy:

"Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere."

This sort of balance could have been achieved by something like the old Muggle system of Pocket Boroughs, by which smaller (and older) communities can outvote larger ones. My personal suspicion, however, is that the constituency from which each particular Wizengamot elder is chosen is decided not by territory or place of residence (a Muggle idea) but by family origin, which seems to be more important among wizards.

This sort of system existed in ancient Rome, where (admittedly, in the Plebeian Assembly) extended families or tribes (originally running their own affairs) became in the end little more than electoral devices: thirty one "voting tribes" from a particular place of origin, and four "city tribes." Romans accepted outsiders (including freed slaves) as citizens when they had culturally absorbed them (just as wizarding Britain accepts Muggle-born wizards); but all outsiders that became citizens were enrolled in the four "city tribes" - thus very much diluting their vote. This seems to me like a very wizarding thing to do.

If the wizarding system followed this model, additional Wizengamot elders might be senior Ministry officials like Umbridge (appointed either by the Wizengamot, or else by the Minister) or the leaders of major public institutions like Hogwarts (appointed by the governors) and maybe St Mungo's too, or maybe the leaders of certain ancient and important wizarding communities, bringing the total to something like fifty.

Such a system could have come about if the Wizengamot (or Wizards' Council) were originally made up of the leading members of all the most prominent wizarding families (which could be why Modesty Rabnott had no vote) who would perhaps have run their own affairs but come together to agree on common laws they could enforce. When each member of the Wizards' Council died or retired, his family (and their descendants, including any descendants of mixed blood) would choose a successor to represent them - and maybe replace him if a majority of them agreed on a particular replacement: so although his constituency would be his friends and relations, he couldn't go too much against their wishes without some risk of being replaced. Wizards without any ancestors at all from old families would be effectively excluded, and even if (on the Roman system) they were allowed a family or tribe (or electoral house) of their own, (perhaps four on the Roman model, one for each of the houses at Hogwarts that introduced them to the Wizarding World) then until their descendants began to intermarry with wizarding families their electoral influence would still be very limited - especially as the number of Muggle-born wizards grew. Nor would they have likely objected. In historical times it would have seemed rather progressive when compared to the Muggle world in the days of the Rotten Boroughs (in that everyone allowed to use a wand would have had a vote), and even now, when things have changed, any Wizengamot elder the Muggle-born wizards might be allowed to choose would have to be conciliatory, or risk being excluded from their number in the way that Albus Dumbledore was.

Moreover, such a system would be subtly weighted in favour of the pure-bloods in the way that the wizarding political establishment genuinely seems to be. Maybe at some point in the past some electoral "families" or "houses" were required to choose their representatives from among their pure-blood members. This is clearly no longer the case, but even now the smallest electoral houses (where a few votes went a very long way) would almost certainly be those where pure-blood wizards predominated; electoral houses where lots of wizards had married Muggles would probably be a good deal larger, considering the relative infertility of pure-blood families. Some electoral houses might be tiny; the very largest might contain hundreds.

I admit that this is all highly speculative, and is almost certainly wrong in its details, but I suspect that it is this general sort of political system that wizarding Britain is likely to use.

And I don't see how such a system could be easily changed, short of a major upheaval - which, in fact, may be about to occur. (The symbolism of Dumbledore and Voldemort between them destroying the Fountain of Magical Brethren suggests as much.) At the moment I have suggested a very stable set up exists, which makes for close personal contact between the Wizengamot members and those who choose them, which does not exist in any Muggle political system. Even those selected from the larger electoral houses might not want the system changed, because they personally were chosen through their connections with their particular constituency, an advantage which any reform would remove. And if (let us say) Hermione were ever chosen to sit in the Wizengamot, then if she really said all that was on her mind she would only confirm the others` convictions that it is a good idea after all to have the system weighted against newcomers from the Muggle world - and if she stepped too far she might find herself removed like Dumbledore, which would put an end to any other reforms she might have planned.

From what we have seen of how the Wizengamot functions, it seems to work by a degree of consensus, perhaps because the nature of whichever way they are chosen means that the elders of the Wizengamot have similar background (and prejudices) and (more particularly) because those wizards (like Dumbledore) who stand too far outside the consensus risk being removed from the body.

Not that we should criticise the way the Wizengamot is chosen too heavily. If it is by the way I have suggested, then for all the system's flaws, at least some of the Wizengamot elders will be there because their friends and relations like or respect them, and not because they are ambitious and ruthless egomaniacs, which is all too often the case among people that want to get elected. In any case, however they are chosen, it is a fact that Dumbledore had a lot of support among them only a few years before (and indeed, Fudge would depend for the next two years on Dumbledore's faction there to stay in power). Fudge probably had to rely on the unanimous support of the Ministry officials in the Wizengamot to get the votes to remove Dumbledore, and to push through his controversial legislation in creating a High Inquisitor for Hogwarts - and I suspect that Fudge's majorities were quite narrow, in spite of whatever mental influence and suggestion Voldemort brought to bear on the Wizengamot elders, the support of the Daily Prophet, and whatever money and threats Lucius Malfoy was spreading around. Why else did Fudge proceed so slowly and cautiously? He had to win the other factions over each time, to bribe or persuade them to support him. Even after five years in office, his own personal faction was tiny (only six voted to find Harry guilty) and probably restricted to those members who were Ministry officials like Dolores Umbridge.

It was a different Wizengamot which Araminta Meliflua (an aunt of Sirius Black) had tried to bully into declaring Muggle-hunting legal. Since then the mood must have softened. The first Voldemort war probably removed the more extreme of the pure-blood faction from the Wizengamot (since they were fighting on the other side) and the reaction against Crouch that followed it saw off another tyrannical threat. I have a strong suspicion that Millicent Bagnold probably stayed on as Minister just long enough until, with defections and retirements, Crouch's faction fell below the critical level for her to be sure that he wouldn't succeed her as Minister of Magic.

-----------

And that's the end!

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 10)

2004-01-24T23:51:08Z

The limits of power in a state of emergency: a brief survey of wizarding Britain

It is an interesting point that all the real constraints on the power of the Ministry of Magic are entirely unofficial. The most obvious, of course, is the power of the extra-legal patronage networks, whose tentacles spread right through the Ministry and the Wizengamot, which (ultimately) seems to control the Ministry. Another is the fact that the wizarding world is a rather small one. It is a real limitation on the power of both the government and the press that they must operate in a world where everyone knows everyone else - and where bias and injustice are therefore much more easily noticed. Perhaps that is why it did not seem odd even to Sirius Black, let alone to the Council of Magical Law, that Bartemius Crouch should have presided over the trial of his only son. Wizarding Britain is such a small community that conflicts of interest not only do not have the same importance as with us, but may in fact be unavoidable, the way the pure-blood caste are all related to one another. At least if anyone has a reason for bias, everyone else is likely to know it - and given that there is an armed population, popular opinion can't be ignored. The groups most likely to suffer injustice are those that cannot - or may not - use wands: non-human magical beings, and Muggles. They have effectively been disenfranchised, though only the goblins put up resistance to this, and may have plans for restoring their old position.

Other constraints on the power of the Ministry are more practical than legal, and derive from the limitations of wizarding technology. In military terms the wizards still live in the early Middle Ages, in spite of their astonishing powers. They cannot kill millions by pressing a button, but only a small number at a time, by using a wand in their own hand. No "weapons of mass-destruction" exist that are of any use against wizards (they're not easily killed by Muggle catastrophes like car crashes, as Hagrid points out) and personal fighting ability is still a major consideration in choosing people for high office, like Dumbledore and Bartemius Crouch.

And they're still living in the age of castles. Among Muggles only deep underground bunkers are any defence against powerful weapons: among wizards, some private family homes are almost completely secure against anything. This puts a constraint on what the Ministry can do, because it's only the qualitative advantage in military technology that gives a Muggle government more power than street-gangs, and among wizards the only weapon's a wand - a weapon which every one of them has.

It is this that gives Wizarding Society its peculiar flavour, like a strange distortion of Tolkien's Shire. Tolkien once described the Shire as "half anarchy, half aristocracy." The Statute of Secrecy means Wizarding Britain is half Shire and half police state. In some respects they're stuck in the past - in both good and bad ways, in fact. They go to a thousand year old school, shop in Tudorbethan alleys, and work out their money in golden Galleons and silver Sickles. They go to a patron for career advancement. The consequences of the Statute of Secrecy have insulated wizards from the Cultural Revolution that has occurred in the Muggle world in recent decades, or at least slowed the changes down for the wizards to be able to absorb them at their own pace. In many ways that's not a bad thing. And yet they have surveillance, magical technology, and a lot of the features of a modern bureaucratic police state, made tolerable only by the personal angle and natural human inefficiency: personal relationships and loyalties still seem to count for more than institutions. Indeed, it is personal relationships that hold the wizarding world together: the real reason why Dumbledore lays such stress on loyalty in preparing Harry for his role - loyalty to friends and underlings as well as to patrons. In practice there is a balance between the all-powerful claims of Ministry of Magic and the fact of an armed population; between the wizarding world's inherited culture and more modern influences seeping in from the Muggle world; between the Ministry making laws all the time and the extent to which they're routinely ignored, in spite of the risk.

The best example of the way Ministry laws and regulations are so often disregarded is the curious record of there only being seven registered Animagi in the whole of the twentieth century. If three members of the male half of just one house in just one year in Hogwarts alone became unregistered Animagi, and that's only counting those who learned while still at school, the registry must be a joke. Any law that can't be enforced is ignored.

In theory the people that run the Ministry can make any law they like, because for the last three hundred years they have had emergency powers at their disposal. They can change the rules by which people are judged, as they did when they changed the time and location for Harry's trial without telling him or Dumbledore. In practice it is very unwise for them to do so. For one thing, they have no real army at their disposal, and the entire population is armed, so if they lose too much popular support they're in trouble. This is what happens at the end of Order of the Phoenix. There were no real legal constraints to stop them from instituting a reign of terror at Hogwarts (once they'd persuaded the Wizengamot) with censorship and informers and secret police, but as it turned out, the Ministry of Magic (and the Wizengamot) went too far. They overreached themselves, and by the end of the book their directives are being ignored by both sides of the emerging civil war. Their power of coercion has dwindled drastically, and now that the Dementors have changed sides, the Ministry no longer even have that threat to ensure obedience.

Not that this will end the abuse of power, either by the Ministry or indeed by the independent patronage networks. My guess is that there will be more injustices in the next book, including an increasing number perpetrated by Harry's own network. The increasing ruthlessness of Harry's friends is a very worrying sign. If you're disturbed by what can take place in a State of Emergency, just wait and see what happens in an actual Civil War.

Continued in the Appendix...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 9)

2004-01-24T23:43:31Z

What happens in Order of the Phoenix: Harry becomes Patronus Potter

Malfoy's attempt to cultivate Fudge was increasingly successful, because Cornelius Fudge needed allies, and fast. What we're seeing in Order of the Phoenix is the Ministry of Magic persuading themselves (or being persuaded by Voldemort, working behind the scenes and in their minds) that Dumbledore's independent patronage network is a direct threat to their power: in fact, the main threat to their power. What follows is a concerted and protracted attempt by the Ministry of Magic to crush Dumbledore`s patronage network and take away his control of the school, the major strategic resource he controlled. (They quickly removed him from the Wizengamot, where his influence had been in decline as early on as Chamber of Secrets, but from which he could have been in a position to try and remove the Minister; and they separated him from his prestigious position as Chairman of the International Confederation of Wizards by the simple expedient of removing him as their representative there; but he was still headmaster of Hogwarts, and thus in a position to influence the younger members of nearly every family in wizarding Britain. And as long as he had full authority there, he was in a position to build and train a private army there. So they began to undermine his position in Hogwarts, slowly, little by little, because the Wizengamot elders were mostly an independent bunch and had to be prepared for each stage.) Dumbledore co-operated for a while, and in doing so he gave Fudge and his whole Ministry faction enough rope to hang themselves with, as Hogwarts slipped out of control, and people began to believe Harry Potter.

This attempt by the Ministry of Magic to assert its authority over just one patronage leader (who in the event was not the one which actually threatened them) ended, of course, in complete and humiliating failure, with the Ministry's authority and prestige in tatters. The Ministry gave up their attack altogether, and the book ends with all the patronage networks now preparing to act independently, ignoring the law and the Ministry when it suits them: Dumbledore is now quite ready to disregard all sorts of legal niceties in the very presence of the Minister of Magic, and basically gives him undisguised orders.

However, and more importantly, we're also seeing the beginning of Harry Potter as a patronage leader in his own right, albeit a somewhat flawed one (fifteen is far too young for that kind of job). The DA, which Harry forms out of his personal adherents and pupils (those who stuck by him in adversity) may be referred to as Dumbledore's Army, but at bottom it's really his own. Malfoy's sneer of "Patronus Potter" has finally become a reality.

This, in fact, is slightly scary, in spite of the likelihood that Dumbledore planned it. A lot of the more bizarre features of Harry's education make sense if Dumbledore was preparing him at an early age to take up this role of patronage leader: to be an active leader in the younger generation in a way that Dumbledore never could. A master-patron doesn't get anywhere by micro-managing his subsidiary patronage networks; that's not how a patronage system works, and even a megalomaniac like Lord Voldemort can see it. Subsidiary patronage networks need inspiring leadership of their own, and their leaders must be allowed some freedom of action - even a freedom to make mistakes. Nor can they be undermined by the master-patron in front of their followers. That is yet another reason why Voldemort was comparatively mild to Lucius Malfoy when the Death Eaters were summoned to the graveyard, and Malfoy was given an authority of his own even over those Death Eaters who had been in Azkaban. Harry has become to Dumbledore's army what Lucius Malfoy is to Voldemort's. It's not inappropriate that they faced each other by leading opposing missions to the Department of Mysteries.

