Boggart powers (WAS: NixTheBewitchingHour, etc.)

[bluesqueak]

No: HPFGUIDX 39361

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "ssk7882" <skelkins at a...> wrote:

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

Elkins replied:
> 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.  
> 

I'm not sure Harry is actually dimming the lights himself; or indeed 
that the lights are dimming at all. Following on from 
the 'psychosomatic' thought...

 The Boggart seems to have the ability to reach into people's minds 
and tap into their darkest fears, taking on the appearance of those 
fears. In which case the dimming of the lights and the cold are all 
part of the Boggart's powers of illusion. 

Harry 'thinks' they rekindle after each Boggart attack; suppose the 
reason they are alight after each attack is that they never really 
went out? The cold would also be a power of illusion - the Boggart 
senses that Harry associates Dementors with cold, so you get 
a 'sense' of cold.

This would be why a Boggart is 'safe' enough to use in teaching a 
third-year class - the worst it can do is scare you to death.

> 
> -- 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.)

Pip (who agrees with Elkins that Lupin would have resigned anyway, 
but notes that while Snape is almost as good as Dumbledore at second 
chances he's probably not trusting enough to give people a third.) 
Squeak!