Karkaroff and DE question

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 137605

Aussie wrote:
> The Death Eaters are a group supporting an English Dark Wizard. So 
what is a Bulgarian doing in the Death Eaters?
> 
> If he was the headmaster of an ancient wizarding school, reknown for
it's Dark Arts, then I immagine he is MUCH older than Snape and maybe
older than Riddle too.
> 
> So does anyone know when he joined LV?
> 
> Was it overseas?
> 
> If he was in Drumstrang when he met LV, could a Horcrux be hiding 
> there?
> -aussie-

I think the Horcrux hidden in Durmstrang is a great idea. Maybe the
secret passage between the two schools (under the lake) will come into
play in HBP (as will Viktor Kru,, though he's notw too old to be a
Durmstrang student).

As for Karkaroff's age, his hair is black in the Pensieve scene when
he betrays the other Death Eaters, including Snape. It's as white as
Dumbledore's when he's at Hogwarts with his students. This suggests to
me that he's in his thirties or forties in his trial scene and his
fifties or sixties in the main GoF story. Certainly he's considerably
older than Snape and could be the same age as Voldemort (about 68 in
GoF). If so, Karkaroff could be one of the original Death Eaters.

The fact that he has an Eastern European name doesn't necessarily
prevent him from being English. Quite possibly he attended Hogwarts
with Tom Riddle like Lestrange Sr. (father of Rodolphus and Rabastan),
who also has a foreign (French) name. And there's also Antonin
Dolohov, who has a Russian(?) name but seems to be another of the
original Death Eaters. He's not mentioned as part of the Slytherin
gang from Snape's time, so I suspect he's older, like Nott (Theo's
aging father) and the white-haired Karkaroff. (Or, like the Lestrange
brothers, he could be the son of an original Death Eater.)

Anyway, to summarize, I think Karkaroff is English despite his name
but had ties to Durmstrang, perhaps through his father and that he's
in his fifties or more likely sixties in GoF. It's possible that he
(and Dolohov) had connections to Grindelwald that we'll discover in
Book 7. Voldemort could have placed one of the Horcruxes in his
keeping (without revealing that it was a Horcrus), just as he
entrusted the diary to Lucius Malfoy. That could be one reason why
Voldemort had him killed rather than merely punishing him for his
cowardice as he stated he would do in the graveyard scene. At any
rate, it's a plausible idea and fits nicely with the secret passage
between Hogwarts and Durmstrang.

Carol