PoA Chapter Twenty

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

The image of all of these guys coming down the stairs is pretty hilarious and creepy at the same time.

As they creep awkwardly back in the tunnel I find myself thinking it’s too bad they don’t have cell phones. Then I think this probably would have been a good moment for Lupin or someone to send a Patronus to Dumbledore to tell them to have people there to meet them outside the tunnel. Too bad Patronuses don’t work that way yet.

Sirius makes no effort to prevent Snape’s head from bumping along the tunnel. Which is understandable at the moment, but I’m sure Snape’s been described doing things gently in that kind of circumstance. This is the kind of thing that seems like JKR making some subtle point but in the end I don’t think she is. It’s just funny when Sirius or the Twins is petty this way.

Some sort of explosion takes place in Harry’s stomach when Sirius asks to live together. For a moment I fear Harry’s going to do something really messy and wonder if the Shrieking Shack has a working loo, but it turns out he’s just overcome emotionally.

Oh Sirius, you’ve totally done it now. You want to actually be Harry’s family? Dumbledore’s not having that!

Oh look, the full moon. Good thing you all knocked out Snape since he would have no doubt been yapping about it for the past fifteen minutes, thus keeping Lupin from leaving the Shack with you all.

And certainly keeping Lupin from chaining himself to people with broken legs. He might as well be chaining himself to a hickory-smoked ham.

Anyway, without Snape obviously Lupin’s going to forget about the full moon and being a werewolf tonight. He’s been too busy rushing through the tunnel where he almost killed somebody as a werewolf to the house that was built to house him while he was a werewolf, reuniting with his friends at school who became Animagi to hang with him while he was a werewolf and confessing how he’s a werewolf until he was interrupted by the guy he almost killed as a werewolf who’s yelling about how they tried to kill him in the very tunnel that connects to this very house with this very werewolf who btw forgot to take his werewolf Potion tonight.

Maybe he should have written it on his hand.

Btw, apparently Lupin can walk around just fine under the full moon if it’s covered by clouds. Which would indicate that all he has to do to get around his curse is to stay indoors and away from windows for three nights a month. Or carry a parasol.

Actually, I feel like the moon coming from behind the clouds should probably be a Jabootu thing. In werewolf movies the moon always rises by emerging from behind the clouds that part like a curtain and begin the transformation.

Go Peter! Look, I’m sorry, I know he’s evil but the guy’s a survivor!

I wonder if Peter had remembered the full moon and was waiting his chance, in fact. Rats have to think about these things.

Harry trying to cast his Patronus here while Sirius cowers is pretty great. Nothing bad to say about this bit, really.

Well, except that I’m not sure why Sirius is a man here. He was last seen as a dog and he said Dementors don’t bother dogs. Did he turn into a human just as they snuck up on him Stealth Monster style? There’s a hundred of them and you can feel the coming a ways off.

Harry’s using the thought that he’s going to live with Sirius to cast his Patronus. Nice the way that Dumbledore’s excellent plans for Sirius in OotP effectively take away that greatest hope for both of them (meaning Sirius and Harry) here. Not in this book, I mean, but later.

Really, the whole way that Dumbledore inserts himself as Harry’s awesome mentor and father figure is one of the ickiest things in the series. I guess because it’s not even presented as something he’s doing on purpose, but it plays like a barely-conscious impulses that show so clearly through the character. (Choices show who we are.) Sirius is like the anti-Dumbledore, and he dies trying to be Harry’s family and escape Dumbledore’s horrible home for him.

Dumbledore puts Harry in a horrible family too. But he does tease them for ten minutes so that makes it okay.

Seriously, let’s review: Dumbledore takes James’ invisibility cloak when the family’s in hiding, which might have helped them a little. He intentionally places Harry with a family that hates him (making him a little underfed but not a pampered prince!). He gives evidence against innocent Sirius. He doesn’t curb Snape’s behavior or try to make peace between them. He insists Sirius live in the childhood home of his nightmares. And he apologizes…for being the guy who’s so squishy about Harry he gave him the house cup and didn’t tell him he was planning to have him killed because he wanted him to be happy.

