The Powers of Metamorphmagi (and Animagi)

[Susan Atherton]

No: HPFGUIDX 72376

I was just re-reading OoP and the posts on Harry being a possible Metamorphmagus, and a question that occurred to me a while ago, but was then forgotten about, has resurfaced in my head.

The way I see it, Tonks can be one of two kinds of shapeshifter:

1. She is a genuine shapeshifter, and can spend long periods of time in, say, the form of the old woman who accompanied Harry to the train station. This is given canonical support by Sirius remaining a dog all the way from Azkaban - if Animagus transformations don't require effort, then is seems to make sense that Metamorphmagus transformations shouldn't either. A Muggle way of doing this would be putting on clothes - once the initial effort of changing your appearance is done, you can then ignore it, it requires no effort to stay looking the same.

2. She is a person who is capable of shapeshifting, and each alteration to her appearance requires a certain portion of her energy focused on maintaining that form - if she loses focus, she will shift back to her base form automatically (which would presumably be the young woman Harry met). An good example of this kind of shifter is Mystique from the X-Men, a metamorph who has to concentrate to maintain her form. There are better examples in the comics, but in the X2 movie, when she is under stress, she starts changing shape very rapidly through different appearances because she is in pain and can't control her gift. The canonical support for this is that when confronted by Dementors, Sirius resorted to being a human again - Dementors obviously counting as a stressful environment. A Muggle way of representing this would be applying makeup, or maybe wearing a hat - you have to keep a little bit of your mind on the fact that it's there, and you mustn't accidentally wipe it off or knock it off.

It's basically, does Tonks really look like what Harry saw her as? Is that how she was born, or is that just an appearance she likes? Her changing her hair so often seems possible evidence of this - after all, if it was really annoying to keep your hair pink when it was more comfy to have it brown, you might just keep it brown. The better way of saying it is: Is Sirius a human who can turn into a dog, or half-human, half-dog? Is it just as comfortable for him to be in his dog form as his human one? Which one feels more right? If Padfoot or The Old Woman were knocked unconscious, would they turn back into Sirius and Tonks because the mental effort is no longer there? Is it a mental projection or is it just a one time shift that doesn't require any attention until you want to shift again?

Obviously there is no real answer to this unless JKR would be so sweet as to write another Comic Relief book for Transfiguration, including the powers and limitations of Animagi and Metamorphmagi, but it's fun to think about. Trying to figure out the limits of Tonks' power could give us clues to why Metamorphmagi have been introduced anyway!

Susan
who could get really complex and start considering if Tonks can replicate a different person identically, or can she only adopt "an old woman" rather than "that old woman there" - but won't.
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