An Ounce of Logic

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

This is really a followup to librasmile’s comment on my last post, “Extraordinary”. What s/he said, that Aurors should have noted AK’s reflective properties, made gel some thoughts that had been floating around.

Yes, they should have. And they almost certainly did.

In fact, everyone did. They just didn’t realize the implications of what they were noticing.



Everyone in the WW understands that an AK only kills its target if it actually hits it. That’s so obvious it need not be said: no “targeted” spell will have its effect should it simply miss.

So if a targeted victim managed to duck behind a tombstone, say, no one would blink at the fact that Avada Kedavra hadn’t killed hir.

Because the spell didn’t hit the victim, see. Not because it was blocked; being blocked is different! Being blocked is when someone magical deliberately creates some magical shield preventing a spell from having its normal effect.

Thus the WW’s (and Jo’s) lack of logic and imagination manifests.

*

All the spell-lights thrown by DE’s chasing the seven Potters were green, so we assume that they were all AK’s. At least once, Harry ducked below the edge of his sidecar to avoid being hit. So Harry naively believed (or hoped) that the sidecar walls would be sufficient to block the curse.

Yet clothes, clearly, afford no protection. Nor does the air.

So, AK and some other spells, like high-velocity bullets, apparently penetrate some material objects but not others. This difference might be related to the object’s mass, or density, or some other physical characteristic.

So if anyone bothered to study the matter systematically, they’d figure out how dense a material would have to be to provide an effective shield against the AK. Would a wood or plasterboard house wall do it? A stone one? How thick?

Or what other characteristic than density is involved. Does metal block, but not stone?

(And I said the air provided no protection, nor cloth, but we don’t know if this is strictly true. If there were enough air between the caster and target, or enough cloth, would the spell dissipate? Miles, perhaps?)

There might be another issue. It seems possible that if a witch moved a real boulder into the path of an AK, the boulder would block it. But if she conjured one, would it necessarily have the mass and density of the real thing? If not, and if mass mattered, perhaps conjured objects wouldn’t work to block the AK, even when their real counterparts would….

Dumbles, note, moved an actual, physical, metal statue in front of Harry instead of conjuring a metal shield.

For all we know, the WW might know of cases where someone conjured a stone wall or a metal shield to block an AK, and the conjured barrier didn't work. And everyone in the WW agreed, “Yup, that proves it again, the Killing Curse can’t be blocked!”

This supposition fits nicely with the WW’s obvious prejudice against non-magical solutions. The Philosophy of the Mundane: Why Wizards Prefer Not to Know! Acknowledge that the strongest magical shield can’t block this curse, but any old solid physical object can (if it’s dense enough)? That a non-magical solution can work better? That the prime minister, travelling in her armored car, is better protected from one form of magical attack than the minister for magic on his broom?

What self-respecting witch or wizard could bear to think such a thing?


*.

Nor, note, does the spell’s force apparently dissipate in sterilizing the thin column of air through which it travels. Killing all those microbes didn’t use up any force at all? Yet Fawkes the phoenix was able to use up the charge on a Killing Curse aimed specifically at Dumbles by taking it himself. (I think Hedwig’s case is inconclusive—the question is not so much whether AK can kill an animal in its path—we know it can—as whether its force would be used up in doing so. In the book, unlike the movie, the owl didn’t intercept an AK aimed at a human. Nor was Barty’s teaching AK aimed so as to hit a child if the spider’s death didn’t use up its force, and anyway we don’t know if he cast it with human-killing strength….)

So either the Killing Curse doesn’t kill microorganisms, gnats, etc., or a human-strength one isn’t used up by killing them. More likely the latter. (Although, if the former, the secret of the immunity of the Seven Potters to all those AK’s being thrown about is explained: it was a muggy summer night, and the fighters were low enough to the ground that almost all those AK’s being thrown about were expended in mosquito-killing.)


How big (or how magically important) does a creature have to be to block (by using up in its own death) a human-strength AK? We know that microorganisms absolutely do not block it, and that a phoenix (or, at least, Dumbledore’s phoenix) does.

What about that fox? A Grim? A cat? A Kneazle? A crow? An augery?


What about Cedric’a transfigured-from-a-boulder dog, then?


If I transfigure my jumper (clothing—doesn’t block AK) into a kitten, would the kitten’s death protect me?

How about if I transfigure dust motes into gnats—enough gnats!—can I block an AK?

Moreover, Barty Jr. told Harry’s class that if the students all cast AK at him, they wouldn’t give him so much as a nosebleed.

Barty said nothing about not suffering a subsequent stomach-ache, or bout of diarrhea.

Could a student AK have killed the microorganisms normally present on human skin? Or in Barty’s gut?

