deathtocapslock | COS Chapter Two: "Dobby's Warning"

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COS Chapter Two: "Dobby's Warning"

* Harry wants to say “What are you?” but thinks this might be rude, so instead says “Who are you?” It’s good to be reminded of how nice Harry was to start with, before Dumbledore’s favouritism removed all his politeness and replaced it with an entitlement complex the size of Hannover.

* Ironically, the only house-elf in canon who wants to be free is also the most servile and obsequious. At times, COS reads like a pro-slavery tract arguing that slaves cannot cope with freedom, and need a good benevolent master to take care with them. He even speaks a sort of Pidgin English like a stereotypical nineteenth-century black Southern slave.

* Dobby’s never been treated like an equal before. This is probably meant to reflect badly on the Malfoys, but TBH his constant toadying makes it rather hard to think of him as one.

* Does Dobby have to punish himself? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he just hurts himself for kicks, without his owners knowing.

* So how exactly could Dobby find time to spy on Harry and intercept his post, and keep doing his household duties to stop the Malfoys from knowing?

* Gosh, Dobby’s really going over the top with the flattery, isn’t he? No wonder Harry ends up liking him so much.

* So what is this plot Dobby supposedly overheard? The diary was given to Ginny, not Harry. Is it the case the Lucius really intended to give it to Harry, and Ginny only got it by accident?

* Actually, that would make a lot more sense. Ginny Weasley being found killing Muggle-borns would be all very well, and might even discredit Arthur; but Harry Potter killing people would be even better, from the point of view of a Death Eater.

* Is there any reason why Dobby can’t tell Harry what the plot entails, other than a half-arsed attempt by JKR to prolong the mystery?

* Albus Dumbledore is the greatest headmaster Hogwarts has ever had, apparently. Well, I suppose that’s probably true if by “greatest” you mean “most powerful”, as opposed to, say, “best at running a school”.

* Harry jumps six stairs without making any noise? Wow, that kid’s athletic!

* Actually, that last point was a bit redundant. Of course Harry’s athletic, he’s the hero. After all, it’s not like clumsy and unfit people ever do anything brave or special.

* So the Dursleys and Masons are making jokes about the Japanese and the Americans. Just in case you’d forgotten that they’re racists, making anything that you do to them perfectly OK.

* So the pudding covered Harry head-to-toe when it shattered? Was there some kind of small explosive device in it?

* Must be rather hard for Mrs. Mason to go outside if she’s afraid of birds.

* I’m not sure why Mr. Mason thinks the Dursleys are playing a joke on him. If he had to explain to them his wife’s phobia, they wouldn’t have known that the sight of an owl would scare her.

* If the magical trace can’t tell who’s using magic, that would give Pureblood kids something of an unfair advantage. They’d be able to practise throughout the summer and pass any spells off as their parents’, whereas Muggleborns wouldn’t be able to practise at all.

* Harry should have realised that threatening his relatives with magic would just make it worse for him if/when it emerged that he wasn’t allowed to do it outside of school.

* I can’t imagine the Dursleys locking Harry away like that. Even if they don’t care about him, they should at least be worried what the neighbours would say.

* Harry, being relatively new to the WW, is still worried about being expelled. Little does he know that he could in fact do pretty much anything, up to and including disembowelling a fellow student in the bathrooms, and get away with light detention.

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I want to know where Dobby got the idea that Harry Potter is so wonderful in the first place. Kreacher seems to ape his master's prejudices about blood purity, but Dobby's view is that of the wider wizarding world. Weird.

He seems to be a Dumbledore sycophant. Terri once suggested he was a wedding gift from Narcissa's side of the family. Well, there are Potters on the Black Family Tree. Maybe he was once owned by some Potter or other.

Apparently Voldemort's defeat led to House-elves being less downtrodden (because apparently only Death Eaters mistreated their elves - looks like Crouch senior had something to hide) - maybe Dobby was less isolated from his fellow elves than Kreacher was?

Or maybe Dobby is just sucking up? Who would change hir treatment of a family elf according to the political situation? (Don't forget Voldemort never ruled the Wizarding World at this point, he wasn't passing legislation requiring frequent torture of one's elf.)

