A chimp animagus?

Opposable thumbs, and non-verbally casting.

If only chimps were native to Britain...

 

While having Jaguar or Anaconda! animagus Harry is nothing short of moronic, the 'native animals only argument makes just as little sense. How does magic have any sense of political boundries?

I'd like to read a story where Harry trains like mad to become an animagus, only to end up as something completley and utterly useless. And not fly useless, where one could conceivably come up with a situation in which it might have some application - I'm talking an animagus goldfish.

 

There are very few useless animagus forms Imo, like even gold fish would be useful for escape if a large amount of water is near.

 

I like the idea for a little parody oneshot:
Harry goes into a 'triggered' (by some potion or magical artifact) transformation, so he will learn faster...well shit that a goldfish doesn't have lungs and he didn't think about bringing some water.
He hid himself, because he wanted to be alone and goes all emo about how he needs to fight the dark lord etc., tries it and dies.
The thing about the prophecy: the artefact or the potion could be invented/made by Tom Riddle and he found it in the RoR.
So if he died because of lack of oxygen because of this (insert thing) made by Riddle, Riddle can be called his murderer (well and his own stupidy, too, but who cares? Prophecies are never really clear worded anyway)

Could be kinda nice.

 

Personally, I want to see a Harry platypus animagus sometime.

They are the most ridiculous-looking natural creature in the world. They also have cute little poison spurs that can incapacitate or even kill a grown man.

 

Doesn't dumbledore make things fly to his hands wandlessly

 

Yeah, I think. I also recall Remus holding a handful of flames or something.

 

Wandless magic clearly exists (as in is physically possible) given what we know about accidental magic. As to what one can do without a wand intentionally... it seems unclear. On the one hand, Sirius is capable of the presumably complex magic of animagus transformation without his wand, and the metamorphmagus powers are also technically 'wandless magic'.

Other than that... who knows. Odds are against it, or else I imagine Voldemort would have figured out how to do it, and not put so much stock into having the perfect wand.

 

I like to think of it like this; sure, you could kill someone with just a bullet alone. But it's a hell of a lot easier to just load it into a gun and shoot them.

 

Voldemort did figure it out. He was using wandless magic as a child.

When Dumbledore first met Tom Riddle to tell him that he was a wizard and had been accepted to Hogwarts:

"It's . . . it's magic, what I can do?"
"What is it that you can do?"
"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."


And later, when Dumbledore is speaking to Harry about Tom Riddle:

"His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-developed for such a young wizard and - most interestingly and ominously of all - he had already discovered that he had some measure of control over them, and begun to use them consciously. And as you saw, they were not the random experiments typical of young wizards: He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control. The little stories of the strangled rabbit and the young boy and girl he lured into a cave were most suggestive. . . . I can make them hurt if I want to. . . . "

 

Ah Yak... forgot about that - well caught.

Which begs the question, when the two wands got caught in the brother wand clusterfuck, why didn't Voldemort just raise his other hand and rip Harry's head off? Would have been a lot more practical than say... doing nothing for three years and then getting killed by Expelliarmus.

 

Like most other things in fiction, or at least in JKR's fiction, the reason for the overly complex stupid stuff is because otherwise there wouldn't be a story to tell.

 

My guess is that is was a combination of surprise and the situation - they were involved in what looked like a magical tug-o-war and when you try to switch from metaphorically pulling with 2 hands to just 1 when you pick up a rock to throw at your opponent, you are probably going to lose the tug-o-war match.

 

I'm of the opinion that even if you are a child prodigy like Riddle, the ability to use wandless magic consciously in a controlled manner (ie not accidental magic), somehow disintegrates or withers away once you start using wand magic.

I'm only basing this on observations of Voldemort in the later books though. IIRC he always uses a wand to do magic. The whole flying thing is inconclusive. It is impossible (obviously) to say that that the flying spell Voldemort employs is maintained or cast wandlessly. For all we know he might have made a pair of flight boots ala Hermes of the Greek mythology (although Hermes had winged sandals). Or it could be a potion, or a spell that you cast on yourself with a wand before you employ it, etc. etc.

I just really don't like wandless magic in fanon. There are exceptions though, an obvious one being HJ in Jbern's TLIL.

 

Power the Dark Lord Knows Not

*Cackles madly*

 

I was re-reading one of the chapters today, and it occurred to me that I wasn't exactly sure how the TWT point system worked.

I think that for the duels, a win was worth a point each. With Harry going 4-5 in the duels, 4 points. He got a single point for the broom race, so I guess in non-dueling tasks, fifth place is good for 1 point. Harry won the other two tasks, and considering his point total was 25, I guess first place is worth 10 point apiece. I would assume last place has no point value, so would anyone have an idea the point values attached to second, third and fourth?

 

I'm sure I've read a fic where Harry is a platypus animagus, but it was a long time ago, so I can't remember the name. :/ I don't remember it being all that great anyway.

 

Except for the duels which are worth 1 point for each of the 15 duels (5 wand, 5 staff, and then 5 more wand) the scoring is like this.

1st place - 10 pts
2nd place - 6 pts
3rd place - 4 pts
4th place - 2 pts
5th place - 1 pts
6th place - 0 pts

 

Well, that makes sense. I tried to find a direct explanation in the story itself, but failed to find it. I probably missed it.

Today it occurred to me that that narrative in Lie is hugely, vastly more intricate and larger in scope than canon GoF. I mean that as a credit to jbern, but the TWT has only been ongoing for about 2 months, and 5 tasks have been completed (4 if you count all the duels as one task). I found that fascinating, considering the TWT still has about 4 months to go. While the story to date certainly has been fantastic, jbern's going to have to come up with some really good ideas for the TWT to stay interesting for the duration of the story, which bodes well for us readers, as jbern has yet to really disappoint with his written works.

Here's to hoping an upcoming chapter has another scene like the one Karkaroff had in chapter 9, when he outlined the upcoming tasks. Set a nice precedent, with specific things to look forward to.

 

There's two reasons behind that Voice, first is the classic advantage of fanfiction. All the backround info is already known/available to the reader, so the author doesn't need to explain little things or worry about introducing a concept that will be completely unfamiliar.

Then there's the fact that JKR was writing a something that starting as a kids story and migrated into young adult by the end with Cedric's murder and the ritual to rez Voldemort. She couldn't get into the story because she was worried about writing the overarching plot.

So Jbern's got a bit of leeway to actually have fun his story, a bit more character detail and such. Good times are had by all because he's a damn talented writer to boot.