GOF Chapter 34: Priori Incantatem
Aug. 26th, 2011 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oryx_leucoryx posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockPeter releases Harry, who might have considered running, but can't because his leg is injured, and anyway the DEs closed the gaps in the circle. Was that standard DE procedure? So the gaps only represent deaths/captures/absences since the previous time the circle was formed? So perhaps I have no idea if the number of DEs was growing or diminishing prior to the previous circle time? We don't know how often Tom used to call for circle but whatever the case, the last one was formed definitely after the recruitment of Barty and Peter. (No, Harry doesn't consider praising Albus in case that would call Fawkes to him. That was so 2 books ago and heroes don't need to learn from one book to the next because otherwise the author wouldn't have a reason to bring up a deus ex machina that will move the background plot of a future book.)
Peter goes out of the circle to retrieve Harry's wand. Which was left by the Portkey and Cedric's body. Some 20 (or perhaps 6?) feet away. (BTW how did Harry lose his wand in the first place? Is Peter the master of Harry's wand?) Since Harry is close to the center of the circle it means the circle has a radius of under 20 feet and a circumference of under 126 feet. This can accommodate some 75 men shoulder to shoulder. But a tight circle of 60 men would have a radius of about 16 feet and reach up to 4 feet from the Portkey. Harry is outnumbered by at least 30 to one. The 7-Potters battle had 7 teams of 4-5 DEs (with possibly a larger number attacking Moody and Fletcher), after adding Severus, the 10 Azkaban escapees, Draco, Stan Shunpike, possibly other joiners and after subtracting Gibbons, Lucius, Peter, possibly other deaths, possibly a small team at the Ministry. I doubt there were more than 35 people in the circle. And other than one gap for 6 and one double gap there were some single gaps which were outnumbered by ungapped positions. Which is why I consider a circle of 60 (including gaps) generous (though 47 is the bare minimum).
Did Harry learn to duel at Hogwarts? Just barely. But thanks to Tom's question Harry remembers he knows how to disarm (which he learned from Severus, but Harry can't be bothered with this detail right now). And completely forgets other spells such as stunners which he has practiced daily for the last month. Would Tom have stopped the show to teach Harry if he had asked? Tom did want the DADA position. Anyway, by next year Harry will recover his memory of those spells and will be considered qualified to teach his peers.
The DEs laugh at Tom's little show. So good not to have that wand pointing at you. Was that an Imperius causing Harry to bow or did he bow reluctantly but of his own accord? Because there is no description of the pleasant floaty feeling. But after being hit by another Cruciatus a true Imperius can't make him beg for Tom to stop torturing him. He can dodge the next spell and hide, but not for long. So in the end he emerges to attempt to cast the one spell he can remember at Tom.
Remember back in chapter 9 (and 18) I said wands were going to be important in this book? Here is when:
The spells connect and form a beam of gold (well, red light and green light add up to yellow) while the 2 wands vibrate. No doubt they just discovered their family connection and are trying to meet in an embrace. Does anyone want to write Harry's wand's POV?
The brother wands are trying to meet, but their respective owners are holding on and pulling back. This results in the wands lifting their owners in the air (I can't help thinking of dogs tugging so hard on their leashes that the people walking them have to accommodate). To allow for privacy the wands enclose themselves and their owners in a golden cage, on a clear patch of grass. (Any idea what happens when brother wands with unicorn hair meet? Wands with hair from the same Veela? I don't know if dragons have more than one heartstring, whatever that is, so I don't know if dragon heartstring wands have brothers.) Harry's wand appears to be singing in Fawkes' voice. Again, I wonder about the possibilities with other types of wand cores. It's as if a friend is speaking in Harry's ear. Well, last time something appeared to belong to a friend it was Tom's diary, so I take it Harry is hearing Tom's wand. The wand doesn't want the connection broken because it wants to catch up with its little brother.
Harry decides his wand wants him to push the beads of light towards Tom's wand. When the beads connect Tom's wand starts spouting echoes of spells it had cast in reverse order. See, it was talking to its younger brother, telling it what it had been up to all these years.
