My general impression was always that his ideals were never generally accepted. There was never that much support for them. "Mudblood" considered a bad word by the general populace, etc. The only thing sustaining the Pureblood movement was Voldemort's personal power and the fear it engendered. And don't forget that once given a rallying point in the form of Harry Potter coming out into the open, a very large part of the wizarding population did show up at the Battle of Hogwarts (brought by Slughorn) and fought against Voldemort.

In the absence of Voldemort's power, the Pureblood supremacy movement seems to have about the same ability to enact change as white supremacy does today.

 

Can the summoning charm work on people?

I'm looking at http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Summoning_Charm and the closest thing I see to summoning a person, is Harry Potter summoning a toad in his fourth year which implies that you can summon a person.

Any opinions on the matter at least?

In The Santi's fan fiction, an auror tries to summon Grindelwald and...

I know that his story isn't canon, but he does a pretty good job with keeping thing accurate, and filling in the blank spots. I'm trying to write a fan fiction and I'm not sure how I should go with it...

 

I'd always thought wizarding racism was mostly similar to racism in the US during the 1940s and 50s. It's more complex than Sesc's conjecture implies since every wizard has their own views on the issue, both private and public, and those don't always agree.

So you get the people who think muggles to be cruel and stupid but have no problem with muggleborns. You have people who think of any muggle blood as a tangible taint on the bloodline, and those who would cover up any muggle ancestry or fudge family trees but don't believe there is any tangible effect. You have people who are prejudiced against/disgusted by muggleborns on principal, but don't consider any muggleborns they've actually met to fit this archetype. There's people who find muggles ingenious and muggleborns to be fascinating, openly or secretly. There are muggleborns who aspire to the pureblood lifestyle and openly deride their own heritage, people who put up a tolerant and enlightened front but use slurs and make rude comments at home, people who don't give a rat's ass about the issue at all, and people who don't even understand the need for the Statute of Secrecy.

And those are just the generalized, pigeonhole views I came up with by thinking about what I heard growing up. With race or parentage being such a contentious issue, it was likely considered crass to even discuss it in public pre-Voldemort. It probably wouldn't be hard for his own anti-muggle prejudice combined with riding on the fallout from Grindelwald's regime to stir shit up from that angle, especially since he tried to do the same with werewolves, goblins and giants later on.

I've spent too much time thinking about this, please excuse the wall-of-text. :facepalm

 

Personally I'm inclined to think that it does work. The closest we see is probably when Fred and George summon the hairs of a muggles's head in DH. But you could probably argue that this only worked because it was a muggle.

However, if I were you I wouldn't use it in your story. It has a tendency to break any combat system, in that you can just summon your opponent and you'll usually win. So it doesn't really lend itself to a good fight scene. Your example from the Santi's fic is a pretty good way pf dealing with it, I think.

 

If the summoning charm does work on people, I suspect it can be blocked just like every other spell, (bar the Killing Curse).

 

It was blocked. Harry used a Shield Charm to prevent Lucius (I think it was Lucius) from summoning the prophecy.

 

Well, I was meaning blocked in the more specific sense (referring to the magical technique of blocking, not the general use of the word to mean "to stop") but that is true, and valuable information. If it can be shielded against, then it can probably be blocked.

 

I think that's a lot of what Rowling was aiming for, but the comparison breaks down somewhat when you remember there's actually no RL correlation to Muggleborns. After all, I cannot recall a single instance in which a black family (as in, mom is black, dad is black) had a white baby. In the unlikely event if that actually occurring I'd have to chalk it up to recessive "white" genes a la Rowlings "Muggleborns actually have distant Squib ancestors" crap, in that it's just as implausible.

Now, if you were to use the Muggleborn analogy as it relates to, say, a very light-skinned black person or a mulatto passing themselves off as white because of the perks of being white in the 40s and 50s (and now) I could see that comparison working better, especially for the "immerses himself into pureblood culture and society" example.

It was Bellatrix, and that has nothing to do with Summoning people; the prophecy was no more animate than Neville's Remembrall. I also believe that Summoning a toad is wholly different than Summoning a person. IIRC the Hogwarts Transfiguration classes have a subset of lessons for Human Transfiguration aside from and later than that associated with animals. Yes, that means that Transfiguring humans is harder because of the complexity of humans (which are in reality not that much more complex than the rabbits and turtles we see Transfigured in canon) but to me it implies that humans are either resistant to the effects of magic or must be treated differently on the front end.

There's also the canon evidence in DH, where instead of Levitating Harry to get the Cup, Hermione has to Levicorpus him to get him up there. And at the start, Harry casts the Levitation Charm on the sidecar itself instead of his own body, implying that the spell is not intended for humans. Maybe there are contradictory examples (shocking, I know) but that's where my opinion comes from.

