Elphias Doge

"That old berk. Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did."

- Aberforth Dumbledore regarding Doge

Elphias Doge (born c. 1881) was a wizard, a Ministry of Magic jurist, a member of the Order of the Phoenix in both the First and Second Wizarding Wars, and also a close friend of Albus Dumbledore.

In the summer of 1995, Doge was part of the Advance Guard, in which he met Harry Potter. After Dumbledore's death in June, 1997, Mr. Doge wrote him an obituary for the Daily Prophet. Later that same summer, he attended the wedding of Fleur and Bill Weasley at The Burrow, and managed to Disapparate from there seconds before the Attack at the Burrow that ensued when Death Eaters arrived after the fall of the Ministry.

Early life
"I had contracted dragon pox shortly before arriving at school, and while I was no longer contagious, my pock-marked visage and greenish hue did not encourage many to approach me."

- Daily Prophet, Summer 1997; Albus Dumbledore Remembered by Elphias Doge

Elphias Doge was born in around 1881, to the wizarding Doge family. Sometime in or prior to 1892, Doge contracted dragon pox.

On 1 September, 1892, at age eleven, Elphias Doge started at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. No longer contagious of his dragon pox, but still with a "pock-marked visage and greenish hue", not many approached Doge. Albus Dumbledore, however, looked past that and befriended him during their first day at the Castle. Doge believed that their mutual attraction was due to the fact that they both felt that they were outsiders: he had his greenish skin tone and Dumbledore was primarily known to others as the son of Percival Dumbledore, who scarcely a year previously had been convicted of a savage and well-publicised attack upon three young Muggles. Their peers at Hogwarts would often think of Doge as Dumbledore's "dim-witted but devoted sidekick".

When Doge and Dumbledore left Hogwarts in 1899, they planned to take a Grand Tour of the world together. However, when they were staying at the Leaky Cauldron and preparing to leave for Greece, they got news that Dumbledore's mother Kendra had died. Doge attended Kendra's funeral and departed for the Grand Tour without Dumbledore. He wrote letters to Dumbledore about his "narrow escapes from Chimaeras in Greece to the experiments of the Egyptian alchemists". He came back home shortly after the death of Dumbledore's sister Ariana, whose funeral he also attended.

First Wizarding War
"Original Order of the Phoenix. Found it last night when I was looking for my spare Invisibility Cloak, seeing as Podmore hasn't had the manners to return my best one… thought people might like to see it... Elphias Doge, you've met him, I'd forgotten he used to wear that stupid hat […]"

- Alastor Moody shows Harry Potter a picture of the First Order of the Phoenix

During the First Wizarding War in the 1970s, Elphias Doge became a member of the Order of the Phoenix, an organisation led and founded by his friend Albus Dumbledore, in order to oppose Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters. During that time, he would usually wear a silly hat. Given his role within the Order, it is more than likely that Doge fought in several battles of the First Wizarding War.

Between wars
Between the wars, Elphias Doge served the Ministry of Magic as Special Advisor to the Wizengamot. He was still in this post well into the Second Wizarding War.

As member of the Advance Guard
After the rebirth of Lord Voldemort on 24 June, 1995, Albus Dumbledore called the "old crowd", of which Doge was part of, back to form the Second Order of the Phoenix to fight during the course of the Second Wizarding War.

On 6 August, 1995, Doge joined the Advance Guard that escorted Harry Potter from 4 Privet Drive to 12 Grimmauld Place. When he saw Harry, he commented on how much he looked like his father, but had his mother's eyes. After arriving at Grimmauld Place, Doge attended the Order meeting.

Albus Dumbledore's death
"Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain; he could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship more than I can say, but my loss is nothing compared to the Wizarding world's. That he was the most inspiring and best loved of all Hogwarts headmasters cannot be in question. He died as he lived: working always for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day I met him."

- Daily Prophet, Summer 1997; Albus Dumbledore Remembered, by Elphias Doge After Dumbledore's death on 30 June, 1997, Doge wrote a heartfelt obituary for the Daily Prophet. A close friend of Dumbledore's, Rita Skeeter "pestered" him to talk to her about the late wizard for her project, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore. Doge became upset and called her an "interfering trout", which resulted in Skeeter making various remarks questioning Doge's sanity.

Wedding of Bill and Fleur
Elphias Doge attended the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour on 1 August, 1997. He wore a moth-eaten fez and sat alone in a table drinking champagne. Recognising him from two years before that, and having read Dumbledore's obituary, Harry Potter, disguised as a Muggle to look like a Weasley cousin, joined him and the two had a brief conversation about Dumbledore's childhood, before being interrupted by Muriel, who believed every word of Rita Skeeter's sensationalist and mostly false biography of Dumbledore. Doge passionately defended Dumbledore and his family, but Muriel repeatedly contradicted him. While this was happening, the Death Eaters were staging a coup in London, killing Minister Rufus Scrimgeour and taking over the Ministry of Magic. In an attempt to siege Harry Potter, the Death Eaters infiltrated the wedding, in a short but aggressive skirmish. Doge managed to Disapparate from the Burrow just seconds before the Death Eaters arrived.

It is unknown what happened to Elphias after the attack at the wedding and it is also unknown if he participated in the Battle of Hogwarts.

Physical appearance
Doge was described as having a wheezy voice and white hair which made him resemble an aged dandelion clock. In his first year at Hogwarts, he suffered from Dragon pox; he had many green pimples on his skin. Doge also appears to enjoy wearing eccentric hats: a "stupid hat" he used to wear in the 1970s, a pointy hat he wore in 1995, and a "moth-eaten fez" he wore during the wedding of William Weasley and Fleur Delacour.

