Detecting magic (was: re AKs and Horcrux!Harry and soul-ripping )

[eloise_herisson]

> > Eloise:
> > No, it's not inconsistent with the evidence in HBP. But then if
> this  is the case... forgive me, but aren't we back to where we 
> started?  How did the MOM know that Harry had been AK'd at GH?
> 
> Pippin:
> Because Voldemort had no  reason to hide the murder of a family
> of blood traitors and Dumbledore supporters who had already
> defied him three times. 

Eloise:

He had no reason to hide it after the event, just as he had no reason 
to hide any of his other murders, after he became feared as Lord 
Voldemort. No doubt had it not gone so wrong, the Dark Mark would 
have been fired over GH just as elsewhere.

I understood your reasoning to be that the immature Tom did not have 
the ability, which he later developed and potentially used when he 
murdered Frank Bryce, amongst others, to hide his magic when he 
murdered the Riddles.

And I think that's good reasoning. After all, although he wanted his 
murders and those of his DEs to be known about after the event, it's 
less helpful if the MOM can detect you *in the act* so that you end 
up ambushed by a horde of Aurors. And hiding Bryce's murder, in fact 
all the magic going on in the Riddle House, would be sensible.

And I also agree that there was good reason for him to want the 
Riddle murders to be discovered, if he wanted revenge on Morfin. 
OTOH, he needed to frame someone if the murders were likely to be 
discovered as surely his ancestry was recorded and if the MOM knew 
there was a Riddle at Hogwarts and three Riddles had died under 
strange circumstances that they knew at once to be magicical...

OK, they wouldn't expect a schoolboy to be AKing his family.
But at what point did Dumbledore put two and two together?  

I digress.

If Voldemort had the ability to cloak his activity, would really have 
broadcast to the MOM radar that he was AKing the Potters one by one?
Would GH, which we know was protected by Fidelius and where the 
Potters had hidden with the full knowledge of Dumbledore (err, well, 
at least before the Fidelius) not be protected by other charms? 

I find it very hard to believe that the MOM radar could both 
penetrate the defences of GH and that Voldemort was happy to be 
(albeit remotely) watched at work. And if that's *not* how it works, 
then, as I said, on the surviving evidence, what led them to believe 
Harry had survived an AK? I believe there *was* a witness.

> But I suppose the larger question is why JKR leaves all these 
> perceived inconsistencies in the text. Is she 
> unconsciously imitating the sloppiness of pulp fiction, or is she 
> doing so consciously and does it then serve some thematic 
> purpose?

<snip thought provoking discussion>

On the basis of my own limited attempts to write about the 
Potterverse, I think the reality is that creating a consistent 
magical world is nigh well impossible. At least, JKR's kind of 
magical world. Becasue the trouble with this kind of magic is that 
there is (as with my youngest) an answer for everything.

It's very difficult to set up magical devices or spells without 
obvious counter-devices and spells jumping out at you so you have 
arbitrarily to draw the line in certain places: this curse cannot be 
blocked; it is impossible to Apparate in this area, etc., etc.. I 
think there are too many i's to be dotted and t's to be crossed and 
sometimes plot devices just accidentally clash with each other.

I got roundly told off for suggesting JKR was inconsistent over on 
the other list, but I'm afraid sometimes she just is. I don't 
criticise her for it, at all - in fact on the whole she manages it 
remarkably (that sounds so patronising and it's not meant to be at 
all) - I just think that it's almost inevitable, given the nature of 
the magic she writes about.

~Eloise