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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Enslave the Muggles/Reaction to Sectumsempra
Date: 2011-11-27 06:27 pm (UTC)Regarding Harry feeling entitled....
Harry? Feeling entitled by 6th year?
Oh definitely.
And that's certainly Ron's primary take on the matter, at the start--Harry took a daring chance by following the Prince's alternate instructions instead of the book's, his boldness paid off, and now Hermione's just jealous that Harry's daring (and trusting to instinct) paid off better than her perennial going by the book.
But--I don't have HBP here, so I'm going off memory--when Sectumsempra turned out to be a spell that (used inappropriately and without understanding) could KILL, wasn't Harry described as feeling as though an animal he'd befriended had turned on him? And later, that the Prince had seemed a friend to him?
Harry had followed the Prince blindly before, and been rewarded by better potions grades than he could get on his own, a way to talk to his friends without being overheard, funny (at least to the likes of Harry and Ron) hexes, even the knowledge to save Ron's life when Ron was poisoned (which of course he'd have known since first year, had he paid the same attention to the teacher in class as he did to his unknown friend).
So he follows the Prince again, and this time he does something he didn't intend and (to his credit) he would not have wished, and he feels betrayed.
So yeah, I think Harry did trust, and like, the "Prince" he'd imagined as the book's author.
Similar senses of humor can be such a bond, after all.
Re: Enslave the Muggles/Reaction to Sectumsempra
Date: 2011-11-27 07:12 pm (UTC)So I don't see how Harry could attach such emotions to the darn thing. So maybe thats why I felt like Harry knew what the hell he was doing - I possibly read more into it or something. I just felt like he knew what he was doing even if he didn't want to admit it. Hell at the beginning of I think HBP when Severus went to get Harry from Tonks - didn't Harry admit to himself that it felt better to blame Snape than it did to admit the truth to himself?
So the boy is already in denial over the part he played in Sirius death and instead he chooses to pick a easy target and blame Snape for it. SO I'm almost tempted to think he was being purposefully blind on the Halfblood Prince book as well.
And at the end of it all it could just be that JKR's writing style didn't give me enough that I could form the connection that Harry felt the powerful friendship bond. I just have a hard time developing friendship from cliftnotes so Harry clearly is delusional either way.
Sense of humor
Date: 2011-11-27 08:40 pm (UTC)In fact, they're such cool spells that when he remembers that his dad had used Levicorpus, he seriously entertains the notion that the Prince MUST have been his nifty, cooler-than-anybody, amusing father. Even when Remus tells him outright, NO, he doesn't want to give up the idea.
I agree with you about Harry being in denial about several things, but I also think he found the Prince's sense of humor (which Hermione subsequently characterized as "nasty") to be entirely congenial.
Re: Sense of humor
Date: 2011-11-27 08:53 pm (UTC)I might think the person is brilliant and inventive but I wouldn't suddenly be having warm fuzzy thoughts about the writer, no matter how cool the spells were. Well technically those spells were Okay because he didn't know who they came from.
It's kinda funny, strip off the Slytherin and Severus is looking like a hex welding Gryffindor - or at least a creator of spells someone like James seems to favor. If it wasn't for Lily, Sev could have been James' bestest friend instead.
If Harry has those feelings about the HBP without knowing who it is then he should have equally been in love with all those who wrote school books or anyone who scribbled something funny on a bathroom wall. I think there was more to it than him having 'friendship' with the unknown author.
I just think a big part of it was Harry being subborn about the book more than it was he actually developed love and friendship with the author.
Being stubborn about the book
Date: 2011-11-28 02:35 am (UTC)Oh, surely some of it was. But more--Harry has two real-life prototypes of people who (unlike him, ever) invent "funny" hexes--the Weasley Twins. And he likes them (and vice versa) and thinks of them as honorary big brothers, and is utterly blind to how their victims must surely regard them.
And Harry prefers to think of his Dad and the Marauders as having been the same (though the Map is the only thing we know they invented, and the fact they stole Sev's spells suggests his inventiveness may have surpassed theirs).
So his idea of "clever bloke inventing hilarious hexes to use as jokes or against enemies" is Gred and Forge, and teen James and Sirius (who were introduced first via the Map--given to Harry by the Twins--insulting Snape to his face, as Harry longs to). All of whom he prefers to think of as Good and Funny Guys, their malice only directed against people who deserve it. And Harry's mentors in mischief and trouble-making.
So I think it's more projecting his feelings for the Pranksters he likes onto the unknown guy. (Not girl, Hermione--PRINCE, right? And a half-blood, just like Harry!) I mean, anyone who invents Levicorpus and a Toenail-Growing Hex MUST be a kindred spirit to Gred and Forge, right?
His whole insistence that the Prince must be a guy--partly it's to insist Hermione must be wrong in whatever she says, but partly I think it's Harry wanting to imagine the Prince being like himself. Only cleverer. A clever ally who, unlike Hermione and suchlike GIRLS, wouldn't ever lecture Harry or disapprove of a bit of nasty fun....
Of course the other option is that the magic under everything let Harry "feel" that the Prince behind the book, the caster behind the Doe Patronus, really was a secret ally....
Re: Enslave the Muggles/Reaction to Sectumsempra
Date: 2011-11-27 07:16 pm (UTC)Close. Here's the passage, from HBP 24, p. 525 in the Scholastic HC edition:
He felt stunned; it was as though a beloved pet had turned suddenly savage; what had the Prince been thinking to copy such a spell into his book?...Would [Snape] confiscate or destroy the book that had taught Harry so much...the book that had become a kind of guide and friend?.... (Ellipses in second sentence in original)
Later in the chapter, when Hermione says, "I told you so," Harry continues to insist there's nothing wrong with the Prince, that he'd only copied the spell, wasn't encouraging its use, and may have been writing down something that had been used against him. (p. 529)
It occurs to me now that, although Harry's behavior in mindlessly using this spell seems like very bad and stupid behavior to us, it really shouldn't be a surprise, and it makes perfect sense from Harry's POV. Ever since he entered the Wizarding World, he had been following his instincts and mindlessly obeying Dumbledore's authority, and it had always worked out well--well, except for that minor dustup in which Sirius ended up dead. But that was all Snape's fault, anyway. So it was perfectly reasonable for Harry to assume that everything would be fine in this case, too.
RE: Reaction to Sectumsempra
Date: 2011-11-27 08:44 pm (UTC)And you're right, following his instincts and mindlessly doing what someone he trusts suggest had always worked out before.
Except, as you say, for that little dustup which was really Snape's fault. No way would Sirius ever have CONSIDERED rushing off to the DOM to save someone he loved had Snape not, six months earlier, called him a coward.
Why, not even Harry himself would be so rash.
Re: Reaction to Sectumsempra
Date: 2011-11-27 09:34 pm (UTC)Harry really is a bit delusional with his habit of making Snape the scapegoat for everything.
Re: Reaction to Sectumsempra
Date: 2011-11-28 02:14 am (UTC)