Wandlore and more

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185387


Magpie wrote:
<snip>
> If all the kids at school are indeed being forced to cast Crucio, 
then maybe the spell just isn't all that hard and Harry, now that 
he's 17 and has had a couple of tries (even if they didn't go all the
way through) can do it.

>
Carol responds:
Unless JKR is being completely inconsistent, I seriously doubt that
"all the kids at school" are being forced to cast Crucios. Neville,
our authority for what's happening at Hogwarts, never says any such
thing, IIRC.

Crouch!Moody (who should know) told the fourth-years that if all of
them together pointed their wands at him and shouted "Avada Kedavra,"
he wouldn't get so much as a nosebleed. First-years struggle even to
get a feather to float using "Wingardium Leviosa." We see only the
seventh years, and we know of only two students, Crabbe and Goyle, who
successfully cast Crucios, which, according to Bellatrix (an authority
on the subject) you have to "mean."

Snape's duty and promise is to protect the students. This isn't canon,
of course, but I suspect that he would remind Amycus Carrow (probably
not the best teacher in the world, anyway) that students have to be
taught at a level suited to their abilities, they have to pass their
OWLs and NEWTs, and they have to learn other spells than the
Unforgiveables. (Clearly, he taught the previously unmotivated Crabbe
and Goyle how to perform a Disillusionment Charm.)

Not even Voldemort would want Pure-Blood and Half-blood students to go
around torturing each other. Certainly, Snape wouldn't want his
students doing that. The only instance in which we know of students
torturing one another is in detention, and we know of *seventh-year*
students punished for refusing to do so.

One more point: Even is students who had not yet passed their OWLs
could be taught to cast a Crucio (and both Harry and Draco had trouble
with it in their fifth and/or sixth years), Snape would warn Carrow
that students who hate him could gang up on him and use it against
him, so he would be wise to teach it to as few students as possible.

I can't prove it, but I'm quite sure that only the seventh years, or
perhaps the sixth and seventh years, were taught the Unforgiveables.
they would, in any case, be the only ones capable of casting it
successfully. What Carrow taught the younger students, we don't know,
but he certainly wasn't teaching them to kill each other or to create
Inferi. And Luna, a sixth-year who would have been in Carrow's Dark
Arts class till Christmas, couldn't even cast a successful *Stupefy*
until she hit Alecto Carrow with one in DH. I can't see her Crucioing
or attempting to Crucio anyone, and there's no mention of her being
punished for refusing to do so--or Ginny, either.

Your point about being seventeen, old enough to be a fully qualified
Wizard even though he hadn't taken his last year of classes or taken
his NEWTs, may be important here. In HBP, when he was still sixteen,
Harry's powers didn't even register when he rode the boat with DD in
the cave. Now that he's seventeen and a "man," perhaps they're
stronger. Maybe his age, rather than Draco's wand (or in addition to
Draco's wand) is the reason he managed successful Unforgiveables in
DH. (But, still, you have to mean them. I wonder whether Draco's
reluctant Crucios were less painful than Harry's of Amycus or Amycus's
of him--the one that Snape stopped in HBP.)

Carol, noting that just as our perspective is limited to Harry's most
of the time, it's limited to Neville's and the other DA members (all
seventh years except Luna and Ginny) with regard to Crucios