Molly isn't so inexperienced these days, we all have a tendency of thinking of her as 'The Apprentice' when she's about as old as Harry in Storm Front and has been trained by Dresden and Leanansidhe. She's fought a lot and has endured on her own, and now possesses the Lady's mantle. Presumably, this would also come with training from Mab and Lea as well.

Molly's a lot more competent than we give her credit for, just because Dresden is so much more than he was at the start of the series.

 

Concur with this, also think that Murphy is infected. Would explain why she was being so weird towards Dresden and unwilling to take up the sword. One would presume, an infected person wouldn't be able to wield a sword and the excuse "he works in mysterious ways" is an easy and believable one, in the Dresden world.

 

Actually, I don't think about her as 'The Apprentice' since Lea started teaching her, but I still think she is very inexperienced. Just as Harry was in Storm Front for that matter. But mostly I was thinking just what she could possibly do against Nemesis since even Mab had a trouble with removing it from Lea and the Demonreach recommend her before she became the Lady.

And she is still much younger than Harry was in the first book. He was about 27-28 years old, she is about 23.

 

Then why kill Maeve? Why not kill Harry before he could stop He-Who-Walks-Before from breaching Demonreach's wards? Nemesis' goal on the island was to spark off the banefire and set all the immortal monsters in the prison free. So why would Murphy go along with that if she was under the control of Nemesis?

Aside from that, she's apparently been in frequent contact with the Swords for the entire period of Harry's death. Wouldn't they react to her in a bad way if she was infected?

 

Well, she hasn't been really in contact with them, has she? For all we know, they are lying somewhere in her house and she can't touch them/wield them anymore. I would say, for a case as important as this, it would have been reason enough to take up one of the swords. If things are really important, Murphy would put her own values aside. "The swords say they shouldn't be used here" is a really shoddy and convenient excuse.

 

That doesn't explain why Murphy stopped Maeve, when all she had to do was not pull the trigger and Nemesis won. Especially since all of its primary enemies (with the exception of the Gatekeeper) were sitting right there, waiting to be balefired.

As for the swords, good money says it was as simple as the White God/some angel seeing a need for Molly to become the Winter Lady, and thus made the Swords impart negative vibes about this thing.

 

While its certainly possible I just wrote it off as her being her, she has always been a bitch. As much as I loved the book Murphy was one of the few things I hated about it. I thought it was ridiculous that Harry getting pissed with her was painted as the Mantle driving him nuts when Murphy basically blackmailed him into giving up his oldest and best friend who is also one of his single biggest helpers in the middle of a possibly world ending crisis. Harry should have put her head through a wall or at bare minimum told her to go fuck herself. As for the Swords sure she might possibly be a future Knight but at the moment she hasn't got a damn bit of business swiping them like she did. I know its not how it was supposed to be but honestly I saw the entire thing as a control freak's last desperate swing for leverage. Since she can't bring the law down on anyone anymore she's trying to grab something that will let her keep some kind of power.

 

I've never understood the seemingly mindless hatred for Murphy. While her reaction to Harry coming back was muted as all hell, I found what she did with the swords and Bob to be completely fine, and if anything a prime example of good decision-making. Harry's reaction upon hearing it, if anything, only reaffirms her choice as a correct one to make.

 

We don't truly know how the infection works in all cases, and especially in cases dealing with mortals. Its possible that souls or free will makes it more difficult to Nemesis to "assume direct control" as he did with Sith, and all he can do is manipulate things more subtly with mortals. Heck, even with Aurora it was less total control and more manipulation to convince Aurora that she was just doing the right thing all along. Only Maeve seemed to truly understand that she was infected and go along with it happily.

So if Murphy is infected, its quite possible that Nemesis cannot have Murphy suddenly shoot Harry in the back so Maeve can win, but he can subtly manipulate Murphys mind and implant thoughts/feelings that say "don't bring the superswords, they don't want to to be used for a catastrophe that could annihilate all life". Or make Murphy a bit less effective at critical moments (not sure if any like this happened however).

