My theory is that Credence is really Corvus Lestrange. I refuse to believe he is a Dumbledore and they wouldn't just waste a whole movie on a red herring with the Lestrange thing. He somehow is truly Corvus Lestrange like they originally believed. Mark my words.

 

This. The Dumbledore thing is just so monumentally dumb that I don't think even Twitter era JKR would do this.

 

Agreed. It's gotta be Grindelwald trying to turn the kid against Dumbledore, right?

Even if he is Aurelius Dumbledore, why would the kid hold a grudge when his birth family believe him dead in a boating tragedy?

I need to watch both films again to try and get the story right in my head, but I don't want to watch both films again.

Edit: Grindelwald's speech at the end though is worthy of a rewatch. That was really well done, especially because we know he'll fail.

 

I'd argue that this would require Credence to be a rationally thinking character and I'm not even going to get into the meta level of JKR noticing this and making Credence irrational or rational on purpose vs by accident.

 

Spoiler

I'm expecting Creedence to be a half sibling to Albus and that, maybe by a mistress that Percival sent away or whatever. Probably a Muggle, because otherwise there's no way the woman would have lost 'her' baby to a sinking ship - or maybe the woman escorting him was just a nanny. Regardless of the particulars, it'd take a clumsy as fuck retcon to slot him in there as a true sibling. I'm fine with waiting until the 4th movie to find out though.

 

Does anyone know the legitimacy of this wiki article on the blue fire spell Grindelwald used? I thought it was controlled Fiendfyre or something, but apparently someone on the wiki got a source that says it's a variant of the shield spelled called protego diabolica.

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Protego_Diabolica

 

It's wiki and they are full of shit. It's FiendFyre unless it's named differently in the movies.

 

They seem to have cited the movie as well as something called the Fantastic Beasts: A Cinematic Yearbook.

 

It's BS DLP vets will tell you the same thing.

 

I see. Is there any valid source online for these kind of things? The lexicon is sparse and seems to be unfinished.

 

The source is the movie. Rewatch it and and go by everything that is said. If it isn't said in the books or movies than it isn't canon.

 

No, I meant is there any online database for Harry Potter information that is properly sourced and thorough? The only two I've come across are the wikia and the lexicon, both of which I find lacking.

 

No there isn't.

 

The Wiki and Lexicon are pits of despair. Decent as guidelines, but I've seen dubious citations many a time. The source given there is the Screenplay book, which I haven't laid hands on, so it's possible.

 

For me the screenplay is higher canon than the movie itself, given that the screenplay is written by JKR whereas the movie is JKR's screenplay as interpreted by literally hundreds of crew members.

I'm actually happy that it's not fiendfyre. Fanon has grown overly reliant on fiendfyre as its go-to powerful spell, and the spell behaved nothing like fiendfyre did in DH in any event.

 

The fact that it didn't behave the same can be explained by the fact that Grindelwauld casted the spell rather than Crabbe.

 

It behaved in a very different way to all past descriptors of it too, not just when compared to Crabbe's casting of it.

 

As someone who owns a copy of the screenplay, I can confirm that Grindelwald’s spell is indeed called Protego diabolica (p. 254). The name is a bit on the nose, perhaps, but I, too, like the fact that it isn’t Fiendfyre.

Everything that deepens the lore of magic and spells is a welcome sight to me, similar to Newt’s tracking of Tina earlier in the film. Actual grown-ups using new spells, whether combative or non-combative, is always a sight to behold.

 

So Grindelwald used a fire spell that took the shape of monsters and seemed to act of it's own accord when he disapparated and threatened to consume all of Paris and it's NOT Fiendfyre? Perhaps it's a variation of Fiendfyre in some way and that it only reverts to the spells true nature when the caster loses or relinquishes control of it? That'd explain why the fire monsters didn't appear until after Grindelwald left and why he expected a variant of the protego to destroy a city.

 

Yeah I kinda agree. I preferred (when I watched it) thinking that it was this strange use of fiendfyre, and that when he goes it turns into normal (albeit blue) fiendfyre and goes ravaging. Crabbe had no control, and I felt like it was showing a difference in what a masterful dark wizard can do with it vs. A school boy. As well as the fact that it's the elderwand and we associate Dumbledore with fire and that wand, so why not Grindlewand?

I admit, at the start I can buy it as a dark shield spell, but when he releases it and it turns into animals to burn down all of paris - at that point it doesn't feel like a variation on a protego. It feels like fiendfyre, and I'm disappointed that it wasn't.

I'll probably use diabolicas or something with that and a modifier as an incantation for fiendfyre going forward in any stories.