Boggarts as Dementors and Moons (Was Boggarts 'n Such)

[ftah3]

No: HPFGUIDX 33027

cindysphynx wrote:
> I think the boggart does have some of the powers of the thing it is 
> impersonating.  The clearest (and maybe only) example is when the 
> boggart dims the lights when Lupin and Harry are learning the 
> Patronus charm:  "The lamps around the classroom flickered and went 
> out."  This was definitely not an illusion:  "He took a bit of the 
> chocolate and watched Lupin extinguishing the lamps that had 
> rekindled with the disappearance of the dementor."
> 
> This suggests to me that the boggart/dementor really did dim the 
> lights in the classroom.  Real dementors seem to have the power to 
> extinguish lights, as the lights on the Hogwarts Express go out 
when 
> the dementors arrive.  I think boggarts really do take on some of 
the 
> characteristics of the thing they are imitating.  
<snip>
> look at the boggart/dementor 
> in the maze in GoF.  Harry first believes it is a dementor, so he 
> conjures a Patronus.  What does the boggart do?  It falls back and 
> retreats, just like a real dementor would.  But Lupin told us that 
> Ridikkulus is the spell for fighting a boggart, not Expecto 
> Patronum.  A boggart shouldn't be bothered at all by a Patronus; it 
> ought to keep right on coming, shouldn't it?  

I have a kind of oddball idea in answer to this.  How do we know that 
the dimming of the lights, and the actions of the boggart in the GoF 
maze, are not expressions of *Harry's* magical abilities, rather than 
of the boggart's?  

If the boggart has abilities outside of the magical power of 
suggestion, I think it would be a much greater force of mayhem; and 
yet we never see that it is any consistently great force other than 
in the fear it can call up in it's victim.  On the other hand, we've 
seen countless examples of Harry unwittingly influencing his 
environment with magic when under duress (the boa constrictor event, 
blowing up Aunt Marge).  And if he already associates his Dementor 
experience with a dimming of interior lights, and in light of his 
intense reaction to reliving the Dementor experience, it wouldn't 
surprise me a bit to find that he himself inadvertently puts a shadow 
over the lighting.  

Similarly, he knows the Dementor in the maze is a boggart, and by 
this time in his development is so utterly unimpressed by them as to 
run right past it.  He automatically uses the Patronus on it, but 
what if mentally he was sort of combining spells ~ voicing the 
Patronus but imagining the thing falling on it's face?  On both 
accounts the boggart acts as Harry expects and thus forces it to act 
~ it retreats, a la real Dementor, and it bumbles foolishly, like a 
Riddikulus'd boggart.

(Alternatively, and to dabble in conspiracy theory, what if the 
boggart-dementor in the maze was someone pulling a Malfoy, on the off 
chance that it would, if not stop, then perhaps slow Harry down? :-P  
All right, all right, I won't Go There any further.)

Just thoughts, anyhow.

Mahoney