HBP Chapter Twenty-Six: "The Cave"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* I don’t know why, but whenever I read this chapter’s title it makes me think of My Immortal. “Harry was expecting Dumbledore to take him to the 3 bromsticks, but instead they went into………… DA CAVE!!!!!!!”

* Tom must have had some pretty awesome wizarding skills to magically get himself and two other people down the cliff at age ten. Harry, naturally, can’t do this after his sixth year at wizarding school, and has to climb down the muggle way.

* Wait, so how can you tell that a place has “known magic”? I don’t think we’ve been given any indication before that you can sense where a magical enchantment has been cast. Maybe it’s just a super special power that only Dumbledore has.

* So Harry and Dumbledore swim through the water to enter the cavern. For some reason this fact strikes me as rather Freudian.

* Dumbles works out where the concealed entrance is by running his hands along the cave walls, which again is something we’ve never seen before. What is this skill? And why isn’t it taught at Hogwarts? Maybe Dumbledore’s just been slipping curiosity-reducing potion into the Hogwarts pumpkin juice for the last x number of years, and doesn’t teach people how to recognise magic in order to reduce his chances of being found out. Naturally now that Voldemort’s come back the Headmaster needs to keep people even more docile than usual to stop them questioning his war strategy, so he’s been upping the dose over the past two years. That explains why nobody really cares about the attempted murders, and why Ron and Hermione don’t want to investigate the Draco mystery. (Harry does because his deep and enduring love for Draco is even stronger than the curiosity-killing potion.)

* “‘Harry, I’m sorry, I forgot,’ [Dumbledore] said.” Yeah, well done Professor, forgetting that your favourite pupil and the only hope of the wizarding world is catching hypothermia right next to you. What was that you said last chapter about caring for the safety of your students?

* “Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than physical injury.” Yeah, but if you’re going to have to fight off a horde of inferi, being physically injured isn’t that good a situation to be in.

* That said, a little bit of blood wouldn’t hurt you that much, especially not since you could magically heal yourself immediately afterwards. Why not make it a really big payment, like having to kill somebody to get in? That way no good guy could ever get to your Horcrux, because they’d all be too noble (alright, alright, stop laughing) to do so.

* I’m not sure why Dumbledore thinks that trying out a spell which is bound to fail and alerts whatever’s guarding the Horcrux to your presence is “a very good idea”, but oh well.

* “‘Magic always leaves traces,’ said Dumbledore.” Not that you need to know what these traces are, Harry, or how to recognise them, even though you’ll be spending most of next year hunting for a series of hidden magical objects, and being able to tell where somebody’s cast a spell would be very helpful for that sort of thing.

* Dumbles said that weight won’t be an issue when crossing, because Voldie would care more about magical power, and bewitch the boat to only take one wizard at a time. Erm… if you say so, Dumbledore. I mean, sure, maybe he has done that; then again, maybe he hasn’t, or maybe he has, but in such a way that the boat will still capsize if it’s overloaded. You’re taking an awful risk based on a guess about a boat you just discovered thirty seconds ago, aren’t you?

* Speaking of wild guesses: “I do not think you will count, Harry: you are underage and unqualified.” Gosh, how convenient that Voldemort tied his super security system to the government’s statutes about when you can and can’t perform magic unsupervised.

* “Voldemort’s mistake, Harry, Voldemort’s mistake… age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimated youth,” says the man whom even death can’t prevent from manipulating his teenage protégé.

* The corpses floating in the lake are pretty cool, but seem suspiciously similar to the Dead Marshes from The Lord of the Rings.

* I’m not sure why wizards would view death as this great unknown mystery, when their world is full of ghosts, sentient portraits of dead people, and a stone able to summon back spirits from the afterlife.

* Yes, Voldemort, guard your precious soul-fragment with creatures which can be defeated by a basic fire-making spell! That’ll work as a security arrangement.

* So OK, Dumbles, maybe Voldemort wouldn’t want to immediately kill somebody who tried to drink the potion, but again, you’re taking a big risk based on nothing more than speculation and guesswork.

* It would kind of serve Dumbledore right if it turned out that the potion was in fact a poison which takes immediate effect, and he keeled over and died as soon as the first drop touched his lips.

* Wait, so if Voldemort would want to question anybody who gets this far, why didn’t he set up some kind of alarm system to go off when somebody tampers with the potion? He clearly doesn’t check his Horcruxes regularly, so anybody who did get this far would probably be incapacitated and die slowly anyway, in which case why not just fill the basin with poison to be on the safe side?

