And the worst thing is that it seems you can cast imperius recursively. Wasn't Katie imperio'd [?] by Rosmerta, who was under the spell of Draco? And Draco definitely isn't the best example of mental fortitude in the series.

 

Since in the HP universe wizards that were turned into werewolves still can use magic, would it be reasonable to assume that it is the same with wizards turned into vampires?

 

We see one example of a vampire in HP, and that's at a Slug Club party, I believe. Sanguini or some such, and he had to be reprimanded by whoever brought him along when he tried to bite another guest, so either not the best example of a vampire or they're all blood addicted in HPverse.

 

Eh...

Animagi: Can control the change, aren't contagious, still a living being, still use magic.

Werewolves: Can't control the change, are contagious (though mostly only while transformed), still a living being, still use magic.

Vampires: "Ain't no such thing as a part-time vampire!" Can presumably create more vampires, though we have no idea how. Are dead things.

That whole living versus un-living thing might be a key factor in being able to wield/interact with magic.

Now, wands are made of things that used to be alive, too, and are even treated as almost being alive in some respects. While the wand may choose the wizard -or even "un-choose" them, in favor of someone else- it's still the wizard's magic making things happen.

Inferi are dead, but they are animated by a wizard's magic, and presumably cannot use magic of their own, even if they could in life.

It may come down to how important life and/or being alive is in the process of making the magic happen. If we take wands as an example, one could hypothesize that you could just hold hands with your vampire friend, instead of carrying a wand , but can a vampire use a wand to make their own magic? *shrug*

Vampires are rarely mentioned in the books and, as far as I can recall, only appear in one scene, where we don't learn anything of value - other than, perhaps, that they feed on blood rather than, say, psychic energy or some other mumbo jumbo. Since they aren't classified by the Ministry as beasts, they aren't even in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, so we didn't get any info there, either.

We don't know how they create new vampires, how often they must feed, how much of their original mind/personality they retain, how long they can un-live, how sunlight affects them (Dracula, if you'll recall, did NOT burn up in sunlight!), which of their mythical weaknesses actually affect them, if they can fly or use mental powers, if the vampire who created them retains some control over them, if they can eat regular food, or indeed whether they can still use magic.

Edit: I think a big clue to how awesome/lame it is to be a vampire in the HP world is that Voldemort isn't a vampire. He went waaaay out of his way to search for immortality when vampires were right around the corner. Either they can't use magic, meaning they could probably be exterminated by wizards with relative ease, or their weaknesses are so terrible (sunlight, no magic, no holy symbols, garlic, silver, running water, need soil from their homeland, submission to the vamp that 'sired' them, the works) that immortality via vampirism was a thoroughly unattractive option to Tom Riddle.

Or, it could be both a lack of magic AND glaring weaknesses. Either way, Voldemort didn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

This is one of the big issues fanfic authors must contend with in any story where Harry (and/or Hermione, or whoever) becomes a vampire OR where it's a crossover with a series that has vampires as powerful characters: If vampires are that good, how come Voldemort didn't become one? Or, if vampires aren't that good, how could vampire!Harry still be awesome and beat Voldemort?

Or, simply, how do the HP characters not just curbstomp the vamps from the other series? (Of course, if it's a Twilight curbstomp, who gives a shit?)

Same applies to crossovers with Anita Blake or Underworld, where werewolves are concerned. Being a Harry Potter werewolf sucks in pretty much every way, by comparison.

 

The notion that vampires aren't alive is pretty silly. They may not be biologically alive the same way humans are, but they're (presumably) sentient and walking about on their own cognizance. That's about as alive as it gets.

 

I think a better way to look at it, instead of alive vs. dead, is whether they are volitional.

Inferi are not volitional. They are controlled in every way by a spell. Without that spell, they are no longer animated.

Someone under a the Imperius Spell however, is still volitional to some extent. In the subconscious, they are still causing their own heart to beat, their own lungs to draw air, and their own magic to do act (Krum, for instance, in the maze. He was instructed to cast a spell, but it was his own magic that was being used when he cast it). Also, there is the possibility of breaking the Imperius spell, which again speaks to volition

So, vampires are volitional. That would mean that they would have the ability to use magic, if they already had it. Of course, this is assuming that there isn't such a thing as a "magical core" that is physical in some sense and can die.

 

Yeah, if magic relies on actual biological function (as opposed to mental function) then vampires might very well not be able to use it. Which of course begs the question of how vampires stay alive if not for magic, but I suppose it could a curse similar to lycanthropism...

 

"I think a big clue to how awesome/lame it is to be a vampire in the HP world is that Voldemort isn't a vampire." - maybe HP!Vampires are not immortal.

 

Ummm... I don't think it is really. They may be eternally youthful or some bullshit, but HP vampires can still die. Voldemort would not have seen that as a desirable form of immortality.

