Silver or Silvery? (WAS: How Long Will Wormtail's New Hand Last?)

[erisedstraeh2002]

No: HPFGUIDX 42756

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "grey_wolf_c" <greywolf1 at j...> wrote:

> Since Voldemort is at the top with the very best, it's entirely 
> possible that the hand lasts a long time. Then again, it may not 
> have been conjured out of thin air at all: it may be a summon of 
> some sort of ghostly energy. Remember that it's not silver, it's 
> just silvery. So was the bird Dumbledore used to call Hagrid 
> previously in GoF. Whatever that material is, we don't know it's 
> properties or how easy it is to conjure, nor how much it lasts.

Now me:

OK, does this mean Scholastic is playing tricks on me again?  My US 
GoF hardcover edition reads (p. 649, my emphases): "Voldemort raised 
his wand again and whirled it through the air.  A streak of what 
looked like *molten silver* hung shining in the wand's wake."  and 
Wormtail's "breathing harsh and ragged, he raised his head and stared 
in disbelief at the *silver* hand, now attached seamlessly to his 
arm, as through he were wearing a dazzling glove."  Does the UK 
version say "silvery" instead of "silver" here?

My version does concur on the Hagrid-summoning charm (p. 560): 
Dumbledore "raised his wand into the air and pointed it in the 
direction of Hagrid's cabin.  Harry saw *something silvery* dart out 
of it and streak away through the trees like a ghostly bird."

I liked your idea that the hand would need to be re-conjured from 
time to time.  I've heard other listies say that silver kills 
werewolves, so perhaps in a future book we'll see Wormtail raise his 
silver/silvery hand to kill Remus Lupin only to see the hand 
disappear before Wormtail can strike!

This also got me thinking about why Wormtail couldn't just conjure 
(or re-conjure) his own new hand.  It occurred to me that it's 
perhaps because Wormtail doesn't own his own wand.  Wormtail uses 
Voldemort's wand to kill Cedric Diggory in the graveyard, and I can't 
think of any other time when there's a reference to Wormtail using 
his own wand (after he frames Sirius in the street in PoA, that is).

~Phyllis
who is feeling "disruption in" her "comfortable and ordered world" 
(GoF, p. 707) that Scholastic changed "curse" to "murder" in Chapter 
1 of GoF and had her convinced that Crouch Jr. had defied Voldemort's 
orders to murder Moody and, by extension, had her believing that 
Polyjuice Potion would work with the hair of a dead person