Godric's Hollow/what happened (long)

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 4407

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer 
<pennylin at s...> wrote:
> Hi --
> 
> Steve Vander Ark wrote:
> 
> > We don't know Hagrid's route from Godric's Hollow to Privet Drive 
in
> > the slightest, and we can deduce absolutely nothing about the
> > location of Godric's Hollow from the books. The mention of Harry
> > falling asleep over Bristol tells us nothing. Godric's Hollow 
could
> > be anywhere, and not just in England.
> 
> This *is* all true enough Steve, but the discussions over at Yahoo
> (probably before you joined) had to do with figuring out whether 
any of
> the towns/villages in the UK had a name that might be similar to
> Godric's Hollow that might give some indication of location

Ah, I understand the direction of your logic. But IMHO Godric's 
Hollow, unlike Ottery St. Catchpole, got it's name not from an actual 
place name but from JKR's wish to tie it in with the name of Godric 
Gryffindor. I think Godric's Hollow is a magical place associated 
with the great wizard Gryffindor where the Potters were working for 
the Department of Mysteries on some great form of magic that would be 
used to defeat Voldemort. No one knew what they were actually doing, 
probably not even Dumbledore knew the details, but it was going to be 
the miracle spell or defense that was going to win the war. They 
needed time to finish the defense, and it somehow involved Harry. 
Voldemort had gotten wind of their plans and knew it was essential 
that he destroy the boy. When he learned of the Potter's location, he 
hurried there. After attacking James and Lily and wounding but not 
killing them (perhaps because the defense did in fact block the Avada 
Kadavra curse to some extent), he turned his wand on Harry. But the 
combination of the defense cooked up by James and Lily and the deep 
magic of his mother's sacrificial attempt to save him was enough to 
blast the curse back on Voldemort and he was nearly killed. At this 
point he fled, leaving his wand behind him, soince he couldn't hold 
it in noncorporeal form. 

At this point, the sequence of spells revealed by the Priori 
Incantatem hasn't begun. If it had, one of the spells we see 
regurgitated would have been the one that rebounded and almost 
destroyed Voldemort. Therefore someone else must have taken up the 
wand and finished the job, killing first Lily and then James. I am 
betting that that someone was Crouch, although it could have been 
another Death Eater who accompanied Voldemort that night.

Hagrid didn't stick around. He said he got out before the Muggles 
started swarming around, and frankly, can you imagine him trying to 
be inconspicuous? My guess is that Godric's Hollow isn't a village, 
because if there were Muggles nearby, they would have been swarming 
almost instantly in typical Muggle rubber-necking fashion. Godric's 
Hollow is probably a magic place, deep in a forest or on a moor, far 
away from Muggle civilization. At any rate, Sirius also turned up at 
that point, and in order to allow Hagrid to travel more quickly with 
Harry, he lent him his motorcycle. He could apparate anyway and would 
use other means to track down Pettigrew.

In my opinion, Hagrid met Dumbledore with Harry that night and they 
spent the day 1 Nov working out the details of the plan for the 
defense of Harry as he grew up, knowing that he held in his 
body/mind/soul/psyche/something a record of the defense that his 
parents had been developing. They must now wait for him to mature for 
him to fill the role planned for him, since no one knows what that 
defense is: the only record of it is in Harry (the eyes? the scar?). 
In the meantime, he would certainly be a target, and Voldemort might 
still return one day. So they developed a plan involving Arabella 
Figg, the Dursleys, and probably others who would watch over him and 
guard him. Dumbledore probably cast some deep family-related magical 
guard spells which are why Harry now has to stay at the Dursleys.

When the plan was in place, Dumbledore apparated to Privet Drive, met 
McGonagall, and chatted for a while while Hagrid came along on the 
motorcycle. After all, neither Harry nor Hagrid would be able to 
apparate, so some other form of magical transport would be needed, 
and the Knight Bus would certainly not be appropriate for this kind 
if special situation. (Boom! Crash! And the Dursley's house jumps 
across the road to avoid the violet triple-decker! The baby flies out 
of Hagrid's grasp and bounces off Ernie Prang's head...)

And somewhere in London, more or less at the same time, Sirius Black 
meets up with Pettigrew, so no one on Privet Drive that night knew 
anything about it yet...

Okay, how's that for speculation?

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon