Fan Theory: What Really Happened in HP&tHBP's "The Cave"?

[guardians_song]

Let’s redo this theory, shall we?

Let us now turn our minds to the potion that protected the Locketcrux in the cave. It’s notable in that Albus’s dialogue under its influence is so mysterious (who is he speaking to, what wrong has been done, and who are the people for whose welfare he’s pleading?), that the effects are so odd (if it’s a poison with hallucinatory side effects, why do the hallucinations stop with the last goblet of potion?), and that it’s never fully explained what in the world that potion was. We never get so much as “that was the Plot Device potion” from Dumbledore or “that sounds like the Don’t Ask Rowling Annoying Questions potion, combined with the dreadful poison of the juice of the It’s Just A Damned Plot Device Already fruit” from Hermione.

 

Of course, Harry claims that the effect of the potion was to make Dumbledore hallucinate that he was being forced to watch Grindelwald torturing Ariana and Aberforth. One might ignore that Harry literally came up with that explanation within minutes of learning of the very existence of that duel, that Harry has a notoriously bad track record with his spontaneous explanations, and that Harry is just spouting things to try to bludgeon Aberforth into agreement at that point, and take this as the one true explanation. Well, fine. Harry does act as the Voice of Rowling several times in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so I suppose it’s possible.

However, then you have to explain why Dumbledore would see Grindelwald torturing Ariana, since it’s made abundantly clear both in The Missing Mirror and King’s Cross that Grindelwald only tortured Aberforth and that Dumbledore’s greatest fear was that he himself had killed Ariana. If this potion is giving Dumbledore hallucinations of his greatest fears, shouldn’t it be showing him Ariana dying at his own hands? Indeed, according to Rowling, Dumbledore’s boggart is Ariana’s corpse. Ignoring interview-canon, this is backed up by the very definition of a boggart and what Dumbledore confesses about his fears in King’s Cross. So, no matter how you slice it, it makes very little sense for that part of Harry’s explanation being correct – and once that’s sprung a leak, his entire explanation collapses, because Dumbledore was clearly saying “Don’t hurt them”.

Now that I’ve disproved Harry’s explanation, I now have to go back to the original text to gather evidence for what was actually going on.

 

Dumbledore panted and then spoke in a voice Harry did not recognize, for he had never heard Dumbledore frightened like this.
“I don’t want……don’t make me.”
Harry stared at the face he knew so well, and did not know what to do.
“…don’t like…..want to stop…”
[…]
“No…” he groaned […]. “I don’t want to… let me go”
[…]
“Make it stop, make it stop, ” moaned Dumbledore.
[…]
“No, no, no, no, I can’t, I can’t, don’t make me, I don’t want to…”
[…]
[…] but upon draining the goblet, he sank to his knees, shaking uncontrollably.
“It’s all my fault, all my fault, ” he sobbed. “Please make it stop, I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I’ll never, never again…”
[…]
Dumbledore began to cower as though invisible torturers surrounded him; his flailing hand almost knocked the refilled goblet from Harry’s trembling hands as he moaned, “Don’t hurt them, don’t hurt them, please, please, it’s my fault, hurt me instead…”
[…] and once again Dumbledore obeyed him, opening his mouth even as he kept his eyes tight shut and shook from head to foot.
And now he fell forward, screaming again, hammering his fists upon the ground […]
“Please, please, please, no… not that, not that, I’ll do anything…”
[…]
he yelled again as though his insides were on fire.
“No more, please, no more…”
[…] Dumbledore began to scream in more anguish than ever, “I want to die! I want to die! Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die! ”
[…]
he yelled, “KILL ME! ”
[…] and then, with a great, rattling gasp, rolled over onto his face.

 

Those are all of Dumbledore’s actions and lines, minus the descriptions of him drinking. It’s interesting to note that Grindelwald could not have been the “invisible torturers” of the metaphor, on account of, as Gehayi would say, not being plural. It’s also interesting to note that Harry “doesn’t recognize” the voice in which Dumbledore speaks, though he immediately covers that line by saying it’s because he’s never heard Dumbledore so frightened.

