He spends a similar amount of time dicking around the common room doing sweet fuck all.

 

When he could be doing sweet fuck all in animal form?

We've already covered it in this thread, but it's stupid to have Harry learn such a specialized skill for no reason. I'd rather see him spend his time learning something useful.

 

Indubitably.

 

Fantastic! Haha, that's amazing...

 

I guess it depends. I have a story where Harry and the gang try to learn animagi. It is relevant to the story, and I tried making it original, and somehow focusing on the character's personality.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2689143/1/A_Life_To_Live

I do enjoy animagi stories. But I must admit there are many crappy stories, where animagi is thrown in there without making any sense for the plot.
Even animagi based stories, we find some overpowerful transformations that make no sense at all.

For example. I saw one where the WHOLE damn school were animagi. I think Harry and Hermione were stag, and doe, and Neville was a lion (a lion? Neville???).
Another where Harry was a Lion, Phoenix, Basilisk.

I even saw one where Ron was a horse! I can see Ron as a fox, a coyote, a ferret, or such cunning creatures. But a horse? Horses are hard working, spirited, not cunning.

Saluts.

 

Quite frankly - I cannot see Ron as cunning.

 

Neither can I. The only good trait Ron has is Chess. For everything else, he's just an idiot, and lazy. I would think his form would be a Donkey or something, but no, I don't think that either, because Donkey's have a use. Ron's form would no doubt be useless, like him. Maybe a Misquito, lol. Just an annoying insect.

 

I'd wager on a pig, as far as I remember his eating abilities aren't only fanon and besides pork pigs aren't really useful.

 

I think an Insect animagus form would be incredibly useful.

"What I wouldn't give to be a fly on that wall"

 

Animagi are over-rated.

You want to turn into an animal? Pull a Krum and self-transfigure yourself.

That said, I'd really love to see a shark animagus Harry, if only in a humor-fic.

 

Krum only partially transfigured himself, IIRC. The problem with going all the way would be how do you turn yourself back when you can't use your wand?

 

It was also stated that you could lose yourself if you self-transfigure.

Their was an example of becoming a bat or something.

 

Where's the reference and what happened, the person go batty?

 

And he got his marks deducted for not completing the transfiguration.

Since the judges could take away the marks, I think we can assume safely that returning back by oneself is possible. Perhaps it is a time based spell, who knows. It is times like this that I feel JK should have expanded the magic in the HP universe.

And Ryuugi Shi, don't know where you got the bat, but I think losing oneself is a Dresdenverse thing.

 

No, it was in Harry Potter. One of those two small books (the red monster one, and the green Quidditch one). I'll figure out which one later.

 

There are other more useful skills to be had when dealing with magic. I mean sure, it's a cool trick with some crafty potential, but the amount of time characters tend to sink into learning the transformation could be used more effectively.

And Ron should never have an interesting talent. Ever. Sure he's good at chess, but that's about the ONLY thing he's good at. And chess isn't particularly useful as a life skill, thinking several moves ahead in a closed system is all well and good, but the world isn't a closed system and people don't have to play by the rules.

 

It's not that Ron should never have an interesting talent, it's that Ron shouldn't be capable of an interesting, time-consuming talent that takes a lot of effort to pull off. For example, I have read a few stories in which Ron, effected by the brains that touched him during the Department of Mysteries, had memories or visions that he shouldn't have... That one story by FP from Fanfic authors did this particularly well, as Ron had seen a vision of his own death and began living more extravagantly because of it.

Returning to the original topic: I think that RustyRed's Harry using self-transfiguration upon himself rather than a full Animagus transformation would be novel idea, especially considering that particular character's penchant for spur of the moment decisions. Also, I like the idea of (provided he did learn the transformation) Harry using his form in conjunction with the 'Other World'... in fact, I think that, and a water-dwelling creature, are the only possible Animagus forms that can be used convincingly, without making it cliche and unrelated to the plot.

 

I have a bit of a question about the actual difficulty of the transformation.

The Marauders had it figured out by fourth year, correct? So we can infer that it took them a number of years, assuming that they started as soon as they figured out Remus' secret sometime in first year.

But still, how much time would you say these young children actually devoted to learning the transformation? They had all of their schoolwork to complete, and I assume they got fairly good grades considering James' Head Boy status later on.

How long did it take them to simply find the materials needed to learn how to do it?

Wasn't James on the Quidditch team? Did he start second year or do we know? My point is that he probably had a very busy schedule with little downtime.

Didn't they do the training without alerting Remus? How much time do you think the Marauders had away from one of their posse to do this in?

All I'm asking is that is the notion that it takes a terribly huge amount of time and effort really accurate? I'm not trying to say you can learn it in a weekend, but if a bunch of young teens can figure it out in their off-time over a period of 3-4 years then why can't others do so at a significantly faster rate over a shorter period given the right conditions?

I guess I'm just not convinced that it's a horribly difficult thing to accomplish despite the small number of known Animagi in the books, given what we know of the Marauders' experiences with the skill (especially Peter's).

 

It's one of those situations where the actual details in the books contradict one another. It's made out to be incredibly difficult by a number of parties (I can't remember specifics at this point), and then we find out that schoolkids managed it in their off-time with no professional instruction. And as you said, an idiot like Petigrew managed it.

It's a cool ability, but the books really don't give much in the way of concrete information (surprise, surprise).