If Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen) is right and Corvus Lestrange is Aurelius Dumbledore (Ezra Miller), then Albus Dumbledore’s (Jude Law) mother Kendra is still alive in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. The third Fantastic Beasts movie promises to explore Dumbledore’s past and relationship with his friend-turned-foe Grindelwald, as it builds up towards the famous 1945 duel where Dumbledore finally defeats the dark wizard, which will probably be revealed in the fifth and last movie of the franchise.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald came with a few major plot twists, its biggest one (considering the amount of new Harry Potter canon) being Grindelwald revealing Credence’s identity as Aurelius Dumbledore, a fourth Dumbledore sibling. But not long before this, Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz) reveals another huge twist to Newt (Eddie Redmayne), Credence, Nagini (Claudia Kim), Tina (Katherine Waterston), and Yusuf (William Nadylam): back in 1901, Leta was traveling to America with her baby half-brother Corvus. Bothered by his incessant crying, Leta swapped him with another baby in a nearby cabin. When the ship sank, Corvus ostensibly drowned. The other baby is, of course, Credence. But when Grindelwald tells Credence he is Aurelius, he doesn’t know Credence isn’t Corvus, but a baby that was once swapped with him.
The fact that Grindelwald doesn’t know about the baby swap can mean a myriad of things: he could simply be lying about Credence’s identity (manipulating him against Dumbledore), or he may think that Corvus Lestrange is indeed Aurelius Dumbledore, as Leta was the only person who knew Corvus drowned, and the first time she told the story to anyone was at the Lestrange mausoleum, the night she was killed by Grindelwald. If Grindelwald is right about Corvus being Aurelius Dumbledore, that means that his mother is Kendra Dumbledore, who was supposedly killed by her daughter Ariana during one of her Obscurus outbursts in 1899, before Credence/Corvus/Aurelius was born.
Kendra Dumbledore’s Fate Must Be Explored In Fantastic Beasts 3
If any of the five Fantastic Beasts movies must explore Dumbledore’s past (and perhaps Harry Potter’s darkest secret), it’s The Secrets of Dumbledore. Ariana’s death and Kendra’s fate are the highlights, and they’re bound to become conversation topics, as the movie will see Albus and his younger brother Aberforth reunite perhaps for the first time since Ariana’s funeral (where Aberforth broke Albus’ nose). When she was six years old, Ariana was violently attacked by three Muggle boys, an event that deeply scarred Ariana and led her to suppress her magic. Just like in Credence’s case, Ariana became an Obscurial. The Dumbledores’ father, Percival, eventually went to Azkaban for attacking the Muggle boys, and their mother, Muggle-born Kendra, was accidentally killed by Ariana in one of her Obscurus outbursts. Albus was then tasked with protecting Ariana, but that didn’t go well either: during the famous three-way duel between the Dumbledore brothers and Grindelwald, Ariana intervened to stop them and lost her life. This drove Aberforth and Albus apart, as Aberforth blamed Albus for the tragedy.
As the Dumbledore brothers meet again in Fantastic Beasts 3, they must discuss the tragedy of Ariana and Kendra’s death – if Kendra was indeed killed by Ariana. It wouldn’t be surprising if Kendra’s fate would be one of Dumbledore’s many secrets, as his brother Aberforth himself tells Harry in The Deathly Hallows: “He learned secrecy at our mother’s knee. Secrets and lies, that’s how we grew up…” Dumbledore has been known to keep huge secrets from his closest friends (Snape’s tragic story in Harry Potter is a good example, as Snape didn’t know Dumbledore was “raising Harry like a pig for slaughter“, nor did Harry know about Snape’s undying loyalty until his tragic death). But with the grand plot twist of Credence’s identity, Dumbledore must reveal the truth behind his mother Kendra in the next Fantastic Beasts movie.
Hints Kendra Dumbledore Is Corvus’ Mother
The Kama/Lestrange family story is quite a complicated one, as Yusuf Kama tells it in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. His mother, Laurena, was abducted via Imperius Curse by Corvus Lestrange IV. He forced her to be his wife and bear him a daughter, Leta. Shortly after Laurena died in childbirth, Corvus married another woman, Clarisse Tremblay, and they had a son, Corvus. When Clarisse died in childbirth too, Yusuf swore an Unbreakable Vow to kill baby Corvus and end the Lestrange bloodline. That is when Corvus IV sent his son along with young Leta and Irma Dugard, the family’s half-elf housekeeper, on a boat to America, to protect them from the Kamas.
But a description of Kendra Dumbledore in The Deathly Hallows is eerily close to Clarisse’s appearance in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Harry sees a photo of Kendra and notices her jet black hair which she wore in a high bun, dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a straight nose. Harry thinks her face had a “carved quality“, with a “formally composed” expression. Kendra is also described as wearing a high-necked silk gown. In the short flashback scene showing Corvus IV’s second wife, Clarisse perfectly matches Kendra’s description in the Harry Potter book. If Credence is a Dumbledore and an Obscurial, then Grindelwald is right in thinking Dumbledore has met his match.
Who Else Aurelius Dumbledore Could Be
With Fantastic Beasts 3 still on its way, Credence’s identity as Aurelius Dumbledore is yet unconfirmed. At the end of the second movie, Grindelwald reveals the baby raven that Credence has been caring for was a phoenix, announcing a very symbolic identity transformation from Corvus (which is Latin for “raven“) to Aurelius Dumbledore (“a phoenix will come to any [Dumbledore] who is in dire need”, claims Grindelwald). But the phoenix’s allegiance to Credence doesn’t necessarily confirm his heritage. Fawkes came to Harry’s aid in The Chamber of Secrets, bringing him the Sword of Gryffindor, blinding the Basilisk, and healing Harry’s wounds after the battle. Furthermore, Grindelwald could have used a Transfiguration charm to turn the raven into a phoenix and convince Credence of his heritage. This wouldn’t be the first time Grindelwald manipulates Credence into obedience. Making him feel like an outcast, rejected by the great Dumbledore family, could be a quick way to turn him against Albus Dumbledore.
There are several other theories surrounding Aurelius’ identity. As Grindelwald doesn’t know about the baby swap, Credence can either be Corvus/Aurelius, who miraculously survived drowning, or just a young man with a confused and unfortunate past (having been swapped, then handed over to a terrible orphanage). In a parallel theory, Aurelius Dumbledore is not Corvus Lestrange, but the very baby that Leta swapped for Corvus. In this case, a fan-favorite theory is that Aurelius is not Albus’ brother, but his son. Albus was born in 1881, so he would have been 20 years old when he fathered Aurelius. Also, the prophecy about Credence/Aurelius which describes him as “a son cruelly banished” fits with a child sent to America after Dumbledore didn’t want him.
Another branch to the Credence/Aurelius origins theory is that his birth mother is also Voldemort’s grandmother, which would make Aurelius the brother of Merope Gaunt, Voldemort’s mother. Credence shows very powerful magic (which, suppressed, led to an extremely powerful Obscurus), so he is likely to have descended from the Gaunt line, which, in turn, descended from the great Salazar Slytherin. Merope Gaunt’s father, Marvolo, was bigoted and abusive. Years of inbreeding had led to the Gaunt family line producing very mentally unstable family members – it would thus be plausible that Credence/Aurelius’s mother is Voldemort’s grandmother. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore must clear the mysteries surrounding Credence’s identity, and the best way to do that is by exploring Dumbledore’s family history.
- Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)Release date: Apr 15, 2022
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