Boggarts 'n' such

[ftah3]

No: HPFGUIDX 33021

blenberry wrote:
> > Yikes, I'm getting all confused about this boggart theory.  It 
seems 
> > odd that Harry would be affected *more* by a dementor that he 
*knows* 
> > is fake (the boggart) than by one he believes is real (Malfoy and 
> > friends).  Is the difference just that the boggart is magical? if 
so, 
> > does that mean boggarts take on the powers of the thing they 
appear 
> > to be?  

I guess my interpretation of the boggart is that the so-called, 
figurative, 'power of suggestion' *is* the boggart's 
power.  

You draw the parallel between the Malfoy dementor and the boggart 
dementor.  Both attempted to use the power of suggestion to unhinge 
Harry.  

I suppose I should inject here that I don't think that the boggart is 
altogether incredibly dangerous.  Most of the kids, when informed of 
the boggarts m.o., deal with it easily; and Lupin gives the 
impression that he could corral it in his sleep.  To my mind, the 
boggart is comparable to, for example, a miniature poodle.  If you're 
scared of dogs and high-strung, that hyperactive, oddly-coutured ball 
of yapping fluff would scare the crap out of you; but once you get 
used to it, it's little more than an annoyance.  (Er, no offense to 
lovers of miniature poodles.  I'm just sayin'.)

So the boggart.  I really think that by focusing mainly on its 
affects 
on Harry and it's lack of effect on Lupin, we ascribe to it much 
more power than it actually has.  

Note that the *only* people who 
cannot handle it well are Harry and Hermione; and they evince a sort 
of extreme 'head-case' quality during their failures.  

Hermione, 
eternally obsessed with getting top grades/marks, completely and 
totally stressed out after a full school year of living more hours 
than naturally occur in a day and having to study doubly hard, 
as well as having spent a great deal of the year on the outs with one 
of her only two friends, *plus* helping Hagrid with the highly 
emotional Buckbeak case ~ in the end, her encounter with the boggart 
is pitiably laughable.  She's had it; she's on her last nerve, and 
imho needing just the right circumstance to cause her to freak out ~ 
so she leaps out of the wardrobe screaming that Prof. McGonnagall 
told her she failed all of her classes.  LOL/poor gal.  Hermione's 
head-case 
moment.

Harry, too, is suffering from head-case syndrome.  I see this less in 
his actual experiences with the Dementor/boggart-dementor, than in 
his musings upon his experiences.  He knows he's reliving the worst, 
most 
frightening moment of his life, a horrible thing to go through...and 
yet he's drawn to it.  He even 
worries about how he will be able to protect himself against the 
Dementors when a part of him *wants* to hear his parents' voices.  He 
has no memory of his parents, and only photographs to know them by; 
hearing their voices, even in the context of 
that nightmare, is the most tangible thing he has of them to that 
point.  So while his survival instinct has him fighting the affect of 
the Dementor/boggart-dementor, another, more complex, instinct 
reaches out for it.

My point is that Harry and Hermione are the only individuals who are 
shown to have real trouble counteracting the boggart's power.  Even 
Neville, generally timid and considered 'nearly a squib,' puts 
Lupin's suggestions and coaching to immediate and successful use 
agains the boggart.  But Harry and Hermione, proven to be strong-
willed and level-headed respectively in the past, fail against the 
boggart.  
Why?  Their frames of mind are weak at the times of the encounters, 
for various reasons.

So going back to the boggart's magic.  To me, the boggart's power is 
the magical equivalent of what Malfoy & co. attempt to do with their 
fake dementor, and of what real world ad campaigns attempt to do to 
consumers on 
a daily basis.  The attempt is to use power of suggestion ~ which is 
in essence a play upon our preconceived notion of a thing ~ to 
illicit a certain reaction.  Malfoy, with his costume, attempts to 
influence the psyche from a distance (without touching/interfering 
with/manipulating the 'actual' psyche).  The boggart's magic, 
however, is an ability to not only cull a physical form, but, at the 
same time as it reaches into the psyche to seek out the appropriate 
form of fear, 
it also manipulates the psyche.  

Notice that my postulation does *not* conclude that the boggart 
actually takes on the magical properties of the thing whose guise it 
takes.  Rather, my postulation is that it calls up an echo ~ the 
sense memory of a real or imagined event (i.e., the reason the person 
fears the image it chooses).  

Just as with non-magical attempts to manipulate the psyche via power 
of suggestion, it's a rather weak, vague power.  Almost like a very 
weak electrical charge in it's basic danger.  On the other hand, to 
the unsuspecting, the unskilled, or those in the grips of a head-case 
moment, it *can* put the whammy on them.

Two more thing I want to address: why does Lupin not transform when 
the boggart becomes the moon; and why do Harry's experiences as a 
result of the boggart-dementor grow in detail/depth.

On the first point:  because Lupin is not unsuspecting, unskilled nor 
a head-case.  He knows what the boggart is, and the very weak 
psychic 'electrical charge' called up by the boggart is far from 
being sufficient to cause the full werewolf transformation.  

On the second point: the boggart tickles sense memory.  Even though 
it doesn't take on the Dementor's actual powers, this is incredibly 
similar the power of the Dementor, which is also to cull from the 
deep 
recesses of the mind one's greatest fears/regrets/etc.  In fact, I 
almost think the boggart could be the sort of low-end form of the 
Dementor.  If the boggart is the weak electrical charge, the Dementor 
is the electrical storm.  So the fact that Harry's experience grows 
in depth under the influence of the boggart simply comes from a 
combination of the boggart jogging a memory that deep down Harry 
wants to plumb.  As the Dementor demonstrates, Harry *does* have 
memory of his parents voices, especially in relation to that tragic 
event in his life.  So it's really no surprise that the boggart's 
influence not 
only causes him to relive the real Dementor experience, but also 
opens the door to additional memories.

<pause>  Does any of that make sense?  Hopefully?  Or am I completely 
cracked and babbling senselessly?

Mahoney