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: 2011-11-26 02:03 am (UTC)So Harry thinks Severus's patronus must be a doe because Lily's had been--and when has Harry been right about anything else about Severus? As to Albus, he lies like a rug.
I am reasonably sure that the doe probably symbolized Lily to Sev; about all else, I'm an agnostic. (Though Alison Venn--the one who claims to have the same birthday as one of the minor characters in the Severus Snape epic [7/31] wrote a great story, "Sincerest Flattery"? in which Lily is first in Charms class to master the Patronus, and James takes his Animagus and Patronus form and Severus his Patronus, from seeing her Patronus first....)
As in: the doe, in Celtic symbolism, represents grace, gentleness, protectiveness, wisdom, and is a guide to spiritual evolution--the white hind leads the seeker into the faery woods, if he will but abandon material ambition. (In real-life cervids, the doe, not the buck, protects the fawn.) I should imagine that's a fair animal representation of Sev's opinion/idealization of Lily. Sort of like seeing Lily as Beatrice (or Beatrice as Beatrice): we know more about the lover than the love-object, once we know that comparison is being made.
If I remember correctly the RL Beatrice married someone else--didn't stop her being Dante's spiritual inspiration....
I don't think most magical people WOULD find the charm that difficult--at least not under laboratory conditions, without a Dementor breathing down your neck. We don't see most of the DA have problems--in fact they seem to find it easier that Protegus. That it should have a such a reputation suggests to me that most have never tried it, and have HEARD of it as being difficult.