What Lucius Knew About the Diary
Jun. 14th, 2021 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalker posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslock...and when he knew it.
I was reading through the comments to one of Terri’s old fics, and got sucked back into the probably-irresolvable tangle of questions about what Lucius was really planning during Chamber of Secrets. Piecing together some of the comments and one or two of my old speculations, we might at least be able to come up with a mostly-coherent hypothesis for one of those questions: what exactly did Lucius think the Diary was, and what did he think it would do?
It’s easy to assume that Lucius must have known what we know by the end of the book: that Tom Riddle was Voldemort’s original name, that he really had opened the Chamber of Secrets, that there really was a monster and the monster was a basilisk, and so forth. Lucius must have been a very important and trusted Death Eater to know all that!
But imagine it’s 1981, and you’re Voldemort. Just how much of that would you tell your slippery friend? Remember, Lucius doesn’t have to actually do anything except pass the Diary on to someone else. Maybe not even to a chosen victim, in the original plan; he might have been told to give it to Severus some weekend and let Severus plant it on a kid. If Lucius is just the delivery boy, how much does he really need to know?
By 1992, he clearly knows that it will at least seem that there is an Heir of Slytherin who has opened the Chamber of Secrets and released a monster. He knows this appeared to happen back in 1943, and told Draco as much. If he knows Hagrid was a suspect then, he didn’t tell Draco that part. (It’s possible that Fudge learned this from old Ministry records and told Lucius after the 1992 attacks started rather Lucius knowing all along.)
He doesn’t let on whether he knew from the start that the monster was a basilisk. And if he did, he was awfully reckless letting his only son and heir go to school with a basilisk roaming the halls. We know he strongly prefers that Draco stay alive, and basilisks don’t distinguish their victims based on blood status. But Draco doesn’t act like he’s been warned to keep safely in the middle of a crowd at all times and carry a mirror, does he? Well, maybe Lucius did warn him, and Draco ignored it… which Lucius could have predicted, easily, taking us back to Lucius being extraordinarily reckless. And Narcissa, if she also knew, because Draco says that his mother talked his father out of sending him to Durmstrang. Would she have done that if she thought Draco might run into a basilisk? Would Lucius have let her talk him out of it if he knew?
Also, if Lucius did know, what was his plan once he got the Board of Governors to oust Dumbledore? Was he going to tell Fudge, “Incidentally, I think the monster’s a basilisk—don’t ask me how I figured it out when no one else has—and I have also intuited who is controlling it based on no evidence whatsoever.” Somehow, I can’t see even Lucius thinking that was a good plan. He seems to have believed that he could appear to solve the problem once Dumbledore was gone without sounding as fishy as a seafood market.
So I’m inclined to think that he didn’t know it was a basilisk. What did he think it was, then?
And here’s where I think we should back up and ask whether Lucius thought there really was a monster at all. He knows the Diary is cursed somehow, yes. But we know there are books in the Potterverse which do things like compelling you to keep reading. Maybe he thought the curse was more on the order of Imperius-in-a-Book: the Diary would make the child write messages on the walls and curse other students (the Diary would impart the knowledge of whatever curses were required).
That would be a much easier problem for Lucius to handle. Draco would be safe, since the cursed student would know Draco was a pureblood. Lucius could arrange for an inquiry, make sure he was involved, and contrive to find something suspicious about Ginny which would “warrant further investigation.” They’d find a cursed Muggle diary in her belongings, and problem solved! Such a simple solution, and gosh, why didn’t Dumbledore figure this out if he’s so brilliant? Perhaps removing him from his position was an even better decision that we realized… old man’s obviously lost his touch…
What about the Heir business and the previous time the Chamber was supposedly opened? Dumbledore says that Voldemort acted through an intermediary “this time” as if everyone knows the Heir was on the spot last time, but is everyone sure the Heir didn't act through an intermediary last time too? If Lucius thinks the Diary is Imperius-in-a-Book, presumably it was enchanted back then and made some child (perhaps it was Hagrid after all!) curse their classmates. The person behind it used the legends of Slytherin’s monster waiting in the Chamber of Secrets to purge the school as symbols of the noble cause, but that doesn’t mean that the Chamber really was opened or that the monster was real. Intelligent people recognize that it’s a metaphor, Lucius might have nodded sagely to himself.