The Weasleys are damn lucky they’re loyal enough that Dumbledore didn’t feel threatened by them, and that they had so many children he could feel relatively secure that Harry couldn’t get too much personal attention from them no matter how much they wanted to give it.

Harry and Hermione could very well have died here. Harry’s not even supposed to know how to do a Patronus. I mention it because of what it says about the safety of the school that Molly had such faith in at the start. The place is literally crawling with soul-suckers that eat students as easily as convicts, and Dumbledore’s making faces about how frustrated this makes him really doesn’t make him any less in charge.

Of course, had Harry and Hermione been eaten I’m sure everybody would have talked about how it was their own fault, really, for being out past curfew. The Dementors are only following their instincts. Nothing unsafe about it if the students would just do what they’re supposed to do. Didn’t they listen to the instructions about not going out after dark?

Short chapter this time. The next one’s going to be interminable, though.

Things that happen twice:
First mention of a unicorn, I think. Harry apparently thinks they’re bright. They’ll show up for real in the next book.
No the use of a Patronus to call ahead and tell people you’re coming, something that will be pretty standard starting in I think GoF.
Peter escapes pretty much the way he escaped the first time.
The whole walk back from the shack echoes the Prank.
The Patronus galloping through the woods is reminiscent of Snape’s silver doe in DH.
Ron’s out, then Hermione’s out and Harry faces things alone, reminding me of PS/SS.

It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!
Sirius asking Harry to live with him
Status: Not fired. Albus bent the muzzle of the gun to prevent it.
If you thought Harry might get a happy ending with Sirius, stop.

Something exploded in Harry’s chest
Status: Fired!
That was his chest monster hatching in his stomach, from which it will migrate to his chest in HBP.




Atomic Grenade
Hermione has no idea what Peter did to Ron. Always handy with the atomic grenade, that Peter!

The Cricket Rule / Day-for-Night
Don’t think any of these are going to remind Lupin he’s walking around under a full moon as a werewolf, though…

Exploitation Filmmakers’ Credo
…even though Snape just reminded it of him a few minutes ago.

One Radio Rule
No, really, Lupin. Don’t use that Patronus to make sure there’s a guard waiting to take Peter on the other end of the tunnel.

Spring-Loaded Cat
Peter finally gets back at Crookshanks by spring-loading him right off the ground and knocking him out.

Jabootu Score: 6

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

Why does Peter even bother with Remus' wand and hexing Ron and Crookshanks? Why not just transform and run? Anyway, since Peter grabbed Remus' wand and Harry then disarmed Peter does that reverse Remus' disarming of Harry? Because Peter became the master of all of Remus' wands (ie the trio's) and then Harry became the master of all those wands? So is he now the master of Hermione and Ron's wands? Is that why he is the better dueler of the three? Does Remus need a new wand now? Or dose the fact that Remus dropped the wand when he transformed mean he was not defeated by Peter, so nothing I said here meant anything? Yes, I know I am being difficult.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Good pont. But yup, looks like he's in charge of Remus's wand now so...does that mean he's also got the wands its disarmed? Actually I do think it doesn't count if he dropped it. That's why Bartie never got Harry's wand. Basically nobody ever gets Harry's wand.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I thought Barty lifted Harry's wand out of his pocket? Harry thought he had dropped it, but he didn't know how long the wand was missing. But I suppose it only counts if you take the wand out of a person's hand (whether physically of magically)?

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

Didn't Grindelwald steal the wand from Gregorovitch when the latter was in another room? Then Grindelwald Stunning Gregorovitch on the way out. Dumbledore probably used a similar trick on Grindelwald. Draco wasn't really fighting Harry, as I recall -- he was just standing there, covered in blood as usual, this time courtesy Dobby.

So maybe force isn't part of the transfer at all. Maybe duping your opponent is the key. Maybe Snape didn't have to die, even though that was a certain outcome with Voldemort.

Who knows what counts in these books?