* Also, why does Dumbledore not try just pouring the potion on the ground, or even using the goblet to scoop out the Horcrux? Or does the Gryffindor code say that only recklessly brave ideas can be considered?

* So Harry tries to get Dumbledore some water, and accidentally ends up raising a whole lake full of zombies against them. Oops. Hey Potter, why didn’t you try conjuring water straight into Dumbledore’s mouth? Sheesh.

* Dumbledore says it’s “quite understandable” that Harry panicked and forgot to use fire. He’s right, of course, but he’s also highlighting how woefully unprepared Harry is for finding Horcruxes. You’d want to train him up almost like you train soldiers, so that when things start getting hairy he can keep his cool and take appropriate measures almost without thinking about it. Sending Harry as he is now to go after Horcruxes is like dragging somebody from high school, putting a gun in their hands and drafting them into a special ops unit without any basic training.

* “‘I am not worried, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. ‘I am with you.’” Even though Harry just panicked in the face of an Inferi attack and Dumbledore had to save the day. What a toady that man is.

Comments

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Well, you're probably correct, but just to be fair, don't you think the Room of Hidden Things is probably hidden most especially from the Headmaster? In other words, I'm not sure it would ever be possible for a teacher, let alone the Headmaster, to ever enter that room. Perhaps that's why Albus made sure to mention it to Harry (as a restroom in need) in the first place? Part of the manipulation?

[oryx_leucoryx]

We know Sybil entered the room to hide her bottles, so teachers can certainly go there. Jodel thinks Dippet placed the Horcrux books there. Rowling claims Dumbles brought the Mirror of Erised out of there.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes, and we also know that Dumbledore entered the room when he was searching for a chamber pot.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Yes - Albus entered the Room of Requirement - that is not exactly the same as the version of the room that is the Room of Hidden Things.

I had missed the bit by JKR that said the Mirror of Erised was in the Room of Hidden Things - and just to confirm - she said that particular version of the Room of Requirement? or just that he got it from the RoR?

I also missed the stack of sherry bottles in the RoHT (hidden things), is it specified that she hid them there? Or just that she was exiting the door? Because if she was only using the RoR, she might have specified a specific hiding place that would give her a different room fromthe RoHT. Of course it also would be rather easy for Harry to miss seeing a bunch of sherry bottles when one could easily assume there would be a veritable mountain of firewhiskey empties left by naughty school kids.

I admit that it is quite possible that Albus was merely stupid or purposely avoiding to search that particular incarnation of the RoR, but it does seem to negate the purpose of the Room of Hidden Things if the school's authority can just waltz in anytime.

And I think I will probably disagree with the idea that books on Horcruxes were in there - at least while Tom was at school. To hide the diadem there when he returned to ask for the DADA spot pretty much implies he knew about the RoR as a student. I cannot imagine him not attempting to find those books there before leaving. The question only remains as to whether or not he realized the RoR could become the RoHT or whether he was merely looking for a place to hide the diadem and that was the first he ever saw the RoHT?

I would tend to think that he would have planned to hide the diadem there all along - once he learned from the Grey Lady that it was in Albania. IF he had ever seen the incarnation of the room that was the RoHT then I think he would have looked there for the books - just to be safe - before even asking Slughorn's opinion on quantity.

Truthfully, it would be especially silly of Voldy to hide the Diadem there IF he ever looked there and found the books. I think they were hidden elsewhere.

[oryx_leucoryx]

We know Sybil and Draco were briefly in the same physical room. Sybil entered to hide her bottles, while she was there she heard Draco hooting over his success (at making the cabinet work), and then everything went dark and she was ejected. The darkness must have been from Draco tossing Peruvian darkness powder. The room she was in was the same room into which Draco emerged from the cabinet, ie the ROHT.

I cannot imagine him not attempting to find those books there before leaving.

Well, according to Jodel he did, that was where he learned about Horcruxes. When Horace told him the topic was banned he knew to look for the books in the ROHT because that was where all banned books were kept.

I disagree with her bwecause IMO he already knew quite a lot about Horcruxes before speaking to Horace, he just needed an opinion about whether making more than one was feasible. (What he heard in Horace's response was that there was a moral objection but not a technical one.)

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Disregarding Oryx's and Mary's rebuttals, I'm not following your reasoning here. Why would any room in Hogwarts be warded against its legitimate headmaster and teaching staff? If anything, the staff should be the only people with guaranteed access to it. What leads you to assume otherwise? And if the Headmaster especially (why?) is barred from the room, just who was meant to access it?

