Vanishing Cabinets

[sunnyskywalker]

Rowling and her overpowered, plot-breaking one-book wonders...

This is thanks to Jodel and her speculations on the Vanishing Cabinets in her essays “Minding the Gap” and “O, the Times Are Out of Joint!”

In “Minding the Gap,” she wonders whether Phineas Nigellus used the cabinets to pop back and forth between Hogwarts and home when he was headmaster, and whether his daughter Belvina, who married a Herbert Burke, acquired the “home” cabinet, which eventually ended up in Borgin & Burkes. She also notes that you could spin any number of other plausible stories.

Regardless of how it ended up that one of the pair was at Hogwarts and one in the shop… just how long was that back door into Hogwarts available before Peeves broke the Hogwarts cabinet in CoS? How many people knew about it, and who might have used it—and for what?

Jodel has one possibility for that, too. I snipped a bit of the text to focus on the parts most relevant to my own questions:

[T]he fact that the London cabinet was still in the shop in 1996 in no way disqualifies it from having been in the shop in 1938. Or for it to have been acquired at any time during the period that Tom was either employed there full time, or working there during the summer.

[…] Tom, however, is very likely to have come across the Hogwarts cabinet at some point while poking and prying into every nook and cranny, and recognized that it matched the one at Burke’s. […] Even more to the point, he would have had access to it in 1948, before he left Britain […] And if, as I now suspect, Tom was covertly slipping in and out of Hogwarts under Headmaster Dippet’s unsuspecting nose at his own convenience, then I think the rarely asked question of; “Where did Tom store his Horcruxes before he gave them to followers to hide?” has a fairly obvious answer.

[…] Consequently; Tom’s job interview was primarily a pretext for getting into the castle to discover where the transfer cabinet was currently located.

Checking whether the Cup and Locket were still in situ, adding the Diadem to the collection, and jinxing the DADA post (or the classroom), or Confunding the Hat, could all be better accomplished on a later visit, at some time when there would be no reason to believe that he had been anywhere near the place, and could work undisturbed. He had come to Hogsmeade with witnesses who could attest that he had met with Dumbledore, returned to the Hogs Head and departed in their company. As for getting back via the cabinet; he was fully conversant with the security at Burke’s. Getting access to the London cabinet was hardly beyond his capabilities.

(She postulates that after the prophecy, he sneaked in while Dumbledore was off legislating or something to retrieve all the Horcruxes but the diadem from the Room of Hidden Things.)

Ack. Could Tom really have known of a secret way into Hogwarts since the 1940s? If he did, what else might he have used it for? Secret meetings with prospective followers might have been too risky. What about Confunding and Imperiusing students and staff? Using bits of the castle’s magic we don’t know about? Undermining its magical defenses? Imperiusing the house-elves? Did he even need an agent in the castle to deploy the diary or assassinate Dumbledore?

The fact that he did send Snape in suggests that either he didn’t know about the cabinet or it didn’t allow him such free access that he felt he didn’t need anyone on the scene.

If the Marauders tapped into some existing magic of the castle to make that map, for example, there might be a tracking enchantment which detects intruders. (And alerts the headmaster via one of those silver instruments?) Perhaps Voldemort could only hide himself from that magic for short bursts of time. Just long enough to slip into the un-tracked Room of Requirement and back, maybe. In that case, having an agent in the castle for other missions would make things a lot easier. He’d reserve his cabinet use for special occasions or as a last resort, to improve his odds of no one detecting the intrusions and moving or sealing the cabinet.

He may have had plans for it, however. Perhaps after his (supposedly) loyal agent loosed the basilisk and killed Dumbledore, Voldemort was planning to lead his Death Eaters in through the cabinet and take over the castle before anyone outside had time to react. (And if Snape had failed to kill Dumbledore, Voldemort could hope that the old man had been shocked or weakened enough by the attempt to make him easy pickings.) Maybe the only reason that didn’t happen during the first war was because Voldemort was waiting until he’d weakened the Ministry enough that they wouldn’t have a hope of taking the castle back. Having Barty Jr. assassinate his father right as Voldemort was breaking into Hogwarts would give him a nice window, if you want to tie a few conspiracies together. Voldemort loves elaborate plots!

Or maybe he didn’t know about the cabinets. Either way, did anyone else?

Fred and George know that the cabinet is a Vanishing Cabinet, but they claim not to know where Montague might end up. Because it’s broken, or because they don’t know where the paired cabinet is? Had they not found the cabinet by 1992, when it was broken, and so never popped through to find out? Were they cautious enough not to jump into an unfamiliar Vanishing Cabinet that could send them anywhere?

Or had the twins been able to sneak into Knockturn Alley until Peeves broke the cabinet?

What about in the 1970s? Did the Marauders pop into Knockturn Alley whenever they pleased? And, um, never mentioned this massive security hole, even after they’d left school and didn’t need it available to sneak out anymore. Did they have a reason to sneak in? Did Peter, as a Death Eater rat? Or were they covering up something truly dreadful they’d done when they sneaked out—and if so, what?

Again: ack.