Dumbledore's portrait

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 145904

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Martha" <gilchristm at j...> 
wrote:

Martha:
> Hello,
> I'm new here so apologize if this has been addressed before... You
> know that there are pictures in the wizarding world that move
> (Chocolate frog cards, pictures in the newspaper, photographs), and
> those are not necesarily of people who are dead. Isn't it possible
> that Dumbledore made a picture of himself and placed it in the 
> portrait location in the headmaster's office?  This would eliminate 
> the portrait from the pool of evidence about Dumbledore being dead.

Geoff:
That's an interesting new slant on things, however, canon says:

'In silence they ascended the moving spiral staircase and entered he
circular office. He did not know what he had expected: that the room
would be draped in black, perhaps, or even that Dumbledore's body
might be lying there. In fact, it looked almost exactly as it had
done when he and Dumbledore had left it mere hours previously: the
silver instruments whirring and puffing on their spindle-legged
tables, Gryffindor's sword in its glass case gleaming in the
moonlight, the Sorting Hat on a shelf behind the desk. But Fawkes'
perch stood empty; he was still crying his lament to the grounds. And
a new portrait had joined the ranks of the dead headmasters and
headmistresses of Hogwarts... Dumbledore was slumbering in a golden
frame over the desk, his half-moon spectacles perched upon his
crooked nose, looking peaceful and untroubled.'
(HBP "the Phoenix Lament" pp.583-84 UK edition)

However the portrait got on the wall, Dumbledore didn't place it
there. It had appeared since the two of them left and Dumbledore had
not returned there. Maybe a portrait is painted and stored in the 
school somewhere and the magic of Hogwarts kicks in when the head
teacher involved dies.