How Many DEs Left? Was:Dark SHIPS ( was Re: Possession)

[Jim Ferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 90941

Helen: "  ..."Oh Molly, come on, it's about time you got used to 
hearing his name - look I can't promise no one's going to het hurt, 
nobody can promise that, but we're much better off than we were last 
time. You weren't in the Order then, you don't understand. Last time 
we were out-numbered twenty to one by the Death Eaters and they were 
picking us off one by one..."

  I must admit, this statement never bothered me before, but now 
people are asking questions about how many DEs there are and how many 
turned up to the graveyard, I'm struggling with it too. Maybe Lupin 
meant "DEs and people controlled by DEs"?"

There's some possible explanations for it. We all sometimes overstate 
a little; Lupin might have been doing that.  Don't forget LV was 
defeated in that war by Harry, and many of the DE's were killed, 
captured, or scattered.

And that brings me, at least, to the untold stories of the graveyard 
scene.  How could that be all the surviving DE's? Could it be the 
cadre of DE's, Voldemort's staff? It doesn't say so in the text, but 
it's hard to make sense out of it otherwise.  I have a hard time 
imagining Lucius Malfoy standing in the same circle as an evil 
version of Stan Shunpike.  If anything gives that "elite" idea any 
credence, it's the MoM scene at the end of OotP; there's more DE's 
around than seem possible even considering the gaps in the circle at 
the graveyard.

Jim Ferer