Broomless flight is a technique like apparition and not a spell.
In order to disapparate, you need the 3 D's (Destination, determination, and deliberation), after that, you just turn on the spot and disapparate. I think flight is similar, without any spells involved, just your concentration, willpower, and magic.

Perhaps in order to teach Snape how to fly, Voldemort had to drop him off a mountain as some birds do.

- Wizards are superior to muggles in many ways: All of them are magically resistant to blunt damage and mundane attacks.

Their intelligence, memory, reading speeds, and other things can also be superior, it does not apply to all wizards but some like Hermione are supernaturally intelligent, she can read several books over the course of one week (This is canon) and her memory is extraordinary.

- Their reflexes and reaction time are also superior, with Quidditch players being proof of that. Imagine racing on a bike with 6 other people while trying to pass on a ball, meanwhile, there are two 60kg balls of iron flying around trying to knock you out. Not sure how good this example is, but a normal human could never play quidditch.

- Capturing the snitch is only worth 70 points, it's as if each member of your team had scored 10 points.

- A Galleon is worth One thousand pounds. Muggle money is practically worthless and goblins only accept limited quantities of it.

Wizarding minimum wage is 4 Galleons a month.

A galleon is exchanged much less often than a sickle or a knut.

Wizarding goods are priced according to offer and demand. So if you can mass-produce an item and there is not much demand for it you sell it at a low price. If it's a highly desired object like a Nimbus then you control the offer by selling it at a higher price.

A brand new Nimbus costs 20 galleons, a Firebolt costs 150 galleons.

Omnioculars only cost 1 sickle each. (Could sell for 2 at Sporting events).

Chocolate frogs only cost 5 knuts each. They cost more than pure chocolate because of the cards.

Brand new Spellbooks cost at least 2 galleons if they're still being printed.

New plain black robes cost 1 sickle each.

The Weasleys are poor due to bad financial management, like many families they try to pay for everything with their monthly salary alone. They rarely ever save any money.

There are wizarding taxes but they are lower than their muggle counterpart.

The cheapest wand at Ollivander's will cost you 30 galleons. Most parents just buy their children a cheaper wand from some other wandmaker just so they can go to school.

Cheap wands cost 5 galleons at the minimum.

Food is generally cheap.

Food and drink at pubs are more expensive, you pay for the experience.

A bottle of Butterbear at a pub will cost you 4 knuts.

The salary of an Auror starts at 20 galleons. Healers earn the same.

Nearly all Non-magical goods are cheap and will cost less than a sickle per item. Robes included.

Magical items are priced according to offer and demand, of course.

Pure gold, silver, and precious gems are also priced according to offer and demand by wizards (They don't necessarily match their muggle counterpart).

Figuring out a perfect exchange rate between muggles and wizards is impossible because you would have to consider how much a muggle would want to pay for wizarding goods. Any muggle billionaire would easily pay dozens of millions for a real broomstick that can fly, even if it's an old one. That's why muggle money is practically worthless to wizards, they only care about their own internal currency.

 

Bear with me on this one, because it came to me quite suddenly. The Fidelius charm is the equivalent of getting someone to pinky-swear not to tell a secret, and it magically forbids that secret from being revealed until the secret keeper so desires. Or, as in canon, the secret keeper dies and everyone who knows the secret now becomes a secret keeper.

The reason it's so complex isn't merely because casting it is incredibly difficult, which it is, by the way. It's complex because the secret needs to be worded properly, and a sufficiently talented lawyer will be able to break through a secret if made aware of the existence of the same and given a person who's been told the secret to ask questions. The man who became famous for his ability to break the Fidelius, no matter how it was worded, was Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was so good at it he was elected consul, and Mark Antony so feared his ability to break the Fidelius cast upon some secret of Julius Caesar's he had him murdered.

The Fidelius is not a perfect ward. For example, if one wants to hide the location of Hogwarts, one may hide the secret worded thus: "Hogwarts is located at so-and-so in xyz area of Scotland." However, a person unaware of the name of the area, or a person who knows the area by any other name, would have no difficulty stumbling across it if they were in the area. This turned out to be one of the reasons Mehmet the Conqueror renamed Constantinople to Istanbul when he conquered it in 1453.

A person who knows a secret before a Fidelius was cast may not reveal it, but they would still know it. The Fidelius merely prevents the secret from being passed on: it does not erase knowledge. Thus Dumbledore was cleverly able to hide the location of the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, but he would be unable to hide the location of Number 12 Grimmauld Place itself and so did not try. The spell manifests itself differently for different people. Since Harry did not know of the existence of Number 12, the house was hidden from him. Someone like Bellatrix, who knows about the house, would be able to see the house, but not discern the presence of the Order inside. Since the magic is directed towards concealing the location of the headquarters of the Order, it does so within the parameters of the way it has been cast and the information available to the person from whom the secret is being hidden.

Kreacher was unable to directly tell the Death Eaters about the location of the Order headquarters in any way because of the Fidelius, but he was able to tell them about Harry and Sirius's relationship, which was then used to launch the DoM plan.

TL;DR: The Fidelius is a complicated charm to cast because the magic which powers it is difficult to get right, and you need a competent lawyer to draft the secret lest it get revealed inadvertently.

 

I think you might need to raise the bar on what supernaturally intelligent speed reading looks like. Several books a week is some rookie numbers.

 

All the characters can read multiple books a week, like Flitwick literally assigned them once to read three books in preperation fro the next class when they were about to start on the Summoning charm.

I think a better example of enhanced intelligence would be Barty Crouch Sr being able to speak over two hundred languages.

