Pettigrew & an accomplice

[ftah3]

No: HPFGUIDX 35817

Eloise wrote:
> >The reason why some of us think an accomplice is necessary is that 
Peter's 
> plan >was so unlikely to succeed. If Sirius had kept his head, 

Full stop!  Sirius Black, keep his head?  Firstly, Peter's plan 
(betray, and then frame Black by making it seem Black killed him 
[Peter] too) is a very good one, as plans go, because from what we 
know of both young and old Sirius, he was a headstrong, impulsive 
kind of person, which Peter knows.  So the second part of the plan ~ 
i.e., Black not keeping his head in order to make a good, level-
headed defense of himself ~ could be a likely, if not absolute, 
follow-on.

Eloise again:
> it could have 
> been cleared >up, partially by PI'ing his wand. He knew what Peter 
had done. 
> If he had got word of >it to Dumbledore, he would have had a 
powerful ally on 
> his side. 

1. What was the condition of Sirius and his wand after an explosion 
that leveled buildings and killed nearby Muggles?  All we know is 
that he stood there and laughed when authorities arrived and arrested 
him.  It's possible that he stood there, battered and bloody, with a 
busted wand in his hand, and laughed while the authorities arrested 
him and summarily took him to a doctor under guard.  

2. Presuming Black's wand was in tact, I don't think that a cover-up 
is the only explanation for the fact that no mention is made of the 
PI spell being used as evidence.  We don't know the possible 
restrictions of the PI.  I mean, Black supposedly used a spell that 
made things go 'boom.'  How many spells do that?  The last spell 
Black could have used may have been a spell that a) lit something on 
fire, b) blasted something out of the way, c) used exerted force to 
lift/move/shift/bother/annoy something, d) any number of forcible 
activities.  Can the PI differentiate?  Can it demonstrate amount of 
force?  Maybe.  Can it demostrate intent?  No.

Also, can the PI evoke spells which do nothing more than make things 
go 'boom'?  The spell Crouch Jr. used at the beginning of GoF made an 
image in the sky, so it was fairly obvious to use PI to see if the 
wand would make a ghost of that image.  But if the spell takes no 
physical form, and thus there is no physical thing to 'ghost' out of 
the wand, will PI even work?

Eloise wrote:
> Peter's wand disappears. Fudge *tells* us 
> what is left of Peter: Blood-stained robes and a few fragments. * 
No wand*.

Right: 'fragments.'  If Peter set off the spell, timing it to go off 
as he shrunk himself into his Animagus rat self which would tumble 
down the drain...ground zero of the explosive spell is right where he 
left his blood-stained robes and *wand*.  He couldn't take his wand 
with him as a rat, but the wand couldn't have withstood the 
explosion.  No wand, because the wand went kablooey; and, because no 
wand left to be either PI'd nor spirited away by an accomplice, no 
accomplice is necessary to spirit away the wand or suppress/tinker 
with evidence.  And if a busted wand (a la Ron's) can't do spells 
properly, it's not a stretch for myownself to imagine that they won't 
get much out of the blasted smithereens of a wand using the PI spell.

Mahoney