Plot-holes plugged while-u-wait

Plot-holes plugged while-u-wait
(Possible explanations for anomalies in the books, and other random thoughts. More to be added as I think of them.)

Why is Snape the only Death Eater with a Patronus, and why a doe? At the foot of the platform a bright silver, long-haired cat prowled up and down, up and down, and Harry realised that it was there to protect the prosecutors from the despair that emanated from the Dementors: that was for the accused to feel, not the accusers. [cut]
The moment he had passed the place where the Patronus cat patrolled he felt the change in temperature: it was warm and comfortable here. The Patronus, he was sure, was Umbridge's and it glowed brightly because she was so happy here, in her element, upholding the twisted laws she had helped to write. [cut]
Umbridge crumpled and her forehead hit the edge of the balustrade: Mrs Cattermole's papers slid off her lap on to the floor and, down below, the prowling silver cat vanished. [DH ch. #13; p. 213–215]

James Farrell: How did umbridge manage to conjure a patronus while wearing the locket when harry wasnt able to
J.K. Rowling: Because she is a very nasty piece of work. She has an affinity for this horrible object, which would help rather than hinder her.
[cut]
Chely: James patronus is a stag and lilys a doe is that a coincidence?
J.K. Rowling: No, the Patronus often mutates to take the image of the love of one’s life (because they so often become the ‘happy thought’ that generates a Patronus).
[cut]
Samantha: Was snape the only death eater who could produce a full patronus
J.K. Rowling: Yes, because a Patronus is used against things that the Death Eaters generally generate, or fight alongside. They would not need Patronuses.
[cut]
jenny: How did snape keep his patronus secret from the rest of the order?
J.K. Rowling: He was careful not to use the talking Patronus means of communication with them. This was not difficult, as his particular job within the Order, ie, as spy, meant that sending a Patronus to any of them might have given away his true allegiance.
[Bloomsbury.com livechat, 30^th July 2007]

At some point, perhaps on one of the deleted sections of Pottermore although I haven't been able to find the original quote, Rowling reportedly said that only "fundamentally good" people could cast a Patronus, then she backpedalled when asked about Umbridge.

In spite of a long association with those fighting for lofty or noble causes (those able to produce corporeal Patronuses were often elected to high office within the Wizengamot and Ministry of Magic), the Patronus is not unknown among Dark wizards. While there is a widespread and justified belief that a wizard who is not pure of heart cannot produce a successful Patronus [cut] a rare few witches and wizards of questionable morals have succeeded in producing the Charm (Dolores Umbridge, for example, is able to conjure a cat Patronus to protect herself from Dementors). It may be that a true and confident belief in the rightness of one's actions can supply the necessary happiness. [cut]
No reliable system for predicting the form of an individual’s Patronus has ever been found, although the great eighteenth-century researcher of Charms, Professor Catullus Spangle, set forth certain principles that are widely accepted as true.
The Patronus, asserted Spangle, represents that which is hidden, unknown but necessary within the personality. ‘For it is evident,’ he writes, in his masterwork ‘Charms of Defence and Deterrence’:
‘… that a human confronted with inhuman evil, such as the Dementor, must draw upon resources he or she may never have needed, and the Patronus is the awakened secret self that lies dormant until needed, but which must now be brought to light...’ [cut]
Spangle is interesting on the subject of those unusual witches and wizards who produce a Patronus that takes the form of their favourite animal.
‘It is my firm belief that such a Patronus is an indicator of obsession or eccentricity. Here is a wizard who may not be able to hide their essential self in common life, who may, indeed, parade tendencies that others might prefer to conceal.' [cut]
The form of a Patronus may change during the course of a witch or wizard’s life. Instances have been known of the form of the Patronus transforming due to bereavement, falling in love or profound shifts in a person’s character. [cut]
It is usual, but not inevitable, for a Patronus to take the form of an animal commonly found in the caster’s native country.
Extinct Patronuses are very rare but not unknown. [Pottermore]

