Hat-and-Cloak is Voldemort but not Quirrell. When in Quirrell, Voldemort has a whole (probably quite powerful!) brain to run his computation on. Outside of Quirrell, he relies only on what computation he can do purely as a ‘ghost’, or as magic, or whatever. Hat-and-Cloak is thusly disguised because Voldemort lacks a body. Or maybe Voldemort possesses someone else, who isn’t as smart as Quirrell, and is proportionally dumber and more prone to mistakes. Quirrell is zombie while Voldemort’s away because Voldemort set it up that way. Don’t want your robot walking away without you.
Part of the groundhog-day attack involved setting up a trigger in Hermione, that when she can attack Malfoy, she should try to kill him. This explains her behaviour in the battle, and her apparent behaviour in the duel.
Hat-and-Cloak is a player in this story. Players in this story are clever and powerful. A sensible way of resolving this apparent contradiction is to postulate some form of disability or restriction applying to Hat-and-Cloak. Then all you need is Conservation of Characters.
It would simply be bad writing to set up a mysterious and malevolent figure like Hat and Cloak and then reveal him as one of the story’s established villains. It’s redundant, a wasted move, to reveal that the villain was secretly a villain. It drains tension from the story to reveal that the heroes were only facing one opponent, not two. I would rule out the possibility just by assuming a competent author.
A point in favor of Hat and Cloak being Grindelwald: the playing card he chose to represent Dumbledore was the King of Hearts. ♥
It would simply be bad writing to set up a mysterious and malevolent figure like Hat and Cloak and then reveal him as one of the story’s established villains.
Unless the reveal involved learning about the Voldemort-Quirrell symbiosis, or Voldemort-Hat-and-Cloak outsmarting Voldemort-Quirrell, or any of a dozen other dramatic reveals.
A point in favor of Hat and Cloak being Grindelwald: the playing card he chose to represent Dumbledore was the King of Hearts. ♥
At first I wanted to say “reading too deeply”, but you have a point: the choice of card was not a throwaway line, it was intended to be mysterious, so it should have some depth worth plumbing.
Unless the reveal involved learning about the Voldemort-Quirrell symbiosis, or Voldemort-Hat-and-Cloak outsmarting Voldemort-Quirrell, or any of a dozen other dramatic reveals.
You’re postulating increasingly complex (ie unlikely) explanations to defend your theory. Donny’s statement is strong evidence for H&C not being one of the existing villains.
That Santa Claus is Hat and Cloak was the implication I took from this exchange. Still seems correct to me. It’s the combination of his paranoid advice and ignorance of current events. Why would Lupin tell Harry to avoid Dumbledore? (That’s the letter with the ‘more trouble than James’ reference.)
This is a good question, and we do in fact have evidence that Lupin doesn’t totally trust Dumbledore—he worries that Dumbledore may have sent Harry off to evil step-parents.
What evidence is there that H&C isn’t just Quirrell wrapped in an illusion?
There’s no need for Hermione to have cast the lethal hex. She wins the duel, then the real perpetrator stuns both of them, hexes Draco, and then memory charms Hermione into thinking she did it. However, if that’s the case, unless the perpetrator then used Hermione’s wand to cast the hex, checking what spells her wand had cast would reveal something fishy.
Why are we proposing the H&C is not clever and powerful?
I’m confused about H&C. On one hand, yes, he looks incompetent. On the other hand, in Ch.35 he knew that Quirrell would be questioning Zabini about Dumbledore’s plot, and instructed Zabini accordingly. How could he know that, given that Quirrell decided to question Zabini on the spur of the moment, when he heard Harry mention Dumbledore favorably? The most likely explanation seems to be that H&C is Quirrell and instructed Zabini just in case.
ETA: if I ignore logic and judge only by manners, then H&C seems to be Snape. But why?
If Voldemort’s possession ability worked like that, though, why wouldn’t he just use Quirrel’s body for that? You’d think that he would make sure to use his smartest host for anything requiring puzzle solving or careful manipulation.
Perhaps Voldemort doesn’t want Quirrell to know certain going plans? Perhaps Voldemort thinks not involving Quirrell is the most effective method of convincing targets that someone other than Quirrell is doing this? Perhaps Hat-and-Cloak’s secrecy is to normal people what Quirrell’s brilliance is to Harry (convincing), and Voldemort thinks or know that Quirrell can’t pull off being H-&-C properly? Perhaps Quirrell is monitored in some way that he can’t safely or nonsuspiciously avoid (I can believe Dumbledore setting up some such thing) and so Voldemort does just enough to fly under the “openly hostile” rader, using Hat-and-Cloak to strike the tinder as it were?
I don’t know, but I suspect that if my claim is the case, the answer to your question is a reason the story itself does not reveal.
You’d think that he would make sure to use his smartest host for anything requiring puzzle solving or careful manipulation.
He certainly does the lion’s share. Perhaps Hat-and-Cloak only handles less challenging or less dangerous-to-fail situations.
I was under the impression that Quirrellmort’s zombie-time meant that the Quirrell host-body had been lobotomized. If so, any intelligence that Voldemort can bring to bear is already native to him.
Of course, there is that comment in one of his early discussions with Harry about never being able to fully disentangle the mind from the body that it wears...I’m not yet entirely sure what to think about this.
I don’t think we have any direct evidence that Voldemort can step out of Quirrell without great inconvenience.
When H&C drops the disguise, Hermoine recognizes him/her. I don’t think it is particularly likely that ghost-Voldemort looks anything like any picture of him from a history book. So how would Hermoine recognize him?
I feel that I should point out that when the black mist lifts and Hermione recognizes the face of her assailant we have no reason to believe that the face she recognizes is not itself an illusion.
