F&G->minors / Draco's HoG / Voldemort & the Stone / that Irish Folklore site

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)" <catlady at w...> > 
> I assume(d) that he would get all his innate powers back by getting
> his body back -- that is, getting a body sufficiently similar to his
> own. The only non-innate power I know he had was immortality, and his
> graveyard speech in GoF said: "But I was willing to embrace mortal
> life again, before chasing immortal. I set my sights lower 
 I
> would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength." I
> figured that his 'old strength' 'back again' meant all his other
> magical powers.
> 
> I am not as certain as you that the Stone wouldn't give him a body, a
> body sufficiently similar to his own. The Stone is more powerful than
> a hunk of meat, an old bone, and a vial of blood.
> 


Quick post at the end of the day's play at Old Trafford -

Depends on what one means by 'powerful'.
It isn't a spell, it's the base for a potion.

So far as has yet been revealed in canon, the Stone has one power, one
function - to extend life, indefinitely if one keeps swigging the potion. 
So far as we know, a Fountain of Youth it ain't, nor yet a constructor
of off-the-rack corpuses. If it were I'd think it'd be viewed as some type
of Dark Magic - eternal life plus eternal youth - obviously a no-no, a
temptation for the unthinking. 

Similar real life circumstances loom over my personal horizons - I'm
already a good deal older than one would be expected to live 100 years
ago, and I trust there's a decade or two still to come - but those extra
decades will be in the seventies and eighties, and be rife with aches,
pains and bloody-mindedness. (That last is something to look forward 
to; I'll cast my jaundiced eye over the younger generations and tell them
exactly where they are going wrong.) 

Maybe the best that getting Stoned can achieve is to remain the same
physical age that one had when supping from the cup, stopping  the
clock but not reversing it. If it did have the power to make one youthful
it'd be a mite embarassing if one swallowed a smidgeon too much.... 
Must factor in a bit of human psychology too - living to a great age
can be regarded as admirable - staying young while doing so is likely
to piss off the contemporaries of the lucky bugger who owns the Stone.
Envy is such a nasty emotion, don't you think? 

Mind you, it's quite possible that Jo is cheating again. Perhaps she reads 
Rider Haggard in addition to Aggie Christie.

Kneasy