Rowling has stated firmly that Snape is the only Death Eater with a Patronus, but the reasons she's given for this are contradictory. While it's nice to know that she feels that Snape is fundamentally good and pure of heart, that doesn't make sense as an explanation of his having a Patronus given that Umbridge has a strong, bright Patronus, albeit not as strong as Harry's. Nor does the idea that Umbridge derives sufficient happiness to generate a Patronus from her belief in her own righteousness help to explain why Snape should be the only Death Eater with a Patronus. Presumably many Death Eaters are sure of their righteousness – Bellatrix certainly is – and Lucius and Narcissa probably have a lot of very happy memories of each other and of Draco. Plus, unpleasant people can derive very happy memories from unpleasant things happening to other people.

I feel free, therefore, to develop my own idea of why Snape is the only Death Eater with a Patronus: one which actually makes sense. I suggest that the Dark Mark, as worn by senior Death Eaters, interferes with the casting of a Patronus because it creates a permanent open link to Voldemort. Snape is using Occlumency to limit the extent to which Voldemort can read him, which also blocks the effect of the Mark and enables him to cast a Patronus: but he has to hide the fact that he can cast a Patronus, because the fact that he can do so shows that he is Occluding against Voldemort.

As to why Snape's Patronus is a doe, Rowling's intention appears to be that James was a stag Animagus so Lily's Patronus became a doe because she loved/was suited to James, and then Snape's Patronus became a doe because he loved Lily and/or because he was bereaved of her, and because Lily was his only strong happy memory. But that's problematic for two reasons.

The first is that it would mean that Snape's Patronus was ultimately derived from James, the man who publicly sexually humiliated him, which would be sick even by wizarding standards. And incidentally the fact that Rowling apparently said somewhere (although I haven't been able to find the quote) that James's Patronus was a stag, as well as his Animagus form, would surely put him into the category of "wizards who produce a Patronus that takes the form of their favourite animal ... who may not be able to hide their essential self in common life, who may, indeed, parade tendencies that others might prefer to conceal" if, indeed, he had the stag Patronus before Lily had the doe. That might well be true, since stags are known for pride, aggression and sexual posessiveness, but it casts him in a better light if he developed a stag Patronus in answer to Lily's doe rather than as an extension of his own Animagus form.

That's asssuming, of course, that Lily's Patronus really is a doe. Nothing in the text really proves this. Harry says that Snape's Patronus was the same as his mother's, but all he actually knows is that Snape's doe Patronus caused Dumbledore to think of Lily for reasons not specified, and she felt familiar to him. Maybe Harry had a flashback memory of seeing Lily casting the doe Patronus when he was an infant?

The second, even bigger problem is that regardless of likely authorial intent, what's in the text is canon unless the author says it's an error, and the text says that Prongs is a stag and Snape's (and by implication Lily's) Patronus is a doe, or at least that's how Harry interprets them, and Remus also calls Prongs a stag. In British English a stag and a doe are male and female of two different species and genera of deer. A stag or hart is a male red deer (Cervus elaphus), whose mate is a hind. A doe is the female of any other deer (except moose and reindeer/caribou, who are bulls and cows), and also of lagomorphs, rodents and sometimes goats, and her mate is a buck. If Snape's doe is indeed a native British deer she must be either a fallow deer (Dama dama), or a roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), both of which are much smaller than a red deer. A red deer is the size of a pony, a fallow deer is about as big as a medium-sized but leggy goat and a roe deer more like a collie.

Mating a stag with a British doe is like mating a wolf with a fox, both in genetic distance and in size. [Unless, of course, you want to be cute, and say that Snape's doe is a guinea-pig, or is one of the extinct giant fallow deer called the Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus), in which case she would be as tall as a large moose, and a lot chunkier.] If Lily based her Patronus on James's, or vice versa, then the implication is that whichever of them came second may have thought that they were compatible with the other one, but had fundamentally misunderstood them.

