Answers to Readers' Questions 17/03/21

1. Is Snape Draco's godfather?

Answer: No. That is a fanfiction setting, and the author does not use it as reference. (For settings acknowledged by the author, please refer to the "Canon World Settings" chapter in the related works section.)

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2. Shouldn't the Black Ancestral Home have protections that only allowed the legal heir or the rightful bloodline heir to enter?

Answer: No. Old Mrs. Black did not die until 1985, by which time Sirius Black was already rotting in prison. According to all officially known protective magic, if control was not transferred before the controller's death, the magic automatically failed. (There are many examples of this, such as Ekrizdis and Azkaban.) The idea of a legal heir is absolute nonsense. If such magic existed, Scrimgeour could not possibly have detained Dumbledore's belongings for thirty whole days. And don't tell me Old Mrs. Black was more powerful than Dumbledore. As for blood purity, the House of Black had been passed down since the Middle Ages. After more than a thousand years of intermarriage with other families, Sirius Black and Skylar probably had roughly the same proportion of "Black blood" in their veins.

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3. What is the lifespan of a House Elf?

Official sources state 200–300 years, but the possibility of unusually long-lived variants cannot be ruled out. Wizards generally live around 80–100 years as well, yet Bathilda Bagshot, Grindelwald's great-aunt two generations removed, lived all the way to 1997. Therefore, on February 3, 2017, Rowling half-jokingly stated on the official Twitter that Kreacher died not long after 1997—though she did not specify exactly how many years later—at the age of 666. I consider this setting acceptable.

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To avoid similar questions, I will also list the other fanfiction settings that were not drawn from canon:

1. The Trace is placed on wands—this was never mentioned in the original work.

2. Penelope Clearwater's year—in the 2004 revised edition, Rowling resolved this controversy. She enrolled in 1988, was in the same year as Percy, and was four years above Skylar/Harry.

3. Zacharias Smith becoming Quidditch captain—this was never mentioned in the original work. (I do not know about the films.)

4. A Petrification Curse does not exist—Petrificus Totalus is the Full Body-Bind Curse. It is an advanced form of Locomotor Wibbly, binding both hands and feet.

5. The Freezing Spell was mistranslated by the People's Literature Publishing House—"freeze" can mean either to freeze something solid or to make it remain motionless. In the original work, the Freezing Spell could only make targets, such as Cornish Pixies and Muggle alarms, remain motionless, so I translated it as the "Immobilization Charm."

6. Former Hogwarts headmasters—the only ones acknowledged in official sources are, in reverse chronological order: McGonagall, Snape, Dumbledore, Dippet, Black, Mole, Fortescue, Everard, and Derwent. (Fanfiction often likes to cite the headmasters shown in the films, but those were all names of lower-year textbook authors or film production staff—a purely joking reference.)

7. Galleons are made of pure gold—this was never mentioned in the original work. I think it is more reasonable that Galleons are magical metal created by processing gold through goblin alchemy.