Constructing the Hallows

This is a little something I have had rolling around in my head since I first heard about the Hallows in DH and have been adding to as we found out more by them and saw other peoples take on them.

I’m going to tackle each Hallow separately as I think they are each unique and deserve a thorough looking at.


Firstly is the Hallow we see the most of, the Potter Invisibility Cloak.

Introduction:

Much like the Death stick, the Cloak is merely an example of item - common in the case of the Death Stick, rare in the case of the Invisibility Cloak, and one of a kind in terms of the Resurrection Stone – that has been superbly made.

As a general overview of the Hallows it is said the Peverell brothers made all three items. In universe it is not said if they made them each separately or as a group then split them. I would believe that each would have their own specific project but very well may have had input from the other brothers. Regardless of whether the items were independently crafted or a group effort it is safe to say they created three items which have not been bested centuries later.

In the case of the Invisibility Cloak we do know a fair bit about Invisibility Cloaks in general.

They are rare, we only ever see one other, Moodys in OOTP, and hear that he has another better quality one. Now Moody is apparently the best Auror alive and possibly ever, so for him to have one, or even two is believable, either buying them for his job, obtaining them through work, or keeping them as plunder.

We never see another at Hogwarts despite several students coming from wealthy background, although to be fair not seeing another one is not surprising, they are invisible and it’s not like people would brag out loud about using one.

No one else in the Order has one apart from Moody; this includes at least two other Aurors and several ministry workers.

So rarity, the only items we see which are rarer and items we only see once, such as the pensive.


Properties and types:


We are however given information about them.

It is said that there are different types and qualities of invisibity cloaks. This stands to reason that the knowledge of their making is not a vast secret, merely that to make a good one require skill and the right materials.

Poor quality ones are said to be simple cloaks with a Disillusionment charm on them, these are poor quality and don’t last long. Given that it is said that Dumbledore can cast a charm of such skill that he is rendered completely invisible without the standard blurring that is usually seen, one could reason that this variety of cloak can vary between very poor to seemingly perfect replicas of a true Invisibility Cloak.

Parents could very well make temporary Invisibility Cloaks for their children to play with in this manor, or law enforcement personal could have specialists make them high quality ones for raids. The issue for either type is longevity. These charms apparently wear out, whether through losing cohesion and turning opaque or through a catastrophic failure; the end result is a temporary cloak. Also this type may be susceptible to a simple finite.

In this category one could also add cloaks with notice me not or muggle repelling charms on them. This would render someone invisible to a degree from certain people.

The next example is the cloak made from the hair of a Demiguise. These would seem to be much rarer and “true” Invisibly Cloaks.

Like the disillusionment cloaks these two would have different quality. Much like wool from a sheep or any form of material, there are different grades and qualities.

Quality can come down to, age of the fur, length, thickness, purity (is it from the bum area and stained or from the underside where it may be grass stained) or from the top of the head and shoulders where the best fur is often found.

If a wizard were to shave five demiguises (which would its self be a hard task to find and catch that many, adding to their rarity) he would get a bail of Demiguise fur. For this example I will use the ratio of wool one can get form a sheep as that is what I am familiar with. About 15-20% is considered near trash being to stained or matted to be much use, this is sometimes machined and salvaged for use in carpets or non-clothing items. Another 20-25% is coarse heavy wool from the underside, depending on the breed and the farm this is sometimes separated and is used in Carpets ect. The final 50% is rated for clothing use. Sometimes they will also pick out the best wool from the top of the head and shoulders for a virgin pile of high grade wool.

It is also important to point out that the Magical world at the time and the Muggle world were joined and shared knowledge of the world. And while knowledge of Africa and it’s strange animals were known in Britain at the time and had been for quite some time, the trade in goods from that part of the world, especially highly rare magical goods from an invisible gorilla, would have been exceedingly rare.

Now obviously Demiguise fur is rare and expensive so our wizard would not dispose of any of his Demiguise fur. Out of his five pelts of fur he can produce five cloaks, but dividing up his fur into different grades he will likely end up with one poor quality, another one or two or moderate quality and the others of fine quality.

If a Wizard were to only have the pelt of a single Demiguise he would not end up with a high quality cloak due to imperfections. This adds to rarity of this kind of cloak.

This accounts for the different types of Demiguise cloaks. One must also assume the quality of the construction comes to play.

The tightness of the weave, most people know of thread count and the higher the count the better the quality. Also there is quality control, checking for knots or imperfections in the weave. Added to this is the quality of the construction of the cloak, the tightness of the stitch, the thread used ect.

