Ask Us Anything!

[alt_moderator]

The cast thread is filling up rapidly, and while we don't have to fuss about comment collapse, it is getting difficult to navigate...

So here's a new post, where we're asking YOU to ask US: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

Comments

[stormyhearted]

Oh, and another- Dolohov told Sally Anne that Neville and Harry's bodies had been cremated. Did he lie, or was he lied to? If so, who told him that- Barty, or Bella? Why did Rod know where they were- and why weren't they cremated?

[reenie]

Barty suggested that he and Bella burn the bodies (interesting, given that he must have known that Dolohov wouldn't be too happy about it). Bella said she didn't care. They did whatever they did off journal, but Dolohov was told the bodies were burned.

I believe Bella and Rod decided to hold on to them (ew, by which I mean put them in a secure location) for a couple of reasons:

1) leverage for later, if needed (as employed by Rod in his plea bargain)
2) Both of them wondering if Voldemort's remains might have some mysterious power or value attached to them, given what an awesomely dark wizard he was. Rod was an experimenter, remember.

[synecdochic]

On a Doylist level, the seeming inconsistency there was a case of "last minute needs", mostly! We needed Rod to have some kind of leverage so he could have a bargaining lever.

On a Watsonian level, in addition to Reenie's excellent explanation, I like to think that everybody made the decisions before Tosha woke up and told him that it had already been taken care of because they knew he had A Thing about the burial of the dead and they just didn't want to deal with him. ;)

(I was very, very careful with Tosha: there is precisely one point in all of the game at which he directly lied to someone, blatantly and without any kind of shading. (And I wonder if people can figure it out/remember it!) He can tell you the absolute honest truth and make you think that he's lying to you, he can tell you the truth in such a way that you INTERPRET it the way he wants you to interpret it, but like he says to Justin: he rarely lies, because lying is way more effort. Partially it's that he won't lie to the kids because they're his students and that means something to him, but even when he and Lucius were doing the "we are going to pretend to break up our coalition and see what kind of things that shakes out of the Death Eater politics", he didn't so much LIE as twist the truth really, really, really hard.)

[naomikritzer]

Pretty sure I know! Unless that was in the category of "careful shading" rather than "lie direct."

[synecdochic]

You do indeed know. :D