[HPforGrownups] Re: A few words, once again

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 169459

From: julie <juli17 at aol.com>
justcarol67 wrote:
>> > Another favorite moment, one that makes me smile, is Harry 
>remembering
>> > "Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak," and smiling through his tears at
>> > Dumbledore's funeral. I smiled through my tears, too.
>> 
Bart:
>> Am I STILL the only person who does NOT think it's a coincidence that 
>> those 4 words contain the letters, "D,U,M,B,L,E,D,O,R and E"????
>> 
>> I've put the rest of the letters through anagram generators, but 
>haven't 
>> got anything useful, yet.
>
Julie:
>Those 4 words also contain the letters T,O,M,R,I,D,D,L,E. Coincidence? 
>I put the remaining letters through an anagram generator, and got the 
>following:
>
>WIN BUT WET-BLANKET
>
>Hmm. He is sort of a wet-blanket of a villian ;-)
>
>Julie, suspecting it's probably all meaningless

Actually, the fact that it contains "Tom Riddle" as well makes me even more suspicious that these words were not chosen by accident. Of course, the names might point to the meanings of the words. And, assuming that JKR plays fair (which she does, let's take some additional items:

1) Dumbledore has a habit of planting ideas into people's heads in such a way that they believe they came up with it independently (well, Harry in particular; some are more obvious than others, like when he prods Hermione to use the Time Turner in POA, some so subtle that there is disagreement as to whether or not he did it on purpose, like, did he place the Mirror of Erised where Harry was sure to find it?). This increases the chance that the words have some special meaning. However...

2) Dumbledore does not, in general, believe in the inevitability of prophecy (notably mentioned in explaining THE prophecy to Harry at the end of OOP), although he probably believes that prophecies show potentialities, and it's up to the people involved to try and either make them happen or prevent them from happening. Therefore, it is HIGHLY unlikely that, at the time he said these words, he believed he was going to be dead before Harry could defeat Voldemort. However, he knew that he could die at any moment.

3) It seems clear (admittedly a dangerous thing to say in these books, it's at least strongly hinted) that Dumbledore did not suspect that there were one or more hurcruxes in play before CoS; it's probably a safer bet to say that they only became his major theory as to how Voldy survived until then, though they may well have been one of several other theories. 

4) I've mentioned in the past my belief (brought on by Dumbledore's statement to Harry near the end of PS/SS implying that he expected/encouraged Harry to try to prevent the theft of the variably adjectived Stone) that quite a bit of Harry's meddling (as in "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids and that kneazle!") was not only known by Dumbledore, it was instigated by him. 

These all lead to a theory that the words were important, that they were even more important now Dumbledore is dead, yet, many of us Muggles have attempted to decipher them, and failed. It appears that two conclusions are likely: That the words are an important part of Dumbledore's legacy, that they have something to do with Voldemort, and, when they are needed, the reason will be reasonably obvious.

Bart