Polyjuice

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 179538

Sharon Hayes wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179369>:

<< If someone takes polyjuice and transforms into another person,
they retain their own mind. That is, they are in another body but
their personality is still *theirs*. Is that all they retain? if so,
how does that work? To me that means they must also retain their own
brain, since mind comes from brain. >>

In Potterverse magic, the mind exists as itself, not as a mere product
of the brain. We see ghosts clearly still have their minds even though
their brain turned to dust or ashes centuries ago. Part of Animagus
magic is that the Animagi keep their own minds while their brains have
temporarily changed into an animal brain. (Do I have to quote canon
from QTTA that a wizard Transfigured into a bat will have only a bat's
mind and not remember to where he wanted to fly, so only the rare bat
Animagus will be able to use animal form to fly on purpose?)

<< On the subject of polyjuice, do the internal organs transform as
well? So, for example, when the 7 friends transform into Harry's
doppelgangers, do they retain their own internal organs and
characteristics? Is it just the external appearance that is changed?
(snip) 
Also on the subject of the doppelgangers, Hermione and Fleur are the
only girls to transform into Harry. JKR makes no mention of how weird
that must have been. Sorry if this seems trivial but to go from having
female "bits" to suddenly having male "bits" must feel awfully odd.
Neither Hermione nor Fleur bat an eyelid at the change, 
(snip) 
Hermione and Fleur would also have been much smaller than Harry (one
assumes?) and no mention is made about them busting out of their bras
or clothes. Is Hermione sans bra already and does she have jocks or
boxers on already -- I can't imagine Fred and George watching them
stripping off and seeing Hermione/Harry or Fleur/Harry in pink lacey
knickers and not making some comment! Seriously. >>

Last to first -- back in CoS, Rowling showed that Harry and Ron got
larger and burst out of their clothes when Polyjuicing into Crabbe and
Goyle, a situation in which gender (sorry, Carol) was not involved.
Presumably all the doppelgangers who started out smaller than Harry
prepared by arriving wearing Harry-sized undershirts and underpants.
So their underwear would be big enough and not girly. 

(I believe we have canon that wizarding undershirts for Harry's
generation are t-shirts, but I recall no canon about wizarding
underpants except that Old Archie's generation didn't wear them. I
imagine the older generations wearing under-robes as underwear, while
Harry's parents' generation had undergone a fashion change to wearing
chemises and drawers as underwear (those words can have a lot of
meanings: I mean chemises are pullover blouses with drawstrings at
neck and wrist, and drawers are knee-length pants with drawstrings at
waist and knee. I think I need a costume historian to tell me how the
flies worked.) I'm not sure which side of the fashion change Arthur
and Molly were on. 

To me, there was another fashion change, around Bill's time, that
included wearing t-shirts and boxers instead of chemises and drawers,
as well as wearing jeans, trainers, and other Muggle outerwear. To me,
this fashion begun when Voldie fell the first time, as part of a
movement to show how anti-Voldie and pro-Muggle one had always been.
It eventually so much turned from fashion statement to fashion that
even Draco wore jeans.)

Middle point -- I agree that Hermione and Fleur must have felt strange
to suddenly have male 'bits' (unless they had rehearsed taking
Polyjuice with Harry or some other male's hair in it -- maybe Fleur
and Bill had tried turning into each other to understand each other
better or for sexual kinks) but Harry wasn't watching to see who else
felt freaked out besides him.

First point -- I completely disagree that internal organs don't
change. << Immediately, his insides started writhing as though he'd
just swallowed live snakes - doubled up, he wondered whether he was
going to be sick - then a burning sensation spread rapidly from his
stomach to the very ends of his fingers and toes - next, bringing him
gasping to all fours, came a horrible melting feeling, as the skin all
over his body bubbled like hot wax - and before his eyes, his hands
began to grow, the fingers thickened, the nails broadened, the
knuckles were bulging like bolts -his shoulders stretched painfully
and a prickling on his forehead told him that hair was creeping down
toward his eyebrows - his robes ripped as his chest expanded like a
barrel bursting its hoops - his feet were agony in shoes four sizes
too small. >> That description, from CoS, is his whole body, inside
and outside.

Mike Crudele wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179416>:

<< I have to go along with just the external appearance, with some
allowance for stretching or shrinking the spine and muscles as
necessary for height differences. Remember, Hermione accidentally
took Polyjuice with a cat hair, I don't think her internal organs
changed to that of a cats. >>

Remember that the book from the Restricted Section said that Polyjuice
was not intended for human to animal transformations, and that
Hermione's cat face didn't go away in one hour like the boys' Crabbe
and Goyle appearance. We don't know if it would ever go away without
Madam Pomfrey's medimagical treatment. So human->animal Polyjuice
cannot be taken as a sign of ho human->human Polyjuice works.

<< They don't have a sense of being male, they only have the
appearance. If they retained all their internal organs, like both of
us think they did, then their male "bits" don't work like they would
if the had been men transforming. Those "bits" probably don't even
have any sensation to them, as in there's no there there. >>

As you know, I totally disagree with your idea of how Polyjuice works.
Off-topic, I imagine there is something to quibble with the idea that
having a sense of being male and having physical sensation of male
anatomy are the same thing -- some male -> female transsexuals
fathered children before their surgical transformation, which suggests
that they could feel their male 'bits' even when they felt that they
were trapped in the wrong body. Back on topic, we used to discuss
whether a pregnant woman who Polyjuiced into a man would still be
pregnant when the Polyjuice wore off. I said, it's magic: her fetus
would transform into one cell clinging to a convenient organ and
transform back undamaged.

<< Shall I tell you what a friend and I in our adolescence imagined we
would do if we suddenly changed into a member of the other sex? No,
I think I'll not. >>

If it was like what my Tim said about Draco Polyjuicing Crabbe and
Goyle into little girls, you and your friend would have taken turns to
change sex, not done it simultaneously.

Sharon Hayes wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179419>:

<< that means that for the hour you were polyjuiced you would have two
lots of DNA-- one for your cells and one for the foreign cells. I know
it's magic and magic can do all kinds of seemingly unreasonable
things, but that just seems downright dangerous. What an easy way to
get a bit of someone else's DNA or stem cells, for example! >>

To me, all the cells have the foreign DNA. But it would turn back to
one's own DNA when the hour was up. So you can't use one hair to
Polyjuice into someone and then cut off a bit of that person's hair
from your head to use to Polyjuice into that person on a future
occasion. I can't think why it wouldn't work to use a bit cut off your
own transformed hair to take another dose before the hour was up, but
Crouch!Moody apparently didn't think it would work, so he kept
Real!Moody alive as a source of hair. I suppose if he had cut all the
hair off and then killed Moody, he would have Polyjuiced into a
Dead!Moody, the hair having continued its contagious magic connection
with the person despite having been cut off and taken to another place.