VERITASERUM!

[brooksindy]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6746
From: brooksindy
Subject: Re: VERITASERUM!
Reply To: [Yahoo! #6740] VERITASERUM!
Date: 8/12/00 11:17 pm  (ET)

http://www.chicon.org/hugos/nominees.htm

>If the veritaserum was used to validate Barty Crouch Jr.'s confession
couldn't it have given
>validity to Harry's and Dumbledore's testimony to Voldemort's return?

Apparation, Veritaserum, etc. - i fear that JKR depsite her cleverness
has added some things to the wizarding universe without originally
thinking of consequences - and that later required some thinking about
to explain away their potential as deus ex machinas. Like Star Trek, too
many fabulous inventions & technology mean that you have to later invent
restrictions that you didn't explain earlier in order to not have your
earlier neat idea be a cure-all (and where's the plot tension there?) Not
being able to apparate on Hogwarts grounds is almost certainly that,
else why didn't Sirius escape that way? And out in the rest of the world
how do you stop a wizard you are trying to capture from Apparating away
anyway? Almost no visible spell was described that I recall. The only
thing i can think of is that Aurors might carry some item or charm that
distorts spacetime around themselves such that the being they are trying
to apprehend cannot Apparate.
Which might be a bummer if they needed to do so themselves!

For Harry, perhaps the restriction on Veritaserum is that it makes
non-adults very ill; (which would put a whole new aspect in Snape's
therat to use it on Harry); for the wizard trials, perhaps it too is
relatively new.