This. You simply need to be competent at what you're doing and there won't be any problems.

 

Soooo... the whole Wizarding World is screwed, then.

 

PSShhyah!

How else can you expect the world to be saved by Ugly Betty, Ralph 'Mouth' and the Boy called 'It'?

 

I can't check myself currently, but did Harry's scar hurt at the Quidditch World Cup, when the Crouch Junior put the Dark Mark in the air? If it did, why?

 

I believe it is movie BS, as I do remember the scene in GoF. It made me cringe, just as a lot of other crap in the movies did.

 

How large do you think was the effect of Voldemort's rule on England?

We have Harry,Hermione and Ron trying to go to a village and fleeing because of dementors being there.

 

In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry gets very tired when practicing the Patronus charm with Lupin. But I can't remember if that was due to the spell being draining or due to him practicing it against the boggart and the resulting dementor effect. Which was it?

For some reason I have the feeling that it was both and that it was draining just to create the mist.

(I don't have the books to check)

 

As poorly-referenced as it is in this snippet, I think it was more the spell sapping his energy than the Dementor.

 

I think it was that the boggart took the form of a dementor. For some reason I distinctly recall Lupin giving Harry chocolate when he became exhausted from practicing and that chocolate made Harry feel better. Though I can't remember if that's only from the movie or not.

 

Thanks wordhammer. So its the effort of keeping the spell up that is draining. Hmmm... what does that mean about magical power in the Harry Potter universe?

I know several DLPers *cough*Taure*cough* are big on the idea that magic doesn't use power (magical or physical) and instead is based solely on skill, but how does the Patronus interact with that if it explicitly drains energy?

 

Chocolate was the medicine to the Dementor effect at their first appearance too, and Madame Pomfrey made a comment about it being good that they finally had a Defence Professor who knew what they were doing when she heard that Lupin had given out chocolate on the train. This was just after she had given some to Harry herself, after learning of his exposure and bad reaction to the Dementors.

Also, the Patronus charm is one of the few spells in the HP universe that has been shown to require more than a wand movement and incantation to perform.

 

It doesn't exactly say that the spell itself is draining him though. It says "the effort of keeping it there" drains him, which could involve the Dementor, the emotional effort of having to focus on a happy memory against an onslaught of depression, or the shame and inner conflict he feels at wanting to hear his mother's death over and over again.

 

Bro... none of us really know what the fuck we're talking about. The mechanics of the HP magic system are beyond fucked.

It's better to just pick an explanation you like and stick with it.

 

Much of Harry Potter magic requires mental focus, which is draining in and of itself. Compare with activities such as high-end theoretical physics, writing complex computer code, or playing a musical instrument at a high degree of skill. Despite the activities not being physically demanding, they are mental challenges that after an hour or two can leave you in much the same drained state as Harry after Patronus Charm practice.

 

What exactly are the limits of the imperius curse? For example can you make someone dance a particular style of dancing even if that person doesn't know it or in another case where the caster has only heard of it but has actually never seen it.

To expand on that question, when casting the magic its the caster who has control right? meaning that the amount of things the person under the spell can do is only limited to what the caster's knowledge, for example if the caster knows advanced physics he can make someone do something relating to that or is it the other way round?

 

Curses in Harry Potter allow people to do things they may not normally be able to do. For example, the book Sonnets of a Sorcerer forces the reader to speak in limericks for the remainder of his or her life; no mention is made of whether the reader must have a sense of rhyme or meter. Neville does "a series of quite astonishing gymnastics" in Crouch/Moody's class when under the Imperius. It's quite plausible that neither Neville or Crouch were capable of doing such gymnastics, so it could be that caster nor victim needs to know how to do the actions.

Who knows? Perhaps the gaping plot chasm where Ron opens the Chamber of Secrets in Deathly Hallows was really the result of Hermione's well-intended Imperius.

 

So basically according to canon you can make someone speak a language that doesn't exist(like speak the language of a cross between hipogriff and cats).

I guess the better question is, has there been a fanfiction out there that has tried to give a reasonable explanation for it?

 

The best explanation is that somebody under the Imperius can do whatever's under their physical capabilities, as long as it's within the mental capabilities of either that person or the caster. But it's not necessarily canon.

 

It's not the Patronus Charm that makes Harry feel terrible, it's the effect of the Dementors. Whenever he casts the Charm a) without the presence of Dementors (e.g. when Malfoy pretended to be a Dementor) or b) before he feels their effects (e.g. the Patronus at the end of PoA) he doesn't feel drained at all.

I would disagree with this common perception. The fact that magic is hard and the fact that people who study theory a lot have greater success in casting practical magic seems to suggest that pretty much all spells are more than just wand movement and incantation.

There's a limit to how difficult it can be to say a word and move a stick in the right pattern. If that was all there was to most spells, everyone would be Dumbledore-level magic users. Given that they're not, there must be something else to normal magic use (I would suggest understanding of theory).