Portkey mystery? - incomplete lexicon information

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 59108

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tom Wall" <thomasmwall at y...> wrote:
> Steve wrote:
> My conclusion is that it is a two  
> stage process. The first stage is
> taking an object and making it 
> capable of being a Portkey. 
> ..edited.... The second stage is 
> programming the Portkey-ready 
> object ...(and) activation of 
> the Portkey, ...
> 

> 
> I, Tom, ask:
> Does this mean that your take on the Third Task is that the 
> Triwizard Cup had been involved with some kind of preparatory stage 
> prior to Crouch!Moody's transport of it to the maze? 
> 
> He admits, under Veritaserum, that he 'turned it into a Portkey' on 
> the way from the Great Hall to the Third Task. 

bboy_mn:

Keep in mind what my goal is, I'm creating a Portkey theory that tries
to explain why Portkeys aren't the preferred method of transportion in
the wizard world. Portkeys certainly have every advantage over all the
other forms of wizard transportation we have hear about. [note: I'm
not giving much weight to the Knight Bus, which is pretty cool. Right
now I'm focusing on transportation controlled by individual wizards.]

Brooms - slow even at 150 mph, windy and cold, and with limited
capacity. (Although, I have solved the capacity problem, but that's
another story.)

Apparation - Mr Weasley tells us that Apparation is dangerous and
difficult, and that many wizards prefer brooms. Why brooms? Certainly
a Portkey has many advantages over a broom. The first and most obvious
is that it can be any object; a watch, your shoes, a hat; common,
convinient, compact, portable, and easily stored objects. If you can
do it, Apparation would certainly be the preferred method, but it has
the additional drawback of not allowing you to transport your whole
family.

Floo Powder - seems to be the preferred method, but it's difficult, or
at least, it seems difficult to me. It appears that you are in the
Floo stream with other people and run the risk of bumping into people
and object; remember, 'keep your elbows tucked in'. It has limited
reliability as Harry found out. It's dirty, it require a fire and/or a
fireplace, you have to be connected to the Floo network, and you have
to keep buying more powered. Certainly Floo is the closest in function
to Portkey, but it is certainly not as convinient, flexible, or easy
to use as a Portkey.

So, to your question, in order for my theory to remain consistent, I
have to subscribe to the popular belief that the Tri-Wizard's Cup was
already a Portkey programmed to take the winner out of the center of
the maze and to it's entrance. That does seem to be Harry's final
destination, the entrance to the maze. I have to believe it is logical
that they would want to get the winner out of the maze right away, so
that he could be awarded his points and if he was the overal winner,
be presented with the trophy and the prize money. It seems an
unreasonable delay to expect everyone to walk back out of the maze. Of
course, there are other options for getting people out like brooms,
but a Portkey Tri-Wizard's Cup seems fast, efficient, and somewhat
dramatic.

Regarding Fake!Moody's comment that he 'turned it into a Portkey',
let's remember that someone under the influence of truth serum doesn't
speak in ABSOLUTE truth. They speak in GENERAL truth. Speech patterns,
figures of speech, common phrases, local speech idioms and regional
dialets, and colloquialism would all come into play. A speaker of
Hip-Hop Blacklish would not suddenly change to speaking perfect Kings
English just because he took truth serum. 

So, I take Fake!Moody's statement to mean that he performed a Portkey
spell on the cup before or as he took it into the maze. That doesn't
make his statement a lie, it makes it generalized truth. The Q & A
under the truth serum is not seeking to find the absolute truth amd
minute details of his enchanting of the Portkey, but is seeking a
broader more general truth about his actions and motivation over the
period of several months.


> 
> To contrast with you a tad, I'd think that the fact that Crouch!
> Moody could perform this spell would indicate that the spell is 
> accessible to a diverse population - ...(snip Barty Jr knowledge of
> portkey spell).... So, if he didn't know how to do this 
> already, he'd have to have some kind of access to this information.
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> So, based on his seeming ease with the procedure, I'd think that 
> it's not too difficult to create a Portkey - maybe it's just that 
> they're less convenient than we think they are, due to their time-
> specific properties.
> 
> -Tom


bboy_mn:
Well, since this is my own personal theory, I get to twist the logic
and properties in anyway that suits me. Anyone can look up the
incantation in a spell book, but as we've seen from examples like the
death curse, and the Partonus charm (as well as many other), it takes
more than words to make a charm work. 

I think the programming spell is somewhat difficult and a little
tedious, so I think it takes an above average wizard (both
intelligence and magic ability) with a degree of ambition and patience
to do it. Let me digress slightly and ask you all how many of your
VCR's are flashing 12:00... 12:00... 12:00...? A lot, I think.
Certainly we can all get out the manual for the VCR and go through the
steps to set it, but how many of us do? I suspect the only people with
their VCR clock set, are the people who regularly record. The rest of
us have plenty of clocks around the house, and don't really care what
the VCR dial says.

Point? I think the programming phase is tedious, boring, diffcult, and
time consuming to the extent that many wizards don't have the patience
to mess with it. It's certainly do-able, but tedious. 

Certainly if you are rich, you can have your servanst constantly
brewing up Portkey-ready object, and have the servants enchant them on
an as needed basis. I also suspect the Crouch Jr coming from a
reasonably well off home, might have take an interest in Portkeys when
he was young because it would give him a degree of independance that
other less fortunate kids wouldn't have. Crouch seems like he could
afford to have others deal with the tedious parts of Portkeys while he
just enjoyed the benefits. I also think that Barty Jr has demonstrated
that he is far above average and a very powerfull wizard. (I've also
solved the time consuming, tedious, boring programming part as well as
other portkey drawbacks, but that again, is another story not suitable
for this forum.)

When I encounter problems like this, I don't ask, 'why doesn't that
work?', I ask, 'what is a reasonably likely way that I can make that
work?'. While I have no truth, absolute or general, to back up what I
say, it seems reasonably likely.

Just a thought.

bboy_mn