Personality and traits
In his youth, Doge suffered from dragon pox, and everybody at Hogwarts avoided him, except Albus Dumbledore. This made Elphias friendly towards Dumbledore. Doge has appeared as being a very loyal friend. He also didn't like unfairness, as he got angry when Muriel lied that Ariana Dumbledore was a Squib and that her family had imprisoned her. Doge also appeared as being a friend of the most members of the Order of the Phoenix, such as James and Lily Potter. Rita Skeeter heavily implies Doge to be senile or "dim-witted", but this was most likely because of his refusal to help her in her biography of Albus Dumbledore; the post he held within the Ministry, that of Special Advisor to the Wizengamot suggested otherwise.

Albus Dumbledore
Elphias was close friends with Albus Dumbledore, meeting him the first time at Hogwarts. They were both outcasts, as he contracted dragon pox shortly before he began schooling.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, was an outcast because of his Muggle-hating father. After graduating from school, they had planned to tour the world. However, when they were packing to go to Greece at the Leaky Cauldron, Dumbledore got an owl informing him that his mother had died and that he had to go home instead.

While Elphias was travelling to Greece, Dumbledore had to take care of his siblings. At the time Elphias was ending his travel, Ariana was killed. Elphias learned that she was accidentally killed in a duel between Albus, Aberforth and Gellert Grindelwald. No one ever learned who killed her.

In their later life, Dumbledore and Elphias remained close friends. Elphias had a high opinion of Albus; he thought that he could see the good inside all the people, however apparently insignificant or wretched. After Dumbledore's death, Elphias wrote a heartfelt obituary for the Daily Prophet. At Bill and Fleur's wedding, Elphias stated to Harry Potter that he "certainly knew Albus the longest", if you didn't count his own brother, Aberforth.

Dumbledore family
Elphias was also close to the Dumbledore family. Elphias wasn't able to meet Percival, Albus's father, as he was imprisoned in Azkaban for punishing three Muggles who had scared Ariana. After that, Ariana lost her sanity and could not control her magical abilities. Doge also liked Kendra, Albus's mother. He later stated that she was a fine woman.

Kendra was accidentally killed by Ariana. A few years later, Ariana was also accidentally killed in a duel between Albus, Aberforth and Gellert Grindelwald, when she attempted to help Albus and Aberforth. It never became clear who did kill Ariana. Elphias participated at her funeral, where Albus and Aberforth had an argument.

Elphias thought that Albus was much more popular than Aberforth, and that people never do seem to count Aberforth. Aberforth also thought that Elphias admired Albus very much, and that Elphias "thought the sun shone out of Albus's every orifice", although Aberforth does not seem to have such a high opinion of Doge, referring to him as an "old berk".

Harry Potter
Elphias seemed to like Harry Potter. When he first met Harry, he said that he looked like his father, but he had his mother's eyes; something that everyone told Harry. Elphias was also a member of the Advance Guard, a group of members of the Order of the Phoenix who escorted Harry to 12 Grimmauld Place.

Elphias met Harry again in 1997, at the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. They discussed Albus Dumbledore, and Elphias told him that Albus was a very good person, something that helped Harry feel better.

Muriel
Muriel was the loud, ill-mannered, rude, 107 year-old aunt of Molly Weasley. She enjoyed gossip very much and Rita Skeeter, and thus was incredibly pleased that Skeeter was to be writing a new book, known as The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, that would slander Dumbledore. Muriel was delighted in revealing the dark parts of Dumbledore's history to Doge, who idolized and admired him and refused to hear anything bad about him. Being close to the Dumbledores, Doge was very emotional about the tragedy of Ariana, so to hear Muriel so rudely cackling about it made him furious and feebly wheeze about how untrue it was. Muriel brought Doge to the verge of tears as Muriel made him feel wretched and miserable as he heard slanderous lies being told about Albus. While it is true that some of the information in Skeeter's book was true and Doge did skip over the parts that didn't make Dumbledore look very good, Doge still disliked Muriel for horrifying him with the terrible things Skeeter was going to write and the way Muriel took pleasure in hearing them.

Order of the Phoenix members
Elphias was a member of both the first and the second Order of the Phoenix. He had a good relationship with the most members, including Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin, Sturgis Podmore, Emmeline Vance, Dedalus Diggle and Hestia Jones, who were also members of the Advance Guard. Moody did not seem to like Elphias' "stupid hat" during the First Wizarding War.

Etymology

 * Doge was the title held by the elected leaders of Italian maritime republics such as Venice, Genoa and Padua from the 7th to 19th century. It shared the same root as the title duke, in the Latin dux and Greek doux, both simply meaning leader.

Behind the scenes

 * Legohp5-7trailer 068.png]]Doge is portrayed by Peter Cartwright in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and David Ryall in Deathly Hallows: Part 1''.
 * In LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7, his talk with Harry about Dumbledore's childhood during the Wedding of William Weasley and Fleur Delacour is omitted.
 * In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, when the wedding is interrupted, and before Elphias Disapparates, he says "Nice meeting you, Mr. Potter". This causes a mistake in the film since in the fifth movie they had already seen each other when Harry was being rescued from the Dursleys.

Appearances

 * Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
 * Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film)
 * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
 * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
 * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (video game)
 * LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7

Notes and references
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