Walpurgis in the wind?

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "mooseming" <josturgess at ...> wrote:
>
> "Walpurgis Night (in German folklore) the night of April 30 (May 
> Day's eve), when witches meet on the Brocken mountain and hold 
> revels with their gods..." 
> Named after Saint Walpurga  born in Wessex in 710 and surely a 
> candidate for the founding of Durmstrang. 

While surely Rowling named the Knights of Walpurgis as a pun on
Walpurgisnacht (= May Eve = Beltane Eve), I fantasize that within the
Potterverse, the K of W named themselves after some other Walburga,
possibly a locally beloved healer who was done in by a mob of peasants
with torches and pitchforks stirred up by envious local Muggle
not-as-successful healers...

> (We will be hearing more from Krum.)

I hope Viktor re-appears, heroic and useful, and I hope he survives,
but I don't expect Rowling to be so  merciful.

> The Brocken mountains are in Germany, > as is the Black Forest where 
> Quirrell went looking for vampires and found Voldy.

Hagrid said Quirrell met a vampire in the Black Forest. The student
rumor mill said he met a vampire in Romania. I don't think either is
canon for where he met LV.

> Dumbledore may well have defeated Grindlewald there as the allies 
> bombed Brocken on April 17 1945.

DD might have defeated Grindelwald at Brocken (I am not married to my
suggestion that the Germanic name and 1945 date are misdirection for
DD having defeated a local UK Dark Wizard), altho' I think it would be
difficult for young Tom Riddle to have apprenticed with Grindelwald
there to learn Horcrux-making and other Dark Arts. Just Apparate right
through the battle fields?

> From 1957 the Brocken constituted a military security zone, not a 
> bad place for Voldy to go to after disappearing from Borgin and 
> Burkes (the cold war in full swing and all).

> vapour!mort would surely have been drawn to a HRX and the diary, 
> ring and locket were all too close to home.

If young TMR *had* apprenticed at Brocken, that could maybe make it a
significant place to him, suitable for hiding a Horcrux. However, LV
didn't hide himself there, because he hid himself in Albania. 

Why Albania? Before we learned the word 'Horcrux', we knew he had done
immortality magic and some suggested he had hidden his soul, like
Koschei and other fairy-tale villain. In current terminology, that he
had made one Horcrux. My theory that LV was irresistably magnetically
drawn, whenever disembodied, to the location of his one Horcrux, which
must have been hidden in Albania, was destroyed by the revelation of
multiple Horcruxes, of which the oldest three (as you said: ring,
locket, diary) were NOT in Albania. 

So why Albania? I hate to think that Rowling doesn't know that Illyria
and Germania are different places. Maybe some kind of name magic:
Albania, Albion, Albus -- maybe Bialystock is the destined place of
victory.

> Karkaroff (an eastern block sounding name) could well have met Voldy 
> during this time.

Igor Karkaroff has a Slavic sounding name, but does not speak with an
accent. He made some remark like "Hogwarts -- how good to see the old
place again." I'm inclined to think of him as British-born (and
educated) of immigrant parents.
 
> Helga is a Germanic name 

I remain married to my idea that as many as possible of the Founders
were from the island of Britain, with Helga from the Danelaw and
Rowena a Saxon from the South. (My theory is probably all wrong,
because I always think Rowena is the redhead -- like rowan tree -- and
Helga is the blonde, but the Famous Wizard cards tseem not to agree.)

'Godric' is also a Saxon name, but I've appointed him a Welshman,
Gryffydd Glyndwr, who very young ran away from his boring wizarding
home to join a Muggle band of men at arms, where Saxon and Norman
mercenaries (free-lances!) had trouble pronouncing his name. The
Normans called him Grevisse (alternate of Gervaise) Gryphon d'Or and
the Saxons called him Godric Glendower, and it amused him to combine
the two and take Godric Gryffindor as his nom de guerre. Perhaps he
already had the gold gryphon symbol from his family and it helped
inspired the Gryphon d'Or part of his name.

Salazar Slytherin *might* be a native of the island of Britain who had
acquired his foreign name while travelling -- otherwise we're stuck
with the idea that the one foreigner was the one bad guy. I'll buy it
along with my idea that he was 600 years old at the Founding and has a
kazillion descendants, not just the Gaunts. 

But then, I'm the one who believes in a fifth Founder, Tavish
Tartanwool, who provided the location for Hogwarts (and the latest
WOMBAT told us that Rowena found it in a dream) and was murdered by
Salazar.