One time they turned flames blue and green, which isnt really annoying, so much as just a dead giveaway. Also turning milk bad doesnt seem to bad.

 

But also kind of a giveaway.

 

Perhaps, but can you imagine accusing someone of witchcraft over a carton of bad milk?

 

Ha! Historically, people have been accused of witchcraft over as little as giving the wrong person a dirty look.

These days, we just accuse them of being a troll who uses HAX.

 

Hey, did you guys notice that Snape is the only guy who has a female patronus?

 

Yeah, it's almost like a female is the most important thing in his life. Oh, wait...

 

No, I mean technically speaking. Before DH I assumed that the Patronuses showed one's 'animal nature'. However, if Snape's patronus is female, then this theory is clearly wrong.

 

I believe that patronus is just representation of person's good feelings. Harry's patronus is a stag, because memory of his parents is making him happy. To Snape, as strange as it seems to me, is a doe that is making him happy by representing his 'love' (If Snape is capable of truly feeling it of course.). That would also explain why Tonks's patronus has changed. She was probably turned down by Remus and her previous patronus didn't work because it wasn't truly making her happy anymore.

Does it make any sense? Sorry if I am rambling, I am very sleepy right now.

 

That's silly. You're silly. Isn't it more likely to assume that the shape it assumes is directly connected in a way to the memories the Patronus is invoked with?

Why was Harry's Patronus a stag though? Yeah, yeah, we all know that was James' animagus form, but did Harry know about it at the time he cast it?

 

You have a point. Just forget I said anything.

 

The only one we know for sure. Most just weren't specified.

We already know he retains memories of the night his parents were killed; it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that, deep within his subconscious, he still has memories of his father occasionally assuming his animagus form... if for no other reason than to entertain baby Harry.

He may not have conscious access to those memories, but they are there. He has similarly restricted access to his memories of his mother's death, however the outside influence of the dementors forces him to relive them.

--
Between the books and the interviews, we know a Patronus can be representative of someone/thing the caster associates with either love or protection.

It may be tough for Harry to truly conjure up feelings of "love" for his parents, since they're basically strangers he'd only heard about (and as complete fuck-ups, at that,) until he was eleven, when he got to see some animated images of them; then he saw a few bad memories of them, some sort-of-but-not-really-ghosts that appeared at Voldemort's resurrection, and some maybe-real ghosts of them as he was walking off to die.

He may use thoughts of his friends to cast the spell, but the shape it takes is not based on any of them. So, protection it is. He knows (and may subconsciously remember) that his father protected him and Lily, he subconsciously remembers that his father could become a stag, so his protector takes the form of his father.

So... why not a Patronus that represents Lily? She protected him, and unlike James she didn't completely fail. Ironically, the difference is baby Harry didn't personally witness James's death. Lily, in the end, was more successful in her attempts to protect her son, but Harry actually saw her die in the process, before Voldemort cursed him. Maybe that kind of thing sticks with you, even if you can't remember it.

Presumably, if Harry saw Lily as more of a protector, his Patronus would be a doe, too.

This is where I have to chuckle: Why a doe? Well, obviously, because a doe is a stag's mate, and James could be a stag.

That's fine for Harry: He doesn't know enough about his mother to have an obvious animal to associate with Lily, except when you consider whose wife she was. By that same token, Snape supposedly has a Patronus whose form is dictated by his "love" (pfft, more like obsession) for Lily, but it seems he can't find an animal to associate with her, either, despite presumably knowing more about Lily than Harry could ever hope to discover.

So, despite hating James's guts, Snape can only create a Patronus based on Lily through the lens of her being James's wife; he is incapable of separating James from his thoughts of Lily.

Which presses all the right schadenfreude buttons for me.

 

Or maybe JKR is sexist and immediately defaulted tobthe male parent as the protector

 

Or she figured she'd made Lily so important and beloved and saint-like that she had to throw James some kind of bone, considering he's apparently best known for being a douche and landing a wife that, despite being a muggleborn in a society that doesn't value them, was waaaaay outside his weight class.

Okay, James, you get to be the inspiration for Harry's Patronus... happy now?

 

Harry did know that a stag was James's animagus before he cast it. He learnt about it in the Shrieking Shack.

 

Don't forget about the whole timey-wimey thing where he saw his patronus as a stag, therefore his patronus is a stag.

 

Excuse me? What did Lily do that put her outside James' weight class? To date James helped create the marauder's map, mastered an advanced transfiguration at a young age, and was generally considered a talented, popular wizard. He was also an asshole to Snape (who supposedly gave as good as he got, remember) and possibly other people with his pranks. Lily did...Well she was good at potions, right?

Both seem to equally talented (in their field), but neither were Dumbledore/Voldemort level skilled.

Keep in mind the protections on Harry were not Lily's intention. This isn't fanon where she set up some ritual and invoked deep magic to sacrifice her life to protect her child. She was a desperate woman confronted with a murderer who refused to stand aside in the face of danger (Which is very brave) to protect her child. Noble, yes, but James did the same thing.

 

Lily had a pre-Hogwarts control of her magic that we've only seen Tom Riddle match.

Anyway, I think he meant Lily was out of his class as a person in general, not who would win in a fight.

 

What did she do with it? I mean, at Hogwarts and the little life she had after it.

 

You know, it isn't fair to use wandless pre-school magic as something special, because for all we know there might be hundreds wizards and witches who can do it.

We've only seen Riddle and Lily do it, yes, but Harry is an underachiever and we have not actually seen childhoods of other people.

 

The films certainly took this to heart:



I suspect wandless magic is way overblown by fanon and the line between accidental and wandless magic in canon is itself blurred. Wishing for something hard enough apparently allows most every magical child to harness their magic from time to time and make stuff happen (Harry's Apparition, his hair-growing thing, vanishing the window to the snake case, Neville's bouncing when tossed out a window, etc.)

It's not a stretch for an intelligent child like Riddle or Lily to have figured this out for themselves and learned whatever mental discipline is needed to exploit it. Added to this is all manner of wandless canon magic (potions, animagus transformations, metamorphmagi, speaking Parseltongue, Apparition, a gazillion magical devices, etc.), so perhaps no big deal is made over it in the books because it really is no big deal.