Patronus Lessons
Nov. 24th, 2011 04:37 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockOn the one hand, the Patronus charm has the reputation of being so difficult that many adults can't master it; on the other, not only does super-speshul Harry do so at thirteen, but so do many of his friends two years later--including not only the incalculable Luna, but the never-top-of-the-class Ron, Seamus, and Ernest. Nor can we ascribe their success to Harry's wonderful teaching, for in DH Arthur Weasley and Dolores Umbridge both use the charm with no problem under stressful conditions. Producing, in both cases, fully corporeal patroni, not merely silver puffs.
In fact, we don't have a single canon instance of someone trying and ultimately failing to master the spell. Why, then, its formidable reputation? And why did Harry have such trouble learning it?
Someone pointed out in the "Marietta's True Crime" discussion below that Harry's teaching the DA to cast the Patronus Charm might have alarmed Marietta about the group's intentions, since the only use she knows for the charm is to repel Dementors--the Ministry's authorized Azkaban guards. (Yes, it can also be used against Lethifolds--but not only are those beasts quite rare, they are tropical. Maybe southeast Asian schools of wizardry would teach it as a matter of course to their older students, but northern European ones? No.)
So I posit that the Patronus Charm is not and has not been part of the Hogwarts general curriculum, and that in Britain the only ones who have generally been taught it are those expected to have a need to deal regularly with Dementors: selected law enforcement personnel. Think about this a moment. Aurors would surely be trained to use the spell (summoning Dementors to take custody of the Dark wizards they catch). So too would prison guards. And quite possibly no one else.
Now, people might apply to become an Auror out of romanticism or adventurousness, a desire to serve or a desire to gain power, and they have to be near the very top of their year (five NEWTS) to get INTO the program. But I imagine that prison guards enjoy about the status in the WW that they do in ours. In which case most of the people applying would be on about the magical level of Stan Shunpike: magical drop outs with at most an OWL or two. If they were qualified for a better job, they'd be off doing it.
And Stan, and those on his level of intelligence and competence, WOULD find the Patronus charm (among many others) nearly impossible to learn.
Then it would follow that so as far as the wizarding public would know, the Patronus charm is easily mastered by those wizards and witches at an Auror-trainee's elite level--and everyone below that level is expected to struggle with it.
Now, of course, the OotP, unlike the general population, uses the Patronus Charm to communicate. If the supposition is correct that the general population has never been taught that charm, then Dumbledore may have divined the secondary use way back when he founded the Order and taught his followers it for that reason. Or, he may have taught his followers the Patronus Charm originally because he always expected that Tom, if once he thought of it, would eventually seduce the Dementors, and so Tom's opponents would eventually need to know how to repulse Dementors on Tom's side. Indeed, Albus could even have come up with the secondary use as communicators as an excuse to teach the charm without revealing his suspicions about Tom's ultimate appeal to the Dementors.
However, Fudge knows even less than we Dumbledore's true motives for teaching the Patronus. To him, the fact that Dumbledore's werewolf protege Lupin had known the charm well enough to teach Harry would have ultimately added to Fudge's suspicions about Dumbledore's followers. What did you say, again, Dumbledore, were your reasons for teaching a werewolf, one of Sirius Black's best friends, to cast a Dementor-repelling charm? Did you, perhaps, teach Black himself the same spell, back in the day?
Finally, let's pause for a moment to reflect on Harry's "best evah" DADA teacher's pedagogical incompetence in the Patronus lessons. Lupin explains the spell briefly to Harry, tells him the incantation (doesn't demonstrate any particular wand movement--are we to understand that with the Dark Arts--oops, I mean, Defense--an incantation and intention substitute for the precise pronunciation and exact wand motion required by such subjects as Charms and Transfigurations?), lets Harry try it once and achieve a puff of vapor--all good so far. Then Lupin looses the Boggart for Harry's second and all subsequent tries.
Excuse me, if I undertook to learn marksmanship, I wouldn't expect to be given ONE shot at a target before I was told to try under battle conditions!
