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bluerosesburnblue · 5 years

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An HPHM Theory: Who put the objects in the Vaults?

So we all know the drill by now, right? A curse starts up, we spend the year hunting down the Vault, we open it up, and we find a bunch of hidden objects that point us towards the next Vault. Rinse. Repeat.

But who’s leaving those objects there? It was assumed from the start that Jacob was the culprit, but there seems to be some logical inconsistencies with that

And I think Albus Dumbledore has some explaining to do

So let’s start off with why I don’t think Jacob could have placed those objects in the Vaults

First off, it’s been hinted quite a few times in recent Years that there’s an order the Vaults are intended to be opened in. We haven’t just been taking these curses as they come; whoever’s activating them each year is doing so in a deliberate manner.

The next vault. The final vault. These are numbered terms. And the objects we find in them always hint towards what we’ll need to open the very next vault that unleashes these curses

There’s a set order to them. And whoever put those objects in there was aware of that fact. So why do I think this excludes Jacob?

(Screenshots are from I-GGames on Youtube)

Our beloved Jacob’s Sibling™ seems to be pretty confident that the wand we found in the Vault of Ice was Jacob’s. Now, they could be completely wrong about their guess in the Vault of Fear that he broke it, but I’m inclined to believe them on a few points. After all, why wouldn’t they know what their own brother’s wand looked like? And it worked. Touching the broken wand to the Vault opened it. But we can’t confirm when or how it was broken

But if we assume that that’s Jacob’s wand and he needed it to open the second vault... how did it get in the first?

Canonically, Jacob was expelled mid-search, like, right after Duncan’s potion exploded and killed him while they were still working on the Forest Vault. We haven’t gotten confirmation if he eventually completed it or not, but we do have reason to doubt he would’ve been able to make it back to Hogwarts to put this stuff in there. After all, based on what we know of the Vaults, if you mess with it it unleashes its curse until someone gets in and opens the Vault, at which point the curse ends. Everyone talks about how the Vaults haven’t been messed with since Jacob’s team was hunting them. It’s unlikely that he could’ve managed to sneak back into Hogwarts, open the Vaults with no one noticing, and then left without anyone seeing him or the curses being unleashed. Even if we assume that Jacob could’ve opened the Vault and gotten in relatively quickly since he knew how to break each curse already, that still doesn’t make sense with the rumors we’ve heard of Jacob’s whereabouts

The mysterious voice claiming to be Jacob says that he’s in the Portrait Vault

Now, I don’t believe he is. Especially since they’ve been foreshadowing that this isn’t Jacob for a long time. But the writers clearly want us to believe that this is at least a possibility. But if Jacob’s trapped in the Vault, then he couldn’t have gotten his stuff into the other Vaults

Similarly, we still have Duncan’s unsubstantiated claim that there’s rumors among the faculty that Jacob’s been working on Knockturn Alley. This one also seems weird to me, though, since we meet Alistair, a shady wizard who frequents Knockturn Alley and knows Jacob pretty well

(Courtesy of BeartheCaptain on Youtube)

(and GamingVideos)

Seems pretty weird to me that someone who is known for talking to everyone on Knockturn Alley and was particularly fond of Jacob... supposedly hasn’t seen him in years and didn’t even know he was missing until the articles came out. Not that Alistair is the most trustworthy person, but it does shed doubt onto the Knockturn Alley rumor. Especially since, you know, at this point in the story we’ve gone there several times and it’s never been brought up. Jacob’s Sibling doesn’t even attempt to follow up on that one. (Seriously, I almost want them to just walk out into the street and scream “HEY DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE MY BROTHER JACOB LASTNAME IS” and see what happens. Best case scenario is that Jacob himself runs out to clamp his hand on their mouth and drag them off because that was the dumbest thing he’s ever seen them do what is WRONG with you???)

Our other options are that Jacob joined the Cabal, as implied by, well, R’s letter:

or that he simply made himself disappear. Both of which would put him in a better position to put things into the Vaults, but neither of which are particularly likely for him to have gone to the effort to have done so. (Or he’s dead in which case, yeah, of course he couldn’t put anything in the Vaults)

So with all of this doubt on Jacob’s ability to leave the clues in the Vaults for his beloved little sibling, who did?

Let’s talk about Dumbledore’s shady ass for a second.

I didn’t start thinking of this theory until Pitts told us we were done with detention. What exactly, did he say?