My own headcanon, therefore, which provides a healthier take on all of them, is that Lily and Snape both got the doe from a shared happy childhood memory, although it's certainly possible that Snape's doe was awakened by Lily's death. I like to think that perhaps when they were ten or so they went on a shared school-outing or Evans family trip to Leeds Art Gallery, where there is a famous Victorian painting by John William Inchbold called The white doe of Rylstone, based on a poem by Wordsworth. I like to imagine them giggling together over the fact that the doe appears to have been painted from a dead specimen which had been very badly stuffed.

James's alleged stag Patronus might then well have been inspired by Lily's doe, but the species got a bit derailed by confusion with his own Animagus form.

Or perhaps Snape's Patronus is a doe and Lily's was actually hind. Or perhaps, of course, like Rowling Harry doesn't know one deer from another or what to call them. It could well be that Snape and Lily have the same Patronus and it's a hind, or they have a doe and Prongs was actually a buck, not a stag. The fact that Harry initially mistakes his own Prongs-based Patronus for a unicorn, and Aberforth passes it off as a goat, suggests that it may not be very big and has little teenage-boy-deer antlers, and the silver spots usually seen on fallow deer might not show up on a generally silver Patronus, so Harry could well have mistaken a fallow buck for a young stag.

Of the two, there is a certain charm in assuming that Prongs is a stag and the Snape/Lily Patronus is really a hind. Does generally have a very cute, Disney look, with a dished profile and wide eyes, whereas a hind's face looks more like a cross between a racehorse and a very supercilious sheep. It's a lot Snapier.

Peter Pettigrew: a rat's a Gryffindor for a' that        While Muggles have been told that Black is carrying a gun (a kind of metal wand which Muggles use to kill each other), the magical community lives in fear of a massacre like that of twelve years ago, when Black murdered thirteen people with a single curse. [cut]
       'He murdered thirteen people?' said Harry, handing the page back to Stan, 'with one curse?' [cut]
       'Anyway, they cornered Black in the middle of a street full of Muggles an' Black took out 'is wand and 'e blasted 'alf the street apart, an' a wizard got it, an' so did a dozen Muggles what got in the way. 'Orrible, eh? An' you know what Black did then?' Stan continued in a dramatic whisper. [PoA ch. #03; p. 34/35]

       'My God,' said Lupin softly, staring from Scabbers to the picture in the paper and back again. 'His front paw ...'
       'What about it?' said Ron defiantly.
       ''He's got a toe missing,' said Black.
       'Of course,' Lupin breathed, 'so simple ... so brilliant ... He cut it off himself?'
       'Just before he transformed,' said Black. 'When I cornered him, he yelled for the whole street to hear that I'd betrayed Lily and James. Then, before I could curse him, he blew apart the street with the wand behind his back, killed everyone within twenty feet of himself -- and sped down into the sewer with the other rats ...' [PoA ch. #19; p. 266]

'You haven't been hiding from me for twelve years,' said Black. 'You've been hiding from Voldemort's old supporters.' [PoA ch. #19; p. 270]

'Peter -- I'll never understand why I didn't see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who'd look after you, didn't you? It used to be us ... me and Remus ... and James ...' [cut]
'Lily and James only made you Secret-Keeper because I suggested it,' Black hissed, so venomously that Pettigrew took a step backwards. 'I thought it was the perfect plan ... a bluff ... Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they'd use a weak, talentless thing like you ...' [cut]
You weren't about to commit murder right under Albus Dumbledore's nose, for a wreck of a wizard who'd lost all his power, were you? You'd want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn't you?' [PoA ch. #19; p. 271]

       'Sirius, Sirius, what could I have done? The Dark Lord ... you have no idea ... he has weapons you can't imagine ... I was scared, Sirius, I was never brave like you and Remus and James. I never meant it to happen ... He Who Must Not Be Named forced me --'
       'DON'T LIE!' bellowed Black. 'YOU'D BEEN PASSING INFORMATION TO HIM FOR A YEAR BEFORE LILY AND JAMES DIED! YOU WERE HIS SPY!'
       'He -- he was taking over everywhere!' gasped Pettigrew. 'Wh-what was there to be gained by refusing him?' [PoA ch. #19; p. 275]

