Half-Blood Prince

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 183818

> Carol responds:
> I don't agree. If James, who didn't know the countercurse to
> Sectumsempra, had been hit with that curse, he would have kept on
> bleeding till Severus Snape, the one person who did know it
(assuming that he'd invented it at that point--it was pretty
complex)performed it on him.

Pippin:
If it worked that way,  George would still be bleeding, too. But canon
says Mrs. Weasley was able to stop it, though she couldn't restore his
ear.

 Probably James knew the same anti-bleeding charm, and as we know, the
scar could be restored with dittany. Canon only says there was a flash
of white light and a gash appeared on James's cheek; nothing about
gestures that I can find. We can't be sure it was sectum sempra, since
it was a non-verbal spell, but it seems an unnecessary complication
and Flinty besides to have it be something else. 

Certainly you won't deny that James used levicorpus? That was also in
the potions book. We already were told that Snape knew curses
beyond his years, and we have several other students, Hermione and
Harry among them, who learned NEWT level spells before they'd passed
their OWLs. 


> Carol, who doubts that "everyone else" used a curse that Severus had
> marked "for enemies" and would probably only have used in the DE
days that Lupin didn't know about until after the fact


Pippin:
Snape spent his DE days eavesdropping and slithering out of action,
not specializing in Sectum Sempra. But what Lily called dark
magic was being used at Hogwarts during her fifth year, by the
students who attacked Mary, and by Sirius Black who sicced a werewolf
on Severus. 

Once again, it's the House-elves, not the Gryffindors, who were truly
scrupulous about not using dark magic.

Pippin