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Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse

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Regardless of what Dumbledore's plans were and whether they were defensible or not, none of that matters now because Taylor just decided that engaging the enemy today is a better choice than a complicated plan that requires inaction today to (maybe) achieve victory tomorrow.

Fact is, unless Dumbledore has far more influence than seems reasonable at this point, the Ministry is going to come down on Draco like a ton of bricks, just like they did to dear Lucy. Now, in Draco's defense all we know he's done so far is commit conspiracy to achieve mass-murder and insurrection. But that's still plenty to get him thrown into a cell next to daddy during a time of war (which the Ministry under the new Minister has finally acknowledged).

The question is what the fallout from this is going to look like. Because Taylor isn't playing this 'war in the shadows' game that Dumbledore is, and she's just announced that to the Death Eaters, Order, Ministry, and most critically, the Hogwarts students and the general public. Sure, knocking out one child Death Eater is hardly going to be war-winning, but once she starts to get rolling its going to become quite clear that there's a new and quite decisive player on the board. Everyone else is going to have to figure out how to deal with that, allies and enemies alike.
 
Midnighter13 said:
in Draco's defense all we know he's done so far is commit conspiracy to achieve mass-murder and insurrection. But that's still plenty to get him thrown into a cell next to daddy during a time of war (which the Ministry under the new Minister has finally acknowledged).
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I'm fairly certain having the Dark Mark is also equal to committing the crime of Treason.
Or being a Terrorist.
 
Jen T said:
No? That's why they went into hiding.

Pettigrew being given a secret got the Potters killed. (I forget what happened to the Longbottoms.)
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That wasn't anything Dumbledore did, and he didn't know about that part, so it has no bearing on his decisions.

If you mean trusting Sirius, that was also not his decision. It was James' and Lily's. As I recall he only suggested the Fidelius charm.
 
Unless the Minister decides to chuck Malfoy Jr through the Veil to show just how serious he is taking the Death Eater threat, Snape should be quite safe from the conditions of the Vow.

Riddle's intentions with Drakey was for him to actually fail and possibly being killed as a lesson to dear Lucy for a) losing the diary, b) failing to get the prophecy orb and getting himself and his team captured. What saved his life was Snape actually killing Dumbledore and breaching Hogwarts with the Cabinet trick.

With him being imprisoned, it is possible that Riddle will kill him, Lucius and Narcissa once he takes over as an object lesson for failure.

As for Hermione's attitude in the OT, I think it was PTSD due to almost dying at the Ministry battle which made her regress a bit and try to avoid getting involved in Sixth Year, leading to her stubbornness with rejecting the possibility that Draco was marked. The breach of the Castle and Dumbledore's death shattered that final illusion, I think.

Dumbledore's handling of what I call the Occlumency debacle is what led to his stupid actions. He sabotaged Harry by assigning Snape the job, knowing full well that Snape would take any opportunity to release himself of the responsibility, while giving the illusion to the Order or Sirius at least that he was taking care of the issue. Why else would he wait until the start of the second term to arrange for the lessons, especially with his insistence that Snape could be trusted to do the job?
 
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Jen T said:
I'm going to break from thread consensus and say his secrecy is also vaguely defensible because Voldemort can read minds, truth and various emotionally coercive potions are around everywhere, and the last time he trusted people with info he got the Potters killed and the Longbottoms lobotomized...but it's not like he ever actually uses that reasoning so I'm definitely giving him and especially Rowling more credit than deserved.
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Voldemort can read minds and use truth potions. So instead of defending his people from them, he makes sure everyone fucks up his plans through incomplete information.
 
Possible scenario during a future Order meeting:

Taylor: "You keep saying Harry's some kind of 'Chosen One' but you keep refusing to teach him how to defend himself. Are you trying to get him killed?!"

Dumbledore: Visibly flinches.

Taylor: "My god, you actually are."
 
Barghest Blue said:
I prefer the interpretation that she so religiously follows the rules as written because whenever she doesn't have them (or just doesn't use them) as a guide for her behavior she tends to escalate harder than Taylor and with a lot less warning for everyone in the splash zone

She's not good with empathy and she struggles to really connect with the people around her, she doesn't understand them, not really. In general the Trio are very poorly socialized, but Hermione is worse than Harry in that regard.

