# General Harry Potter thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 10, 2006, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162 "2006-09-10T14:12:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/81 "2006-09-15T02:59:34Z")
:smack: :smack: :smack: Man, I messed all that up, no? I meant Mickey Rooney–didn’t he star in the Thomas Edison movie? And some wizards DO blend into the muggle world–they must in order to do M of Magc work. IMO, Rowling plays up the difficulty of getting the fashion right (and I wish she would stop-wizards aren’t retarded), but think of the guy at the Quidditch cup–they kept having to re-charm him. There are examples, even if I can’t bring them to mind. Sorry, they are the Gaunts-and they were weird as hell. Plus, some Muggles know of the other world-so why couldn’t some wizards talk to them about technology? Mr Weasley is always asking Harry about phellytones etc… Just saying it could happen. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/82 "2006-09-15T03:02:17Z")
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99] That clock bugs me, btw. When first introduced, it was described as a grandfather clock. And now, Molly Weasley is carrying it around on top of her laundry basket. [/QUOTE] Yeah, me too-but I blame the film. It looks like a cuckoo clock (ok, I would have preferred a more dignified one with a moon and stars face), but it’s supposed to be large and hang on the wall or stand somewhere. Not be carried around (like she couldn’t tap into it somehow, no matter where she is-like make a wall disappear to see it from another room in the house). ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/83 "2006-09-15T04:16:55Z")
I do stand corrected, the wording is that the tournament is between the three largest europeon wizardry schools. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/84 "2006-09-15T05:17:17Z")
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that wizards aren’t especially frightening when it comes to force? Muggles aren’t in the middle ages anymore, we have vast stores of technology to draw upon, and unless somehow a bullet to the brain wouldn’t kill a wizard, I don’t see how a squad of SAS couldn’t settle Voldy’s hash once and for all. While he was waving his wand and casting an _Anna Kornikova_(:p) spell at one soldier, the others would be attacking him with assault rifles, grenades and who knows what else. From what we’ve seen, he just doesn’t seem to present that big of a challenge to a modern armed force-assuming they can find him to attack, and since we have seen people crossing over from our world to the WW, that doesn’t seem to be an insurmountable challenge. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/85 "2006-09-15T06:30:01Z")
OK, you’ve got the entire resources of the US Department of Defense at your disposal. How do you deal with a man who can instantly transport himself to any spot on the globe, turn himself invisible, and bring down a bridge with a few words and a gesture? Not to mention modifying memories and controlling others’ minds, of course, and he probably has some means of scrying at his disposal, as well. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/86 "2006-09-15T10:50:08Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] OK, you’ve got the entire resources of the US Department of Defense at your disposal. How do you deal with a man who can instantly transport himself to any spot on the globe, turn himself invisible, and bring down a bridge with a few words and a gesture? Not to mention modifying memories and controlling others’ minds, of course, and he probably has some means of scrying at his disposal, as well. [/QUOTE] OMG-Voldemort is Osama bin Laden! :eek: well, it made me laugh. And isn’t there an aura of menace surrounding Voldy? Perhaps Rowling’s writing skills don’t cover it, but I thought folks were supposed to be uneasy in his presence-whether they know who he is or not. Maybe, since the horcruxes, he has become impervious to most methods of death ala vampires? Stay tuned! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/87 "2006-09-15T14:00:33Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] OK, you’ve got the entire resources of the US Department of Defense at your disposal. How do you deal with a man who can instantly transport himself to any spot on the globe, turn himself invisible, and bring down a bridge with a few words and a gesture? Not to mention modifying memories and controlling others’ minds, of course, and he probably has some means of scrying at his disposal, as well. [/QUOTE] Take off and nuke him from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. I still can’t believe that any wizard could withstand the heat and radiation of a nuclear bomb, freezing charms or no freezing charms. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/88 "2006-09-15T17:40:58Z")