 

Come to think of it, it’s… also interesting that, if this is a poison, Voldemort didn’t simply dump several highly toxic poisons into the basin, cast whatever charms he used to make this one incapable of being disposed of via any means other than ingestion, and wander off humming a merry tune. After all, if this was a bezoar-neutralized potion, surely Dumbledore would have had the brains to ingest one beforehand or have Harry administer one to him afterwards. And we know that an antidote to mixed poisons needs even more ingredients than the sum of their antidotes, so it would be nigh-impossible to protect against several poisons with highly complex antidotes at once. Assuming basic intelligence on both the parts of Voldemort and Dumbledore, we must therefore presume that this liquid is more complicated a substance than Harry thinks it is. After all, an entire basin full of the stuff isn’t immediately fatal or incapacitating beyond what a good Ennervate and glass of water could fix. Dumbledore may not be feeling well, but he can still summon a pillar of fire, make his way out of the cave with Harry’s help, and ride a broom immediately afterwards. While Dumbledore does claim that Voldemort would want to keep his victim alive long enough to interrogate them, I’d think that he’d want them a bit more incapacitated than that. Besides – we know that the alarm wasn’t immediately triggered upon tampering with the Horcrux proper, since Regulus managed to infiltrate the cave, give Kreacher the locket, and get killed without alerting Voldemort. That’s more than enough time for a properly-prepared burglar to struggle up to his feet, pour basilisk venom over the now-uncovered locket, cast Fiendfyre upon it, or perform any other quick Horcrux-destroying action, and then stagger over to the water to join the Inferi.

 

So how is it intended to incapacitate?

 

Well, we see in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that Voldemort’s first conclusion upon discovering that Harry’s going after the Horcruxes is that it must have been Dumbledore who clued him in. It follows that Voldemort assumes that all other Horcruxes face primary danger from Dumbledore and acts accordingly. We’ll excuse the Room of Hidden Things Horcrux as ‘hiding in plain sight’, and accept that the Diary was designed as a sacrificial proxy first and foremost. Aside from that, however, one was hidden in a booby-trap to which Dumbledore was particularly sensitive, another was hidden in Gringotts (where even Dumbledore couldn’t have gotten in without assistance), yet another was kept on Voldemort’s person at almost all times… and this one?

 

I’m going to have to take a leap of faith to get to the theory proper, so excuse me for trying to bridge the gap as much as possible. I’ve established that it’s not simply a poison, that its effect was not what Harry claimed it was, and that Voldemort wouldn’t have intended it to incapacitate the victim – which he would have assumed to be, in all likelihood, Dumbledore – through its physical effect alone. I therefore claim that it was meant as a psychological weapon as well, based upon Voldemort’s known love for psychological torture. And now I’ll come up with a rather silly claim as to what kind of psychological torture it was meant to be.

 

Do we know any magical liquid-like substances, peculiarly bound to basins, that are intended solely for transfer into wizards and witches and might have unusual properties when it comes to removal from said basins by other means?

 

Well, yes. Pensieve-bound memories. We have no idea whether Pensieve memories can be Vanished, spilled, or any of the other methods of disposal that Dumbledore eliminated, but it seems likely that they would be immune to a few, which places them ahead of mundane liquids where we’re concerned. Clearly the “potion” was not an ordinary Pensieve memory, but it being something similar would at least allow it to inherit the properties of that class. And, since Pensieve-bound memories are not true liquids, this possibility might explain why Voldemort didn’t include a whopping dose of Draught of Living Death or some other sedative or poison in the solution to make sure Dumbledore went down and stayed down – the memories and the liquids would naturally separate and ruin the point of mixing the two.

 

But since Dumbledore would hardly throw a ground-pounding fit over viewing a memory, no matter how traumatic, we know this “potion”, no matter what it was, didn’t function as an ordinary memory. Furthermore, it would have to induce internal damage causing severe thirst – though I’m skeptical that the thirst is a necessary side-effect, as Harry assumes, and not just an incidental one. Since flight isn’t permitted as a solution to the problem of the lake for whatever reason, the burglar would have to go to the edge of the small island anyway in order to leave – at which point the Inferi-trigger would go off. However, that’s not very important, since the “potion” does cause such damage; my only point on that front is that Voldemort wouldn’t need to impose that as a necessary condition on the “potion”.

