extra canon for safe house/MAGIC DISHWASHER

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 46557

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Grey Wolf" <greywolf1 at j...> wrote:
> Pippin wrote:
 JKR wrote:
> > Harry-
> > I'm flying north immediately. This news about your scar is the 
> > latest in a series of strange rumours that have reached me 
here. 
> > If it hurts again, go straight to Dumbledore -- they're saying 
he's  got Mad-Eye out of retirement, which means he's reading 
the signs even if no one else is.
>
> > UK hardcover GoF p 199
> > 
> > 
Grey Wolf asked:
> > > However, even more intriguing is that very first comment: " 
a series of   of strange rumours that have reached me here". We 
know that Sirius is in some tropical paradise, with huge 
> > multicoloured birds. What kind of  rumour would arrive there? 

My suggestion:
> > Er...how about the newspapers? 

The Wolf replied:
> Now, there are two problems with newspapers. One is, as 
always, that  Sirius is in hiding, so he wouldn't be attracting 
unwanted attention by  subscribing to a UK newspaper (and 
Bertha's disapearance and Frank  Bryce are not going to figure in 
a newspaper from whichever country 
> Sirius happen to be in). I already said that the World Cup 
disturbance are top contenders for the rumours, but I feel that 
shouldn't be all.  The other is that RL newspapers tend to arrive 
quite late to tropical 
> countries, and so seems to do the owl post Harry sends his 
way. Which brings me to the problem of timelines 
<<<<<

Grey Wolf, you will excuse my referring to ancient history, but I 
think you must be  too young to remember what it was like before 
satellite TV. Newspapers used to have international editions 
published abroad and these could be had on the same day in 
capital cities all over the world, and maybe a week later in the 
outcountry, at least where tourists congregate. You could buy 
them at newsstands and hotels, quite anonymously, and of 
course we know how Sirius the dog gets his papers. I figured 
Sirius was hanging out in Jamaica--you'd expect to find a lot of 
ex-pat English wizards there who read The Daily Prophet 
International. 

As for the timeline:
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/timeline_main2.html#Ninet
ies

According to the HP lexicon, Harry felt his scar hurt (and Frank 
was murdered) on Saturday August 20.The disturbances at the 
World Cup are reported on Tuesday August 23. 

Supposing that Frank's disappearance is reported at the same 
time in the Muggle newspapers, (why that was news, we don't 
know, but it's canon that it was), Dumbledore could have written 
to Sirius at the same time that Harry did. Dumbledore could also 
have informed Sirius that Bertha Jorkins was missing. Rita 
Skeeter didn't know about it  till a week later, so I agree Sirius 
wouldn't have been likely to read about that in the newspaper. 

So I would put the sequence of events like this:
8/20 Frank is murdered, Harry's scar hurts, he writes to Sirius
8/21? Dumbledore learns of Frank's disappearance from the 
Muggle press
8/22 Disturbance at the World Cup
8/23 Prophet reports disturbance at QWC
8/27? Harry's owl reaches Sirius
8/31? Rita Skeeter reports Bertha's disappearance
9/4   Sirius' reply arrives at Hogwarts

So there's only 15 days for Hedwig to get all the way to Sirius's 
location and back. Those owls are fast! Of course there's no 
reason to assume the journey there and back takes the same 
number of days, what with prevailing winds and all.  Dumbledore 
says in "The Penseive" chapter 30, that he's been "in contact with 
[Sirius] ever since he left Hogwarts last year", so Sirius's 
information could have come from Dumbledore himself. 

The odd thing is that Sirius says that Dumbledore got Moody out 
of retirement because he was "reading the signs", but all of the 
signs above  took place *after* Dumbledore decided to hire 
Moody.  Voldemort and Wormtail were already discussing the 
planned substitution "checking and double-checking identities" 
the night Frank Bryce died. In fact, if Voldemort learned about 
Moody from Bertha Jorkins, Moody had to have been hired even 
before Pettigrew first reached Voldemort.

There could be several explanations for this: 
1) It's a Flint. We know the book was rewritten extensively. Is it 
possible that the original, abandoned plot of GoF called for 
young Crouch to take his *father's* place? That makes *so* 
much more sense: aging potion instead of polyjuice, extensive 
familiarity with the person to be substituted, the real Moody 
teaches Harry how to resist Imperius, no having to believe that a 
skilled Auror could be kept under Imperius for so long (wouldn't 
the demonstrated ability to resist Imperius be a job 
requirement?), no necessity to fool Dumbledore for months on 
end. In that case, Moody could have been hired much later than 
in the version we have.

2) Sirius just put it that way because he needed to convince 
Harry that Dumbledore would take him, er, seriously. 
Dumbledore's reading the signs and Moody's hiring are 
unrelated--this of course is consonant with MAGIC 
DISHWASHER, since MD!Dumbledore wouldn't need any "signs" 
to tell him that Voldemort was about to return.

3) Voldemort, a Dark Lord, has an elemental relationship with 
the Dark Forces. That is, they grow stronger as he does whether 
they take orders from him or not. Just like  Middle-earth: all evil 
things respond to Sauron's return, even those which are not 
under his command. I actually like this one a lot: it explains  
young Barty's brief escape and how the  Death Eater activity at 
the QWC  could be taken as a sign of the Dark Lord's return if 
Voldemort wasn't yet in contact with them. The signs 
Dumbledore had read could have been Trelawney's prophecy, 
the Centaurs' foretellings and, perhaps, increased activity 
among the more prescient of the  Dark Forces even  prior to 
Pettigrew's reunion with his master, while later rumours of other 
undescribed dark activity reached Sirius in hiding.

Pippin