 

Hemione can read several books per week while doing multiple pieces of homework, coaching Harry and Ron, and still have free time to knit hats. Also, she can memorize multiple books, to the point of knowing which chapter certain bits of information comes from. That's not something a muggle could ever do. I've never heard of anybody who can recall 100% of a book with 100% accuracy and not be autistic.

 

Voldemort figured out the mysteries of Wandless flight because he spent over a decade as a flying, bodiless spirit.

 

Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment and Tweak are the house elves in charge of getting the food to each House's table.

 

I love the idea, too. It’s great. Which house elf would be in charge of which house-table?

Im feeling blubber for Slytherin, Tweak for Gryffindor, Oddment for Ravenclaw, and, of course, poor Nitwit for Hufflepuff.

 

There was a story that had a throw-away line like this in it, it might have been Harry Potter and the BWL. Dumbledore was exasperated at how he had to open three-way negotiations between the grounds elves and the kitchen elves with the dungeon elves mediating.

 

Nah - it's in order.

Nitwit - Gryffindor; just ask a Ravenclaw or Slytherin what to expect of them
Blubber - Hufflepuff; because they're so well-fed and uncourageous
Oddment - Ravenclaw; house of the loners, geeks, and freaks
Tweak - Slytherin; the twisted ones, who always look for an exception to leverage

 

Recent revelation:

Voldemort's barrier for entry to the cave by the sea was a sacrifice of one's own blood. This makes sense particularly so that the inferi would never be able to break out of it. That said, if Voldemort's spirit were stuck in there without a body, he might be able to possess an inferius but he wouldn't be able to leave without some kind of back door. I suspect parseltongue at the right place might have worked.

 

How would Voldemort's spirit ever end up there?

 

If something tragic happened in Albania to make him flee that hideyhole, the cave would probably be the next safest venue.
It's also my headcanon that spiritform Voldemort had to hang close to his horcruxes until he could arrange a body to possess. Otherwise, why keep returning to Albania?

The longer version is this:

What we know: Riddle got blowed-up and vaporized by sacrificial magic, so his spirit (soul, memories and magic) ran off. He fled to Albania where he lay idle for 10 years(!) until Quirrel found him and submitted to playing piggyback. Then after Quirrel fell apart, Voldemort went back there and waited another two years for Wormtail to find him.

The disembodied spirit must not be able to wander far from the horcrux, or he'd peek in on his followers trying to get help or something. The closest jar was Harry (but not a full jar, so he might not be drawn to him), then the diary [Wiltshire], the locket [London- Grimmauld] or the cup [London- Gringott's], the ring [Little Hangleton I think is in Yorkshire], the diadem [Hogwarts] and maybe something in Albania already- the last horcrux that became Nagini? So why go to the furthest away horcrux?

Let's go with- the spirit is drawn to the most-recently-made soul jar. Once it 'touches base', the spirit may venture forth depending on its wandless & wordless magical skills and seek to possess someone, but they can't venture far. It does not eat, so it needs to recharge its magic by returning to the soul jar- which is specifically enchanted to draw sustenance as a reservoir just for this purpose. Better-prepared mages who understood where they would show up would have an Inferi handy for mobility, plus supplies for the generation of a new Homonculus body already prepped. One can't simply 'go on' just because there's a soul jar somewhere, or astute Dark Lords would send one into space or down the Laurentian Abyssal. Also, he'd have no reason to hang in Albania. If he could hang near any horcrux, Riddle would have been haunting Malfoy Manor the whole time and would no doubt have been able to get Lucius to enact a substitute body within weeks of his original death.

 

Uh, Voldemort did not have a Horcrux in Albania.

 

Not denying that canon never said so, but if he didn't have a horcrux in Albania, why did he keep going there? Did he make Nagini a horcrux long before or was it done after Wormtail showed up? If before, where was she all that time? If after, why make one when he's already weakened?

My headcanon fills in these questions with a theory: that there was a horcrux in Albania; it was the last one he made before attacking Harry; he had to return to it since it was the last one made; that when he had Wormtail fashion him a temporary body to carry his soul, it 'used up' that horcrux; and that he then made Nagini into his last-made horcrux so that if anything went wrong, he'd at least be mobile while he sought to recover a body.

I'm perfectly willing to revise my headcanon if you can find a better explanation for 'Why Albania?'

 

Because it was far away from Dumbledore, any Auror who might be looking for him, and any Death Eater who might be under surveillance. And it was a place he associated with being safe to hide in since the diadem stayed there for a millennium. Since he expected his DEs to find him eventually (he says so in GoF), presumably he either told some of them where to find him in case of problem, or left some clue behind him.

Also, Dumbledore guesses that he hadn't made his last Horcrux when he went to kill Harry, and as we all know Dumbledore's guesses are basically Word of God unless explicitly disproved. I'm also pretty sure Word of God confirms he made Nagini with Frank Bryce's death.

 

@wordhammer

So yeah, he didn't have a horcrux in Albania before he killed Bertha. It certainly contradicts your headcanon. I think the explanation is simply that Voldemort was already familiar with the area and it was far away from where anyone might be searching for him.

 

My headcanon is that Snape invented broomless flying, inspired from Lily flying from the swing when she was a child. (Maybe they even experimented together with it when they were still friends).

And then he taught Voldemort (not that Voldemort would ever publicly recognise it). That's why Snape is so valuable to him, he's am inventor.

And also because I really don't see why Voldemort would have taught something so valuable to Snape (it's a bit Voldemort "signature" move), he doesn't seem the type to share... If everybody else can do it then he'd look less awesome.

 

I quite like the idea that it was Snape's invention. Your logic is strong regarding Voldemort's attitude, though I'd be ambivalent about whether it was inspired by Lily or not.