[HPforGrownups] Re: Who Trusts Snape?! (OofP spoilers)

[Kathryn Cawte]

No: HPFGUIDX 67138

 
 
TK said -
I have no canon to back this up, but the Maurader's Map can't be that 
new and inventive a bit of magic. If it is, then those 4 guys (MWPP) 
had *way* too much time on their hands, back then. In addition to 
their OWLs, NEWTs, lessons, quidditch, mapping the secret passages, 
nicking snitches, sneaking off campus to hang out with the 
lycanthrope, tormenting Snape (full time job), chicks, and secretly 
studying the necessary spells to become animagi, how could they have 
had time to do original research to such a degree that they created a 
novel method of keeping track of everyone (known and unknown, actual 
identities, not fooled by polyjuice potion or animagi disguises) 
within certain confines? Unlikely. That's beyond the scope of those 
crazy science guys in high school who wound 100 miles of copper wire 
around football field goal posts on weekends to make a cyclotron for 
physics experiments. That's graduate school-level research, so the MM 
is probably not a unique magical item. They did have to make it, I 
would imagine, but they probably found the spells in books like 
Hermione found the recipe for Polyjuice Potion. 


Me -

Actually I tend to think it was a combination of new and existing magic. I
think all the component element for the spells probably already existed in
books and such but had never been combined like that before. It wouldn't
even take a genius to suddenly say hey if we add these spells together look
what we get, it just takes a bit of lateral thinking. I liken it to many
muggle inventions which when they are invented people say - well that's
really simple why didn't anyone ever think of that before? There were
probably spells for seeing through Polyjuice potion, spells for tracking
people, spells for talling if an animal is actually an animagus etc but they
d never been combined like that before.

After all most people would probably rather rely on keeping unknowns out for
a security system rather than tracking them when they were there etc etc.

K