Silly me, I thought the man in the hat looked like Mad-Eye Moody and the house looked like Hagrid’s cabin.
I guess I’m not thinking deeply enough.
No, it was Pettigrew’s right hand, but everything in the picture looks so silvery that I can’t tell whether Hat-Man has a silver hand or whether it’s just moonlight.
Cool art, anyway. I’m getting excited.
Dumbledore was the only member of the Order in the atrium when Voldemort appeared.
I think he’s too short and stout to be Mad Eye. I vote Peter Pettigrew.
Izzybella and I were eagerly discussing things at lunch. We decided the following:
Petunia got a letter from Hogwarts, but was so revulsed by the thought of the magic world that she refused to go and figuratively, if not literally, beat the magic out of herself. Note that she married one of the muggliest Muggles ever in the person of Vernon Dursley.
This would make sense of her revulsion and distaste for Lily, who got the same letter and chose the wizarding world over the Muggle world.
It would also make sense as to why Petunia treated Harry so shabbily. Perhaps since she beat it out of herself, she thought she could beat the magic tendencies out of him as well.
That means, in our not very humble opinions, that the non-magic person who will do magic will be Petunia, and probably in order to save Dudley.
And we also agreed that Vernon doesn’t know that Petunia got a letter to Hogwarts, and he will be horrified and appalled when she does said act of magic.
That intrigues me. Jo has a way of picking descriptive names - what does the left side have to do with astronomy? Unless Sinistra is sinister in the English sense.
This is my theory as well, though a lot of people don’t like it.
Sinistra is a star in Ophiucus (the Serpent Handler). That constellation is rich with symbolism that seems to fit in a Potter context, because of the three different explanations for the constellation:[ul][li]It depicts the first doctor, Asclepius, who learned the healing arts by watching one snake heal another with herbal remedies only known, apparently, to snake-kind.[/li][li]It depicts Apollo the sun-god’s victory over Python to lay claim to the seat of the Oracle at Delphi.[/li][li]It depicts Laocoon, the Trojan priest dragged under by sea-snakes for realizing that the Trojan Horse was a ruse.[/ul][/li]
You can see how any of these would fit in with the story, given Rowling’s love of subtle Classical allusions 
I’ve seen some speculation that the HBP is Godric Gryffindor, and that there will be some more “viewing of the past,” through the Penseive or elsewhere, in this book. Given that, and the snake on the hut, maybe the Man in the Hat is Salazar Slytherin?
Very interesting, thanks for the extra info Hamish.
Well, while JKR isn’t super-careful about historical detail (e.g. dressing Nearly Headless Nick, who died in 1492, in Elizabethan-style clothing), I can’t quite see her depicting a wizard who lived a thousand years ago in a modern-style coat and hat.
It could still be a Pensieve flashback, though – maybe to the night Harry’s parents died, or the night of Voldemort’s birth (she’s said we’ll learn more about that).
:smack: You’re right. Long and confusing battle, that, although I thought by far her best-written yet.
Still, I saw no evidence that Dumbledore was holding back either. I don’t know. It looks like Rowling is saying only Harry can kill Voldemort. But it would be a major plot point if it turned out that if somebody ELSE killed Voldemort, they’d kill Harry too.
Fretful Porpentine:
You sure of that? I thought Nick died in 1592. I’m just now (in preparation for Saturday night) rereading Sorcerer’s Stone, and Nick tells Harry he hasn’t had food in almost four hundred years, not almost five hundred.
Hmm… I thought it was basically an open secret that Voldemort and Harry were linked so that if you killed Voldy, you’d kill Harry (unless it was Harry doing the killing). After all at the end of OotP, when Dumbledore held Voldemort in that painful contraption, it was causing Harry all sorts of bad pain.
That’s why Dumbledore can’t kill Voldemort, and it must be Harry that does the job.
I think the real mystery is why this is the case and how that night at Godric’s Hollow linked them so.
Well, he has his 500th deathday party in CoS, which is set in 1992. Another “oh dear, maths” moment for JKR, I’m afraid.
Looking back at the passage, I guess it isn’t clear that Dumbledore is holding Voldemort, but it does seem from passage that Harry feels linked to Voldemort to the point where he is wishing that Dumbledore kill “us”. It seems to strongly suggest that Voldemort and Harry are very closely linked and that trying to hurt Voldemort will end up doing damage to Harry.
(If it was Voldy holding Harry at the point, why wouldn’t he have killed him? I think that it was probably Dumbledore who was holding Voldemort and then Voldy decided to show him the result)
I apparently need to read that part again, but I thought that Voldemort broke free, disapparated, and then possessed Harry from whereever he ended up. When that failed, he returned to the ministry to save Lestrange, which is when Fudge et al. saw him.
Yup. She’s admitted this is one of her mistakes. 500 is canon.
Anyone who wants to read the back of the UK/Canadian children’s edition, click here. There’s a spoilers warning on it, but very minor and for the very, very beginning of the book.
So, I blogged this question this morning, but what the heck, I so rarely have an original thought. (Please don’t burst my bubble by telling me its unoriginal and linking me to HP slash. 
)
Does Hogwarts have a Sex Ed class for the older students? You know, magical methods of contraception, the dangers of using engorgement charms on yourself - the basics.
Sex ed at Hogwarts
Book Titles:
Wand Control for Wizards By Richard Longfellow-Wang
Understanding Your Inner Cauldron for Young Witches by Delores Mulva
At the end of Goblet of Fire there is a passage when Dumbledor looks triumphant for a moment when he finds out that Voldemort used some of Harry’s blood in his re-birth and that it will transfer some of Harry’s power/protection. I’m guessing this will be the ‘out’ for the kill-one-kill-both thing. Now that both Harry & Voldemort have a part of each others power, maybe you can kill one of them & the ‘part’ that is with them will subustitute for the death of the other.