silver, Transfiguration,

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Carol wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/29064 :

<< What about true silver? Wormtail's silver hand appears to be
permanent (and very strong, given the twig that he crushes to powder
when he first receives it). And yet it seems to be conjured out of
thin air. >>

I assumed Wormtail's new hand was made of solidified magic, not of a
mere material. Aren't there any other descriptions in canon of magic
looking 'silvery'? Which is not *exactly* the same as looking silver,
because highly polished silver's color looks more white than anything
else and its shine is almost garish, while 'silvery' (especially when
describing magic) has color qualities of twilight and non-garish shine
of moonlight -- a Full Moon bright enough to read (very large print)
by is not garish.

<< And if it's true silver, might it be lethal to a werewolf? (I'm
thinking of Fenrir Greyback, if he's at large or escapes from Azkaban,
not Remus Lupin.) >>

I have seen nothing in canon indicating that silver is dangerous to
Potterverse werewolves. It's not in FANTASTIC BEASTS, not in Book 3's
DADA lesson, not in Book 5's DADA OWL (Pensieve) conversation.

<< If Scabbers hadn't really been Pettigrew in PoA, he would have
remained Scabbers when Lupin and Black cast their spell to transform
him. >>

I feel that the spell the Remus and Sirius cast on Scabbers was NOT a
transfiguration from animal to human, but rather a reversal of human
to animal transformation magic. It MIGHT have been Finite Incantatum
and it MIGHT have been Revelio Specialis, but I prefer to believe it
was the Homorphus Charm, which I believe causes a human magically
transformed into something else to temporarily regain human form.

Someone lent me the (sixth year) Ostendo spell for a fanfic, of which
I wrote: "there was a very complicated Charm that they'd been studying
in Flitwick's class for two weeks already.  Among its variations, it
could reveal both magically and naturally invisible objects, detect
Curses, detect disguises, find hidden objects, and one version, named
Homorphus, could force a Transfigured human or an Animagus to
transform momentarily back into his or her real human form."

Dumbledad wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/29071 :

<< I also have the word "palimpsest" in my notes for this section but
I cannot remember why! >>

Well, that SEEMS fairly obvious. As you know, parchment was so
expensive for medieval people that they scraped off the surface layer
with its old writing in order to write something new. Remains (or
ghosts) of the old writing can still be read under the new writing
(especially with uv light, scanning electromicroscopes, and digital
photo analysis) and are called 'palimpsests'. Pullman must have been
saying that even tho' a person tries hard to scrape off the system
they grew up believing in, in order to write with no system, traces of
the old system will remain.