Accidental Harrycrux with a Bloodsucking Snake (long)

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 155213

 
> Pippin:
> As you say, there are all sorts of other things JKR uses to show
> that Dumbledore considers Harry more important and don't set
> up a Chekhov's gun. Mentioning the possibility of such an
> order creates the expectation that it will be given. The order 
wasn't
> given to Harry, and the only other person under his command that
> Dumbledore spoke to before he died was Snape.
> 

Neri:
Maybe, maybe not. It's an assumption anyway. But what I still fail to 
understand is how is Snape any better morally if he "just" blasted a 
helpless man of the highest tower in Hogwarts and left him to die a 
long and painful death, running away when he was the only person who 
still had a chance to save him. 

 
> Pippin:
> Hagrid tells the kids  to send up green sparks if they find the 
unicorn. 

Neri:
Sparks, not a jet of light. It is not a curse and we have no reason 
to think that it blasts people in the air.


> Pippin:
> I've established there are other ways to produce green light.
> As you said, there are all kinds of spells that will produce the
> effect of blasting someone up into the air especially when cast by
> a powerful wizard. However, AK isn't one of them.
> 

Neri:
If AK indeed never blasts the victim, then the DEs on the tower would 
know that (who'd know it better than somebody who uses AK on people 
all the time?). So they'd know that Snape's green light on the tower 
wasn't really an AK. 


> Pippin:
> Voldemort's AK has to be the most powerful one there is. However
> when Fawkes swallows it in OOP, he bursts into flame and falls,
> right in front of Dumbledore. If he'd been blasted backward,
> he'd have set Dumbledore on fire. 
>
> When AK hits an inanimate object it produces a blast, which is 
probably 
> why the rebounding AK blew the Godric's Hollow house to pieces. 
> But Dumbledore already dead when the AK hit him doesn't help your 
> argument <g>.

Neri:
As you say, there's a lot of unexplained variation in the AK cases 
we've seen until now, including sometimes blasting inanimate objects, 
suggesting that it could blast people too, just like any other curse 
in the Potterverse that usually doesn't blast people but occasionally 
do. We were never told that AK doesn't blast people. However, we 
*were* told that no person had ever survived an AK except for Harry. 
This implies that there isn't such a thing as "half power AK" or "15% 
power AK". If there were, then there would have been many survivors 
of 15% AKs around, and people wouldn't have said that Harry is the 
only one who survived. They would have assumed that for some reason 
Voldemort didn't manage to produce a 100% AK. The whole concept of a 
curse with no protection against is at odds with a "half power AK". 
The likely explanation is that a failed AK doesn't produce a green 
light and doesn't blast people *or* inanimate objects. It may give 
people as much as a nosebleed, but I doubt it.  


> Pippin:
> It's weird that Dumbledore would strike the ground with enough force
> to knock a locket out of his pocket and open it, but not enough to
> knock his glasses off or break them.

Neri:
Not at all. If a man lands on his back, as Dumbledore seemed to, then 
the resulting inertia would push his glasses in the down direction, 
IOW in the direction of his face. It would push the locket in the 
same direction, but if it was in a side pocket with an opening facing 
backwards, it's seems reasonable that it would fall out.

If Dumbledore landed softly, then why is he described as "broken" 
with arms and legs spread wide in unnatural angles?


> Pippin:
In PoA, Harry's friends remark
> on the fact that his fall didn't break his glasses. Of course we 
soon
> find out it's because Dumbledore arranged a soft landing. 
> 

Neri:
I still don't understand how Dumbledore arrested his own fall without 
his wand.


> Pippin:
> I'd say DD knew the locket was phony as soon as he'd got it out of 
the
> basin. Harry knew it was wrong as soon as he picked it up. 
Dumbledore
> was certainly not less observant than Harry. I think DD opened the 
locket 
> when he knew he was dying in order to make sure any curse that was 
on it 
> struck him and not the next person to find it. I don't think he was 
expecting
> the note. He probably thought Voldemort had left the false locket 
as a
> trap.

Neri:
Then why did he leave it on the ground for anybody to pick up?


 > 
> Pippin:
> Other people do have a problem with it, though. I can remember it
> being hashed out on the List. Your explanation is reasonable but 
it's
> not the only possible one.  In any case, JKR does have to revisit
>  the third part of the UV, because Harry doesn't know about it. It's
> another shoe waiting to drop. 
> 

Neri:
Harry is already convinced that Snape killed Dumbledore, so it won't 
be much of a shoe drop that Snape took a UV to do it.

I agree that JKR still has to explain Snape's motives in taking the 
UV, but she doesn't have to explain its mechanism, unless it's 
relevant to Snape's motive. If it's not relevant then her explanation 
so far would be sufficient. 

However, I think that springing a Snape surprise on us based on some 
loophole in the UV mechanism would probably be poor plotting. If JKR 
wants to play with loopholes then she first owes us a good 
description of the mechanism. But if her description of the mechanism 
has much more holes than loop in it, then finding a loophole isn't a 
very exciting game. This is why I predict that any Snape surprise 
we're going to get in Book 7 won't be based on a UV loophole. 

Neri