Now, in the Boggart lesson this perhaps couldn't be helped--I don't know of any way to tell whether or not a student is casting Riddikulus properly without seeing its effect on an actual Boggart. But the Patronus charm has a visible effect, and normal pedagogical practice would be to let the child practice under controlled conditions until s/he had mastered the spell itself fully--THEN practice trying to cast it as protection against a Boggart-Dementor.
And we see that in the DA, many of Harry's students were producing a corporeal patronus by the end of what was apparently their first lesson--while poor Harry, trying to cast the spell while sinking into unconsciousness, couldn't master the spell for months.
In fact, we don't have a single canon instance of someone trying and ultimately failing to master the spell. Why, then, its formidable reputation? And why did Harry have such trouble learning it?
Someone pointed out in the "Marietta's True Crime" discussion below that Harry's teaching the DA to cast the Patronus Charm might have alarmed Marietta about the group's intentions, since the only use she knows for the charm is to repel Dementors--the Ministry's authorized Azkaban guards. (Yes, it can also be used against Lethifolds--but not only are those beasts quite rare, they are tropical. Maybe southeast Asian schools of wizardry would teach it as a matter of course to their older students, but northern European ones? No.)
So I posit that the Patronus Charm is not and has not been part of the Hogwarts general curriculum, and that in Britain the only ones who have generally been taught it are those expected to have a need to deal regularly with Dementors: selected law enforcement personnel. Think about this a moment. Aurors would surely be trained to use the spell (summoning Dementors to take custody of the Dark wizards they catch). So too would prison guards. And quite possibly no one else.
Now, people might apply to become an Auror out of romanticism or adventurousness, a desire to serve or a desire to gain power, and they have to be near the very top of their year (five NEWTS) to get INTO the program. But I imagine that prison guards enjoy about the status in the WW that they do in ours. In which case most of the people applying would be on about the magical level of Stan Shunpike: magical drop outs with at most an OWL or two. If they were qualified for a better job, they'd be off doing it.
And Stan, and those on his level of intelligence and competence, WOULD find the Patronus charm (among many others) nearly impossible to learn.
Then it would follow that so as far as the wizarding public would know, the Patronus charm is easily mastered by those wizards and witches at an Auror-trainee's elite level--and everyone below that level is expected to struggle with it.
Now, of course, the OotP, unlike the general population, uses the Patronus Charm to communicate. If the supposition is correct that the general population has never been taught that charm, then Dumbledore may have divined the secondary use way back when he founded the Order and taught his followers it for that reason. Or, he may have taught his followers the Patronus Charm originally because he always expected that Tom, if once he thought of it, would eventually seduce the Dementors, and so Tom's opponents would eventually need to know how to repulse Dementors on Tom's side. Indeed, Albus could even have come up with the secondary use as communicators as an excuse to teach the charm without revealing his suspicions about Tom's ultimate appeal to the Dementors.
However, Fudge knows even less than we Dumbledore's true motives for teaching the Patronus. To him, the fact that Dumbledore's werewolf protege Lupin had known the charm well enough to teach Harry would have ultimately added to Fudge's suspicions about Dumbledore's followers. What did you say, again, Dumbledore, were your reasons for teaching a werewolf, one of Sirius Black's best friends, to cast a Dementor-repelling charm? Did you, perhaps, teach Black himself the same spell, back in the day?
Finally, let's pause for a moment to reflect on Harry's "best evah" DADA teacher's pedagogical incompetence in the Patronus lessons. Lupin explains the spell briefly to Harry, tells him the incantation (doesn't demonstrate any particular wand movement--are we to understand that with the Dark Arts--oops, I mean, Defense--an incantation and intention substitute for the precise pronunciation and exact wand motion required by such subjects as Charms and Transfigurations?), lets Harry try it once and achieve a puff of vapor--all good so far. Then Lupin looses the Boggart for Harry's second and all subsequent tries.
Excuse me, if I undertook to learn marksmanship, I wouldn't expect to be given ONE shot at a target before I was told to try under battle conditions!
Now, in the Boggart lesson this perhaps couldn't be helped--I don't know of any way to tell whether or not a student is casting Riddikulus properly without seeing its effect on an actual Boggart. But the Patronus charm has a visible effect, and normal pedagogical practice would be to let the child practice under controlled conditions until s/he had mastered the spell itself fully--THEN practice trying to cast it as protection against a Boggart-Dementor.
