Half-Blood Prince

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 183852

> 
> Carol responds:
 Unless, of course, you disregard the literal meaning of the spell.

Pippin:

How much do literal meanings matter in magic?

 "Sempra" occurs  in "Rictusempra" and that is not a spell that can't
be reversed except by a special countercurse. I think the "sempra" in 
Sectum Sempra only means that it keeps cutting as long as the caster
is waving his wand like a sword, just like rictusempra continues the
tickling effect indefinitely. 

The ability to cause multiple cuts with a single spell is what makes
it "for enemies", IMO. We don't know how effective Dumbledore's charm
would be at healing a number of deep cuts at once. Even Snape's spell
had to be repeated several times.  

But  in order to stop George's bleeding something had to keep the
blood from  leaking out of severed veins and capillaries. It's
difficult to see how that could happen if they were permanently cut open. 

Carol:
 (James, however, would be unlikely to ask Madam
> Pomfrey for dittany and equally unlikely to have any on hand.)

Pippin:

Why not?
Dittany is a real herb, and I'm not sure why James wouldn't have any,
since he would be exposed to cuts and scratches during his outings
with Lupin. I doubt he was as ignorant of healing magic as his son.
Surely it would cause comment if James showed up at breakfast with
injuries having had none at dinner the night before. 

Wikipedia says one variety of dittany is a common garden plant, and as
this is the one used for its anti-inflammatory properties it may be
the one Rowling had in mind rather than the rare Greek herb which was
said to confer courage and has to be retrieved from steep mountains in
Crete. But even so, James is wealthy and presumably less inhibited
about spending his money than Harry is. 



> Pippin:
> 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. <snip>
> 
> Carol:
> That's not quite what we're told. We're told that he knew more
curses when he came to Hogwarts than half the weventh years in school
at that time. Harry and Hermione have nothing to do with it. 

Pippin:
Harry and Hermione demonstrated two ways in which enterprising
students can learn spells not generally taught to anyone their age.
Snape is at least as enterprising and far more innovative. I don't see
why it's flinty for Snape to have a 6th year potions book before 6th
year, especially since it's a used one and probably his mother's. 

Carol:
 we're still left with the question of how Lupin
> knew that it was Sectumsempra. 

Pippin:
I assume he knew that because like "levicorpus" the spell had become
known to others. Perhaps Snape shared it with his Slytherin friends,
who weren't as good at nonverbals as he was. 

Snape and James continued to duel in secret, unknown
to Lily, all through their sixth and seventh year, and I suspect
neither of them was very scrupulous about anything except getting
caught. Using a spell that could cause serious damage and might get
you expelled unless it was very carefully controlled could be a form
of one-ups-manship  just like larking around Hogsmeade with a
werewolf in tow. It's the sort of risk that appealed to James, IMO.

Lupin says that "Sectum Sempra" was "always" a specialty of Snape's.
Though I like Jen's idea of how Lupin could have learned that Snape
was using it from Moody, I think we are supposed to be disillusioned
from thinking  that Hogwarts was  an innocent place where Dark Magic
was never used except by those nasty Slytherins.

It was innocent only because we were seeing it through Harry's
innocent eyes.

Pippin