Ah, but we do know, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that the reliving of a memory might cause the subject to act out the actions taken in the memory – after his Godric's Hollow vision, Harry worries that he might have "screamed curses like Voldemort, cried like the baby in the crib". So, if the “potion” was a Pensieve-variant that caused its imbiber to relive the target memory, it could potentially make Dumbledore mimic actions taken in the memory.

 

Now, I know that this goes into raw speculation at this point, so I must justify my earlier statement that it couldn’t have been a viewed-memory alone. It’s about as plausible to say it was a viewed-memory plus an insanity-inducing compulsion as it is to say it was a relived-memory, since neither are explicitly magically inducible in canon. However, the viewed-memory plus compulsion would still require Dumbledore to have a reason to say “Don’t hurt them”. I suppose you could say he was viewing the torture of Order members at Voldemort’s hands, but then you have to explain the phrases “I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I’ll never, never again.” That could plausibly be attributed to his admitting to his screw-ups in strategy that led to their deaths, I suppose, but then I still can’t see Dumbledore begging Voldemort to hurt him instead. Dumbledore always addressed Voldemort in the manner of an authority figure to one under his authority – pleas I can see as distorted orders, but begging Voldemort to hurt him instead would place him under Voldemort’s authority, which just does not fit with Dumbledore’s character. Especially since the context in which he says “it’s my fault” makes him sound like he’s taking responsibility for a crime, not admitting to a failure. The only way I can see these words coming out of Dumbledore’s mouth in response to memories is if he was addressing Grindelwald, and the “them” then implies he was viewing the tortures of Grindelwald’s victims (under Grindelwald’s regime, not when he was a sixteen-year-old, mind you)… I admit to that being a plausible explanation, allowing for Harry’s short-sightedness, but it still seems uncharacteristic for Dumbledore to hammer his fists against the ground, and, as Geyahi would say, Grindelwald still isn’t plural. But those are subjective issues.

 

However, as this is my fan theory, I’ll insist that it’s irredeemably uncharacteristic and Grindelwald’s lack of plurality is inarguable, and continue on.

Now that I’ve established that a viewed-memory wouldn’t do the trick (minus events that we never saw or had described for us second-hand on page, which Rowling doesn’t tend to use as the solution to any puzzle), I’ll start explaining what the relived-memory was.

 

Harry’s naïve interpretation of events is that he’s being addressed by the lines “I don’t want to… don’t make me”, “Don’t make me… let me go”, and “KILL ME!” and someone else is being addressed with the “Don’t hurt them, [etc.]” lines. But if the actions are all relived, then Harry’s not being addressed at all, and it is simplest to assume that the subject of the memory was speaking to one entity the entire time. But what?

 

Well, Harry’s right that whoever’s in this memory doesn’t seem to be in his or her right mind. The sentences are fragmented and barely coherent, the diction is childish, and the physical behavior is hysterical and uncontrolled. Furthermore, he or she blames himself or herself for whatever is going wrong, desperately doesn’t want to see several people hurt, and, at the end of the memory, begs to die – and has his or her request granted on the spot.

 

But we should also take note of the assumptions made in Harry’s original explanation that are actually nowhere in the scene itself – that the verb completing the phrases “I can’t”, “don’t make me”, “I don’t want to” is ‘watch’, that the person being addressed is already “hurt[ing] them”, and that “make it stop” is referring to either the torture or the viewing thereof. To recap, with those assumptions removed, this is all we know:

• The subject of the memory is begging someone to not make him or her do something;
• The subject of the memory is begging someone, presumably the same entity, not to hurt at least two people;
• The subject of the memory is begging someone, again presumably the same entity, to make something stop which he or she finds agonizing, and finally ends up begging said entity for death.
• The subject of the memory seems mentally impaired;
• The subject of the memory blames himself or herself for whatever is occurring;
• The subject of the memory claims to have done wrong in the past, but swears that, if the events are stopped, he or she won’t do it again;
• The subject of the memory dies at the end of the memory.

 

Do we know anyone vaguely connected to Dumbledore who would satisfy all those conditions?