[QUOTE=asterion] Take off and nuke him from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. I still can’t believe that any wizard could withstand the heat and radiation of a nuclear bomb, freezing charms or no freezing charms. [/QUOTE] Oh, come on. Didn’t you ever read your Spider Robinson? One alien has not only the ability to withstand them himself, but also the power to confer the ability upon ordinary humans that he takes a liking to. A wizard shouldn’t find anything daunting about that. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/89 "2006-09-15T18:10:10Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] OK, you’ve got the entire resources of the US Department of Defense at your disposal. How do you deal with a man who can instantly transport himself to any spot on the globe, turn himself invisible, and bring down a bridge with a few words and a gesture? Not to mention modifying memories and controlling others’ minds, of course, and he probably has some means of scrying at his disposal, as well. [/QUOTE] Marine sniper? It’s hard to cast a spell of protection when your corpus callosum is already being ejected through your face. Sure, one might imagine an anti-artillery enchantment of some kind to be a permanent feature of any diabolical sorceror’s sartorial ensemble, but frankly that’s Muggle thinking. The propensity to attack each other with magic seems so ingrained among Rowling’s wizards that establishing defenses against purely mundane attacks would probably never even occur to them. That’s assuming that they could even grasp the concept of a rifle in the first place; remember, these are people for whom the telephone is a nigh-unfathomable mystery. “You say that muggle is going to try to kill me with a device that throws tiny lead pebbles? Ridiculous! Why, he couldn’t hit an elephant from this dist–” ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/90 "2006-09-15T19:37:06Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] OK, you’ve got the entire resources of the US Department of Defense at your disposal. How do you deal with a man who can instantly transport himself to any spot on the globe, [/quote] The impression I have from the books is that apparating is a fairly short range process (otherwise why have portkeys?), and I don’t think it’s quite instantaneous, the wizard has to cast the spell to apperate, doesn’t he? So: Sniper. Artillery. Airstrike. Take him out before he even realizes he’s under attack. [QUOTE=Chronos] turn himself invisible, [/quote] I do not recall Voldy every having this ability. Am I forgetting something? [QUOTE=Chronos] and bring down a bridge with a few words and a gesture? [/quote] Muggles can do this too- “Drop 50 and fire for effect”. [QUOTE=Chronos] Not to mention modifying memories and controlling others’ minds, of course, [/quote] Has he ever demonstrated this ability on more than a one to one basis? Pretty hard to control the minds of an entire squad of Marines. [QUOTE=Chronos] and he probably has some means of scrying at his disposal, as well. [/QUOTE] Granted, but why would he scry on mere Muggles? And how many can he spy on at once? If I’m going after him with the entire DoD at my side, that’s a lot of assets for him to monitor. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/91 "2006-09-15T22:53:07Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave] > [@Chronos](#): > > turn himself invisible, I do not recall Voldy every having this ability. Am I forgetting something? [/quote] I believe that in PS, Dumbledore says in the Mirror of Erised chapter “I don’t need a cloak to be invisible.” If Dumbledore can do it, Voldemort certainly could. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/92 "2006-09-15T22:54:57Z")
[QUOTE=Rysto] I believe that in PS, Dumbledore says in the Mirror of Erised chapter “I don’t need a cloak to be invisible.” If Dumbledore can do it, Voldemort certainly could. [/QUOTE] There was the…Disillusionment Charm? Something like that, anyway, at the beginning of OotP. It made Harry camoflaged against his surroundings, so not totally invisible. Maybe he meant that? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/93 "2006-09-15T23:30:45Z")
