The immensely complex Homorphus Charm

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 94034

Joe wrote:

> The following scenarios suggest themselves:
> 
> 1- Lockhart made up the whole thing.
> 2- Some poor wizard (or witch) actually managed the HC, Lockhart 
> smacked him (or her) with a memory charm and stole the credit.
> 2a- Lockhart will recover his memory (how he manages this feat is 
> subject for another post on another day) and tell who was the 
person 
> who DID manage the HC, who will then have his (or her) memory 
> restored.
> 2b- Lockhart stays a babbling idiot and the secret is lost forever
> 3- Someone (Hermione?) remembers Lockhart talking/writing about 
the 
> HC and reconstructs it. (There is ample evidence in the canon for 
> people not having noticed something before. The Sirius Mirror is 
> onesuch example. I just hope it's not too late for Lupin.)

There are other possibilities.  It may well be that the Homorphus 
Charm exists as described by Lockhart and is well-known to wizards 
(like Animagus or Secret-Keeping), but is of no use to Lupin.  It 
would suit Lockhart's publicity-seeking to claim credit for a known 
difficult spell: to claim credit for curing a hitherto incurable 
condition might result in too much eager attention from St Mungo's 
and a subsequent exposure that memory charms alone could not redress.

What Lockhart describes is the forcible transformation of a werewolf 
from wolf form into human form, which may well not be a cure for 
lycanthropy.  Presumably the issue for the villagers of Wagga Wagga 
was that they did not know which of their number was the werewolf.  
What the wizard with the hare lip (or whoever it was) did was to 
unmask the person.  What followed may have been incarceration, 
expulsion, or lynching, any of which might have 'solved' the problem 
from the villagers' point of view.  If the person survived, quite 
probably they transformed to wolf form as normal at the next full 
moon - or even ten minutes after the Charm was performed.

Of course, if Voldemort turns out to have a tame werewolf that he 
can use to frame Lupin, then Homorphus may become relevant.

David, who thought Wagga Wagga was a largeish town