That meat is for the dragon, obviously. What else would we be needing specially seasoned meat for? Rakepick’s specifically having us train to fight a dragon. There was a dragon portrait in the last Vault.

...but how would Pitts know that? He calls it Dumbledore’s detention and specifically says that Dumbledore told him to take care of Jacob’s Reckless Sibling. I think it’s extremely likely that Dumbledore told him to give us the meat when we were done. And note that of all of the possible Hogwarts detentions we could’ve gotten, we specifically got kitchen duty with the House Elves

That’s all that the House Elves seem to do for us in regards to this Vault. But, wait, what was that in the Forest Vault?

A tiny sweater. Such as one meant for a House Elf. But the House Elves are quite tangential to the whole portrait vault. All we need is spiced meat, which we could get from a ton of places that aren’t the Hogwarts Kitchens. And while a few of the Elves speak kindly about Jacob, I can’t remember any of them mentioning that he asked for favors or served detention

The only reason that the House Elves are prominent is that Dumbledore made them prominent, unless there’s some other hidden aspect to them we have yet to see. The most likely reason that the sweater is in there is because someone anticipated that Jacob’s Mid-blink Sibling would be befriending them to get the meat. The only person who could anticipate that connection is Dumbledore

Let’s move on to something that’s been bugging me for a while. In Year 5 Chapter 19, Dumbledore tells us to use Legilimency on him. Dumbledore. A known Occlumens. One skilled enough to be able to block out only the things he didn’t want us to see. And yet, we see this:

I’m sorry, what!? Wait! Hold on, sir, go back, can we talk about this!?

We don’t even know what he’s whispering or when this happened. But this line seems too deliberate to brush off. And we do know one thing from it: Dumbledore knows exactly where the Vault of Ice is. And, given how he shows up when we open the Forest Vault, I suspect he already knows were all of the Vaults are, even before Jacob’s Mind-Reading Sibling finds them. If only thanks to Jacob. After all, he and Snape were very aware of Jacob’s own Legilimency and Dumbledore has repeatedly noted that he was very interested in the boy

It’s no surprise that Dumbledore knows more than he’s telling us. He has from the start. He has a better idea of what happened to Jacob, but he won’t tell anyone. And it’s him who constantly warns us that the voice we hear in the Vaults might not be Jacob

We saw him in front of the Vault. We couldn’t discern what he was whispering.

My suspicion is that Dumbledore is the one who’s been placing all of these clues in the Vaults. Maybe what he was whispering was a spell or something to open the Vault. Maybe it was instructions to someone or something in the Vault. Regardless:

Dumbledore would easily be able to place something into the Vaults without anyone else noticing given that he’s the Headmaster

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s set something up in a hidden room in the school (looking at you, Sorceror’s/Philosopher’s Stone)

Dumbledore is the only person who could make the direct connection between the House Elves and the Vaults

Dumbledore clearly has a good reason to suspect that the voice we’re hearing either isn’t Jacob, or isn’t telling the truth

Dumbledore keeps disappearing for months at a time seriously where are you going and why?

Wouldn’t be the first time he’s intentionally set things up to manipulate a child in HP canon to try and take down a threat (though chronologically it may be the first depending on when he suspected that he’d have to train Harry to take down Voldemort. Regardless, the action is in-character)

Currently, I think it’s very likely that Dumbledore knew about at the very least the dangers the Vaults posed, but possibly also about the Cabal, too. He saw the vast potential that Jacob had and attempted to use him to neutralize the Vaults. This failed, spectacularly, and so he moved down the line to the next best choice: Jacob’s Sibling. Knowing full well about the bond between the siblings, he’s set the younger of the two up to crack the Vaults by using Jacob’s memory

His words never match his actions. He reprimands us for hunting down the Vaults and tells us to never do it again, then rewards us with House Points which subtly enforces the idea that this is a good thing he does want us to do. The one time he punishes us, it’s while there’s a witness present and also a setup to get us a key item necessary to open the next Vault

Dumbledore wants us to open the Vaults. And I think he’s made it so that Jacob’s Sibling wants to open them, too

#harry potter series #harry potter hogwarts mystery #hogwarts mystery #hphm #harry potter hogwarts mystery spoilers #hphm spoilers #spoilers up through year 5 chapter 27 you have been warned #tl;dr dumbledore HAS to have an ulterior motive otherwise i'm going crazy

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