Connecting the dots

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "nkafkafi" <nkafkafi at y...> wrote:
> 
> 
> Neri:
> Dumbledore defeating Grindy at the same time he and Tom were a teacher
> and a student at Hogwarts depends on the absolute dating of the
> Potterverse, because Grindelwald was defeated in absolute dating ("in
> 1945") while Tom was a student in story internal dating ("fifty years
> ago"). Practically the only thing that connects the two time frames,
> and enables us to deduce that these two events happened at the same
> time, is NHN deathday cake. There's a lot of discussion if JKR
> originally meant to ground the story in absolute dating. Personally
> (especially after OotP and her latest timing flints) I tend more to
> the opinion that she didn't, and the NHN deathday cake dating was a
> one-time blunder. To my knowledge this dating cannot be corroborated
> anywhere else in canon. 
>  
> 

Kneasy:
You  want to argue with the Lexicon, then go right ahead.
Tom's time frame has him as born in 1928 and the school year '44-45
was his final year at Hogwarts. Do you have evidence to dispute this?
If yes, I'm sure we'd all like to hear it.

> 
> Neri:
> We already know that the brother wands weren't an accident. The wand
> chooses the wizard (Ollivander makes sure we get that - he says it
> twice and adds "remember") and the brother wands saw similar things in
> Tom and Harry. We also know that Dumbledore knew about this –
> Ollivander contacted him immediately after Harry bought the brother
> wand. However, the same "free will" of the wands would make it
> difficult for Dumbledore to orchestrate the whole thing in the first
> place. It's certainly not an accident, but canon points at fate (or,
> in the meta level, JKR) rather than at Dumbledore.
> 
> 

Kneasy:
The "free will" is somewhat limited.
The prospective owner does not browse amongst the stock until he/she
gets that tingling feeling. Ollivander decides which wands the buyer will try.
It's not as if it's a case of 'one wand for life' either, wizards do seem to
change wands at some time or other.

Yes, Harry did try lots of wands, but there again we have absolutely no
idea how many wands other wizards try before being fitted.
No, I  can't agree about fate (or meta-JKR); Harry is part or fractionally
Voldy - it's not chance that 'brother' wands gravitate to a personality
split between two bodies. This brings in considerations of what happened
after GH - did DD know or surmise the significance of the scar? Maybe
it was something he feared but could not confirm - but matching Harry
with the brother to Voldy's wand could be a confirmation of sorts.

The question is - did DD suggest to Ollivander that HP would be a suitable
or potential candidate for a Fawkes feather wand? Or perhaps he mentioned
that the wand might be 'a bit special'. Matching a 'special' wand to a 'special'
and quite famous young wizard would seem natural in the circumstances.

> 
> Neri:
> I think this is movie contamination. At least, in the book Dumbledore
> never asks Tom if he wants to tell him something. It's old Dippet who
> asks something like that, and it is Harry who makes the connection
> with his own answer to Dumbledore:
> 
>snip> 
> Tom's interaction with Dumbledore, immediately after Tom leaves the
> headmaster office, is rather brief and mild in the book, although
> Dumbledore's "penetrating" stare is indeed mentioned:
> 
> It seems that, while making the parallels between Tom and Harry
> obvious, JKR avoids making Dumbledore's role identical in both their
> cases. It is Dumbledore and Dippet who have parallel roles in the
> text, although the movie scriptwriter, trying to make things more
> obvious and get rid of Dippet, missed this subtle nuance.
> 

Kneasy:
Quite so. Always useful to have a LOON around to correct quotations.
However, it's not so much movie contamination as not having the book
to hand. But the use of 'penetratingly' did stick in my memory - and
it *is* there for a purpose, I think. And no, I don't suggest that
DD's role with Tom is 'paralleled' with Harry, it probably isn't, but a
that a connection exists and that in both cases DD knew rather more
about what Tom and Harry had been up to than he lets on.