DD's mentorship unknown / The Sorting Hat / Pippin's list of mysteries

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)"
<catlady at w...> 
wrote:
>> Pippin wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
> old_crowd/message/1588 :
> 
> << 1. Who told McGonagall that Dumbledore would be at Privet
> Drive?
> 2. Who killed the unicorns?
> 3. Who was the hooded stranger in the Hogs Head?
> 4. Who passed the Riddle diary to Lucius Malfoy?
> 5. Who is the half-blood prince?
> 6. Who was Voldemort's second in command?
> 7. Who owns the Riddle house?
> 8. Who removed Voldemort's wand from Godric's Hollow
> 9. Who sent the Fearsome Four after the Longbottoms?
> 10. Who told Dumbledore that the time of Harry's
> hearing had changed? >>
> 
> What does this list mean! I can't see how these could *all* be part
of
> the ESE!Lupin theory. I think that Lupin couldn't have had anything
to
> do with killing the unicorns (surely Quirrelmort did it?) because he
> had not yet been introduced as a character. ESE or ESG Lupin would
> have had *motive* to tell DD that the time of HP's heading had
> changed, but how would he have known it? He was on no closer terms
to
> Fudge and Wizengamot members than DD was!


Pippin:
The list wasn't all ESE!Lupin, it was loose 
ends with a "who". 

Numbers  7 and  10 are not  part of ESE!Lupin.  I 
haven't a clue who owns the Riddle house, but I 
think Percy tipped off Dumbledore about the hearing.
Number 1 is tricky. McGonagall _says_ Hagrid told 
her that Dumbledore would be at Privet Drive, but if 
that's true, why didn't she know for certain that 
the Potters were dead? Sirius says that he saw the 
bodies, so Hagrid must have seen them too...unless 
the person who  insisted on claiming Harry and 
gave Hagrid the motorcycle, thus placing Sirius 
beyond doubt at the scene of the crime, wasn't 
Sirius at all.

Lupin, although not introduced as a character until 
Book Three, was conceived of earlier. Rowling is on 
record as saying she was looking forward to Book 
Three because Lupin was in it.

 Harry asks if a werewolf could have killed the 
unicorns. I think that's a hint, though the answer 
is negative. Hagrid must be thinking of a werewolf 
in its transformed state when he says "Not fast 
enough", but since there were two slayings about a 
week apart, a transformed werewolf could not have 
been responsible in any case. I suppose Hagrid 
didn't want to point up Harry's ignorance in front 
of his friends.

 Presumably the second slaying was necessary because 
Hagrid found the body of the first unicorn before it 
could be drained of blood. Quirrellmort is heard 
begging Voldemort not to make him do something 
again,  but if he was in such a weakened state that 
he needed to drink unicorn blood to sustain himself, 
how could he have managed to kill such a powerful 
magical creature on his own?

I agree with Neri that at this point it's impossible 
to know which loose ends are inadvertent, which have 
been left dangling to be caught up with a flourish 
and tied in a bow, and which innocent seeming 
strands will prove to be  loose with a loud 
*sproing* and catch the unwary reader by surprise. 

Neri asked about multibook whodunnits.
The multi-part mystery goes all the way back to 
Sherlock Holmes, but for the whodunnit saga
in novelistic chunks I suppose we can blame
George Unwin's (Tolkien's publisher, 
who insisted, Caesarlike, on dividing LOTR into 
three parts) influence on George Lucas. Neri is perhaps
too young to have agonized over whether Ben Kenobi 
or Darth Vader was telling the truth  about who 
murdered Luke's father, but we ancients spent years in 
doubt. 

Pippin