My biggest question is how Ron managed to learn Parseltongue.
Ok, just finished the books, since 3 people were reading it before me. Ive read through most of the thread. Some thoughts I haven’t noticed yet:
1.
The part where they travel around in the tent, is exactly like Frodos travel into Mordor.
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Harry is in hiding
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The land is barren, and they are low on food
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He carries an artifact around his neck, which he wants to destroy
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He was sent on this quest by a wise old wizard who he saw die
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The artifact has part of the arch-villain in it
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It has a will of its own and spreads ill moods
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This makes Harry split up with his best friend
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His best friend immediately tries to find him again, but can’t, until sometime later
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When the friend finds him again, he saves Harry’s life
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They have an invisibility cloak
Dumbledore told Harry things that he didn’t tell Snape, and Snape knew this. Afterwards, Snape gave Harry occlumency lessons. Why didn’t he just read that part of his mind?
3.
I read the book right after reading Orson Scott Card, which clearly was a mistake. Everybody in the book seems rather stupid. Even when they try to be clever in the escape from Harry’s house. Why are the death eaters so simple-minded, and go after the least protected Harry last, with no second guessing? They didn’t even seem to suspect that Harry himself could be polyjuiced himself. And why should the real Harry even be on the trip? Why not drive him to safety, transformed into Aunt Petunia or something, while the fake Harry’s were fighting in the air.
4.
The house elves can disapperate into non-disapperating zones, and out again, bringing people along?! Why didn’t they just use that ability to fetch all the horcruxes?
5.
Ron: Its the 5th exception to Gamps law of elemental transfiguration
Everybody: Look at the brains on ron!
Come on. “You can’t conjure food.” This must be the most basic knowledge regarding wizardry. I don’t expect everyone to be impressed if I mention Darwins theory of evolution.
6.
Excellent theory.
carnivorousplant:
The minister was under the Imperius curse, not an intentional Volemort supporter. Many others had a pure-blood prejudice which was stoked by orders from above that they didn’t know came from an evil source, and were happy to obey.
mr. jp:
First of all, the Occlumency lessons were before Dumbledore told Harry all that stuff. Secondly, Snape was on Dumbledore’s side all along, and despite his desire for more information, did not wish to disobey the leader he chose. He can control his curiosity.
This one, I can answer …
part a:
It seems like Legilimency only reads surface thoughts, whatever the target is actually thinking about at the moment, with perhaps a bit of compulsion built in to restrain the target from simply blanking his mind. The trick to Occlumency seems to be to be able to, when the Legilimancer asks you about the Order of the Phoenix, to think only about the lies you’ve told him about them, and not even to consider for a moment the facts that you’ve hidden. Tricky, indeed…
part b: At the time of the Occlumency lessons, Harry was not aware that he had been told things that were hidden from Snape; and in fact, he may not have been told many such things at all, as Dumbledore was concerned that Harry’s secrets were vulnerable to being plucked from his brain by Voldemort. That is, after all, why he was taking Occlumency lessons in the first place. Only after Voldemort’s attempted possession of Harry at the battle in the Ministry, when Dumbledore was sure that Voldemort wouldn’t be trying that again, did he start confiding deeper secrets in Harry, specifically his suspicions about Voldemort’s creation of Horcruxes.
This one’s pretty easy. Nobody paid house elves much attention at all, or ever bothered to study what they could do. They seem to be very powerful, but yet subservient. I don’t think, until this book, that folk knew about house elves apparating into protected zones. Besides this, they only knew where one horcrux was, and that one was a fake when they retrieved it.
The trio paid attention to the house elves. And they could have guessed on where the rawenclaw item was outside of hogwarts, and then disapperated to the room of requirement, couldn’t they? Or use it to get the hufflepuff mug. Unless the bank is under extra protection or something.
Yes, you’re right.
OK, compelte wild speculation here, but:
I think house elves are capable or apparating TO a person (ie their master or someone they are strongly linked to, like Dobby is to Harry), but not to someplace they have never been, like the room of requirement or the vault at Gringott’s. Sure, Harry has seen it, but I think “Apparate next to Harry in the Malfoy Mansion” is a little different then “Apparate to a magical room that changes its very existence based on the thoughts of someone outside it…and that I’ve never personally been in before.”
Keep in mind also that beyond simply keeping apparating away, other spells could be set to go off at an unexpeted apparition, like the alarms that went off when the trio popped in by Aberforth’s place. I’d be willing to bet that apparating into the vault would have set off that treasure-trap thingy (that they acidentally set off anyhow), and they would have wanted to avoid that.
He didn’t. He just managed to replicate the sounds. Kind of like singers in a chorus singing a foreign-language song - they don’t actually learn to speak the language, just the meaning of and how to pronounce the words they sing. IIRC Ron only needed to manage one word, ‘Open’.
Hermione says it in the first book: most wizards aren’t taught an ounce of logic.
Apparition is accomplished through the three Ds: Destination, Determination, and Deliberation. You begin by visualizing your destination (“Half-Blood Prince”, Chapter 18). Dobby could Apparate to the Malfoy dungeons to save Harry because he’d been there before.
Obviously, house elves can break those rules in some ways: somehow Dumbledore was able to summon Kreacher to the Dursleys’ house even though Kreacher had never seen it; and Dobby was able to appear at Harry Potter’s house in “Chamber of Secrets” even though there was a Fidelius Charm on the house!
Whether they could have Apparated to the Horcruxes, not even knowing what they were, I dunno.
