That scene is not Sirius describing what the Order thinks the prophecy is. That scene is Sirius describing what Voldemort thinks it is, or at least, what he thinks he is seeking in it.

 

Does anyone have tips on how to write a witty character quips when you're not witty?

 

Collect funny lines from stuff you're reading into a comedy reference file- most humor is recycled, so you're not cheating. It doesn't even have to be in print- some of the best lines are things I heard in conversations or saw on a show (Dolorous Edd on Game of Thrones is worth listening to almost as much as Tyrion Lannister).

Ask someone who does witty writing for help/samples.

The basis of most sarcasm is contempt. Even if what the victim is saying is perfectly sound, the sarcastic fencer will demean it as obvious or pick apart the one element of their statement that can be mocked. This is done in the sixth book in particular:

...so even if your victim is found to be correct, you can always redirect the topic onto something irrelevant and embarrassing.

 

I've never read "fantastic beasts and where to find them" however there is all kinds of talk about the new movie of the same name. Is reading the book necessary to understand the movie? Is the book like the movie in that it follows a whole other character? I thought all we knew from the canon universe was that Newt Shmander was an early headmaster of Hogwarts and that his great great grandson married Luna Lovegood and wrote the book.

 

The book is not a story, it's basically a school book about magical creatures. And what's this about Newt having been Headmaster? Never heard of that.

 

My mistake. His portrait is in the headmasters office in the movies I thought that implied that he was headmaster at one point.

 

The movies are not canon.

Newt was a magizoologist, not a headmaster.

 

Did Albus even tell them what they were guarding? It wouldn't be so hard to believe if he hadn't.

 

The scene with Harry wouldn't make sense if they didn't. Why would Molly be telling Sirius not to say anything more about people guarding something at the ministry that they didn't connect with Harry?

There's also the whole "Peter ran straight to Voldemort" thing, which meant he, and probably the group, knew Voldemort was after him. It's circumstancial, but I think the weight falls on the Order knowing at the very least there was a prophecy concerning Harry and Voldemort, that their lives were intertwined.

Along with that, remember the whole Albus "Secrecy" Dumbledore trope is as much fanon as canon. He kept his secrets, but from whom? All we get is Harry's perspective.

So, technically, you're right, he may not have. But I think he probably told the Order at the very least there was a prophecy and it had to be guarded because it Harry's, dealing with Voldemort.

 

I was browsing through a bunch of old stories where I run into a plot device I haven't heard much: Getting rid of the Horcrux through stopping Harry's heart long enough for oxygen to no longer reach his brain. Thus technically killing him.

Now my problem with it is that it's a plan that requires plot precognition to work. But it did get me wondering.

What exactly constitutes dead in HP universe? Since it's a universe where souls are a real tangible thing. Is it the soul leaving the body? Is that irreversible? Well it's not because of Harry's station of light adventure, but that was an extraordinary circumstance.

Is there anything about it in Potterwerse? I stopped reading that somewhere around year 2.

 

IIRC, Dementors take the soul, but the person isn't considered dead after they're kissed. Of course, that may be head canon.

 

It's described as being worse than death. That pretty much means it's not death.

 

Do animals have souls too? I remember there being some speculation between Harry and Dumbledore about Nagini's state as a Horcrux, but I can't recall whether they discussed the matter of its soul (or lack thereof) or not.

 

Maybe. Sirius was able to gain some relief from the Dementors by turning into his animagus form, and he avoided detection around Hogwarts in the same way, which suggests they're not the Dementors' primary food source. By that measure it may be that animals simply don't have what the Dementors want; souls. Or it could mean that they're simply less appetising than humans.

I can't think of anything else that would suggest either way.

 

So... what can we do with the Protean Charm? In canon, we see it used to enact a simultaneous transfiguration across a relatively large distance.

This introduces some interesting possibilities, like the equivalent of wizarding "texting." Here's a rough prototype of it, probably not the final version:

Take two pieces of parchment with ink on them, P1 and P2, charmed with the Protean Charm. You get P1, your friend gets P2. Transfigured the top half of P1 to send a message, your friend transfigures the bottom half of P2 to reply. Simple, instantaneous communication.

Which raises the question to what the range of the Protean Charm is. Space-and-time matter in HP magic, but the Protean Charm seems to easily cover Hogwarts and up to Hogsmeade at least. If the max transmission distance is some decent number like 500 miles, you can set up the equivalent of "cell towers" for long-range communication.

