Question about Harry's scar

[abigailnus]

No: HPFGUIDX 53923

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "grace701" <grace701 at y...> wrote:
> I was thinking of how Voldemort used the Killing Curse to try to 
> kill Harry.  If I'm not mistaken, in order for you to kill someone, 
> your wand must be pointed at their heart.  

Am I right when I assume that you base that presumption on the fact that Harry pointed his wand at Sirius's heart in the Shrieking Shack?  Because I don't think we can read too much into that.  For one thing, Harry doesn't even know about Avada Kedavra at that point.  Every so often, someone asks how exactly Harry was going to kill Sirius, and then there's a race to see who can find the most malicious application of a common spell (Accio his heart, levitate him out the window and let go, etc.), but AK wasn't an option.  I think it's rather obvious in the SS scene that Harry has no idea what he's doing.  He's angry as hell, and he knows he wants to kill Sirius, but he hasn't given any thought to how he's going to accomplish it, and he's stopped before he can puzzle it out.  

Pointing his wand at Sirius's heart is, I think, a dramatic flourish on Harry's part, and not required for the spell to succeed.  In fact, I can think of no spell that requires such specific targeting.  Obviously, if you want to levitate an object, it helps to point your wand in its general direction, and we know that spells can miss their target, but none of the dueling spells that we've seen require that you target a specific portion of the body.  Harry has never seen AK performed (or rather, he can't properly remember the first time he saw it and his eyes were closed the second time it was performed in his presence) but he has witnessed the other two Unforgivables, and they don't require a specific target.  So all told, I don't think AK needs to hit the heart to work.  

Abigail