[the_old_crowd] Re: OotP: Return of the Numbers Problem
JoAnna Wahlund
pt4ever at pt4ever.yahoo.invalid
Wed Jul 2 21:31:49 UTC 2003
Remember in GoF, when Sirius was telling Ron, Harry, & Herminone about what life was like during Voldemort's first spree of terror? (I don't have my copy of GoF handy at the moment, so this is paraphrased). "You didn't know who was on which side, you didn't know who was acting of their own free will and who was under the Imperius Curse..."
I'm willing to bet that Voldy et. al. were controlling people with the Imperius Curse left and right (perhaps Muggles and wizards/witches), so I could see how the number of Voldy "supporters" could be around 400. Or it could be that Lupin was using hyperbole - that it *seemed* like 20-1.
psychic_serpent <psychic_serpent at ...> wrote:
--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Blaise" <blaise_writer at h...>
wrote:
> S
> P
> O
> I
> L
> E
> R
>
> S
> P
> A
> C
> E
>
> Even though it's not a huge spoiler really... I've been doing some
> counting (and incidentally wondering whether LOON would take me
on)
> and I noticed something. According to Lupin, back during
Voldemort's
> first shot at world domination, the Order was outnumbered by Death
> Eaters 20 to 1. Now there must have been at least 20 members of
the
> Order then, judging by the names and ages of the current members
and
> the photo Moody shows Harry. So that means at least 400 Death
Eaters,
> perhaps fewer allowing Lupin some leeway for exaggeration - maybe
> they were really only outnumbered 10 to 1. So my question is,
where
> have they all gone? Only about 20 are mentioned in the books,
there
> weren't anywhere near 400 at the gathering at the end of GoF, and
> Voldemort only mentions six missing. Presumably some are in
Azkaban
> too, and some killed by Voldemort, like Regulus Black. But still,
I
> can't believe there can be some 350 missing. Is this part of the
> eternal number-of-wizards problem? A Flint? Or does JKR have
> something up her sleeve?
>
> Blaise
It might be her numbers problem again (I still have yet to see
anything in the books that supports her assertion that there are
about 1000 students at Hogwarts, or even half that many) but this
one would probably not be too hard to get out of, compared to many
of the number issues in the books (such as Nick not having eaten in
about 400 years when he'd been dead for about 500). Since we know
that many people who did things on the side of the Death Eaters were
actually under Imperius, that could account for the 20 to 1 ratio,
and also account for why they wouldn't be considered true Death
Eaters now that Voldemort is back. OTOH, it's been suggested before
that those who were summoned to the graveyard in GoF were only the
members of the "inner circle" and that many other minions did not
get the Dark Mark that would have summoned them. Whether either one
of those is the answer or not (or both), it'll probably be a bit
less bothersome than explaining how Snape is supposed to teach
Potions to 1000 students a week (minus those who don't qualify for
NEWT-level classes) without using a Time-Turner and five different
dungeons. <g>
--Barb
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~JoAnna~
http://pt4ever.diaryland.com
"You know, you look at George W. and you realize some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some get it as a graduation gift." - Robin Williams
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