Harry's shield in 5th year couldn't do what it could in 7th year. Even at that, there's no canon spell that just goes through solid objects - so why create another shield? If anything, spell development would go toward healing/cancelling the effects of certain spells. It just doesn't sound efficient to have a counter spell for every offensive spell out there.

 

Why invent spells to shield specifically against a curse when a general protego will cover it just fine? It's just making things needlessly complicated, and it seems that the best way shield of the lot is the one you spend the most time perfecting. I would bet any amount of money that Harry's shield spell in DH would have completely blocked Dolohov's curse either because he's faster at casting it or because it is that much closer to 'perfect'.

 

The real problem with shield spells tailored to specific spells is that you would need nigh-precognitive powers to use them. How do you KNOW that the person you're fighting is going to cast any particular spell. You'd have to be a psychic or extremely fast.

 

This. This this this this this this this. Except for a few more commonly cast spells, and those that are shouted out by less-experienced wizards, you'd have no clue what was coming at you.

 

Maybe you could charm clothing with some tailor-made (ooh, I made a bad pun!) protegos for some more common spells so you never have to worry about being caught off guard, but you don't have to walk around with a bubble around you all day.

Maybe something like an anti-tripping jinx protego on your boots, or jelly-legs jinx on your trousers. An anti-summoning charm on your wand, shit like that. Everything else can do fuck-all through those protegos, except those specific spells.

Still, I'm inclined to agree with Taure about there being just one shield spell: protego.

You know, I just thought of something: rather than complaining about protego totalum, which I explained seems more forgivable, what really seemed like fangirlism on the part of Rowling, was Flitwick's protego horribilis. Not only do we not see what it actually does, but it's cast on the entirty of Hogwarts . . . and it's a Horrible Protection!

 

I assumed Protego Horribilis was a defence that was particularly strong against Dark magic, but I think it's more likely now that it was an aggressive defence.

 

Which makes legilimency so useful. You actually do know what your enemy will cast. That's probably a precursor to parrying correctly - you'd have to know what they're going to cast as they're casting it.

 

I wish I had your working knowledge of Latin, Rin; so much of modern language (not just English) has its roots there.

I certainly hope the point of Wingardium Leviosa isn't "float this feather", for several reasons. That would imply that a person would need to know the Latin (or some equally archaic language, the point being "not just whatever name you normally use") word for whatever he or she wanted to levitate. So suppose you wanted to float the tables at the Burrow like Bill and Charlie do in the beginning of (I think) DH (maybe GoF?), where they have the tables fight. You'd have to say something to the effect of "Trabis Leviosa" or "Mensa Leviosa". Either or both of those might be shit, since I just ran "table" through an English-to-Latin translator. The point being that if this were the case, and you wanted to float the silverware, you'd need the Latin-esque word for either "silverware" (best case) or "knives, forks, and spoons" (worst case).

Obviously, that isn't the case, since Ron used WL on the troll's club, and Harry used it on the sidecar in DH after it broke away from Hagrid and Sirius' old motorcycle. Then again, almost every time I've seen Mobili-xxx or Locomotor-xxx in any HP book, it has been specifically tailored to that item, like Mobilicorpus for moving Snape's unconcious body in PoA, to Locomotor Trunk used by Tonks in OotP. I can't recall exactly where I read this, and I believe it had to do with the trees jumping out of the way of the Knight Bus or something, but there was a Mobiliarbus spell for causing trees to move. Well, that seems to say that you'd better know what you're doing if you want to move something magically.

To be relevant to this thread, I don't remember Harry getting hit by a partially-shielded purple spell from Dolohov in OotP. I remember his silenced spell still putting a big hurt on Hermione, though, which brings up the age-old question of whether or not spells cast silently are less powerful than verbalized ones, which is an entirely different debate.

 

I looked it up on the lexicon:

Word of the prophets says that Wingardium Leviosa comes from Wing (English: wing) + Arduus (Latin: high, tall) and Levo (Latin: to raise/lift up).