In a sense, Lucius always knew this, even if Harry didn't. At the beginning of Chamber of Secrets, he sought out and shook hands with Harry, before they began their long duel.

With regard to making Harry a patron Dumbledore has clearly succeeded. The forces of law and order have completely discredited themselves, and it's not just Dumbledore that's now prepared to ignore them. Harry is too. Harry's tendency to think that rules didn't always apply to him (which Snape very much resented) was only a preparation for this.

Harry's personal patronage network began when he trained the DA, although his "inner circle" had began years before in his friendship with Ron and Hermione, and the Weasley twins had become Harry's clients when he became their "financial backer." Like Dumbledore's, Harry's patronage network is based on ties of personal loyalty (as Zacharias Smith had to understand) and was based on Hogwarts and the Weasley family (the two twin pillars of Dumbledore's own network) - another sign that Dumbledore means for Harry to be a patron under him, and maybe (eventually) his successor. Harry's network (in Dumbledore's absence) fought a successful guerrilla campaign against an occupying power (Dolores Umbridge and her collaborators) and finally saw hostile action with the fateful mission to "rescue" Sirius.

The change in Harry is complete when he explains his position to Snape: "I'm trying to decide what curse to use on Malfoy, sir." At the start of the book, Harry nearly has his wand broken for performing a purely defensive charm. At the end, he performs the Cruciatus Curse in the Ministry of Magic itself. Like the other patronage leaders, Harry is now above the law, and knows it. And he's still only fifteen years old.

Continued in Part 10...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 8)

2004-01-24T23:34:42Z

The cost of maintaining a patronage network: is Lucius Malfoy really that rich?

In fact, a strong case can be made that Lucius Malfoy's wealth and power were always less than they appeared. First of all, the first time we actually see him he is selling family heirlooms rather than buying them. Now it's true that with Ministry raids on the manor likely, these are heirlooms it might have been dangerous to hang onto, but on the other hand, that was a perfect excuse for him to start selling without giving the impression that he was short of cash. Moreover, Borgin was convinced that he had more such things - quite enough to be just as embarrassing. So either he had less in the way of Dark objects than was commonly reputed, or else he was selling some simply to raise the money, and using the fear of raids as an excuse, so as not to give rise to rumours about his financial predicament.

And he wasn't so rich as to be above haggling. The bargaining over the price of the goods he sold took quite some time - and to judge by Borgin's reaction Lucius Malfoy drove a hard bargain.

In addition, we know from the conversation that Harry overhears in the shop that Lucius was initially cautious in what he offered Draco. He'd promised him a racing broom - nothing else - and it was still just a promise. And he spoke as if funds were far from unlimited. It's after the sale that he not only buys Draco the broom he had promised, but similar racing brooms for the entire Slytherin Quidditch team, an act of conspicuous consumption designed not just to get Draco onto the team but to give the impression of wealth to all and sundry, including any creditors. We know that one important figure (Ludo Bagman) got in serious debt to the goblins. Lucius may have done the same.

In fact, for all we know, Lucius was less well off than he seemed right from the start - hence his "Slytherin" ambition. Joining a revolutionary movement is an odd thing for someone to do with as much to lose as Lucius Malfoy - unless it was all precarious to begin with, and he needed to find a patron of some sort before his own power-base unravelled through lack of money to oil his connections. The very way that both he and Draco boast of money all the time in itself suggests insecurity - and if he is now going into debt to protect his position, could some of his hatred and contempt for Arthur Weasley's comparative poverty spring from a fear he might one day end up like him?

And there's one more point that has seldom been noticed. For all that Draco says about how his father's only dealings with the Ministry were personal contacts with the "top people" there, it seems that those contacts (at the beginning of Goblet of Fire) are in fact very new indeed. Only a few pages before this, when the Malfoys met Cornelius Fudge (at his invitation) in the Ministerial box, we learn that this was the first time that Fudge had ever seen either Draco or Narcissa. Now, this is very interesting indeed, given that the wizarding world is a rather small one (and the elite is smaller still) and that while Fudge had only been Minister of Magic for a few years, as Deputy Minister he'd actually been around the centre of the political stage for a great deal longer. Of course, being known as Bellatrix Lestrange's sister would no doubt have spoiled Narcissa's potential role as a wizarding socialite, but it fits what I'm now starting to suspect: that Lucius Malfoy's political ambitions (in the post-Voldemort set up) and his extravagant spending of gold to achieve them, are both relatively new phenomena.

Here it is important to consider the political background shortly before Harry's second year at Hogwarts, and just why it was possible for a minor Ministry employee like Arthur Weasley (and he was minor, to judge by the size of his office) to be so confident and assertive in his raids, to introduce and give his name to a controversial "Muggle Protection Act," and to imagine he actually had a chance of bringing down Lucius Malfoy - and why (if he really did have this power) Arthur had never tried it before.

The key factor here is that a new Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, had been in office for less than two years, and had come to power with very little political backing, mainly because he wasn't Bartemius Crouch. Fudge as Minister had at first had almost no patronage network, because he had never been taken seriously before, and with no real ties to any faction he was highly dependent on Albus Dumbledore, an extremely popular political heavyweight who (at the time) was the one person that Fudge knew for sure had no ambitions to take his place, because (in effect) he'd been offered the job and had refused it. Moreover, Fudge would have had active political enemies, starting with Bartemius Crouch himself, Crouch's supporters, and any other Departmental Head who wanted to be Minister of Magic - because I doubt if any of them would have got that far unless they harboured such ambitions, and Fudge's weakness would have encouraged them. Moreover, if (as seems likely) it's the Wizengamot that passes laws and appoints (and replaces) the Minister, Fudge's poor showing at Harry's trial is proof of how little personal backing Fudge had among them even after five years in office, whatever they had come to think of Dumbledore. A few years before, he'd have had even less. In consequence, by the time Chamber of Secrets begins, Cornelius Fudge had been soliciting Dumbledore's advice on a daily basis for over two years, and Arthur Weasley, as a trusted and valued client of Dumbledore's, could be confident that the Ministry of Magic would back him, even against a powerful patron like Lucius Malfoy.

In some ways, Arthur Weasley is Dumbledore's most important client, in spite of the fact that he holds no important position, because Dumbledore can rely on him absolutely. It is no accident, surely, that when the Order of the Phoenix is reformed, it is basically built up almost entirely of members of the Weasley family and the close friends and colleagues of each: all the others are virtual outcasts (like Hagrid, Snape, Black and Lupin) who are dependent on Albus Dumbledore because they have nowhere else to go. It was because Fudge was aware of Arthur's importance to Dumbledore that he recruited Percy as his assistant. Now, three years before this, the Minister of Magic was constantly Owling Dumbledore for advice, and Dumbledore himself was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the body which probably passes laws and decides who the Minister will be. Being Dumbledore's most trusted adherent within the Ministry of Magic temporarily gave Arthur Weasley a degree of power out of all proportion to his minor official position.

My guess is that after Voldemort's fall, Lucius Malfoy lived within his means, and actually kept a fairly low profile. Perhaps he felt that he'd got off by the skin of his teeth, and that it had really been touch and go. Perhaps getting the Ministry (or the Council of Magical Law) to accept Imperius as an excuse had been too costly in money and favours. What changed it all was the Ministry raids, conducted by Arthur Weasley, secure in the support of the then-dominant Dumbledore faction. Not that he began with Lucius Malfoy, but my guess is that the initial raids began to intrude on Lucius Malfoy's clientele, and Lucius, as a result of the low political profile he had adopted after Voldemort's first defeat, would have realised he could now no longer protect them. This was extremely serious, because if his reputation as a dependable patron disappeared, his clients would leave him, his remaining political influence would vanish, and then he would himself become vulnerable because the fear his name still inspired would be gone - and it was a very real fear, to judge by the way his fellow Hogwarts governors could be intimidated by him when he threatened them. If Lucius didn't take steps to maintain his power, he would soon be without allies, and vulnerable to further Ministry investigations, to betrayal by the former clients he'd deserted, and even revenge from former victims.

This is the background to what Dobby reveals to Harry, that there had been discussions at the Malfoy manor house about something that threatened Harry Potter. Who was Lucius discussing things with? Not Draco, that's for sure, and possibly not Narcissa either, who was clearly not a Death Eater (she wasn't summoned to the churchyard with them) and seems to have liked to keep a low profile - at least until Kreacher's arrival put her on the spot, and gave her a chance to make her family's standing with Voldemort less precarious. That she stopped Draco from being sent to Durmstrang by Lucius (who wanted him out of Dumbledore's influence) suggests that Lucius listens to her advice, but that she is less fanatical than her sister and her husband, and less bothered about Dumbledore. If she had a part in the plot (and with the way she had kept a low profile, the ease with which Lucius could extricate himself if it all went wrong suggests her style) her motive would have been practical rather than ideological: a necessary counterstroke against a threat from her family's enemies. The likelihood, though, is that Lucius had been discussing these things with his old Death Eater clients, who had come to him with tales of Ministry raids, and asking for his help. Lucius would have lost them all (with fatal consequences, because they knew too much about him) if he'd simply told them there was nothing he could do for them. If Lucius couldn't actually stop the raids, at the very least he had to show his friends and supporters a way he could strike back at the perpetrators. That's why he decided to use the Diary - and Dobby, the family House-elf, with a known fondness for eavesdropping and privy to all the family secrets, heard the discussions, and decided he had to protect Harry Potter.

So Lucius simply couldn't afford to accept the new Ministry intrusiveness passively, and he correctly gauged that the real danger came from just two enemies: Arthur Weasley and Albus Dumbledore. Weasley was a problem because he was a Ministry official who simply wasn't afraid to challenge him, and whose sphere of responsibility was confiscating dangerous artefacts - something Malfoy had enough of to make him vulnerable; Dumbledore was the political heavyweight behind Arthur Weasley who would make sure that the Ministry of Magic would back him if Malfoy was caught in possession of illegal artefacts. Malfoy couldn't allow things to go this far. He had to fight back, and somehow increase his political influence, his ability to pressure the Ministry, even if he couldn't afford it - especially if he couldn't afford it, because his influence depended on his being perceived as rich and powerful.

It would have been the Ministry raids on his clientele in the run up to Chamber of Secrets, and his increasing awareness that he was going to be a target too, and that his influence and family name would not be enough to protect his clients or even himself, which prompted Lucius Malfoy to take a more active and interventionist approach to wizarding politics - and a more expensive one too. He took the battle to the enemy; and he jolly nearly succeeded in not only revenging himself on Arthur Weasley, but in removing Dumbledore from Hogwarts and breaking up Dumbledore's patronage network, which had given Weasley the courage (and backing) to pose a threat to him in the first place. A further aim was to separate Fudge from the headmaster's patronage network, by demonstrating Dumbledore's weakness: that is why he arranged to hand Dumbledore his dismissal by the governors in the very presence of Fudge.

He didn't entirely fail, either. Through a judicious mixture of discreetly placed bribes and threats, and maybe offers of alliance (to Wizengamot elders, probably, and Ministry officials like Umbridge) Malfoy became able to exert pressure on Cornelius Fudge (for example, to arrest Hagrid), and permanently changed the balance of power. One of the hidden consequences of the events in Chamber of Secrets is that Fudge seems to have realised that Dumbledore's support alone might not be enough to keep him in office, and that he himself would need to obtain the support of other factions to survive. That is why Fudge felt he had to be seen "doing something" (like arresting Hagrid) in order to reassure the wizarding public. Moreover, persuading other factions to back him increased his illusion of a power base independent of Dumbledore; an illusion fostered no doubt by the flattery and manipulation of his Senior Undersecretary, Dolores Umbridge, who, it later turned out, had her own dealings with Malfoy. Thereafter Fudge showed himself much more willing to bow to political pressure (often, one suspects, discreetly financed by Malfoy) and far less willing to ask or take Dumbledore's advice.

As Lucius didn't (at first) have the money to achieve all this, the first thing he had to do was to sell some family heirlooms, and rid himself at the same time of whatever objects could put him in danger were they were found in his possession. Once he'd raised money in this fashion he spent it in ways guaranteed to attract attention (like first-class brooms for the Slytherin team). By giving out the appearance of limitless wealth, he would have been able to borrow (or extort) yet more, and reinforce the impression of wealth and power which he needed to overawe the Hogwarts governors, influence the Wizengamot and keep his own supporters loyal. By a mixture of threats, bribes and bullying he came very close to destroying Dumbledore and bringing Hogwarts into his own sphere of influence, wisely working through intermediaries so that he could deny involvement if things went wrong. There are some signs that after his failure in Hogwarts he turned his attention to St Mungo's, with similar hopes of influence there. Before the beginning of Goblet of Fire (exactly Voldemort came back) he began to be generous on an even larger scale, enough to attract the Minister's notice, and even (it seems) his gratitude. By the time of the Quidditch World Cup, he'd spread enough gold to be invited by Fudge to the Minister's box. By the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, he had spent even more, and gained a great deal of political influence.

"Gold, I expect," said Mr Weasley angrily. "Malfoy's been giving generously to all sorts of things for years… gets him in with the right people… then he can ask favours… delay laws he doesn't want passed… oh, he's very well-connected, Lucius Malfoy."

