There’s only four known owners of the Cloak, three of them died after they had given up possession of the Cloak, and the fourth is alive and has not yet given up the cloak.
Dumbledore merely asked to borrow the cloak from James:
“You. You have guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the night your parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously. It explained much of his undetected wrongdoing at school! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I asked to borrow it, to examine it. I had long since given up my dream of uniting the Hallows, but I could not resist, could not help taking a closer look. . . . It was a Cloak the likes of which I had never seen, immensely old, perfect in every respect . . . and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at last, all to myself!”
In canon, Harry has been without the Cloak, after taking possession of it, for much longer than three days: in Philosopher’s Stone, he left it at the top of the Astronomy Tower after giving Norbert to Charlie (I wonder if Norbert will appear in MoR...), and in Prizoner of Azkaban he left it in the Honeydukes secret passage. If being without the Cloak for a few days is enough to die, Harry should have died in his first or third year. If James hadn’t died, Dumbledore would only have been borrowing the Cloak, and he returned it to Harry at close to the first opportunity. It’s unclear, therefore, if he would have owned the Cloak for purposes of this theory, but if so I think he should have died well before he did.
Giving up the cloak is not enough to kill you for no reason. You die after giving it up if you’ve used it to live beyond your span. Dumbledore is old but not out of bounds for a wizard.
In that case we only know of one owner who may have lived longer than standard, and we don’t even know about them. James was in his 20s, Dumbledore was only around 150, and Harry is only 37 in the epilogue. It seems like people are privileging this theory beyond the little evidence it would get from the Cloak being related to the Wand and owners of the Wand tending to die.
The base rate is based on the legend that the Cloak hides the wearer from Death, works, and that the first wearer dies when he leaves the protection of the cloak.
There’s only four known owners of the Cloak, three of them died after they had given up possession of the Cloak, and the fourth is alive and has not yet given up the cloak.
Dumbledore merely asked to borrow the cloak from James:
In canon, Harry has been without the Cloak, after taking possession of it, for much longer than three days: in Philosopher’s Stone, he left it at the top of the Astronomy Tower after giving Norbert to Charlie (I wonder if Norbert will appear in MoR...), and in Prizoner of Azkaban he left it in the Honeydukes secret passage. If being without the Cloak for a few days is enough to die, Harry should have died in his first or third year. If James hadn’t died, Dumbledore would only have been borrowing the Cloak, and he returned it to Harry at close to the first opportunity. It’s unclear, therefore, if he would have owned the Cloak for purposes of this theory, but if so I think he should have died well before he did.
Giving up the cloak is not enough to kill you for no reason. You die after giving it up if you’ve used it to live beyond your span. Dumbledore is old but not out of bounds for a wizard.
One possibility: The Master of the cloak dies ‘shortly after’ someone else becomes the master.
Null hypothesis: Owning the Cloak which was intended to hide the wearer from death has no effect on the death of the wearer.
In that case we only know of one owner who may have lived longer than standard, and we don’t even know about them. James was in his 20s, Dumbledore was only around 150, and Harry is only 37 in the epilogue. It seems like people are privileging this theory beyond the little evidence it would get from the Cloak being related to the Wand and owners of the Wand tending to die.
The base rate is based on the legend that the Cloak hides the wearer from Death, works, and that the first wearer dies when he leaves the protection of the cloak.