Or maybe he thought there was some non-basilisk monster in a real secret chamber which the book could Imperius the child into releasing and controlling. But that raises awkward questions about what Lucius thought the monster was and why he was so confident that it wouldn’t hurt purebloods even by accident.
And the Heir? Voldemort might have told Lucius that he was the Heir of Slytherin. But that doesn’t mean he also revealed that he was Tom Riddle. In fact, he might have implied the story I once posited he spread to the rest of the wizarding public: that he killed Tom Riddle because the boy was a potential enemy. (And Voldemort did kill Tom… from a certain point of view.) The Heir of Slytherin was behind the plot, yes… but from a distance, through an intermediary.
What Lucius might have gathered from Voldemort’s explanation was this: back in 1943, Voldemort took his first step in his rise to power by enchanting the Diary and giving it to Tom Riddle. Perhaps Tom was initially on board with the plan, and Voldemort hoped to recruit him. Tom, controlled by the Diary, put up a message that the Heir of Slytherin had arrived to cleanse the school, cursed several students, and set up Hagrid as a fall guy. If no one bought Hagrid as the culprit, Tom would be the backup fall guy (not that Voldemort told him that, but the boy was bright enough to work it out). That turned out not to be necessary. The test run frightened the school and killed a Muggle-born, but the time wasn’t ripe for a full-on takeover attempt—this was just the opening salvo. Voldemort retrieved the Diary to use again at a later date. He asked Tom which students were most supportive of the Heir’s campaign of terror, and recruited them a few years later. But the incident was too much for Tom, who refused to be involved in any further plots. Voldemort eventually killed Tom when Tom not only firmly refused to be recruited, but threatened to tell someone what he knew.
Whatever discussion Lucius and Narcissa had, and the incomplete scraps Lucius passed to Draco, might not make it clear to an eavesdropping Dobby that the Heir wasn’t actually around this time and that Lucius didn’t believe the Chamber held a real monster. Or maybe Dobby figured a student cursed to attack their schoolmates was just as dangerous to the Great Harry Potter (a half-blood, don’t forget) as a monster. As for his clue about the Dark Lord before he could be freely named… well, if Dobby knew that Voldemort originally gave Lucius the Diary, he might originally have meant that yes, Voldemort was connected to the plot, but no, he wasn’t behind it—one of his followers was. Once Dumbledore referred to the Diary as one of Voldemort’s old school things, Dobby figured out that Voldemort was Tom and revised accordingly in his explanation to Harry. Luckily the warning was still accurate, even if not the way he thought originally.
Whatever Voldemort told Lucius originally, Lucius might have worked out more during the decade he had the Diary and Voldemort was gone. Maybe he did float the idea to Narcissa that the Dark Lord hadn’t used and killed Tom Riddle, but had been Tom, and Dobby ran with that.
I still don’t think Lucius knew about the basilisk, though. That was probably a nasty surprise.
I was reading through the comments to one of Terri’s old fics, and got sucked back into the probably-irresolvable tangle of questions about what Lucius was really planning during Chamber of Secrets. Piecing together some of the comments and one or two of my old speculations, we might at least be able to come up with a mostly-coherent hypothesis for one of those questions: what exactly did Lucius think the Diary was, and what did he think it would do?
It’s easy to assume that Lucius must have known what we know by the end of the book: that Tom Riddle was Voldemort’s original name, that he really had opened the Chamber of Secrets, that there really was a monster and the monster was a basilisk, and so forth. Lucius must have been a very important and trusted Death Eater to know all that!
But imagine it’s 1981, and you’re Voldemort. Just how much of that would you tell your slippery friend? Remember, Lucius doesn’t have to actually do anything except pass the Diary on to someone else. Maybe not even to a chosen victim, in the original plan; he might have been told to give it to Severus some weekend and let Severus plant it on a kid. If Lucius is just the delivery boy, how much does he really need to know?
By 1992, he clearly knows that it will at least seem that there is an Heir of Slytherin who has opened the Chamber of Secrets and released a monster. He knows this appeared to happen back in 1943, and told Draco as much. If he knows Hagrid was a suspect then, he didn’t tell Draco that part. (It’s possible that Fudge learned this from old Ministry records and told Lucius after the 1992 attacks started rather Lucius knowing all along.)