As an exercise I will try to report the echoes in reverse order of their appearance (ie in the order of the events) and see what turns up:
- A shade of James, representing the AK that killed him.
- A shade of Lily - Voldemort didn't need to cast any spells between the 2 AKs, he didn't even need magic to move aside the furniture Lily tried to use to block the door
- A shade of Bertha Jorkins. Who held that wand? If her death was used to Horcruxify Nagini then it must have been Babymort (OTOH if Nagini was Horcruxified with Frank Bryce's death then it may have been Peter who held the wand). In any case, there are no screams, so it seems her information was obtained by purely mental magic. Also, any magic Peter used to capture her or in the making of Babymort was probably conducted with some other wand (his own? Bertha's?)
Note there is no shade representing the AK intended for baby Harry, the spell that hit Tom. Because his body disappeared, so there was nothing left to produce the shade, or so it seems.
- A shade of Frank Bryce (magic required for transportation to Britain either left no echo or was done with a different wand)
- Screams - representing at the very least Tom's torture of Peter as observed in Harry's vision, but may include any torture of Crouch Sr by Tom. We see no echoes of any other spells. Since I doubt Peter conducted their daily lives without casting spells that leave echoes I tend to think he used some other wand - whether his own or Bertha's - over the course of the year.
- A shade of Cedric
- Screams - Avery's (the levitation of Peter left no echo; nor is there an echo of any of the magic Peter did after Cedric's death, of which I'd expect at least to see the magical ropes with which he bound Harry - so for some reason Peter must have switched back to his own wand after killing Cedric)
- an image of Peter's prosthetic hand
- screams - Harry's. It seems the Imperius left no echo.
Did Harry's wand defeat Tom's? Is Harry now the master of Tom's wand? Or are sibling wands exempt from this rule?
The shades of the 5 dead appear to be aware both of the circumstances of their deaths and present events. They instruct Harry to take the Portkey back (because he can't figure it out himself?). The shades provide enough of a distraction that allows Harry to run (on his leg that was so badly injured it couldn't support him a few minutes earlier), knock aside two stunned DEs (only psychologically stunned, not magically). Tom calls to the DEs to stun Harry, though they were already sending spells in his general direction. Somehow none of their many spells hit him. Elkins thinks they were aiming to just miss - they don't want to deal with any strange magic that seems to happen when this kid is hit.
Harry attempts to carry Cedric's body physically when he finally realizes he should summon the Portkey so he can leave in time. Erm.. And why does this work? Why did the Portkey go 2 ways? Whose idea was it? More on that next chapter.
Peter goes out of the circle to retrieve Harry's wand. Which was left by the Portkey and Cedric's body. Some 20 (or perhaps 6?) feet away. (BTW how did Harry lose his wand in the first place? Is Peter the master of Harry's wand?) Since Harry is close to the center of the circle it means the circle has a radius of under 20 feet and a circumference of under 126 feet. This can accommodate some 75 men shoulder to shoulder. But a tight circle of 60 men would have a radius of about 16 feet and reach up to 4 feet from the Portkey. Harry is outnumbered by at least 30 to one. The 7-Potters battle had 7 teams of 4-5 DEs (with possibly a larger number attacking Moody and Fletcher), after adding Severus, the 10 Azkaban escapees, Draco, Stan Shunpike, possibly other joiners and after subtracting Gibbons, Lucius, Peter, possibly other deaths, possibly a small team at the Ministry. I doubt there were more than 35 people in the circle. And other than one gap for 6 and one double gap there were some single gaps which were outnumbered by ungapped positions. Which is why I consider a circle of 60 (including gaps) generous (though 47 is the bare minimum).
Did Harry learn to duel at Hogwarts? Just barely. But thanks to Tom's question Harry remembers he knows how to disarm (which he learned from Severus, but Harry can't be bothered with this detail right now). And completely forgets other spells such as stunners which he has practiced daily for the last month. Would Tom have stopped the show to teach Harry if he had asked? Tom did want the DADA position. Anyway, by next year Harry will recover his memory of those spells and will be considered qualified to teach his peers.