One theory I heard is that Dobby's owner had been a DE who went to Azkaban after Voldemort fell, whereupon he was transferred to the Malfoys, who treated him comparatively better. When he heard that V had fallen due to one Harry Potter, he started idolising him, leading to his toadying towards/attempts to cripple Harry.

I was thinking more along the lines of the elf-torturing DEs being arrested and losing their elves to (presumably) more liberal relatives (whether as a legal measure - possibly anyone given life in Azkaban has their property confiscated and given to their closest relative or legal heirs, or it's just a matter of the DEs leaving the household and the rest of the family being less extreme). This still implies a correlation between Death Eating and elf-abuse, which other than the Malfoys we are not given (indeed, we're given the opposite implications given how Regulus and Crouch treated their elves).

* I can’t imagine the Dursleys locking Harry away like that. Even if they don’t care about him, they should at least be worried what the neighbours would say.

Yeah it seemed odd that they're supposedly so concerned with keeping up appearances, but never try to hide their abuse of Harry

Well, in POA it turns out their cover story is that Harry attends that St Brutus School for criminally incurable boys or something. The bars on the window fit right in. Or maybe this is when they started using that cover story.

OTOH, though, the Dursleys don't seem like the sort of people to broadcast the fact that their nephew is (allegedly) at some sort of asylum, given that they apparently hate abnormality so much. People like them would surely think that criminal insanity (or whatever it is Harry supposedly has) was as bad if not worse than magic.

/At times, COS reads like a pro-slavery tract arguing that slaves cannot cope with freedom, and need a good benevolent master to take care with them. He even speaks a sort of Pidgin English like a stereotypical nineteenth-century black Southern slave./

Oh, jeez, now I'm getting flashbacks to Jar Jar Binks.

I think that GoF was more of a pro-slavery tract, since it showed the consequences of a house elf being willingly freed by her master: she turned into a useless, hiccuping drunk. Yes, once you parallel the depiction of house elves in "Harry Potter" with the depiction of slaves in pro-slavery tracts and ex-slaves in racist post-Reconstruction propaganda, it really does become quite offensive. Hence why "Gone with the Wind" is not on my list of favorite books.

/Harry jumps six stairs without making any noise? Wow, that kid’s athletic!/

*sheepishly* After reading CoS, I remember trying out the stairs in my house to see which step was noiseless, because I wanted to know it by heart just like Harry did.

/Little does he know that he could in fact do pretty much anything, up to and including disembowelling a fellow student in the bathrooms, and get away with light detention./

Sneaking around at night in the castle = detention in the Forbidden Forest and the enmity of the entire school
Nearly killing a fellow classmate = light detention with everybody forgetting about it
*sighs*

"Sneaking around at night in the castle = detention in the Forbidden Forest and the enmity of the entire school
Nearly killing a fellow classmate = light detention with everybody forgetting about it
*sighs*"

This may have something to do with the fact that sneaking around at night lost Gryffindor house points, ruining (seemingly) their chances of winning the House Cup. Nearly killing Draco didn't, so nobody minds. (Or nobody who matters, anyway. Yes, Pansy Parkinson and some of the other Slytherins may have been "villifying" Harry, but they're not really people.)

My own pet theory is that the House Cup is charmed to make any student who looks on it want to win it for their house. That would explain why house points are taken so seriously.

The House Cup seems pointless, it's bizarre that they place so much value on it, especially as the points system is so arbitrary and the reward is basically nothing.

We competed at our school for the honor of holding the E banner for a month. Each month the most excellent class was announced at assembly and a student got to go up to receive the banner, which was dark purple with a shiny golden E stitched to it. It had tassels and looked medieval. Useless, but we loved to win it, hated to lose it.

We had a similar thing at my school, when we were about 9. It's hard to imagine 16/17 year olds caring.

I doubt you loved it enough to ostracise people who reduced your chances of winning it, though.

No, we were a religious school and encouraged to applaud whoever did win.

(Obviously not Gryffindors, then, since we did applaud the winning competition.)

* Does Dobby have to punish himself? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he just hurts himself for kicks, without his owners knowing.

