Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Characters/Caractacus Burke

From Wikibooks, open books for an open world
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter - Character
Caractacus Burke
Gender Male
Hair color Unknown
Eye color Unknown
Related Family Unknown
Loyalty Galleons, Dark magic

Overview[edit | edit source]

Caractacus Burke is one of the owners of Borgin and Burkes, the Dark magic supplies store in Knockturn Alley. The other owner is Borgin.

Role in the Books[edit | edit source]

Beginner warning: Details follow which you may not wish to read at your current level.

Half-Blood Prince[edit | edit source]

In Albus Dumbledore's Pensieve, Harry sees Burke gloating over the marvelous deal he had made, buying the Locket of Slytherin for about ten Galleons from some poor little witch, almost certainly Merope Gaunt, who didn't know what she had. He evidently later sold it for thousands of Galleons to Hepzibah Smith.

Strengths[edit | edit source]

Weaknesses[edit | edit source]

Relationships with Other Characters[edit | edit source]

Analysis[edit | edit source]

Due to the fact that Borgin & Burke's seems to be exclusively ran by Borgin during Harry Potter's time, it's possible that Burke died sometime within the next fifty-some years of when we see him in the Pensieve. To add to this theory Dumbledore claims that Caractacus was one of the original founders of the shop in 1863, and so must have been born before 1846. Evidence in the stories suggests that Tom Riddle was born about 1930, and would have started working for Caractacus when he was about 18, in or about 1948. So Caractacus would have already been at least 100 by the time Tom Riddle began working for him.

Questions[edit | edit source]

Study questions are meant to be left for each student to answer; please don't answer them here.

Greater Picture[edit | edit source]

Intermediate warning: Details follow which you may not wish to read at your current level.