polyjuice question..

[archeaologee]

No: HPFGUIDX 40034

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Carrie-Ann wrote:
> I was wondering something about Polyjuice potion.  Here's the 
> scenario...
> Person A takes polyjuice with a hair of person B in it.  Now Person 
A 
> has transformed into person B.  Person C comes along, and thinking 
> that person A is really person B makes a polyjuice potion with 
> something from person A (in his transformed state). Now, my 
question 
> is... Who does person C turn in to?  

To stray a little from cannon...

If one assumes that we are dealing with similar ideas to those of 
homeopathic magic (as opposed to sympathetic magic), as is implied by 
the whole taking a hair of the intended person thing, then one has 
two possible ways of looking at it.

Firstly, for non-anthropologists, what is homeopathic magic.  Put 
simply it is using something that belonged to, or was part of, some 
other person (or whatever) to cause an effect on them\it.  By doing 
something to the object one has the power to control some aspect of 
the owner\thing that it is from.  

The principal behind it is that there is a link formed from the 
object\hair that you have to the owner, as the object is imbued with 
some of the spirit (or is still linked to the spirit) of the thing 
you are trying to effect.  

I do realise that that polyjuice does not effect the person you are 
changing into, but I rather believe the idea is still that the hair 
in the polyjuice carries some of the spirit of its original owner and 
so you can become like them (I'm not even sure hair carries DNA so I 
went with a "theory of magic" solution).

If the spirit of the person who you transform into is with you whilst 
you are transformed (as could be argued by the fact you take on their 
physical appearance) then the link formed from person B's hair will 
be to person A (so that is who you transform into).

However, if one assumes that you retain your own spirit during the 
transformation then the homeopathic link will be to person B, 
regardless of their outward appearance.  This would also apply to 
animagi, you would transform into the person, not the animal, no 
matter what they looked like when the hair was obtained.

I rather think that the second scenario is more likely as I tend to 
associate something's "spirit" with their essence, or whatever, and 
not their outward appearance.  This is in no way provable (at least 
with my rubbish memory of the details of the books) but I think the 
idea of homeopathic magic is used by JKR, knowingly or not.  This is 
because it is a later classification\analysis of pre-existing 
concepts of how "natives\primitives" (ooh the ethnocentricity) 
do\understand magic and JKR definitely knows about folk magic and the 
like.

Just realised how lecturey\authoritarian all that sounded, I make no 
claim that this is the only or right way to look at this problem.  I 
just thought it was an interesting angle on the whole thing.  Only 
one person really knows how magic works in the potterverse, and most 
of us can guess who that is.

James (who is vaguely worried that his use of the word "ass" in his 
last post could get him into trouble, and hastens to point out he is 
using it in the English sense - meaning donkey - and not the American 
sense - meaning posterior.  He genuinely does believe Lockheart is 
asinine though)