Timelines Re: [HPforGrownups] Dumbledore on the Dursleys in OotP (LONG)

[Karen]

No: HPFGUIDX 151324


On Apr 23, 2006, at 11:13 AM, dumbledore11214 wrote:

> Alla:
>
> "Three days later, the Dursleys were showing no sign of relenting
> and Harry couldn't see any way out of his situation. He lay out on
> the bed watching the sun sinking behind the bars on the window and
> wondered miserably what's going to happen to him.
> ******
> Dobby might have saved Harry from horrible happenings at Hogwarts,
> but the way things were going, he'd probably starve to death anyway.
> The cat-flap rattled and Aunt petunia hand appeared, pushing a bowl
> of canned soup into the room. Harry, whose insides were aching with
> hunger, jumped off his bed and seized it" - CoS, paperback, p.22.
>
> One bowl of soup in THREE days is starving in my book and THAT is
> also canon.
>
>
> "....after last summer Harry had not forgotten what it felt like to
> be continuously hungry" - GoF, p.348.

kchuplis:

Yeah, I think they were pretty much starving him but to me that  
passage does not say that was the first time in three days they had  
shoved food through the flap. To me it is ambiguous how often that  
had happened other than he wasn't getting enough food. Just needed to  
point that out.

Things like this bother me. Like I don't believe that we have a fix  
that the Pettigrew/Sirius incident needed to happen in the first 24  
hours after LV's attack. I still read nothing that tells us that *for  
certain*. I think it could have been up to a month later. It's as  
though the MoM, of course, tracked him down immediately. He's an  
unknown animagi. He didn't need the bike to track down Pettigrew. He  
knew him well, the bike would have drawn attention. The MoM, IMO,  
only found Black because he didn't leave the scene of a highly  
disastrous and well noted incident (by both muggles and WW), because,  
well, he was unhinged. I have been rereading and I just see no  
specific reason to believe it happened the same day.

Lots of these things can be read more than one way. Maybe Harry got  
one or two cans of soup a day....he'd still be starving (I mean,  
that's like maybe 300 calories.) but it doesn't mean that was the  
first food in three days.

Sirius gave his bike to Hagrid on the day of the murders saying he  
didn't need it anymore, but it doesn't mean he immediately found and  
confronted Pettigrew.