We've all hear of the Magical-Trunk that contains a mansion, a potions lab, a dueling workout room, and a library with a conveniently placed Book-of-Plot, but I've always wondered what would happen if the trunk got chopped in half.

For a simpler example, take a perfectly square building in the middle of a grassy field, itself in the middle of nowhere. This building is made of red brick mortared together. The inside has been magically enlarged to be twice as large volume-wise inside as it's outside dimensions suggest it should be.

Now what would happen if a wizard goes up onto the roof (or a Muggle with a jackhammer) and uses a well-cast cutting spell to cut out a circular slice of roof and looks inside.

1) What would he see?
2) What would a person inside looking up at the hole see?

Further, what happens if the enlargement spell is suddenly canceled (roof is repaired)? Would objects along the wall come crashing inwards as the walls shrinks? What if the building is full of water? Would it be compressed into a smaller space? If so, could this lead to magic discovering its greatest use - a trash compactor?

 

He would see a room that's twice the size of what it should be.

Now if he chopped the house in half vertically and removed one half then something strange could be seen.

As the x-axis of the real world would be say 10m while the x-axis of the house world would be 20m. Then.. I suppose the person outside would see a distorted inside where everyone is twice as thin.

Or reality would implode out of sheer impossibility.

 

I'd assume the pocket dimension would collapse, either destroying all matter inside it or dispelling it into our dimension.

Harry should have saved up and bought a TARDIS.

 

Yeah...I'd say that if the object upon which a spell is cast is destroyed, or changed in a significant enough manner (what extent of change is needed for this is in the air) then the spell goes too.

For example: Godric's Hollow. I'd say that the reason why Hagrid was able to get Harry was because the Fidelius no longer existed, since the secret which it was protecting - the house - was destroyed.

 

So basically, enough damage to the enchanted object and the spell is destroyed, right? That probably would apply to other situations too.

 

what would happen to all the items inside the object, though? Wouldn't the people who made the trunk or whatever other magically altered domain we are talking about have safety features to prevent this sort of thing from happening? Remember, when they opened up Moody's trunk in GoF, they saw many different rooms, so where do those other 6 (iirc) rooms go when their key isn't in use? Maybe it's a pocket dimension and the trunk is just a way to keep the Pocket dimension stablized? I'd think that Harry just wouldn't be able to get out if the trunk was destroyed, but the room itself wouldn't be.

 

I just had a Berkeleyan inspiration to solve that problem. What if the different rooms don't actually go anywhere, but are simply destroyed, and recreated whenever the person opens the compartment?

 

And what is if someone is inside when the compartment is closed? Destroyed? Apparently Moody was not destroyed in book 4, seeing as how he dies in book 7.

 

Well, it may be the case that people aren't supposed to stay inside trunks, and that he was destroyed and the trunk just recreated an exact copy of him.

 

And his soul?

 

It is doubtful that HP worlds space twisting spells are creating actual pocket dimensions. If that was truly the case there would be absolutely no need for trunks or bags of any kind. As all you need is a portal or doorway all that excess depth on the container would be useless. Carrying around a hoola loop would be alot easier than dragging a big trunk around.

 

But would serve JKRs literary purpose less.

 

Or it could be some kind of shrinking charm. Everything that goes in is shrunk, so it appears to be larger. If it was cut in half then the real size would be the same, but a tape measure put in the proper way would shrink and give the appearance of more room. Don't know about Moody's trunk though.

 

Maybe the trunk recreated a zombie.

Or the soul just waited around until the trunk recreated the body--since it isn't material it isn't destroyed when the trunk destroyed th contents.

Or, as a preventive strike before any of the self-hating muggles around here say it--lol, it's magic.

 

Personally I don't believe it creates pocket dimensions to store things, just that it expands the space in the trunk so that more things can be fit into it.

As for the other compartments and where they go, is it not so hard to believe that they don't actually go anywhere? That they are still in the trunk and occupy the same space as the currently open compartment, just that they are simply not seen. It's a logical falacy, with the same thing being in the same space, but magic is totally illogical so it works.

Also, could the objects inside it not be folded into a higher dimension (like how a 4-dimensional cube cannot be fully seen by 3-dimensional beings) instead of being held in a completely separate one? I'm not that good with extra-dimensional theory but it is possible, right?

Aekiel

 

Maybe I should just write out a boiler-plate statement and shove it in whenever an argument like this crops up. Something along the lines of:

That said: the trunk stores each set of contents in a row along the fourth dimension. If you were capable of looking, and indeed moving, in four dimensions, you wouldn't need to go through all that lock and key rigmarole.

 

Do you mean the fifth dimension? Because the fourth dimension is time...

 

A pocket dimension in this context is a new world like, D&D elemental planes, where you open a portal and you have deus ex machina unlimited space.

It has no basis in (current!) modern physics. Likewise, in the current m-theory there is no 4th nor 5th spatial dimension to utilize as a pocket dimension as much fun as that would be.

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

Try it, it's very enlightening.

 

He didn't say pocket dimension, he said 4th dimension. And I'm rhoughly familiar with string theory, but I take it with a grain of salt due to it being untestable (for now of course). It may or may not be true, but we shouldn't treat it like it is.

 

It would depend if the magic acted upon the area or if it was built into the walls. My guess is that it is enchanted/charmed into the walls. So if you destroyed the integrity of the wall then you would destroy the integrity of the magic and the enchantment/charm would fail.

It would make an interesting plot bunny to have magical bombs made in such a way. Large amounts of acid or explosive potions in a trunk or package which was magically enlarged on the inside.