[HPforGrownups] Re: "It wuz Snape" / That Fateful Night

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

No: HPFGUIDX 42334

At 9:16 PM -0400 8/6/02, Ian Malone wrote:
>
>A. Why did the Potter's house collapse? It has been established that AK
>cannot blow a house to pieces.

Yes, but this AK did something no other recorded AK had ever done 
before - it ricocheted off of the intended victim and discorporated 
the caster.  If even a small ammount of Voldemort's mass was 
converted to energy in the discorporation, that would be sufficient 
to bring the house down.  Presumably whatever protected baby!Harry 
from the Avada Kedavra in the first place also protected him from the 
aftereffects, other than the curse scar itself.

Much as I like "It wuz Snape," it seems to me that wizards have 
investigative tools to find out what happened that are far better 
than Muggle ones.  They could certainly Prior Incantato both James 
and Lily's wands; perhaps they could cast the speaking-mirror 
enchantment on whatever fragments of mirror were left and ask them 
what they saw (or, if James and Lily weren't entirely living as 
Muggles in the privacy of their home, the mirrors might already have 
the enchantment).  I would suspect that they have an investigative 
spell that acts like psychometry - perhaps it's part of the 
Divination curriculum - but as it's a Yellow Flag, I don't think we 
*need* it.


At 7:50 PM +0000 8/7/02, grey_wolf_c wrote:
>Where does it say that Voldermort has no soul? Right there in that
>quote you gracefully included (thanks for not making me translate it!),
>but it's just a matter of interpretation. I've always understood that
>"Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die" meant that he had
>become so totally evil that his soul had been tarnished to the point he
>could not be considered a human being anymore.

Hmm.  I've always interpreted that precisely the opposite way: his 
dark magics and dabblings in Things Wizards Were Not Meant To Dabble 
In had irrevocably changed and twisted his body, and only the 
obsidian spark of his soul still connected him to his humanity.  This 
might be why he pays so little attention to what his old body 
consisted of when he brews up his new one, omitting the 
bone/blood/flesh of his mother - there wasn't much of that left in 
his previous one, anyhow.

-- 
  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles at earthlink.net
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