I would say the rule in question is much more akin to the Third Law of Thermodynamics, one which everybody knows, but which few people can name. Obviously everybody would agree upon the axiom that devices must have a fuel or a power source to run, but they wouldn’t know the name of the principle of physics.
Was there ever a Fidelius charm put on the Dursley’s house? I don’t remember that.
Nope. Consider how many people could see/know it was there. Postmen, milkmen, all the neighbors. I think it would have been unworkable.
The charm on the house was the one Dumbledore invoked to keep enemies from attacking Harry there.
the locket was slytherin’s and was proof that they were slytherin’s decendants. the stone in the ring was proof that they were peverell’s decendants. tommy-baby was the last of the lines from his maternal side.
About half way through the first chapter, I had a really neat thought.
Suppose she set it up so that Voldemort decides to use love against Harry, and takes his muggle family hostage. Amid lots of wizard types saying, “Well, let em go, what the heck.” Harry, because of who he is has to go and try to stop him. Voldemort has everyone locked into combat with this or that death-eater, or trap, or such. It’s just Harry vs Tom, and the Durselys cowering in fear as some huge effect is driven back and forth between the two. Then Dudley cracks, and punches Voldemort in the face! Voldemort cannot just keep his concentration on fighting. Harry wins.
It was just a thought. Not hating Muggles was the real difference between the two.
Tris
[quote]
Apparition is accomplished through the three Ds: Destination, Determination, and Deliberation. You begin by visualizing your destination (“Half-Blood Prince”, Chapter 18). Dobby could Apparate to the Malfoy dungeons to save Harry because he’d been there before.
Obviously, house elves can break those rules in some ways: somehow Dumbledore was able to summon Kreacher to the Dursleys’ house even though Kreacher had never seen it; and Dobby was able to appear at Harry Potter’s house in “Chamber of Secrets” even though there was a Fidelius Charm on the house!
Whether they could have Apparated to the Horcruxes, not even knowing what they were, I dunno.
[quote]
Well, he must have been able to disapperate close to the chamber of secrets. Then they didn’t have to set the whole battle in motion. And I would say there is a good chance he has been inside the bank at one point, though not all the way inside the chamber they needed. But it could still help.
I vote for the extra protection, if anyone is going to be aware of the powers of non wizard races its the goblins. They put their heart and soul into Gringot’s protection (keep in mind that security has only been breached a) when the vault was empty and thus the guard let down and b) when Harry and Co. had inside help) and would have been more likely than the wizards to consider the ‘lowly’ house elf.
I waited until I could check something in my copy of Deathly Hallows before commenting on this–I couldn’t remember exactly what Dobby had been told before he took Luna, Dean, and Ollivander to Shell Cottage.
First off, it seems clear that house elves can transport themselves and others to familiar locations, particularly the place where they are in service. However, when have we seen house elves appear on their own in unfamiliar places?
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When summoned by their masters, or by others empowered to command them. (Harry and Dumbledore summoning Kreacher.)
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On their own initiative, to go to people not their masters, but with whom they have a bond. (Kreacher sought out Bellatrix when Sirius told him to “get out”.)
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On their own initiative, to go to someone they know something about and have made a point of seeking out. (Dobby initially appeared near Harry outside, watching him from the hedge, not in the house.)
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When directed to go to a place where someone they’re familiar with is. (Dobby had no reason to know where Shell Cottage was, and probably had never met Bill, but would likely have seen quite a bit of Fleur–she was in residence at Hogwarts for months, and was in competition with Harry for the Cup. It would have been in character for Dobby to keep an eye on Harry’s opponents.)
It may be that house elf teleportation is keyed more to people than to places, sort of like the owls’ postal powers. If so, then it is unlikely that they could have sent a house elf to either the vault or the Room of Requirement–they had no house elves familiar enough with those locations to reach them without a person to seek out. Only Dobby and Winky were known to be familiar with the Room of Requirement, and it’s unlikely that either had seen the hiding-place version.
Of course, I could be talking a lot of rubbish. Does anyone have counterexamples?
One inconsistency between the written and spoken word of J.K. Rowling.
In the post Deathly Hallows interview
Transcript: (about 30 lines from the bottom)
In the memory sequences of The Prince’s Tale, where the memories flow in chronological order, Snape is shown in Sirius’s bedroom just after the memory of him (mistakenly) taking off George’s ear.
Either their was a mistake (admittedly a minor one), or a pensive session can flow in whatever old order.
I think the house elves can do whatever is neccessary to complete their master’s orders–look at Kreacher’s actions to find Mudungus and Winky’s for Barty Crouch.
What I don’t get is Dobby’s first actions–his coming to warn Harry way back in book 3. Perhaps the Malfoys had never expressly forbidden him (it never occuring to them that a house elf could be disloyal), but to go to the elaborate means that Dobby did to prevent Harry from getting to Hogwarts shows at the very least an independent mind and thinker. I suppose Dobby was all that.
Do we even know what those spells would do? They looked scary, sure, but they seemed to respond to “I didn’t kill you” and then just disappear.
Just a few questions.
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Was it just pure luck that Harry happened to be nearby when Snape died so that he could get Snape’s memories and learn he had to die? Was it also just luck that it was Draco who disarmed Dumbledore, who was then disarmed by Harry, thus giving him ownership of the Elder wand? For a story that seems to be built on internal logic it seems a bit fortuitous that these events happened.
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If Dumbledore had the Elder wand, why couldn’t he defeat Voldemort at the end of OOTP?
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This one’s less important. What would happen if a Dementor attacked Luna? Does she even have any sad thoughts? At least in the movie it seemed she wasn’t that upset about her mother’s death, which would have to be her worst memory.