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The reverse halo effect you describe is called the horns effect.
Old people, & people immersed in the traditional wisdom of old cultures, believe many things that have playtested as useful beliefs over a very long period. It doesn't follow from this that no dross creeps in.
What I'm puzzled by is the paralell between the violent use of magical cooling against Draco & the preservative use of it on Hermione.
The laws of Wizarding society are, broadly speaking, insane. There is a vast gulf between twisting or breaking a rule that makes no sense and violating the trust of a friend like Hermione.
Circumventing Horcruxes would be one option, certainly. Harry has already thought how blindingly stupid it is that the killing curse must be cast using hate in order to work. If he were going to change anything about it I would imagine that that observation would feature.
There are people in the world who can have their whole day ruined by the mention of rape. It's why we have things like trigger-warnings.
I was only thinking of the trial scene, I'm afraid.
I do wonder whether the Source of Magic, or whatever it is that determines whether a Horcrux can be made, draws a distinction between deaths in combat, deaths accidentally caused and deaths deliberately and avoidably caused.
You're correct, but I was responding to the whole statement:
I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that Dumbledore deemed himself indispensable >and his soul's contiguousness dispensable to the war effort.
If our dear Headmaster murdered Narcissa because he thought his continued availability to Magical Britain was more important than avoiding that kind of atrocity, or keeping his soul whole then that means that he used the murder to protect himself from death, and in this context that means that he made a Horcrux.
This is, of course, all conjecture. We don't know for certain that Dumbledore himself did the deed, or that it went down the way that the surviving Malfoys believe it did. We do know that Dumbledore finds it useful for them to believe it, and we do know that he has studied how horcruxes are made as part of his Anti-Voldemort campaign, and we can be fairly sure that Madame Bones knows the truth of the matter of Narcissa's death
I hadn't previously seen any clear motive for Dumbledore to kill Narcissa. That he might have done so to help keep himself ready to defend Magical Britain at least provides a possible explanation.
Assuming that he did, in fact, do broadly what Draco said, anyhow.
Pedanterrific, I'm not conflating the two acts, merely observing that one may illuminate the other.
This might put something of a different slant on the events surrounding the death of Narcissa Malfoy, if true.
I took that particular passage as evidence that Rational!Voldemort is not so incompetent as to risk discovery through hat-removal.
Wouldn't he? I though he got madder & less reliable as he shaved off more & more of his soul; less & less recognizably human, too. If it had been the case that he could make a small Horcrux later on when that decay was already advanced then it might have made a sort of sense to take a smaller fragment of himself away from the already damaged original.
No. Madam Bones said that the man she suspects Quirrell of being just disappeared (and, indeed, was the last of his family before he did so). Granted we don't know where most of Wibble went, but 1) he had a family, and they were peeled as well, and 2) I don't think having your skin found flapping loose in your office counts as a mysterious disappearance.
I feel that I should point out that when the black mist lifts and Hermione recognizes the face of her assailant we have no reason to believe that the face she recognizes is not itself an illusion.
Since we already know that she has been obsessing about Draco, I suspect that it may even have been his face (though with the information we readers have it is obvious that H&C is not actually he), though I don't put a great weight on that suspicion.
Though when Tonks is masquerading as a member of SPHEW one of the bullies does level a spell at her intended to dispel the effects of Polyjuice.
I was under the impression that Quirrellmort's zombie-time meant that the Quirrell host-body had been lobotomized. If so, any intelligence that Voldemort can bring to bear is already native to him. Of course, there is that comment in one of his early discussions with Harry about never being able to fully disentangle the mind from the body that it wears...I'm not yet entirely sure what to think about this. I don't think we have any direct evidence that Voldemort can step out of Quirrell without great inconvenience.
Hat and Cloak uttered that line by way of drawing attention to the reason that blood-purists have taken her for an enemy (which is relevant because H&C wants to give the appearance of courting Hermione as an ally). As an explanation of that hatred and danger it makes sense say it no matter who H&C turns out to be.
"There is a Charm called Obliviation."
Harry froze in place. "A spell that erases memories?"
McGonagall nodded. "But not all the effects of the experience, if you see what I'm saying, Mr. Potter."
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"Obliviation cannot be detected by any known means"
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"Miss Granger has been obsessing over Mr. Malfoy since the day that Severus... yelled at her. She has been thinking of how Mr. Malfoy might be in league with Professor Snape, how he might be planning to harm her and harm Harry - imagining it for hours every day - it would be impossible to create false memories for so much time."
"The appearance of insanity..." Severus murmured softly, as though he were speaking to himself. "Could it be natural? No, it is too disastrous to be pure accident; too convenient for someone, I have no doubt. A Muggle drug, perhaps? But that would not be enough - Miss Granger's madness would have to be guided-"
"Ah!" Harry said suddenly. "I get it now. The first False Memory Charm was cast on Hermione after Professor Snape yelled at her, and showed, say, Draco and Professor Snape plotting to kill her. Then last night that False Memory was removed by Obliviation, leaving behind the memories of her obsessing about Draco for no apparent reason, at the same time she and Draco were given false memories of the duel."
In chapter 75 Snape gives Hermione a rather thorough dressing-down in front of the school. Did the Groundhog Day attack in chapter 77 happen on the same day? I have been assuming that Snape & Harry were broadly correct, and the Groundhog Day attack was how that madness-guiding trick was done.
My working-theory is that the entire purpose of the attack was to produce a directed trauma, and an obsession, without a readily detectable cause.
Xachariah and Drethelin, if I've read you right you both believe that Hat and Cloak's purpose was to put some idea or belief into Hermione's head; to convince her of something. I think that there is something rather deeper and more subtly manipulative going on here.
[Edited for formatting.]
I'd be very interested to find out more about techniques like that. Would you point me toward a place to start?
Yes. Your ability to communicate ideas and to understand ideas doesn't give two beans whether the ideas are true or not. The better you are at lying the better you are at clearly presenting any thought, including thoughts that are true, or neither true nor false.
My experience in the circus bears this out.
To learn to juggle you have someone tell you what your mind and hands need to do when juggling, and you throw the balls in the direction you know they need to go, and you keep doing it (being corrected as often as you can find a better juggler) until you stop dropping them and can keep your pattern solid indefinitely.
To learn to handstand you get upside down do whatever you can to find out what balancing feels like. You can't feel it unless you're doing it.