The DEs laugh at Tom's little show. So good not to have that wand pointing at you. Was that an Imperius causing Harry to bow or did he bow reluctantly but of his own accord? Because there is no description of the pleasant floaty feeling. But after being hit by another Cruciatus a true Imperius can't make him beg for Tom to stop torturing him. He can dodge the next spell and hide, but not for long. So in the end he emerges to attempt to cast the one spell he can remember at Tom.
Remember back in chapter 9 (and 18) I said wands were going to be important in this book? Here is when:
The spells connect and form a beam of gold (well, red light and green light add up to yellow) while the 2 wands vibrate. No doubt they just discovered their family connection and are trying to meet in an embrace. Does anyone want to write Harry's wand's POV?
The brother wands are trying to meet, but their respective owners are holding on and pulling back. This results in the wands lifting their owners in the air (I can't help thinking of dogs tugging so hard on their leashes that the people walking them have to accommodate). To allow for privacy the wands enclose themselves and their owners in a golden cage, on a clear patch of grass. (Any idea what happens when brother wands with unicorn hair meet? Wands with hair from the same Veela? I don't know if dragons have more than one heartstring, whatever that is, so I don't know if dragon heartstring wands have brothers.) Harry's wand appears to be singing in Fawkes' voice. Again, I wonder about the possibilities with other types of wand cores. It's as if a friend is speaking in Harry's ear. Well, last time something appeared to belong to a friend it was Tom's diary, so I take it Harry is hearing Tom's wand. The wand doesn't want the connection broken because it wants to catch up with its little brother.
Harry decides his wand wants him to push the beads of light towards Tom's wand. When the beads connect Tom's wand starts spouting echoes of spells it had cast in reverse order. See, it was talking to its younger brother, telling it what it had been up to all these years.
As an exercise I will try to report the echoes in reverse order of their appearance (ie in the order of the events) and see what turns up:
- A shade of James, representing the AK that killed him.
- A shade of Lily - Voldemort didn't need to cast any spells between the 2 AKs, he didn't even need magic to move aside the furniture Lily tried to use to block the door
- A shade of Bertha Jorkins. Who held that wand? If her death was used to Horcruxify Nagini then it must have been Babymort (OTOH if Nagini was Horcruxified with Frank Bryce's death then it may have been Peter who held the wand). In any case, there are no screams, so it seems her information was obtained by purely mental magic. Also, any magic Peter used to capture her or in the making of Babymort was probably conducted with some other wand (his own? Bertha's?)
Note there is no shade representing the AK intended for baby Harry, the spell that hit Tom. Because his body disappeared, so there was nothing left to produce the shade, or so it seems.
- A shade of Frank Bryce (magic required for transportation to Britain either left no echo or was done with a different wand)
- Screams - representing at the very least Tom's torture of Peter as observed in Harry's vision, but may include any torture of Crouch Sr by Tom. We see no echoes of any other spells. Since I doubt Peter conducted their daily lives without casting spells that leave echoes I tend to think he used some other wand - whether his own or Bertha's - over the course of the year.
- A shade of Cedric
- Screams - Avery's (the levitation of Peter left no echo; nor is there an echo of any of the magic Peter did after Cedric's death, of which I'd expect at least to see the magical ropes with which he bound Harry - so for some reason Peter must have switched back to his own wand after killing Cedric)
- an image of Peter's prosthetic hand
- screams - Harry's. It seems the Imperius left no echo.
Did Harry's wand defeat Tom's? Is Harry now the master of Tom's wand? Or are sibling wands exempt from this rule?