The trouble is all this costs money, and the question is does Malfoy have it? It has surely cost more than he gained from Borgin (which was just a start) or Borgin would have been far more than a simple Knockturn Alley shopkeeper, and unless Malfoy had other things to sell the bulk of his new political influence must have been financed by borrowing. Ludo Bagman may not have been the only important wizard to get in serious debt to the goblins. It would make sense if they funded his political influence in return for his using it to restrain the Ministry's supposed desire to nationalise Gringotts. Some of the laws he got delayed may in fact have been anti-goblin laws - which might explain why (when Bill Weasley asked them) the goblins were "not giving anything away yet." If this is true, then Lucius Malfoy's arrest may remove one of the few political pressures restraining Fudge from moving against the Gringotts goblins - which would actually fit Voldemort's plans very well: the goblins could be driven into his own camp without their asking why Malfoy wasn't restraining the Ministry. However, if Lucius Malfoy's debts are not paid, the goblins will be even angrier than they were about Ludo Bagman; unless, of course, unknown to the reader (and even the goblins) Malfoy's debts are Ludo Bagman's.

This is a much more likely explanation, because Lucius Malfoy is far too canny to borrow from the goblins what he knows he can't repay, if there is any other way of obtaining it. And so far, there's been no hint that the goblins are chasing him for any repayment. Either his debts are safely secured, or else he hasn't been borrowing money from goblins directly. There's only one person we know who has.

The likelihood is that Lucius Malfoy blackmailed Ludovic Bagman with the threat of revealing evidence that he really had been a Death Eater, and that Barty Crouch had been right after all. Bagman was on the face of it guilty of passing secrets to Augustus Rookwood, and he even admitted as much. He claimed that he didn't know Rookwood was asking on behalf of the enemy, and suggested minor corruption as a motive, that Rookwood had promised him a place in the Ministry. The trouble is there was only Bagman's word for it that he had really been a stupid as this, and he only escaped Azkaban because he had recently scored for England, and the jury was full of Quidditch fans. Crouch was so convinced he was guilty he kept an eye on him ever since.

Bagman's Quidditch days are past, and a jury would now be less sympathetic, and in the year of Voldemort's return, Bagman behaved very like someone who was being blackmailed. Judging by the depth of their reaction, he had borrowed huge sums of gold from the goblins; and not only from the goblins, but from everyone he could get any money from, including Lee Jordan's dad, even cheating the Weasley twins. He eventually tried to cheat the goblins. Fred and George assumed that he fled "right after the Third Task" because he feared what the goblins would do to him, but the evidence doesn't bear that out. The goblins caught up with him, and took away all the gold he was carrying to escape with (nowhere near as much as they were owed) but they didn't otherwise do him any harm. In other words, they let him escape - so who was he really fleeing from, and since he didn't have much money left, where did all this money go? Who was he paying off, and who was suddenly spending money that some years before he didn't have?

The obvious answer is Lucius Malfoy, who, as Ludo Bagman got ever more desperate for gold (that somehow vanished without trace) was spending a fortune on building up his political influence. If anyone possessed the evidence that could prove that Bagman really had been a Death Eater after all, that somebody was Lucius Malfoy - and he had no reason to protect him. After all, Bagman had been in Rookwood's cell-structure and patronage network (the son of Rookwood's friend), clearly not in Malfoy's own. And with Augustus Rookwood in Azkaban, Bagman had no protector, in spite of his high Ministry position - and in Barty Crouch he had an enemy who would destroy him if he had the chance. This way of getting money from the goblins through an intermediary (who would take all the risk) fits Lucius' (or Narcissa's) style - it certainly fits the pattern in Chamber of Secrets, where every stage of the plot was worked through intermediaries, so that when it all came unstuck, Lucius could hiss: "Prove it."

This suggests that Snape turned up to the Dark Lord's rebirth, hiding his real thoughts with Occlumency, so he could resume his role as a spy. Ludo Bagman and Igor Karkaroff would then have been the two that were missing.

As for who Bagman was fleeing from (since it clearly wasn't the goblins) the answer was probably the Death Eaters. He left right after the Third Task, which curiously enough was when the Death Eaters were summoned by Voldemort, and Ludo Bagman knew he was back. Quite apart from Voldemort's words, the Death Eaters have every reason to kill him, so that the goblins will go on thinking that they have been cheated by the Ministry, rather than been manipulated by Voldemort's chief lieutenant. What really might tip off the goblins, of course, is the fact that each Galleon has the serial number referring to the goblin who cast the coin. If they try to locate those coins, they could perhaps trace their history back to those who had received money from Lucius Malfoy. Only they won't know the money came from Malfoy, will they? They'll just see the gold traced back to the very establishment wizards and charitable institutions that are blocking them with regard to recovering their gold!

As for why Malfoy was extorting and spending all this money, at the time of Goblet of Fire, the reason is obvious.

For some years after Voldemort fell, Lucius Malfoy seems to have thought he didn't need to spend much gold to maintain his position, to "keep a respectable face to the world" (in Voldemort's words), in spite of his own personal attachment to "the old ways." The events immediately preceding Chamber of Secrets showed him otherwise: that, as Borgin put it, "blood now counts for less and less." Malfoy now realised that to "keep a respectable face to the world" would cost money for someone with a record like himself, which he proceeded to spend in large quantities, and since the potential financial rewards of such activities have not come his way yet, he either went very much into debt or he was able to steal or extort it. Since Malfoy himself has so much to lose (his manor, heirlooms, and family inheritance) he probably planned to be cautious in politics, after his near-escape when the plot against Dumbledore unravelled. Apart from seizing such opportunities as came his way to hurt his opponents he might have been content to spend just enough to maintain his position, and hope that his newfound influence would one day translate back into Galleons. But at this point disaster struck. His old master, whom he'd deserted, came back.

If Snape and Karkaroff were able to guess (by the way their Black Marks had started to come to life periodically, from the moment Wormtail revived him) that Voldemort was on his way back, then Lucius would have known it too. (Bagman as well, if he was a Death Eater, would have been able to feel his Mark come to life, and his panic would have grown till he ran away when he was Summoned by Voldemort.) And I can imagine Lucius Malfoy's clients and the former Death Eaters in his cell-structure (whom he'd managed to clear more than twelve years before) all coming back to him, and asking him what they were to do. My guess is that Lucius, seeing that there was a real chance his old master was coming back, would have done all he could to increase his political influence whatever it cost him - whether he ran into debt or squeezed Bagman - so that if the worst happened and Voldemort came back, he'd still be useful to his old master. Lucius acted at once, starting with a simply massive donation to St. Mungo's Hospital - a charity in which Cornelius Fudge may have had some personal interest in - and possibly even profit out of. And he gave a donation so enormous that it got him and his family an invitation to the Minister's box in the Quidditch World Cup.

There may have been other factors at work here. One of Voldemort's most sinister powers is his quasi-demonic ability to enter people's minds and misdirect and manipulate their thoughts, playing on their fears and prejudices, encouraging all their darker instincts, and increasingly warping their judgement. This is most obvious in the case of Harry, who was almost persuaded to distrust Ron and Hermione, and was very nearly induced to leave the safety of Grimmauld Place. Harry resisted these temptations, just, but others (like Percy) were not so lucky. In fact there's a lot of evidence that nearly everyone from the Minister of Magic down has been affected in a similar way, which accounts for the exaggerated behaviour of almost everyone in the course of Harry's fifth year at school (especially that of Dolores Umbridge) not to mention Harry's unusual anger, and the breach between Percy and his family, for whom there is a lot of evidence (in the previous books) that he cared very much. (In fact, Percy's advice to Ron to tell Umbridge about anything that worried him in Harry is exactly like the advice Marietta received from her mother.)

It's not only wizards that are tempted this way. In addition there's that strange coup among the giants, where a leader who was willing to treat with Dumbledore was murdered by one who would ally with Voldemort - and it just so happened the very evening before the Death Eaters arrived to recruit them. I do not think this was coincidence. And if the giants (or some of them) could be swayed in this way, can the goblins be persuaded as well - or at the very least be influenced? Is this the true reason why they're so quiet, and why Bill Weasley could get nothing out of them?

Not that everyone is affected in the same way; nor does it quite excuse the victims; for this sort of temptation to work requires some sort of internal weakness for Voldemort to build on - a willingness to be deceived. As Dumbledore pointed out, Harry's warm heart was his best protection and what (in the event) saved him. It was Percy's genuine self-importance (and probable resentment of Harry), Fudge's desire to be important (and his jealousy of Dumbledore), Umbridge's self-satisfaction and spite, Harry's anger and self-pity that allowed their judgements to be manipulated - though in Harry's case loyalty to his friends managed to defeat the temptation. To some extent, Voldemort always had this power, from his earliest steps into the Dark Arts: in Chamber of Secrets it was Ginny's "deepest fears, her darkest secrets" that gave him the strength to control her, and a landing place in her soul to pour "a little of my soul back into her."

Ginny assumes that all forms of possession by Voldemort must follow the same pattern as her own, where she apparently had no memory of the times when she did his bidding - and Harry is very relieved to believe her. When he admitted that there were no "big blank periods" in his memory, she told him he hadn't been possessed. And yet, Harry himself was briefly possessed in the Atrium of the Department of Mysteries, and remembered exactly what it was like, and Professor Quirrell's quite different (and perfectly conscious) experience is clearly called "possession" by Voldemort. "I took possession of his body" he says, and "I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess." And mark how he obtained Quirrell, an originally well-meaning young man "full of ideas about good and evil," but also "naïve." In Voldemort's words "he was easy to bend to my will" - probably by the same mental temptations he now uses on a much larger scale. Even before Quirrell's failure at Gringotts persuaded Voldemort that he had "to keep a closer watch" on his servant by permanently inhabiting Quirrell's body, it was still called possession. Perhaps Ginny only had gaps in her memories because Tom Riddle found it convenient to erase them when he left her mind. Dementors might be able to bring them back: no wonder she reacted so badly to their presence.

In setting the Basilisk on Penelope and Hermione, Ginny removed her chief female rivals for the attention of Harry, and of Percy too, the only brother who seems to have cared about her enough to notice her disquiet. When Tom Riddle made her write her own farewell on the wall and come to the chamber, to lure Harry there, "she struggled and cried." Were some of the victims chosen because Tom found less resistance in Ginny to attacking victims she had cause to resent?

The real question is whether or not Voldemort unwittingly gave this power to Harry Potter (along with the gift of Parseltongue) as a result of the curse that failed. Harry could see out of Voldemort's eyes in dreams, at first without his enemy being aware of it; it was Harry's attempt to restrain the snake (when he and Voldemort both possessed it) that alerted Voldemort to his presence. Just as Voldemort can affect Harry's thoughts, could Harry's mental interference stop Voldemort from being quite as ruthless as he'd like, so that "neither can live while the other survives?" Voldemort was unable to truly possess Harry, because he found sharing a soul with him unendurable; if Harry were ever strong enough to do the same to him and enter his mind, would Voldemort be unable to endure it, and yield, like the king in that game of chess that protected the Philosopher's Stone?

In any case, I suspect these corrosive mental temptations happened in the first war too: the climate of "terror … panic … confusion" in which the Marauders could all (with reason) suspect each other of being traitors. The war was not just against Voldemort's servants, but an internal war in the minds of his enemies - one where Crouch's method of training Aurors to become like Death Eaters in order to fight them would have been truly fatal, by destroying the only real defence (a warm heart) protecting anyone not an Occlumens from Voldemort's misdirections. This time, of course, it will be worse, because Voldemort's will (the true source of much of his power) was sharpened by his years in the wilderness, until when he at last returned he was "greater and more terrible than before."

The Marauders were not the only friends among whom such divisions were sowed. Nor was Voldemort the first Dark Wizard to use such quasi-demonic powers. The Sorting Hat made it very clear that a remarkably similar thing had happened in the Founders' Day. At the beginning of Order of the Phoenix it recognised the same thing occurring again, and so made a song stressing the importance of unity, and suggesting that all four of the Hogwarts founding friends had been manipulated into mutual dislike and suspicion (possibly by some external malevolent power, that came to Hogwarts to spoil it just as Grendel came to Heorot) until Slytherin saved the situation by departing from the school.

The idea that Slytherin placed a Basilisk in a Chamber of Secrets in the hope that a future descendant would find and open it, happen to share his own ideology and use the monster to purge the school of Muggle-born wizards (assuming it wasn't closed altogether) is dependent on a thousand years of hearsay and malicious rumour. Though the rumour quoted by Professor Binns maintained that Slytherin left because the other three founders had ganged up against him, the Sorting Hat (who was actually there) suggests otherwise: all four of the founders were at odds, and if Slytherin had not left the school, and made the deliberate sacrifice of walking away from his whole life's work, it would have met "an early end." I presume he did this to remove "discord," which the Sorting Hat blamed for the strife, as if it were sown by a malevolent external power. In fact, the hat is pretty explicit that this is just what is happening now, and that the whole thing had happened before in the Founders' day, and in exactly the same way, when "discord crept among us, feeding on our faults and fears."

Oh, know the perils, read the signs,
The warning history shows,
For our Hogwarts is in danger
From external, deadly foes…

In other words, by making the parallel, the Sorting Hat is saying that it was an outside power that was truly to blame, not any of the four founders, who were merely manipulated.

Nor, apart from this act of sacrifice, do we know very much about Slytherin, and why he built the Chamber of Secrets - if indeed he was acting alone, and not being swayed by some other power, as Ginny was when she called the Basilisk. Judging by the fact that there was a great deal for the Basilisk to eat in the subterranean caverns far beneath Hogwarts, it is perfectly possible that the monster was originally placed there to protect the school, not to destroy it, from whatever horrors might live underneath - albeit in a rather Slytherin way. Aragog and his crew were certainly terrified of it.

