Dumbledore's-death-is-a-fake-theory

[n_longbottom01]

No: HPFGUIDX 143619

> 
> Miles:
<snip> 
And to bring in the meta killer argument: Rowling stated in 
interviews, that characters who die in her books are really dead and 
do not return.
> 
> Miles
>

n_longbottom01

I think that the characters who have really died in the story will 
all stay dead (Harry's parents, for example), but we have already 
seen "dead" characters come back to life in the series.  Barty Crouch 
Jr. and Peter Petegrew were both supposedly dead, but it turned out 
that their deaths had been faked.

I like what Constance Vigilance pointed out about Dumbledore's 
conversation with Slughorn about why he wasn't fooled by Slughorn's 
attempt to fake his own death... "no dark mark."  The scene shows 
that if Dumbledore was going to fake a death, he would do it right.  
Dumbledore couldn't have staged everything that happened on the night 
of his death, but he could have had an arangement ahead of time with 
Snape.  Draco was being set up to fail as a punishment for his 
father; Draco had to appear to be sucessful in order to live.  Would 
Snape be breaking his unbreakable vow if he only pretended to kill 
Dumbledore?  Maybe Dumbledore's death was faked and the unbreakable 
vow will come back to bite Snape in the next book.

Dumbledore implies that he can hide Draco by faking his death, just 
before he is killed himself.  It sure seems like there must be 
someone who's death has been faked, but I am not sure who.  Here are 
some thoughts I've been having on the subject recently:

I know that you aren't supposed to be able to Apparate on Hogwarts 
grounds, but we didn't see Dumbledore fall the way to the ground... 
what if he Apparated to a safe spot just as he disappeard from sight 
over the edge of the tower.  Also, Barty Crouch, Jr. turned his 
father's dead body into a bone, could Dumbledore have done the 
reverse, and turned an object into something that appeared to be his 
own dead body?

Early on in The Order of the Phoenix, we see the students practicing 
vanishing spells.  Hermione progresses to vanishing kittens... is it 
possible to vanish a wizard, I wonder?  And it seems that the animal 
being vanished does not all vanish at once... since an incomplete 
vanishing spell can leave behind a rat's tail, it seems like the 
animal might vanish starting at one end and working its way to the 
other end.  Could a properly placed vanishing spell have made it 
appear that Sirius was falling through the curtain, when actually he 
was only vanishing?  I'm not sure were someone goes when they are 
vanished... but they aren't dead, hopefully (otherwise, Hermione is a 
kitten killer).

I'd like the faked death to be either Dumbledore or Sirius because I 
like them... I'm not sure how either works storywise, though.  My 
other candidate was R.A.B. is posing as Stubby Boardman... but if 
R.A.B. is still around, the locket Horcrux should be destroyed... 
but, because of what Dumbledore says on the tower, I think he is 
involved in any remaining faked deaths left in the series, and I 
can't work out how he could be involved in R.A.B.'s faked death.  
Otherwise, he should have known not to go into the cave, for one 
thing.  Plus he should have known about Voldemort's Horcrux's sooner 
for another.

n_longbottom01