GOF Chapter 34: Priori Incantatem
Aug. 26th, 2011 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.
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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.