Hello. I read the first chapter of Fuegodefuerza's story In the Chamber on PC.com today and started to wonder if Harry could start learning Healing spells to, you know, gain necessary skill to prevent such things from ever happening (Ginny died in the chamber, because Harry wasn't "strong" enough).

Then I started to wonder what would happen if you mended a broken bone, but didn't stop the spell. Would it be a huge leap of faith to believe that Bone Mending spell somehow melts the ends of the bone and "connects" those ends when they are in the correct position? What would happen if you cast the spell on a good, healthy bone? Would the spell melt the sides of the place where the spell connected with the leg? Would it be possible to somehow twist the bones, effectively breaking the bone? That could provide some interesting battles...

I don't know much about medicine, but what would happen if you use the spell used to defibrillate the heart on a healthy human? I imagine this spell as electro-shock that "restarts" the heart. This is oversimplified, of course.

If, theoretically, these things are possible, then we have an idea for potentially interesting story. I have no intentions of suddenly making Harry some sort of super healer. He is 12-13 years old, so it is difficult for him to learn these spells, however, he should be determined enough from Ginny's death to achieve some results. Maybe, in the process of learning a new spell, he could accidentally lose control of the spell and kill some animal or something and realize that Healing spells can be dangerous. This topic is not about the plot, though, so I won't discuss it here.

I am waiting for your opinions on this topic.

P.S. If my English is bad, sorry.

 

When you first said twist the bone I imagined the bone being temporarily melted then flipped sideways or backwards before being solidified. At this thought I lol'd.

 

Could be interesting. It makes sense, in a way, since if you use a defibrillator on a healthy person it messes them up pretty bad. I suck at creating spells though, so you'd have to be pretty creative to come up with Healing spells and then twist it around so it hurt someone.

 

Yeah, that would require some creativity... Also, you have to be very careful to avoid making Harry too powerful. I had the idea that Healing magic is unblockable. Yeah, that would be amazing:
"Defibrillatus", shouted Harry.
"Shit", muttered Lord Voldemort and fell like a sack of potatoes, dead.

That is completely not interesting.

 

Healing spells used in combat are inefficient because they weren't made for combat. And there be a variety of reasons: very short range, requires much control, more draining, easier to miscast the spell -thus making it dangerous to use in stress-heavy situations lest it backfires. And a lot of other reasons can be found.

So I'd avoid this if I were you. Though, a good idea would be using healing spells for torture on captured prisoners but that's the only other realistic use I can see for them...

 

What do you mean "more draining"? Taure is probably going to rip your head off. If I am mistaken, sorry.

Anyways, why should the range be an issue? I don't think that magic cares about laws of physics. It shouldn't be effected by gravity or things like that.

Also, I am not talking about writing a story where Harry fights only with Healing spells. No, he would use some shields, some stunners, you know, normal spells, but when his opponent really pissed him off, he would start casting healing spells.

There should be a spell that can remove a bone from your body. With enough skill, you could remove the hand of your opponent, thus making him unable to hold a wand. As CoS shows us, if an arm bone is removed, you have to drink Skele-Grow (can't remember it's correct name) Potion to grow it back. The process takes hours.

Yes, healing probably takes concentration, but what doesn't? Also, what do you mean by "miscast the spell"? Miscasted healing spell should probably result in dire consequences for your target. That is the whole point, isn't it? The problem is not in hurting your opponent with a healing spell, but hurting him in such a way that it is harder for him to defend himself or he is not able to fight at all.

Also, you can heal yourself if your opponent gets past your defenses. In my opinion, healing spells should not require a lot of wand movements and their incantations should be quite short, no more than one word. Imagine this:
Herman got hit by a Death Eater at the Department of Mysteries and Healer!Harry starts healing her.
"Healicus Titicus Hermanicus Dolohovi Spellicus Impressivus... Hermione? Hermione, talk to me! Oh shit, she's dead".

P.S. If I decide to write this story, I am going to research the spells better than this example.

 

No, no, no. Range isn't exactly a issue. Precision is. Healing spell are designed for specific uses, like removing a bone without doing damage to blood vessels, muscles, etc; therefore it should in theory be harder to cast than the average Dark curse who does exactly the same thing but in a cruder way -and more efficient.

It can be draining, not just in terms of how much magic is used; casting a complex spell with complex wand patterns and long incantation while maintining complete focus so you don't screw the spell or make it backfire... you see what I mean?

As I said, healing spells are much more complex, therefore by logic, should be harder to cast. If they weren't hard, or didn't require long incantation or whatever, I'm pretty sure Harry wouldn't have been the first to have thought about using them.

Law of physics don't apply in Magic, but there are certain rules. If there wasn't, any first year could potentially blow the whole planet with a miscast Wingardium Leviosa.