If she is infected, then Murphy might not even realise there is anything wrong with her. She might not realise that the swords would reject her, because Nemesis is constantly there coming up with excuses and justifications to whisper to her mind so she won't even try to use them. Maybe picking up a sword could cure her for instance, or atleast reveal that something is very wrong when the sword would react violently. She rejected picking up a sword in the short story Aftermath with such a "flimsy" excuse, even though doing so would certainly have increased the chances of saving everyones lives. Murphy just not thinking clearly, or a clue Butcher put in the short story in preparation for Cold Days, the way he did with Harrys headaches several books ahead of time?

And one has to admit, Murphy has been potentially exposed to outsiders on several occasions. Then again, so have all the others. One might expect though, that given the scariness of Nemesis being able to potentially infect someone, atleast one of Harrys friends/allies will eventually be affected so looking for potential clues does make sense.

Actually, the whole outsider psychic attack in White Night happened when many of Harrys closest friends and allies (and others such as Marcones group and Lara) were present, making them all potential suspect for infection at that location. I could see Butcher doing that intentionally, to make it possible for anyone to have been infected and for Harry (and readers) to not know.

Is Lara taking the opportunity moving up in the world, or is it Nemesis manipulating her to do so? Is Marcone still himself, or is Nemesis there too? Is Thomas still Thomas? Everyone of them was open to outsider infection for several moments while Harry was having his internal debate with Lash.

Maybe, but that seems a rather anti-free will argument considering that the primary goals of beings such as archangels seems to be to support free will. Would make the White God pretty damn hypocritical, if he now manipulated everything to make sure Molly would become winter Lady. If its possible to manipulate everyone with future foresight this way, why not do it all the time to defeat all the bad guys and fix all evil?

 

I don't hate Murphy but compared to the other fem characters she is meh. + Harry without Bob means we miss him teasing about Molly.

 

That's what I thought as well. Harry's not in a good position to look after the Swords right now.

The only time I didn't like Murphy was at some points in the first two books, and her behavior's pretty easily explained then anyway. I wasn't a great fan of how she was brought into Cold Days, but that's not a criticism of her character.

 

How exactly do you come to that conclusion? Taking away a huge source of knowledge and aid in the middle of a world ending crisis from the one man who has a chance at stopping it sounds like a good plan to you? Her a mortal human who has guns at best taking away holy relics that could be stolen from her in a heartbeat seems like a good plan? If she actually cared about hiding the swords she would have at a minimum given them to the Church or the WC, hiding them herself in the mortal world is at best incredibly short sighted. As for Bob if she was really concerned about Harry using him for something dastardly she should have simply made him agree to give him back to Butters after everything was said and done and not blackmailed him into forking it over when Bob could have been a massive asset.

 

Demonreach is the safest place to store the swords.

 

Eh in theory yes but what with Harry being the Warden with Intellectus if Murphy was concerned about keeping them from him I can easily see her passing that up. Still though the way I see it if it was honestly about protecting the Swords there are thousands of things that she could have done that would have trumped the shit out of her just taking them herself. If anything serious supernatural decided they wanted them from her it would be childs play to carve clean through her and waltz off with them.

 

Cool theory. Please explain what Storm Front Harry with a vagina is supposed to do against Nemesis.

No. She's smart. I wouldn't hand the swords or Bob over to Harry, either. He's working for the Queen of all Wicked Fairies. Until he Machiavellis himself out of being the Winter Knight, she's quite right in not giving that shit up.

In fact, it's pretty much the ONLY thing she does in this book that actually makes sense. If you're going to argue for Murphy's infection, how about you use the stuff that's actually weird, like her being completely chill with Harry being back out of fucking nowhere, with no questions besides "so, whose asses do we need to kick this week?"

 

Yes, it does seem like a good plan when there was a very real chance that Bob and the swords both could have fallen into the hands of a monster completely subservient to Winter, which, had Harry let the Mantle subsume him, is exactly what would have happened.
I don't blame her in the slightest.