[oryx_leucoryx]

So, if you take someone else's wand (with no intent to return it?) or if you disarm them magically, regardless of whether you actually end up holding their wand yourself - you become the master of all of their wands (which includes all the wands they mastered and were not yet taken from them)? I doubt anyone but Voldemort and Dumbledore was the master of their own wand for long. Or else, Ollivander was BSing Harry for reasons of his own.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Oh come on Oryx Leucoryx, you know very well that Rowling didn't have a clue about all that wand mastery nonsense back when she wrote book 3! :-)

Or book 4. Or book 5. Or book 6.

For six-sevenths of the series it was all 'the wand chooses the wizard', full stop.

Or else, Ollivander was BSing Harry for reasons of his own.

I remember one fanfic - Sluagh, the sequel of "Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness", both by thanfiction - where Harry ends up deciding that all that new wand lore of Rowling's was just as you say, bollocks:

"But the wands…" Harry shrugged, and he was reluctant to look away even though he had to in order to get the laces of the boots he had found through their eyelets. "I don't know, really. It made a lot of sense at the time, all caught up in the moment, but the more I look back, the more I think that the Elder Wand was just a masterpiece of wandcraft – a really perfectly made wand that channeled magic really well, but nothing more special than that – and that the real power that Dumbledore knew it had was to rattle Riddle and give me confidence. And that's what mattered in the end…that my Expelliarmus was just that fraction faster and more confident than his Avada Kedavra. That I believed my spell would work and he hoped his would."

"Then you mean," Neville found himself whispering, and he could feel the color drain from his face. "It was just…a duel. You just…beat him."

Harry's head sagged, and he nodded, his shoulders drawing in as if he expected to be struck for his confession. "I'm sorry. I should have admitted it earlier. I should have admitted it to the whole world, but I guess I've been too much of a coward. It's not about the celebrity, I just…I don't know. Maybe I don't want more people looking at me the way I deserve."

"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed. "Harry, if you think I don't respect you now because it wasn't all kinds of elaborate Wand Lore nonsense…no! Hell, I've never respected you more! Do you realize what you're saying, mate? You took on Riddle with nothing more than your own guts and you still beat him. ..."

I remember thanfiction trying to work out what to do about all that 'Wand Lore nonsense' ... I've had exchanges with two or three authors about that, I think. It's something any author has to do if they're writing a HP story post-DH. They always realise that Rowling's work was just broken and that they'll have to jettison some part of it to make the remnants consistent. The DH Wand Lore is usually the first to go ... either blatantly dismissed like in Sluagh or otherwise just forgotten.

(I think the idea of Harry winning his final duel with Voldemort purely on his own merits is a bit laughable too, but at least it's not *impossible* I suppose.)

So give it up Oryx Leucoryx! With all due respect, even Albert Einstein wouldn't be able to reconcile Rowling's wand garbage! :-)

[oryx_leucoryx]

You know, it works. It's a powerful wand, it even repairs Harry's broken wand. It did not give Voldemort extra powers because he already was powerful (I suppose he didn't try repairing Lucius' former wand). We have no reason to think it gave Albus or Gellert more power than they had already (besides possibly Albus repairing Hagrid's snapped wand). The legend about the power of the wand transferring by murder was just a legend that got reinforced by people who believed in it and killed the previous owner of the wand. Voldemort didn't need extra magic to kill Harry. What he needed was to kill him in a way that destroyed Harry's body, so he wouldn't be able to recover regardless of the blood connection between the two of them. But Voldemort's favorite method of killing is the AK, which leaves the body of the victim intact.

The only question is why did Ollivander tell that nonsensical story about wand mastery to Harry.

So, if Voldemort had tried and managed to repair Lucius' wand he would have believed he had mastered the wand and Severus would have survived. Sniff.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Yes, drop all the contradictory 'wand mastery' nonsense that Rowling invented in her final novel and maybe things look workable.

But Rowling *really* didn't want Harry to win by any dint of magical power or effort on his part - I'm still dumbfounded by how much so - so that's why she whipped up this 'super wand' idiocy overnight.

What he needed was to kill him in a way that destroyed Harry's body, so he wouldn't be able to recover regardless of the blood connection between the two of them.

Interesting. You think the 'blood connection' works only while there is physical blood on both sides?