So we have the Deathly Hollow cloak, we can assume it is a Demiguise cloak due to the limitations of the disillusionment cloaks.

We can assume they used only the best quality fur in its making, this might have been a tall task, where they could get such an amount of high quality fur, in their time must have been truly amazing and lead to the mystic of the cloak. One might think that disillusionment cloaks were common at the time but Demiguise cloaks were much rarer, or possibly the Hollow cloak was the first of its kind.

Being the youngest of the brothers he was likely trying to compete with his brother achievements in the other hallows and also had an exceptional eye for detail in the weave and construction of the cloak.

The only issue we don’t have any knowledge of is if the Hollow cloak and other Demiguise cloaks have addition spells on them. I would believe not as it is said a finite would not affect these cloaks, however we do have examples of spells lasting over a thousand years (the sword of Gryffindor worked perfectly after a thousand years, both the Goblin enchantments and Godrics, as did the sorting hat).

This leads me to believe that there are most likely not spells cast on the cloak, but there may very well be spells enchanted or weaved into its construction, spells that could only be affected by destroying the cloak itself.

Of all the Hallows I think the Invisibility cloak would be the easiest to recreate by a skilled wizard. High quality materials of the best grade, a superb attention to detail for the smallest imperfections in the weave and construction. Finally a thorough understanding of the spells woven into the construction of the cloak and their interaction with each other. As the other fields of quality are the easiest to control for, albeit if costly, I believe this is where the Hollows cloak stands apart. The Peverell most likely had a perfect grasp of the spells used to create the cloak, or possibly used a combination of charms that others have not since tried.


Conclusion:


I think the Hallows cloak is rightfully the least impressive and sought out of the three, but still deserving special honour. It is obviously superbly made and may have very well been one of the first or even the first example of a true Invisibity Cloak. It owes most of its fame due to its connection to the other two Hallows and its construction in a time where such items were considerably rarer.​

 

*Facepalm* I auto corrected them all the capitals and didn't look at the rest...

 

If you decide to fix all the Hallow/Hollow mistakes, you may want to also correct the Moodies/Moody's error in the introduction's third paragraph.

Though I'm curious as to why you think the Cloak would be easier to reproduce than the Elder Wan, since the reasoning you gave - high quality materials and attention to detail - could be just as easily applied. Can't really comment much further on that due the lack of knowledge concerning wands, and because I imagine you'll likely talk about that when you cover the Elder Wand itself.

 

To make a Eldar wand would be as easy or hard as it is to make any wand. We dont know for sure the process, just not that any tree and any substance can be used. And the combination of Eldar and Threstal is rare and possibly hard to combine. The main power of the Eldar wand now is the fact it has had dozens, maybe hundreds of very powerful/violent/skilled owners from which it has gained a "knowledge" of dangerous powerful magics from.

 

The main problem is that I always considered the creation of an decent wand or invisibility cloak to require roughly the same amount of effort, with the former being more common due to their utility. If wands of decent quality were much more difficult to make, then I'd find it to difficult to imagine them becoming the main way to cast magic due the lack of wandmakers and the people able to pay their services.

 

You have included "notice me not" charms, but as far as I know, they are fanon.
I would remove them.

 

I am fairly sure Notice me Not charms are canon. Used in both the Leaky Cauldron and Platform 9 3/4. If not the same name then certainly the charm itself.

 

Notice-Me-Not charms are more like a category of spells rather than a singular spell. For example, a muggle repelling charm and a disillusionment charm may come under the Notice-Me-Not charm bracket.

 

There are only Muggle-Repelling Charms.

The "Notice-Me-Not" charms are a purely fanon invention, most likely created to hide some mpreg or shit like that.

 

My point would stand, cast a muggle repelling charm on the cloak and it might still work.

 

We had the wandmaker Gregorovitch trying to replicate the properties of Elder Wand. While we don't know if he was successful, since there aren't many super wands running around, we can conclude that the wands he made failed to match the power of the original Elder Wand. From this, we can conclude that constructing another Elder Wand is a task beyond the powers in this realm.

The story mentions that Death or a personification of it created the Hallows. Like someone in canon says 'There is no limit to magic' and 'Not all magic is wandwaving'. Maybe there are supernatural higher beings when it comes to magical world who control events.

That being said, Dumbledore had the cloak for almost 11 years. I am sure that Dumbledore might have attempted to recreate the cloak at some point and must have failed to create one with similar properties. Remember Dumbledore was pretty free for 9 years, if you exclude his political positions and Dumbledore has got the ELDER WAND.

