PJP (WARNING: adult themes)

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

The new look of Y!Groups webview apparently doesn't empurple the post
titles on the Messages list of posts when I've read those posts. This
will make it harder for me to figure out where I left off last time
*sigh*.

Ginger wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/4299>:

<< If you Polyjuice yourself into someone, you only need one hair or
toenail or whatever. What is to stop you from changing into, say, Bob,
giving yourself (with Bob's hair) a haircut, and staying Bob for as
long as you keep drinking the potion? >>

Unlike Neri, I don't think Polyjuice works by genetics. I think it
works by magical essence of identity. So the hair trimmings from
Moody!Crouch magically essentially are Crouch's hair, so using them in
Polyjuice would unexpectedly turn the drinker into *Crouch*.

I think that using old hair to try to be a younger version of oneself
or a younger version of someone else (which includes trying to be a
live version of a currently dead person) only turns the drinker into
the current version of that person. Because the magical essence of
identity is never split into pieces, that essence in the old hair is
still a peninsula of that essence in the current person.

Which argues that hair cut from or semen ejaculated by or tissue
samples of a Polyjuiced person would transform back either 
.) immediately when separated OR
.) one hour after the person's just-before drink of Polyjuice OR
.) when the person transformed back (in which case, the woman who
wanted to be a father could do it by remaining transformed for the
whole nine months - I believe this magical thing is 'set in stone' by
being born).

Pippin wrote on that matter in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/4301>:

<< King Uther Pendragon was transformed by Merlin into the likeness of
the Duke of Cornwall so that he could lie with the Lady Igraine. The
child which resulted was undoubtedly Uther's. >>

My result (above) seems to agree with you, but We don't even know that
Cornwall!Uther was a case of Polyjuice. It might have been just an
Illusion spell to look/smell/etc like Cornwall.

Before this, I never thought about the semen of a Polyjuiced person,
only about the female reproductive system of a Polyjuiced person,
about which some questions came up in the past.

1) Suppose a man (or an infertile/postmenopausal woman) takes
Polyjuice to change into a fertile woman to get pregnant. I 
said, even if he achieved pregnancy within the hour, it would go away
when he transformed back. Even if he took Polyjuice every hour to
avoid transforming back, it would go away when he took the next dose
of Polyjuice, because he is tranforming into Madam So-and-so even tho'
he is transforming into her *again*, so he is transforming into a
non-pregnant woman. 

2) Suppose someone takes Polyjuice to change into a woman who is
pregnant at the time. Well, I think they would LOOK as pregnant as the
hair donor, or else it wouldn't be very useful for disguise. Whether
they would actually BE pregnant may depend on how the Polyjuice magic
treats the conceptus as part of the womb-mother or as a separate being. 

If the magic treats the conceptus as just part of the womb-mother in
this case, then the transformed person would BE pregnant and a woman
could have identical twins by getting someone to take Polyjuice with
her hair when she was deep in labor to give birth before transforming
back. 

If the magic treats the conceptus in this case as a separate being,
then the transformed person wouldn't actually be pregnant, except
maybe for the special case in which a pregnant person transformed into
a different pregnant person -- maybe the fetus would also transform.
That might work for the man in the previous question to become a
mother. What would happen if he (or a normal pregnant female) went
from being pregnant for one hour to being in full-term labor? I guess
the baby would be born full-term and a clone of the hair donor's baby?
I don't know what would happen to a non-pregnant Polyjuice drinker
while the hair donor gave birth.

If the magic treats the conceptus as separate and the man!woman from
the previous question changed back to himself or transformed into
anyone else who wasn't pregnant, would the conceptus just vanish or
would it die or would it turn into a tumor? A cancerous tumor?

3) Suppose a pregnant woman takes Polyjuice, especially to change into
a man. I think her fetus goes away when she transforms and comes back
unharmed when she transforms back, like Moody!Crouch's eye. Challenged
about the mechanics of this, I said the whole conceptus hides
disguised as a single cell.

The only way that any of that relates to Ginger's question about the
woman who is not yet pregnant when she turns back into herself is IF
the question of whether the conceptus just vanishes sheds any light on
whether the sperm cells just vanish. I can't think of any reason why
the sperm would just vanish... But, Ginger, wouldn't it be easier to
use a Beautifying Potion like Malodora Grymm?

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/4301>:

<< But would a wizard polyjuiced into a Muggle retain his or her
powers? >>

More interesting: would a Muggle polyjuiced into a wizard gain wizard
powers?

Nitpick on Neri's
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/4305>:

<< (or the changed Harry would be as stupid as Goyle and the changed
Hermione would start chasing mice). >>

Because Polyjuice Potion doesn't work when used for animal
transformations, the change in Hermione was little more than skin deep. 

I don't know whether the principle on which it doesn't work is
predictable superficial transformation only or 'unpredictable 
results' (as I well remember from my IBM COBOL days!). If the 
former, it could be used as a test to identify whether chimpanzees 
or a (retrieved/reconstructed) Australopithecus or H. erectus is a
person or an animal. Or whether whales and elephants are people so
that killing them is murder...