But the deux ex machina 'shared blood' thing acts like an erzatz horcrux, and that didn't need a body, did it? Voldemort hung around like a wraith for years ... and his old body disappeared in Rowling's missing 24 hours hole. Although if a horcrux was like the blood thing then Riddle would have just woken up again in his old/own body. Hmmm.

It still feels like an assumption on your part, that the blood connection will only work if bodies remain on both sides, but I like the cleverness of it. I'd have to read Dumbledore's explanation of it again to see what emphasis there is on such things to be totally convinced.

So, if Voldemort had tried and managed to repair Lucius' wand he would have believed he had mastered the wand and Severus would have survived. Sniff.

But Voldemort was sure that the wand wasn't performing with his other feats of magic, the other spells he cast. Which knocks thanfiction's "it was all hot air" theory out of the running.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Interesting. You think the 'blood connection' works only while there is physical blood on both sides?


Well, suppose Voldemort decided to let Nagini eat Harry. Completely. No body left at all. His soul goes to King's Cross, he chats with Dumbledore and then what? How does he return to fight Voldemort one last time (after Neville kills Nagini)? At best Harry would be a disembodied soul, ie a ghost. Until Neville (who else? well, maybe Hermione) kills Voldemort and then either Harry remains a ghost or moves on to the afterlife. I don't see other scenarios.

But Voldemort was sure that the wand wasn't performing with his other feats of magic, the other spells he cast. Which knocks thanfiction's "it was all hot air" theory out of the running.

Voldemort said the wand wasn't working for him. Severus said he saw Voldemort doing extra-ordinary magic with that wand. We saw him AK the goblin and some DEs with that wand. We saw him fly (though it isn't clear if a wand was necessary for that, but that certainly counts as extra-ordinary). So the wand works at least as well as the regular one. But Voldemort says the extra-ordinariness is from him, not the wand. We do not know what he tried to see if the EW is any better, but it worked at least the usual level.

[mottsnave.livejournal.com]

Hi, I just discovered this site a few weeks ago and have been having great fun reading the sporking and replies. I was moved to peek my head out of lurkerdom because of an author interview I heard on the Radio this morning: NPR's Scott Simon speaking to the novelist Justin Cronin. Here's what caught my ear:

"SIMON: May I ask, do you have this all - do you and your daughter have this all plotted out? Or...

Prof. CRONIN: I do, and I had it plotted out from the start. I'm one of those writers who really is pretty systematic. I try to plan out as much in advance as I can. I feel like the day you start to write the book is like the day you launch a missile. You better have it aimed pretty carefully or you'll kill all your friends in England, so I try to make sure that I've targeted things as carefully as possible."

And I thought to myself, wow, that's exactly what Rowling did, she didn't aim the missile and killed all her friends! And the wand stuff wasn't even the worst of it!

[oryx_leucoryx]

But Voldemort was sure that the wand wasn't performing with his other feats of magic, the other spells he cast. Which knocks thanfiction's "it was all hot air" theory out of the running.

Think of it this way: Suppose there is a maximal level of magic attainable. The Elder Wand gives anyone who wields it access to that level of magic. So to someone with poor magic, like Hagrid, the Elder Wand would amplify his magic maybe 100 times. For someone with average magic like say Ron, the Elder Wand would amplify hir usual level 10 times. For someone whose natural magic is already close to the maximal level like Voldemort (who was torturing and mind-controlling before he ever set eyes on a wand and before he learned his first formal spell) the Elder Wand would hardly matter at all. If Voldemort expected the Elder Wand to be a linear amplifier that increases everyone's magic by a constant factor he was in for disappointment.

[oryx_leucoryx]

BTW if my take on thanfiction's interpretation is correct then ironically the special thing about the Elder Wand is that it is the only wand that in no way chooses its wizard - it just gives as much magic as possible to anyone.

But Ollivander never saw the wand. All he knows is that it is rumored to be extra-powerful and to pass on by murder. Which is what he told Voldemort under torture and later came to regret (somewhat). Being a Ravenclaw he wasn't for coming clean to Harry directly about something he was ashamed of, he had to get Harry thinking in that direction in round-about ways. So he took the opportunity of Harry mentioning to him that some wands work better for him than others to make up this BS about defeated wands in order to lead Harry to discuss the Elder Wand so he could be warned.