Since we already know that she has been obsessing about Draco, I suspect that it may even have been his face (though with the information we readers have it is obvious that H&C is not actually he), though I don’t put a great weight on that suspicion.
Hat-and-Cloak is Voldemort but not Quirrell. When in Quirrell, Voldemort has a whole (probably quite powerful!) brain to run his computation on. Outside of Quirrell, he relies only on what computation he can do purely as a ‘ghost’, or as magic, or whatever. Hat-and-Cloak is thusly disguised because Voldemort lacks a body. Or maybe Voldemort possesses someone else, who isn’t as smart as Quirrell, and is proportionally dumber and more prone to mistakes. Quirrell is zombie while Voldemort’s away because Voldemort set it up that way. Don’t want your robot walking away without you.
Part of the groundhog-day attack involved setting up a trigger in Hermione, that when she can attack Malfoy, she should try to kill him. This explains her behaviour in the battle, and her apparent behaviour in the duel.
Hat-and-Cloak is a player in this story. Players in this story are clever and powerful. A sensible way of resolving this apparent contradiction is to postulate some form of disability or restriction applying to Hat-and-Cloak. Then all you need is Conservation of Characters.
It would simply be bad writing to set up a mysterious and malevolent figure like Hat and Cloak and then reveal him as one of the story’s established villains. It’s redundant, a wasted move, to reveal that the villain was secretly a villain. It drains tension from the story to reveal that the heroes were only facing one opponent, not two. I would rule out the possibility just by assuming a competent author.
A point in favor of Hat and Cloak being Grindelwald: the playing card he chose to represent Dumbledore was the King of Hearts. ♥
Unless the reveal involved learning about the Voldemort-Quirrell symbiosis, or Voldemort-Hat-and-Cloak outsmarting Voldemort-Quirrell, or any of a dozen other dramatic reveals.
At first I wanted to say “reading too deeply”, but you have a point: the choice of card was not a throwaway line, it was intended to be mysterious, so it should have some depth worth plumbing.
I like it here! Everyone’s so gracious. Upvoted and thank you.
You’re postulating increasingly complex (ie unlikely) explanations to defend your theory. Donny’s statement is strong evidence for H&C not being one of the existing villains.
That’s a disjunction of several unlikely explanations; any one alone is enough to ‘defend’ my theory.
Why do you think that particular Santa Claus was H & C ?
Sounded more like Lupin to me, with the ‘getting into more trouble than James’ reference.
That Santa Claus is Hat and Cloak was the implication I took from this exchange. Still seems correct to me. It’s the combination of his paranoid advice and ignorance of current events. Why would Lupin tell Harry to avoid Dumbledore? (That’s the letter with the ‘more trouble than James’ reference.)
This is a good question, and we do in fact have evidence that Lupin doesn’t totally trust Dumbledore—he worries that Dumbledore may have sent Harry off to evil step-parents.
What evidence is there that H&C isn’t just Quirrell wrapped in an illusion?
There’s no need for Hermione to have cast the lethal hex. She wins the duel, then the real perpetrator stuns both of them, hexes Draco, and then memory charms Hermione into thinking she did it. However, if that’s the case, unless the perpetrator then used Hermione’s wand to cast the hex, checking what spells her wand had cast would reveal something fishy.
Why are we proposing the H&C is not clever and powerful?
Slips and mistakes H&C has made point to incompetence.
I’m confused about H&C. On one hand, yes, he looks incompetent. On the other hand, in Ch.35 he knew that Quirrell would be questioning Zabini about Dumbledore’s plot, and instructed Zabini accordingly. How could he know that, given that Quirrell decided to question Zabini on the spur of the moment, when he heard Harry mention Dumbledore favorably? The most likely explanation seems to be that H&C is Quirrell and instructed Zabini just in case.
ETA: if I ignore logic and judge only by manners, then H&C seems to be Snape. But why?
If Voldemort’s possession ability worked like that, though, why wouldn’t he just use Quirrel’s body for that? You’d think that he would make sure to use his smartest host for anything requiring puzzle solving or careful manipulation.
Perhaps Voldemort doesn’t want Quirrell to know certain going plans? Perhaps Voldemort thinks not involving Quirrell is the most effective method of convincing targets that someone other than Quirrell is doing this? Perhaps Hat-and-Cloak’s secrecy is to normal people what Quirrell’s brilliance is to Harry (convincing), and Voldemort thinks or know that Quirrell can’t pull off being H-&-C properly? Perhaps Quirrell is monitored in some way that he can’t safely or nonsuspiciously avoid (I can believe Dumbledore setting up some such thing) and so Voldemort does just enough to fly under the “openly hostile” rader, using Hat-and-Cloak to strike the tinder as it were?
I don’t know, but I suspect that if my claim is the case, the answer to your question is a reason the story itself does not reveal.
He certainly does the lion’s share. Perhaps Hat-and-Cloak only handles less challenging or less dangerous-to-fail situations.
I was under the impression that Quirrellmort’s zombie-time meant that the Quirrell host-body had been lobotomized. If so, any intelligence that Voldemort can bring to bear is already native to him. Of course, there is that comment in one of his early discussions with Harry about never being able to fully disentangle the mind from the body that it wears...I’m not yet entirely sure what to think about this. I don’t think we have any direct evidence that Voldemort can step out of Quirrell without great inconvenience.
When H&C drops the disguise, Hermoine recognizes him/her. I don’t think it is particularly likely that ghost-Voldemort looks anything like any picture of him from a history book. So how would Hermoine recognize him?
I feel that I should point out that when the black mist lifts and Hermione recognizes the face of her assailant we have no reason to believe that the face she recognizes is not itself an illusion.
Since we already know that she has been obsessing about Draco, I suspect that it may even have been his face (though with the information we readers have it is obvious that H&C is not actually he), though I don’t put a great weight on that suspicion.