I love how the Mandrakes go through all the stages of human development. Particularly the puberty is brilliant. Rowling's really had fun with some of those plants.

That whole DADA job thing doesn't seem entirely plausible. We're not told in HBP how long ago it is exactly that Voldemort showed up asking for the job, but it seems safe to say twenty years earlier at the very least - at least a number of years before Voldemort's downfall, and more likely ten or fifteen years before that. If the streak has been going for that long, surely it would be something widely known - something the current students' parents could tell them from their own experience, and something that every student except perhaps first years would know beforehand: DADA teachers only ever stay a year.

It would also be a sort of magic we've never seen anywhere else, quite powerful magic one has to say, if Voldemort has indeed literally cursed the job. And if he has, surely Dumbledore should know a way to counter it. But if he hasn't and it's just a superstitious jinx, then what are the odds?

I also wonder *why* Snape wants that DADA job so bad. Surely he's better at Potions than he is at DADA, and since he's not *really* a Death Eater, it can't be to sabotage students' education either (which he really doesn't in any case).

It's not entirely clear to me at how long distances apparating works. Or perhaps there are limitations about crossing water or oceans or so.

Yeah. It makes sense, though, if it's the only or main school in France/Francophone Europe.