The shades of the 5 dead appear to be aware both of the circumstances of their deaths and present events. They instruct Harry to take the Portkey back (because he can't figure it out himself?). The shades provide enough of a distraction that allows Harry to run (on his leg that was so badly injured it couldn't support him a few minutes earlier), knock aside two stunned DEs (only psychologically stunned, not magically). Tom calls to the DEs to stun Harry, though they were already sending spells in his general direction. Somehow none of their many spells hit him. Elkins thinks they were aiming to just miss - they don't want to deal with any strange magic that seems to happen when this kid is hit.
Harry attempts to carry Cedric's body physically when he finally realizes he should summon the Portkey so he can leave in time. Erm.. And why does this work? Why did the Portkey go 2 ways? Whose idea was it? More on that next chapter.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 04:56 pm (UTC)Maybe Fawkes' rescue of Harry in COS had nothing to do with what Harry said about Dumbledore; he would have come regardless. But Dumbledore doesn't let Fawkes rescue Harry in GOF because Dumbledore needs--and fully expects--Harry to die so that Voldemort can then be killed.
----They instruct Harry to take the Portkey back (because he can't figure it out himself?).
I give Harry the benefit of the doubt here. He's only experienced one-way portkeys before. What reason would he have to believe that the cup goes two ways? Even we, as the readers, have to do some fanwanking to explain why the cup goes two ways.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 12:54 am (UTC)I continue to adore your brilliant option here for Harry. But yes, that was "so 2 books ago"! :-) Fawkes' rescue was one of the many one-book wonders that Rowling would rustle up as the deus ex machina de jour to get her story over a hurdle in one tome but instantly dropped, never to be considered again in another.
BTW how did Harry lose his wand in the first place? Is Peter the master of Harry's wand?
HA HA HA HA!!! :-) :-)
I just *know* that, somewhere out there, an (angry) fan has re-read all 6 books and catalogued all the multitude of occasions where Harry, Hermione or Ron lost the ownership of their wands. :-)
Anyway, by next year Harry will recover his memory of those spells and will be considered qualified to teach his peers.
I quite enjoyed OotP at the time and it's my favourite HP book. But yes, Harry's defence repertoire was pretty limited. Dodge a lot and hope for luck. Still, give Rowling credit, she has him actually tell his peers all this, and they still insist on his running the D.A. I *think* it's even mentioned - or otherwise implied - that the D.A. encourages Harry to - *shock!* - read ahead, learn new things to teach the students.
Was that an Imperius causing Harry to bow or did he bow reluctantly but of his own accord?
It's pretty clearly another sort of spell that Riddle uses to *force* Harry to bow, don't you think?
"I said, bow," Voldemort said, raising his wand - and Harry felt his spine curve as though a huge, invisible hand were bending him ruthlessly forward, and the Death Eaters laughed harder than ever.
I remember reading a fan fiction story in my early days in the fandom which had Harry discover this same 'puppet master' spell and use it on Draco.To allow for privacy the wands enclose themselves and their owners in a golden cage -
I hated this 'golden cage'. As is usual for a Rowling story the whole "priori incantatem" thing is explained by the Dumbledore in the next chapter, but even there he doesn't explain why the very convenient cage materialised, preventing the Death Eaters from interfering. Although I see that Voldemort instructed them to 'do nothing', so maybe it had no repercussion on the story after all. Still, we're told a couple of times about the DEs "prowling around the edges of the golden dome", one can only congratulate Harry for being so ... lucky ... that this amazing golden cage stopped them from holding him fast and preventing him from escaping.
Bah.
Did Harry's wand defeat Tom's? Is Harry now the master of Tom's wand? Or are sibling wands exempt from this rule?
HA HA HA oh stop it!! :-)
Actually, even though Harry forced the bead of light into Riddle's wand, it wasn't a strict 'disarming' or anything like that, was it? Sigh. Why are we talking about it? We all know this whole wand mastery thing wasn't invented until Rowling was desperate to wind things up in her last book. And even then it was a case of "wands do only what is convenient for my story, at the time".
Elkins thinks they were aiming to just miss - they don't want to deal with any strange magic that seems to happen when this kid is hit.