In GOF, a year and a half after being freed, Dobby still punishes himself for speaking ill of the Malfoys (leading some readers to believe Dobby wasn't really freed - or perhaps that he was free of Lucius but not of Narcissa - overturned only by DH). Something other than magical compulsion is going on here.

* So how exactly could Dobby find time to spy on Harry and intercept his post, and keep doing his household duties to stop the Malfoys from knowing?

Note that if he is speaking the truth he can still delay punishment for this disobedience until his return. Maybe he wasn't breaking an explicit command, or maybe he was stretching the meaning of a given command to 'go away' or the like, as Kreacher does in OOTP. Or maybe the whole thing is a lie and at least one of the Malfoys (Draco?) ordered him to prevent Harry's return to Hogwarts - or he manipulated Draco to tell him to keep Harry out of Hogwarts. Or he is stretching the meaning of a Malfoy who said 'how I wish that Potter boy never came to Hogwarts'.

Do you think house-elves can put mail redirecting spells on people's homes? Or did he have to lurk around 4PD all the time in case an owl was on its way?

* Is there any reason why Dobby can’t tell Harry what the plot entails, other than a half-arsed attempt by JKR to prolong the mystery?

Well, supposedly he can't implicate his masters in wrong-doing - except he already did. Maybe he was given an explicit command to remain silent. Or maybe he didn't really know the details to say something coherent (as if he was being coherent anyway), and only after Draco wrote home about the events of Halloween he realized that had to do with the plot.

But my questions are: What did Lucius expect to happen? What did he know of the properties of the diary and how did he learn them? Whom was Lucius discussing his little plot with that Dobby overheard the plotting?

According to Dumbledore, Tom gave Lucius the diary shortly(?) before Halloween 1981 and told him it could open the Chamber of Secrets and unleash Slytherin's monster. If this is what happened then perhaps Tom was planning to have the diary deployed by Lucius in November 1981, on the heels of Harry's death. Perhaps Severus was expected to watch things on the Hogwarts end and help use the events to discredit Dumbledore (did he already get his orders or was Voldemort waiting for the stage to be set to give them?). Was it really necessary to give the diary to Lucius before the attack on the Potters? And if Lucius knew a monster would be unleashed in the castle did he not fear for Draco? He even let Draco stay at Hogwarts for Christmas! Or did Lucius somehow believe the monster would recognize a pureblood and leave him alone?

Or perhaps Lucius knew less than Dumbledore wants us to think? Did Voldemort just give Lucius the diary for safe-keeping, telling him nothing about it - thinking it unwise to have a Horcrux in his own possession while meeting his would-be vanquisher and Lucius learned of the diary's properties from writing in it? Did the idea to pass the diary on to a student come from the diary itself (and did the diary tell Lucius what would happen?)? Was Lucius just trying to get rid of a suspicious object while incriminating an enemy? Did Dobby know something Lucius didn't (and if so how)? Was the whole thing a set-up by Dobby who was trying to get the Malfoys in trouble? Endless conspiracy theories!

According to what Dobby tells Harry in the end, when he said the plot did *not* involve He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named he was hinting that it involved Tom Riddle, before he changed his name. Yeah, right. As clear as the midday sun.

As for Harry's punishment: The Dursleys believed he had levitated the pudding on purpose - breaking school rules, risking punishment from the wizarding world, in order to ruin their future. While the punishment is horrific, I can understand they sincerely feared what he'd do if allowed around. I think they sincerely believed the incident proved he belonged in a place like St Brutus.

"In GOF, a year and a half after being freed, Dobby still punishes himself for speaking ill of the Malfoys (leading some readers to believe Dobby wasn't really freed - or perhaps that he was free of Lucius but not of Narcissa - overturned only by DH). Something other than magical compulsion is going on here."

Dobby always struck me as being a bit of a masochist, even when I was too young to really know what one was. If he were a human, I could just see him taking part in some BDSM; he'd probably enjoy the submission/pain involved.

"Or maybe the whole thing is a lie and at least one of the Malfoys (Draco?) ordered him to prevent Harry's return to Hogwarts - or he manipulated Draco to tell him to keep Harry out of Hogwarts."