He doesn’t let on whether he knew from the start that the monster was a basilisk. And if he did, he was awfully reckless letting his only son and heir go to school with a basilisk roaming the halls. We know he strongly prefers that Draco stay alive, and basilisks don’t distinguish their victims based on blood status. But Draco doesn’t act like he’s been warned to keep safely in the middle of a crowd at all times and carry a mirror, does he? Well, maybe Lucius did warn him, and Draco ignored it… which Lucius could have predicted, easily, taking us back to Lucius being extraordinarily reckless. And Narcissa, if she also knew, because Draco says that his mother talked his father out of sending him to Durmstrang. Would she have done that if she thought Draco might run into a basilisk? Would Lucius have let her talk him out of it if he knew?
Also, if Lucius did know, what was his plan once he got the Board of Governors to oust Dumbledore? Was he going to tell Fudge, “Incidentally, I think the monster’s a basilisk—don’t ask me how I figured it out when no one else has—and I have also intuited who is controlling it based on no evidence whatsoever.” Somehow, I can’t see even Lucius thinking that was a good plan. He seems to have believed that he could appear to solve the problem once Dumbledore was gone without sounding as fishy as a seafood market.
So I’m inclined to think that he didn’t know it was a basilisk. What did he think it was, then?
And here’s where I think we should back up and ask whether Lucius thought there really was a monster at all. He knows the Diary is cursed somehow, yes. But we know there are books in the Potterverse which do things like compelling you to keep reading. Maybe he thought the curse was more on the order of Imperius-in-a-Book: the Diary would make the child write messages on the walls and curse other students (the Diary would impart the knowledge of whatever curses were required).
That would be a much easier problem for Lucius to handle. Draco would be safe, since the cursed student would know Draco was a pureblood. Lucius could arrange for an inquiry, make sure he was involved, and contrive to find something suspicious about Ginny which would “warrant further investigation.” They’d find a cursed Muggle diary in her belongings, and problem solved! Such a simple solution, and gosh, why didn’t Dumbledore figure this out if he’s so brilliant? Perhaps removing him from his position was an even better decision that we realized… old man’s obviously lost his touch…
What about the Heir business and the previous time the Chamber was supposedly opened? Dumbledore says that Voldemort acted through an intermediary “this time” as if everyone knows the Heir was on the spot last time, but is everyone sure the Heir didn't act through an intermediary last time too? If Lucius thinks the Diary is Imperius-in-a-Book, presumably it was enchanted back then and made some child (perhaps it was Hagrid after all!) curse their classmates. The person behind it used the legends of Slytherin’s monster waiting in the Chamber of Secrets to purge the school as symbols of the noble cause, but that doesn’t mean that the Chamber really was opened or that the monster was real. Intelligent people recognize that it’s a metaphor, Lucius might have nodded sagely to himself.
Or maybe he thought there was some non-basilisk monster in a real secret chamber which the book could Imperius the child into releasing and controlling. But that raises awkward questions about what Lucius thought the monster was and why he was so confident that it wouldn’t hurt purebloods even by accident.
And the Heir? Voldemort might have told Lucius that he was the Heir of Slytherin. But that doesn’t mean he also revealed that he was Tom Riddle. In fact, he might have implied the story I once posited he spread to the rest of the wizarding public: that he killed Tom Riddle because the boy was a potential enemy. (And Voldemort did kill Tom… from a certain point of view.) The Heir of Slytherin was behind the plot, yes… but from a distance, through an intermediary.
What Lucius might have gathered from Voldemort’s explanation was this: back in 1943, Voldemort took his first step in his rise to power by enchanting the Diary and giving it to Tom Riddle. Perhaps Tom was initially on board with the plan, and Voldemort hoped to recruit him. Tom, controlled by the Diary, put up a message that the Heir of Slytherin had arrived to cleanse the school, cursed several students, and set up Hagrid as a fall guy. If no one bought Hagrid as the culprit, Tom would be the backup fall guy (not that Voldemort told him that, but the boy was bright enough to work it out). That turned out not to be necessary. The test run frightened the school and killed a Muggle-born, but the time wasn’t ripe for a full-on takeover attempt—this was just the opening salvo. Voldemort retrieved the Diary to use again at a later date. He asked Tom which students were most supportive of the Heir’s campaign of terror, and recruited them a few years later. But the incident was too much for Tom, who refused to be involved in any further plots. Voldemort eventually killed Tom when Tom not only firmly refused to be recruited, but threatened to tell someone what he knew.
