Power of the Elder Wand

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 179024

Mus wrote:
> > It strikes me (though I don't think it had before) that it's a bit
surprising that no-one's come up with a charm to defend against
Expelliarmus.  
> > 
> 
bboyminn replied:
> 
> Sorry, but what makes you think there isn't a defense again
Expelliarmus? 
> 
> I would think a strong shield charm would be enough to block it, but
I don't think you can walk around all the time surrounded by a shield
charm.
> 
> The Shield Charms strikes me as another sustained charm, that is, it
is cast and remains for as long as you hold it by willful intent. Once
you are distracted or drop your intent, the spell fades. <snip>

Carol responds to both:

JKR is a bit inconsistent with regart to countercurses and defensive
spells, in part, perhaps, because of the limitations of Harry's
knowledge. However, based on what we do see, I don't think that
Protego is necessarily a sustained curse; it's more like a temporary
shield (it's called a Shield Charm, after all) that not only protects
the intended victim from the curse being cast at them at that moment
but, at least sometimes, deflects a curse (other than an
Unforgiveable) back onto the attacker. Bellatrix deflects Harry's
Stunning Spell using Protego in OoP; he would have been hit by his own
deflected curse if he hadn't scrambled behind the fountain (OoP Am.
ed. 811). If Protego deflects Stupefy, I don't see why it wouldn't
work for Expelliarmus. However, Protegos don't always work in the same
way; Snape blocks whatever McGonagall throws at him with a very swift
Protego which merely knocks her back rather than Stunning her. Maybe
he casts the Protego before she casts her curse (which he may be able
to anticipate using Legilimency), but he doesn't seem to be deflecting
her own spell onto her (DH Am. ed. 598). Whether Snape is trying to
avoid hurting McG or JKR is being inconsistent, I can't tell.

However, Snape also manages to parry various spells, including even
Crucio, with a lazy flick of his wand before Harry even finishes the
incantations in HBP ("Flight of the Prince"). Harry doesn't think to
use Expelliarmus (he tries Crucio twice, then Incarcerus, then
Stupefy, then an Impedimenta interrupted by a DE's Crucio, then
Sectumsempra, then a silent Levicorpus, only to be a"blocked again and
again," in Snape's words. Whether Snape is using specific
countercurses or Protego or just a movement that deflects the spell
away from him is unclear, but it seems clear to me that he could have
blocked Expelliarmus just as easily as these other curses, some of
them Dark and dangerous. (I don't think he's using Protego because
Harry would recognize the spell and because it doesn't, AFAWK, block
Unforgiveables.)

However, I see no reason why Protego wouldn't protect against
Expelliarmus if it protects against Stupefy, which seems to be the
most popular nonlethal spell used by both sides and which can be a lot
more dangerous than Expelliarmus under certain circumstances, as we
learn in the chase scene in DH. I can't imagine Snape in "Flight of
the Prince" letting Harry disarm him when he so easily deflected or
blocked or parried all those other spells.

So, for Grindelwald to have been disarmed by Dumbledore, as must have
happened for DD to become master of the supposedly unbeatable Elder
Wand, DD must have caught him somehow off-guard. (I suspect that a
powerful Dark Wizard like Grindelwald was probably both a Legilimens
and an Occlumens, but DD was probably a shade better at both skills.
Chances are that no one else, including the eighteen-year-old Tom
Riddle, could have penetrated those defenses. Maybe there was an
element of psychological manipulation, as well).

Anyway, if a Shield Charm (Protego) can deflect a curse back onto an
opponent (Bellatrix's Protego in OoP), it seems like the perfect
defense against Expelliarmus. Instead of disarming you, your opponent
finds himself or herself disarmed. You just have to be quick and not
caught off-guard; a split second more time might have allowed DD to
cast a Protego, disarming Draco instead of being disarmed himself
(assuming that doing so wouldn't activate Snape's UV or otherwise ruin
DD's plan to have Snape kill him).

OoP mentions "counterjinxes," but I think those are spells used to
counter specific jinxes after the fact, and they seem a bit
superfluous since Finite Incantatem can apparently reverse any of
them. Hexes, perhaps, might be harder to reverse. But Expelliarmus is
neither a hex nor a jinx, just a charm, so it probably doesn't require
its own specific countercurse. (Finite Incantatem woun't get you your
wand back if it's in someone else's hands; you have to block or
deflect the spell before it hits you--which takes us back to Protego
or a parrying motion like Snape's in HBP.

Carol, thinking that the sustained and extra-strong Protego that Harry
casts after LV "kills" him has more to do with Harry's accidental Love
magic than with the usual nature of Protego