Reminds me of the theory (I think it was on Red Hen) that Dobby had got Draco all worked up about Harry Potter and how awful he was, and then asked, as innocently as possible, "Does Master Draco want Dobby to stop Harry Potter returning to school?" When Draco responds in the affirmative, he goes off and does his stalking thing. Although they'd still have to find a way of stopping Lucius and Narcissa from finding out.

"Do you think house-elves can put mail redirecting spells on people's homes? Or did he have to lurk around 4PD all the time in case an owl was on its way?"

A mail-redirecting spell (possibly some form of Confundus charm shield around the house to make the owls think Harry lived in Wiltshire?) might be the most likely idea, actually, as it would save Dobby from having to hang around all the time. Draco could probably pass the letters off as addressed to him, although I'm not entirely sure why Dobby would take the letters with him when he visited Privet Drive. Possibly he wanted to use them as bargaining chips?

"Well, supposedly he can't implicate his masters in wrong-doing - except he already did."

Also, he could give Harry the details of the plot without saying who's behind it.

As for Lucius letting Draco stay: maybe Voldemort had just told him that the diary would purge Hogwarts of Mudbloods, and he assumed his Pureblood son would be safe?

I've since come to the conclusion that Dobby was watching Privet Drive on Lucius Malfoy's orders. I really do sincerely think the plot was to give the Diary to Harry, and in order to do that, Lucius needed to know when Harry was going to be in Diagon Alley for school supplies. Dobby probably also hung around the Burrow after Ron and the Twins snuck Harry out his bedroom window in the night.

Unfortunately Lucius never took the fact that Dobby had his own agenda into consideration. And I suspect that Dobby never admitted to the Malfoys that he wanted to be freed. Dobby flattered Harry and gave him a highly inflated sob story to play on Harry's sympathies on his own account. Harry, remember, was not Dobby's master. Dobby was under no constraint to tell him the unvarnished truth.

I suspect that Dobby was also supposed to sneak the Diary into Harry's things during Malfoy's distraction in Flourish & Blotts. Only, since Dobby considered that Harry was his best bet at getting free of the Malfoys, that was an order he had no intention of obeying.

Consequently, when Lucius goaded Arthur into attacking him (and got more of an attack than he'd bargained for. He expected Arthur to throw a hex, rather than a punch) Dobby passive-aggressively tucked the Diary into anyone's books *but* Harry's. Harry, Ron, and Ginny had *all* dumped their books into Ginny's cauldron. Harry's books were all new. Apart from the Lockhart stuff, all the Weasleys' books were 2nd hand. Dobby stuck the Diary into one of the 2nd hand books, and he probably didn't know or *care* whose book it was.

And no, Dobby was *not* freed. Lucius Malfoy never "gave" Dobby a sock. Lucius Malfoy threw a sock *away*. Dobby caught it before it hit the ground and declared "Master has given Dobby a sock! Dobby is free!". Malfoy was too rattled by the situation to immediately deny that he had done anything of the sort, and Dobby escaped.

And no, Dobby was *not* freed. Lucius Malfoy never "gave" Dobby a sock. Lucius Malfoy threw a sock *away*. Dobby caught it before it hit the ground and declared "Master has given Dobby a sock! Dobby is free!". Malfoy was too rattled by the situation to immediately deny that he had done anything of the sort, and Dobby escaped.

Does this mean the enchantments that bond an elf to his masters remained in effect between Dobby and the Malfoys? This might explain the self-punishment in GOF, but I don't think the events of Malfoy Manor in DH are compatible with this.

A lot of this comes down to just what enchantments *do* bind an elf to his family? And there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on the subject floating about. In OotP, Kreachur, when ordered out of a room took the oportunity to leave the house for several days and betray the Order insofar as he was able to to a peripheral relative. Most of the Order were astonished later to discover that the elf was not bound to the house itself and unable to leave it.

And he certainly managed to set things up to lead to the murder of his titular master. I think the fact is that *we do not know* what the actual binding between an elf and his family consists of. And that much of any given elf's behavior in the matter is largely a case of habit and custom--or of direct orders from the current master.