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

If the ROR becomes whatever you need it to be, and you need it to be somewhere where you can hide all your incriminating stuff without the authorities finding out, then it's possible that teachers can't access the room in that form (unless they themselves need to hide something, which is how Sybil managed to get in there to hide her sherry bottles).

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

I expect most people are thinking, "I need to hide my sherry bottles/cigarettes/girly mags/incriminating potions text right now" without adding on a codicil that reads "forever and ever unto eternity amen." I doubt that sort of requirement would hold, anyway. As I recall, at least one member of the D.A. had to remain in the room in order for it to maintain its "D.A. hide-out" identity. My guess would be that once an individual who requires something goes away, the Room re-sets to neutral until the next person with a requirement comes along. Magic of this sort is much better if it has some limitations.

And I agree with annoni that if anyone could override others' requirements--especially student requirements--it would be the legitimate Headmaster, although he might need to have a fairly good idea what it was he needed to override.

[oryx_leucoryx]

So all Albus had to do was to decide he needed to hide something - from Severus, Filch, the Ministry, whoever. Anyone who wants to hide anything gains access to everything anyone ever tried to hide. Harry saw the cabinet (though he did not realize that was what Draco had been working on) despite the fact that Draco wanted it hidden.

Hmm. Maybe if Albus saw the diadem he wouldn't realize its significance? Harry did eventually make the connection, so if Tom's request to hide the diadem worked through mentally influencing people to not notice it such influence (if it existed) was limited in its scope.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Just because a tool is used for a particular purpose (e.g. hiding incriminating evidence) doesn't mean that function is what the tool was designed to do. And again, why would anyone create such a room without installing some kind of override feature to ensure they could always access whatever they needed?

My take on the RoHT is that it's essentially the ultimate lost-and-found/supply closet (and one with some incredibly powerful preservation charms built in at that). In addition to whatever cleaning supplies or food the elves stock it with, there has been a nigh endless stream of students and staff hiding their secrets there. I'd also wager that this is where the elves stash any lost, unwanted, or unclaimed items. Hogwarts was built ~1000 years ago. Meaning, depending on when the RoHT was built, it has had up to One Thousand Years to accumulate odds and ends of varying degrees of worth. Furniture that is worn out or merely out of style. Books considered unfit for the library or left behind by students. Etc. etc....

It is this vast supply of materials and items that lets the Room of Requirement function as it does. The person outside the Room paces, focusing on what they want, and the Room provides the items that best fit that request from its tremendous reserves. This would explain things like why books provided for the DA looked worn and second hand. They were. It also keeps the Room from being ridiculously overpowered. The only reason it seems unlimited at this point is because it has accumulated so. Much. STUFF over the centuries it has something to offer for almost anything anyone would want.

And it really is what the person wants that it responds to, not what they require. What Harry needed for the DA was somewhere Umbridge and her flunkeys couldn't enter, but what he presented to the Room was a desire to have somewhere private to learn defense. The RoR really is misnamed in that sense. (Though since "The Room of Desire" sounds like something out of erotica I suppose it's not the worst name name they could have picked...).

Because of this I'm not sure Riddle ever found the RoHT proper. He did not WANT to find a glorified supply closet. He wanted to find grand secrets and chambers that would open for no one but HIM. So he might have found the RoR, and he might he have figured out that it could supply him with items he couldn't have obtained anywhere else in the castle, but he might not have seen the Room's more mundane aspects if he really didn't want them to be there. The Room really is wonderfully obliging like that.

Dumbledore might have overestimated Riddle and assumed that of course he found the RoHT and of course he wouldn't stash a bit of his soul in the school junk closet. He'd use something grand, like the Chamber of Secrets - which was, in a roundabout way, where the Diary was meant to end up. No need to waste time searching the RoHT.... Or it could be that Dumbles doesn't know the full capabilities of the Room either. The elves might, but they have fairly limited needs of it themselves, and they usually don't volunteer information without prompting. How likely is it that Dumbles would stoop to ask house elves how his own castle works?

[josephinestone.livejournal.com]

Anyone can enter it, they just need to think they need something to hide.

That Harry didn't figure out what Draco thought to get into the room in sixth year baffled me.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Er, no. Not that simple. Getting into the RoHT did and could do nothing to help Harry find out what Draco was doing because there was nothing to tell him that the cabinet, out of all the myriad piles of junk, was what Draco was working on. Besides, if I'm right above about how the RoR works, it's possible that Draco never found the RoHT either. The Room just pulled the cabinet out from the rest of the junk pile and gave him a private place to work (i.e. it was just Draco, his tools, and the cabinet in the RoR) instead of Draco balancing on a pile of other junk to get at the cabinet.