That's my latest theory and I stick to it until something else comes up.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Well, I think I only got to about that point in Sluagh - I haven't picked it back up again - so I don't know if more was written about it.

Ollivander wasn't particularly interested in being Harry's 'teacher', coaching him or sugar coating replies to his questions - he just answered what he was asked!

The Elder Wand to one side, other wands in DH acted according to the new rules - Hermione's wand, a Snatcher's wand - which had never been seen to happen in the previous six books, so DH is still full of fail on that front.

[oryx_leucoryx]

The Elder Wand to one side, other wands in DH acted according to the new rules - Hermione's wand, a Snatcher's wand - which had never been seen to happen in the previous six books, so DH is still full of fail on that front.

I interpret the other wands in DH following the old rules (and ignoring what Ollivander said). Remember at the shop when several wands didn't work quite well (or worked disastrously) for Harry before he tried the wand that chose him? So perhaps the Snatcher's wand and Hermione's wand were like that - they didn't fit with Harry's magic. Draco's did (and you can draw any conclusions you like from this). Also note that in the past most people who used other people's wands successfully (eg Sirius using Severus' wand) were raised in wizarding homes and may have had the experience of using wands of family members before and thus may have been more flexible about having a wand other than their own, as opposed to Harry or Hermione (with Bellatrix's wand).

It's not that I think Rowling secretly meant all those other things. She wants us to believe in all that wand mastery business. However we know it just doesn't work if applied to the earlier books, so I'm toying with alternate explanations that work for all 7 books. And really, the only thing that stands in my way is Ollivander. I can accept a character lying, but it's better if the character has some motivation to do so.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Ollivander had been through a traumatic experience. He may not have fully known what he was saying.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

I agree with what seductivedark pointed out above, but I think he may have had plenty of reason to lie about wands in general. Maybe not, but I really do wonder, about matching wands to people.

As long as you have a mystical "wand choosing the wizard" thing going, you don't have to explain yourself too much about which wand you sell to whom, and there are a lot of advantages there.

Some wands certainly appear to be more powerful than others. The Elder Wand, wielded by Harry, could fix Harry's original wand; Hermione's wand, wielded by Hermione, couldn't fix it. Since Hermione is generally very good at magic, and since the spell used was a basic one, I think it's safe to conclude that the difference really was the wand, and that a more powerful wand really does let you do things you can't do, otherwise.

Okay, so... who decides who gets the more powerful wands, and who gets the weak wands?

I'm pretty sure that there's at least *some* matching of type of wand to person, if only because there's so much variation in the kind of wood used. (We know of two wands made of willow -- Lily's and Ron's second wand -- but we have no other known duplications.) If the kind of wood made no difference, it'd presumably be much more uniform. If the kind of tree made a significant difference in power, again, you'd expect most wands to be made of a few of the most powerful kinds.

(Now, maybe some individual trees are more powerful than others, and heartwood might be better than a branch, or vice versa... Ollivander's comments about wands' flexibility might actually relate to the part of the tree that was used. But that's a separate issue from the kind of tree.)

Ollivander describes Voldemort's wand, "Powerful wand, very powerful." So do powerful people generally get powerful wands, or was Voldemort just lucky?

There are probably a lot of things that could be going on with all of this. Dunno how much we could work out must/should be going on according to what's in the text, but anything that can't be worked out conclusively is potential fanfic fodder. (grin)

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>So give it up Oryx Leucoryx! With all due respect, even Albert Einstein wouldn't be able to reconcile Rowling's wand garbage! :-)<

Well, that's certainly true enough. Wand *mastery* was a rabbit out of her hat, at the last minute used to grease the wheels, and keep the plot moving without haveing to go back and write the links that would have connected the indigestable chunks of plot into something coherant.

It allowed her to pretend that Harry had control of Tom's wand without ever coming face to face with him. It allowed her to kill Snape off ingloriously and keep him from taking over every scene he was allowed to appear in. She must have been wracking her brain on how to pull both of those off.

