Missing 24 hours.

[amiabledorsai]

No: HPFGUIDX 140235

eggplant:
 I don't quite get this missing 24 hours stuff, isn't it possible that
the baby Harry was trapped for many hours in the wreckage of his
parent's house before he was rescued or even before any of the good
guys knew that something was wrong. And when they did finally get
Harry I'm sure Dumbledore would insist he be given a through medical
check up before he went to the Dursley's.


Amiable Dorsai:  
We know the timing of very little that happened that day, but we know
that the Wizarding World knew something was up by the morning of the
night Voldy had his little mishap.  Here are a few quotes from
"Sorcerer's Stone":

"When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday
our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to
suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening
all over the country. Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most
boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away happily as she
wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.

    None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.

    At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked
Mrs. Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but
missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his
cereal at the walls. "Little tyke," chortled Mr. Dursley as he left
the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four's drive.

    It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first
sign of something peculiar -- a cat reading a map. For a second,
Mr. Dursley didn't realize what he had seen -- then he jerked his
head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the
corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn't a map in sight."

Vernon encounters people wearing "funny clothes" gossiping on his way
to work that morning.  Owls zoom back and forth all morning, though
Vernon does not notice them.  When he goes out for lunch, he hears a
snippet of conversation that fills him with dread:

"The Potters, that's right, that's what I heard yes, their
son, Harry."

So by daylight that morning, the word was out that something had
happened.  By lunchtime, rumors were swirling around young Harry Potter.

So where was Harry?  McGonagall was apparently expecting something to
happen at Lily's sisters house since early that morning, but no one
else turns up at Privet Drive until:

"Mr. Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but
the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was
sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far
corner of Privet Drive. It didn't so much as quiver when a car door
slammed on the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In
fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all.

    A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared
so suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out
of the ground. The cat's tail twitched and its eyes narrowed."

So Dumbledore shows up quite long after the Potter's were killed--in
fact, judging by Harry's memories in PoA, they were killed before they
turned in the night before.  The Potters died late Monday night, or
very early Tuesday morning.  Dumbledore appears at Privet Drive just
before midnight Tuesday. Hence, the 24 hour figure.

Dumbledore and McGonagall chat for several minutes, then Hagrid shows
up on a flying motorcycle that he borrowed from Sirius Black:

"No problems, were there?"

    "No, sir -- house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all
right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. He fell asleep
as we was flyin' over Bristol."

It doesn't sound like Harry was hard to retrieve.  It also sounds
like--but we can't be certain--that Hagrid came straight to Privet
Drive after picking up Harry.

Now we don't know how fast Sirius' motorbike was, but the UK isn't
that big--at any reasonable speed, Hagrid should have been able to get
from wherever Godric's Hollow is to Surrey in a lot less than 24 hours.

So where were Hagrid and Harry all that time?  Where was Dumbledore? 
How did McGonagall know to stake out Privet Drive?

Myself, I think Hagrid was hiding out with Harry at Dumbledore's
orders, while Dumbledore was making sure the Longbottoms were secure,
doing his best to piece together just what had happpened to the
Potters and Voldy, and, perhaps, doing whatever needed to be done to
set up the protections on Harry. 

I have no great problem with the "missing 24", but a lot of people do.
 And even I admit there are some mysteries.

Amiable Dorsai