In light of that, and because of the same feeling that someone else posted about it making fights less fun, I don't think humans can be Summoned. I read a fic early on where Harry Summoned Ginny away from a curse or burning building and she's dumbfounded hat he could do it (supposedly impossible, yada yada) and it occurred to me that it *should* be impossible.

 

I was providing evidence to show that you can shield against a summoning charm so that if it is possible to summon humans, the victim or a third party should be capable of stopping it.

 

Summoning all the inanimate objects a person is wearing might be an indirect way to summon a person. Summoning all the clothes a person is wearing (as long it's not just something like a towel draped around them) should work well.

 

I'm under the impression that in the magic system of Harry Potter:

you = your body + stuff you're wearing + stuff you're carrying

Because that's what the person doing the magic thinks when they think of the concept of themselves as a person (for the purposes of doing magic involving themselves, at least), and that most wizards and witches in general think that way.

I blame it on Apparition and similar magic. They get used to the idea that they have to include their clothes, necklaces, earrings, etc. as parts of themselves, just like their organs and other body parts are, when they Apparate or else they leave them behind.

 

I know that a lot of what I’m about to quote and respond to has already been addressed, but I rarely let that stop me…

I’m reserving judgment until I actually see the process in writing. After all, I’m more than certain that Oedipus Flower would peg Rowling’s “most depraved sequence of actions she could possibly imagine” –meter, but for DLP that’s, well, not run-of-the-mill, but not, I think, as shocking as it once was. For all we know, the JKR version of Horcrux Making 101 could be as ho-hum as disemboweling a bunch of kittens and using the innards as lube for fucking a retarded fat chick in her back fat. uh, don't mind me. 'cause that sounds bad, and is not something I do. Or did. Or want to do again. :|

I think the true motivation may have been overlooked, or at least not elaborated on further than these quotes. Voldemort hated himself to an extent, and never truly got over his childhood and his parents betraying and abandoning him. On one level, he wants everyone to suffer for the perceived injustices against him, and on another level he merely wanted to be able to do exactly whatever he wanted, whenver, wherever, etc. without anyone (read: Dumbledore, the Aurors) trying to make him stop. He was modeled pretty closely after Adoplh Hitler, who like Voldemort espoused an ideal of blood purity he himself lacked, etc. etc.

I think you can pretty well sum it up with, “He was just a complete asshole.”

I think we should all grab our copies of DH and scribble after the “All was well” line – “Just kidding. It still sucks because even though we ‘won’ we didn’t clean house, so guess what? Our kids will have to go thru this same shit a few years down the road.”

I have wondered several times what exactly it was that “pushed” Lucius “too far.” I mean, was it LV moving in? Because surely LV was living *somewhere* during OotP and, in fact, HBP. Was it Lucius’s time in Azkaban? Or sending Draco on what everyone assumed was a suicide mission? I could see one or both of those doing it, but it’s never stated, and by the time DH rolls around Draco is pretty safe. It seems to me that LV was just being a dick to Lucius for the sake of being a dick, when he had clearly forgiven every other DE that failed during the Ministry raid.

I got the feeling thru most of DH that if LV had won it all, Lucius would’ve been right back to his smarmy self given the chance, and would’ve eventually gotten his groove back and been in LV’s good graces. I suppose that’s partly why I hated that the Malfoy’s apparently got off scot-free.

Which is another reason to read and enjoy “As Yet Untitled” by bellerophon30. Harry & Co. are far, far less inclined to turn the other cheek or let things slide in that fic. In fact, most of the “good” guys take a decidedly cold and calculating side and take a dim view of leniency for the “bad” guys.

This is exactly how I see it. LV is a textbook example of a sociopath with some megalomaniacal psychopath thrown in for good measure.

Perhaps Grindelwald wasn’t so pretentious or as deranged? Perhaps Grindelwald, like most wizards, according to Lupin, doesn’t believe in any kind of Wizarding royalty, and so never thought to call himself Lord anything.

And if there were no others, then of course LV is the worst and most powerful and most fearsome. He’s also the sweetest, kindest, most self-deprecating Dark Lord, for all that tells us.

I’ll give you this one, since people were too scared to use his name even 13 years after his supposed death. That’s something, there. Still, the reasoning is diluted by the fact that LV was known to attack from the shadows and in ambush, never (or rarely) choosing to mount a frontal attack on anyone. The way I see it, we’d be afraid of a serial burglar as well, but mostly because of his tactics, not his straight-up prowess.