I'm reading an excellent story right now where Kingsley and others honestly wonder if post-DH Harry can be killed (magically), they're nervous taking him on. Which is very interesting, I thought. Sure, we readers know that Harry survived because of the (silly) shared-blood contrivance, but none of the other characters know that! (And, of course, since said mechanism was only invented on the spot for Harry, they wouldn't even know that such a contrivance might exist.)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 12:33 pm (UTC)"He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort's one last hope for himself."
So ... Voldemort has, within him, part of the Lily-protection magic, and that's what anchors Harry. A normal blood transfusion wouldn't do the trick.
Still, this means, of course, that there are now a hundred or more wizards who are immortal, as of the end of DH. Because Harry tells us that the castle defenders now all share that exact same protective magic:
I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you.
Each castle defender - Hermione, Ron, Neville, Luna, yes, even Ginny (sadly) - they all now share a bit of Harry-protection magic, just like Harry and Tom shared the Lily-protection magic. So, while that enchantment survives ... none of the castle defenders can be killed.
Kill Hermione and she'll come back, anchored by the other hundred or so wizards that keep that enchantment alive. Kill Ginny (please!) and - darn it - she'll come back. They all will.
In fact, the only wizard present at the defence of the castle who will die of old age will be Harry Potter himself. The rest of the defenders will live forever, each one being pulled back by the remainder of the group. Unless someone manages to kill them all, every last one, at the exact same time. As long as they don't all attend the same party at the the same time they'll be ever-lasting.
It's one of the more ridiculous repercussions of Rowling's poor storyline which has always given me cause to chuckle.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 10:22 pm (UTC)Heh. Where they all WANT to die ... all but one. And as long as that outsider refuses to meet with the others, die at the same time ...
... the others will all be anchored by him.
Actually, at King's Cross Dumbledore tells Harry that the boy has a choice, that he can 'board a train' and move on. So my little plot above won't work.
So I'll stick to your idea of willing immortals who hang around too long, whose minds can't take eternity. Or maybe time will heal some of the canon wounds. Ginny Potter, her hero!crush finally expended, divorcing Harry. Hermione divorcing Ron (of course; 19 years with him is one thing, but eternity?!?!).
Is the blood protection inherited by offspring? A baby's blood is mingled with its mother's, right? If Voldemort could "[take] into his body a tiny part of the enchantment" then surely the same would apply to the kids. So we would have an entire race of magical immortals.
Harry, of course, would be long dead - oh, so scratch my idea above about Ginny divorcing him, she'll simply become his widow - but that's okay, the Lily-protection worked with the sacrifice being deceased; in fact, that was the idea, Harry's surviving was Rowling cop-out #32 of the series.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 10:11 pm (UTC)diedmeant to die.It's one of the more extreme repercussions of Rowling not thinking things out. I'm quite proud of my little theory, actually. :-)
So Rowling set out to write a story that would "teach people about death" and then made half her main cast immortal through careless use of plot device? Smooth.
... but I'd never seen it in that light. Hee!! :-)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 12:07 pm (UTC)So yes - before Voldemort fashioned himself a body using Harry's blood there was no-one else on the planet sharing Lily's protection, and thus no anchor. Harry wasn't immortal for his first 13 years.
After the transfusion, though, Harry had his pseudo Horcrux anchor.
What was the 'triumphant gleam' supposed to be anyway? I've forgotten. Was it exactly that - Dumbledore realising that Harry was immortal/protected? Is that the Rowling/canon explanation? I've only read DH once and some details are getting fuzzy for me. I confess, if that's the case then I'm surprised, it shows that Rowling knew about this blood protection malarky back with the fourth book.
(I strongly believe that she didn't know about the multitude of horcruxes until book 6. Perhaps the fact that the 'snack' heralding Dumbledore's gleam only forked into TWO pieces - not more - supports this.)