Of course, maybe Slytherin really did believe that a convoluted plan to "purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic" centuries after his time would actually work, however mad it sounds - as opposed to closing the school instead. But to listen to the lying suggestions of a Dark wizard in your mind, and give him a landing place in your soul, will in the end drive you insane. That is what seems to have happened to Umbridge. It is just possible that this happened to Slytherin - except that if so he still had the strength to walk away from the evil and save the school.

In fact, Gryffindor and Slytherin had far more in common than dividing them, which is surely why they had been friends for so long. They were both wizarding isolationists, who wished to build up and educate a wizarding community, separate from the Muggle world. Their differences were over means rather than ends. Gryffindor believed that their security depended on keeping their numbers up. Slytherin thought it a greater danger to allow outsiders (with other loyalties) into their community. Both of them may have had a point. That they built their school in a remote location is enough to indicate they had enemies. No outward attack damaged the school, but a more insidious assault on their minds "feeding on [their] faults and fears" nearly tore the school apart. Most affected was Salazar Slytherin: the trouble was largely healed when he chose to leave the school.

Not that the sacrifice was total; nor did it fully healed the divisions. But the Sorting Hat's story suggests that sacrifice of one's heart's desire may be what can finally end this evil. In Slytherin's case it was to leave the school which he had set his heart on creating - though he failed to heal the rift with his colleagues, to forgive and be forgiven by them. This is what Harry will have to do. Ironically, in this, he may become the true "heir of Slytherin." It is also possible that Tom Riddle was meant to be this too, only he made the opposite choice, but this, of course, is speculation.

So Hogwarts worked in Harmony
For several happy years,
But then discord crept among us
Feeding on our faults and fears.

The houses that, like pillars four,
Had once held up our school,
Now turned upon each other and,
Divided, sought to rule.

And for a while it seemed the school
Must meet an early end,
What with duelling and with fighting
And the clash of friend on friend

And at last there came a morning
When old Slytherin departed
And though the fighting then died out
He left us quite downhearted.

Voldemort's most dangerous power lies in his ability to feed on the faults, the fears, the darkest secrets of his enemies, to twist, pervert and corrupt their minds, and set them against one another. That is why the Sorting Hat in its song stressed the importance of unity, as the only real means of survival, and why Dumbledore (when he suspected that Voldemort planned to return) wanted the Triwizard Tournament to bring Europe's oldest schools together, and encourage friendships between their students.

And we must unite inside her
Or we'll crumble from within…

Now, seeing how Fudge's new alliance with Malfoy seems to have started just before the Quidditch World Cup (in other words, exactly when Voldemort came back to England) did Voldemort's mental misdirections begin (with regard to certain key people, like Fudge) the very moment he was revived by Wormtail, before he got his full powers back? Was there a hidden influence in the Minister's mind, fanning Cornelius Fudge's ambitions and fear of Dumbledore, encouraging him and his supporters to disbelieve all the rumours that were floating around? Did Voldemort also trouble to focus on whoever was running the Daily Prophet?

It is only too likely. It was Voldemort's "demonic" powers (especially an ability to possess others) which remained with him even in his exile (rather than his more normal wizarding powers, which required some sort of body) and this sort of power would only have grown in him when he was half-revived by Wormtail. I don't think it could have been an accident that Rita Skeeter chose (or, rather, was likely given the go-ahead) to destroy Harry's reputation in that very year.

When Voldemort returned to his full powers and finally summoned his old servants, he would have wanted (and expected) Lucius Malfoy to increase his short-term influence however much it cost him, and simply wouldn't have cared if Malfoy had to risk his estate to do this. In fact, quite the reverse: the more Malfoy had to mortgage his future on the chance of a Voldemort victory, the more Lucius Malfoy would be willing to do to bring about that victory. And Malfoy was in no position to deny him (even though there was no more to squeeze from Bagman) hence his pockets clinking with Galleons when he visited the Ministry of Magic - either for bribes, or to give an appearance of wealth. No doubt Voldemort had learned from his previous mistake in not tying his servants sufficiently close to his cause (which made it possible for them to desert him when he fell) and decided that if Lucius Malfoy had to stake all his possessions and reputation on the chance of a Voldemort victory, he would more or less be forced to be loyal. Just possibly, Voldemort suddenly remembered (perhaps from a sermon in his orphanage childhood education) the observation from the Gospel: "where thy treasure is, there shall thy heart be also" and realised that politically it was sound good sense. Lucius has been compelled to bet all his treasure on the event of his master's victory - that's how Voldemort has secured his loyalty.

In the short, term, of course, Lucius Malfoy's ploy worked. He is again at Voldemort's right hand, and has maintained his position among Voldemort's servants. There is still some jockeying for position among the Death Eaters, if Harry's vision of Rookwood is genuine, but Rookwood, while able to provide useful intelligence about the Department of Mysteries, has failed on the counts of both loyalty and usefulness: unlike the Lestranges, he didn't try to find his master, and unlike Lucius Malfoy, he didn't keep his network of spies and clients intact. Karkaroff has run away. Voldemort's principal lieutenants during Order of the Phoenix were Malfoy, Bellatrix and Wormtail.

The irony is that Malfoy's efforts may well have all been for nothing. Now that his record as a Death Eater has been exposed, the political influence he bought will have vanished. He's probably less useful to Voldemort too, except in just two matters. It's too late now for Lucius to change sides, and that will make him a more dependable servant. And unlike Voldemort's most truly loyal and fanatical servants, Lucius Malfoy is actually sane.

This is the true reason why Lucius became Voldemort's right hand man once more, probably even more than he was during the first war, and why it was he who commanded the mission to recover the prophecy - in spite of his thirteen year disloyalty, and the fact that the mission included close relations of equal rank to Lucius Malfoy and of far greater proven loyalty, albeit of less age and experience. It's not simply that Malfoy (unlike other prominent Death Eaters) had kept his resources and his patronage network intact. It's because Lucius is both intelligent and sane that Voldemort depended on him to restrain the loyal fanatics like Mrs Lestrange. In the Death Eater mission to recover the prophecy, it was Malfoy that insisted on doing exactly what his master wanted, and the fanatically loyal Bellatrix that got carried away with her emotions and in the end wrecked the whole mission.

Continued in Part 9...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 7)

2004-01-24T23:26:45Z

Three ways of deserting one's patron: what happened when Voldemort's curse backfired

Judging by the leadership Malfoy seems to have assumed over nearly all the surviving Death Eaters, I suspect that he headed a "sub-cell" in Voldemort's terrorist organisation and thereby a series of sub-sub-cells. The only reason why Crabbe and Goyle, neither of whom is very bright, are actually in Voldemort's Inner Circle at all is because they are longstanding clients of Lucius, and he brought his own clientele into his cell network when he joined Voldemort's terrorist organisation. Crabbe and Goyle are to Lucius like the Weasleys are to Dumbledore: not the most important of his clients, but the ones he can rely on most.

Now, whereas all the other cell networks under Voldemort were taken apart by the Aurors when his curse backfired at Godric's Hollow, Malfoy's own network survived virtually intact, and Goblet of Fire gives clues as to how. Within minutes, I suspect, of Voldemort's fall, Lucius Malfoy had not only secured as many of his master's possessions as he could lay his hands on - including the Very Secret Diary - but had contacted all the cells beneath him and co-ordinated their stories. To a man they turned themselves in to the Ministry, claiming that Voldemort had bewitched them, and that they'd been under the Imperius curse.

I very much doubt if Lucius Malfoy was subjected to Veritaserum. If it did exist at this point, then perhaps it was not yet thought reliable. It still isn't used in criminal trials, to judge by Harry's experience before the Wizengamot. My own suspicion is that there are ways round Veritaserum, especially if someone friendly makes the potion or arranges the interview, or if a clever memory charm changes the culprit's own memory first, so that he really believes he is innocent. It's also possible that Veritaserum is unreliable indicator of a suspect's state of mind for crimes committed under the Imperius Curse, which the suspect can perhaps remember actually wanting to commit. Moreover, Lucius has a strong sense of self-preservation (witness his warning to Draco that it wasn't prudent "to be less than friendly with Harry Potter," and the careful way he distanced himself from his plot to reopen the Chamber of Secrets by working through intermediaries), and he may already have prepared in advance a secret plan of what he should do in the unlikely event that his master was killed. However, I'm not at all sure that Veritaserum then existed, because if it had, it could have been used by Crouch on Karkaroff, without the need to cut a deal with him. Possibly even now only Snape has the skill to make it.

As for the Dark Mark he bore, that could not betray Lucius either. There is no evidence that anyone except the Death Eaters themselves (and Dumbledore, secretly through Snape) ever knew of its existence. Fudge certainly had not heard of it, which is why he was so bewildered when he saw it on Snape's arm, and it may very well have been dormant (invisible and undetectable) after Voldemort's first defeat.

In turning himself in, there was less danger to Lucius than might be supposed. Had the Ministry not cleared him Lucius was important enough for a trial to have been a necessity, and it is not unlikely that (in the absence of concrete evidence and the sort of popular outcry that Bellatrix Lestrange provoked) most jurors would have been far too scared to convict him. The Ministry might have felt it wiser not to risk this, but to accept (or pretend to accept) his excuse, and maybe come to some arrangement. After all, a great many people during the war would have done things they were ashamed of. If there was a general feeling that lots of things were best left forgotten, this would undoubtedly have helped Lucius, when he decided to turn himself in.

In the event, it was a master-stroke. Damage limitation was all but complete. The various stories fitted together, Malfoy was cleared along with his clients, and emerged with his client-network intact and a personal ascendancy over at least a dozen trained and powerful Dark Wizards (and surely a number of lesser ones) all of whom owed him their lives and freedom. He was also safe from the risk of a traitor like Karkaroff exposing him. There was now nothing to expose: he'd already admitted to all his crimes, but had been let off because he had a perfect defence, that he had been acting under Imperius.

In addition, he had made sure that people within his patronage and Death Eater cell structure were safe. His reputation as a dependable patron, one willing and able to look after your interests if you were one of his own, would go a long way towards maintaining his evident power - quite apart from having an obedient cadre of former Death Eater commandos among his clients. No wonder Molly said "that family's trouble." Draco may well have inherited this attitude, one that would have been inculcated into him at an early age as the presumptive heir to a patronage network: the real source of his apparent confidence that whatever he does he'll get away with it and his open contempt for Dumbledore. It has been argued by A J Hall that perhaps Draco's only convincing moral quality is his strong sense of tribalism (that you should always stand up for one of your own side, whether they are wizards, Slytherins or family) and in my view this is hardly an accident. I believe there is a real chance that Draco might turn against Voldemort, if Voldemort were to betray and kill Draco's parents, especially his mother. Not that this would make Draco like Harry one whit better.

Of course, there is another way of reading Lucius Malfoy's behaviour - and that of Bartemius Crouch in clearing him.

The sources for reading the character and motives of the older Bartemius Crouch are varied, and full of misinformation. The two principal ones, his son, and Sirius Black, had very personal reasons to hate him. Young Barty Crouch, (disguised as Moody) told Harry that the elder Crouch was far more fanatical than he (Moody) ever was, more determined to get every one of the Death Eaters, and since what he said was borne out soon after by Sirius Black, the reader is left with very little doubt it was true.

Only it wasn't. The evidence suggests that the older Crouch was actually more rational than Alastor Moody when it came to hunting down Death Eaters, and far less thirsty for their blood. It wasn't only his son whom he spared: he was happy to do a deal with Karkaroff, too, and keep his side of the bargain as well, much against Alastor Moody's advice. After all, Karkaroff (having betrayed so many surviving Death Eaters) had been completely neutralised - he could never go back to Voldemort, and that was what Crouch really cared about.

Crouch's overriding aim was never to try and put every Death Eater in Azkaban: it was to make completely sure that Voldemort never came back. So Crouch had very good reason to cultivate a reputation among the surviving Death Eaters still at large that he was someone who would keep his word. The last thing he wanted was to panic any into going to look for Voldemort.

Unaccounted-for Death Eaters (who might go and find Voldemort) were a danger for that reason. By his arrangement with Karkaroff, Crouch not only neutralised him, but he got the names of pretty well every Death Eater still at large, except for the ones under Malfoy's protection, and he got a reputation as someone who would keep his word to defectors. The question is: why was Crouch not worried about Malfoy? Was he really fooled by the "Imperius" excuse, or (as an alternative to a long and uncertain legal battle, during which time at least some Death Eaters would very likely escape to their master) had Crouch (in secret) done a deal with Lucius Malfoy, right after Voldemort's fall?

The terms of the bargain could have been as follows: Malfoy would keep all his own clients in line (and any Death Eaters he knew about or suspected), and ensure that none of them ever went looking for Voldemort. He would also warn Crouch, if he suspected any of doing so. As part of this deal, Lucius got his wife's relations (the Lestranges) released. That would be how they "somehow talked their way out of Azkaban." But when he got wind that his in-laws were looking for the Longbottoms to gain information on Voldemort's whereabouts, he betrayed them to Crouch, and they were captured, which explains why (after torturing the Longbottoms) they didn't get a chance to make their escape. In other words, the bargain worked perfectly, and even exposed another Death Eater - with the slight drawback that the uncovered mole happened to be Crouch's son.

Young Barty Crouch would have been in an ideal position to spy on his father. He would have got wind of the information that the Longbottoms knew where Voldemort was, and he would have been the one who gained the Lestranges entry to the Longbottom house. After all, the Longbottoms knew him and would surely have trusted him - he was their Head of Department's son. In other words, with his Master's fall, Lucius had secretly switched sides. And if Barty Crouch had even suspected this, it would explain his hatred for Lucius Malfoy, the "Death Eaters that walked free" - and even (by extension) Draco.

