McGonagall’s Disappearance: Coincidence or Conniving?

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by Ravleen

As we all ruefully know, the events that took place at the Department of Mysteries were carefully acted and preplanned by Voldemort and certain Death Eaters. From the ominous vision Harry had, to Kreacher’’s lies, they were linked together to form a chain reaction — one “coincidental” event leading to another. In the end, they all led to the same thing: luring Harry to the Department of Mysteries. But I believe that we may be overlooking a crucial beginning step that was made before his dream.

My idea may be nothing more than a wild theory, but I’m talking about the timely disappearance of Hagrid and McGonagall. I believe the conniver of the attack on Hagrid may have been someone other than Umbridge and her allies. They could have lured or tricked Umbridge into attacking at that particular moment. Why, you may ask? Because McGonagall was such an obvious threat to their schemes.

No, I do not think that the intention of Umbridge’s nighttime attack was to sack Hagrid. As we saw with the pitiable Trelawney, Umbridge receives a sickening pleasure from intimidating others, from embarrassing them in front of many. This reputation is a well-earned one; why would she suddenly become secretive and sack Hagrid at night?

Voldemort is much too knowledgeable to overlook McGonagall’s presence. If he worked to put all the other sub-plans in order, it would be quite foolish to forget that Harry had her to run to. Another interesting detail is that while Hagrid and McGonagall were suspiciously absent, Snape remained. The Death Eaters and Voldemort thought him to be on their side, so they obviously didn’t try and lure him out of the way. It’s mighty suspicious that the only Order member that remained was Severus Snape.

So, logically, this was Voldemort’’s agenda:

  • Get rid of McGonagall and Hagrid
  • Break into Harry’’s mind
  • Death Eaters and Narcissa tell Kreacher to injure the hippogriff so Sirius will be out of the way, allowing Kreacher to mislead Harry
  • Somehow, the Potter boy will reach the Department of Mysteries

Now, did Voldemort and his Death Eaters assume that Harry would figure out a way to reach the illusion in the Department of Mysteries? Lucius Malfoy did say, “The Dark Lord knows you are not unintelligent.” Maybe Voldemort trusted Harry to jump to the rescue, and take crazy means to reach the place. Or maybe they had some influence on the thestrals. We’’ll save that for another day.