 

Hm. Well, it’s not like we know any unstable, deranged, childlike, now-deceased matricides…

 

Yes, there’s really no choice fitting the evidence better than Ariana. (Well, Dumbledore doesn’t have that many named characters linked to his personal life in the first place, so it wasn’t a large pool from the start.) As a bonus, she does have a reason to hallucinate multiple torturers surrounding her, not necessarily related to whomever she’s addressing.

 

So now we have to figure out who in the world she’d be addressing immediately before her death, right after she was “set off” by the flashes and bangs. Fortunately, inspecting “Dumbledore’s” babbling under this theory, there’s a massive clue – that it’s an entity that could make her do something. Ariana’s great issue was that she couldn’t control her magic, and that it would turn inward and drive her mad(der). Now, we just have to show that it actually fits what’s said under the influence of the memory.

 

Dumbledore panted and then spoke in a voice Harry did not recognize, for he had never heard Dumbledore frightened like this.
Of course you haven’t, you dope, that’s his sister.
“I don’t want……don’t make me.”
We’re theorizing that she’s telling her magic she doesn’t want something/not to make her do something. All right, fine, that was probably the poor girl’s perpetual state.
[…]
“…don’t like…..want to stop…”
And she doesn’t like something that’s happening/she wants it to stop. Again, probably her perpetual state.
[…]
“No…” he groaned […]. “I don’t want to… let me go”
More of the same.
[…]
“Make it stop, make it stop, ” moaned Dumbledore.
Now she’s actively begging it to make something stop. There’s the obvious “something” of the duel - and, given that she’s suppressing her magic after she’s already been set off and that Dumbledore will soon be suffering fried insides, her magic is likely doing a conga through her innards. Either way – or both ways – that would be wholly justified.
[…]
“No, no, no, no, I can’t, I can’t, don’t make me, I don’t want to…”
[…]
More of the same.
[…] but upon draining the goblet, he sank to his knees, shaking uncontrollably.
“It’s all my fault, all my fault, ” he sobbed. “Please make it stop, I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I’ll never, never again…”
It’s “all her fault” because the subject of the argument was whether she’d stay with Aberforth or get carted off with Albus and Gellert. As for “I know I did wrong” – most probably her manslaughter of Kendra, as we’ll see in a moment.
[…]
Dumbledore began to cower as though invisible torturers surrounded him;
A hallucination of the Muggle boys would more than do.
his flailing hand almost knocked the refilled goblet from Harry’s trembling hands as he moaned, “Don’t hurt them, don’t hurt them, please, please, it’s my fault, hurt me instead…”
And now she would be begging her uncontrolled magic to not “hurt” the three duelists [in the same way that it “hurt” Kendra], and begging it to “hurt her instead”.
I’ll note here that, as such, we should complete “don’t make me”, “I don’t want to”, and “I can’t” with “hurt them”.
[…]
and once again Dumbledore obeyed him, opening his mouth even as he kept his eyes tight shut and shook from head to foot.
And now he fell forward, screaming again, hammering his fists upon the ground […]
“Please, please, please, no… not that, not that, I’ll do anything…”
“Not that, not that”, again, makes most sense echoing Kendra’s death. Read “Please, please, please, no, don’t kill them, don’t kill them, I’ll do anything”.
[…]
he yelled again as though his insides were on fire.
“No more, please, no more…”
It now seems to have taken her at her word, and is setting her innards on fire.
What are these “similes” you speak of? Dumbledore does seem to need to douse his innards immediately afterwards… and if Ariana’s magic is turning upon her in the memory, it stands to reason that Albus’s would be doing likewise in his reliving of the memory.
[…] Dumbledore began to scream in more anguish than ever, “I want to die! I want to die! Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die! ”
Understandably, having wild magic rampaging through her insides makes euthanasia seem like a wonderful idea around now. Either that, or the suppression of magic combined with the continued flashes and bangs is giving her the sensory overload from hell – In the spirit of Ariana’s entire backstory, we’ll go with “both”.
[…]
he yelled, “KILL ME! ”
And now, overwhelmed by agony, she commands her magic to kill her.
[…] and then, with a great, rattling gasp, rolled over onto his face.
For once in her life, it obeys.