This would be another way of explaining why Lucius kept such a low profile for over ten years, and why Barty Crouch left him (and his clients) alone. They knew where they stood with each other. Lucius would not get involved in new Dark activities, and would be responsible for England's Dark wizards, making sure that no one went to find Voldemort, and he would stay out of politics. And it all worked perfectly, until Crouch was removed from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (and its ability to oversee all other departments) and with the ascendancy of the Dumbledore faction, the "strict but fair" Amelia Bones (who would have known nothing of the deal) gave Arthur Weasley free rein to persecute Malfoy's clients, and even Malfoy himself.

Lucius, of course, would have felt betrayed, and Crouch would have had to support him, and maybe used his remaining political influence to join Malfoy in pressuring Cornelius Fudge to change tack. But their bargain was effectively over. With the Ministry no longer sticking to their end of the deal, Malfoy went back into politics, though he was still careful to perform all his crimes through intermediaries, so that he would have a defence.

Crouch's rationale (if he made an arrangement with Malfoy) is obvious. If there were a general witch-hunt against all Death Eaters, then at least one or two would surely escape to bring back their master, if they had nowhere else to go. And in the event it was just one such former Death Eater (one who really did have nowhere else to go) who actually did bring Voldemort back. The arrangement with Malfoy worked perfectly, though, until Sirius Black rocked the boat by escaping from Azkaban - which perhaps accounts for the official panic, and the pressures brought to bear on Fudge (no doubt by Crouch and Lucius Malfoy) in order for Black to be recaptured. And if this theory is true, then Lucius Malfoy had changed sides even more completely than Karkaroff; only no one but Crouch actually knew it, so that when Malfoy's old master came back, he could return to his old allegiance.

The chief flaw in this theory is that Voldemort would have had the opportunity to question Crouch about any deal he might have made with Malfoy, and he shows no signs of this sort of knowledge, and Malfoy shows no fear of it. So perhaps there wasn't a formal agreement with Crouch, or any confession on Malfoy's part: Crouch may merely have been privately persuaded that Lucius (whether guilty or not) had no intention whatever of going to find Voldemort, and every intention of stopping anyone else from doing this - and that Lucius was just the sort of person the Ministry of Magic needed to keep all the Dark wizards in line, so that they didn't overstep their bounds. It was the Death Eaters outside Malfoy's patronage whose existence worried Crouch so much; in other words, those that had been in different cells, including (he was convinced) Ludo Bagman.

Karkaroff was part of a different sub-cell network of Voldemort's, and saved himself in a completely opposite fashion to Malfoy - by betraying all his clients completely. The fact that he could get on well with Malfoy (and presumably those in Malfoy's faction) suggests that they had nothing personal against him - it was the subordinates and colleagues in his own cell-groups that he betrayed, and Rookwood too (and through him possibly Rookwood's cells). When they got out of Azkaban, they would all have a huge score to settle against Igor Karkaroff. No wonder he was scared for his life.

I don't know who headed Karkaroff's network - probably himself, directly under his master - but I suspect that it included every one of the foreigners in Voldemort's circle. Significantly, the only two we know of are Russians. Snape may perhaps have been in it too, judging by the fact that Karkaroff named Snape as a Death Eater. The difference between Malfoy's cool-headed behaviour (escaping with his entire organisation intact, and regaining the trust of the Ministry of Magic) and Karkaroff's bungling (in Goblet of Fire he's liable to panic) is very striking. Draco would not have reacted quite so coolly as Lucius either, I feel sure.

I'm not quite sure about Rookwood's place. I'm certain he wasn't under Malfoy. That he had a "network of highly-placed wizards" suggests that he had a complex cell-structure all of his own, quite probably the equal of Malfoy's: though they definitely were not all Death Eaters, and some of them (as Ludovic Bagman claimed) were quite unaware of whom they were helping. Karkaroff, I would guess, was not a part of Rookwood's network, but he was evidently highly-placed enough to know of its existence: so Karkaroff was either at or very near to the top of an adjoining system of cells.

So perhaps we have (under Voldemort) three cell-leaders: Malfoy, Rookwood, and, maybe Karkaroff, although Karkaroff could well have been one level lower down. Under or alongside Karkaroff would have been the foreign wizards, including all those that had been to Durmstrang. In Lucius Malfoy's sub-cells however, Malfoy's own original henchmen and clients would have been brought into Voldemort's service: hence the otherwise unlikely presence of Crabbe and Goyle among the Death Eaters. (Mind you, their magical ability must have been greater than their brains: they can Apparate at least, and that is apparently beyond the ability of an awful lot of witches and wizards.) An innermost cell (of perhaps three wizards) could have had sub-cells and sub-sub-cells, to make an "inner circle" of about forty Death Eaters. Not that Voldemort would have been bound by convention. He would have varied the cell-structure to however would have seemed more useful to him. There could have been Death Eaters whose names were only known to Voldemort himself.

Beyond what Hagrid called his "inner circle" Voldemort would have had hundreds of active servants that did not have the honour of being full Death Eaters, and maybe thousands of inactive sympathisers. Some would have served him out of fear, others (like Ludovic Bagman) out of ignorance. Furthermore he had various allied magical peoples and Dark creatures. By the time Voldemort came back this power structure was in ruins (apart from little more than a dozen surviving Death Eaters free to join him) but it was still rebuildable, if he could be given time to do it - and that is one of the chief reasons he kept a low profile that next year: he needed time to rebuild his power.

It's interesting to compare the reactions of Malfoy and Rookwood to Voldemort's defeat. Unlike Malfoy, Rookwood never turned himself in to the Ministry, but instead kept quiet, trusting in his anonymity - which lasted only till someone betrayed him. Karkaroff undoubtedly knew about Malfoy as well as about Rookwood, but couldn't hope to betray him too, because Malfoy had already admitted to everything Karkaroff could say against him, but had the absolute defence that he had been acting under the Imperius curse.

None of these leaders among the Death Eaters was sufficiently brave or loyal to go and look for Voldemort, and thus to risk capture by the Aurors. It was only junior members of the conspiracy who tried that: significantly in most cases it was the very ones Snape had once been friends with (the three Lestranges, for example) who were happy to go to Azkaban for their master. Their willingness to suffer and take risks for the cause - albeit in their case for an evil one - suggests a surviving kinship with Snape, who had, "at great personal risk," became Dumbledore's double agent.

The Ministry was not entirely foolish in trusting Malfoy. Once his master had gone, he very clearly did not want him back, and must have been horrified at the mere thought of his return, as Bill Weasley explained to Ron:

"I bet they'd be even more frightened than the rest of us to see him come back. They denied they'd ever been involved with him when he lost his powers, and went back to their daily lives ... I don't reckon he'd be over-pleased with them, do you?"

Voldemort still needs Malfoy, of course: he heads the only one of Voldemort's old patronage networks that remained intact - but there is no way that Voldemort could or would ultimately forgive him - and Lucius Malfoy must surely know that. In Order of the Phoenix he is actually in a far more precarious position than he seems - something of which Draco seems quite unaware. At present Voldemort needs Lucius, his money, and above all his patronage network and connections. Unfortunately for Lucius the Death Eater heart of his patronage network has a prior loyalty to Voldemort, and to save themselves they would betray Malfoy to him in a trice. (The only possible exception is Snape, whom Lucius very clearly imagines to be a part of his network). So Lucius Malfoy needs to be as useful as possible to Voldemort to appease his master's anger at the way he'd deserted him - and yet, if Voldemort ever wins, Lucius has reason to fear retribution. And of course, with Voldemort's return, Lucius Malfoy's longstanding policy of secretly keeping to the Old Ways while presenting "a respectable face to the world" became an increasingly an untenable one - and it finally broke down when he was captured by the Ministry and committed to Azkaban. This is serious for Lucius Malfoy because (unlike most of the Death Eaters) Lucius has a great deal to lose. His ancestral home and all his possessions are much more easily destroyed than replaced.

Continued in Part 8...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 6)

2004-01-24T23:21:13Z

"You know my aim, to conquer death": the purpose of Voldemort's patronage network

Power, much as he enjoys it, is largely a means to Voldemort. His principal aim is "to conquer death," as he said to his reassembled Death Eaters. Beside this the politics is a mere sideshow, because after all, there is no point in having power if you are not alive to enjoy it. This leads to the puzzle of why Voldemort didn't try to obtain the Philosopher's Stone sooner. In fact, I would argue that the Stone had always been Voldemort's ultimate aim. For all we know, it still is, even though it has been destroyed.

Beginning with his arrival at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle pursued his twin aims, of learning as much about magic as possible, and building up his own secret network of clients. Learning about magic was the more important, and once he learned what he could do with the Chamber of Secrets he closed it, so that he could finish his years at school and learn whatever he was still able to there. In the event, he left it closed for good: he had no intention of making the attempt with the aid of the diary while Dumbledore was keeping watch. Yet when he left Hogwarts, he delayed for some decades his play for power, while he searched for ways to put himself beyond the reach of death. After all, trying to take over the world is a risky occupation; he did not want to be killed in the process.

In the end, by various magical transfigurations, he did gain a measure of security from death, largely by putting himself beyond life, as Rubeus Hagrid explained to Harry. "Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die." Since Voldemort's new appearance is so often described as snake-like, the most probable partial transfigurations are ones that could have given him part of the nature of the Basilisk, and (possibly) of the Gorgon (a partially serpentine creature not mentioned anywhere except in Hagrid's exclamation "Gallopin' Gorgons") which is supposed to be immortal. By the end of these years of studying the nature of magic (as he travelled the world on a sort of Grand Tour of Dark Magic, learning what he could from other magical traditions) after countless magical transfigurations he was unrecognisable, but had largely succeeded in his aim: he couldn't even be killed by the Avada Kedavra curse, when it rebounded back on him - and it wasn't just anyone's curse, but his own. It destroyed his body, but the (largely demonic) powers he had acquired remained with him, and he couldn't actually die unless he willed it. He was safe to make his play for power.

Only his play for power had a purpose too. That may even be why he began it in England. It wasn't just the land of his birth. Nicolas Flamel lived there too, and Voldemort's aim was always the Philosopher's Stone. He seduced or frightened to his side the more extreme of the pure-blood families, who had been losing their grip on power, as their numbers and influence declined, and offered them leadership and support to restore them to their old position. In this way he polarised wizarding society, and with gradual pressure and temptation offered to people on both sides, he began a round of murder, fear, suspicion and revenge. In doing so he compromised his own supporters by making them participate in increasingly unforgivable crimes, so that there would be no going back for them. Those who tried to back out (like Regulus Black) were killed. This is exactly the means that Lenin used in entrenching his tyranny on Russia, and in the same way it involved a deliberately created civil war as a way of legitimising terror and cementing his hold on society. This wasn't a matter of ideology: it was practical politics.

To begin with few of the Death Eaters (even Lucius Malfoy) would have realised quite what they were joining. All the first murders were secretly done, or disguised as unexplained "disappearances." By the time they did know it was far too late for them to back out. Only Snape managed to do it, and he did it by actively switching sides and accepting the patronage of the arch-enemy Dumbledore - something that would have been beyond the pale for nearly all the Death Eaters.

At the same time Voldemort built up alliances with marginal groups, outsiders and despised minorities: giants, Dementors, and (hopefully) goblins. By 1979 at the earliest (when Regulus Black had left Hogwarts and "joined the Death Eaters") Voldemort felt he was strong enough to be able to reveal "his true colours;" and the real terror began. In response, Bartemius Crouch gave permission to Aurors to kill on suspicion and use Unforgivable Curses, and a series of revenge killings began that made Voldemort's adherents depend all the more on his protection, and cemented his hold over them.

Now, why did Voldemort wait so long to try and seize the Philosopher's Stone? And more to the point, why was it only when he came back in Harry's first year that Dumbledore had to hide it from him? If it was sitting in a Gringotts vault during Voldemort's first attempt to seize power, why didn't he try to take it then, when he was strong? His servant, after all, nearly succeeded in taking it for him, years later, when he was weaker. Now, the Stone can't always have been in Gringotts, because Flamel would have needed it from time to time to make his Elixir of Life from. My guess is that (until just before Voldemort's fall in 1981) the Stone was protected in some other way - a way that must have been circumvented only just before Godric's Hollow.

Voldemort's principal aim, once the civil war had begun, would have been to clear his way to the Stone. Whatever charms protected the Flamels he would have circumvented or broken; whoever knew about these protections would have been taken, one by one, and made to reveal all that they knew.

The key figure may perhaps have been Adalbert Waffling, the magical theoretician, whose theoretical breakthroughs apparently affected the lives of "every modern witch and wizard." Waffling died before his time at the age of eighty in the suspicious year of 1981. (From what the chocolate frog cards say, the average age of natural death for wizards of his generation seems to be about a hundred). In other words, he was almost certainly a wartime casualty, and must have been killed shortly before the Potters were. The Flamels (in the Philosopher's Stone) had their own personal goldmine, and could have afforded the best theoretical magic to protect themselves and their stone. Waffling's death may have opened the way for Voldemort to reach the Flamels (or possibly to break into the Gringotts vaults) but before he could capitalise on it, he made a fatal mistake at Godric's Hollow. Voldemort no doubt calculated (as soon as he had heard of the prophecy) that removing a wizard who could defeat him was an even more urgent priority than getting the Philosopher's Stone.

The Flamels were safe for now, and as long as Voldemort was in exile the Philosopher's Stone could be safe in Gringotts, but now they could see that if he ever returned its protection would depend entirely on their old friend Dumbledore, and Dumbledore had come to see that Voldemort's knowledge of magic was "perhaps more extensive than [that of] any wizard alive," and that even his own "most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if [Voldemort] ever returned to full power." When this was proved to be the case in Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts, Dumbledore was able to persuade the Flamels that the very existence of the Stone created a risk that Voldemort would become immortal, and that for safety's sake they would have to destroy it, even though it meant they would die.

