What parts of Harry Potter do you think fly under the radar?

Here are two to start us off:

1. At the end of DH, Flitwick and McGonagall were casting spells that covered the entirety of Hogwarts. There didn't appear to be any special requirements of these spells, they just cast them normally. This massively extends the potential scope of HP magic (though perhaps Wormtail's street explosion was a forerunner) but I've never seen it incorporated into fics or mentioned in magical discussions.

2. In GoF, Hermione said this:

 

1) I always read that as them manipulating or activating the defences that had been put up in HBP and before. So not so much as simple to cast but to activate. Like pressing a button to launch a nuke.

2) Considering we never really see them, I doubt they are terribly impressive. Surely the Death Eaters or Order would be casting them on themselves if they gave an edge in a fight. Most likely somthing like warming charms ect.

 

Given the context and the use of incantations as if casting regular spells I'm not sure if this can be supported:

I think they could be impressive, since the context was Harry taking on a dragon, but that they're not the kind of spell to be cast lightly i.e. they could be permanent and if cast incorrectly could cause serious damage. The context was transfiguration spells, so I'm picturing it at the moment a bit like Hagrid's experimental breeding, of the accidental creation of Quintapeds by the use of transfiguration. You can't just give yourself new powers like an enchantment, rather you have to partially transfigure yourself into having a physical structure that enables a new magical ability. So for example you couldn't just use a spell to grant yourself invisibility, rather you would have to transfigure your skin into Demiguise hide.

Since Tales of Beedle the Bard, in which Dumbledore says that the animagus transformation is the only way to maintain your human mind while in animal form, I've read Krum's shark transformation as an incomplete animagus transformation (presumably because he hasn't yet mastered it). He keeps his human mind when in shark form (since he still rescues Hermione) so it's hard to see what else it could be.

 

Though if you transfigure yourself into having a body part that is magical in nature rather than something like cat's eyes, you may find it hard or impossible to reverse. Note for example that no attempt to untransfigure quintapeds has succeeded.

 

I've always been intrigued by the scene where Snape and Harry duel at the end of HBP and Snape counterspells/deflects Harry's Cruciatus. Is Snape just awesome like that, or is this a thing?

 

Ron weasley

 

About transfiguring one's body: perhaps the issue is not so much that people can't transfigure themselves but simply don't want to?

We see Dumbledore wear glasses so we say that fixing eyes with magic is impossible, but that's kinda strange considering all the other healing magic can do.

Maybe he simply decides to let nature be nature and allows himself to get sicker.

 

llawssalg: you're not wrong, but a little bit of elaboration wouldn't go astray.

To me, it often seems that even if he isn't being bashed per se, people who've been in the fandom for a while struggle to think of his positive attributes. Which is a shame really; he is one of the more interesting and human characters in HP in my opinion.

Even if we leave aside his many feats of bravery, courage and loyalty, his faults are what serve to make him an interesting character. And after all, all of this was happening while he was just a teenager. Can we honestly say we didn't ever do something at least a bit shitty when we were teenagers/younger?

 

To clarify, by "under-appreciated" I meant "lacking attention" as opposed to "mischaracterised". Ron is certainly mischaracterised in a lot of the fandom, but he's not exactly under the radar.

There's a lot of ambiguity surrounding counter-spells. There seems to be several different uses of the term:

1. A spell that reverses a spell's effect after the fact.

2. A spell that reverses a spell's effect before the fact.

3. An offensive spell that is used in a defensive context (Hermione talks about this in the first lesson with Umbridge, Dumbledore uses it in this way when he picks Harry up in HBP).

Personally I like to combine 1 & 2 as involving the same process (namely, using the appropriate undoing spell for the offensive spell in question, though for lower level spells a simple "finite" seems sufficient) and the only difference is time.