       From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, 'Kill the spare.'
       A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: 'Avada Kedavra!' [cut]
       The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harry, tying him from neck to ankles to the headstone. Harry could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; he struggled and the man hit him -- hit him with a hand that had a finger missing. And Harry realised who was under the hood. It was Wormtail. [GoF ch. #32; p. 553/554]

       And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his robes [US version says 'his cloak']. His voice broke into petrified sobs. 'Flesh -- of the servant -- w-willingly given -- you will -- revive -- your master.'
       He stretched his right hand out in front of him -- the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand, and swung it upwards.
       Harry realised what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened -- he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harry as though he had been stabbed with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. [GoF ch. #32; p. 556/557]

Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Wormtail gasped and applauded. After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn't tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention. [cut]
'Put that away, will you,' said Sirius finally, as James made a fine catch and Wormtail let out a cheer, 'before Wormtail wets himself with excitement.' [cut]
Wormtail was looking from Sirius and James to Snape with a look of avid anticipation on his face. [OotP ch. #28; p. 568/569]

Christiana: How did voldemort get his wand back after he was in exile
J.K. Rowling: Wormtail, desperate to curry favour, salvaged it from the place it had fallen and carried it to him. I admit that would have been a bit of a feat for a rat, but they are highly intelligent creatures!
[Bloomsbury.com livechat, 30^th July 2007]

There is a general assumption that Peter was weak and a coward. Yet, consider his history.

His expression as he waits for James and Sirius to attack Severus is one of "avid anticipation". Admittedly Rowling uses "avidly" rather a lot on OotP, but still, the way that scene is written, with Peter fawning on James and then apparently salivating over the idea of James attacking a victim, suggests that there's more going on than just wanting protection. In the real world he would probably have become a gang-boss's enforcer. He doesn't just desire to follow the powerful for protection: he gets off on being associated with their dominance and cruelty.

Yes, joining the Death Eaters made practical sense because Voldemort was winning the war and was "the biggest bully in the playground". But Peter didn't simply join him passively and run at the back (which is what Snape seems to have done, since there was never even a rumour that he was a Death Eater and Bellatrix said he was all talk and no action). He apparently became a spy within the Order, risking discovery and, OK, the Order probably wouldn't kill him if they discovered him but he's still looking at life in Azkaban and possibly being tortured by the Aurors, so his action in becoming a spy within the Order is nearly as brave as Snape's action in becoming a spy for the Order. It's perfectly possible to be brave in service to a bad cause.

[That's assuming, of course, that Peter really was the leak in the Order for a year, and it wasn't actually Dumbledore having Snape feed tidbits of true information to Voldemort to cement his position. Since Snape became the Order's spy ten or eleven months before the end of the war, it's a distinct possibility.]

Assuming he was indeed the spy in the Order, Peter operated in clear sight for a year, including with people who imagined he was their loyal friend. Then, when Voldemort was disembodied and his plans went pear-shaped, he had the nerve and presence of mind to frame Sirius, chop off his own finger and murder twelve Muggles at a stroke.

That we know of, he personally killed at least thirteen people – twelve Muggles and Cedric Diggory – and was an accessory in the murders of Bertha Jorkins and Frank Bryce by Voldemort, and we see that he is personally violent because he hits Harry to stop him struggling, even though Harry had saved his life. As a rat, he hid for twelve years in the bosom of his enemies. He apparently didn't mind being a rat, so long as he was a pampered pet, so his decision to seek out and resurrect Voldemort wasn't, or wasn't just, to win back favour and protect himself from the remaining Death Eaters. He could have gone to Albania, or to Thailand if that was what he preferred, and lived safely as a rat: but he preferred resurrecting the Dark Lord to the inconvenience of living as a wild rat, and having to forage and dodge weasels.

Finally, he chopped off his own hand to bring Voldemort back: and yes, he was terrified of doing it but he still did it. Whatever else he lacked it wasn't nerve, and he had an iron will: just no dignity.