So the Stone is now beyond Voldemort's reach - except that Voldemort has made perfectly clear he will not give up his chief objective, "to conquer death." The question is how he plans to achieve it. Does he have other plans in mind, or does he still need the Philosopher's Stone, or at least knowledge of how to make it? The only Stone known to have existed in recent years now lies securely in the past, along with its secrets. If the Stone is still Voldemort's aim, he will have to go into the past to find it, and learn the secret of its making, or (if he cannot risk going himself) he must find a way to send a loyal, reliable servant instead.

At the close of C S Lewis' novel, Out of the Silent Planet, the protagonist, Dr Ransom, concludes: "I am trying to read every old book on the subject that I can hear of. Now that 'Weston' has shut the door, the way to the planets lies through the past; if there is to be any more space-travelling, it will have to be time-travelling as well ...!" With the death of the Flamels, that may also be true of the Philosopher's Stone.

Continued in Part 7...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 5)

2004-01-24T23:19:34Z

Patronage trees and terrorist cells: how Voldemort's inner circle worked

Voldemort's own patronage network (or at least those, like Malfoy's, which he took over) believes in purifying the wizarding race, with "pure-bloods in charge" and Muggles themselves classed as beasts. The network included a lot of ambitious outsiders from unimportant families, like Snape, as well as more aristocratic pure-bloods like Lucius Malfoy and his relations, who feared that they were being marginalised and saw Voldemort as their last hope in regaining the power they felt they deserved. However, it is by no means clear that Voldemort himself shares these views. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that he is simply using the pure-blood fanatics, and would be happy to use them up if it suited him.

Certainly the murders Voldemort's reign of terror unleashed (by both sides in the conflict) have done more towards destroying the pure-blood caste than for the cause of putting it in power. So has the consequent (and thankfully short-term) collapse in the wizarding birth rate that seems to have happened when Voldemort's power was at its height, if the small classes of Harry's year are anything to go by - they're only a quarter of the size a school of a thousand would suggest. In addition the war has divided the surviving pure-bloods into mutually hostile camps, maybe for ever. It's increasingly likely that by the end of Voldemort's campaign there will not be enough pure-blood wizards left to survive for long as a separate caste, even if the fanatics win - and Voldemort obviously doesn't care. This is probably the reason why the Black family "got cold feet" about helping Voldemort. Once he started killing pure-blood wizards, especially on such a large scale (even if they mostly were blood traitors) wizards like the Blacks realised that they'd been had. Voldemort wasn't really on their side after all, or on anyone's side except his own. Far from putting their families in power, he was likely to finish them off in the process. They grew scared, even paranoid. At stupendous cost (which must have eaten into their wealth) the Blacks put every security charm on their house that was known to wizardkind, and holed up inside it till the crisis was over. Their clientele (if they couldn't protect them) probably ended up with the Malfoys.

With regard to Voldemort's power structure, this is my theory of how it worked. The Death Eaters are Voldemort's "inner circle." I doubt there were ever more than forty, because some were always dead or in prison. He would have had hundreds of other servants that had not been initiated as full Death Eaters, and many more sympathisers and allies, like the Dementors and the Giants. Rita Skeeter, for all her mendacity, is careful not to make any allegation unsupported by evidence, and her statement that the Giants (along with other dark beasts and monsters) had been active on Voldemort's side in the first conflict is undoubtedly true, and backed by Dumbledore's words as well. Their depredations would have stretched the Ministry's resources to its absolute limits, creating an atmosphere of terror, and a general awareness among wizards that the Ministry could no longer protect you, and that only in Voldemort's patronage structures could you and your family be safe - the price being that you would probably be asked to betray your friends, and might have to be an accomplice to murder. Hogwarts, however, was still intact: "one of the only safe places left," protected as it was by Dumbledore. Voldemort was afraid of Dumbledore, so it seems he was leaving Hogwarts till last.

Anyway, to minimise chances of betrayal, it seems that the Death Eaters had a cell-based internal structure, on the lines of a revolutionary or a terrorist organisation. They didn't all know each other's names. Most probably Voldemort had three cell-leaders, one of whom was definitely Lucius Malfoy. The likeliest candidates for the other two were Augustus Rookwood, and either Karkaroff or Dolohoff, who would have been responsible for the Durmstrang-educated foreign recruits. (My guess is that this cell-leader was Karkaroff - he'd never have become headmaster of Durmstrang if he weren't a very important wizard). These cell-leaders would perhaps have had three sub-cells each, and those in turn a further three, leaving (let us say) forty in all, although the real number could have been less, with deaths and imprisonment in Azkaban. Each cell-leader would know the identities not only of his sub-cells, but of his sub-sub-cells. Some extremely useful spies, like Wormtail and young Barty Crouch, might well have been directly under Voldemort (to minimise the chance of betrayal) but I strongly suspect they were under Rookwood, who used "a network of highly-placed wizards" inside and outside the ministry to collect information. He was probably Voldemort's spymaster.

When I suggest "forty" as the number of Death Eaters, I admit the evidence is conflicting. Remus Lupin told Molly Weasley that during the first Voldemort war the Order was "outnumbered twenty to one by the Death Eaters" - which suggests that there may have been hundreds. Also, it seems odd that Regulus Black was too unimportant "to be killed by Voldemort in person" if he was one of only a few dozen Death Eaters. The trouble with the theory that there were once hundreds of Death Eaters is that Sirius tells us that Voldemort, after his return, "wasn't going to take on the Ministry of Magic with only a dozen Death Eaters," and there were only ten more in Azkaban. That is only twenty two, and one doesn't get the impression (from Voldemort's words in the churchyard) that the dead much outnumbered the imprisoned. Moreover, since the largest gap in the circle was six (and sometimes there wasn't a gap at all) there couldn't have been more than sixty at the very most in the Inner Circle, in the days when all the gaps were filled, and forty is a more probable figure. A more likely explanation is that Remus Lupin was using the term Death Eater loosely to describe any active and willing servant of Voldemort's, whereas in fact they may have had a narrower meaning, as Sirius Black himself suggested:

"In the old days he had huge numbers at his command: witches and wizards he'd bullied or bewitched into following him, his faithful Death Eaters, and a great variety of Dark creatures."

In other words, the Death Eaters are just the Inner Circle - a small, select group. The crowd that followed Malfoy at the Quidditch World Cup probably included a wider variety of Voldemort supporters and Malfoy clients, not just the true Death Eaters. Both would have worn dark cloaks and masks while on missions, and so non-initiates may not have been aware of the difference. (All missions of murder would have been led by one of the Inner Circle, who would have cast the Dark Mark in the sky.) In fact, Sirius Black's words about his brother Regulus are themselves ambiguous. Regulus Black may have joined the "side" of the Death Eaters, rather than become a Death Eater himself. He was little more than a boy: he may not have been "important enough." Alternatively, Voldemort may have recruited larger numbers at first into his Inner Circle, and culled the less ruthless and loyal of them when he showed his "true colours."

Continued in Part 6...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 4)

2004-01-24T23:17:16Z

Patronage and ideology: Percy Weasley's search for a patron

Not that all these patronage networks are purely associations of convenience for survival and advancement in an insecure world. They all seem to have some sort of ideological basis. All the networks are "isolationist" in that they support a policy of non-interference in the Muggle world and Obliviation on a colossal scale to keep Muggles in the dark about what's going on. They're all remarkably casual about that, as is obvious from the scene with the Muggle landowner Mr Roberts at the Quidditch World Cup. Dumbledore's network is (probably) the most "progressive" - though not by Muggle standards, of course. It is all-embracing, and stands for co-operation between all kinds of magical peoples and wizards, regardless of their background and birth, and protecting Muggles from wizards as well - albeit in a sometimes patronising way. It's typified by Arthur Weasley, although Dumbledore has a greater understanding of Muggles (he even reads Muggle newspapers) and his personal views may be somewhat different. Barty Crouch understood Muggles too. Cornelius Fudge's new patronage network is not biased against Muggles or Muggle-born wizards, but is hostile to (and very fearful of) other non-wizarding magical people like goblins, centaurs and giants, even werewolves (and it probably has reason to fear them all, to be fair). Being almost entirely Ministry-based, it naturally believes very strongly in extending Ministry of Magic control wherever it possibly can. Its next target may well be the goblins, an ideal target: dangerous (and therefore feared), unpopular, ugly, disarmed and rich.

Percy Weasley's career so far makes a vivid illustration of how these patronage networks function - as well as the role of ideology in cementing them. He started off clearly in Dumbledore's camp, regarding his family's patron in much the same way that his siblings did.

"Mad?" said Percy airily. "He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?"

These words could have been spoken by Ron. In fact, Percy and Ron have a lot in common. Both had a lot to live up to, both resent their lack of importance and poverty, both are protective of younger siblings, and Ron's resentment and competition with Percy mirror Percy's behaviour to Arthur. Indeed, the best parallel with Percy's closing the door on his family is Ron's refusal to speak to Harry, though in Ron's case the motives were purely personal.

Percy saw himself as a high-flier, a former Head Boy at Hogwarts, destined for a successful Ministry career, and (hopefully) one of a line of "prefects who gained power." (In fact, I suspect that Percy in his night-time patrols as a prefect looked into the Mirror of Erised too, and, like Ron, was led astray by what he saw.) He seems to have felt as keenly as Ron the shame and disadvantage of poverty, something that never bothered Arthur - not even the fact that it bothered his children.

Percy was the only child to follow his father into the Ministry, but arrived at a time when the Dumbledore faction there (which by family tradition he should have been part of) was already starting to decline and clearly would not do much for him, and he seems to have been aware that too much association with his father would hurt him in the new political climate. His calculated risk in attaching himself to Crouch's declining patronage network paid off in the short run (in Crouch's "illness" Percy ended up running the entire Department of International Magical Cooperation) but it ended in disaster, with Crouch himself dead, along with his network, and Percy not only under a cloud (for not observing that there was something wrong with Crouch) but now without a patron as well.

So shortly afterwards he joined Cornelius Fudge's patronage network, an even greater gamble for Percy, because it created a breach with his family, (that he could be so fulsome in the praise of Dolores Umbridge proves they are now part of the same network - it recalls what he said about Mr Crouch) and he may have been only invited in so that Fudge could divide the "enemy." Anyway, through these short cuts, Percy manages to land some seemingly very important positions. He spent a year as Bartemius Crouch's personal assistant (and ran the Department in his absence) and he later became the junior assistant to the Minister of Magic himself. But in each case his position was vulnerable. It is a sign of insecurity that Percy always felt he had to publicly flatter his patron. He was continually praising Crouch while he served as his assistant - and boasting of his pull with a patron that didn't even remember his name right; the following year he had to protect his (far more insecure) position with Fudge by acting as a yes-man for him, pointedly laughing at his flattest jokes: "very good, Minister, oh very good." As the Polyjuice scene shows in Chamber of Secrets, this is precisely what Draco Malfoy expected and got from Crabbe and Goyle.

On the other hand, an exaggerated profession of admiration and loyalty is normal for any client to show to a patron, and very often comes from the heart. Percy's admiration for Crouch at least probably did. And the Dursleys could say the most appalling things to Hagrid about Harry's parents without making him lose his temper. But he risked Azkaban to punish the Dursleys when one of them criticised Albus Dumbledore.

Percy always adopts the ideology of his patrons: the strictness of Bartemius Crouch, and the anti-Dumbledore suspicions (and anti-Harry prejudice) of Fudge's coterie. Now, convenient as this was for his ambitions, he wasn't consciously cynical here. His very strictness as a prefect at school suggests that he already had some affinity with Crouch's public persona, and the prejudices he displays are merely a more extreme form of the ones he would have been brought up with. Ideologically, Percy was always closer to Molly than to Arthur, including in his trust in the Daily Prophet - even Molly briefly believed the Prophet's slander about Hermione. More conventional than his siblings, he's the most "respectable" of her children, and she valued that - perhaps because she was herself of a slightly lower social background than Arthur (as is clear from a lot of things: her choice of words, her fears and her tastes). In many ways it's not surprising that Percy chose to work for Crouch, and as for when he went over to Fudge, he saw the breach with his family in ideological terms. His father was backing a rogue patron: his own loyalty lay (as it should) with legitimate wizarding authority.

In other words, to Percy (with his love of order and rules) Fudge is admired not for himself (Percy criticises him often enough in earlier books) but as the personification of legitimate authority, for which he has a great deal more reverence than anyone else in his family, even his father. Percy has a genuine love of order, and that (at least as much as ambition) made a Ministry career something of a vocation for him. As Cornelius Fudge's junior assistant Percy is in a far more vulnerable position (and a dependent one, after his breach with his family and Dumbledore's network) than as Crouch's assistant, where he was entrusted with real authority, and he seems a great deal less at ease: his responses are far more exaggerated and artificial. Now, on one level this seems to be yet another example of the exaggerated and twisted behaviour to which almost everyone has been tempted since Voldemort regained his full powers, and also because Percy sees himself as being on sufferance after his mistake of the previous year - but he also looks as if he is putting on an act, and not an entirely convincing one other: his responses are a bit too contrived. In addition, his praise of Crouch was privately said to other people. What he says to Fudge is outright flattery to his face. It is the price of Percy's job.

