The immensely complex Homorphus Charm

[jmgarciaiii]

No: HPFGUIDX 94041

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "davewitley" 
<dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:

> 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.

If that were the case, I would have assumed that *someone* would 
have said, WRT Lupin: "Hey, what about the immensely complex 
Homorphus charm?" "Nahh. It's no use, really."

> 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.

I'm on the fence here. I think Lockhart the type that would make 
such a rash claim (false claims being 2nd nature to him) without 
thinking of the consequences. After all, he did try to mend HP's 
broken arm and when that backfired and HP's arm was left boneless, 
he said (I paraphrase) "Ah. Well. That can sometimes happen." And 
there was some grumbling from Madam Pomfrey but nothing else befell 
him.
 
> 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.

Correct. It is entirely possible the werewolf could have remained 
wolf-brained and human-bodied. I don't know--nor is canon any help 
either way--which is which.

>  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.

Well, GL mentions the glory of the tale as coming from the 
villagers, who were relieved to be free of their monthly terror, not 
from the werewolf who was relieved from the distress of That Time Of 
The (Lunar) Month.

> 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.

I don't know why that would be. Mind you, I'm not saying it is NOT 
true, but I don't think that "probably" is the adverb of choice. GL 
did say the villagers, etc. from their monthly terror, which implies 
(w. GL it seems everything must be taken with a pound of salt) the 
problem--whatever the solution may have been: Homorphus, 
incarceration, whatever--was non-recurring.
 
> Of course, if Voldemort turns out to have a tame werewolf that he 
> can use to frame Lupin, then Homorphus may become relevant.

I think it might become relevant without that! :-)

-Joe in SoFla