Once more, with feeling:

“I don’t want… don’t make me… Don’t like… want to stop…”
“No… I don’t want to… let me go.”
“Make it stop, make it stop, ” moaned Ariana.
“No, no, no, no, I can’t, I can’t, don’t make me, I don’t want to…”
She sank to her knees, shaking uncontrollably.
“It’s all my fault, all my fault, ” she sobbed. “Please make it stop, I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I’ll never, never again…”
She began to cower as visions of Muggle boys surrounded her; she flailed helplessly, trying to ward off her nightmares, as she moaned, “Don’t hurt them, don’t hurt them, please, please, it’s my fault, hurt me instead…”
She kept his eyes tight shut and shook from head to foot.
And now she fell forward, screaming again, hammering his fists upon the ground.
“Please, please, please, no… not that, not that, I’ll do anything…”
She gave another yell as her insides exploded in agony.
“No more, please, no more…”
Ariana began to scream in more anguish than ever, “I want to die! I want to die! Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die!”
“KILL ME! ”
And then, with a great, rattling gasp, she rolled over onto her face.

 

With blanks filled in:

“I don’t want to hurt them… don’t make me… Don’t like… want to stop…”
“No… I don’t want to hurt them… let me go.”
“Make it stop, make it stop, ” moaned Ariana.
“No, no, no, no, I can’t hurt them, I can’t, don’t make me, I don’t want to hurt them…”

 

…Right. I think that fits uncomfortably well.

 

So what was the purpose of this? To make Dumbledore relive the death of his little sister and, in case the trauma of the memory didn’t impair his judgment enough, specifically do it with a memory that made his own magic turn upon him as a result. That second property would have the bonus of rendering any magical burglar disoriented, weakened, and agonized, which would hopefully render them unable to perform any magic powerful enough to destroy a Horcrux or muck about with any other methods of Horcrux-destruction without burning their own fingers off. As a further bonus, it would disable any burglar in direct proportion to the strength of their magic, rendering all burglars equally incompetent. But especially Dumbledore.

As for how Voldemort would get hold of this memory – remember that he possessed the Resurrection Stone briefly. Before rendering it a Horcrux, he could have taken the opportunity to summon up Dumbledore’s dead and have brief chats with their shades in the hope of discovering a weakness in his mortal foe. And Voldemort knows the importance of family.

We do know he could be awfully charming to dead young ladies with notable relatives, so he wouldn’t even have to coerce it out of Ariana. Just one offer to relieve her of that terribly painful death-memory, and he could have gotten it with ease. Now we have the slight issue of how to retrieve a memory from the dead, but if Resurrection Stone shades can act as Patronī, despite having nothing in common with them whatsoever, and be partially solid, it’s not such a stretch to say they can hand over memories. Particularly to such an expert young Legilimens as Tom Riddle.

To recap, my theory is that the “potion” in the cave forced Dumbledore to relive Ariana’s dying memory, that Ariana died from forcing her magic to turn upon her rather than her brothers and Grindelwald, and that any and all internal damage to Dumbledore was from his own magic.

 

 

***END FAN THEORY***

 

…This was so much less long-winded in the version from five years ago. *winces* Next time, I’ll just write a one-shot. At least then I’d have 3,800+ words worth of content.

 

 

Side Notes:

-The other components of the cave-trap? The remains of the dead and Dumbledore’s blood. *rolls eyes* Oh, come now, Voldemort. There’s clever, and then there’s just tacky.

-Yes, I KNOW Kreacher did not suffer the same effect. However, Kreacher was not human and lacked human neurology and magical wiring, and so would not suffer the exact same effects. In fact, one might ask – why did Voldemort use Kreacher? Surely he would have been more than willing to kidnap a Muggle as a test subject, and not make one of his followers lose a good House-Elf?

 

If I had to hazard a guess, it was to check that the trap would also incapacitate nonhuman sentient test subjects, such that someone couldn’t just send their House-Elf in, have the House-Elf drink down the whole thing and only get a sore stomach, and leave with the Locket while playing javelin-toss with the Inferi. Unfortunately for Voldemort, he neglected to check whether or not House-Elves could teleport past anti-Apparition wards…