She's driven to succeed at academics because that is the one area where she undeniably excels, but when it comes to dealing with actual people she tends to fumble hard.
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You make it sound like she has Asperger's. I never got that impression from the books.
Midnighter13 said:
Regardless of what Dumbledore's plans were and whether they were defensible or not, none of that matters now because Taylor just decided that engaging the enemy today is a better choice than a complicated plan that requires inaction today to (maybe) achieve victory tomorrow.

Fact is, unless Dumbledore has far more influence than seems reasonable at this point, the Ministry is going to come down on Draco like a ton of bricks, just like they did to dear Lucy. Now, in Draco's defense all we know he's done so far is commit conspiracy to achieve mass-murder and insurrection. But that's still plenty to get him thrown into a cell next to daddy during a time of war (which the Ministry under the new Minister has finally acknowledged).

The question is what the fallout from this is going to look like. Because Taylor isn't playing this 'war in the shadows' game that Dumbledore is, and she's just announced that to the Death Eaters, Order, Ministry, and most critically, the Hogwarts students and the general public. Sure, knocking out one child Death Eater is hardly going to be war-winning, but once she starts to get rolling its going to become quite clear that there's a new and quite decisive player on the board. Everyone else is going to have to figure out how to deal with that, allies and enemies alike.
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Once they find out what the plan is, a smart thing to do might be to take advantage of it to lay an ambush for the Death Eaters. Obliviate Draco and everyone else that he's been discovered, then when enough time has passed for plausibility, plant the memory that he has succeeded and let him go through to rally the troops and move the cabinet so it opens up to a 7-story drop from the top of the castle with transfigured spikes on the ground.
Hopefully you get Voldemort in need of a new body.
 
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SlickRCBD said:
You make it sound like she has Asperger's.
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I have no idea what the symptoms of Asperger's are so I wouldn't know

Regardless, she doesn't need to have Asperger's to share personality traits similar with said symptoms that I listed

My read on her is that she is horribly undersocialized and as such never learned these things that kids normally learned through interacting with each other growing up. My guess is that Harry and Ron were not the first kids to think of her unkindly, leading her to be isolated socially.

She consistently demonstrates a lack of social awareness and empathy, utterly failing to understand the impact her actions can have on others and completely failing to connect with her peers on issues. She also tends to dogmatically follow the rules and nearly worships authority figures (mainly teachers) up until a point is reached where she switches and goes full throttle with little to no limitations on her behavior.

She's mentally healthy, but she's missing quite a few puzzle pieces when it comes to interacting with people and she tends to overcompensate for it.
 
Got a feeling that little Scorpio is being retcon'd out of existence.
All we need now is for Ron to never marry Hermione and the entirety of the Named characters for the Next Generation have been eliminated.
 
So how do you guys think Dumbledore is going to react to this? Personally I suspect he'll begin with a classic "I'm so disappointed in you Harry" speech.
Hopefully Taylor will interrupt by reminding him that she did warn him that if she didn't like how he operated, she would take matters into her own hands, which she just did.

Also, I wonder if the rest of the Order will loose a bit of faith in Dumbledore for keeping such important information secret when it put so many people, especially children, at risk.
 
Jen T said:
Pettigrew being given a secret got the Potters killed. (I forget what happened to the Longbottoms.)
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All that was written about the Longbottoms (before OotP) is that after Voldemort's visit to the Potters, Bella, her husband and brother-in-law, and Barty Crouch Jr. attacked them looking for information about what happened to Voldie. Frank and Alice were left non compos mentis, and Neville was given to Augusta. Everything else I've heard about what happened to them is fanon.
 
This is a glorious train wreck to see happening!!! Sucks to be Draco!

Woodlark14 said:
So Taylor now knows about the vanishing cabinet and that Voldemort's followers are in control of its pair. I wonder how much explosives she and Harry would consider an appropriate amount to send them. Might be too late for such a plan, but worth considering.