I read your monologue and I don't think the hallows can be recreated and if they can, the duplicates would never match up in power or awesomeness to their originals.

Cheers to you if anyone understood my rant perfectly.

 

I disagree completely with the idea that the Hallows were made by anything or anyone above or beyond the three Peverell brothers.

While Gregorovitch did try understanding the Death Stick this does not mean he couldnt make it.

The compination of Eldar wood and threstle hair may have been hard to combine, or to find pieces of high compatability. But this is only a matter of finding the right pieces which is a matter of patience and luck.

I think what Gregorovitch lacked is Ollivanders understanding of Wand lore, of how a wand learns from its previous owners.

So Gregorovitch could very well have created another 5 eldar wands, and they may have been rather good and powerful dualing wands, much like James Potters wand was good for Transfiguration.

What the Eldar wand had was a reputation, when it was made the owner was already very tallented and the wand learned from him, then some violent person killen him and claimed the wand. And the wand learned more violence and magic from him, and so on and so forth over dozens or hundreds of owners. Each one giving it a further bit of knowlesge and ease of use for powerful magics due to the people who claim it.

Also is the fact that it is "THE Eldar Wand" when people held it they probably thought they were the shit and fought better. You could very well call it the Placebo wand.

I also doubt Dumbeldore would try to create a new cloak. There was no need, he wasnt on the Hallows quest anymore, it was more academic interest and possibly the connection to the prophecy through Harry he cared about. He didnt need a cloak since he could make himself invisible with magic.

 

Well, firstly it's the 'Elder Wand'. Secondly, if the Peverells did create the hallows, Antioch Peverell must have been a wandcrafter who used the wood from an Elderberry tree with the core of the tail hair of the 'original' thestral(you know, the first species). Cadmus must have been a master necromancer and Ignotus a master enchanter.

Since, JKR didn't give us any timeframe on when exactly the Peverells lived, the sources and the knowledge to make artifacts of such terrible power must have been lost over time.

And they must have made up the story to make themselves look bad-ass.

Either that, or maybe higher beings exist in the magical world.

 

You don't need to be a master enchanter to make an invisibitiy cloak, and the knowledge certainly hasnt been lost over time as I pointed out.

Look at painting, people know how to paint today, some very well, but Da Vinci is still one of the best, if not the best of all time, and he lived hundreds of years ago.

It could be the same the the Peverells, they were the Da Vinicis of the magical world (unlikely to happen to three brother but maybe they helped each other).

As I have pointed out several times, I don't believe the Elder wand to be very special, any modertly tellented wand maker, or any wizard who knows how to spot the right pieces could make one. What made it special was the story they made around it and its relationsship with the other two Hallows.

The Cloak I covered, it was well made and certainly skillful, but again I think it is more of a case of a very well made cloak that was probably the first of its kind that lead its fame.

The Stone I do believe is the most impressive but I will cover that latter.

 

I have a feeling that this is turning into another 'Magical system' debate. So, how about we conclude the thread soon?

We need the Hallows to be special to come up with new plot-bunnies and authors to write good post-hogwarts stories. Still, your arguments made me think again. I cannot conclude anything. I'll hang around and see where this discussion goes.

 

Eh, brilliance often runs in families. The Brontë sisters are a good example. Or, it could just be a case of one-upmanship:

"Hey Cadmus! Check this out!" *krapow*

"What's that, Antioch? You've made an invincible super-wand incapable of defeat? Screw you! I'm going to make something that can raise the frickin' dead."

"Necromancy? Pah! Watch in awe as I sneak into woman's showers!"

"Yeah, well, I'm the oldest!"

 

So, have we reached any conclusions yet? I still maintain that the Hallows were the creations of a higher being, namely Death here.

 

Conclusion? A very bad Deus ex machina.

As for what-where-how-discussions; meaningless because we don't that much about them and every author can just tailor his own details to his own story. We can just sum up what's in the books, anything more is just an endless ideas game.

Thank god that JK didn't go into detail about them otherwise the result would've been just an even more messed book.

 

There really are two ways to go with it. Mystical artefacts created by some sort of higher being or reproducible master works, made by specific historical persons using methods/skills/knowledge now lost.

Neither method is canon and both are given as possibilities by JK within canon. As for their use within fics I would say it really depends on the fic you are planning to write. Mystical could suit something epic or grandiose set within an action or adventure narrative and the more prosaic origins of them could fit within a more gritty and introspective fic. It really does depend on what effect you want to create with the Hallows.