[oryx_leucoryx]

So how do you explain Sybil's report of hearing Draco, everything going dark and then being ejected from the room? She clearly crossed paths with Draco, which suggests to me that they were both in the same room.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Given Draco's paranoid secrecy (even Crabbe and Goyle didn't know what he was up to) and the fact that Draco had successfully kept Harry out all year, I don't see him tripping up at the end and giving the Room such careless instructions that Sibyl could just stumble in while he was still working. What this says to me is that Draco tested the cabinet by moving through it to the other end himself, and the Room reset itself after he left. Draco had no reason to realize this would happen.

What happened next depended on how far shut the cabinet door in the RoR was. If Draco closed it behind him, or it swung even nearly shut on its hinges, then Draco's first clue that something was wrong would have been Sibyl calling out "Who's there?" Being rather understandably panicked, he may have thrown the Darkness Powder as soon as he returned to the first cabinet before he had even opened the door properly. As I recall he physically threw Sybil out of the room, so must have been quite close to the door; not much opportunity to trip over anything suspicious. Depending on how quickly his powder dissipated, he might still have still been blinded himself by the time he felt the coast was clear for him to leave.

If the door remained open, or he waited until the powder dissipated, he still might not thought he'd found anything noteworthy or worthwhile. That would depend on what he thought Sybil had requested of the Room and why the cabinet brought him out in the same Room despite Sybil's alterations.

The magic of the cabinet had already been shown to be capable of overriding or circumventing Hogwarts' protective magic by establishing the connection to the second cabinet in the first place. Assuming that it was also able to keep the connection open by forcing the Room to maintain the cabinet's position - regardless of other alterations - seems a reasonable inference to me.

If he thought Sybil was merely hiding something and this version of the Room was the default for anyone hiding anything, then that's a discovery. If he thought she had wanted to drink surrounded by nostalgic decor or something similar, but was already so drunk by the time she got to the Room it could only interpret her wishes as a mish-mashed pile of junk, then that's not so interesting.


_____



Idle pondering: Why does the RoHT distinguish between people wanting to hide things and people wanting to hide themselves? Is it triggered specifically by people looking for general long-term storage?

[oryx_leucoryx]

The magic of the cabinet had already been shown to be capable of overriding or circumventing Hogwarts' protective magic by establishing the connection to the second cabinet in the first place.

No. The two cabinets were already connected before the one on the Hogwarts side was moved into the ROHT. When Montague was pushed into the cabinet it had been standing in a 1st floor corridor, and the connection was already there. (Just incomplete, because the Hogwarts cabinet had been broken by Peeves a few years previously.) Obviously the two cabinets were designed to be connected, regardless of location, the ROR/ROHT was not related to their functionality.

(Why was the cabinet at Hogwarts in the first place? Jodel proposed that it was brought there by Phineas Nigelus Black, and the other one was originally located at 12GP, they served Black as a short-cut home, important for a headmaster who was also a family man. After his death his daughter Belvina Burke, nee Black, moved the 12GP cabinet to the Burke family business, whereas Dippet moved the Hogwarts cabinet out of the Head office. He may not have known that the cabinet was one of a pair.)

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

But the cabinets were still able to maintain that connection despite the mythically nigh-impregnable defenses Hogwarts is supposed to possess. Given that this is a painfully obvious way to sneak people in and out of the school and we don't see even a potential override mechanism, I'm still calling it a hole in the castle's defenses.

[oryx_leucoryx]

My point being the breach was unrelated to the action or function of the ROR. (And if Jodel is right and the cabinet was brought in by a headmaster that would explain why that was possible - a headmaster created the connection and his successor did not undo it, possibly because he was unaware of it.)

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

I think we're getting away from the point. You asked for a scenario where Draco might not have found/recognized the RoHT and I was trying to provide one. Do you think Draco would be so intimately knowledgeable of the precise mechanisms by which the cabinet and the Room function and interact that he'd understand everything that happened?

We don't know anything about who made the cabinets or what knowledge was passed on about them to whom, so we're free to head!canon whatever we'd like. Unless there's canon information I'm forgetting?

(Digression: if the RoR were generally known to students/faculty, shouldn't the Weasley twins have known about it before Harry showed it to them? I think it's probably pretty rare that people are pacing in that particular corridor focused precisely on what they want with each pass. Most people - in my experience - are either turning over several problems or a single, more complex issue if they're pacing back and forth. Chances are good they'd be thinking about different things each time they passed the door, not the triggering the Room. If they did trigger it, they'd have to then think to look inside it. And, of course, no thinks to ask the House Elves anything.)