Whatever discussion Lucius and Narcissa had, and the incomplete scraps Lucius passed to Draco, might not make it clear to an eavesdropping Dobby that the Heir wasn’t actually around this time and that Lucius didn’t believe the Chamber held a real monster. Or maybe Dobby figured a student cursed to attack their schoolmates was just as dangerous to the Great Harry Potter (a half-blood, don’t forget) as a monster. As for his clue about the Dark Lord before he could be freely named… well, if Dobby knew that Voldemort originally gave Lucius the Diary, he might originally have meant that yes, Voldemort was connected to the plot, but no, he wasn’t behind it—one of his followers was. Once Dumbledore referred to the Diary as one of Voldemort’s old school things, Dobby figured out that Voldemort was Tom and revised accordingly in his explanation to Harry. Luckily the warning was still accurate, even if not the way he thought originally.
Whatever Voldemort told Lucius originally, Lucius might have worked out more during the decade he had the Diary and Voldemort was gone. Maybe he did float the idea to Narcissa that the Dark Lord hadn’t used and killed Tom Riddle, but had been Tom, and Dobby ran with that.
I still don’t think Lucius knew about the basilisk, though. That was probably a nasty surprise.
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no subject
Date: 2021-06-14 09:59 pm (UTC)I never thought Lucius truly believed that there was Slytherin Monster (or at very least that it still existed). I cannot imagine someone so invested in his family's legacy to the point he was joining wizarding KKK, risking his only heir to a creature so fickle as Basilisk. IMHO he probably thought the pre Voldie war Slytherin Heir victims were, in fact Voldemort's victims- obviously the dark lord was smart enough to make everyone think Salazar's nasty surprise is still around.
I think we have to backtrack a bit to understand Lucius' thinking process.
When he does the diary switcheroo?
He is under Arthur's investigation. He needs to get rid of his... more questionable trinkets. He doesn't know what it exactly does but knows its purpose- to be given to Hogwarts student to cause mayhem. To me it sounds like mind control. So perhaps that is what Voldie-war-I-Lucius thought when he got it. But let's face it CoS!Lucius has no idea there is Voldiewraith out there waiting for willing bodies. In his PoV if the puppet master was cut out, there should be no problems with the puppet.
So what would happen if you send a cursed object to "the most secure place in Britain"? Well, the person who brought it there should be under stern investigation. I can just imagine Lucius face on the second day of the school year when there wasn't an article in the Prophet about a daughter of a ministry official bringing a cursed muggle object to the school.
Then around November, he might have heard from Draco about Mrs. Norris. He probably dismissed it as students being students. Then he might have heard about the students. And here is the problem- I cannot imagine Malfoys hearing about what happens in Hogwarts and keeping Draco here.
Perhaps Dumbledore monitors students' correspondence? It certainly explains why the troll incident never made out of the school. Malfoys certainly felt safe enough to leave Draco at the school during winter holidays.
So maybe Lucius didn't know about attacks on the students until it leaked out to the MoM? And then swiftly came onto Dumbledore since obviously whatever curse Voldie laid on the book was supposed to dethrone him? So it should deactivate once he is out of Hogwarts?
I have another theory about Tom Riddle=Voldemort problem.
Somehow almost nobody other than Albus and Horace make the connection between Tom and Voldemort, which always weirded me out. But we also know Voldemort dabbled in foreign magics. What if, beside Horcruxes and whatever spells made him look snake-like, he invested his skill points in secrecy spells?
My theory goes like this: Tom used 2 different secrecy spells. The first one prevents his followers from sharing what he considers sensitive information. I imagine it's intention-based, so if the spell doesn't sense you wanting to betray Tom it doesn't act up- it would explain how Snape can pass sensitive information while the Ministry has such a hard time gathering info from DEs. The other spell prevents anyone who doesn't know Tom=Voldemort from making the connection. Explains why Albus can show off his knowledge and everybody goes *le gasp!*
As for diary being property of T.M. Riddle? Well, Riddle isn't pureblood name and you have to smuggle dark object somehow ;P
no subject
Date: 2021-06-19 12:14 am (UTC)But I think it also works if Lucius sincerely believes the diary will basically Imperius its user into cursing other students only according to criteria set by the diary-curse: that is, the diary makes the user attack only people they know to be half-bloods or Muggle-borns. Everyone knows Draco is spotlessly pureblooded, so he's safe. Ginny will eventually be caught with a cursed diary with all the great (for Lucius) political consequences of that. I could believe that Lucius does think it would work this way. After all, if the cursed object makes its victim fake an "Heir of Slytherin" campaign to purge the school of non-purebloods, obviously the curse will make sure the victim really does only attack non-purebloods to make it convincing, right?
