DH2: In Memoriam – Harry Potter Lexicon

"He died as he lived: working always for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day that I met him."
-- Elphias Doge

Harry is preparing to leave Privet Drive, emptying his school trunk and packing a rucksack with the items most important to him. In the process, he also sorts through the newspapers of the past few weeks to re-read and save Dumbledore’s obituary. At the end of his packing, he notices an interview in the current day’s paper in which Rita Skeeter is talking about her upcoming tell-all biography, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.

Calendar and Dates

Since Harry has "four days left of being unable to perform magic", it is four days before his birthday on 31 July - so it is 27 July.

Interesting facts and notes

I met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our first day at Hogwarts.

So Elphias Doge was in the same year as Albus Dumbledore, and therefore is very close to the same age.

Scarcely a year previously

That is, when Albus would have been ten years old. From Elphias' phrasing, it sounds as though the incident happened around the same time of year as the beginning of the Hogwarts school year.

his father, Percival, had been convicted of a savage and well-publicized attack upon three young Muggles.

According to Aberforth Dumbledore (DH28), Ariana was six years old at the time, so she was four years younger than Albus.

Three years after we had started at Hogwarts, Albus' brother, Aberforth, arrived at school.

So Aberforth was three years younger than Albus and therefore a year older than Ariana.

When Albus and I left Hogwarts we intended to take the then-traditional tour of the world together

In the Muggle world, that sort of thing used to be referred to as a "Grand Tour" (although the Muggle version was concerned chiefly with Europe).

kept telling me to watch out for trout

Elphias' version of this "meeting" with Rita Skeeter, which he explains when he first meets Harry, is that

"....[t]hat woman, or vulture might be a more accurate term, positively pestered me to talk to her. I am ashamed to say that I became rather rude, called her an interfering trout, which resulted, as you may have seen, in aspersions being cast on my sanity." (DH8)

Exceptional character moments

Elphias Doge's obituary of his friend, Albus Dumbledore.

Rita Skeeter's upcoming unlikely-to-be-anything-but-nasty biography of Albus Dumbledore.

Memorable lines

"It was stupid, pointless, irritating beyond belief, that he still had four days left of being unable to perform magic ... but he had to admit to himself that this jagged cut in his finger would have defeated him."

"Skeeter's book contains less fact than a Chocolate Frog Card."