Our family pets are usually responsible for small gifts.

Huh, in my family the dogs tend to be given responsibility for the most expensive pieces of jewelry and/or big checks from our parents. Mom and Dad are often heard to exclaim, "Sox has a platinum credit card!"

The year that Legion T. Cat actually signed the gift tags with his pawprint (dipped in green ink) was great. I got to clean the carpets and furniture, and R got to clean himself and beg forgiveness.

I never get anything from my dad, but his dogs have given me many a gift.

Been amusing myself with Buffyverse/Potterverse crossover fic -- Harry Potter and the Key of Dagon is quite amusing, even if it takes some liberties with timelines, and was obviously written before "Deathly Hallows" and ignores some of the events of "Order of the Phoenix."

One thing that fascinates me is how few of the writers don't seem to realize (or willfully ignire) that Harry is actually about six months older than Buffy.

We got gifts from all sorts of other people, too -- the Supreme Court justices' names often appear on mine, and my sisters will get things from famous people related to their professions. We also get them from people whose identities supply a hint about what's inside.

In my family, there are lots of presents from Elves' Local Union 1225.

Lookie what I got at Comic-Con! [link]

Lookie what I got at Comic-Con! [link]

I think I might like that Harry better than the movie version or the book cover illustration version.

Do we know when Dumbledore started teaching at Hogwarts? Because, if we go with the information that he's 150 years old (which, according to hp-lexicon, isn't from any of the books -- it's from an interview with JKR), then that makes the summer with Grindelwald into the summer of 1858, and then the next definite date of him doing anything that we have is that he was already a teacher at Hogwarts when Riddle started, in the late 30s. So that's eighty years where we know he was on the Wizengamot and discovered the uses for dragon's blood and published some papers, but there don't see to have been any more significant events there.

And also, that's eighty years of Grindelwald doing -- stuff. Seems like a lot of time to wait between getting the Elder Wand and gaining power.

According to the chronology listed in wikipedia, Dumbledore started teaching in 1891, but it's missing a citation so I don't know how accurate it is.

ETA for bad spelling

I'm terribly anal about crossovers, actually - the fact that Dawn specifically mentions the existance of the Harry Potter books, and Xander (and the Trio) making all their Spiderman/Superman comments really make it hard for me to suspend disbelief for crossovers with other canons.

Sometimes I can sling a rope around disbelief's neck, hang it from the rafters and go 'lalala I can't hear you' while reading something good, though.

eta

Oooh! Polgara, I was watching Smallville Season 6 earlier today, and there was a big strapping dude who did the whole built-in-impalement-device thing, and I was all "You're a Polgara Demon!" at the screen. And then reflecting upon how insanely referential things are, when their monster reminds me of a Buffy monster named after your good self, whom I assume to be named after the David Eddings character? It's like six degrees of, er, something.