CHAPDISC: PS/SS 1, The Boy Who Lived and Avatar SPOILERS LONG

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 187756

Alla:
> 
> Well, yes. My point is that all we know is that *strangers* approached Harry, they could have been Order members, they could have been Voldemort spies. I just think that this does not show the strength of the protection.

Carol responds:
The strangers approached Harry when he was not at 4 Privet Drive. One of them was, as several people have mentioned, definitely the harmless Order member, Dedalus Diggle, who tips his tophat to Harry in the Leaky Cauldron. Harry says to him, "I've seen you before! You bowed to me once in a shop." (SS Am. ed. 69). Given that context (and what we know about Mrs. Figg, who could have described Harry to the other Order members), it seems likely that the other strangers, both of whom recognize Harry but do him no harm, were also Order members watching out for him.

Even though Harry's photo had not yet appeared in the Daily Prophet at this point, the lightning-shaped scar appears to be common knowledge. Harry is instantly recognized when he enters the Leaky Cauldron (accompanied by Hagrid), and at least one person who may already intend him harm is present there, Professor Quirrell. It seems certain that if he had wandered Diagon Alley accompanied only by other children or had otherwise shown up in the WW before SS/PS, he would not have been safe even with LV vaporized and many of the DEs in prison. His only protection from, say, Lucius Malfoy is Malfoy's cloak of respectability. It isn't "prudent" to speak ill of Harry Potter when the rest of the WW idolizes him. But suppose that, say Avery or Fenrir Greyback or Yaxley or the Carrows, all of whom were still at large at least up until HBP (Avery was arrested after the MoM fiasco) had found him at large in the WW, with no blood protection or any other protection? (They'd have been after Sirius Black and probably found him as easily as they found Karkaroff if Sirius had taken Harry.)

When Harry is spotted by Diggle and the other two clearly harmless strangers (both of them odd characters rather like Mrs. Figg and Dedalus Diggle), he's in the Muggle world where no one except those informed by Dumbledore of his whereabouts could have found him. (As we know, most Witches and Wizards avoid the Muggle world, finding it hard to pose as Muggles.) DD, being secretive, would not have divulged Harry's place of concealment to any but a trusted few. There can be no other reason for those people being (like Diggle and Mrs. Figg) in Little Whinging except that DD sent them there to keep an eye on Harry.

Now *if* a DE knew at that point that Harry lived at 4 Privet Drive, he or she would have found out the hard way about the blood protection, IMO. But, clearly, they didn't know it because part of DD's plan was for Harry to grow up in obscurity, not knowing that he was famous. It was like hiding him in plain sight. Now granted, the DEs *could* have harmed Harry when he was at school or playing alone in the neighborhood, but clearly, they didn't know that he was there.What DE would expect DD to hide the Boy Who Lived in a Muggle neighborhood and allow him to attend a Muggle school? 

If, OTOH, he had been raised by the Weasleys or by a well-to-do family like the Crouches, he would have been in the public view--and unsafe--for his entire childhood. At 4 Privet Drive, he's uncomfortable and mistreated, but he's safe and hidden from prying eyes. I can't prove it, but based on what we know of DD, I'm ready to swear that he would not have divulged Harry's location to anyone outside the Order, and no one else in the WW, including the DEs, had any way of discovering it.

Carol, just expressing her own views on the matter