I wonder if I can use my theory to show that Harry should have acted as Riddle's blood-anchor also? Hmm. Obviously that wasn't the case, since Riddle died. I guess there's a few ways a canon apologist could squirm out of that one. Like, Riddle's remaining soul was too small. Or only people who are the targets of the magical sacrificial protection can use the anchor to come back. (Which doesn't affect my notion that the castle defenders are now all immortal.)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 01:48 pm (UTC)As to the triumphant gleam, I've always assumed it was about the blood link because I don't think there's anything else in Harry's account that would count as triumph for Dumbledore.
And yes, I can't see anything stopping the blood-Horcrux mechanism from working both ways either. Unless we get into fanwank, wherein I argue that a Potterverse soul is the metaphysical hardware on which the mind's software runs (in the same way that the brain is the non-metaphysical hardware) and that the flayed baby was incapable of choosing to return, and is trapped at King's Cross forever.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 10:39 pm (UTC)deathI-meant-to-die protected them from Voldemort the same way that Lily's protected Harry. (Except, of course, it acts nothing like the same. But that's Rowling error six hundred and fifty two. :-))So - Harry and Riddle both shared Lily's magical protection, and that's what allowed Harry to come back. Hermione, Ron, Ginny (darn it), Luna, Neville and a hundred or so other castle defenders all share Harry's magical protection ... thus they'll be able to come back from death. Unless every last one of them dies at exactly the same time.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 12:13 pm (UTC)Nice idea.
Diane Duane did something like that with her four-part "Door" series. As I recall *anyone* could cast spells, but if one wasn't 'magical' then the energy for the spell would be taken from one's 'life force', thus shortening one's life. But people with 'magic' could tape into the energy of the planet/magisphere and cast spells with no penalty. Something like that. :-)
The protagonist of the books starts out as a 'muggle' and we know there's a cost to every spell he casts (in being the hero). So we readers are all very happy when he acquires true magic.
In a Rowling world such as what you moot I dare say the wizards - certainly the evil wizards - would be trying like crazy to discover spells that would siphon off energy/life force from those stupid muggles. Another gimmick to living forever which I'm sure I've seen several times over the years.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 01:32 pm (UTC)Her Trek books are great - Spock's World was a classic, don't you agree? - although I have yet to finish her four-part Romulan series (*loved* book, uhm, #2 or #3, the one where Kirk's small force invades the empire). She wrote three Spider-Man original novels which were excellent (fan fiction - 'official' or otherwise - amazes me sometimes in how quality authors can make bad or silly universes just *work*. Like some comics books, HP fanfics, some Dr. Who fanfics I've read (I don't think too much of the official TV series) and so on).
She wrote the four-part 'Door Into' series, which I think has been reprinted. She pops up all over the place. She wrote a trilogy adapted from a ... game of some sorts, I gather? Called the 'Harbinger' trilogy. Space opera stuff, which got a bit deus-ex-machiny at the end but was still a good read.
Okay, I've found her wiki page, which lists everything she's done, it's here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Duane). I've always enjoyed her 'Young Wizards' series; maybe you should give it another shot. The first one, 'So You Want To Be A Wizard', isn't as good as the later ones, in my opinion, the latter books being a bit more focused I reckon.
"Stealing the Elf-King's Roses" was great - shucks, everything she writes is great and worth reading IMO - but had a hand-wavey ending.
Ah, that four-part 'Door Into' series appears to be called "The Middle Kingdoms" or "The Tale of the Five". Sorry about that. You can see the reason for my preferred term from the titles. :-)
Hmmm. This reminds me that I picked up her Seaquest DSV adaptation but never got around to reading it.
Anyway, big Duane fan here - it was the Star Trek that pulled me in. Spock's World, Doctor's Orders and Dark Mirror, all brilliant. Intellivore I read but I guess it didn't turn me on as much, I don't remember it. :-)
I really really suggest you give the Young Wizards series another shot. I know I've talked about them here on deathtocapslock before, as a series that gets the 'magical mechanics' RIGHT, and just shows how sorry Rowling's making-it-up-as-she-went-along 'oh, maths!' wave-a-stick thing really is.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 03:33 pm (UTC)