It's descendent, not ancestor; Omniscience

[judyserenity]

No: HPFGUIDX 40425

On the topic of whether Voldemort is Slytherin's descendent or 
ancestor, David (davewitley) very kindly emailed me the following 
quote from an interview with JK Rowling:

             **************************
Q: Is Voldemort the last remaining ancestor of Slytherin, or the last 
remaining descendent of Slytherin? 

JKR Ah, you spotted the deliberate error. Yes, it should 
read "descendent." That's been changed in subsequent editions. (Keep 
hold of the "ancestor" one, maybe it'll be valuable one day!)
              ***********************

The interview can be found at:
www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/author/transcript2

David found the interview via Mike Gray's search engine of JK Rowling 
interviews, which is at www.aberforthsgoat.net  (If only I had 
remembered that URL, I could have saved us all a lot of trouble! I 
wanted to search for JKR's quote, but forgot that Mike's site ends 
with .net, not .com.)

So, this clears it up; it should read "descendent".  This means Harry 
*can not* be descended from Voldemort (or Slytherin) unless Dumbledore 
was wrong when he said in CoS that Voldemort is the last surviving 
descendent of Slytherin. 

My feeling is that Dumbledore wouldn't have told Harry that Voldemort 
is the last descendent of Slytherin, unless Dumbledore was sure that
was true.  In other words, I think Dumbledore has some sort of 
privileged knowledge that tells him Slytherin has no other 
descendents. 

This brings us back to my claim that Dumbledore is "omniscient."  
Really, omniscient is too strong a term; I don't think he knows 
*everything*.  However, I think he has some information about the 
future, that allows him to take risks which would otherwise be 
reckless.  (Either that, or he is one heck of a mellow guy.) 

-- Judy