Ludo and the Tornadoes
This is more or less a bunch of questions and speculations with little grounding, once again inspired by The Quibbler. I'm playing with the idea that a lot of what they report has some truth to it (whether they know it or not). Some of the speculations owe a lot to pharnabazus's essays about how the wizarding world works.
A question which has never yet been answered is, where did all the money Bagman borrowed from the goblins go? Pharnabazus has a great theory that Bagman was actually passing the money to Lucius Malfoy, who used it to bribe Fudge. But just for fun, I started playing with an alternative explanation.
The August or September issue of The Quibbler in Harry's fifth year has "an accusation that the Tutshill Tornadoes were winning the Quidditch League by a combination of blackmail, illegal broom-tampering and torture." Maybe, for whatever reason, The Quibbler is right. Mr. Bagman, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports and once accused of being a Death Eater, what have you been up to lately? He's been AWOL for two months at the time of this issue's publication and hasn't reappeared. Maybe he's blackmailing, tampering, and torturing (or paying others to do so). Maybe he's bribing, too. Maybe he was doing all that before he disappeared and The Quibbler just didn't report it until now.
Actually, maybe Lucius Malfoy is involved after all. We know Lucius likes to buy expensive brooms for kids and torture people, so why not get involved in some Quidditch League nastiness? Maybe the money Bagman borrowed went both to Malfoy to bribe Fudge and into the Quidditch business. Maybe the Tornadoes are secretly a Death Eater team, or just the DEs' favorite team. Maybe the teams opposing the Tornadoes are Dumbledore's Men and Women, Through and Through. Maybe the Tornadoes winning would somehow lead to the DEs being able to use the Holyhead Harpies to get to Slughorn, who was in hiding all through the fifth year (or the Tornadoes winning was just a side-effect of the attacks on the Harpies, disguised as mere Quidditch corruption). Or maybe the ultimate goal is killing Oliver Wood.
I worked out a possible scenario. The timing for everything is a bit tricky, but that's pretty normal for the series. So: Bagman borrows money all year for Lucius Malfoy, who uses it to bribe Fudge. Maybe Malfoy has Bagman slip the Harpies some covert gold as well, for reasons he may or may not explain to Bagman. At the end of the year, Voldemort returns, the goblins call in their debt, and Bagman flees--from Voldemort, the goblins, or both. Slughorn goes into hiding. Either Bagman runs to Malfoy for help or the DEs catch up with him. Whether or not he was a DE before, the DEs decide he is useful now, and force him to help them if he doesn't do so willingly. He can't go out in the open because of the goblins, so over the summer, Bagman uses his inside knowledge of the Quidditch League to help the DEs blackmail, torture, and tamper with the brooms of the Harpies (and other teams to cover their tracks, but not the Tornadoes so it will look like ordinary corruption if discovered) to try to convince the previously unbribeable Gwennog Jones to help them find Slughorn. (Why they want Slughorn, I'm not sure--maybe something to do with his potions expertise, or Horcruxes, or his useful network of connections. But he sure thought they wanted him for something.) The Quibbler somehow finds out about the corruption and reports it by the time Harry gets on the train two months later.
If that's not what happened (and even if it is), where is Bagman now? He has been missing for two years. Is no one looking for him? (Everyone ignores his disappearance, just like how he ignored Bertha Jorkins's disappearance--oh, the irony!) Has he been found dead in a ditch with a note saying "Don't cross the goblins" pinned to his back and Harry just never heard about it? Did he flee to somewhere with tropical birds, as Sirius once did? Was he ever really a Death Eater, and if so, has he rejoined them, or did Voldemort kill him for fleeing as he did Karkaroff? Is Fudge hiding him somewhere? Is Malfoy? (Is he under the drawing room floor?) Is he trapped in a Gringotts vault? Is he moving from house to house like Slughorn did? What was the point of the whole Bagman subplot, and why could it not be resolved with a brief Daily Prophet story that he had been found, the end? Will he be found in Book 7, thus bringing the strained wizard/goblin relations to a head and making everyone regret not listening to Binns's lectures about goblin rebellions? I actually hope so, because I would like to see History of Magic and the six books of hints that the goblins are important actually come to something after being ignored for so long, and if that was tied in with the mysteriously-still-missing Bagman, it would be even better.
