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).

So all of chapter 2 is about Dumbledore, there are lots of intriguing bits about his past in there. I've always liked Rita Skeeter, I'm sure her story isn't accurate, but there was too much there to be just a throwaway bit. I suspect she might show up in the story later somehow. No why that Dumbledore's eye was Harry's imagination, but I'm not sure what it means. Is there a Dumbledore chocolate frog card lying on top of Sirius's mirror someplace? After the end of book five, I'm certain that Dumbledore himself can't communicate through the mirror from beyond the grave.

I just found a most excellent fic about how Aberforth and Neville meet via the Room of Requirement and Arianna's painting.

Ah. Thanks, Kathy. Do we know what happened to his original body, though?

I don't remember any mention of what happened to it--I assume that it was disposed of after the debacle of the attack at Godric's Hollow.

But, at least one of his Death Eaters was there to get his wand and keep it for his return.

Ah. Thanks, Kathy. Do we know what happened to his original body, though?

I believe the body was entirely destroyed, and all that was left of him was an ethereal remnant -- an eighth of a soul, if you will.

an eighth of a soul, if you will.

Technically a 7th of a soul, since Nagini wasn't infected with soul de Voldemort until after his body died the first time.

Technically a 7th of a soul, since Nagini wasn't infected with soul de Voldemort until after his body died the first time.

Point. I stand corrected.