The AK that was (or wasn't)

[mooseming]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Barry Arrowsmith" 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:
> --- 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

Voldy is the one who is most adept at simply dropping folk in their 
tracks, now he *is* a powerful wizard; control, clinical execution, 
heartlessness, are these qualities that make a *good* AK? If so then 
Wormtail's hit on Cedric makes him a deft hand. Snape's a little 
sloppy.

I think JKR was having a bit of fun, poison him, shoot him, then 
throw him off a cliff, so to speak. How dead do we need DD to be 
already? Is this the dropping of anvil sized hints?

Also the fall allows the locket to pop out of DD's robes, therefore 
relieving Harry of the responsibility of riffling through a dead 
man's pockets. Bit of an emotional faux pas that would be don't you 
think?

Regards
Jo

I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the 
time was ripe for a cheese cauldron.