Whether or not there is anything behind this Quibbler story, I think the mention of Quidditch corruption could be a subtle reminder that Bagman, his borrowed gold, and his possible DE past should not be forgotten. There was something going on behind the scenes there. It might be important.
A question which has never yet been answered is, where did all the money Bagman borrowed from the goblins go? Pharnabazus has a great theory that Bagman was actually passing the money to Lucius Malfoy, who used it to bribe Fudge. But just for fun, I started playing with an alternative explanation.
The August or September issue of The Quibbler in Harry's fifth year has "an accusation that the Tutshill Tornadoes were winning the Quidditch League by a combination of blackmail, illegal broom-tampering and torture." Maybe, for whatever reason, The Quibbler is right. Mr. Bagman, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports and once accused of being a Death Eater, what have you been up to lately? He's been AWOL for two months at the time of this issue's publication and hasn't reappeared. Maybe he's blackmailing, tampering, and torturing (or paying others to do so). Maybe he's bribing, too. Maybe he was doing all that before he disappeared and The Quibbler just didn't report it until now.
Actually, maybe Lucius Malfoy is involved after all. We know Lucius likes to buy expensive brooms for kids and torture people, so why not get involved in some Quidditch League nastiness? Maybe the money Bagman borrowed went both to Malfoy to bribe Fudge and into the Quidditch business. Maybe the Tornadoes are secretly a Death Eater team, or just the DEs' favorite team. Maybe the teams opposing the Tornadoes are Dumbledore's Men and Women, Through and Through. Maybe the Tornadoes winning would somehow lead to the DEs being able to use the Holyhead Harpies to get to Slughorn, who was in hiding all through the fifth year (or the Tornadoes winning was just a side-effect of the attacks on the Harpies, disguised as mere Quidditch corruption). Or maybe the ultimate goal is killing Oliver Wood.
I worked out a possible scenario. The timing for everything is a bit tricky, but that's pretty normal for the series. So: Bagman borrows money all year for Lucius Malfoy, who uses it to bribe Fudge. Maybe Malfoy has Bagman slip the Harpies some covert gold as well, for reasons he may or may not explain to Bagman. At the end of the year, Voldemort returns, the goblins call in their debt, and Bagman flees--from Voldemort, the goblins, or both. Slughorn goes into hiding. Either Bagman runs to Malfoy for help or the DEs catch up with him. Whether or not he was a DE before, the DEs decide he is useful now, and force him to help them if he doesn't do so willingly. He can't go out in the open because of the goblins, so over the summer, Bagman uses his inside knowledge of the Quidditch League to help the DEs blackmail, torture, and tamper with the brooms of the Harpies (and other teams to cover their tracks, but not the Tornadoes so it will look like ordinary corruption if discovered) to try to convince the previously unbribeable Gwennog Jones to help them find Slughorn. (Why they want Slughorn, I'm not sure--maybe something to do with his potions expertise, or Horcruxes, or his useful network of connections. But he sure thought they wanted him for something.) The Quibbler somehow finds out about the corruption and reports it by the time Harry gets on the train two months later.
If that's not what happened (and even if it is), where is Bagman now? He has been missing for two years. Is no one looking for him? (Everyone ignores his disappearance, just like how he ignored Bertha Jorkins's disappearance--oh, the irony!) Has he been found dead in a ditch with a note saying "Don't cross the goblins" pinned to his back and Harry just never heard about it? Did he flee to somewhere with tropical birds, as Sirius once did? Was he ever really a Death Eater, and if so, has he rejoined them, or did Voldemort kill him for fleeing as he did Karkaroff? Is Fudge hiding him somewhere? Is Malfoy? (Is he under the drawing room floor?) Is he trapped in a Gringotts vault? Is he moving from house to house like Slughorn did? What was the point of the whole Bagman subplot, and why could it not be resolved with a brief Daily Prophet story that he had been found, the end? Will he be found in Book 7, thus bringing the strained wizard/goblin relations to a head and making everyone regret not listening to Binns's lectures about goblin rebellions? I actually hope so, because I would like to see History of Magic and the six books of hints that the goblins are important actually come to something after being ignored for so long, and if that was tied in with the mysteriously-still-missing Bagman, it would be even better.
Whether or not there is anything behind this Quibbler story, I think the mention of Quidditch corruption could be a subtle reminder that Bagman, his borrowed gold, and his possible DE past should not be forgotten. There was something going on behind the scenes there. It might be important.