I’ll give you this one also, to an extent. LV took over in a spectacularly well-done coup, but it also occurred in a vacuum. If there had been more time to fill the void with rational D’dore supporters rallying around someone like Kingsley, I think the results would’ve been the same in the end (LV taking over) but would probably have been (a) far bloodier and (b) more drawn-out and in the public eye.

I used to dismiss Herpo on the derpy name, but now I think on it, Herpo would be a great character to bring back in a story about either Necromancy or perhaps being called up via the Resurrection Stone by either Harry or an antagonist.

/goes to add more notes to the soon-to-never-be-finished story I haven’t been working on…

This is exactly how I read it, too. I don’t see how it could be any other way, honestly, and fuck Rowling for throwing half-assed shit like that into an interview. Goddamn, woman!

Here’s the important thing – Parseltongue HAS to be a magical language, because SNAKES DO NOT HAVE EARS. Therefore, no one speaking some Parseltongue “words” (read: hissing) they happened to hear could possibly really work on something spelled to only react to a Parselmouth. And so yes, I’m flat-out saying the Ron opening the CoS in DH is a load of bullshit.

You know, it’s a real shame that so many shit-fics have ruined the concept of Parsel-magic. It’s one of the parts of that stillborn baby Unsung Hero that I really thought was excellent. At the time, ‘cause it’s been a while.

M.I.L.F. – McGonagall I’d Like to Fuck?

And that’s why no one has ever Splinched off his cock, because more than anything – at all – guys believe you = your body + your cock, dammit! + “ooh yeah, my ‘other’ wand, heh” + “eh, whatever this other stuff is.”

 

While probably true, let's not forget that none of the other Death Eaters involved in that raid had tossed away a piece of Voldemort's soul for their own personal gain, even if it was unwitting. Lucius was always going to have a long way to climb back up after that; I'd say after he screwed up the raid as well he was probably written off as anything except a punching bag with stacks of gold.

 

That's not exactly accurate. Snakes have a sense of hearing. Vibrations are transferred through the air/ground and into their internal ears.

 

Isn't it possible for Parseltongue to be a language that has to be spoken by a magical being? That way it is still a magic language. I do think that was a bit contrived, but I have grown to like the idea that Parseltongue isn't some magically imbued language. Harry and other Parselmouths can actually understand the hissing due to some magical talent, while a normal magic-user can indeed replicate the effect without actually knowing what they are saying. That does raise the question of the charm on the sink, whether it would respond only to a magic-user saying open, or if it would respond to say, a snake.

 

I think someone mentioned - maybe in a different thread - the possibility that snakes don't speak parseltongue. Rather, parseltongue is a human language that snakes understand, and a parselmouth is a person who can a) understand snakes and b) speak parseltongue instinctively.

I quite like this idea.

Another topic: splinching. We're really shown two contradictory sides to this in the books. In DH, splinching is able to cause massive bleeding and injury, and Ron is able to move about afterwards. It's basically dismemberment. But in GoF, it's described thus:

Not only was it not life threatening (they waited for the Reversal Squad), but the splinched people were immobilised by it - as if the two parts were still connected somehow, and were preventing them from moving. The existence of a connection between the body parts would also explain how it wasn't life threatening.

Possible ways to reconcile these two types of splinching?

The only thing I can think of is that the better at apparition you are, the more serious the splinching if you mess up. A person who normally successfully apparates is quite good at completely leaving their previous location behind, so if they accidentally forget a body part, they leave it behind completely, severing it. On the other hand, a person who is rubbish at apparition isn't very good at separating away from their old location, so their body parts are still magically connected when they splinch.

I guess this would also go some way to explaining why it's safe for students to practice apparition at the extremely high (probable, one could say) risk of being splinched at least once. Otherwise we'd have a load of decapitated 6th years every year.

 

That was what prompted Portus' reply.

I hated that part of DH. The idea that splinching wasn't fatal was one of my favorite magical quirks. And Ron's fucking arm ruined it. The injury wasn't even an important part of the DH plot. Rowling just threw it in so Hermione could nurse him back to health.

You could maybe also attribute it to stress level. If you're not calm and focused when you perform a less than satisfactory disapparition, perhaps the resulting splinch is messy.

 

Also, wasn't Hermione Apparating them around the country then? That's how they ended up in the Forest of Dean, she thought of it as a safe place to escape from Yaxley. So maybe if you're Apparating yourself, you have more control over it, so the splinching is less serious, but if someone else is doing it, problems start.

 

This, I would assume. Not to mention that a relatively safe assumption to make would be that the more people you are apparating, the difficulty of apparition becomes exponentially higher.