Is Harry a Metamorphmagus?

[ginnysthe1]

No: HPFGUIDX 116633


Kim asked:

>... On the other hand, animagus ability (which either requires a 
wand or doesn't -- I confess to being confused about this: didn't 
Peter Pettigrew need a wand to transform himself back into a rat in 
PoA? But McGonagall doesn't need a wand to turn herself into a cat, 
does she? So is it a spell for some and an innate ability for others?)
<

Imamommy responded:

>Methinks we have a case of movie contamination.  The canonical 
reference is this: 

"Pettigrew had dived for Lupin's dropped wand. Ron, unsteady on his 
bandaged leg, fell.  There was a bang, a burst of light--and Ron lay 
motionless on the ground.  Another bang--Crookshanks flew into the 
air and back to the earth in a heap. "Expelliarmus!" Harry yelled, 
pointing his own wand at Pettigrew; Lupin's wand flew high into the 
air and out of sight.  "Stay where you are!" Harry shouted, running 
foreward.  Too late.  Pettigrew had transformed.  Harry saw his bald 
tail whip through the manacle on Ron's outstretched arm and heard a 
scurrying through the grass."  -PoA, Scholastic, p.381.
 
>So no, an animagus does not require a wand to transform, but I 
remember in the film Pettigrew *does* point a wand at his own head 
before transforming.  I hope that helps.<

Here's Kim now:

Thanks for looking that up!  Unfortunately I'd already looked at the 
same passage a while back and didn't interpret it the same way you 
have.  I'd looked it up after seeing that the same scene in the movie 
seemed to contradict what I'd thought was true about self-
transfiguration (in this case animagus ability), i.e. that a 
witch/wizard didn't need a wand to turn her or himself into an 
animal.  What I read in that passage is that Peter had had the wand 
in hand for just long enough to start the process of "rat 
transformation" before Harry's "Expelliarmus!" knocked the wand out 
of his hand.  I realize it doesn't say that explicitly, but I also 
don't think there would have been a bang and burst of light for a 
self-transfiguration spell anyway, so that part is naturally missing 
from what's written.  And the "Too late" implies (to me anyway) that 
Harry had been too late in expelling Lupin's wand away from Peter and 
so Peter'd been able to transform himself back into Scabbers right 
before.  Of course, you could argue that I was trying to make sense 
out of the movie portrayal of that scene, so unconsciously 
was "seeing what I wanted to see" in the book passage.  But I 
honestly don't want to see anything that's not there or doesn't make 
sense (if any of this stuff really makes sense... ;-)).  What I do 
see is that transfiguration, on the one hand, is something that has 
to be taught in a class using wands (isn't that how Peter and the 
other "marauders" learned transfiguration in the first place?  Why do 
you need a wand for the "small stuff" if you don't need it to 
transform yourself?), but on the other hand, it appears at times as 
an innate ability that doesn't require a wand.  So what I'm saying is 
that there seem to be contradictions in JKR's writing about it.  
After all, if it does require a wand, then cats and rats wouldn't be 
able to turn themselves back into people, would they?  But clearly 
they can so they don't need a wand then.  But I also think that JKR 
had a lot of input into scene interpretation in the Azkaban movie and 
isn't likely to have let them stick in the part where Pettigrew wands 
himself if she thought it was flat-out wrong.  But I could be wrong 
about that too.  Nevertheless I'm standing my ground til I see more 
solid evidence, and have no problem with agreeing to disagree!

Kim (who says Pshew! and Sorry! for what appears to be a long-winded 
argument to your succinct response)