ChapDisc: HBP30, The White Tomb - What if...???

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165885

bboyminn wrote:
<snip>
> In general, I somewhat dispute people's claims of what is a normal
Killing Curse. To my knowledge, we have never seen a Killing Curse
actually occur. For example, when Cedric was killed, Harry's eyes were
closed; so to some extent, we get Harry's preception rather than  his
knowledge.

Carol:
Actually, yes, we have--Harry sees Fake!Moody kill the spider:

"There was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound, as
though a vast, invisible something was soaring through the
air--instantaneously, the spider rolled over onto its back, unmarked,
but unmistakably dead (GoF Am. ed. 316).

Harry's reaction is perhaps significant:

"So that was how his parents had died. . . . exactly like that spider.
Had they been unblemished and unmarked too? Had they simply seen the
flash of green light and heard the rush of speeding death, before life
was wiped from their bodies?" (316, ellipsis in original).

It's noteworthy, of course, that Harry's earliest memory is an
identical "blinding flash of green light." He wonders "where all that
green light came from" (SS Am. ed. 29), as if the green light is not
just a "jet" coming from a wand but everywhere in sight, *blinding*
him. The light is so memorable, so important, that he retains that
memory alone until the Dementors help him to recall voices as well.

And, though Harry's eyes are closed when Cedric dies (he's feeling ill
because of Voldemort's presence), the similarities are still marked:

"A blast of green light blazed through Harry's eyelids, and he heard
something heavy fall to the ground beside him. . . . [T]errified of
what he was about to see, he opened his stinging eyes. Cedric was
lying spread-eagled on the ground beside him. He was dead. For a
second that contained an eternity, Harry stared into Cedric's face, at
this open gray eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a
deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly
surprised" (638).

The rushing sound is missing, perhaps because Harry is retching and
too terrified to notice it, but the blinding flash ("blast") is so
marked that he sees it with his eyes closed, and the death in both
cases is instantaneous. Like the Riddles ("Lying there with their eyes
wide open!" 2), Cedric's eyes are open. Dumbledore's are not. He looks
like he's asleep. Nor does DD look surprised like Cedric or terrified
like the Riddles, who, like the spider, are unmarked and appear to be
in perfect health, aside from being dead (4). (FWIW, DD is hit in the
chest, so if there's a "hex mark," it would be hidden from Harry's view.)

And there's Frank Bryce. *Harry* may not see that death, but *the
reader* does. There's no reason to doubt the reliability of the
narration in this instance, though the pov is odd (the
limited-omniscient narrator is no longer in Frank's head and has
perhaps switched to Harry's):

"There was a flash of green light, a rushing sound, and Frank Bryce
crumpled. He was dead before he hit the floor" (15).

The flash, the rushing sound, instant death. Exactly like the spider,
very similar to Cedric. We can safely assume that there's no mark on
Frank and that the police can't figure out the cause of death
(assuming that he's not fed to Nagini).

How many descriptions do we need to see that AK victims do not go
sailing into the air, that they die instantly (the freezing charm
should have worn off instantly), that there's a "blinding flash" or
"blinding blast" of green light, nothing like the "jet" of green light
that comes from Snape's wand? 

And just for the sake of completeness, "flash" and "jet" are not synonyms.

flash 
Function:
    noun 
1 a: a sudden burst of light b: a movement of a flag in signaling2: a
sudden and often brilliant burst

jet  
Function:
    noun 
1 a (1): a usually forceful stream of fluid (as water or gas)
discharged from a narrow opening or a nozzle (2): a narrow stream of
material (as plasma) emanating or appearing to emanate from a
celestial object (as a radio galaxy) b: a nozzle for a jet of fluid2:
something issuing as if in a jet <talk poured from her in a brilliant
jet — Time>

A sudden burst of light versus a forceful stream like water from a
hose. Not the same thing at all.

> > Carol, who really wants someone to put Harry's memory of DD's
death into a Pensieve and figure out what's  really going on
 
> bboyminn:
> 
> That is actually a pretty good idea. How better to give people exact
unbiased objective knowledge of the event than to let them view it in
a penseive.

Carol responds:
Thanks. It's the only way I can think of to present the death and what
preceded and followed it from a perspective other than Harry's. Maybe
that's why the Pensieve was introduced into the books in the first place.

Carol, who hopes that JKR has not somehow forgotten those detailed and
overlapping descriptions of Avada Kedavra, which is what it is
regardless of whether Harry witnesses it