The way Percy closed the door on his mother without speaking to her can be read on several levels: it isn't simply a cold-blooded decision to dissociate himself from people that could do him harm in his career - he still feels concern for his younger siblings, and he always identified most with his mother, the one person in his whole family who hasn't rejected him. He was actually the only one of her children to do all he could to become the sort of person she wanted him to be. But by dissociating himself from his family, Percy is actually avoiding a conflict of loyalties, the sort of position where he might be obliged to betray his parents, who, he believed, were siding with a rogue patronage leader who was plotting to take over the Ministry. His letter to Ron is full of worries that family would go down with Dumbledore, and that Ron himself would go down with Harry. In telling Ron to approach Umbridge, he was offering him a way into Fudge's patronage network, and in cutting off all links with his parents, he answered his father's accusation. Arthur had ordered Percy not to accept the job with Fudge (his last chance within the Ministry) on the grounds he had really been promoted simply in order to act as a spy. By cutting himself off from his family, Percy has effectively made it impossible for anyone to ask or expect him to spy on them, and thus has proved his father wrong.

Not that Percy had envisaged this breach (before his father's accusation) or even saw it as being final. There is ample evidence in almost every book that he genuinely does care for his family, something for which Ron in particular (Harry's chief source about Percy) never, ever gave him credit; he was the only person to notice Ginny's disquiet in Chamber of Secrets; he rushed into the lake on Ron and Ginny's rescue in Goblet of Fire, and his final letter to Ron, although smug, uncharitable, and completely lacking in judgement (common faults in Order of the Phoenix) does display a real concern for Ron and Ginny. Only Molly returns this affection, which makes his shutting the door on her all the more poignant; the others had all been put off by what they saw as his self-importance and pomposity, and now they will only take him back on terms that will humiliate him. The creepy thing is that the twins (and to some extent Ron, Bill and Ginny) had come to dislike him anyway, regarded his cherished beliefs (his love of order) with contempt, and actually thought they were "well rid of him" - the first in a series of coming tensions that could well break up the Weasley family. By the time of the final breach with his father Percy had effectively been excluded from the real life of his family, his place in their hearts and their lives stolen by Harry - which makes his very different attitude to Harry's story more understandable.

For Harry, Molly is the mother he never saw; Arthur can talk to him about Muggles; Ron's friend, Ginny's saviour, the twins' companion in mischief and patron, he's even Penelope's saviour too. Harry achieves without any effort what Percy tries so hard (too hard) to accomplish, and he's unknowingly stolen Percy's place in his family. Percy's distrust and resentment of Harry is far more excusable than Ron's behaviour in Goblet of Fire, and this time there was no Hermione able to act as a bridge between them.

In addition, the whole of the political elite seemed to be taking the same view of Harry that Percy does - and indeed, as time elapsed, with not the slightest evidence that Voldemort had returned, Harry's claims would have appeared all the more unbelievable. Moreover, until his father accused him of being hired as a spy, Percy had showed every indication of arguing the issue reasonably. He was correct in pointing out that the only evidence of Voldemort's return was the word of one person (Harry) whose sanity had been called into question, and unlike the rest of his family, Percy wasn't close to Harry, and actually had cause to resent him. Besides, Percy's view of Harry is far from the only instance of unwarranted distrust we see in Order of the Phoenix, now that Voldemort is back and exerting his corrosive power; it's a feature of most of the protagonists, and Percy's is more reasonable than many.

What will happen now is another matter. Percy undoubtedly expected to be vindicated, and his pride may make it hard for him to come back, especially to the gloating of Fred and George and the contempt of his other siblings; and the scale of Arthur's continuing anger may make their reconciliation difficult - not to mention the other tensions which are beginning to tear apart the whole Weasley family - with potentially fatal consequences for Dumbledore's and Harry Potter's patronage network. Molly has been under the most appalling pressure, and there are signs that she is about to crack.

The real question with regard to Percy is how far his political shifts have been caused by his beliefs, and how far he moulded his beliefs in order to suit his political ambitions. I suspect that both are to some extent true, with the former truest of his time with Crouch, and the latter of his alignment with Fudge. But his love of order remained throughout, and I very much doubt he was consciously cynical. He would not have lasted in either camp for long unless his beliefs could fit with those of his patron and fellow-clients. This is because all patronage networks have an ideology that binds them together - including that of Voldemort.

Continued in Part 5...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 3)

2004-01-24T23:14:09Z

At the top of the patronage tree: Dumbledore, Voldemort, Malfoy and Crouch

Dumbledore himself has a vast network of clients, some more dependent on him than others. The Order of the Phoenix may well not contain the most important of them: they're just the ones he can rely on most. Snape is highly dependent on Dumbledore - especially once he'd left Voldemort's patronage. So is Hagrid. So (since his escape) is Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin, who can't find a job with the new anti-werewolf laws. So, finally, is Harry. It's Dumbledore that has kept Snape out of Azkaban all these years, as is clear from the way Dumbledore vouched for him when Snape was accused at Karkaroff's trial, and it was Dumbledore's influence that enabled Hagrid to stay on at Hogwarts as gamekeeper after the young Tom Riddle had framed him. Dumbledore's personal interference (early in Order of the Phoenix) prevented Harry from being expelled (from school and from the magical world). Mundungus Fletcher is a petty criminal saved from justice and free to operate by Dumbledore's personal protection.

That's why it is so significant that Dumbledore was not able to prevent Hagrid from being sent to Azkaban after the attacks in Chamber of Secrets. Lucius Malfoy's plot was intended to destroy Dumbledore's patronage structure, by demonstrating that Dumbledore could no longer protect his client from Azkaban, and his students from the "heir of Slytherin." Of course, it backfired on Lucius in the end, but he extricated himself with remarkably little permanent damage, and his plot had come very close to success. But the background to this plot of his was that Lucius was himself under threat, and suffered a Ministry raid on his manor. He certainly felt more vulnerable than he used to be. Some people (like Arthur Weasley) were not prepared to accept that it was unwise to attack a powerful patron with lots of trained killers, political connections and Dark artefacts in his service or at his disposal. As Molly had feared, there was a price to pay for her husband's courage; Lucius planned to neutralise Arthur through implicating his daughter Ginevra in the attacks on Muggle-born children at Hogwarts.

In a society that lives under emergency rule, with a very haphazard rule of law, a man without connections, without any sort of patron, without friends and allies, is in a very precarious position indeed. This is precisely what happened to Sirius Black. He and his friends were part of Dumbledore's patronage network, since he had been disowned by his family and could expect no help from them. That's the real reason he could languish for nearly twelve years in Azkaban without any kind of hearing: his friends were either dead or hostile, and his patron thought him a traitor. Sirius didn't have a chance.

This is the key to understanding what Tom Riddle was up to. In theory he should have been a complete outsider, but by artful manipulation and brilliance, not to mention force of personality, while still at school he began his own patronage network (much in the way that Harry is now) among Slytherins who saw him as a rising star, and who wanted "a bit of his power." After leaving school he immersed himself into the Dark Order (at this time called the Knights of Walpurgis) which seems to have been an international freemasonry that could act as a short cut to power for an ambitious outsider in a hierarchical society (as Severus Snape no doubt later calculated, unaware that his master had changed the rules) and he gradually gained adherents within it. More such wizards joined him later when he revealed himself to the world as Voldemort, and he actually began to absorb already existing patronage networks into his own one. His biggest catch was Lucius Malfoy, whom he took into his service, along with Malfoy's whole clientele.

Voldemort's political aims have mystified some observers, in that he seems to be operating as an archetypal terrorist, without any attempt to form an alternative government of his own. Far from trying to impose a "new order," he doesn't seem to want to create any kind of order - all his actions are destructive. In fact what he's doing is replacing or taking over not the official power structures of the Wizarding World, but its unofficial ones: his immediate aims are for all other patronage networks to be absorbed by his own, or else destroyed, with his own network becoming increasingly despotic: a personal tyranny over selected individuals with his Mark burned into their very bodies, and through them, his new "family" (as he calls them), over everyone else he'll allow to survive. As for the "official" power structures in the Ministry of Magic, they were already starting to wither away before they were saved by his first defeat. As the crisis developed they were reaching the point at which they would have snapped entirely, unable to hide what was happening from Muggles - especially when the Dementors openly turned, as I strongly suspect they were just about to when Voldemort made his mistake with Harry.

The result of a Voldemort victory would not have been an ordered world, or even a tyranny in the conventional sense, but a world in which there were no restraints on Voldemort's will, and few restraints on the will of his servants - a major lure for those that joined him, according to Bartemius Crouch.

"You planned to restore He Who Must Not Be Named to power, and to resume the lives of violence you presumably led while he was strong."

Bill Weasley said much the same thing of the Death Eater habit of Muggle baiting. "Harry, that's their idea of fun." In this sense Voldemort is the embodiment of lawlessness. Voldemort might have to be worshipped, at least by those that approached him (indeed he is, to some extent, in all wizards' fear to speak his name) but the Death Eaters wouldn't provide a government - where would be the fun in that? The victory of the Dark Order would be a world in which they were free to enjoy themselves as much as they liked, with everyone else living in terror. That is clearly the chief motive of the Dark creatures in Voldemort's army - especially of the Dementors.

"They will not remain loyal to you, Fudge! Voldemort can offer them much more scope for their powers and pleasures than you can."

The scary thing (to wizards) about Voldemort's words "an army of creatures whom all fear" is that the wizarding world doesn't have any armies - not in the Muggle sense of the word. Hit-wizards and Aurors are just Special Forces. Uniforms do not exist. All there is to confront Voldemort's army (when he rebuilds it) is a very small number of overstretched Aurors, a somewhat larger number of Hit-wizards, and what is basically an armed population, most of whom are afraid themselves, and some of whom are controlled by the enemy. With no real official army (not even an informal militia) the small private armies of powerful patrons (like Dumbledore and Lucius Malfoy) are a major force to be reckoned with.

Lucius Malfoy is perhaps the most interesting figure to consider, when trying to work out just how the wizarding power structures operate. He's rich, of course, or appears to be (and appearance is more important than reality here) but doubtless so are many other wizards that don't possess a tithe of his power. The patronage system favours old money and old families, and Lucius would have inherited a patronage network. He expanded its power and numbers greatly (and the support he was able to offer his clients) by taking the incredibly powerful Voldemort as his patron, but he nonetheless managed to keep his own client network intact in the ruin of Voldemort's first bid for power. He achieved this degree of damage limitation by a quick-thinking act of calculated betrayal that called for a very great deal of sheer nerve and plausibility. On learning of his master's fall, Lucius deserted his patron at once, claiming that he had been "bewitched." Not only did he survive, but in spite of the fact that he had no official Ministry position whatsoever, he remained a power in Wizarding Britain, and the object of a great deal of fear, to judge by Molly's attempt to restrain Arthur from trying to bring him down, and the way he was able to intimidate his fellow Hogwarts governors.

Even so, it's important to remember that Malfoy's network must only be one of several. The patronage network of Bartemius Crouch was at its peak at the time of Voldemort's first defeat, but it began to decline a year or two after with the (supposed) death of his son, when he suffered "a big drop in popularity." His political star began to fade, along with the climate of panic and fear that had made his ruthless tactics so popular. Former clients would undoubtedly have began to desert him for rising patrons like rats leaving a sinking ship; yet even so Percy Weasley in a calculated gamble attached himself to Crouch's faction as a short cut to advancement when he left Hogwarts, before the beginning of Goblet of Fire, no doubt because it was clear to him that his father could be no help at all - an obvious sign that Dumbledore's star had already fallen within the Ministry.

Dumbledore seems to be at the head of a very powerful patronage network, whose support he withdrew from Cornelius Fudge at the end of Goblet of Fire - a blow from which Fudge visibly reeled. Most of the main characters in the series are part of Dumbledore's patronage network, and generally look out for one other, as Arthur did for Alastor Moody after the incident with the dustbins. While such systems are doubtless informal, and (at least in the British Isles) unofficial, they are likely to have gained in a great deal in importance under the pressure of civil war, as the legitimate wizarding authorities became increasingly desperate and arbitrary. Patronage networks must have always existed, but it is only at the height of Voldemort's reign of terror that it began to be impossible for a witch or a wizard to survive outside one, with a consequent increase in official corruption and misuse of power; an increase, it seems, which outlasted Voldemort.

"Blatant corruption!" roared the portrait of the corpulent, red-nosed wizard on the wall behind Dumbledore's desk. "The Ministry did not cut deals with petty criminals in my day, no sir, they did not!"

I suspect that Fortescue had a point. Of course, the whole business of emergency rule is itself corrupting; routine interference with people's memories (something which every wizard has a legal duty to perform when necessary, and Ministry officials perform all the time) will either lead to contempt for Muggles or contempt for truth among those who practice it, not to mention a siege mentality, and wizarding Britain is full of all three. But in Headmaster Fortescue's era the state of emergency probably could be more relaxed: Muggle communications were slower then, and exposure less of a danger; procedures could have been less hurried. By the twentieth century Ministry corruption was more normal (Sirius Black's grandfather could buy an Order of Merlin, First Class) but it's clear that Voldemort's reign of terror made a bad situation far worse. Ministry officials like Crouch become "as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark side." The murder, imprisonment and torture of suspects without any chance to defend themselves (and doubtless the settling of many old scores) was a reign of terror in itself, and to have the support of a powerful patron became one's only form of security.

