[HPforGrownups] Re: Fishing for ideas

[Janet Anderson]

No: HPFGUIDX 101666

"Phil Boswell" <phil_hp7 at yahoo.co.uk> said:

>Just got to jump in here in response to all these theories about
>Dumbledore being someone from the present day sent back in time ...

*snip*

>A personal thing, perhaps, but I am getting rather tired of people
>trying to spatchcock their own favourite SF-nal device (time travel in
>this instance) into the Harry Potter books no matter whether it makes
>any sense at all.

May I agree loudly with this?

In my opinion you can say the same thing about time travel as a literary 
device that you can about using it to solve problems in the wizarding world: 
  "massively dangerous and to be avoided at all costs."  It was used once, 
and really well; using it to send Dumbledore, Ron, Harry, Snape, Lupin, 
Fawkes, Crookshanks, or who knows who all back to Godric's Hollow will end 
up looking like one of those efforts to stuff a lot of people into a phone 
booth.  It won't be poignant or dramatic, just silly (although it might be 
funny if it were written  like those comedy plays where groups of people who 
shouldn't meet are running in and out of closets and bedrooms, each unaware 
of the other).

And as far as I can tell, the theory that Dumbledore and Ron are the same 
person is based only on the fact that Dumbledore's hair used to be red.  (If 
there is any other canon for this, please by all means correct me on this.)

>For the record, I have a mini-theory about Dumbledore's partial
>omniscience having something to do with his Chocolate Frog Cards

I thought about that too.  And he did say he didn't care what the Ministry 
did to him as long as they didn't take him off the Chocolate Frog cards.  
Maybe he just meant that being on a series of children's educational cards 
was more important to him, as an educator, than the honors he had from the 
Ministry.  And maybe not.

>Would anyone have a problem with the idea that Dumbledore might have a
>kind of internal "Marauders' Map" and be hyper-aware of where people
>were in Hogwarts? Just as a quick example, how *did* he know that
>Harry was visiting the "Mirror of Erised" in the first place.

He might.  We know he has a scar on his knee (I think) that resembles the 
London Underground.  (I wonder if that's going to come in handy if someone 
ever needs to infiltrate Gringotts?)  And it wouldn't necessarily have to be 
internal -- after all, the original Marauder's Map was made by four 
students, so the magic involved is presumably not beyond Dumbledore.  But 
the network of portraits may be sufficient for him to keep an eye on 
Hogwarts, or maybe just on Harry.  Or it may just be that Snape isn't the 
only Hogwarts teacher who wanders at night -- and Dumbledore, by his own 
word, doesn't need a cloak to make himself invisible.


Janet Anderson

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