by .:.Lily.:. » Sunday 17 June 2007 10:05:45am
The portrait of DD will not give away what he and Harry were doing and neither will the other portraits because even though they serve the current head, they also all know that this is Harry's journey. If he could still fall back on his crutches at this point, he would never have lost Sirius and Dumbledore. Mcgonagall will learn of the horcruxes when Harry tells her about them.
The portrait will be of no use to Harry until he returns to Hogwarts and I believe he will. The final battle will lead back to where it all started, where Harry first confronted LV, where he first defeated him... It all leads back to the school in the end even if Harry doesn't return for his last year of schooling there. It is then, at the end that he will find the portrait of DD useful.
I like the idea of portraits of Lily and James but I don't see that in their very short lives they would have done anything that would have merited them a portrait. Yes they fought for the order of the pheonix but they didn't discover a new way of healing, they didn't do anything to stand up in history except to die for their son and to bring on the first downfall of LV.
Perhaps someday this will merit them their place in history and a portrait somewhere, but we need to know more about the portraits to understand how they work. Does the portrait have to premade to have the imprint of the wizard and their knowledge upon it? And if so, would it be too late to make a portrait of Lily and James for it to mean anything for Harry?
Phineas Nigel would walk out of one portrait into the one at Grimald place... Does this mean that everyone who has multiple portraits leaves empty frames behind when they are in another? Are there thousands of empty frames around the wizarding world?