The problem is that I can't find ANY conjugations of the verb, Levo that become Leviosa.

Anyway, Portus, I don't think that it matters really what language you use. Intention is everything. Avada Kedavra itself is not Latin but Aramaic. Pack is the incantation for a spell that packs all your belongings into a trunk. Tonks used it in . . . OotP, IIRC.

It might make an interesting dimention of an indy!Harry fic where, in private, he re-learns every spell using a made up series of consonants and vowels.

Everyone else casts, "Wingardium Leviosa"; Harry casts, "saminu" or what-have-you. Assuming that you used only p/b/t/d/k/g/s/z/m/n and a/e/i/o/u, used three syllables, Consonant-Vowel, where no sound was repeated within the word, you would have 43,200 combinations available to attach to any spell. There's nearly 125,000 combinations if you don't mind repitition of sounds within words. I doubt there are 43,200 unique spells known to mankind. Excepting spells with less than three syllables (and I doubt that there are many at all), he could have an extreme edge in a fight - not only will people not know what you're casting, but you can cast in far less time than it takes them.

With the spell: Wingardium Leviosa, if Harry was saying something like saminu, he'd have the spell off in 3/8ths the time it took to say wingardium leviosa, or 1/2 the time it took to say avada kedavra.

 

This is my rant on "Why Garbled Latin Works", and how to relate it to Hogwart's Broken Magical Curriculum.

When we look at spells and the way they're taught, two glaring things always come to mind.

Hogwarts is an all-encompassing primary magical school. Think K-8 here.

Outside of apparent post-graduation level training (Aurors, Dragonkeepers I believe are two noted references), most wizardlings take all they need out of the Castle and into the world.

Not all there is. All they'll need, which is likely a cheap way of saying "The Ministry will yank our funding if we teach you to AK Bitches". I'm sure this is discussed into the dirt somewhere. Probably. But it's enough not to explode your house, let you do cog-like wizard-socially acceptable things, and be useful to the body of Magicals as a whole. Essentially the point of an education, really.

That said - dark/light wizards are always off and about looking for shortcuts, weird and obscure old and new ways to do things, and those lovely plot devices which Merlin left about in his cottage or magical underwear drawer. This implies there is more magic to learn, than what is commonly offered. Reasonably logical.

All that said: What do Japanese witches say to float things? Probably nothing Flitwick teaches. Would Harry be able to use it? If he could wrap his head around the idea that it would work.

There's your ticket. Magic Words. You say something, and the act of saying and swishing gives you: Declaration of intent, and Action to effect the world. Going back to real-world references (if you can call them that) we get into things like self-hypnosis and the foundations of modern new-age bullshittery (sorry pagans). You convince yourself that mumbling garbled latin is really magic words, and BOOM. They are.

It's easier to teach little kids to say mumbo-jumbo and make frogs fly that to explain will and intent, in a way to be understood.

This also leads in to the eventual circumventing of wands and words. People with enough mental sharpness, focus and smarts will see that a lot of their youthful training is just shortcuts and groundwork, and begin bypassing it.

"Hey, if I can say the (xxxNot Latin) phrase for FLOAT, which this school uses, what's to say I can't just click my tongue behind my teeth?"

Intent and understanding the idea of Protect would likely change the shield. That said, the person using it must actually believe they can protect the things or from the idea that's relevant. Death issue again. Also resolves 'different' shields. They are. It's all in intent. People are just lazy! That's fundamentally true.

If Harry felt he was a worse wizard than Hermione, and that her spells would get past his shield, he could possibly block bullets - and her tickling hex get right passed.

 

I've gotten so I just skip duel scenes, and even fight scenes in general in HP fanfics. Every last one of them are the same to me now, from the best to the worst: Nothing but a bunch of shouts of garbled latin if they even bother to do that much (as if I didn't get enough of it from canon). If you're lucky, you'll get some sort of explanation as to the effect this garble latin produces. I don't read latin (although, through very careful use of William Witaker's Words and Wikitionary's lists of the declensions and conjugations, I can ususally construct an accurate, if simple sentence in the language). If you're not so lucky, you just accept that the Author is spewing syllables onto the page.

