How Many DEs Left? Branded DE's and LV Soldiers

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 90965

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "james320152002" 

> James...: 
> 
> Well The Aurors were Authorized to use Unforgiveable curses so it 
> wouldn't be totally out of the realm of possibility that many of 
> them could have been victims to the Avada Kedavra. But yeah..400 is 
> quite a large number.
> 
> "james320152002"

bboy_mn:

Of course, I can't say for sure, but I think we need to be careful
about taking everything that is said in the book as a 100% literal
fact. When people speak, they frequently generalize, and amoung other
speech patterns, occassionally exaggerate to make a point.

A good example, is Hagrid saying that there wasn't a Dark witch or
wizard who didn't come from Slytherin. Well, we know, or can
reasonably conclude that, that isn't true. Hagrid is simply making the
point that a lot of Dark wizards were from Slytherin house.

Also, although it isn't crystal clear in the books, but I think we
need to make a distinction between an Officer in the DE Army and a DE
Soldier in Voldemort's Army. I think the 30 to 40 DE's who showed up
at the GoF graveyard were Officers; they were Voldemort's inner
circle, and these and only these, plus a few more had the Dark Mark on
them.

There were many other 'soldiers' who were actively involved in helping
Voldemort, and reasonably in a world of many thousands, the 'soldiers'
could have numbered in the 100's. But I don't think these were all
called to Voldemort's side everytime he touched the Dark Mark. That
really doesn't seem very practical. It would make more sense to
periodically call his generals together, strategize, then send them
out to direct the troops.

So I think we could take Lupin's 20-to-1 comment as an indicator that
Voldemort had supporters numbering in the hundreds, but regardless of
what he said, I don't think we should necessarily believe that it
implies hundreds of 'branded'(inner circle) DE's. 

Just a thought.

bboy_mn