The AK that was (or wasn't)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, triner918 at a... wrote:
> Pip!Squeak wrote about AK's in canon:

> Nobody *who dies* is blasted off their feet by the AK. They 
> drop/fall  where they're standing/flying.
>  

With  what we can deduce from canon that seems to be so,
but see below.

But it's possible that Jo has been indulging in a little poetic 
licence, a little judicious fiddling to match portent and event.

The chapter title - The Lightning-Struck Tower. The card that 
Sybill keeps turning up that disturbs her so much - The Tower 
Struck by Lightning - and it just happens to depict a tower, struck
by a stylised lightning bolt, and a man falling from the top. 

Could all be a double-bluff to confound us, but it's not the only 
instance where we can find markedly different effects from the 
same spell. Expelliamus! for example; it can vary from blasting 
Lockhart off his feet and into a wall to simply removing someone's 
wand fom their hand.

Might even depend on the power of the wizard casting the spell.
If that's the case, Cedric's AK would be a bad example to use:
Peter is not reckoned to be the best wizard in the business (though
some think he is being deliberately under-rated for plot purposes)
and he is not using his own wand. 

So far we have seen two AKs cast with an intent to kill a person by 
mature wizards/witches using their own wands (assuming Sevvy did
in fact throw an unchanged AK at DD). Bella at Sirius in the Ministry, 
where Sirius goes sailing backwards through the Veil and DD sailing 
off the tower. 

As things stand at the moment, I'm gullible enough to accept it.
Always open to persuasion, of course.

Kneasy