State of the DA (was:Fear as a Crime (Re: muggle baiting )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156401

Carol earlier:

<snip> The DA members can cast the spell in the RoR, but they've never
used it against even a Boggart Dementor--and no one but Harry has a
Dementor Boggart, as far as we know.<Snip> 
> 
DA Jones responded:
>   
> Cho said not be a killjoy, but sorry Carol I have to ppint out that
you have canon wrong. According to OOP, only the follwoing DA members
can cast Patronus. 
<snip >

Carol responds:
I'm quite aware that some of the DA members can cast Patronuses *in
the Room of Requirement*, as I indicated in my previous posts,
including the snippet above. Please read my posts more carefully
before telling me that I "have the canon wrong."

My point is that it would be considerably more difficult to conjure a
Patronus when you're facing a Dementor, since as you note in the part
I snipped, conjuring a Patronus requires first concentrating on a
happy memory. The Dementors, if you recall, feed on happiness and will
be busy trying to suck it out of you. So while it's easy enough, under
Harry's tuition, for the DA members to cast the spell in the seeming
safety of the room of Requirement, it would be another matter
altogether to cast one against a real Dementor, or even a Boggart
Dementor.

Harry, as I said, had the advantage of learning to cast a Patronus
against his own Boggart Dementor (so he's really dealing with two Dark
creatures at one time), and though he never managed a corporeal
Patronus during those lessons, he did get in some practice that came
in handy when he faced the real thing. Note that the first time he
tried to cast a Patronus against a real Dementor (or rather, a bunch
of them), he failed. It was only when he saw his time-turned self
casting a corporeal Patronus that he could do it because he'd "already
done it."

The DA members don't have that advantage, nor could they use Harry's
Boggart because a Boggart becomes confused in a room full of people,
and if another person confronted it directly, it would turn into that
person's boggart, as it did for Lupin when he vanished Molly's
Boggart. Also, a Boggart Dementor has powers similar to (though weaker
than) a real Dementor's, and it's unlikely that the DA members would
just rush up to it and cast a Patronus against it even if it didn't
change to some other shape because they'd be feeling cold and
miserable, as Harry did when Lupin first released his Boggart in PoA.
It's hard to come up with a happy memory in those circumstances. Harry
 did it, with practice, but only because he was working with Lupin and
because he was determined to learn to cast a Patronus against real
Dementors, his own worst fear. And even if using Harry's Boggart
Dementor could somehow have worked for the DA members, giving them the
sort of practice he had, the fact is that they only cast the spell in
perfect safety in the RoR, with neither a Boggart nor a Dementor to
interfere with the process. It's a bit like the difference between
hitting a bullseye in target practice and shooting an armed felon
whose attacking you.

So I repeat--being able to cast a corporeal Patronus in the Room of
Requirement when they haven't so much as faced a Boggart Dementor is
no guarantee that the DA members can cast one when faced with a real
Dementor determined to suck out their happiness and just possibly
their souls. Snape, IMO, had good reason to indicate that casting a
Patronus was not the only way, or even the best way, to fight a
Dementor for people other than Harry Potter.

Carol, noting that Harry, despite all his practice against the Boggart
Dementor, is "paralyzed with terror" when a real Dementor forces his
face upward in PoA (Am. ed. 384) and would have had his soul sucked if
it hadn't been for his time-turned self coming to the rescue