On top of counter-spells there's "blocking" which seems to be a separate thing, even if similar in effect. We saw Lockhart attempt to show harry the wand movement for blocking in CoS and that's all we really know. Perhaps there are a variety of blocking moves you can perform depending on the spell being used, or perhaps there's just one (which presumably has limits).

And then you have the separate issue of deflecting, which really we know nothing about. I'm moderately sure we've seen other wizards deflect spells, so it's not just Snape, but I can't think of a particular example off the top of my head.

 

Why on earth do people think Krum didn't know what he was doing with the partial transformation? The logic was quite obvious from the first time I read it; you can't pick up people/treasures/whatever you need to get from the bottom of the lake with giant sharp awkward shark teeth, you need arms for that. Personally I think he's more than mastered it to be able to restrict it like that

...now I'm picturing Krum biting Hermione in half when he goes to retrieve her

Edit: Oh, oh, someone mentioned transfiguring just your eyes for nocturnal vision or something! If only there was a character with golden yellow eyes that are specifically described as being like a hawk's...

 

I made a similar thread over at the thefanfictionforum awhile back, so I'm pleased to see this pop up here.

1) Hags, the forgotten member of the magical community. In canon, there are many intelligent magical creatures (or beings to pick up the proper terminology). Goblins appear in ever second story, vampires are popular too, veela are common and even centaurs have their billings, but what about hags? No one does anything with the poor (possibly child liver eating) hags.

2) Patents. In Quidditch Through the Ages a spell is described as patented (the Horton-Keitch Braking Charm), in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them we are told of patented potions and in Order of the Phoenix we find out the Ministry has a Ludicrous Patents Office. This is seldom touched upon but there lots of stuff there.

3) Spells can merge to provide complex and unforeseen effects.

As we can see above, Harry casts the 'Furnunculus Curse' on Crabbe, which seems to be the same thing as a 'Pimple Jinx'. George casts the Jelly-Legs Jinx. The spells combined to cause face tentacles.

The fact that spells can merge like this is quite interesting. It makes enchantment a lot harder than it first might seem. You can't just cast a dozen spells on someone or thing and expect them to all keep working.

Those dozen spells are going to be interacting in complex and unforeseen ways, possibly even merging to form a single unified meta-spell based upon but separate to its individual components.

4) Authority magic.

Snape seems to think that being the Hogwarts potions master should help his magic in overcome the Marauder's Map's protections.

 

Perhaps not entirely what you mean by the question, but it is an underappreciated aspect of Harry Potter: what a snarky little shit he is in the books. JKR was pretty good with that kind of thing, really.

Take the following moment from PoA:

 

Oh yes, Harry had some great lines and a tendency to be sarcastic during arguments, even during times of crisis and facing death, but most fanfiction has him being either super-serious all the time, or a soft, polite boy who can't ever utter a dirty word. It really takes the fun out of the story, even if it's not a comedy. Similarly, many fics present Harry's initial character as some sort of saint, when it's clear that he had a lot of "edge" in him in canon. Take this passage from HBP for example:

 

Agreed. Would be interesting to see a story that would explore this branch of magic beyond just the main prophecy.

Imagine a story that took elements of the movie Minority Report and explored the ramifications of arresting people for crimes they haven't yet committed. Pretty cool idea.

 

Not to forget that Ron has some funny lines too.

On the topic of Divination, there is the 0800 fic which treats it as a proper and useful subject. Other than that, I don't think I've ever seen it well done.

 

There's also that line by Hermione, something along the line of, "Ron, Augurey doesn't begin with O-R-G," when he was using the defecting/joke spelling quill. Think it was in HBP.

 

What about the magic of Unicorn's blood? In the first book, it's said that those who drink the blood will live a half life, etc. etc. We already know Voldemort was a wraith before he inhabited Quirrel, but Quirrel seems to have no side effects from partaking in Unicorn's blood.

We also don't really know what a "half-life" means. What would constitute this?

It's been years since I've read the first book mind you, so I could be completely wrong.