- Dumbledore: "You're not alone...there are others...how?"
- Draco: "The Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement. I've been mending it."
- Dumbledore: "Let me guess: it has a sister, a twin."
- Draco: "In Borgin and Burkes. They form a passage."
- Dumbledore: "Ingenious."
- — Draco Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore[src]
A pair of Vanishing Cabinets formed a passage between Hogwarts Castle, the location of Hogwarts School and Borgin and Burkes, a dark magic shop in Knockturn Alley. The cabinets allowed objects placed in one cabinet to appear in the other. The passage was successfully used to transport several Death Eaters from Borgin and Burkes into Hogwarts School, hence commencing the Battle of the Astronomy Tower.
Description
The two objects are large black cabinets, though the one in Hogwarts is described as being both black and gold. The cabinets are described as very valuable.
As an Entryway to Hogwarts
One of the things that is stressed over and over is that Hogwarts is "unplottable", that it cannot be put on a map, and that wizards and witches cannot apparate to or within it. Additionally, both in Harry's third and sixth year it is mentioned that there are spells preventing entrance via any means save the gates, which are guarded by Dementors in Harry's third year, and by locks that can be opened only by professors in his sixth. Much of the action in Harry's third year involves the secret ways in and out of the castle, and many got the impression that all such passageways are known. The Vanishing Cabinets are a way around this protection that has not as yet been guarded against.
History
The Vanishing Cabinet was obviously not known for the danger it represented, as neither the headmaster nor the caretaker removed it from the premises. Though they knew it was a Vanishing Cabinet, no one seemed to know it was linked to a second cabinet in the shop of Borgin and Burkes.
1992-1993 school year
Peeves damaged this Cabinet in 1992 when he was persuaded by Nearly Headless Nick to drop it in a classroom right above Filch's office to get Harry out of trouble with Filch.
1995-1996 school year
In 1996, Fred and George Weasley shoved Graham Montague headfirst into the Cabinet on the first floor of Hogwarts when he tried to take points away from them. Montague eventually escaped (by Apparating) and was found in a toilet's u-bend by Draco Malfoy, who summoned Professor Snape for help. Montague revealed the previously unknown powers of the Cabinets to Draco.
1996-1997 school year
Draco Malfoy using the Vanishing Cabinet
- Dumbledore: "...so tell me, while we wait for your friends...how did you smuggle them in here? It seems it has taken you a long time to work out how to do it."
- Draco: "I had to mend that broken Vanishing Cabinet that no one's used for years. The one Montague got lost in last year."
- Dumbledore: "Aaaah. That was clever...there is a pair, I take it?"
- Draco: "The other's in Borgin and Burkes and they make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the Cabinet was traveling between them [...] I was the only one who realised what it meant — even Borgin didn't know — I was the one who realised there could be way into Hogwarts through the Cabinets if I fixed the broken one."
- Dumbledore: "Very good. So the Death Eaters were able to pass from Borgin and Burkes into the school to help you...a clever plan, a very clever plan...and, as you say, right under my nose..."
- — Draco talking to Dumbledore atop the Astronomy Tower.[src]
Draco's invited group of Death Eaters emerging from the Vanishing Cabinet.
Draco used what he learned about the Cabinet's powers to his advantage. When Lord Voldemort commanded Draco to assassinate Albus Dumbledore, Draco decided to use the Cabinets to allow Death Eaters into the castle to assist him. The Hogwarts Vanishing Cabinet was later moved to the Room of Requirement, where Draco would spend the entire school year in repairing, after coaxing Borgin with death threats for instructions and assistance. Repairing it seems to be very difficult and taxing on Draco's behalf, as he became increasingly neglectful in his schoolwork, duties and activities, with him even losing confidence in success from time to time in that he attempted other crude methods of assassination that failed. However, he eventually succeeds in 1997, and allowed a group of Death Eaters — Alecto and Amycus Carrow, Yaxley, Thorfinn Rowle, Gibbon, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Fenrir Greyback — to enter Hogwarts from the Borgin & Burkes Vanishing Cabinet, in order to accomplish his mission.
1997-1998 school year
During this school year, it is unlikely that the Death Eaters used the pair of cabinets to enter the school because it was already under their control. During the Battle of Hogwarts in 1998, when Vincent Crabbe released Fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement, it was likely the Vanishing Cabinet was destroyed, along with many other artefacts hidden there.
Trivia
- In the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when Draco tested the progress of repairing the broken Cabinet, he placed an apple and later a bird into it; both times, the Cabinet was not fully repaired, when the said object was sent to the Cabinet at Borgin and Burkes and back, the apple was missing a moderate chunk, while the bird died.
Appearances
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (First mentioned)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Mentioned only)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (film)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (video game)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (Appears in flashback(s))
- LEGO Harry Potter: Building the Magical World
- Harry Potter LEGO Sets