> [@](#): > > Marine sniper? It’s hard to cast a spell of protection when your corpus callosum is already being ejected through your face. OK, so just send a marine sniper to blow out Osama’s brains, too. What’s that? You don’t know where he is? Well, what makes you think that Tommy-boy will be any easier to find? Osama can hide in a cave, but Voldemort can hide in a cave _with no connection to the surface_, accessible only via Apparition. And Osama needs to communicate with a large network of people to wreak his havoc, but the Dark Lord can wreak plenty of havoc all by his lonesome, and even if he does need to communicate, he can do so in means untappable by Muggles. > [@](#): > > I do not recall Voldy every having this ability [invisibility]. Am I forgetting something? Any wizard of sufficient means could acquire an invisibility cloak, like the one Harry uses. And I think we can assume that Voldemort has sufficient means. We don’t happen to know of any instance of him using one, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/94 "2006-09-15T23:57:07Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] OK, so just send a marine sniper to blow out Osama’s brains, too. What’s that? You don’t know where he is? Well, what makes you think that Tommy-boy will be any easier to find? Osama can hide in a cave, but Voldemort can hide in a cave _with no connection to the surface_, accessible only via Apparition. And Osama needs to communicate with a large network of people to wreak his havoc, but the Dark Lord can wreak plenty of havoc all by his lonesome, and even if he does need to communicate, he can do so in means untappable by Muggles. [/QUOTE] My point was that he wouldn’t feel the need to hide in the first place. Osama hides precisely because he appreciates the fact that Marine snipers are in fact a threat to him. Does Voldemort share that perspective? It seems likelier that his experiences have led him to regard Muggles as wholly contemptible and unworthy of notice because of their inability to work magic. I expect that Voldemort would expect an attack from Muggles about as much as Osama would expect to be attacked by the pigeons whose nests were lost in the WTC disaster. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/95 "2006-09-16T01:49:38Z")
Question of the night: Would an infrared (or heat seeking, I don’t much about techy stuff) be able to detect Harry in the Invisibility Cloak or another wizard who was in the act of Disapparating? Hmm. My son has a book about the physics of HP- I may need to read it! ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/96 "2006-09-16T04:03:50Z")
Well, IR and light are both just electromagnetic waves, so it’s entirely possible that the invisibility cloak blocks both. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/97 "2006-09-16T06:47:55Z")
Voldy’s already hiding from the wizarding community (even if nobody but Harry can actually kill him, others could seriously inconvenience him), and I don’t think that there’s much different entailed between hiding from wizards and hiding from Muggles. On the question of IR and invisibility cloaks, I don’t know. There are certainly some means of seeing invisible things (Moody’s eye, for starters), and it’s plausible that non-visible light might be one of them. But of course, it’s also plausible that it might not be. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/98 "2006-09-16T07:23:54Z")
Hey, here’s another HP question that our British friends might be able to help me out on: is the structure of Hogwart’s actually close to what British boarding schools are really like? Not in subject matter of course, but do British boarding schools actually have different houses like at Hogwart’s, with a point system, prefects, competing sports teams, etc.? Or did Rowling invent this all wholesale? ---
**Author:** ![Alive\_At\_Both\_Ends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Alive\_At\_Both\_Ends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alive_At_Both_Ends)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/99 "2006-09-16T11:14:14Z")
[QUOTE=Rodgers01] Hey, here’s another HP question that our British friends might be able to help me out on: is the structure of Hogwart’s actually close to what British boarding schools are really like? Not in subject matter of course, but do British boarding schools actually have different houses like at Hogwart’s, with a point system, prefects, competing sports teams, etc.? Or did Rowling invent this all wholesale? [/QUOTE] Well, I never attended boarding school, but JKR certainly didn’t make that stuff up. Lots of books set in boarding schools describe this sort of internal organisation. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162/100 "2006-09-16T12:15:16Z")
Most definitely the Head Boy and Girl bit. Seeing as I’m not British, that’s all I’ve got. Another question: this Floo powder. Is it made at home? Purchased? and if so, how is it manufactured and tested? Are there standards for Floo powder? Grades-so that animals would travel slightly differently than wizards? That would be so cool-think of a field trip to the Floo Powder Factory! (I am thinking of HP in a whole new light due to this thread-thanks, all!) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-harry-potter-thread/372162.md?page=6)