Over in one or other of my Red Hen essays I made an argument that the Elder wand just plain rejected Tom flat out, because; 1. the first time he faced it, it beat him all around the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. There is no way that he was the boss of it. and; 2. it happily works with murderers. So fragmented souls are perfectly all right with it. But it insists that all the fragments be present. We get enough (inadvertent) hints through the series that it is a viable hypothesis that magic is an attribute of the soul to suggest as much.

Rowling never looks for simple explanations for why things happen in her stories. The reasons always have to be *big* and *flashy* and *dramatic*. But, y'know, none of that makes any f them any better. She cuts the ground out from under her own feet.

Horcruxes have never been *fashionable*, after all. How can we say that the Elder wand has ever been taken by someone who made one before? (Here's a hint; it isn't in the hands of anyone who ever did so by the time we caught up to it.) Let alone made *7* of them. It would have been far more economical for Tom to have simply, by his own actions, have *disqualified* himself from *ever* being able to take control of that wand.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

It allowed her to pretend that Harry had control of Tom's wand without ever coming face to face with him.

Yep. Harry won without any special magical power or ability. Just because of luck and the presence of the sooper dooper wand.

It allowed her to kill Snape off ingloriously and keep him from taking over every scene he was allowed to appear in.

Not being a Snape fan - although, as I've mentioned in the last few entries, I've recently had it pointed out to me that he honestly was on the side of the good guys for altruistic reasons (well, reasons beyond "for Lily!") - I hadn't thought of that, but you're right; Harry was so hopefully outclassed in that 'duel' against Snape at the end of HBP it might have been exactly as you say; Snape was more mature and certainly more magically gifted/powerful.

(It's what made me laugh so hard, early on in my perusal of DH 3 years ago, when Harry was boastfully making grandiose statements about hoping to meet Snape for a rematch. Hah!)

Your two theories are okay I suppose, but they're just guesses. Rowling deliberately kept the whole wand mess vapid and nebulous in DH because she knew she was on thin ice. Ollivander's ambivalence when telling Harry of the new rules was horrible to read; I could just imagine Rowling's nervousness as she broke her own canon when she wrote his dialogue.

Sadly there's nothing of the new rules in the first six books to see if your theories hold water. Your #1 is just a guess, an added constraint - you're saying that, once beaten by a wand (in the hand of another wizard) it will never accept you? Hmmm. I can't think of any A beat B, then B beat A sequences from the canon. Harry beat Draco twice, Snape beat Harry once, etc.

#2 seems even more of a guess, although I guess the elegance there is that murderers would have a special place in Death's heart. But then you argue against that by blindly stating that 'all fragments must be present'.

I've mentioned before the theory that was written by fanfic author Paracelsus recently in his wonderful story "Coming Back Late" on portkey.org. In it he states that the Elder Wand chose not to work for Riddle because, in cheating death by creating horcruxes, he'd insulted Death so much that none of Death's Hallows would choose to work for him. I thought that was an excellent notion.

We get enough (inadvertent) hints through the series that it is a viable hypothesis that magic is an attribute of the soul to suggest as much.

I don't see the hints about magic being an attribute of the soul at all. And wouldn't that mean that Voldemort would be running on one out of eight cylinders by the end?

Rowling never looks for simple explanations for why things happen in her stories. The reasons always have to be *big* and *flashy* and *dramatic*.

Oh, sure; she went for the grand images without putting in the work necessary to hold them up. By the end of the series she was so happy to bung in the scenes she'd waited so long to insert the whole series was falling down all around her, but she didn't care.

It's an "oh, maths!" sort of thing I'd say. Rowling is the type who doesn't really care about the details; certainly not when she was having such fun at the end, with no restraints or limits.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Other authors make mistakes too. The background of a character changes slightly. Some years disappear from a timeline. Whatever. With Rowling the problem is the plot of different books depends on her world working differently each time, and when she changes the rules we are not supposed to notice it wasn't like this all along. Also, her 7 books are supposed to be a single story where there are many characters we learn about from different angles in different books - and we never get a complete picture in one place. We are clearly meant to patch information from different books, but between contradictions and hints that never get fleshed out (or things that get fleshed out just a bit and inconsistently) the outcome is incoherent.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>I don't see the hints about magic being an attribute of the soul at all.<

Er, we are directly told that Muggles are unable to become ghosts. Are you then going to claim that Muggles do not have souls? Clearly there must be something different or something more about wizard souls which enable them to leave a consious imprint of their souls behind. I find it very difficult to believe that there are any *more* differences between wizards and Muggles apart from the fact that one has magic and the other does not. They can interbreed, after all.

