Apparating/Disapparating, Portkeys & Phoenix

[Grey Wolf]

No: HPFGUIDX 110450

karenlyall666 wrote:
> Can someone please help me understand how Dumbledore's original 
> arrival in Private Drive was silent, when all other cases of 
> apparition/disapparition is heralded by a noise?
> 
> UK PS PB p12
> " A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so 
> suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out of the 
> ground."
> 
> UK GOF PB p114
> "..., he disapparated with a small pop."
> 
> And although I don't have OOTP to hand I recall all instances of 
> Mundungus or the Weasley twins apparating/disapparating to be 
> heralded by a resounding crack.
> 
> Any ideas anyone
> 
> Karenlyall666

Someone else mentioned that it is related to the power of the wizard - 
I don't quite agree with that. I think it just comes down to regular 
ability. After all, disapparating involves moving your body suddenly 
out of a place and into another. When you suddenly remove a mass from a 
physical space, a lot of air runs to fill the sudden emptiness, causing 
a noise. This is probably coupled with the magic effect itself - magic 
traditionally likes to announce its presence with bangs and cracks. And 
then there is the teenager tendency to be loud and shout "look at me!" 
with every action.

All this leads to the idea that, as an apparating wizard gets older, 
he'll tend to become better at apparating and keep the noise down, out 
of practice. Going back to the driving parallel (present even in the 
books), when you first start driving, you tend to do unnecesary 
accelerations, making a huge amount of extra, unnecesary noise (at 
least with geared cars - not sure in automatic). As you get better, 
your driving becomes more calm and efficient.

In magical terms, it means that as you get better at what is reportedly 
an extremally difficult and dangerous spell, you start worrying less 
about splinching, cast it more on automatic and can concentrate on 
being less loud - maybe taking slightly longer (milliseconds instead of 
instantanous) to cast, so that you ease the air in and out, reduce the 
magic output so that it doesn't make as much noise, etc.

Dumbledore has been doing that for over 100 years, so he's got good at 
it. Mundungus strikes me as a remarkadly incompetent wizard, so he's 
loud (although he's probably useful for the Order in other ways - but 
that is a matter for another post). Of course, in general, the more 
powerful wizards will tend to be quieter, but that is usually because 
the powerful wizards have been practising magic. I think it is quite 
possible that Harry will learn apparating in book 6 (he has a knack for 
learning spells before he's legally able to, just like his father), and 
we'll be able to test this hypothesis - Harry is extremelly powerful, 
as we know, but has very little experience, and I postulate that his 
first attempts at apparating will be loud (and given his history, will 
attract the attention of Filch or Snape :D ).

Sherry said:
<snip>
> So if we go under the assumption that Dumbledoor is using the 
> Thestrals for long trips from Hogwarts then apparantly Apparating is 
> happening on Hogwarts grounds.
> sherry

Actually, no. Apparitioning can be done from outside Hogwarts (I assume 
outside enough that anyone apparating with evil intentions like, say, 
Voldemort would have a hard time storming the school). Remember long 
distance apparating is dangerous, which is why even Dumbledore seems to 
prefer other methods.

Brenda added:
> I mean 
> you can't Apparate and Disapparate from Hogwarts ground, but you can 
> use the Portkey to get there? Remember at the end of OoP, Dumblydore 
> sends Harry back to Hogwarts with a Portkey. From Fudge's reaction 
> I'll say creating portkeys is carefully monitored and somewhat 
> illegal. BUT if it can be done, then why bother with all the anti-
> Apparation protection? Portkeys will easily transport you to 
> Hogwarts just the same.
> 
> Unless 'You can't Apparate from Hogwarts!' is another one of 'You-
> Know-Who' thing. A means to discourage people from doing it.
> 
> Brenda

As Steve already pointed out, Dumbledore seems the only one that can 
create portkeys *to* Hogwarts - maybe you need some kind of magical 
password (assuming you believe that the cup was a portkey to take you 
out of the maze, which I've always felt was a safe assumption).

Recently, however, I came with another possibility rather than the 
password idea: creating a portkey might require some kind of physical 
component - a piece of the place you want to go to. If this was the 
case, Dumbledore would have access to such components for Hogwarts, and 
Voldemort (and thus Crouch Jr) would have the component for the 
graveyard. The weak point of this is, of course, that such a component 
would necesarily be difficult to find, otherwise everyone and their 
little cousin could use one of their old Hogwart souvenirs to pop back 
into the school whenever they wanted - even Voldemort could use his old 
books to pop back.


tonks_op mentioned:
> I have been wondering about that. If you can't apparate into 
> Hogwarts or disapparate out..  How did Dumbledore get out of 
> Hogwarts when he was in his office and about to be taken by Fudge 
> and the other MoM people in the 5th book. He grabbed Fawke's tail 
> and .. was gone. How? 
> 
> tonks_op

More and more magical creatures seem to be outside many of those rules. 
We know that house elves can apparate within Hogwarts and in fact do so 
regularly. We also had a previous clue to Fawke's abilities in CoS when 
he appeared *immediately* when Harry defended Dumbledore's honour in 
the chamber. Interestingly enough, he flew them out later through the 
pipes, but maybe they were simply too many to safely disapparate them 
(he was carrying four people there at the end, plus sword and hat).

And of course, while it is quite clear that you can't apparate in or 
out of Hogwarts, that doesn't really rule out apparating *within* 
hogwarts - Dumbledore could've simply gone to another room in the 
castle. I find unlikely this possibility, though - I think it is rather 
more probable that some magical creatures like elves or phoenixes can 
apparate where humans cannot (maybe simply because the anti-apparition 
charmed were set only against humans, old wizards not being 
particularly known for their tendency to think of non-human races as 
viable oponents - IIRC, the protection spells are mentioned in 
Hogwarts: a History, so they probably predate Dumbledore).

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf, who might or might not be back