[HPforGrownups] re:Violence/MoreHP/Fidelius/HBP'sCurses/DD'sWatch/Sneak In/CounterJinx/WhyJoinLV

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 161442

> Magpie wrote in
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/161367>:
>
> << Which having read the books I would agree with. Counter-hexes do
> always basically seem to be hexes that you throw at other people
> rather than, for instance, blocking spells. >>

Catlady:
>
> I completely agree with you about Hermione's non sequitur, but I don't
> agree with you about counter-curses. (I believe that counter-curse,
> counter-hex, counter-jinx are the same. See
> <http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=24>)
>
> One that comes immediately to mind is Fake!Moody teaching the about
> the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra): "Not nice," he said calmly. "Not
> pleasant. And there's no counter-curse. There's no blocking it. Only
> one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front
> of me."
>
> Also in GoF, we have Hermione helping Harry prepare for the Third
> Task: "He was still having trouble with the Shield Charm, though. This
> was supposed to cast a temporary, invisible wall around himself that
> deflected minor curses; Hermione managed to shatter it with a well
> placed Jelly-Legs Jinx. Harry wobbled around the room for ten minutes
> afterwards before she had looked up the counter-jinx."
>
> PS/SS: "At that moment Neville toppled into the common room. How he
> had managed to climb through the portrait hole was anyone's guess,
> because his legs had been stuck together with what they recognized at
> once as the Leg-Locker Curse. He must have had to bunny hop all the
> way up to Gryffindor tower.
>
> Everyone fell over laughing except Hermione, who leapt up and
> performed the countercurse. Neville's legs sprang apart and he got to
> his feet, trembling."
>
> And Quirrelmort's confession: ""No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your
> friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set
> fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with
> you. Another few seconds and I'd have got you off that broom. I'd have
> managed it before then if Snape hadn't been muttering a countercurse,
> trying to save you."
>
> In the latter three examples, the counter-curse removes the effects of
> its specific curse (Jelly-Legs Jinx, Leg-Locker Curse, broomstick
> curse). The broomstick example shows Snape's counter-curse can remove
> the effects of Quirrelmort's curse while that curse is still being
> cast. Presumably if the counter-curse was cast powerfully enough and
> fast enough, it could remove the effects of the curse before they even
> occured, thus serving to *block* the curse entirely. So Fake!Moody's
> "no counter-curse, no way to block it" would be repetition for
> emphasis.

Magpie:

:sigh::  Now, why couldn't you have been the one arguing with Umbridge? 
Because your explanation makes perfect sense, yet it seemed like in OotP 
that counter-hexes were used as things you could throw at people no matter 
what they were doing.  But your description of them here, with the canon 
backup, makes it clear that they aren't hexes at all, but things that 
deactivate hexes.  Learning the spell that counters a specific hex is a 
completely different thing than learning a hex in itself. So the argument 
"he doesn't like hexes" is still a strange follow-up--if you don't like 
hexes, sheilds are a good thing!

I don't know a lot about pacifists in the real world, but I wouldn't imagine 
they'd be against protecting yourself.

-m