And we see that in the DA, many of Harry's students were producing a corporeal patronus by the end of what was apparently their first lesson--while poor Harry, trying to cast the spell while sinking into unconsciousness, couldn't master the spell for months.
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Date: 2011-11-25 06:05 pm (UTC)Of course the Doylist reason is Rowling's need to be coy about her surprises - Remus being a werewolf and the form of Harry's Patronus (and what is says about James). So no corporeal Patronus can be described before Harry's.
Hmm. When Remus asked Hermione how she figured him out he proposed as hints the schedule of his 'illnesses' and his Boggart, not his Patronus. Maybe he really doesn't have a corporeal one. Maybe the whole bit about the difficulty of the spell is Remus being defensive.
No corporeal Patronus?
Date: 2011-11-26 01:10 am (UTC)Hmm. This makes Remus the one person we have actual evidence for knowing the spell, trying to use it, and not able to produce more than a silver mist. (Though Hermione is spotty--want to theorize why? Of course, it may just be that it's spotty when actually facing multiple Dementors....)
Remus--weaker than Dolores. I like it.
Of course, there is an easy explanation for Remus's impotence with this spell. Remus also believes you have to think of your happiest memory to cast the spell. I think, myself, that you have to generate and project feelings of joy, hope, will to survive--and that for many (most)people, the easiest and most natural way to do so is to remember, to revisit, intensely, a time you already felt that way. I.e., your happiest memory.
The problem for Remus, then, is the content of his happiest memories. We know what they are; he told us at the end of PoA. "...[the Marauders made] my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life."
Problem is, those memories are also inextricably tied up with his greatest guilt, shame, self-loathing, and also loss. He led his friends into becoming Animagi; those excursions with his pack, the "best times of his life" each involved threatening the life, health, and sanity of innocent bystanders; he knew his beloved excursions to be crimes, and to be crimes into which he'd led his friends; they were also betrayals of Dumbledore, to whom he owed so much; and they were capped by those friends finally turning on him ANYWAY, assuming him to be the betrayer, keeping him out of the Fidelius Secret; and one of his own pack became a traitor, the worst of traitors, who gave James and Lily to Voldemort and killed the last remaining pack member....
He can't, as a man, remember the joy of running free as a predator with his first pack without also remembering the guilt of being a criminal betraying his benefactor,friends, and strangers, and without remembering the grief of the pack's utter destruction. Both during PoA and post OotP, the only surviving pack member was the filthy traitor.
How could he disentangle his guilt, grief, and self-loathing from his greatest experience of joy to use those memories to power a corporeal Patronus?
Severus, of course, would face similar issues using memories of Lily to power his Patronus....
Re: No corporeal Patronus?
Date: 2011-11-26 01:15 am (UTC)Re: No corporeal Patronus?
Date: 2011-11-26 05:42 am (UTC)Re: No corporeal Patronus?
Date: 2011-11-27 03:02 pm (UTC)And I would really like to know, what Severus' happy memory is. Maybe then I could like Lily a bit better.
As it is, I'm a bit awed, that he actually has memories that good of her. And I'm not sure, if that's devotion or delusion.
Re: No corporeal Patronus?
Date: 2011-11-27 07:15 pm (UTC)Another thing I'm thinking is, okay so what if he did get the patronus after she was dead. Maybe he never tried it before (for some reason) anyway. I've always thought that once Lily was dead, for him she became the perfect woman. So over the years his devotion could have grown in terms of Lily being dead she could never humiliate him, she could never yell at him, she could never do anything else that would offend him.
So in terms of perfection for anyone else it's hard to live up to an idolized image and for Snape maybe thats what Lily became, thus affecting the patronus...or something like that.
But yea, the whole Happy thought thing puzzles me because it seems like everything reguarding Lily for Severus would be connected to equally painful memories.
Re: No corporeal Patronus?
Date: 2011-11-27 07:22 pm (UTC)Re: No corporeal Patronus?
Date: 2011-11-27 07:31 pm (UTC)