unlike ‘ordinary’ wizard photos wherein the people are simply animated, portraits can interact with live people (photos also to a limited extent like when moody was telling the original order members in the picture to “move along, move along.”)
in photos, the people depicted are trapped in the photo’s time context. they don’t know they’re going to die, or betray someone, or are doomed in some way. portraits, on the other hand, are fully aware of both past and present.
phineas already explained that one can flit from one’s portrait to another and, flit to a nearby painting (you are bound to your own portait’s proximity to other paintings.) one of the few times when hermoine’s intelligence failed was when she thought dumbledore can emerge from phineas’ #12 grimauld place portrait. she should have brought an existing dumbledore painting with her in book 7 (i’m sure there are those around, dumbledore being what he was.) questions:
am i right in assuming that portraits are fully aware of their past and their post-mortem present?
a wizard portrait implies conscious immortality, doesn’t it?
you’ll like this last question: could the death eaters have taken over just by receiving intructions from a voldemort portrait?
ah, i have yet to start a thread here in SD that doesn’t get some kind of reply. basically what i’m saying is a portrait is a horcrux of some sort. we can safely conclude that a portrait is not rendered by hand but by some auto-enchantment (like dumby’s at hogwarts.) you get rendered only once (at time of death) and you’re the same you in all your paintings, so having 4 portraits in different places means viewers are likely to see you 25% of the time. i like the scenes when snape was alone in the headmaster’s room consulting with the dumbledore portrait. it made me think of a general in his private quarters able to consult with the likes of napoleon, alexander, von runstedt, and jane fonda.
why riddle had to kill and steal just to store fragments of his soul hardly makes sense, unless he’s obsessed with maintaining corporeal presence and doing magic (mainly to kill.) this also puts in question why one would even want to stay alive, and go to lengths just to remain invincible. you had to go on a quest to kill your bitterest enemy, hunt unicorns, procure stones, wands and prophecies. while that may seem like a fascinating purpose to anyone, we know that nicolas flamel can live a boring life for 600 years with hardly any complaint (having the same wife that long is the least plausible thing in the magical world.)
with a portrait, as long as you have one talented follower, that follower can do all of your biddling. you can do that through several generations of followers. hogwarts headmasters obviously do it. no better way to maintain status quo.
last question. if your portait is blasted or torn to shreds by sirius black and there’s no nearby portrait to run to, nor do you have another frame elsewhere, what happens to you?
I’m not completely familiar with the series, but a quick browse on a Harry Potter wiki suggests the portraits are simply a sentient replica of varying accuracy. Presumably a magic portrait will know about “future” events either because the replica is based on the memories of the creator or simply because someone told them.
It makes perfect sense. Creating a magic portrait does not grant you immortality, it creates a new being that knows approximately what you knew, and thinks approximately the same way you thought at the time. From his point of view, it’s no more immortality than handing out “What Would Voldemort Do?” bracelets.
but they’re smart enough to give real advice to headmasters and stay very much uptodate. “don’t worry dumbledore. i have a plan.”
and i think portraits would be more useful at st. mungo’s (no need to keep experts on call,) and at the ministry (no need for marathon meetings. let the portraits brainstorm non-stop.
Who’s to say they don’t have portraits at St Mungo’s or the Ministry? I checked out this page, it mentions at least two portraits in the ministry and one at St Mungo’s. They’re all used when Arthur was attacked by Nagini. Dumbledore asks one portrait to go to a copy at the Ministry to warn everyone, and one to go to the copy at St. Mungo’s to keep him up to date on the situation.
In terms of Voldemort, people followed him because of his power, get rid of all of his magical power, trap him in a painting that can be destroyed by a fireplace, I don’t think his followers are going to be gung ho about putting their asses on the line for his plans.
I thought of the portraits as being quite limited, something of a snapshot of the subject’s thoughts and memories rather than a fully sentient creature. For example, when Snape shares his memories, we see him consulting with Dumbledore’s portrait. The portrait recounts parts of Dumbledore’s plan, but I doubt it would have been capable of formulating a new one. While they can clearly form new memories and react to new events, I suspect they can only do so in light of previous knowledge and experience, instead of being truely able to learn and adapt.
Rowling rightly points out that Sirius’s mother is really useless as an animated painting, but she completely ignores the fact that other paintings (also in Grimmauld Place!) are anything but useless. If I remember the books correctly, Hermione has conversations with the dude that is on the Grimmauld Place portrait that is also in the headmaster’s office. He actually tries to get her to reveal where they are, which is an essential plot point. “dumb” paintings would not have such creativity or purpose.
I guess what I’m saying is that the OP makes a valid observation and the only real answer is “because that’s just not the way it happened.” There are a lot of flaws in HP, this is just one of many. Rowling clearly has tried to cover up the oversight, but I think the oversight is there.
I’ll also go with the answer that a painting simply doesn’t have the same impact as the real thing. Even his devoted followers mainly followed Voldemort out of fear. There isn’t much to fear of a painting that can’t cast spells.
I’ll also agree with the OP that prior to trying to kill the Potters, Voldemort should have had a painting made of himself (a small one would be even better), so that he could better direct his followers to proper steps to resurrect him. In other words, it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Create Horcruxes AND Paintings!
But the portrait is only asking her where she is because someone asked the portrait. It wasn’t Phineas’ own idea.
One thing that it bothered me that it never got followed up on: In whichever-book-it-was where Dumbledore was getting discredited, stripped of his High Mugwump position and so on, he was quoted as saying “I don’t mind, as long as they don’t take me off the Chocolate Frog cards”. Aha, I thought! Here’s someone who demonstrably recognizes the great potential of magical portraits, and has put them to good and creative use in the past. Clearly, he sees some advantage in every school-aged wizard in Britain having a magical portrait of him in their pocket!". But it never went any further than that.
Photographs simply record the scene, its a short film that plays the same sequence over and over. We saw a shot of the goblin bank printed in the wizards’ newspaper, and Sirius Black’s wanted poster. It just shows the same few seconds of action, and every one shows the same thing.
Portraits are semi-intelligent entities, capable of a certain amount of independent thought and action. The portrait may have some of the personality of the original person, but it isn’t the actual person in any sense. I like to think of it as the artist having recorded his own personal impression of the subject’s personality and put it into the picture.
But the first time we see the cards, on the Hogwarts Express in the first book, the subject leaves the card and the in story explanation is that he can only spend so much time in each card. This means that the cards are more like portraits than photos. It also means that you could use the cards to pass messages, just like the portraits.
Post-OotP, there was a very popular theory going around saying that the Order’s secret, secure communication method was the use of Albus Dumbledore Chocolate Frog cards. Rowling later commented that the idea was so brilliant that she wished she’d thought to use it herself.