For that matter, *was* Sirius even Kreachur's master? Rowling has yet to explain how Sirius came into possession of the property at all since he had been forcably removed from the family's primary document over a decade previous. By all accounts, the house and Kreachur ought to have passed to Bellatrix upon the death of old Arcturus Black in Harry's first year. So far as the Black family went, *Sirius* was no longer a member.

You can massage it in that Arcturus left the house and property to Sirius by will in order to delay the house passing to a cadet line, but it doesn't really play. Although Sirus leaving it to Harry by will seems to have worked, so it's at least possible.

And he certainly managed to set things up to lead to the murder of his titular master.

So do you believe it is possible that the whole diary plot was Dobby's revenge on the Malfoys? He may have been trying to get them in trouble, regardless of collateral damage.

Not the whole plot, by any means. But he piggybacked his agenda onto his master's.

Lucius Malfoy wanted shut of the Diary. I suspect that as a school governor he had heard something of the rumors regarding the fallout of the QuirrellMort debacle and convinced himself that Tom was neutralized. i.e., He didn't need to hold onto the nasty thing any more. Particularly since Amelia Bones was authorizing raids on suspected Dark wizard's homes. Now, he'd been publicly outed a decade earlier, and gotten off with that Imperius defense. The last thing he wanted was to be caught with a cursed item with the Dark Lord's name in it.

Still he had been told that the book would open the Chamber of Secrets and there was likely to be more power available to him with Albus gone. The last time the Chamber was opened, the school had nearly been closed. I think he hoped that the disruption would depose Albus, and get him thoroughly discredited.

As for Harry; I believed for quite a long time that QuirrellMort may have contacted Lucius and *told* him to deploy the Diary. That only got contradicted by HBP. But I still think that at the end of PS/SS Lucius felt that the time was ripe for him to make his own bid for dominance in the ww. Albus was considered an obstacale, even though he mostly confined himself to Hogwarts. People *listened* to him, and that wasn't likely to further Lucius's aims. And Harry was a potential obstacle as well. Draco had failed to attach him, and he was likely to be a part of the opposition. Possibly better to eliminate him now. And do it in a manner which would be likely to discredit him as well.

Dobby, however used the orders to monitor the boy and let Lucius know when he was going to be in Diagon Alley to actually approach the boy and play on his his sympathies. I don't think humans know what exactly motivates elves, but Dobby clearly has figured out that humans are largely motivated by ideals of reciprocation. And Dobby set about not just to make Harry sympathetic to him, but to put him under obligation as well, by whatever means to hand, whether flattery, or advice, or stepping in to "protect" him.

It paid off in the end. Dobby made sure that he was present when his master's plans came unraveled and took advantage of the situation to declare himself free. He hinted to Harry that if his master gave him clothes, even just a sock, he would be free, and Harry at that point in the series was still bright enough to take the hint and put the book in an old sock of Vernon's so that Malfoy would be sure to *have* a sock and have to get rid of it.

OK, so in your version Voldemort did tell Lucius that the diary would open the Chamber. Do you agree this implies he had intended for the diary to be deployed originally in fall 1981 as part of a multi-pronged attack on the establishment of Wizarding Britain? Once Harry was dead Voldemort could attack the school via Severus while have little Barty kill his father, the strong man at the Ministry.

How much was Severus told of the original plot? Or was Voldemort waiting to give him his final instructions in order to avoid Albus' Legilimency?

Yes, I certainly think that Tom intended for the Diary to be deployed at some point in the near future when he gave it to Lucius. It is unlikely that Lucius was a school governor at that point (his only son was just a year old, and he himself wasn't yet 30), but he had contacts, and his father may have been a governor. I *think* that Albus implied that Lucius knew that when it was deployed the Chamber would open, but that may just be fans connecting dots that aren't actually there. It is likely that Lucius was to send the Diary to Severus, either for further deployment, or Severus was to be the target/sacrifice opening the Chamber (thereby removing the only witness that had known the content of the Prophecy).

And I certainly do think that Tom had plans for Barty Jr in the Ministry. Whether to murder his father or to get him under Imperius and control him.