Mind you, it gets a bit more complex in that by HBP we are further told that a ghost is the imprint of a *departed* soul. From which one would *expect* this to mean that the actual soul has already left this world, and that what we see is an imprint created from the individual's *magic*. An imprint which is unable to grow, or to learn, or to move on. Clearly, from Nearly Headless Nick's statements, he is under the impression that he is indeed Sir Nicholas Mimsy-Porpington (or whatever his name was), and that he had *not* "moved on". But then it is also clear from Sir Nicholas's statements that Sir Nicholas is a fool.

It is also reasonably clear that a ghost although, by deffinition, is the residue of a magical person, no ghost appears to be able to perform magic. It may in fact be a magical echo, but it no longer *channels* magic. Although Rowling is completely inconsistent as to whether "normal" ghosts (unlike Peeves) are able to handle material opjects. Otherwise one wonders what becomes of the reams of essays set by Professor Binns in his classes.

[oryx_leucoryx]

From which one would *expect* this to mean that the actual soul has already left this world, and that what we see is an imprint created from the individual's *magic*. An imprint which is unable to grow, or to learn, or to move on.

Nice catch. So ghosts are very similar to the headmasters' (and healers) portraits, according to this explanation? They retain the personality of the departed and hir interests (Phineas cares that the last of the Blacks is gone, cares about the image of Slytherin House; the healers in portraits still diagnose conditions of people who walk by them) but they are very much stuck with the way that person was when s/he died - so whatever Albus learned from dying (or from his experience in the cave) his portrait didn't take it in?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Yes, I should think so. The time to learn is during one's own lifetime. The imprint left would be very much the person in the state they were at the point that they left it. Frozen in time, as it were.

In some ways fanon serves a bit better than canon, though, for Sir Nick and the rest of the castle ghosts appear to at least be able to remember the students' names -- although fanon often shows Binns calling students by the names of students presumably long gone. But then they *are* aware of present circumstances, even though their own preoccupations tend to rule them. The Baron will *always* be tormented by guilt and grief and Myrtle will *always* be completely wrapped up in how a bunch of mean girls used to tease her.

Portrait!Albus is probably Albus as he was when he set out to the Cave with Harry. Totally convinced that he knew it all, and that no one else is better qualified to dictate events. I'm less than convinced that he learned *anything* that evening, other than that Draco managed to slip his leash and get his "helpers" into the castle. And I am not convinced that Albus didn't leave the castle for a couple of hours in order to let him do it. After all, he'd called the Order in to patrol. What could go wrong?

[oryx_leucoryx]

I'm not sure Albus learned *much* in the cave, but this may have been the time he was most in touch with his emotions regarding Ariana that he had been his entire life. (Still didn't regret all the stuff he messed up later - whether his lack of intervention regarding young Tom, the whole Severus vs Marauders business and a whole lot of other things.)

[ioanna-ioannina.livejournal.com]

Over in one or other of my Red Hen essays I made an argument that the Elder wand just plain rejected Tom flat out, because; 1. the first time he faced it, it beat him all around the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. There is no way that he was the boss of it. and; 2. it happily works with murderers. So fragmented souls are perfectly all right with it. But it insists that all the fragments be present. We get enough (inadvertent) hints through the series that it is a viable hypothesis that magic is an attribute of the soul to suggest as much.
God, I love this explanation! May I use it in a fanfiction, if the need arises? I will list you in the A/N as a source.
I struggled with the stupid wandlore in my last piece and--aaargh!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Any theories on Red Hen are free for the taking. It's part of the reason the site is there.

Sure, I *like* it when the source is credited. But a lot of times an idea gets discussed and reworked by someone else until no one can tell where it originated any more.

But the base assumption comes back to the Elder wand being unique. Once someone adopts that, it can be tweaked in whatever direction one needs it to be.