Why was Peter's Animagus form a rat? The other boys are obvious: stags are proud, combative and sexually possessive; dogs are intensely loyal to their friends but will attack anyone their master sics them on to. But rats are, in general, pleasant, affectionate, playful little creatures and strongly food-fixated: as far as that goes Ron would have made a better rat than Peter. But there is one definite way in which Peter resembles a rat. They appear to be harmless prey, but they are a difficult and dangerous kill even to creatures much bigger than themselves, and to anything in the same size-range, or smaller, they are deadly predators.

There is an in my opinion quite unjustifiably famous psychoanalytical essay called Taming the Prince by fanwriter cabepfir, which argues that Rowling had "feminised" Snape in order to "tame" him – although why anyone would think that the writer who came up with Hermione, Ginny, Molly and McGonagall would think that making a character feminine would tame them, is anyobody's guess. It's a pet hate of mine because the whole concept is fundamentally flawed, and its arguments are so culturally ignorant.

OK, I can see that the fact that Snape has a female Patronus might raise a few questions. But the essay claims that Rowling "feminised" Snape by giving him long hair. People, Snape has long hair because he is based on John Nettleship, who had long hair because he was a superannuated hippy. And yes, John was a dapper man with delicate bones, and not very tall: but he was as straight as it is humanly possible to be, and happy to be a boy.

The most ridiculous claim is that Rowling feminised Snape by dressing him in a nightshirt, which the author compares to a woman's nightdress. But in the U.K. a nightshirt is seen as an exceptionally masculine garment because, like the kilt, it leaves the male genitals readily accessible, dangling just behind it. You could say it's the male equivalent of wearing a mini-skirt, and if anything, it draws attention to Snape's maleness. But it's an old-fashioned and traditionally somewhat working-class garment, so it was an early hint that The Prince was in fact commoner-than-thou.

It was also very likely inspired by the long-sleeved white lab coat John Nettleship used to wear in practical classes.

[cut] The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing [DH ch. #17; p.271]

       They had not drawn the curtains, he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall, black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of coloured smoke erupt from his wand for the amuse¬ment of the small black-haired boy [cut]
       A door opened and the mother entered, [cut] Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother He threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning ... [cut]
       He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he had not even picked up his wand ...
       'Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off --' [cut]
       He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible she, at least, had nothing to fear ... he climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in ... she had no wand upon her either ... [cut]
       He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand ... and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the cot[DH ch. 17; p. 280/281]

The wording is ambiguous, and it is possible that Lily had already taken Harry upstairs to put him to bed in the nursery before Voldemort burst through the door. But the way in which James is described as shouting "Take Harry and go" sounds as though Lily is still standing close to him. If that's so, why on Earth did Lily take Harry upstairs, instead of going out of a ground-floor window or back door with him, round the side of the building to put its bulk between her and Voldemort's wand, and then behind the hedge?

If Lily had already gone upstairs, what is James thinking when he shouts at her to "take Harry and go"? Is Lily still capable of semi-flying from an upstairs window, as she once did from the swings, and if so, why did she waste time building a flimsy barricade (with, incidentally, a baby in her arms)? Why did she waste time building a barricade at all, against such a powerful wizard, when standing behind the door wielding something heavy would have stood at least a chance? Why did she have no wand? Why was she screaming, drawing attention to her location? It makes her seem like a panicky airhead.

My theory is that they actually had a Portkey to safety upstairs in the nursery, or thought they did – but Peter had swiped it, possibly after sneaking in in his rat form, leaving Lily trapped. The barricade was incidental to her throwing boxes aside searching for the Portkey and – since we know she is good at wandless magic – an attempt to buy time because she had sent a wandless Patronus and was hoping for reinforcements (and the "screaming" was her shouting a message to the Patronus). That would also explain why the Order didn't have guards on watch, how they knew anything had happened that they needed to check on and why it was Hagrid who came: they thought the Potters had a way out in an emergency, then when they got a garbled Patronus message they checked the other end of the Portkey first, and then sent Hagrid because he's a good fighter and almost immune to magic.