Also an interesting idea about secrecy spells! We know they have spells to make people not notice physical objects, like the Knight Bus. And of course there's the confusing Fidelius Charm which never seems to work the same way twice. Other information-concealing spells seems plausible. Your idea of a spell that prevents people from connecting dots sounds promising. They can learn the information if it's right in front of them, and maybe could figure it out if they were really determined, but otherwise just... don't think about it. The whole idea kind of slides out of everyone's awareness. That kind of tampering would be hard to detect, and so should work pretty well.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-27 12:24 am (UTC)Poor Minerva. If Albus spends so much time monitoring students' correspondence I can only imagine how much of his duties end up in her to-do box :/
Hmmm, here lies the problem- we have no idea how mind magic works in the series. The only instances of "enchantments" or mind-controlling spells involve users who (using very loose definition) lives.
Another problem arises with Voldie's definition of "pureblood". We know he kept a half-blood in his Inner Circle and there were (according to Hagrid) rumours of his attempts to recruit Lily and James. And obviously, he went after pureblood families who went against him.
How can Lucius be sure he and his family won't be marked as "enemy of the dark lord" by the enchantment if he avoided jail via bribes and claiming he was mind controlled?
I like to think there is that one investigation reporter who has huge cork-board with all information they gathered, trying to discover Voldemort's real identity. They have over 30 profiles on the board, but Tom's has multiple sticky notes- the most damming evidence for his connection to Voldemort being his facial bone structure.
At some point, the reporter comes to the conclusion that working in retail made Voldie insane enough to topple the government ;P
no subject
Date: 2021-06-27 02:31 am (UTC)Yeah, mind magic is one of those big handwavy "don't ask how it works or everything falls apart" bits of the series. It gives us a lot of leeway, but also means that probably no explanation will entirely work, which is really frustrating.
Hm. I know I've joked about Dumbledore spiking the students' morning pumpkin juice with a curiosity-suppressing potion, but maybe something like that really could be plausible? Or, maybe more likely, it's a "trust Dumbledore" potion (much more broadly useful). He manages to work something like, "Voldemort's identity is, alas, undetermined" into conversations whenever appropriate, and people are oddly inclined to take his word for it and not give it more thought. Even people he didn't say it to directly might hear it from other people and go, "Well, if even Dumbledore doesn't know, it's an insoluble mystery!" And then if he does choose to reveal the connection, of course it seems obvious once he says it--they're inclined to trust his word.
(ETA: I have the same problem with this as with Terri's hypothetical "Confidere" spell, incidentally: it seems like too much work. Dumbledore as cult leader seems simpler--we know people like that can get away with a lot of mental manipulation in the real world. But how many thousands of people don't connect the dots in over thirty years? Really? This is another reason I like the idea that they all have an alternate explanation for what happened to Tom Riddle: if they're all pretty sure they know what happened--Voldemort killed the poor but handsome and talented orphan who might challenge him, obviously--there's less reason for them to think to look more closely at him. Also, more than a few of those people who disappeared during Voldemort's early years were probably the people most likely to know enough to work it out. Like the predecessor of that poor journalist, which is why the current one keeps the bulletin board very secret.)
Working in any public service job is enough to give people start thinking about how the world is just broken, man, if only I could tell everyone how to behave and make them listen for a change! Think maybe Florean Fortescue disappearing means he faked his death and ran away to change his face and start a new career as the next Dark Lord?
no subject
Date: 2021-06-27 07:31 pm (UTC)Though I wouldn't be surprised if he did spike meals of selected individuals. It certainly would explain Harry's more bizarre swings in priorities.
The thing is, most people won't wonder what happened to Tom. Sure he was a good student and Prefect, attended local Toast Masters meetings. Still, he never broadcasted his existence like young Albus. We don't hear about his correspondence with famous scholars or writing articles for professional publications. And after graduation, he took a job below his qualifications.
It's like he wanted to gain enough influence to get the resources he wanted and then slowly fade away from public view so he could come back on his own terms. He probably wanted people to assume that the Slytherin muggleborn student had a hard crash with reality after his graduation and ended up returning to the muggle world.