 

I'm with Iron Rose on this. Harry's already one of the most potentially dangerous men on the planet, even if you only count his knowledge of the Darkhallow. If Harry went Darkside (which is a perfectly reasonable possibility, in-universe, especially given how Harry acted immediately after he took Mab's offer) he'd be more than capable of doing a lot of damage to the status quo. Adding in the Swords to that - two of the only weapons that could stand a chance of stopping him? - it's just not a good idea to let him keep them.

Bob too, since he's bound to have more hilariously dangerous knowledge in him after 7 centuries of working with wizards.

 

You know what I think is cool? How everyone saying the hatred for Murphy is mindless, when, really, it's perfectly reasonable for her to give Bob and the Swords back to Harry.

1. Lea could probably make some educated guesses about what Harry was in such a hurry to hide. Lea is -presumably- favored by Mab, and would want to keep that favor. "Hey, you know that wizard who I'm godmother to and your daughter wants to bang? Yeah, he hid some shit on my little corner of the Nevernever." I'd need to read Changes again, but he was sort of in a hurry, so even if he did get a gag clause in return for her hiding it, it's not like she couldn't figure out a way around it.

2. Despite her moniker as, apparently, the Queen of all Wicked Faries, Mab very much wants to keep everything that is hers alive. Summer and Winter are working together to fight the Outsiders. Also, Queen of all Wicked Faries is more than a bit extreme, considering the fact that we've seen members of Summer who have more than earned the moniker of 'wicked' and members of Winter who are anything but. (Aurora and Sarissa, respectively)

3. As was said, Demonreach is probably the safest place on Earth to keep them, considering the fact that that particular section of the Nevernever is all kinds of nasty, and Harry's intellectus with the island would allow him to know exactly where they were and whether or not someone was trying to steal them.

4. It's Bob. Harry without Bob is like peanut butter without jelly. It works, but not nearly as well.

5. Murphy is, at best, an ex-cop who has an on-again off-again relationship with a wizard who is currently the Winter Knight and a bounty hunter who is possibly half hellhound or something.

6. If she really wanted to keep them away from Dresden and simultaneously keep them in a safe place, why not have Kincaid hold onto them? The man's proven himself capable of looking after Ivy, what's two swords and a skull going to add?

EDIT: So what if Dresden broke into Butters' place to grab Bob? He wanted to be in and out, no questions asked, and we know he broke in at that time because he thought that Butters would be either asleep or working. Georgia was an unknown to him, and, guess what? He defended himself. We're talking about a guy who's spent most of his life fighting one nasty or another, instinctive defense isn't that far-fetched.

Also, the Mantle appears to be at least somewhat sentient, and we can only assume from the sort of things it's made him want to do that Slate affected it, since the man was little more than an animal. Harry spending more than a little time with it should turn it back towards, while not exactly a white hat, it won't make him want to put on a black one either.

Furthermore, if Harry was such a threat to the entire fucking world that Murphy is suddenly Miss Responsibility, one would think that Demonreach would not have chosen him.

 

Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea. While Lea is looking out for Harry's best interests, she has a very skewed idea of what they are. Recall, for instance, the times she tried to turn him into a hound. This was before she got infected by Nemesis as well, which she still could be if she even thinks about it too hard.

EDIT: Also, she took Amoracchius and traded it to Bianca for the athame. That's not a good track record to have when dealing with the Swords.

One of which was infected by Nemesis while the other was a Changeling. Not exactly the best examples of Sidhedom right there.

Again, the entire point of Murphy keeping the Swords was to keep them out of Harry's hands. Why on Earth would she want to put them in his own metaphysical backyard?

Well, Harry has pretty much the entire Winter Court to call on if he needs assistance at this point. Aside from that, Harry's got to the point now where Bob is only really a source of information for really obscure stuff. Sure he's good as a research assistant, but I reckon Harry's moved beyond needing to rely on him in much the same way as he doesn't need to rely on potions anymore.

Murphy is, at best, a future wielder of Fidelacchius and has proven herself fighting pretty much every supernatural beastie to hit Chicago. She's got more experience than some Wardens. Need I remind you of the time she attacked an orge (or rather, a Sidhe Lord) with a chainsaw?

Wait. You mean give them to the person whose entire job is to work for the highest bidder? Wow. I can't see how that would go wrong.

