Snape and Dumbledore on the Tower: A Defense of Snape

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 165297


> Alla wrote:
> > <snip> I do not remember **any** incidents in canon when person was
> attacked with **fake** AK. I can misremember of course.

Pippin:
But the possibility *is* mentioned, by Fake!Moody, who says the whole
class could point their wands at him and say the words and he doubted
he'd get so much as a nosebleed. He says it doesn't matter, that he's
not there to teach them how to do it. Unlike Sectumsempra then, this
is a spell that has to be used in a certain way. Waving your wand wildly 
and saying the words won't cut it.

And since it doesn't matter to the lesson being taught, nor to the plot
of GoF, one has to ask, why did JKR put that line in at all?

Why is it important for Harry, or us readers, to know that?

> > 
> > Is it possible that it was **fake** AK? Sure. But sorry, I cannot 
> > agree that this is a straightforward reading anymore than I can agree 
> > that ESE!Lupin is a straightforward reading. Sorry.
> 

Pippin:
Parts of ESE!Lupin are not straightforward. OTOH, it is perfectly
straightforward canon that Lupin was suspected of being the spy,
that he tried to kill Pettigrew, that he withheld much more information 
from Dumbledore than he admitted to, and that he gives conflicting
accounts of himself at several points in the story.

It is possible to explain these things consonant with an innocent
Lupin, but it requires just as much guesswork as ESE!Lupin does.

Carol:. (Probably true, but is JKR familiar with forensics?)

Pippin:
She's certainly familiar with mystery stories. And the fact that dead
people don't bleed was common knowledge long before CSI.
Folklore had it that a murdered person's wounds would
open and bleed afresh if the murderer approached.

Canon itself notes that  corpses, the inferi, do not
bleed.

Pippin