 

They're also a different kind of species, much like werewolves, with probably at least some weaknesses, whereas Voldemort seemed to be something of a wizard supremacist, or at least would have rejected vampirism in his appeal to them.

He would have known of, between the philosopher's stone and horcruxes, at least two forms of wizarding immortality that are as good as or better than the form that comes with being a vampire.

 

And that would certainly go in the list of possible cons, if we knew mre about HP's vampires.

Voldemort died in the books, too, so clearly horcruxes had that same vulnerability.

And, he didn't live long enough for us to find out if he'd age or not, but since Voldemort presumably didn't look like a schoolkid his entire (first) life, I'm guessing horcruxes don't even stop you from aging.

All bets are off, I guess, on whether his new body would age normally or not. If not, he'd have been stuck relying on the loyalty of a follower to supply him with a new enemy's blood (taken, not stirred) every so many years, in order to avoid being a bodiless spirit. And those bones of his father would have to run out, eventually, so he'd need to find a whole new way to get a body.

So, clearly, there are different benefits and drawbacks to each method of immortality. Sure, vampirism doesn't keep your soul from moving on if your body is destroyed, but neither do horcruxes, once someone figures out your trick: It just delays the inevitable.

When comparing vampires to horcruxes, it comes down to how many ways vampires can die and how easy it is for those ways to happen, rather than simply that they can die.

Plus other drawbacks like possibly having to submit to the will of your creator (and even the possibility you die if your creator dies, which is in many vampire stories).

But, we don't know which of these drawbacks HP vampires have.

Maybe it was just the soul moving on versus not that convinced Voldemort that horcruxes were the way to go, but it could also be that HP vampires are physically weak, beholden to their creator, cramp up something fierce when it rains, and burst into flames if they inhale doxie droppings. We just don't know.

 

Drop a horcrux down the Mariana trench. That might not give you surefire immortality, but it'll last at least as long as it takes us to get down there and explore effectively (and probably long past that).

 

Unless the pressure that exists in the trench is enough to crush a horcrux...

 

Or Voldemort finds himself possessing a giant squid.

 

It has to be destroyed beyond magical repair. That leaves basilisk fangs and Fiendfyre, apparently. Was there one other substance mentioned in canon? Can't remember.

 

A lot of stories out there have the killing curse being able to destroy a horcrux (and the fact that the only way to destroy one is to destroy it beyond magical means, means that the killing curse should do the job, no?), but I can't remember if that has any canon justification. But, of course, if the killing curse was enough to terminate a horcrux, there's no way it'd (the horcrux) would be as reviled as it it, no? Unless, of course, that's more fanon getting in the way of canon and the killing curse is actually difficult to cast.

 

No canon justification. Harry, Hermione and Ron never attempted the Killing Curse on a Horcrux in the books. As far as I recall, no character specified whether it was a viable method or not.

 

Maybe if Voldemort had achieved the 6 horcrux goal he set for himself in his youth, he wouldn't have those setbacks like aging. I think that the way he settled the objective has a deepest meaning, but the plot never allowed it so Rowling never had to explain it nor develop it. We are talking about the guy who had the most extensive knowledge of magic in the 20th century, and Horcruxes were one of the subjects he excelled at.

 

Would a basilisk be able to petrify portraits? I don't remember there being any mention of portraits frozen, so why couldn't they just tell Dumbledore/whoever that a giant snake was moving around the school?

 

Are we?

He had plenty of knowledge on the Dark Arts, and I'm sure he had done a lot of research on achieving immortality, but I'm guessing that obsession with never dying probably ate up a lot of time he could have used to study other things.

He may have been a skilled and powerful wizard, and he knew plenty of stuff within his specialties, but I doubt he was a very well-rounded individual, as magical knowledge goes. There could have been plenty of witches and wizards out there who had more extensive magical knowledge than Voldemort, though perhaps without the skill, drive, or courage/insanity/desperation to use it the way Voldemort did.

The Weasley twins certainly had plenty of magical know-how, considering they managed to stock an entire store with their products, on top of making defensive items for the Ministry. Did they know as much about the Dark Arts as Voldemort? No, but they obviously knew plenty, and they were just teenagers.

It stands to reason that there were plenty of people out in the world who would have known as much or more about magic than Voldemort, but not necessarily on the same topics, and they didn't make a name for themselves by becoming a terrorist.

Let's just not get too carried away heaping accolades on a magical Osama Bin Laden, hmm? Most extensive magical knowledge is what I would consider to be an unsubstantiated claim that isn't really supported by the books.

As much as I chafe at the way people think the sun shines out of Albus Dumbledore's liver-spotted Grindelwald gate, I'd say he's an obvious candidate for having more magical knowledge than Voldemort (even without the horcrux knowledge or having memorized 1001 Ways to Kill Using Dark Magic by Ima Kunt), if only by virtue of having lived longer (and having had a body to turn pages with the entire time, unlike Tom).

I'd answer that, but I tripped and fell into an inconvenient plot-hole.