Continued in Part 4...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 2)

2004-01-24T23:07:48Z

Power without a patronage network: Fudge and the Ministry of Magic

Cornelius Fudge became Minister of Magic almost by chance, mainly because he wasn't Bartemius Crouch - and because Dumbledore didn't apply. (There may have been other heavyweight candidates like Amelia Bones that didn't want the job to go to one of their rivals.) With next to no clientele of his own, Fudge had (and still has) no real personal following in the Wizengamot, who, it is likely, appoint the Minister; so his position was insecure from the start. Nor was his reputation high. "Bungler if ever there was one" is Hagrid's verdict, and the fact that he said it just after reading the Daily Prophet suggests this opinion may have been common. This is why, for his first two years in office, Fudge was "forever asking Dumbledore for help and advice," pelting him "with Owls every morning" - an alignment that ensured Fudge the support of Albus Dumbledore's powerful faction.

Even on more recent occasions Cornelius Fudge has betrayed a striking sense of vulnerability, and a deep unwillingness to challenge popular opinion - with regard to leaving Hagrid at large, or the need to do a deal with the giants: "people hate them, Dumbledore - end of my career." It is only when his position as Minister (and the patronage at his disposal) allowed him to expand his clientele (making alliances of his own, accepting support in return for favours) that he began to perceive himself as a power in his own right and ceased to defer to Dumbledore. Eventually he even came to look on Dumbledore as a threat, as the head of a dangerously independent patronage network which he believed to be plotting against him - but one of the chief reasons why he could feel threatened by Dumbledore was because he was ("deep down") aware of his own weakness. This wasn't just an underlying awareness that Dumbledore was a "better wizard" than he was, or of Dumbledore's cleverness and popularity, but of his own political weakness too.

To Harry and his friends, the Ministry of Magic (during Order of the Phoenix) seems like a monolith, with Cornelius Fudge in charge, telling the Daily Prophet what slanders to print and what news to ignore, making whatever laws he pleases and creating a reign of terror in Hogwarts. In fact, the Ministry of Magic is riven with factions, and Fudge's own personal network is neither large nor very able. We see this from what happened at Harry's trial before the Wizengamot. The most important political figure there, Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (to which all other departments defer, "with the possible exception of the Department of Mysteries") is not only clearly outside Fudge's counsels but shows herself to be highly independent of him. Her chief reaction to Harry's "crime" is to be impressed he could do such a difficult spell in the first place! Of the fifty who sat in the Wizengamot trial only six voted with Fudge, and Umbridge was the only one to intervene in support of her patron. Moreover, Fudge's most trusted adherent - the very official on whom he relied to take on Dumbledore in his own power base - is a remarkably stupid woman, with a dangerous tendency to exceed orders that brings to mind Bellatrix Lestrange. She does a great deal to damn her patron's cause - and not just by making all but a handful detest her for her reign of terror in Hogwarts. Her banning of the Quibbler only ensured that everyone read it, and for someone who came to Hogwarts with a brief to stop Dumbledore from creating a private army there, her actions more than anyone else's brought the DA into existence.

As Minister of Magic Fudge theoretically controls by far the biggest strategic resource, but the small size of his patronage network (and its uncertain loyalty) greatly inhibits his freedom of action. It's a telling point that one of the two Aurors he brought with him to confront Dumbledore happened to be one of Dumbledore's own secret adherents. Nor is it really clear how far Fudge was able to pressure the Daily Prophet into making Harry an object of ridicule, in spite of what Hermione thinks. In turning against Harry (and maybe Dumbledore too) Fudge was actually following the Prophet's lead, not pressing the paper to follow his. It was the Daily Prophet's systematic program of discrediting Harry and undermining his credibility (in Goblet of Fire) that caused Fudge to distrust him in the first place, as Harry recognised all too clearly: "you've been reading Rita Skeeter." At other times, both at the start of Philosopher's Stone and at the end of Order of the Phoenix, we see that the paper is anything but afraid of attacking the Ministry of Magic directly, which makes it doubtful how much pressure Fudge could really bring to bear.

Fudge's real faction is thus a small and undistinguished minority at the Ministry of Magic, and he isn't fully in control of it. Even after five years in office they are limited in number, importance and brains. By throwing every ounce of political capital he had at squashing the supposed threat from Dumbledore, he managed to drive the Dumbledore faction largely underground at the Ministry, but he wasn't actually able to dismiss them - and in most cases he didn't know who they were. It took him months to move against Dumbledore's power base in Hogwarts, slowly and incrementally, and when he thought he had succeeded it turned out to be a trap. Fudge's power depended on allies rather than clients, and since allied factions have to be persuaded or bought, he increasingly came to depend on the Daily Prophet and Lucius Malfoy for propaganda and for money. Malfoy's robe audibly clinked with gold on his way to visit Cornelius Fudge, and it is significant, I think, that Dolores Umbridge should have been so open about her crimes (including things that she would definitely not have wanted Fudge to know) in front of Draco and his friends, and basically drew her Inquisitorial Squad from the children of members of Lucius Malfoy's faction. (The children of Fudge's own Ministry officials, like Marietta, are ambivalent on the whole). In other words, the most trusted member of Fudge's inner circle was in far closer confidence with an allied patronage network than she was with Fudge himself. How long this has been going on for?

Her words to Snape are extremely telling: "Lucius Malfoy always speaks most highly of you" - implying she has personal contact with Malfoy over the running of the school. It's tempting to say that Malfoy had recruited her - and yet she really does seem genuinely loyal to Cornelius Fudge, and to the Ministry-based ideology of order and rules. (That is something she shares with Percy: she's just vastly more ruthless and sadistic about what she's prepared to do to ensure its triumph.) This is more than the close alliance of two patronage networks, though; it's a sign that Fudge doesn't control his own one enough to prevent a conspiracy to manipulate him between one of his most trusted officials and a rival patron; to manipulate him for his own good, of course - that is how Dolores sees it.

Continued in Part 3...

Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Part 1)

2004-01-24T22:21:44Z

This essay is very long so I'm breaking it up into parts, but it's really meant to be read all together, with each section building on the previous ones.

The wizarding world under the statute: patron and client in the state of emergency

It is only since Order of the Phoenix appeared that it has become clear to everyone that the Wizarding World, for all the wonders it contains, is in fact an extremely lawless place. Until then, the clues had been largely ignored. That Sirius Black could be sentenced to a lifelong torture without a trial was generally put down to a wartime situation, in spite of the awkward truth that the war was in fact already over – not to mention the curious oversight that his case was not once reviewed in twelve whole years of peace, and no one, not even Dumbledore, had any complaints. Moreover, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets exactly the same thing happened to Hagrid. In spite of the fact that the Ministry of Magic didn't really think he was guilty, they casually put him away in Azkaban for psychological torment, without any sort of hearing and for purely cynical reasons: they felt that they had to be seen to be "doing something" in order to reassure the wizarding public.

In the first four books, however, this sort of injustice didn't affect the protagonists much (except for a foretaste in Goblet of Fire) and so the reader was never fully aware of the degree of lawlessness and misuse of power that wizardkind is subject to. This finally happened with Order of the Phoenix, where a whole string of pernicious laws were more or less introduced on the nod, and the misuse of power and propagation of lies were at last directed at Harry himself.

The reason for this cavalier approach to justice, and for the frightful punishments routinely imposed for almost purely deterrent purposes, is that Wizarding Britain in particular, and the whole Wizarding World in general, has been living under a continuous state of emergency for over three hundred years – ever since the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was passed in 1692: a state of emergency that has lasted so long that it is taken for granted by everyone. In fact, it seems completely normal; and there's no prospect of ending it, either, because if it ever were relaxed, the Muggles would find out, with unthinkable consequences.

Muggles finding out the secret of what has been really going on – that they have been fed a diet of lies for centuries about the truth of their world, and that they routinely have their memories rearranged by a caste of people completely indifferent to their hopes and fears, their wars and sufferings, would clearly be a catastrophe now. In the long run, in order to prevent the Muggle "Powers That Be" (whether legitimate or criminal) from taking control of their local wizards, adding magic to their arsenals and killing off those that resisted, a wizarding tyranny would have to be established over the Muggle world, ruthlessly wiping out any Muggle authorities strong enough to challenge the wizards. In the meantime there would be every likelihood of genocidal war between various factions of both peoples, fed by panic and revenge – and with hunts for traitors and quislings on both sides. And Muggles are bound to find out in the end, unless the authorities and the population in general are allowed to react quickly and effectively without regard to constitutional niceties.

And they do. Given the need for secrecy, this is a matter of necessity, because in the end enough people will get careless sufficiently often for even the Muggles to work out what's going on, in spite of all the squads of Obliviators, unless wizards as a whole are really terrified of what will happen to them if they do get careless, and unless there's a habit of sorting out problems quickly and only asking questions afterwards, when the evidence has usually been Obliviated. This is the true cause of the seemingly automatic presumption of guilt in wizarding justice – which Harry Potter came up against twice when accused of performing underage magic in front of Muggles: once when Dobby framed him in Chamber of Secrets, and more recently when he had to drive away the Dementors from Privet Drive. "Innocent until proved guilty, Severus" (Dumbledore’s warning to Snape) is the exception more than the rule.

As a result of these constraints, wizarding society has evolved in a very different manner from our own. Since their society can't have a proper rule of law (as we understand it) without risking its own existence, wizards have found another way of ensuring their safety and protection. One way of describing it is what historians call bastard feudalism, whereby in a lawless age (like England in the Wars of the Roses) unprotected men attached themselves to a powerful baron as his retainers: they would serve in his household and fight on his behalf – and he would make it clear to everyone that they were under his protection from enemies on both sides of the law. No enemy could attack a powerful baron's retainers without being punished, and the baron would make sure their lands weren't seized by a neighbour or confiscated by the government, and they couldn't be jailed on a trumped up charge. In return, they would fight for him whenever he needed a private army. In Chamber of Secrets it's hinted and in Goblet of Fire it becomes quite clear that Lucius Malfoy has just such an army, made up of ex-Death Eater commandos. So, it seems, has Albus Dumbledore, as the Ministry of Magic correctly feared – it's called the Order of the Phoenix, and it's made up not of Dumbledore's most powerful friends (like the Wizengamot elders who resigned in his support) but of those who are completely loyal to him. One of the chief developments in Harry Potter's fifth year at school is that he develops a similar armed force of his own. He calls it Dumbledore's Army, it's true, but in fact it's really his own army. Just a small segment of it (Harry's Inner Circle, in fact) turned out to be surprisingly capable of holding its own against a picked force of Voldemort's own elite Death Eaters.

However, a much closer parallel to the way power seems to work in the Wizarding World is the patron-client system, such as existed in Ancient Rome. Indeed, there are several parallels between Wizarding Britain and the Roman Republic: Crouch's sentencing of his son to Azkaban for plotting to bring back Voldemort is a definite echo of the Roman Magistrate Lucius Junius Brutus condemning his own son to death for plotting to bring back the exiled king and tyrant Tarquin; also, the lack of any official representation for Harry at his trial before the Wizengamot follows Roman practice: he was entirely dependent on what he could say in his own defence and the private efforts of an eminent statesman like Dumbledore. Perhaps this is hardly surprising: ease of communication and small population have made wizarding Britain very like an old city state (it even depends on some sort of slave labour) with large portions of the economy in the hands of outsiders (the goblins). Further parallels lie in the gradual decline of the old noble caste (patricians and pure-bloods, both of which were massive casualties of the last round of civil wars, proscriptions and murders) and the way both Rome and wizarding Britain could culturally absorb new blood (freed slaves and Muggle-born) by bringing them up in Roman households and wizarding boarding schools like Hogwarts.

Still, there is one major difference. In Ancient Rome the patron-client system was a formally recognised part of how government and social relations worked. By contrast, the wizarding version is entirely unofficial, and grew up in response to the simultaneous weakness, corruption and capricious power of the Ministry of Magic – the inevitable consequence of that fact that Secrecy always comes before Justice. The Ministry is weak in that it cannot provide protection from abuse of power coming from either side of the law, and its capricious power is all too evident in the draconian punishments it imposes, which usually leave the victim a physical and emotional wreck if not mad, and which most wizards (like Peter Pettigrew) will do nearly anything to avoid.

Basically, the system works by otherwise unprotected wizards attaching themselves to a powerful "patron" and becoming his "clients." The patron will smooth over any problems his client might have with the Ministry of Magic, and use his money and connections to help him out of his difficulties, and keep him out of Azkaban – as Dumbledore did with Mundungus Fletcher. In return, the client himself becomes a part of the patron's entourage and connections. The patron ends up with a large body of wizards dependent on him whom he can rely on (a private army, in other words) which effectively puts him above the law, because the wizarding world doesn't actually have armies, at least in the Muggle sense of the word. Some patrons may well have an even more powerful patron of their own, and a wizard at the top of a patronage tree is a very powerful figure indeed: such are Dumbledore, and Lucius Malfoy, to whom wizards like Crabbe and Goyle defer. Their sons in turn attend on Draco, as bodyguard and entourage; this makes them part of the same patronage network, because Draco's patron is his father.

The strength of a particular patronage network depends not only on the patron and clients themselves, but on the strategic resources which they control, and over which the struggle for power is fought. As A.J. Hall explained in her recent paper "Justice in the Wizarding World":

"There exist a number of key strategic pieces over which each primary [patronage] network seeks control or influence, Hogwarts and the Ministry being two, and Harry himself representing a third (others may be Gringotts, The Daily Prophet and possibly St Mungo’s). A network not controlling a particular strategic piece has the options either of outright conflict for possession of it, entering into an alliance with the network that does have control of the strategic piece, or working to discredit or eliminate the importance of the piece concerned."

This is precisely what Fudge's network attempted to do to Harry Potter once they had turned against Dumbledore. Harry was in Dumbledore's pocket, so Fudge's faction in response did all they could to discredit Harry, and so eliminate his importance.

Continued in Part 2...

Ha ha!

2004-01-24T15:56:15Z

Gotcha, Alec. -- rj_anderson