You also have to wonder why James didn't transform into Prongs. Even if Peter had warned Voldemort that James was an Animagus, depriving him of the element of surprise, having even the corpse of an animal the size of a small horse and covered in spikes fall on him would have put a serious crimp in Voldie's evening. But when we see Peter transform the process, although fast, is not instantaneous, so perhaps James simply didn't have time.

'And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation's owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise.' [PS ch. #01; p. 10]

In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all.
A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out of the ground. [PS ch. #01; p. 12]

'What they're saying,' she pressed on, 'is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric's Hollow. He went to find the Potters.' [PS ch. #01; p. 14]

[cut] a huge motorbike fell out of the air and landed on the road in front of them.
If the motorbike was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. [cut] In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets. [cut]
[cut] Inside, just visible, was a baby boy. [PS ch. #01; p. 16]

'No, sir -- house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. He fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol.' [PS ch. #01; p. 16]

'All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Hallowe'en ten years ago. You was just a year old. He came ter yer house an' -- an' --' [cut]
'You-Know-Who killed 'em. An' then -- an' this is the real myst'ry of the thing -- he tried to kill you, too.' [PS ch. #04; p. 45]

'It was me what rescued Harry from Lily an' James's house after they was killed! Jus' got him outta the ruins, poor little thing, with a great slash across his forehead, an' his parents dead ... an' Sirius Black turns up, on that flyin' motorbike he used ter ride.' [cut]
'Most celebrated of these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric's Hollow, the West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, [DH ch. #16; p. 261]

Hermione murmured, 'Let's go this way,' and pulled him down the dark street leading out of the village in the opposite direction from which they had entered. Harry could make out the point where the cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. [cut]
[cut] He was looking towards the dark mass that stood at the very end of this row of houses. [cut]
[cut] The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart; that, Harry was sure, was where the curse had backfired. He and Hermione stood at the gate, gazing up at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those that flanked it. [DH ch. #17; p.271]

The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop windows covered in paper spiders [cut]
He saw the small boy's smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face: then the child turned and ran away ... [DH ch. #17; p.280]

One of the abiding mysteries in Potter fandom is why it took Hagrid and his (or rather Sirius's) flying bike so long to get baby Harry to Little Whinging. For reasons explained in the Location, Location section, we're talking about a journey from somewhere not that far from Weston-Super-Mare to somewhere near Staines: a distance of around 135 miles by road and maybe 115 miles in a straight line. We know the attack on the Potters happened during the evening (there were still children about) on Hallowe'en, and Hagrid says he got Harry out before the Muggles noticed what had happened and came "swarmin' around", and then Harry was left on the Dursleys' doorstep at around midnight on the following day. We know this because in between there had been a whole day of people celebrating Voldemort's downfall. Why did the journey take so long?

The key is in the date, and the location of the cottage. Confusingly the cottage is said to be both at the very end of a row at the end of a lane, and to have "those" cottages, plural, flanking it. Perhaps that means one on the village side and one opposite. But certainly it is either the last or nearly the last house in a lane leading out to the country, which means nobody would be likely to pass it unless they were heading out to a farm, and so they might not immediately notice the damage to one end of the top floor of the building, especially if the damage was at the distal (away from the centre) end. And it was a few days before 5^th November, Bonfire Night, which means any loud bangs would be assumed to be early fireworks. Muggles would not realise that anything was wrong until it was starting to get light and the milkman and later the postman showed up and found the end of the building blown out: maybe 7am.

So, Voldemort attacks at around 10pm. For reasons explained above, Hagrid doesn't arrive immediately because it takes time for Lily's Patronus to reach the Order, and then time for them to check the Portkey end-point where the Potters should have been. Let's say Hagrid arrives at 11pm, to find James lying dead in the hallway, half the upstairs blown out and scattered across the garden, and Lily and Harry missing.

