Dementors, Peter's killing curse, macchiavellist Slytherins, Snape DE

[joym999 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 22642

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., pigwidgeon37 at y... wrote:
> During the first school week of GoF, there is the incident with 
> Malfoy, who throws a curse at Harry (and subsequently gets turned 
nto 
> a ferret). Harry has his back turned to Malfoy and just 
> feels "something white hot grazing his cheek", because Malfoy 
misses 
> him. [snip]
> Now, imagine Peter standing there, facing Sirius who stands some 
30m 
> away from him, holding his wand behind his back (we know that from 
> PoA). You can't aim very carefully in this situation. So Peter did 
as 
> well as he could, aiming more or less at Sirius, the wand (I think 
> this is logical, because otherwise the curse would have gone up 
> somewhere towards the sky) pointing downwards, and pronounced Avada 
> Kedavra. What happened? The curse went in the direction of the 
person 
> it was aimed at, but as the wand was pointing downwards, the curse, 
> instead of crossing the air and hitting Sirius, went straight into 
> the asphalt, hit a gas pipe, and, being hot, made it explode. Big 
> damage for the 13 Muggles who died, none for Sirius who obviously 
was 
> far enough away. I think that's why Sirius laughed and everybody 
took 
> him for a lunatic: It was a hysteric laugh of despair at the 
> absurdity of the situation. The first time this little twit of a 
> wizard had succeeded in doing a powerful curse by himself, he had 
> bungled it all, killing everybody around but for the person he 
> *wanted* to kill, but nevertheless obtained the result he desired: 
> Sirius wasn't dead, but put into Azkaban without trial and Peter 
was 
> believed dead, would be remebered as a hero and could even hide 
from 
> the remaining DEs.

I dont agree with this theory for these reasons:

1.  There is no evidence that there was a gas explosion.  According 
to Stan (or Ernie, I forget) that was just a story they made up to 
tell the muggles.

2.  While a great heat would cause a gas pipe to burst and create a 
leak, It would take more than heat to create an explosion. There 
would also have to be a spark of some kind.  I guess it is possible 
that PP sent a little fireball towards Sirius which missed, drilled 
thru several feet of asphalt and dirt and metal and then hit a gas 
pipe which then exploded conveniently far away enough from PP that he 
could quickly transform into a rat and scurry away, but it seems 
pretty far-fetched.  And it is hard to believe that hurling a small 
fire at someone is advanced magic, as Hermione can make small fires 
during her first year at Hogwarts.

3.  I think that PP mostly just wanted to wreak havoc and get away, 
hopefully killing Sirius in the process, and intentionally (not 
accidently) created a big explosion without regard for who got hurt, 
the sniveling little rat.

--Joywitch