And the thing is, Voldemort doesn't need to fabricate Tom's fate. He just needs to make sure whoever digs into Voldemort's past stumbles upon background he has control over. I like to pretend Voldemort has this whole fake background where he is the son of an impoverished French pureblood family who was homeschooled. After his family's tragic demise, he packs up his possessions and moves to the UK. Oh, and the fake persona probably starts his feud with WW's government because the person processing his immigration paperwork was asshat to him ;P
But yeah, I imagine Voldemort did some "cleaning" after his interview with Albus.
Pfff, bold of you to assume he wasn't already a Dark Lord. He used his shop to gather information and recruit underlings. Oh, and laundry money for his future projects. When Voldemort started to terrorise WW's population, he used this opportunity to relocate his operations and ditch his birth name ;P
no subject
Date: 2021-06-28 01:45 pm (UTC)They might not wonder about Tom as a general thing, but if someone's looking at disappearances generally for clues, or if someone thinks there's something familiar about Voldemort's turns of phrase which they can't quite place, it helps if they're sure they know what happened to Tom. Just in case.
I like the addition of the fake French background! Voldemort totally would have elaborate backup plans. Have a fake reason for Tom's disappearance and a fake original identity, and he's covered either way. (I bet his imaginary immigration official was rude specifically about French people, which everyone would believe.)
Ooh, and I bet Fortescue could slip slow-acting poisons into food and sweets sold by other shop owners. Probably no one realizes it's poison (because it's slow acting), but if they do, it's nothing to do with everyone's favorite ice cream man!
Why does Fortescue know so much about medieval witch hunts? Does he hold a grudge against Muggles for that? Is he planning ahead for what he sees as the inevitable magical/Muggle conflict? Or is he more like a Dark Crime Lord, unconcerned about larger issues and out for whatever he can get?
no subject
Date: 2021-06-28 06:09 pm (UTC)Then in 1957, he died of Asian flu at the ripe age of 28. Truly an ironic tragedy.
Edit: Yeah it was over him specifically being French. The fake identity was moving out of France not long after WWII. Wanting to get away from painful memories and looking for job opportunities he had frontal collision with British bureaucracy and this particular official's xenophoby.
Now, now, Fortescue knows perfectly well that pointless violence and murder is bad for the Business TM. He won't murder his competition like that uncouth French pansy. He is a proud Brit after all! And proud British tradition is solving feuds by writing strong-worded letters to officials. And oh look it isn't his fault the new guy doesn't follow sanitary regulations. After all, why would he plant cockroaches and rats? He is just a humble ice cream salesman!
Jokes aside, I imagine Florean would operate more like Mafioso. His "Dark Crime Lord" persona has relatively good relations with other shopkeepers and business owners as long as they pay him small donations. It's all voluntary! When someone starts to sniff around or doesn't want to cooperate with him, he begins with legal measures (after all, why break the law if you can effectively and cleanly solve the problem with legal methods), then depending on the outcome, he escalates his methods.
He also has quite a profitable potion ingredients smuggling operation and annual auction of well-bred and trained House Elves- only for invited patrons.
As for his history knowledge- at young age Florean decided that knowledge is power, and what is the better way to make smart decisions than learning from someone's else mistakes? At one point, he applied for the History of Magic position at Hogwarts. Albus didn't hire him because it's much cheaper to keep his ghost slave and funnel Bin's salary into his alchemy research budget- Philosopher's Stone research isn't cheap! Florean understands, there are no hard feelings. Nonetheless, he keeps records of his more... interesting clients' purchases well documented just in case.
This was fun writing exercise (●'◡'●)
no subject
Date: 2021-06-29 03:43 am (UTC)Just think how often "legal measures" could mean an anonymous tip to the Aurors that someone seems to have some unsavory associates, and something they said about their purchasing procedures sounded really sketchy. Let them do the perfectly-legal intimidation! I expect a lot of people tried to settle feuds or speed up an inheritance this way during the first war, and a Dark Crime Lord could have made really good use of the DMLE's trigger-happiness and disregard for due process.
True story: I once had a nightmare about suffering Binns's fate, dying and then showing up for work as a ghost. I like my job and coworkers well enough, but that was depressing.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-29 03:14 pm (UTC)I mean, what Binns is going to spend his salary on? Ghostly brandy to drink during debates with his fellow ghostly scholars? Also, what is the legal status of ghosts? Are they treated like objects? Magical creatures? Fellow witches and wizards? Can you get your inheritance if your ancestor stubbornly refuses to move on?