It's not that he broke in, so much. It's that he never even considered asking Butters to lend him Bob. That's a very Winter way of thinking: take what you want just because it's easier and quicker. Also it was Andi, not Georgia.

It will make him more dangerous, violent and reliant on his instincts. While these are not fundamentally corrupting things, they're essentially what id-Harry has been trying to make him for years now. Harry has always fought that side of himself because giving in even a little is one step down the road to Hell.

What would Demonreach care about the rest of the world? He's more than willing to blow up a good chunk of North America just on the off chance his prison could be breached. He's not human; his only goal is the safeguarding of the prison, so it's only natural that he'd want a strong Warden that is not going to open it up. Anything else is immaterial to him.

 

Bob alone escalates Harry's threat level to Kimmler tier-proportions. The only reason the White Council hasn't lynched them both is because they don't know. I'm still expecting Harry to eventually be forced to allow Bob to possess him, and I'm anticipating a replay of what happened to the Denarians at the aquarium before they started using gas.

Murphy isn't magically educated, but she's smart enough to have figured out, in general terms, just how dangerous Bob can be. There's no way in fuck she'd ever willingly had him over to Harry so long as he's the Winter Knight. Bob could have Harry fighting multiple Denarians and winning, and that was before Soulfire or the Winter powerup.

If Harry went evil, even if you nix the Darkhalow, who the fuck could stop him? Not Murphy. He'd run her ass over, or mindrape her into being his servant. Not Michael. He's crippled and retired and doesn't have a sword anymore. Not Fix. Fix got his ass run the fuck over when he was fresh, armed, and wearing pants, and Harry wasn't, wasn't, and wasn't. No one in the Wardens could. The only reason they even know he's alive is because Raisheed told them. And he probably hasn't gotten around to that yet. Luccio doesn't have her old body, Morgan is dead, and everybody else is too inexperienced to stand a chance in hell.

The only person with half a prayer is Sanya. That's it. He's the only one who could do anything about it.

Then you put the Darkhallow into the equation. The Darkhallow that nobody else knows that Harry knows how to do. Open a way to Tokyo or something, wait until Halloween, call up the Hunt, shazam. Harry's a god. Fuck everything. The only reason the White Council stopped Kimmler is because they saw it coming decades in advance, which is kind of the flaw in using two world wars as your primer for the event. Harry doesn't have to do that. He knows how to summon the Hunt. He knows how to summon the Fairie Queens. He could eat half of Fairie and one of the most densely populated uban sprawls on the planet before anyone even knows that there's something in motion that they need to stop.

It took the White Council, as in all the wizards, as in ALL the wizards, plus the Wardens, plus all their splinter and satellite groups, PLUS all the help they could pull together from other places, just to stop Kimmler the first time.

If Harry went evil and also had Bob, then Harry is Kimmler if Kimmler was an Avatar of Winter and also possessed by a Fallen Angel. And while Murphy doesn't know most of this, she's not retarded. She can infer a lot. She can guess how bad it would be if Harry snapped. She's quite right to stuff that shit down a hole until Harry's not working for somebody that could wake up one morning and decide "fuck this gay earth."

Lea couldn't even touch the sword until it had been misused and lost all it's power. That was the entire goddamn point of her meddling in Grave Peril. It doesn't matter if she suspects what's in the bag. It doesn't matter if she KNOWS what's in the bag. Unless she wants to be blown apart into crucifix-shaped sparkles of fairy dust, or whatever it is that happens when a fairy messes with something tagged YHWH's property, she's not going to mess with it.

Winter apologists. Winter apologists everywhere. Because the fact that she considers all of reality her property isn't a cause for concern at all.

I'm sure Mother Winter was just joking about hacking Harry to pieces while he was still alive and then eating him. She's far to cuddly and nice for that.

Except for the part where Fallen-possessed Winter Avatar Kimmler knows the keycode to get in.

It's an appeal to emotion over logic and sanity. Titania approves.

And Harry is, at worst, six totally different and unrelated apocalypses waiting to happen the moment he finally loses it.

Presumably because she's not stupid enough to trust Kincaid with them, either.