Portkeys Explained

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 59154

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Alon van Dam" 
<alanphoenix1 at h...> wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> Since this is the first message I'm writing in this group (yay!), I 
> don't know if what I'm writing has been written before.

Annemehr:
Welcome to the group!
<and now I snip a nice summary of portkey-logic with which I generally 
agree>

Alon continues: 
> The problem I have with the portkey is that it would seem stupid to 
> make the TWC-Portkey a two-way object. If I'd been Harry or Cedric, 
I 
> would take the TWC along with me while exploring (maybe just too 
much 
> roleplaying on my behalf). A possibility I considered is that all 
> portkeys are two-way. However, I seem to remember that at the QWC 
all 
> the used portkeys were just dumped into a large pile, so I don;'t 
> know... Maybe time-activated portkeys also have a timed return-time, 
> whereas touch-activated also have touch-returns... That, or 
> the 'added waypoint'-theorem, or the idea of a safe-catch... Either 
> way, it was quite foolish of Crouch/Moody, Peter, and Voldemort ;)
> 

Annemehr:

I always imagined the TWC to be rather large and heavy; since portkey 
"reentry" seems to be rather sudden and jarring, I'm not surprised 
they would have dropped it.  Right after that, a stranger approaches 
in the dark, unfamiliar place, and they had other things to think 
about, and this explanation satisfies me.  I'm not sure they would 
even think of the portkey as a way *back* since the QWC ones seemed to 
be "dead" after arrival -- a *different* item was programmed for them 
the morning they wanted to go back to Stoatshead Hill.

As for why the Cup transports Harry back to Hogwarts, two 
possibilities have been mulled over during my time on the list.

One says that Dumbledore originally made the Cup a portkey to 
transport the winner to the entrance of the maze, so the audience 
would see who had won.  The idea is that Crouch!Moody merely 
*inserted* a stop at the graveyard, to take Harry there first.  This 
idea is beautifully logical, but two objections make me disbelieve it. 
 For one thing, there is no good reason why Bagman would not have told 
the champions this while he was explaining the task, and secondly, 
Crouch Jr., under the Veritaserum, says that he "turned the cup into a 
portkey," which I take to be literal truth.

The other possibility, which is what I believe, is that Crouch Jr. put 
both stops in for a reason.  There have been discussions as to why he 
did this, and two possible reasons are usually put forth.

The theory I do not believe is that, after killing Harry, Voldemort 
intended to stage an invasion of Hogwarts, and that this surprise 
attack would enable him to kill Dumbledore and some of his allies.  
This seems unlikely to me because I don't think he would atttempt such 
a thing immediately after regaining his body and making the  first 
contact with most of his DE's (the ones not in Azkaban) in about 13 
years.  The perhaps more telling objection is that the TWC, being a 
touch-activated portkey, is a poor tool for transporting a crowd of 
people who would all have to touch it at exactly the same time.

In my opinion, the return trip to Hogwarts was intended to transport 
Harry's dead body to the feet of Albus Dumbledore in a very public 
way, in order to announce Voldemort's triumphant return and victory 
over "the boy who lived."  It would have been a great piece of 
psychological warfare (terrible, yes, but great).

Now, WHILE we're on the subject of portkeys, I'd like to offer a bit 
of possible support to Steve bboy_mn's reasoning that portkeys must be 
difficult to make, since otherwise you'd think they would be used more 
often than Floo Powder.  After all, you need to *buy* Floo powder, you 
need a fireplace on the Floo network at each end, and you get all 
sooty and dizzy -- all disadvantages that a portkey avoids entirely.

A portkey seems to be a kind of variation on apparation, as if it's a 
different application of the same principle of magic.  We know that 
apparation is very difficult and dangerous; what if creating a portkey 
is similarly complex?  My idea is that it is difficult to *learn how* 
to create a reliable portkey, but once you are an expert, it does not 
take much time to actually create one; similarly, if you take a 
portkey that was bungled by an amateur, it may even splinch you!  This 
would help explain the terribly difficult logistics of arranging so 
many portkeys for the QWC, since only a limited number of witches and 
wizards would be qualified to make them -- they would have had to get 
stared very early (but then deliver them all to their assigned places 
close to the time they would be used to avoid their being accidentally 
moved beforehand).  This theory would also help explain why 
Crouch!Moody could turn the TWC into a portkey on his way into the 
maze, since the difficulty involved is one of knowledge and ability, 
not of the time it takes to program one portkey. Barty Crouch Jr. was 
a very powerful and intelligent wizard; even if he did not already 
know how to create portkeys before disguising himself as Moody, I can 
readily believe he was able to learn it during his stay at Hogwarts.  
Although all this is pure speculation, I like it -- what do you 
think, Steve?

Annemehr
who *feels* like she just came up with this idea, but can't rule out 
the possibility she read it months ago and forgot...