Death Eater Meeting / H's B'day / Presents / OWLs and NEWTs

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 30008

Klawzie wrote:

> So perhaps the group that appeared at the graveyard was a "first 
> shift".  (snip)  Especially considering "all those" Death Eaters
> who WERE jailed...there should have been MORE empty spaces for 
> them, right?

"Yet they left gaps in the circle, as though waiting for more people. 
Voldemort, however, did not seem to expect more.... He had reached 
the largest gap of all ... "And here we have six missing Death 
Eaters... three dead in my service. One, too cowardly to return" "
etc. 

That phrase "largest gap OF ALL" suggests that there were more than 
two gaps (one two-person gap for the Lestranges, next to Lucius, and 
one six-person gap). I imagine there being *many* gaps because more 
than three died and more than three went to Azkaban.

Jennifer Kington wrote:

> it sounded to me like LV has a hierarchy at work here. In that 
> case, those guys would have been the inner circle, those closest
> to him =[Voldemort].

Gregory Goyle's father and Vincent Crabbe's father were in the Death 
Eater circle in the graveyard. They were big hulking guys and there 
is no reason to assume that they are brighter than their sons. Does 
being Lucius Malfoy's henchman get you into the inner circle even if 
you aren't clever enough to pass orders along to lower subordinates? 
Maybe it does -- Lucius would want his henchmen with him when he had 
meetings with Death Eaters of any level, for protection against 
assassination, so Goyle Sr and Crabbe Sr would have learned all those 
people's identities anyway.

patchespup wrote:

> Is there anybody from the UK out there that can tell us how 
> [required age for admission] operate[s] there? 

In this list, there are a lot of people from the UK who have posted 
how the birthday cut-off date worked for them or their children. The 
problem is that they don't all agree. Many have insisted that Sept 1 
is the cut-off date and they knew people who had Sept 4 birthdays and 
therefore were 12 years old for all but 4 days of their "first-year" 
year, while others have insisted that it is TOTALLY easy to get an 
exception to that cut-off date and they knew people who didn't have 
their birthdays until October and therefore were 10 years old for the 
first month of their "first-year" year. I imagine that going to this 
group's web message archive and Searching on Hermione's or September 
would turn up thousands of posts on this topic.

Ckopec6497 wrote:

> How did the Dursley's send him his presents?  Like the 50cent 
> piece? They wouldn't send it by owl post so.. any theories?   

I believe there is a Muggle mailing address for Muggles to contact 
wizards.  I like to think that this Muggle mailing address is 
actually a corner of the storeroom of the bookshop next to the Leaky 
Cauldron. Some wizard (perhaps Tom of the Leaky Cauldron, or an Owl 
Post employee) picks up the Muggle mail from that address maybe once 
a day and takes it to an Owl Post office, the one in Hogsmeade 
described in PoA or a similar one on Diagon Alley, and opens each 
piece of that mail. Each piece contains 1) an envelope or a wrapped 
package, which contains the letter or gift, and is addressed to Harry 
or whoever it might be, and 2) some Muggle cash money. The Muggle 
cash money is exchanged for wizarding money at Gringotts exchange 
window and used to pay for Owls to carry that mail the rest of the 
way. 

> Everyone is always remembering Harry's birthday and there is no 
> mention of him ever remembering anyone like Hermione's or Ron's. 

Harry is a nice kid and I am certain that he gave his friends 
birthday and Christmas presents even if JKR didn't write about. I'm 
sure he brushed his teeth more often than JKR told us, too! Well, 
maybe he didn't give Christmas presents that first year, when he 
hadn't expected to receive any.

Heather Glude wrote:

>  and that Percy and Bill both got 12s on their O.W.L.s.

It wasn't that they got 12 ON their OWLs, but that they each 'got' 12 
OWLs. That is, they each passed 12 exams -- JKR hasn't told us yet 
what the exam subjects are or what is their grading system. I recall 
that when I went searching on "O-level", I got about a trillion hits 
on a page (in English) for a university in Singapore that said that 
all applicants must have gotten at least a B on their O-Level in 
Malsaysian (the language). 

> what Fred and George got

I thought they got five OWLs each, but I can't find it in the book 
either.