Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Characters/Bathilda Bagshot
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| Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter - Character | |
| Bathilda Bagshot | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Hair color | Unknown |
| Eye color | Unknown |
| Related Family | Unknown |
| Loyalty | Unknown |
Contents |
[edit] Overview
Bathilda Bagshot, author of A History of Magic, one of the textbooks in use throughout Harry's school career, lives in Godric's Hollow.
[edit] Role in the Books
[edit] Philosopher's Stone
One of the books that Harry must purchase in Diagon Alley is A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot.
[edit] Prisoner of Azkaban
The book A History of Magic is mentioned early in the book as Harry has to do homework over the summer and is using this book as reference. Note that some editions of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban mistakenly list this book as being written by Adalbert Waffling.
[edit] Deathly Hallows
At Fleur and Bill's wedding, Harry speaks with Elphias Doge and Ron's Auntie Muriel. There, he learns that the source used by Rita Skeeter for her scurrilous book about Albus Dumbledore was most likely Bathilda Bagshot, who is apparently living in Godric's Hollow, where Harry's parents had lived, and to Harry's surprise, where the Dumbledore family had lived. This cements Harry's intention to go to Godric's Hollow.
It is mentioned that Bathilda at the time was very nearly senile, and that Rita Skeeter had used Veritaserum to get the recollections of Dumbledore's early life from her.
On arriving at Godric's Hollow near Christmas of that year, Harry and Hermione are surprised to find that a resident of the village can apparently perceive them, despite their being under the Invisibility Cloak. The resident responds positively when asked if she is Bathilda Bagshot; she takes them to her house, which is an absolute mess, and Harry notes a strange odor, as of rotten meat. Taking Harry upstairs, Bathilda collapses and a large snake, Nagini, leaves her body and starts attacking Harry. Hermione comes to the rescue, and the two of them Disapparate under Voldemort's nose.
Later, Harry hears that Bathilda has been found dead, and Dark magic involvement is suspected.
[edit] Strengths
[edit] Weaknesses
[edit] Relationships with Other Characters
In the letter which Lily Potter writes to Sirius Black, and which Harry sees in Grimmauld Place when he searches Sirius' room, Lily mentions that Bathilda seems friendly. Rita Skeeter's book quotes Bathilda as saying that she had tried to be friends with the Dumbledore family but had been rebuffed. One gets the impression that Bathilda is an outgoing person, perhaps one who likes to be the center of a gossip circle.
[edit] Analysis
We never meet Bathilda Bagshot in person; by the time we actually see her, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she is apparently a dead body, animated sketchily either by the presence of Nagini within her, or by the same magic that creates and preserves Inferi. Harry detects the odor of spoiled meat in her house, and we come to understand that this is Bathilda herself. There is no indication of how long she has been dead, but it is likely that it has been some time, as it seems that her author's copy of Rita Skeeter's book has not been touched. It is possible that Voldemort had set this trap as long as some five months before. We see that Nagini is with him in the first chapter of the book, which occurs in late July, and we know that Skeeter's book came out in August or September. This would suggest that Bathilda had died sometime between July and September, and quite possibly at Voldemort's hand, after which Nagini would have been living within her remains. It is perhaps suggestive that we do not see Nagini after the first chapter, until Harry triggers the trap on Christmas Eve or early Christmas morning.
[edit] Questions
- The author has said that Albus Dumbledore was born in 1881, and apparently died in 1997 at age 115 or 116. Remembering that Bathilda Bagshot was already mature enough to be host for Gellert Grindelwald when he and Dumbledore were about 17, how old must Bathilda have been at her death in 1997?
