CHAPDISC: HBP24, Sectumsempra

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161238

Zgirnius wrote:
> >The songlike chant for a 
> > healing spell makes some sense because of the association of 
> > phoenixes with healing. 
> 
a_svirn countered:
> I don't think so. The songlike quality was due to the fact that
Snape *chanted* (that is intoned the incantation in certain rhythm)
rather than pronounced it normally. Fawkes, on the other hand, sings
without words.
>
Carol responds:
But what I was wondering when I wrote the question is why the spell
requires a chantlike countercurse rather than a single word or phrase
(contrast Levicorpus/Liberacorpus). Clearly "Finite Incantatem" would
not counter Sectumsempra or Snape would have used it, and even
Levicorpus requires its own countercurse. Perhaps Sectumsempra
requires a stronger, more complex countercurse simply because it's a
stronger, more complex spell than Levicorpus, not to mention Darker
magic, but when have we seen anything resembling this chantlike spell
in a language Harry doesn't understand (perhaps Latin, perhaps not)? 

Possibly, Snape discovered through experiments (presumably not on his
schoolmates or he'd have been expelled) that no simple, one-word
countercurse could undo the effects of Sectumsempra and searched the
records for some ancient healing spell that could counter it, a spell
that he alone of modern wizards has memorized. Or perhaps he sat down
and invented that complex, chanted countercurse based on what ancient
wizards had done to counter similar Dark spells. Wither way, the spell
is unusually complex, it's songlike, it's powerfully magical, and its
magic is that of healing, not destruction.

What does it tell us about Snape that he would invent or seek out such
a spell? Snape seems almost motherly, but also very powerful, as he
sings it.

Carol, who was reminded of Gregorian chant when she read the
description of the countercurse