Misdirection and manipulation from the fireplace

In my last post, I examined the passage in The Goblet of Fire wherein Barty Crouch, Jr., disguised as Mad-Eye Moody, explains in detail how he, himself, put Harry's name into the Goblet and why.

Today, I'd like to look at another brilliant conceived passage from the fourth book as an example of Rowling's skill, her cunning, as a writer.

I am talking about the scene where Harry consults with Sirius Black through the magic of fire-place communications. It's a beautifully written scene and it offers a great deal of information but, as usual, with a Rowling twist.

Sirius first tells Harry to be careful of Professor Karkaroff, the Durmstrang headmaster. He was, apparently, a Death Eater who then sold out many of his former mates in order to gain release from Azkaban. Without actually saying it, Sirius suggests to Harry that it must have been Karkaroff who put Harry's name in the Goblet.

It's a brilliant ruse, dropped in at this point to confuse us. Rowling trots out the perfect antagonist, one she has very carefully developed in our minds as being untrustworthy and rather nasty. It comes from a character we have come to trust and it points the finger of blame on a person we are absolutely ready to hate.

Next, Sirius tells Harry that he shouldn't simply accept that the attack on Mad-Eye Moody that took place the night before he came to Hogwarts, the attack to which Mr. Weasley had to respond, was a false attack, a creation of Moody's paranoia.

"I think someone tried stop him from getting to Hogwarts," Sirius tells Harry. "I think someone knew their jobs would be a lot more difficult with him around."

Another brilliant strategic move on the part of the author. Why? Because Sirius is absolutely right. The attack on Moody was real. The goal of the attack was to remove Moody from the picture entirely and make it easier for the perpetrator, Barty Crouch Jr., to get at Harry.

And yet, in one important detail, Sirius misses the mark. He assumes that the attack, while real, failed. We believe him, because we have been trained to believe him, because we have been manipulated to want to believe him. We believe that the attack was real but a failure.

So we emerge from this encounter with Sirius believing, as Harry does, that Moody is a good guy and that someone else, probably Karkaroff, is after Harry.

Rowling is a master of this kind of misdirection, of manipulation. She gives us so much information in such a subtle way that we don't see it for what it really is but for what she has carefully designed it to seem.

Brilliant. Wonderful. Wicked.