I hope your nightmare-boss wasn't researching immortality ;P
I don't like the scenario where Tom is killed by Voldemort because he challenged him to a duel. Voldemort goes after Harry because a) he is a madman, b) it's personal and c) he is a drama queen. If early in his career he establishes he will humour any village idiot who wants to duel him instead of ordering his underlings to exterminate the pest, he undermines his reputation as a leader. You have underlings to do tasks below your standing.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-03 12:23 am (UTC)Ghost law must be a really weird specialty. I like it.
No, not challenging to a duel, knowing too much and being a potential future threat Voldemort wants to take out early! Like, if Tom took up Slughorn's networking offers, he might be the guy they called to settle their Dark Lord problem the way Dumbledore was last time. And if he was involved in the diary plot and later regretted it, he knows way too much. Can't have that. So threaten him, and he takes a job at a shop instead of starting his rise to Minister. Good. But then...well, know one knows exactly what happened next. Maybe Tom stumbled on something else Voldemort didn't want him to know while chatting up people with connections and cool ancient relics. Maybe Voldemort risked trying to use Tom in another plot, and it didn't turn out well. Maybe Tom had an attack of consciences and was planning to tell everything he knew, and Voldemort found out somehow. Regardless, Voldemort obviously doesn't want anyone asking questions, so probably best to leave the matter alone.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-03 12:53 am (UTC)One of the reasons I used muggle world for Tom's demise is just how easy it is for a wizard to adjust a group of muggles to the narrative he wants to weave. And how hard it would be for an average wizard investigating the deed to uncover the truth.
With Tom being an uneasy-associate-to-be-offed or uncomfortable witness, anyone investigating can hit the moment where the lead ends, and they switch to another source/theory. There would be no witnesses or evidence that could confirm Tom's death, so there is space for doubt.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-05 04:00 am (UTC)If Tom were the only person possibly connected to Voldemort who disappeared, that might look odd. But supposedly there were multiple early disappearances, possibly even many of them. If all of them have some possible connection to Voldemort, Tom doesn't stand out. So there's a diary with his name on it that was maybe involved in some plot, and some people think the Dark Lord wanted to take him out before he became a threat. But there's also that junior Wizengamot member from an old family who suddenly vanished--another enemy taken out early, or possible candidate for the Dark Lord's true identity? And there was that journalist who was digging into all the old families' dirt who also disappeared--obviously he had lots of enemies, but maybe he took his blackmail material with him when he forged a new identity and used it to manipulate and/or pressure those families in various ways as he built his following. And so on. If Tom's just one of a crowd, he doesn't stand out as the obvious candidate. Heck, Voldemort could have created fake backstory deaths for all of these people, not just himself, so that they all look equally like dead ends or cover-ups, depending on how suspicious someone is. He likes elaborate plots!
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Date: 2021-06-27 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-21 07:35 am (UTC)Fascinating discussion! I'm now wondering if Lucius knew about the diary's connection to the chamber of secrets at all. Apparently Voldemort was at the hight of his power when he gave it to him and didn't expect any problems any time soon, least of all to be actually killed, prophecised baby or not. So he could have just as well have given it to Lucius for safekeeping without giving him any information or further instruction, intending to use it himself or give more orders later on. Then it's up to how much Lucius researched it and what he managed to find out and piece together himself.
I'm also wondering if Lucius actually intended or expected for the diary to make it to Hogwarts. He picked a day when a lot of people were in Diagon Alley for Lockhart's book signing, but it's hard to say if he hoped to run into the Weasleys specifically or mainly just wanted to get rid of the diary and decided dropping it on some unsuspecting bystander would be less traceable than selling it to Burgin after all. And there were still about two until the start of the school year. He could have expected the Weasleys to check their children's school stuff, or to notice their daughter was behaving differently, or Ginny to tell her parents about the odd diary, or something. And Arthur would still have to explain having a dark artefact, even if it wouldn't have the same impact as after a year of trouble - though that might also lessen the probability of a serious investigation into its origins.
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Date: 2021-08-21 04:50 pm (UTC)And good point that he might not have even been sure the diary would make it to school. He seems to have told Draco something, since Draco knows that there was a "last time" and that a girl died, but he might have said that in a letter after the attacks started rather than during the summer. Maybe the whole things was a big, "Whoops... I mean, I meant to do that. Hold on while I scramble to take advantage of the opportunity..."
