What was the spell that hit Tonks? (Was: NVBL spell question)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147747

kchuplis wrote:
> 
> It is suggested in OoTP that non-verbal spells might not be as
powerful as verbal ones when it is said that Hermione's injurys from
the battle at the MoM were not as severe as they would have been if
the DE had been able to cast it verbally. Has there been any other
reference to this? I'm assuming then that you certainly couldn't do a
successful AK or crucio spell nonverbally.

Carol responds:
I'm not sure whether it's necessarily the case that a nonverbal spell
is weaker than a verbal one. I think that Snape wants his students to
practice and master nonverbal spells (and notice that the other
teachers have jumped on the bandwagon and are insisting on nonverbal
Charms and Transfiguration spells--surely not intended to provide an
advantage in battle but maybe intended to help the students master the
technique so that it becomes second nature to them. I wonder if Snape
made this suggestion in a faculty meeting and they took him up on it)?

That aside, are we certain that the spell Dolohov cast would have been
more powerful if it had been spoken or is the narrator reflecting
Harry's OOV?

Also, there are a lot of jets of green light flashing around the DoM
during the battle and very few cries of "Avada Kedavra," or at least
very few that get beyond the first word of the curse. One of these
jets of green light (note that they are not blinding flashes and
there's no rushing sound) hits Tonks and she rolls down the steps,
unconscious. She alone of the Order members has to spend time in St.
Mungo's, but she doesn't die. And fans of Amortentia!Tonks or
Polyjuiced!Tonks should take note that she seems very much herself,
pink hair and all, in the last chapter of OoP (after Sirius Black's
death, so it's odd that Harry would attribute her depression to that.)

Granted, most of these green spells miss their targets and damage the
benches, walls, and (in LV's case) the fountain of Magical Brethren,
so we don't see their effects on people. The one that (temporarily)
kills Fawkes is almost certainly an AK, but (IIRC) the narrator labels
only one other silent spell as a "killing curse," and that label could
simply reflect Harry's perspective. He may assume that because the
light is green, the spell must be an AK (despite the fact that Ron's
"Eat slugs!" spell also involved a jet of green light).

It seems to me that if these green spells were all killing curses,
more people would have been killed. Surely they didn't *all* miss
their targets (except for the one that hit Tonks, who was seriously
injured but did not die). Either that or nonverbal AKs aren't
necessarily lethal and kchuplis is right that they're generally weaker
than spoken spells. (Maybe it depends on the individual wizards powers
and abilities, and most of these DEs have only recently escaped from
Azkaban and probably are not in top form. I also wonder where they got
the wands, since theirs must have been broken when they were sent to
prison, but I'm straying off topic as usual.)

Thoughts, anybody?

Carol, who hopes that JKR will tell us what that purple spell Dolohov
used on Hermione was (it doesn't seem to be Sectumsempra or she would
have bled, even from the silent version)