I was staring at my computer screen today, trying to remember something when I realized that my screen saver was displaying Stonehenge.  The standing stones (the large ones with the lintels over some of them reminded me of people standing in a circle. I got thinking how it would resemble the death eater circle in the graveyard, so I went to a Stonehenge website and found out that there are 30 of those standing stones. Not all of them are still there (some are missing, some are fallen) just like the death eaters. That's the same number as the wizards who should be in the death eater circle.  Ok, should I say I have no life?

It's funny how things just fall together like that. Don't you love the feeling of revalation? I'm not sure what's being revealed but it sure is interesting. I guess either it is just a highly unlikly coinsedense or JK made it that way on purpose. She is just on a whole different level.

~GwP~
My signature is a work in progress and it will progress when I decide to work. That might be a while.

So, was Voldemort one of the 30, or is it 30 plus him?

Very cool observation!



Dad-Eye,

Don't know Chris.  GOF says Harry was outnumbered 30 to one.  So I guess Voldemort could be in or out. 

It's been so long since I've read them I must saddely admit I forgot a few things, some small some major. I guess this is one of the smaller to medium sized things. Did they really say it in GoF that he was out numbered by those odds?

I'm not at home right now, so I'll look the exact wording up later, but, yes, GOF says 30 to one, and then OOTP says about a dozen.  I tend to think after thought and discussion that JKR needed to tell us how many death-eaters there were total.  As Dad-Eye (I think) has pointed out, the DE's are the elite inner circle for Voldemort.  I think we are to understand that there have been a total of 30 wizards in that group.  Some are dead, some have deserted and some were in Azkaban in GOF.  So even though she says 30 in GOF, I think it was to show the total possible.  Harry only saw about 12 based on what he tells Rita in OOTP when he gives her the story.  There were 10 or 12 (I can't remember for sure) that escape from Azkaban, and there are at least 3 dead. Then there are the famous 3, faithful servant, left forever and coward.  That pretty much gets you to 30.

Ok, on page 660 US edition of GOF, "...surrounded by Death Eaters, outnumbered by at least 30 to one..."  and then in OOTP page 566 US edition (to Rita Skeeter), "I wasn't the sole witness, snarled Harry.  There were a dozen-odd Death Eaters there as well.  Want their names?"