Snape’s task (Harry, Moody, Dementors) - Wands

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 15895

Magda suggested:

>The task Snape is sent on at the end of GoF is this: he is to brew up
>a batch of Polyjuice Potion and then transform himself into Harry as
>a decoy for Voldemort.

>No wonder he went pale.

Angela cackled:

>Bwa ha ha! He'd have to be nice to the Gryffindors!

But he'd finally get his day on the Quidditch field!  (Read in a 
Snapelike sneer:) Take that, James Bigshot Potter!

Lynn wrote:

>I believe Moody (aka. Barty Jr., but he was speaking of Moody's own 
past) 
>said he was an old friend of both Snape and L. Malfoy.

I think he was being sarcastic, though Harry & Co. might not pick up 
on the sarcasm about Snape because they don't know at that point that 
he was a DE.  "An old friend" = "one of those people I used to hunt 
down."  The double meaning is that as Moody he's being facetious, 
while as Crouch Jr. he means it literally.  (Well, both Moody and 
Crouch Jr. would hate Snape, for opposite reasons-—Moody because 
Snape was a DE, and Crouch because Snape stopped being one.  
Switching sides makes life very difficult.)

Magda wrote:

> Against this you have to put the Dementors' inability to figure out
> that Sirius Black was transforming into a dog in Azkaban. 

Naama added:

>Not to mention them being fooled by polyjuice transformation - when
>BC Jr. was replaced by his mother in Azkaban.

Good points.  What =do= Dementors sense?  JKR's left it vague enough 
for her to get away with a plot that involves sneaking by them in 
lots of ways we haven't seen yet.

One thing I took from their obliviousness to Sirius's transformations 
and Jr./Mom Crouch's switch is that they are not at all good guards 
in the way we generally expect of a prison guard.  In a Muggle 
prison, every prisoner is supposed to be accounted for by name a 
couple of times a day.  The Dementors don't seem able to identify a 
particular person—they let Crouch Jr. out because he seemed the same 
to them as the person who came in, simply because he was very ill.  
Their methods are so powerful that this little quirk doesn't 
matter...most of the time.

They did know when Sirius escaped, so they must have some kind of 
head count or way of sensing when someone has left the island.  There 
might be human guards to keep track.  I bet that once Sirius's story 
is known, they'll run all future prisoners through an Animagus test.  
(Rita could've escaped easily from a prison that thought bars and 
water were a barrier.  They'd have to put her in a tiny glass cell.)

Tavichan delurked to speculate:

>But magic, in Harry's world, seems to
>depend almost entirely on using wands. Deprive a wizard of their 
wand and they
>lose their power and become no different from a Muggle. Broomsticks 
are
>enchanted to fly-Muggles might be able to fly them just as well as 
wizards. And
>I can only think of one wand-free spell that might not even be one-
Lupin's
>handful of fire in the train scene in PoA. Not only that, but the 
wands
>themselves all contain parts of some magical creature-unicorns, 
dragons,
>phoenixes, etc. How much of the magic is from the wizard-and how 
much from the
>wand?

There are some ways of doing magic that don't seem to involve a 
wand:  divination, potions, Animagus transfigurations (Sirius didn't 
need his wand to transform back and forth in Azkaban).  Some, like 
these, are full-fledged wandless magic, while others, like Harry's 
breaking Marge's wineglass and inflating Marge herself, are the kind 
of uncontrolled magic that JKR recently referred to in the Comic 
Relief chat, I believe it was; she was asked whether you can do magic 
without a wand, and she said yes, but it generally takes a wand to 
focus and control it. 

These cases, plus the background knowledge that there is some kind of 
qualitative difference between wizards and Muggles/Squibs (as seen in 
the case of young wizards who do magic without knowing how, or even 
that it exists, e.g. Harry and Colin), show that it's not all the 
wand—it's partly the witch or wizard.  How much of each?  I wouldn't 
venture to guess, but the magic definitely isn't all in the wand.

Some magical objects do their thing even in the hands of Muggles, 
e.g. the dangerous spouting teapot that caused Arthur's office 
trouble on one occasion (CoS).  It seems likely that not all of them 
do, however.  A Muggle might pick up a wand or a broomstick and have 
nothing whatsoever happen.  A broomstick is different from a wand; 
it's basically just wood that's been charmed.  It might be possible 
to charm it in such a way that it takes magical ability on the user's 
part to activate it; if this is possible, I would think that if the 
Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office would insist on it so that an 
innocent Muggle doesn't pick up a Firebolt and find herself going 150 
mph within 10 seconds . . .

Still hoping I'll pick up an innocent-looking piece of wood one day 
and it'll send out sparks,
Amy Z