Don't forget that a whole corridor was blocked off in First Year. And that corridors seem to be named after subjects, but the teachers only seem to have one classroom...

As said above, JKR is just bad at numbers and/or didn't want to deal with the complexity of having hundreds more characters.

 

I bet Daphne tho has her own en suite living quarters, so that probably explains a dozen or so staircases and a good chunk of that mystery cliff-to-lakeline space.

 

No lie would read so fast.

 

Is it canon that phoenix song behaves differently to dark wizards/bad people?

 

Afaik we heard Phoenix song twice (Chamber and Dumbledore's death/funeral) in canon, and this concept seems to be fanon.

 

During the duel between Harry and Voldemort in GoF while the wands are connected Phoenix song starts to play and Voldemort seems to be almost scared of it while Harry finds it very uplifting.

 

The way I see it, voldy was probably scared of some random shit happening that he had no clue about. He's usually scared of things he doesn't understand, from the canon.
Brother wands clashing against each other doesn't seem to be a very common occurance, which makes sense with the probabilities involved. It took Olivanders telling voldy in book 7 when he finally got clued into the brother wand effect.
Also, the ghosts here would probably the same thing as the resurrection stone or the mirror of erised. Echoes of reality, not the real thing.
That's how I see it, at least.
But that makes a curious question. Would the effect be the same if two dragon heartstrings brother wands clashed? Would there be dragon roars in the background? or unicorn haired brothers?

Edit: typing accurately on phone is horrifyingly difficult

 

I think brother wands have to be more common then we're lead to believe. In canon, Dumbledore acts like it's this super rare thing. But, I feel like this is another thing that should be prefaced with JKR is bad at numbers. First we have to assume that Hogwarts students only buys their wands from Ollivanders. Sure, maybe there's some super specialized wandmaker whose craft is so awesome that it takes him a whole month to make a single wand for a thousand galleons. But in canon, every Hogwarts students wand we see, new or used, was bought from Ollivanders.

Ollivander himself says that he only makes wands from three materials - Dragon Heartstring, Phoenix Feathers, and Unicorn Hair. Perhaps those are the materials that he's most practiced with, or perhaps just produce the most consistent results, it doesn't matter. That's all he uses. So then you have to ask the question of how those resources are required.

Unicorns are rare, but not so rare as to not be found in the wild. Apparently they're even in the Forbidden Forest. So in that sense, they're probably the most common wand core, but still rare enough that their ingredients costs are in gold, rather than silver or copper. We see Hagrid with tons of unicorn hairs, and they're used in potions and to make strong bandages, amongst other things. It is technically possible that Ollivander only plucks a single unicorn hair from each unicorn and no more, but even if we just assume that 1/3rd of all his wand sold are of each ingredient, that's still a lot of unicorn hairs each year. Perhaps there's a unicorn breeder somewhere.

Dragons are probably rarer. They're larger and harder to hide from muggles, so there's dedicated reservations for housing them. But to specifically use a dragon heartstring, that's the tricky part I think. I'm not an expert, but that sounds like you have to kill a dragon to acquire. I would assume that is something that's not done lightly. And I would assume that it's not done solely for a heartstring and nothing more. It would be a planned thing, harvest the scales, blood, teeth, meat, etc. I would also guess that you can get more than one heartstring per dragon. Dragons are large creatures, and wands are small, slender things. It makes sense to me that multiple heart strings can be taken per dragon, which I think would lead to a lot of potential brother wands. Again, maybe not. Perhaps there's some guy in the wild raising dragons like cattle and they have the luxury of just taking 1 heart string per dragon.

Lastly, phoenixes. I have no idea how rare they are. But for supposedly immortal creatures, I would have to guess they would be pretty rare, otherwise you would see them all over the place (though that could just by hyperbole). They have to be common enough for Ollivander to get feathers from, and for him to make statements saying that they are one of his principle ingredients in his wands. Harry and Voldemort can't be the only people with phoenix feather wand cores. Hell, if Fawkes is immortal and the Ollivanders have been in business for 2300 years, then more than likely they have used Fawkes feathers before (though I guess that all because Fawkes is immortal, doesn't mean he's not a young phoenix. He could have came into existence within the last century). Perhaps there are other older fawkes wands that have simply degraded and worn down in ages past. But, if there are other phoenixes that Ollivander has used for wands, from the anecdotal evidence we have, we can assume he told multiple feathers from them as well, meaning that there are likely plenty of brother wands out there.

Yet, as and end note, while I think brother wands are more common than we are lead to believe, actually encountering the phenomena is likely far more rare. And I think that's the crux of the matter. Encountering the brother wand would be pretty rare even if the wizarding worlds population is only a few thousand. But if it's tens of thousands, it gets rarer still. And then you have things like generation gaps. Ollivander has tons of wands sitting on his shelves, some of which could have been sitting there for decades, perhaps centuries. The owner of the brother wand could be long dead, and the wand buried with them. And then on top of all that, the two wand owners have to encounter each other in such a manner in which those wands would behave as such towards each other. So while perhaps brother wands existing is to be expected, the actual phenomena surrounding them is probably quite rare, rare enough that Dumbledore likely only knows about it through books, and Voldemort had to hunt down an actual wandmaker to learn about it.

 

Ollivander said "I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather - just one other." to Harry in PS.

Also in Pottermore after you answer the questions and get your own wand it describes the characteristics of the core, wood and length of the wand that chose you. If I remember correctly in the section under phoenix tail feathers it says that they are very rare. This is probably because at the beginning of the series there are only two domestic phoenixes Fawkes who belongs to Dumbledore and a quidditch team in New Zealand that has a phoenix as a mascot. I think that part was mentioned in Quidditch through the Ages.

 

Yes...

but not so rare that they cost more than a Krum action figure at the World Cup. I mean I know those sort of venues enjoy huge markups but WHEW!

Although I think in the books, the ONLY wizards that we know have a Phoenix wand are Harry and Voldemort. So one could pass off 'Ollivander uses three cores' as 'Ollivander uses two cores, and a third every couple of decades when it's available to him.'

And pass of the math as just meh (which anyone writing HP fanfiction has to do at some point, anyway).

 

with finite amount of magical cores types (n) and finite amount of trees (t)
nXt isn't that big number to all possible combinations of cores and trees.
it is logical in same generation wizards and witches around the world have a wand made of the same core and tree.

 

This does not account for the chance of the two ever meeting in battle.

And another point, I always thought, it was not only that Harry and Voldemorte both had a phoenix feather, but a feather from the same phoenix? Am I simply remebering that wrong is is Dumbledore maybe to explict enough on that?

 

Yes same phoenix Fawks i think he mentions it in book 4 after the graveyard scene.

 

Maybe phoenix feathers are just Olivander's whim and wandmakers from other countries use more common cores. Anyway, brother wands have to be somehow common, otherwise you would have to kill thousands of dragons every year to make wands for all the kids around the world. Maybe wandmakers have policy of not selling two wands with identical cores in one country, it would explain why people with brother wands rarely meet.

 

Is "Potter for President" sign waving during quidditch matches canon?

If it is, how does it even make sense?

 

It's canon, they made it for Harry's first game. It's just a silly banner, they wanted to alliterate and I suppose Potter for Prime Minister was too long and a bit too on the nose.

I'm wonder what Wormtail did to ruin the sheet though, chew on it?

 

My PDF copy of book 5 is a bit messed up and I can't find the answer I'm looking for. When does Harry realize that the dream of corridors and a black door is of the Department of Mysteries? I can't find the exact scene where he makes that connection. The only passage I see is after an Occlumency lesson where he plainly states that he was dreaming about the entrance to it, by name.