 

Look at it this way; if casting healing spells was easily picked up during school, what use would professional healers be? I believe that Inky has hit the proverbial nail on the head, in that casting 'healing' spells requires much more concentration etc then usual. Otherwise it wouldn't be a proffession which takes top NEWT level results and, I would assume, years of training.

 

If the incantation was very long, then the healing spells wouldn't be usable, would they? Someone is bleeding to death and you try to cast a 7 word Healing spell? By the way, if the Healing spells are thought to be not dangerous, then some people may even decide to let it hit. For example let's say you are a Death Eater with a broken arm and someone casts a Healing spell at you. Would you block?

If Dumbledore can animate statues to intercept Killing Curses, why would Harry, after long years of studying, use a Bone Mending charm to snap a healthy bone?

The whole idea is for Harry to sometimes be able to effectively kill his opponents in a fight without resorting to Dark Arts. It sort of is poetic... Voldemort, Master of Death Magic, Dark Arts vs. Harry Potter, Master of Life Magic, Healing Arts. This story should be a really great writing exercise

Dark-Stallion: Who said anything about it being easy? There definitely won't be a SupaHealer!Harry breaking bones and vanishing Malfoy's skull and regrowing it back after summer of his Second Year, when he studied in Diagon Alley. We saw in PoA that Harry can learn extremely advanced magic (Patronus Charm) when he really puts his mind to it.

 

And hence the problem of cannon Potter, he doesn't put his mind to anything other then the Patronus.

I am assuming it would have to be for a cannon Harry to accomplish it. Why else would Dumbledore send students to the hospital wing in order to get cured by Pomfrey if he, himself, could do it if not for the reason that it requires years of high-level training. I think we can all agree that Dumbledore is the epitome of a 'powerful' wizard in the terms of concentration and knowledge.

 

Maybe Dumbledore just doesn't want to bother if Pomphrey can cope with it... I think I failed to clarify one point: As in In the Chamber, when Ginny dies, Harry says "Never again" ad gets really determined to achive his goal.

This Harry should be more serious, hardworking, determined to achieve his goal of being good enough to stop people he knows from dying. However, it won't be easy. I don't think, that it is suitable to write a cannon rewrite from the second year. I think that the story should start at the Department of Mysteries fight, when Hermione is hit by Dolohov's (it was Dolohov, right?) curse.

I think that the explanation of Harry's skill in Healing should be explained by flashbacks. The only problem I see with this method is that if you insert it in the middle of a fight, then it is going to kill interest and if you insert it after the fight, then it won't be important enough to the reader... I am probably wrong, though.

This is just an idea, but maybe the biggest part of Healer training is taken by specialization? You know, Spell Damage and so on? Maybe candidates are thought general healing in first year and then they branch out to different specialities?

 

Dark Stallion:

Because he's the headmaster of the school, and has a staff member who's job it is to perform the healing functions. Note that nobody has actually died in Hogwarts (excluding instant-death Myrtle and the seventh year, of course), which indicates the teachers have a basic knowledge of keeping their students alive until they get to the Hospital Wing.

Why are they more complex? Remember that Madam Pomfrey said she could 'mend bones in a heartbeat' - hardly something achievable if intoning a seventeen syllable long ancient Mesoamerican chant was necessary.

Also, we have seen how harder healing is done: not with a spell but with a potion.

Dante:

A problem: it would seem that a more logical conclusion than focusing on learning healing spells would be to focus on DADA, Transfiguration, etc. After all, he won't need more than a rudimentary healing knowledge if he's so good that no-one gets injured.

Good idea, just don't disregard subjects like human anatomy.

No. It's the same issue people have with the Avada Kedavra. The Killing Curse doesn't pinch a vital nerve, or crush your heart, or any other physical thing that would lead to death, it just flips the switch from 'alive' to 'dead.' Your heart-restarting spells would not apply an electric shock to the heart, it would merely restart it.

By their very nature, healing spells cast to injure are no longer healing spells.

 

We are going to the dark forest that is the "There is no Dark Magic, there is only intent" debate. Do you mean to tell me that Cruciatus that is used to somehow simulate nerves or something is excusable? I would disagree. That is not the point of this thread, though.

Anyways wouldn't it be interesting if Harry used a Bone Mending Charm on a rib of a Death Eater and made it snap piercing the lung or heart (if that is even possible) and when an Auror accused him of killing the Death Eater Harry looked at the man and said. "What are you talking about? His rib was broken, I tried to help him, but I wasn't skilled enough. Sorry, I will do better next time"

EDIT: I imagine that this Harry thought that it is impossible to protect everyone from being hurt, because you honestly can't protect everyone. The best you can do is to heal them afterwards. That comes from the fact that Harry couldn't have prevented Ginny from geting possesed by Riddle's diary, but he had a chance to heal her, but failed.