"Kakisumatabatalus!"

"Bueoberlatobernass!

"Stickus inus theus mudus!"

"Apcray!"

"Voglio il tuo intestino a fuoriuscita dalla bocca!"

And Harry doing stupid shit rather than treating it like a life-threatening situation and using only one, single spell over and over until everything that moves stops moving permanently: Avada Kedavra.

By the end of Book 1, if I were Harry, Voldemore would have been an auto-AK on site, with no time given whatsoever to get a word in edge wise.

People die when they're killed.

 

http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/show/193715/abarai_renji-absurdres-akagi-bleach-cap-death_note

 

But then all his friends would think he is evil, and Harry is not a murderer and..and....

yea, I agree with you.

Anyway, you could have some pattern on the spell creation that would make require another shield to stop it. The more complex that pattern/matrix/whatever is, the harder it is to shield against it with a common protego, thus creating the need for some variations.

Could also explain why the AK is unforgivable. Who knows, maybe its power output would overload any shield you could cast and fuck you both up?

Still, I'm more partial to the idea of a highly concentrated shield-like manifestation of magic floating in front of you absorbing/redirecting spells sent your way till it overloads and blow up on your face

The fact is: we have no cannon information regarding spell creation, so as long as you create your own, you can do anything you like with it, as long as no rainbow-colored-love-shield shows up and starts bouncing back AK at deatheaters.

 

And somehow, I mananged to misspell Voldemort . . .

 

As to the unblockableness of the Killing Curse, I'm slightly partial to the idea that the main reason it's unblockable is that everyone believes it to be so. A reasonably skilled wizard might actually be able to block the spell, except that since all wizards know that AK penetrates shields they always expect the spell to fail, so it does.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIgFNR7ZOhU <-- 4:25~4:28 - This is how you handle Voldemort, only with an AK, not a gun. No fucking Expelliarumuses, no fucking talking, no nothing, just shoot.

 

I disagree.

The first time the Killing Curse was used, it would not have the aura of invincibility. And if every spell up to that point had been blockable, then their would be no reason to fear that this spell was any different - logic would dictate that once one established what the spell was, there would be a way to block it.

I suppose a rather nice compromise can be reached, in that what makes AK so unforgivable is that it's more than just a death curse. It requires such a lack of empathy for life that it is, for 99% of the population, impossible to truly comprehend. As such, only those that can cast it - and kill with it - have any chance of having enough understanding to block it.

Now, on top of that, there is the mystery of how it kills people. Canon seems to indicate (and the fact that a lung piercing curse isn't an unforgivable) that there is more going on than a simple death. It's more... dark, for want of a better world. It's going beyond mortal comprehension of life and death. As such, even those who can cast it can't truly understand it, because one cannot truly understand death if they hold no value for life.

In a very, very odd way, it seems that the only set of circumstances that could even remotely lead to blocking it would be those that Harry underwent at the very end of book seven - a comprehension of the value of life and death even as he prepared to forfeit his own. Course, he didn't cast a shield...

 

Avada Kedavra is unblockable because it represents the unstoppable nature of death, and in JKR's opinion death is the ultimate evil so therefore it is an Unforgivable offence to kill someone. That's the out of world explanation.

In the HP world however, it could be that the Killing Curse harms both the victim (obviously) and the caster, maybe by splitting the soul, or by corrupting the mind, or maybe just because it requires such a fucked up mind to cast that by the point you're able to use it you're likely to have a lifetime in Azkaban to deal with anyway.

 

OP: Regarding the original topic, I have to agree with Sesc. Duels that employ only protego get boring in a hurry. I think it was LordDwar who invented several different kinds of shield for his 'HP and the Summer of Change.' I don't remember their names or functions, but I remember being impressed with the ideas. So long as it's somewhat plausible, I say do what you want.