I'm rereading Sorcerer's Stone. Just got to Voldemort's first appearance. (Though, I noticed, Fred and George actually got in the first blow against the newly-appeared Voldemort -- they got detention for throwing snowballs at the back of Quirrell's turban.) So anyway, he says

See what I have become? Mere shadow and vapor ... I have form only when I can share another's body [...] and once I have the Elixer of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own.

So after his soul split the last time, the last remaining piece was just kind of floating out there? And when he got re-bodified, was the new body his old one, or something brand new? And what happened to his body in Godric's Hollow?

(If there isn't a real answer, I'm going to say that the last bit of soul jumped into the Potters' cat. Because we never did find out what happened to that cat, did we? And hybrid cats seem to be a theme lately.)

I'm also noticing a bunch of things that Rowling seemed to change her mind on later. Like, we're told that James was Head Boy, but in Order of the Phoenix they say that he wasn't a prefect. Also, Voldemort tells Harry that his father bought bravely for his life.

Due to some errands I managed to get through chapter 1. I beginning to wonder about Snape, I'm sure his information is correct and it seems like too much to give away. I thought the revolving person was Lucius at first until Voldamort asked for his wand. Of course, it was impossible to know who it was since it was somebody new. Sounds like the Ministry is pretty much doomed, no real surprise there.

Maybe some of it is what Harry imagined, or what he was told to build up his father.

Er... I am beginning I just noticed in my text editor. If I take time to edit, I'll be too tempted to look at other posts.

Gud

Bah, don't bother. enjoy the book, post what you can. Do not look at the spoilers.

Edit later, if you want, while reading other people's posts.

I'm just really interested to see what her next creative work will be. I really liked how eventually she stopped writing for a specific audience (kids) and just started writing because she had a wider ranged audience

Do you think that's what she did? My understanding was that each book was always supposed to be pitched at a readership roughly the age of her protagonist - so that the books became more complex as the audience grew up. Kind of a 7-part reading scheme stretched over 7 years. Not that it worked out exactly fitting to that timetable - but I understood that had always been her intention.

Hil, I just finished with Goblet of Fire, and Voldemort says in the graveyard that his soul fled to a hiding place he knew of in Albania, and after the failed attempt to get the Philosopher's Stone in the first book, he went back there. Wormtail knew of his first tenure in Albania, so searched him down there after getting away from everyone in PoA, but first stumbled across poor Bertha Jerkins, on vacation but knowing about the Triwizard Tournament. Wormtail took her along when he contacted Voldemort (bodyless), cobbled together a rudimentary body for his master, killed Bertha with Voldemort's wand after they got all the info out of her that they needed, and then used that spell (blood of the enemy, bone of the father, flesh of the servant) to create a full-formed body for Voldemort.

Oh, and JKR wasn't the first children's author to write a series at increasingly higher reading levels--Laura Ingalls Wilder did the same for her Little House book (possibly encouraged in doing so by her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, whom some scholars believe might have been more of a ghost writer and less of a simple editor of her mother's manuscripts).