 

Well, there's a circular reasoning idea which doesn't make sense to me right here:

Step 1) Harry wants to become more powerful at Healing due to not being able to save Ginny
Step 2) Harry becomes relatively ubar at Healing Arts due to the realization that he can mis-use them in order to create pain.
Step 3) Harry goes on a conquest to kill all the Death Eaters, using f'd up Healing Magic.

Now, what I'm wondering here is, 'Why would Harry continue to pursue fucking up Healing Magic in the first place?' and after he did, 'Why would he continue using it?'. The only reasons I could see are for the SOLE reason to create an IronicallyPowerful!Harry. Healing Magic just has too many disadvantages to using it offensively to utilize it as Harry's main arsenal, which is what you appear to be going for here.

 

I have no more desire to get into the "Dark Magic" debate than you do, I'm just pointing out that the paradox in Killing!Healing!Magic.

I think part of the disconnect between us has to do with how you think of healing magic. Your Healing (note the uppercase) magic seems to be a class of magic all of its own, like Charms or Transfiguration. When I think of healing (lowercase) magic, I just think of magic used to heal. Therefore, for me, healing magic ceases to be healing magic when its not healing. For you, though, because Healing is like a trademark stuck to the spell, it stays Healing magic no matter what its used for.

 

Pretty unique idea, but would be pretty hard to pull off.

As for healing magic (and purposely misusing it) being complicated, well, if Lockhart can cast a bone vanishing spell, then anyone can. Remember, this is the guy who can't perform a simple shield, or capture a group of pixies (lol at Pesternomi!).

 

I think the point of that scene was to show that he actually couldn't use the bone healing spell, so it can be argued that Harry purposefully miscasting healing spells would be just as effective as twisting them to a malevolent purpose.

 

I may have mixed something up, but I believe that I never said that harry would use only Healing spells to fight and kill Death Eaters. He would use it for this purpose only when he is pissed off.

They should be useful as a surprise factor. Come on, who would expect a Healing in the middle of a battle?

So far, I came up with this:
1. Healing magic shouldn't have long incantations.
2. They are fairly easy to cast and make something happen, but very difficult to cast correctly. That is why Healers need high NEWT marks and a lot of study. That is also why not a lot of people are running aroundm healing others. These spells are very delicate, you could injure your hurt relative while trying to heal him if you areincompetent at casting the spell and don't really know what you're doing (Lockhart at CoS).
3. Harry isn't the only one who thought of using this branch of magic for hurting users, but those others decided that Dark Arts are simply more effective and easier then Healing. You have to know how to cause serious damage to really do it. That is where Anatomy comes in. Dark Arts just do it.

That is it so far, when I have some more ideas I will post them. Keep in mind that I thought of this idea 10 minutes before posting this thread. It needs a lot of planning before I start writing. It is too easy to overpower Harry and make him some Uber!Healer!Killer!Harry.

I will repeat myself, as far as I see, Harry should use normal Defense Against the Dark Arts in most of his fights and reserve his Healing knowledge for the serious fights that matter. It would mostly be used to heal others to let them keep fighting after they get hurt. Thank you for your responses, they really help me flesh this story out.

 

1) Exactly, it is her job, and so she had to train hard for it. I am assuming that, as the head of a tuition-based school, Dumbledore wouldn't waste money hiring someone whose job could be done by nearly any other staff member if needed.

2) It's a fucking school, how many people, bar Harry for he is the protagonist and thus has to see some action, go through life threatening experiences every year? Hogwarts is apparently the 'safest place in the magical world' or whatever, so I am assuming that their record on 'low deaths' should be good due to the fact that it is an establishment that doesn't exude danger; guess what- my high school had 0 deaths in their 200 year history, does that get them a medal? Plus, how do you know no students had died? We never see any evidence of that in cannon, so you can't use that as a point to show that the staff actually know how to keep students alive.

3) Exactly, Madame Pomfrey could heal bones in seconds; so why didn't the flying teacher, whose name has slipped my mind, heal Neville's wrist when he broke it? Surely such an easy feat of healing magic could be accomplished by the staff if it was so easy?

 

Hogwarts probably has a medical position to guard against the rarer, more serious injuries normal teachers can't deal with. Not, however, to teach, which indicates that either Hogwarts doesn't care at all about basic medical sufficiency in their alumni, or that the basics can be taught in other classes like Charms.

Or due to the fact the teachers are generally competent in keeping their students alive. And: Doesn't exude danger? Have we been reading the same books

Slight tangent: do we not? I have vague ideas of Myrtle being the only one to die at Hogwarts, but it might be from fanon. Anyone know anything about this?

Eh? You use the flying teacher, someone who's job doesn't require them to know anything about magic at all, as an example of the basic magical proficiency of Hogwarts teachers? Hooch might as well have been Filch for all the magical ability she shows.