For example, you have P1 and are in England, your friend has P2 and is in Germany. Both of you register with a "cell tower," that contains P3. You transfigure P1, which transfigures P3, which transfigures P2. Your friend does so in reverse and with enough cell towers and the right infrastructure, you have the equivalent of wizarding email.

If you can set up a charm to ensure that you don't have to transfigure it yourself but trigger it somehow by talking aloud or by writing on it, even better.

The main issue is that you would need a separate parchment for each individual recipient. However, there is probably a way to get around that issue and even the first basic idea is probably a pretty decent communication device for at least fast relatively short-range communication.

But anyway, just wondering if this strikes anyone as a plausible way of exploiting the Protean Charm from canon. And if this possible, it makes you wonder why people bother with owls at all then, at least for close friends and family.

 

I already posted this in another thread, but I'm going to repost it here now:

Spoiler

 

To what extent would it be plausible for there to be cooperation between magical and Muggle governments at the upper levels?

For example, Aurors cross-training with special forces, such as the SAS. I think entry tactics would be a decent skill to have for any Auror, and the use of flashbangs or the wizarding equivalent would probably be supremely helpful. Also, since there doesn't seem to be any indication that long-range spellcasting occurs all that much if at all, perhaps a few Aurors or the like might receive special sniper training, using actual firearms - perhaps magically enhanced. In addition, one could imagine the incorporation of Muggle intelligence gathering methods, such as the use of satellite surveillance or in certain cases, using Muggle databases if key targets are frequently involved in the Muggle world.

On the flipside, as part of this arrangement, Muggle governments might ask for magical assistance in certain key matters. For instance, surveillance and intelligence gathering, along with helping to take down key high-level targets. For example, high-level cooperation between the DMLE and MI5 in the wake of 7/7 or the like. Having actual magic around would make it a lot easier to not only locate certain people, but also help in taking them down.

There were shades of this in Stranger in an Unholy Land and it was one of the things I enjoyed about the story. (The SAS and Aurors ended up teaming up)

A key issue to think through here though is that I imagine that magical governments wouldn't want to get too involved in their muggle counterpart's affairs. Let's just say that no wizards from the Coalition nations were sent to Iraq, for example.

 

I'm not quite sure that you need cooperation with muggle forces for that. Who knows, maybe aurors do get special training for that sort of stuff. We know that there is some sort of auror programme, so it's probably not a stretch to assume that it has some good training.

Point is, that we don't know anything about the auror programme canonically other than it exists. It could have special forces type training as part of the programme itself, for all you know. The question of "why isn't it used against the Death Eaters" can probably be answered the same way as "why wasn't such training enough to disband the IRA in Northern Ireland" or or "why can Indian special forces not destroy the Naxalites".

The main reason I say this, of course, is that it can be a point of wizard-bashing. A lot of stories decide that muggles are great, and wizards suck. It's a lazy form of storytelling, unless you're Marquis Black. It is quite possible to do this right, i.e. make a good combination between the SAS and the aurors. It's just not easy enough.

Another problem is that any sort of cooperation with muggle forces will lead to there being "technology-transfer" into the non-magical world which is outlawed by the Statute of Secrecy. You're simply not allowed to reveal to the non-magical world the existence of magic, unless said muggles are the parents of muggleborn kids, or they're the prime minister or something of that sort. Any sort of change to that arrangement destroys the Statute of Secrecy.

The part about muggles using magic for their own ends is one of the prime reasons for the statute of secrecy, as revealed by Hagrid to Harry in PS.

 

The question isn't really asking a factual question about canon, so isn't really suitable for the thread, so I'll just answer with canon facts that are relevant.

Not quite. We know one other thing: that most years, the Auror Office doesn't take on any new recruits. McGonagall told Harry in OotP that they take on a new Auror only once every few years. That means that it's unlikely there's any kind of "Auror school", because it would be a school of one student. Aurors have a training period at the end of which they have to pass tests, but we don't know anything about it, or even if there's a standardised curriculum. The way Tonks used her metamorphmagus skills to pass one of the tests seems to imply that they test recruits on ability to achieve certain outcomes, not on ability to perform a standardised set of skills.

To expand on this, Kingsley was inserted into the Prime Minister's office in HBP without any Muggle noticing. So it seems likely that magical people could access Muggle institutions/training without any kind of Muggle cooperation required, if for some bizarre reason they wanted to learn a Muggle skill.