deathtocapslock | The Keeper of the Keys, Take Two (Reply)

There’s something I entirely overlooked when I first considered Dumbledore’s choice of Hagrid as the WW’s emissary to Harry.

Hagrid told us that part of his happiness in accepting Dumbledore’s commission was that he had permission to use magic openly until he’d secured custody of Harry. And that he wasn’t supposed to use his (broken) wand after he’d done so.

Um.

Let’s back up and think about this, shall we?

Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts, and his wand broken, when he was in his third year. For a serious crime (raising a class XXXXX magical beast and releasing it in a wizard-populated area) which would probably have netted him a long (life-long?) Azkaban sentence had he been older and adjudged competent.

Now, perhaps it might be the case that the Hogwarts headmaster has the authority to lift, at least temporarily, the interdiction on Hagrid performing magic. But it rather seems that Albus has not—we are given indications that Hagrid used his broken wand surreptitiously, to grow pumpkins and the like, but never once that he used it confident that he had leave to do so. And surely Hagrid’s blind adoration of Albus would have faltered if he knew that Albus was personally and persistently denying Hagrid the use of his wand, whatever other favors and signs of trust he might bestow.

So it seems probable that Albus has not the authority to give a wand-denied convicted criminal temporary permission to use a wand, even on Hogwarts grounds.

In which case Albus certainly had no authority to give such leave in the outside world. To give Hagrid permission to use his (broken) wand among (and against) Muggles!

Yet Hagrid had that permission when he arrived at the Hut-on-the-Rock. He had permission to use magic until he’d secured custody of Harry.

Who, then, gave him that permission?

Had to have been the Ministry, either Fudge or the appropriate under-secretary.

What did Albus say, to persuade the Ministry that a banned-from-using magic gamekeeper was the best choice to deliver the Hogwarts letter to the Boy-Who-Lived? That the Ministry must even go so far as to temporarily lift the ban on Hagrid’s using magic, to expedite that choice?

In my essay “The Keeper of the Keys,”
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/14464.html#cutid

I speculated on Albus’s hidden reasons for wanting Harry Potter’s introduction to the WW to be made by Hagrid.

But the reasons adduced there were such as Albus could never admit openly to anyone in the WW. What did he say to his followers in the Order, to skeptics at the Ministry, to persuade them that Hagrid (not himself, not Minerva, not Fudge, not a Ministry committee) was the best, the only choice, as emissary and escort to Harry Potter?

Well. Let’s look at Hagrid from the eyes of the Ministry. Or, more precisely, from the mouth of someone reared by those who have the ears of the Ministry. What Draco Malfoy knows about Hagrid before he meets him is, “He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he? ...I heard he’s a sort of savage—lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.”

Hagrid is also, of course, as huge as he is uncouth. Almost twice as tall as an adult man, and five times as wide. Terrifying when he’s in a temper, intimidating even when he’s not. Extremely conspicuous among Muggles.

Why would the Ministry want THAT to be the WW’s emissary to Harry Potter?

Or rather, why would they want that as their emissary to Harry Potter’s guardians? You know, the ones who haven’t let him answer his owls?

Those Muggles who had the inestimable privilege of rearing the Boy-Who-Lived as their own, and now apparently have the nerve to be trying to keep him from entering his proper world?

One could not find an ambassador better suited to push ALL of the Dursleys’ buttons. Blatantly, unmistakably a freak. A servant. A criminal. A savage. A drunk. And big enough to physically threaten Vernon without having to use magic.

I think Albus persuaded the Ministry to let him send Hagrid to, ah, persuade Harry Potter’s guardians to rethink their clear intention of keeping their ward well away from the Wizarding World, as a deliberate insult and affront to the Dursleys. The lowest servant at Hogwarts, the criminal expelled at age thirteen, can still force Muggles to accede to the Wizarding World’s will. They don’t deserve the honor of having their decisions set at naught by anyone higher placed.

One last thing. Anything known to the Ministry is also known to anyone who has spies—excuse me, connections—in the Ministry. If the Ministry knew Dumbledore was sending Hagrid as the escort to bring Harry Potter to the WW, so too did anyone else interested.

Like, you know, the former Death Eaters. Dumbledore was quite sure that some of the wizards currently protesting their unfaltering support for the Ministry had once been enthusiastic supporters of the WW’s most recent violent revolutionary…..

And he let them all know that Harry Potter would be visiting Diagon Alley on the thirty-first of July, escorted only by a wandless gamekeeper.

I say again,

Um.