If it wasn't for the disagreement with Dumbledore then it might have been practical to aid an Obliviated Draco in it's repair while setting up a trap on the Hogwarts end to kill the Death Eaters when they arrive.
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Hmmm, do I want to see the Death Nibblers come through the cabinet into a death trap full of all the diabolical traps Taylor and Harry can come up with and then a room full of Taylor's deadliest bugs, then a room full of DA members ready to kill or hear a thump on their end and open the cabinet to see enough explosives to level a building with a smiley face emoji flipping them off???? Decisions, decisions.
 
SuspiciousBird said:
The only minor quibble I have is that I'm really, really surprised none of the Slytherins tried bullying Harry and/or Taylor about the marriage thing. Not Malloy himself, he's canonically distracted this year, but I feel like one of the little idiots would have strode up to the dinner table and made nasty remarks.

Granted, that student would be dead the next morning from spider bites, but what are you gonna do?
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It's on the to do list
SlickRCBD said:
Once they find out what the plan is, a smart thing to do might be to take advantage of it to lay an ambush for the Death Eaters. Obliviate Draco and everyone else that he's been discovered, then when enough time has passed for plausibility, plant the memory that he has succeeded and let him go through to rally the troops and move the cabinet so it opens up to a 7-story drop from the top of the castle with transfigured spikes on the ground.
Hopefully you get Voldemort in need of a new body.
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I've seen this done before in a few fics and while it is doable it's usually done as an unexplored, "we made it happen." It could be done but it would require a little more forethought than I wanted to attribute to this particular incident. Taylor is also eager to use this to; test the ministry, push Dumbledore to reevaluate, and make it clear to everyone that the war, and she, are serious. Honestly though the main reason is babysitting the tinny terrorist while trying not to give away the fact he's been made is… kind of a lot and not TaylorMs style. It's not direct enough.
 
Timerider said:
Fixed that for ya.
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If only Taylor had knowledge of those pressure points and could accelerate her bugs beyond their max speed. I can picture it now: DE group surrounds Taylor, bugs hit targets, "Omae wa mo shinderiyu", crowd explodes.

Great chapter, have a Merry Christmas!

Edit: I just realized that Malfoy mentioned the Room of Requirement during the interrogation. Taylor now KNOWS ABOUT IT. The ways she could use that room to break the story will make the Ministry arresting Malfoy seem minor by comparison. A few of those would be: asking for a room that has a slower flow of time for absurd training, finding the diadem, acquiring all sorts of potential war material, a sanctuary since no one can use the room if someone's already in it, etc. If the diadem can be purged while remaining intact like the ring, imagine it on Taylor's head...
 
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Vandenbz said:
If only Taylor had knowledge of those pressure points and could accelerate her bugs beyond their max speed. I can picture it now: DE group surrounds Taylor, bugs hit targets, "Omae wa mo shinderiyu", crowd explodes.

Great chapter, have a Merry Christmas!

Edit: I just realized that Malfoy mentioned the Room of Requirement during the interrogation. Taylor now KNOWS ABOUT IT. The ways she could use that room to break the story will make the Ministry arresting Malfoy seem minor by comparison. A few of those would be: asking for a room that has a slower flow of time for absurd training, finding the diadem, acquiring all sorts of potential war material, a sanctuary since no one can use the room if someone's already in it, etc. If the diadem can be purged while remaining intact like the ring, imagine it on Taylor's head...
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The grey lady, Dumbledore, and Voldemort (bloody baron might) are probably the only people that know about the diadem at this point. None of them are going to talk for obvious reasons, so the only way they find the diadem is by going dumpster diving with Luna or some other ravenclaw and they happen to recognize it. They then have to realize that it is one of his horcruxes, so the odds of them finding the diadem and desouling it are not likely. It is up to author fiat what he wants the ROR to be capable of but something tells me hyperbolic time chamber is not one of them.
 
Vandenbz said:
Edit: I just realized that Malfoy mentioned the Room of Requirement during the interrogation. Taylor now KNOWS ABOUT IT. The ways she could use that room to break the story will make the Ministry arresting Malfoy seem minor by comparison.
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Heck, just asking the room for terrariums where her bugs can breed quickly would give her TONS of bugs very quickly.
 
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