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Date: 2021-08-23 03:03 pm (UTC)Yeah, Draco knows some basics, but that could also be because one of his grandparents who was at Hogwarts at the time told him the story at some point, it doesn't necessarily have to be connected to current events.
But thinking about it some more, that still leaves the question: What was Lucius' actual plot? Dobby overheard something about Hogwarts, and after how Dumbledore handled Draco reporting a crime - sending him -a first year!- into the forbidden forest in the middle of the night to look for something killing unicorns that turned out to be Voldemort himself (which the headmaster at the very least suspected by that point) with the criminal he reported and the students who'd already covered up that crime and who promptly left him behind there - I can very well imagine all the Malfoys deciding it's time to do something. (That they didn't go public with that alone might say something about how they judged their own power and standing versus Dumbledore's. Did they try complaining to the responsible authority before?) Did Lucius get on the Board of Governors to collect more instances of blatant disregard of student safety, neglect of duties, dubious to criminal activity etc?
If we go with Abraxas dying of dragon pox that winter it might explain Lucius using the diary-plot to strenghten his own plans too heavy-handedly and ending up incriminating himself, losing what credibility he had and getting ever less careful and subtle in the following years.
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Date: 2021-08-23 03:38 pm (UTC)What Lucius actually planned and what he actually said that Dobby overheard is so frustrating to try to work out in a way that makes sense. Whatever it was, he must have thought his plan could work. He's arrogant, but I can't see even Lucius thinking he could get away with somehow "figuring out" that the monster was a basilisk and defeating it while also ensuring that Draco never ran across it, all from a distance.
That's one reason I think it works if Lucius didn't know about the basilisk. If he thinks a student will be cursed to fake mysterious attacks on known-Muggleborns, well, he can probably solve that without looking too suspicious in the process. Having a plan that he thought was nicely under control blow up in his face because he'd underestimated the actual threat the diary posed sounds like the kind of screw-up you would expect from a lot of people, and especially a Malfoy. (Sometimes I think their family motto must be, "Our cunning plans always nearly succeed!") And if the overheard conversation was something like, "You know, I've started wondering if this Tom Riddle was the Dark Lord, not one of his patsies," Lucius might have jumped to the wrong conclusion: "Well, if he was a Muggle-born or half-blood all along, maybe he really wasn't as powerful as he seemed. And he did get defeated by a baby...yeah, this diary is probably no big deal. I can handle it."
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Date: 2021-08-23 03:56 pm (UTC)Oh yes, I can definitely imagine that. :-)
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Date: 2021-09-07 01:59 am (UTC)And don't forget the stunt Dumbledore pulled at the leaving feast. Letting the Great Hall be decorated in Slytherin colors and at the last minute publicly humiliation Lucius' son & house in favor of Potter and his little friends.
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Date: 2021-09-07 06:15 pm (UTC)I like this take on CoS plot.
Considering how Dobby's thought-process works I can easily see him wildly misinterpreting Lucius' plan and focusing on saving his idol. Whatever it takes.
But I also agree with Sunny. I don't think Lucius knew what exactly he was unleashing.
Petrified students are PR nightmare for Dumbledore, but when people start to die authorities tend to take much closer look at evidence. And potentially make uncomfortable for Lucius connections. Better not risk such things when authorities recently raided your household.
As for DE knowing Voldemort wasn't pureblood? Well recently I started to develop certain theory- perhaps Tom managed to convince his followers who knew him from the school that he was pureblood.
We know that feuds between pureblood families are a thing. But how a pureblood family loosing the feud can save itself? How about hiding their heir in the least likely place? AKA muggle orphanage? Obviously Tom's parent's meant to retrieve him when it was safe, but that time never came....
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Date: 2021-09-08 01:15 am (UTC)Hiding, or even a tragic accident? His mother was cursed in that feud shortly before her due date, and wandered into Muggle London in her confusion, where foolish Muggles didn't care for her properly and caused her death, leaving Tom stranded. His few surviving relatives were unable to search for him for various tragic reasons he won't dwell on.
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Date: 2021-09-12 04:46 pm (UTC)Hmmm tragic accident probably would fit more Tom's narrative. If he played his cards right he doesn't have to own up who his father is and doesn't stain his "family's" honour.
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Date: 2021-09-12 06:25 pm (UTC)