Could Avada Kedavra provide a healthful alternative to pasteurization, microwaving foods to make them shelf-stable, canning, using poisons as disinfectants, and all those other techniques we Muggles use for sterilization that have the unfortunate effect of causing physical, chemical, and/or nutrtional changes in the target? I bet AK leaves the antioxidants intact, and creates no trans-fats!

What about as a substitute for pesticides and antibiotics? Could a weak AK kill a plague of locusts? Or plague bacilli in an infected victim?

Without the danger of the targeted organisms developing resistance….

Does the Killing Curse kill plants? Could I use it for weeding?

If not, why not, when it kills foxes, birds, and spiders? Its effect can’t be related to anything uniquely human, such as, say, a soul.

This all begs to be studied scientifically. But alas, most wizards and witches haven’t an ounce of logic. And the only one we knew who retained some through his Hogwarts conditioning is allegedly dead….

*

Back to Dumbles, though.

Dumbles probably realized, eventually, from studying Harry’s memory of Tom’s attack, that the fact that AK can be bounced or blocked accidentally by physical objects meant that one could use the same effect deliberately.

And Albus never saw fit to share that loophole with the rest of the WW—not with the Aurors, not with the Order, not with the children he taught to believe the Killing Curse unblockable.

He kept it as his own secret defense.

Comments

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Hello Terri,

Obviously you DIDn't read my other post.

Are you referring to your post/essay "Hermione’s True Crime(s): Her Betrayal of the DA in Context" back on the 28/10/11? I've still go a reminder stashed way back in my IN box to go and have a look at that. I don't think it's a big ego that makes me think I was one of the readers you had in mind when you wrote it? :-) Coming as it did on the back of the big "Is Hermione a sociopath?" debate and my defence of her in that case.

I always meant to read your essay - and explain again how Hermione, the heroine of the HP series, is most certainly not a sociopath :-) - but I got derailed. A poor special sensitive flower here on deathtocapslock dishonourably got me banned and then feigned a GREAT DEAL OF DISTRESS over some comments I'd posted to rationalise not doing the right thing and retracting her actions once it was shown that she'd been wrong in her original charge and that I was innocent. I had to wait weeks for the Christmas rush to be over and the moderator to be back on deck to redress the wrong.

Anyway, I never got back to reading your essay. Which irked me a bit, because it could look to an outsider that I, Brad, DEFENDER OF THE LADY HERMIONE, had cowardly run away when you came out to battle. Sorry about that. I've always wanted to tell you why I didn't come out and engage that time, you've reminded me to do so now.

Anyway ...

Hermione shows this tendency to such an extent that when her own experience directly contradicts an authority she trusts (text or person), she entirely disregards her own experience. (Mind, she might yet grow out of it-

But she *did* grow out of it, in Rowling's canon.

She, she had that failing in the first few books; that's a fanon trope derived, I think, from appropriate canon fact. But you can't say that the girl is still doing the same thing by the end of the series.

Because -

Yes, she learns that written words can be wrong. She learns to be suspicious of the Prophet and Ministry propaganda, and to mistrust the Ministry in general.

As you say. Thanks. :-)

Notice, though, that she's the only one of the Trio whose belief in Dumbledore's infallibility is unshakable. If Dumbledore told Harry he must hunt Horcruxes, then that's what they must do.

But that's not true. Harry decides that Dumbledore also gave him the 'Quest' of chasing the Hallows, but it's Hermione that says no, don't follow Dumbledore there, stick to the task that we *know* is real.

And, by the way Terri, that's no doubt why Hermione thus advises Harry. Dumbledore's instructions or not, she *knows* that the Horcruxes are things that *must* be destroyed. Things aren't wrong just because Albus believed in them. He was right sometimes!

I guess you're correct that she was the only one in the Trio whose belief in Dumbledore was 'unshakeable', but you do recall that Harry, although wavering in Rowling's weak little crisis of faith mid-way through DH, ended up being the staunchest disciple of all, right? Choosing in the end to abandon any thought of the Elder Wand, 'cause that's not what Albus wanted. Marching off to his death because that's what Albus wanted.

(At least that's the case if I'm remembering things properly.)

"it gives you a split-second advantage in a duel because your opponent can't hear what you're casting."

But it DOES. She's RIGHT!

No, Hermione, the first advantage to nonverbal magic is that you can use it when you can't speak! And you saw that demonstrated on your own body, with your own near-death, and it doesn't occur to you to make the connection.

You can pretend you're in Hermione's head and pretend she's a rote-memory machine and pretend that she never thought of her own personal experience with non-verbal magic, but that's not proof, Terri. Only in your pretend world.

I look at that scene and I see Hermione having a couple of answers ... and picking *the most accurate one*.

What's the advantage of non-verbal casting?

1. Split-second advantage, right off the bat.

2. If someone has silenced you, then you can still cast.

Answer #2 doesn't just depend on non-verbal magic. It also depends on someone silencing you first!