Hagrid does not know that baby Harry is alive, and Harry has very likely been knocked out from the force of being unexpectedly made into a Horcrux and then linked to Voldemort as he was forcibly disembodied. Hagrid spends time messaging the Order: perhaps even returns to the Order to report in person, and then comes back to investigate and find Lily and Harry. He spends time picking through the rubble, trying to find out what happened: maybe even making arrangements for Lily and James's bodies. Then he hears a baby cry, and now he has to locate Harry and dig him out without causing a beam to fall on him.

By now it's let's say 5am. Sirius turns up with the bike, and Hagrid sets off. The fact that he starts off somewhere in the West Country and then passes over Bristol tells us that he didn't just head for Little Whinging in a straight line but followed the roads, picking up the M4 motorway (this is explained, with maps, in the essay on Godric's Hollow).

That's fine except now it's beginning to get light, and motorways during the day are very busy. Hagrid's not that good a wizard and probably can't keep up Disillusionment while flying, so if he tries to fly above the motorway in daylight he'll probably be seen. So he finds a safe place to hole up with Harry somewhere near Bristol and waits until it gets fully dark again, at which point the Muggles won't be able to see anything too far out of range of their headlights, and maybe a bit longer until the traffic on the M4 begins to peter out. Only then does he fly the 110 or so miles from Bristol to Little Whinging, which should take two to three hours.

Snape and McGonagall both have a teaching style very different from what seems to be expected by modern kids, especially modern American kids.

The first thing to remember is that they are teaching Harry 30+ years ago (as at 2026), and they are based on real staff who taught JK Rowling in the late 1970s and early '80s. Snape is based on John Nettleship who was at teacher-training college circa 1960, where he was taught to simulate rage as a means of keeping control – and John, being autistic, took a long time to unlearn that.

So in Snape, we are seeing a style that was taught at UK teacher-training college 65 years ago. He's actually a lot like my own Chemistry mistress, Mrs Styles, in the mid 1970s: and I really liked her.

The following poem decribes a teacher who must have been working in the 1930s (since the poet was born in 1922), when simulating rage to control a class was clearly a well-known technique:

To a Teacher of French by Donald Davie

Sir, you were a credit to whatever
Ungrateful slate-blue skies west of the Severn
Hounded you out to us. With white, cropped head,
Small and composed, and clean as a Descartes
From as it might be Dowlais, 'Fiery' Evans
We knew you as. You drilled and tightly lipped
Le futur parfait dans le passé like
The Welsh Guards in St James's, your pretence
Of smouldering rage an able sergeant-major's.

We jumped to it all right whenever each
Taut smiling question fixed us. Then it came:
Crash! The ferrule smashed down on the first
Desk of the file. You whispered: Quelle bêtise!
Ecoutez, s'il vous plait, de quelle bêtise
On est capable!
Yet you never spoke
To us of poetry; it was purely language,
The lovely logic of its tenses and
Its accidence that, mutilated, moved you
To rage or outrage that I think was not
At all times simulated. It would never
Do in our days, dominie, to lose
Or seem to lose your temper. And besides
Grammarians are a dying kind, the day
Of histrionic pedagogy's over.

You never taught me Ronsard, no one did,
But you gave me his language. He addressed
The man who taught him Greek as Toi qui dores
(His name was Jean Dorat) la France de l'or.
I couldn't turn a phrase like that on 'Evans';
And yet you gild or burnish something as,
At fifty in the humidity of Touraine,
Time and again I profit by your angers.