[oryx_leucoryx]

The twins indeed knew about the ROR before Harry turned it into the DA practice room - it appeared to them as a broom closet once when they were escaping from Filch. (They may have found themselves attacked by Filch and Mrs Norris from different directions and paced back and forth looking for an escape.)

OK, back to Draco - I doubt he'd take Peruvian Darkness Powder with him but not the Hand of Glory. He was planning on using them together. So I'm sure he saw where the cabinet ended up. So he realized that when the cabinet is on the B&B side he had no control of the room, and others could enter it (and change it, if the room where he had been working was not the ROHT). Not sure how that influenced his actions later that night.

So: with my scenario, the only surprise was that others could enter the room. With yours, it was a double surprise - others could change the room into something else entirely and enter the room. The darkness powder solved the presence of others, assuming he already expected to end up in the ROHT. Not sure what protection he might have against the room becoming something entirely different.

[josephinestone.livejournal.com]

I never said it was that simple for Harry to figure out what Draco was up to.

It was that he never put two and two together about the room that frustrated me. After thinking so hard about what he might need to think to get into the room, and then himself thinking 'I need to hide something.' Hiding it, with the hopes of being able to find it again, and then never thinking...Draco is hiding something....I wonder if....(though it has been a long time since I read this, maybe he did at some point think that and just didn't have time?)

Though he would have got plenty of clues if he entered it with Draco in there working on the cabinet, which is what he was trying to do for a long time, and would have been able to do if he thought the right thing.

The way I saw it was that Draco found the RoHT during his fifth year when the DA was hiding in that room. It makes perfect sense for him to think "I need to hide something" in order to get into a room where he knows people are hiding. Then that summer after he was given his task he looked into what the cabinet did as he knew there already was one in Hogwarts. It would be pointless to try and smuggle one in, especially since it was "lost".

Draco had to have known that cabinet was there for the plot to make sense at all. He had no reason to be thinking I need a vanishing cabinet during his fifth year. So if that was how the room worked, Draco wouldn't have seen it his fifth year to seek it out over the summer. And saying that he did find the RoHT during his fifth year, he wouldn't have then changed what he thought to I need to work on fixing the vanishing cabinet, because that wasn't what he thought to get into the room in the first place.

The only way your theory (that Draco never found the RoHT) works is if he figured out that the room gave you what you want, and he asked for arbitrary things that the room just happened to always have laying around in it. That is the only way he would think that this room would give him something he had not previously seen in it. (or he randomly picked a vanishing cabinet as one of the things he asked for, and therefore would have seen it in the room to seek it out later.)

But it simply makes more sense that when he was trying to find out where the DA was hiding, that he thought he needed to hide something and found the RoHT. It's probably one of the more common rooms found...hence all the junk hidden there.

Plus, as others have said, we know that a Professor was in the room with Draco at the same time.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Draco found out about the Hogwarts cabinet from Montague. From what Montague said Draco realized the Hogwarts cabinet must have a pair at Borgin and Burkes, because from inside the cabinet Montague sometimes overheard conversations that took place at the store. When the twins pushed Montague into the cabinet it was still on the first floor. It isn't clear whether it was Draco or the house-elves that moved it into the ROHT.

[josephinestone.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't know/remember this. It must be from an earlier book if the twins were around.

Though, it would be a lot easier for Draco to move the cabinet if it was already in Hogwarts.

[oryx_leucoryx]

OK, for the detailed recap of canon info:

The two cabinets are first mentioned in COS: When Harry ends up at B&B he hides in a cabinet when he hears the Malfoys talking. Later Peeves breaks the Hogwarts cabinet, which is located on the 1st floor, at the request of Nearly-Headless-Nick, in order to create a distraction for Harry.

In OOTP Montague tries to take points off the twins and they stuff him into the cabinet. A day or two later he re-emerges in a toilet and appears to be brain-damaged until much later in the year. But according to what Draco says on the Tower, Montague had told him (possibly on the train, on the way home) that from within the cabinet he could sometimes hear sounds from the Hogwarts corridor and sometimes from B&B. So Draco realized there were two connected cabinets, which he could use to circumvent the Hogwarts security. All he needed to do was to stabilize the connection. Draco tried to get Borgin to tell him how to do it, Borgin claimed he couldn't without seeing the other cabinet, Draco threatened Borgin with Fenrir (and possibly his Dark Mark). We don't know if later Borgin provided any information, but starting from early in the school year Draco had been skipping homework and avoiding Quidditch. I'm guessing that either the house-elves put the cabinet in the ROHT because it was faulty and dangerous or Draco put it there so he could work in quiet.