Boggart powers (WAS: NixTheBewitchingHour, etc.)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 39358

Dicentra wrote:

> Furthermore, the full moon represents a relationship between the
> earth, sun, and moon.  The boggart moon can't replicate this.  So
> that's why the boggart moon doesn't effect a transformation.  

Besides, what Lupin fears the most isn't the moon itself.  The moon 
is just a hunk of rock.  That's really not what scares him.

What Lupin fears is his own lycanthropy, which is *represented* to 
him by the sight of the full moon.  Boggarts are obviously capable
of a rather sophisticated symbolic version of "taking the form of 
ones worst fear."  They can, for example, represent Hermione's fear 
of failure and of disappointing those who have placed both their 
trust and some very high expectations on her by taking the form of 
McGonagall -- who is certainly not *herself* all that frightening to 
Hermione.  (Nor, for that matter, do I really think that what scares 
Neville the most about Snape is really Snape as a person at all.)  
Lupin himself identifies Harry's dementor boggart as the "fear of 
fear."

I don't really believe that the boggarts can simulate the abilities 
or powers of the forms that they take.  If such were the case, then I 
find it *very* difficult to believe that anyone would consider it 
appropriate to teach children how to banish them in a classroom 
setting, particularly only one year after a basilisk had been preying 
on students in that same school.  What if a basilisk had turned out 
to be some kid's personal bogey?  Not at all unlikely, only one year 
after _CoS._   And that would have been good, wouldn't it?  Half of 
the class would have been *dead* before anyone could manage to 
stammer out a "Riddikulus."

Nope.  No, I don't believe that the boggarts work that way at all.  
If they did, then the idea of leaving one hanging around in a 
wardrobe for students to "practice" on would be absolutely *insane.*


> That the boggart Dementor can do dementor things is what seems 
> weird to me.

I don't think that it can, really.  I think that it's all 
psychosomatic.  If Harry hadn't already known from his experience on 
the train what the dementors could do to him, then the boggart 
wouldn't have had at all the same effect.

Hmmm?  What's that you say?  You want to know about the dimming of 
the lights?

Er.  Yes.  Well.  I think *that* is probably a ::coughFLINTcough:: 
manifestation of Harry's spontaneous magic.  He's dimming the lights 
himself through unconscious magic, in precisely the same way that 
Neville is always melting all of those cauldron bottoms in Snape's 
Potions Class.  


-- Elkins (who must regretfully agree with the Pipsqueak that Lupin
does indeed have a few, um, *issues* which make him less than an 
ideal choice as a person to keep around in school full of children, 
but who also feels convinced that after the "forgetting to take his 
potion" incident, Lupin would have resigned on his own accord, even 
if Snape hadn't outed him.)