Timelines & a troubling passage

[Hester Griffith]

No: HPFGUIDX 116298


> Beatnik:
> > > "...Lily and James Potter had not died in a car crash.  They 
> > > had been murdered, murdered by the most feared Dark wizard *for 
> > > a hundred years*, Lord Voldemort" (pg10, emphasis mine).  "for 
> > > a hundred years"...what's going on? As far as we can tell, PoA 
> > > is set in 1993, right? So, what happened in 1893; and what about 
> > > Grindelwald, was he not evil enough to be as 'feared' as LV?  
> > 
> > Geoff:
> > Possibly not from Harry's point of view. He may have latched on 
> > to a hundred years as just a figure, drawing on bits and pieces 
> > of information Hagrid and others have produced.
> 
> Annemehr:
> Alternatively, the "hundred years" might be the narrator inserting
> something Harry does not know (which does happen sometimes).  Dark
> Wizards must occur from time to time; Grindelwald and Voldemort can't
> be the only ones.  Perhaps there was a really bad one around 100 years
> ago.


Hester:

The 1890's were a surprisingly dark time.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
introduced Sherlock Holmes as a fictional character who saw much of
the evil prevalent at that time.  Jack the Ripper introduced the
concept of mass murder.  It was a time of great upheaval as tchnology
was growing in leaps and bounds.  The introduction of the automobile
brought new danger and excitement.  Socially women were entering the
workforce and that led to controversies and the suffragist movement. 
I'm currently reading "The Devil in the White City," a non-fiction
novel about a mass murderer much worse that Jack the Ripper who had a
murder spree at the 1993 Chicago Worlds Fair.  Remember also these are
the years leading up to WWI.

This is all to say that "100 years ago" would have been a great
opportunity for any "dark wizard" of the Potterverse to do his deeds
and the muggle world would have been completely oblivious.  It's quite
possible that the years preceding WWI would have been rife with
powerful dark wizard and Harry and his fellow students would be
learning about them from Binns in History of Magic.  Possibly this was
a glory era for the predecessors of the Death Eaters.  Lord Voldemort
may have/be trying to resurect this era.

Hester, whose mind is a bit muddled at the moment from sleepless
nights with a newborn.  So forgive me for not remembering every detail.