But none of it was to happen until the child of the prophecy had been taken care of.

Opps. Forgot to add: I don't think Severus was told anything of what his part in the matter was to be. He was told to spy, report back (probably through Lucius) and await further orders.

I *think* that Albus implied that Lucius knew that when it was deployed the Chamber would open, but that may just be fans connecting dots that aren't actually there.

Albus says Lucius only expected the diary to open the COS and didn't know it contained his master's soul. But was Albus speaking out of knowledge (how would he know what Tom had once told Lucius back in 1981?) or merely speculating? If Tom simply gave the diary to Lucius to guard and Lucius decided to get rid of it before the Ministry came snooping he might have done the very same thing he did in canon.

Right. It may not be what Rowling tells us directly, but at least it seems to make internal sense.

If the original diary plot was to be set after Harry was dead then there was no need to hide the prophecy. On the contrary, Voldemort would have wanted everyone to know that it wasn't just yet another family of Dumbledore supporters that he killed but the one last hope of Dumbledore's circle. So that wouldn't be the reason to get rid of Severus (though of course since he was intended for the DADA job Voldemort wasn't counting on having him around for more than a year).

Well, it's hard to determine just what was planned, since Tom wasn't any better about sharing information than Albus was.

But it does sound like he wasn't about to let any of his followers know there was a prophecy floating around about his downfall.

Which, when you stop and examine it, is a little unsatisfactory. He owned them. It didn't matter what was prophecised, they weren't getting out from under his thumb while he lived. And he already had a handfull of Horcruxes, so his not living wasn't on the table.

Not that we can't come up with possibilities that *sound* reasonably good, of course...

OK, but doesn't averting the prophecy by killing the savior change things?

Proves it wasn't a "real" prophecy.

So what is this plot Dobby supposedly overheard?
I'd say it's a typical case of mystery plot which reads nicely as long as you don't know the answer but seems ludicrous once you start wondering who on earth would have hatched such an idiotic plan in the first place. Certainly not Slytherin extraordinaire Lucius Malfoy. Come to think of it it's hard to believe a nobody (in economical, political and society terms like Arthur Weasley could ever enrage Lucius enough to plot such an elaborate intrigue at all (let alone the infamous brawling at Flourish & Blott's later on).

So the Dursleys and Masons are making jokes about the Japanese and the Americans.
Ha - I bet they'd imagine all French women to be full of sexy wiles and being snotty hussies and all Eastern Europeans clad in fur and gawking at golden plates as well - presumably only used to wooden bowls and the like!

Come to think of it it's hard to believe a nobody (in economical, political and society terms like Arthur Weasley could ever enrage Lucius enough to plot such an elaborate intrigue at all (let alone the infamous brawling at Flourish & Blott's later on).,/i>

Well, the Ministry may have been preparing to raid his home so he'd want to get rid of the diary at the very least. If Lucius decided that planting it on someone was the way to go, I suppose there would be some candidates with higher priority than Arthur or one of his kids.

Ha - I bet they'd imagine all French women to be full of sexy wiles and being snotty hussies

And then we have the anti-foreign sentiments of British wizards in GOF.

And then we have the anti-foreign sentiments of British wizards in GOF.
That's what I was hinting at. Maybe it's a variation of the It's okay if a Gryffindor does it" rule by replacing "Gryffindor" by "wizard"?

If the magical trace can’t tell who’s using magic, that would give Pureblood kids something of an unfair advantage. They’d be able to practise throughout the summer and pass any spells off as their parents’, whereas Muggleborns wouldn’t be able to practise at all.
I've always said that, over and over!

I do hope you review more of these chapters. These are all fantastic points, and aside from the one about magical trace, I never realized one of 'em.

* Harry should have realised that threatening his relatives with magic would just make it worse for him if/when it emerged that he wasn’t allowed to do it outside of school.

Note that Petunia knows he isn't allowed to do magic outside school. I think she believed he was making empty threats but tip-toed around him just in case. It is the fact that he seems to have chosen the worst timing ever to apparently do magic that got her really scared of him.

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COS Chapter Two: "Dobby's Warning"

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