I was trying to think of a reason for a rebounding Killing Curse to make Voldemort’s body disappear (no luck so far) when I thought of an entirely different question: with no body and no witnesses (other than Harry, who probably didn’t know more than a few words), why was the wizarding public so quick to believe Voldemort had been defeated?( Read more... )

I must be on a "lost causes" kick this year ( Read more... )

I’ve always ignored the first part of the name of Dumbledore’s special group. “Phoenix” is interesting: Dumbledore’s familiar, connected to his interest in immortality, and possibly also connected to the name of Voldemort’s special group. (We see Fawkes “eat” death, or at least a Killing Curse. Maybe there’s some historical lore tying phoenixes to ( Read more... )

Trelawney probably made her prophecy sometime between the fall of 1979 and early spring 1980. Harry and Neville were born in July 1980. So why did it take Voldemort until October 1981 to even try to kill one of them? Was he waiting for a significant date? Were the Potters and the Longbottoms just that well-hidden ( Read more... )

Over the years, we've speculated that Dumbledore tacitly approved of and possibly encouraged the Marauders' bullying for various reasons--indifference (whether clueless or callous), a liking for charming bad boys, a liking for chaos generally, as part of a plan to earn their loyalty and prepare them as fighters for the Order of the Phoenix, a ( Read more... )

An idea sparked by Oryx's "Appendix B" post on the Order of the Phoenix during VoldWar I ( Read more... )

What do we know about the Order of the Phoenix in the first war? Our main source for the membership is the photograph that Alastor Moody showed Harry. The front row has: Albus Dumbledore, Alastor Moody, Dedealus Diggle, Marlene McKinnon, Frank and Alice Longbottom, Emmeline Vance, Remus Lupin and Benjy Fenwick. Behind them are Edgar Bones, Sturgis ( Read more... )

How many unnamed DEs were there?

Harry estimates the number of DEs in the graveyard was over 30. ( Read more... )

My series covered the events of the first war until the attack on the Longbottoms. I wanted to add some appendices about the less principal characters, to see what we know about them, in hope to be useful to those fanfic writers who care about canon-compliance. I was going to write one appendix about the Death Eaters and one about the Order, but so ( Read more... )

Something I think canon is silent on--I'd like opinions, informed or otherwise ( Read more... )