Dumbledore's howler, Dumbledore and Petunia, (was Re: New JKR FAQ Poll: Which is significant?)

[Shannon]

No: HPFGUIDX 107089

>I,Shannon, said:
> > I voted for #3, because that Howler was worded too oddly to just be a
> > reminder of her agreement to take Harry in and protect him.  He could have
> > just said, "remember your promise."  And would that have had such an impact
> > on her? I think there's definitely more to know there.
>
>James Lawlor replied:
>You know, when I was first reading OotP, my initial guess was that the
>Howler was, in fact, from Lily. I figured perhaps she had somehow
>rigged a charm to send the Howler or left a Howler with instructions
>to send at the appropriate time. But it suddenly occurs to me that it
>could be Dumbledore's voice sending the Howler, but Lily's words.
>Perhaps referring to a conversation Lily and Petunia had before she
>died.

That's an interesting idea, and hadn't occurred to me at all.  I always 
thought it was odd that Harry wouldn't have recognized Dumbledore's voice 
immediately, though I guess it could have sounded very different from the 
Dumbledore Harry knows. Still, it struck me as odd. And I can't get past 
the wording of it.  It's too unusually worded for me to accept Dumbledore's 
explanation as the whole story.

>"Remember my last, Petunia" does strike me as something more likely to
>come from a sister than a
>mentor-grandfather-type-headmaster-to-sister-and-nephew person.

And besides that, as far as we know at this point, Petunia wouldn't have 
had any reason to have any significant contact with Dumbledore. From 
someone she knew, such a brief and cryptic message wouldn't seem all that 
out of place. You'd *know* what it meant in that case, probably. Presuming 
that Petunia had no tie to the wizarding world other than Lily (which I'm 
starting to doubt), it seems that Dumbledore would want to make certain 
that she knew exactly what he was talking about.  But she didn't seem to 
express any uncertainty at all about what the message meant or who it was 
from.

>Another thing, now that I think about it. How would Dumbledore know
>when to send the Howler (regardless of who "wrote" it)? We know the
>MoM knew about Harry's using the Patronus Charm, and that Dumbledore
>could have found out via them or one of the members of the Order. But
>unless there was someone sitting out under the window of Number 4
>Privet Drive, they wouldn't know that Harry had just been "throw out".

I assumed, as you suggest, that it was just that he knew the Dursleys might 
have reached the end of their tether with Dudley suddenly attacked.

Shannon

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