       'Before we begin today's lesson,' said Snape, sweeping over to his desk and staring around at them all, 'I think it appropriate to remind you that next June you will be sitting an important examination, during which you will prove how much you have learned about the composition and use of magical potions. Moronic though some of this class undoubtedly are, I expect you to scrape an "Acceptable" in your OWL, or suffer my ... displeasure.'
       His gaze lingered this time on Neville, who gulped.
       'After this year, of course, many of you will cease studying with me,' Snape went on. 'I take only the very best into my NEWT Potions class, which means that some of us will certainly be saying goodbye.' [OotP ch. #12; p. 209]

'Well, the class seem fairly advanced for their level,' she said briskly to Snape's back. 'Though I would question whether it is advisable to teach them a potion like the Strengthening Solution. I think the Ministry would prefer it if that was removed from the syllabus.' [OotP ch. #17; p. 323]

'Well, that means I won't see much of Professor Snape from now on,' he said, 'because he won't let me carry on Potions unless I get "Outstanding" in my O.W.L., which I know I haven't.' [HBP ch. #04; 79]

Harry glanced down at Ron's grades: there were no 'O'tstandings' there ... [HBP ch. #05; p. 101]

       Hermione's hand shot into the air. Snape took his time looking around at everybody else, making sure he had no choice, before saying curtly, 'Very well -- Miss Granger?'
       'Your adversary has no warning about what kind of magic you're about to perform,' said Hermione, 'which gives you a split-second advantage.'
       'An answer copied almost word for word from The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6,' said Snape dismissively (over in the corner, Malfoy sniggered), 'but correct in essentials. [HBP ch. #09; 170]

When they arrived in the corridor they saw that there were only a dozen people progressing to N.E.W.T. level. Crabbe and Goyle had evidently failed to achieve the required O.W.L. grade, but four Slytherins had made it through, including Malfoy. Four Ravenclaws were there, and one Hufflepuff, Ernie Macmillan, whom Harry liked despite his rather pompous manner. [cut]
'I haven't got a book or scales or anything -- nor's Ron -- we didn't realise we'd be able to do the N.E.W.T., you see --' [HBP ch. #09; 173/174]

Snape is in fact very like a working-classs NCO trying to train posh officer cadets: "your pretence // Of smouldering rage an able sergeant-major's." The poem was published in 1980 and says that "the day //Of histrionic pedagogy's over", but John was still employing it in the 1970s, and Rowling reproduced it in Snape. I suspect that the decline in "histrionic pedagogy" has contributed to the decline in the academic success of boys.

Then there's the business with Snape criticising Hermione for just quoting the textbook. When I said that she was expected to be able to state her own thoughts, an American fan actually said "How can you say that? She's not a second-year university student", but an able British student like Hermione is supposed to be able to give their own answer, with reasons, from about fourteen on, with the textbook just as supporting evidence. Simply quoting the textbook would be acceptable from Crabbe or Goyle or maybe from Neville, but not from Hermione.

No, I'm not "just saying that because I like Snape". At my own school in the 1970s we had a student who got very high marks but mainly by rote learning, and I actually overhead one teacher say to another, sadly, "She's just a machine".

That goes with the widespread misunderstanding of why Snape doesn't immediately allow Hermione to answer every question. The teacher doesn't ask questions of a class in order to find out the answer, which they already know. They don't ask questions to find out whether the best students in the class already know the answer, because they already know that they know. They are trying to find out what the less able students know, and to get them to engage with the subject. If people like Hermione, or indeed me, answer every time, other students get discouraged.

Snape's teaching style is far from ideal, and not at all suited for a nervous student like Neville – although at least, unlike McGonagall, he isn't violent. But we are told that he expects all his students to pass the Potions OWL and that his class are "fairly advanced" for their age, so his methods do work. He isn't paid to make anybody, except the Slytherins whose house-master he is, happy: just to get them though their exams.

On that subject, I think many foreign fen don't understand that there is no continuous assessment at Hogwarts.

Because American schools apparently give high marks to anyone even half decent, some American fen think that Snape's class must perform badly because there seem to be only ten students who went through to NEWT Potions with an "Outstanding" grade at OWL. But British exams are marked very strictly. For reasons explained here, there appear to be fifty students in Harry's year, all of whom took Potions OWL because it's a compulsory subect up to fifth year. For ten of them, a whole 20%, to get Outstanding is, well, outstanding – you would expect 5–10% – and there may have been other students who got an O but opted not to continue with the subject at NEWT level.