Yeah, I was kinda worried that the Voldemort v. Dumbledore tilt contained some non-verbal AKs, although one could argue that Harry is an unreliable witness at best, being scared shitless and distraught over Sirius taking a header through the veil. Ah, who am I kidding, that's grasping at straws...

I stand by my assertion that Bellatrix could've spoken aloud though, as she was described from afar.

 

IT'S BULLET IN THE TENTH DIMENSION!!

 

Nope. Can't remember who said it. Whoever it was, they were parodying my taste for magical theory speculation.

 

Was me, idiots.
DX

 

What i'm wondering is why the A.K. is thought to be unblockable. Solid matter stops it, and It may destroy the solid matter, it does stop it. Its amusing to me that wizards in the books are so fearful of how powerful it is simply because no magic shield can stop it, but Dumbledore makes defending against it seem like cake by throwing stuff in front of it in the MoM Atrium.

Theory: It is Necromantic energy like Gafgarion said, but when applied to physical matter it causes it to suffer 'death' in whatever manner that the caster interprets.

The bit about magic shield not stopping it though...any theories?

 

What Dumbledore make seem like cake is not necessarily so for other wizards.

 

I haven't posted in a while, but I can't resist putting my two cents in. This is just my interpretation of things, so it'd be nice if any counterarguments or ripping apart of my reasoning wasn't turned into a stinging ad hominem remark.

What seem to be big problems are that the Killing Curse has effect on individuals even if it impacts on a clothed portion of their body, or having no effect at all on some objects (the centaur statue as pointed out by Taure). I'll focus on the first point, the clothing vs. spell potency problem.

I'm not saying I'm right, but here's an argument based on the fact that the Killing Curse is seen as a bolt of green light.

While I'm certainly not going to dispute that 1) it's magic, so logic won't apply to it every time, and 2) you can't expect anything magical to behave under what any rules that we can conceive of, I also don't think that it's intelligent to simply ignore what we can observe in the real world.

For one, light is an electromagnetic wave, and thus has wave properties- this means, for anyone not physics-savvy, that like atomic radiation (which is pretty much the same thing, but that's not important right now), it can pass through solid objects, depending on factors like how dense the object is.

So, you're not going to be able to see most of the light coming out of a lightbulb if you put, say, a slab of concrete in front of it. Since we can literally 'see' the Killing Curse, it has to be at least emitting light in the visible spectrum. This means that while it can't go through dense objects, it can pass through less dense objects like cloth reasonably easily. For the sake of this argument, we can say that the magical aspects of that green bolt of light- the bit that gives what would otherwise be just a bit of green light its murdering kick- is hitching a ride on the good old green stuff.

So, as the light passes through the fabric, the magic accompanying it is allowed through by proxy.

For spells visible as bolts of colored light, at least, it's not unreasonable (again, this is just my interpretation) to think that the spell itself is comprised of two main portions- the magical part which gives the spell its effect, and the colored bolt of light, which acts as a carrier for the magical aspects.

So, the Killing Curse, when cast, appears as a green bolt of light, and upon impact on a living thing (or a solid object), kills (or destroys) it. One thing nobody seems to be considering (that I've seen so far) is the possibility that the Killing Curse, and any other visible spell, could be comprised of smaller parts. i.e., everybody seems to be thinking that the curse is a single unit of magic, comparable to a bullet from a gun.

What if (this also leads into my own counterargument) that instead of considering it as say, a slug round from a shotgun, the Killing Curse was comparable to buck shot?

Most of the light and killing juice in the spell will reach the target, but some will inevitably miss; case in point, you can actually see the spell as it flies toward an unfortunate target without dying yourself. So, when the Killing Curse is aimed at the clothed part of some poor soul's body, some of it will fly off and hit other things in the immediate area, but will be so insignificant as to be negligible, some of it will be stopped by the fabric of the cloth, but most will pass through the fabric and impact the guy's arm or chest or wherever.

In regards to the bouncing off of objects, you could argue based on light being radiation, and so the Killing Curse behaving like light would have to diffract and reflect like it at the atomic level, but that's a pretty weak argument, especially considering that in order for the curse to not have any effect on its target, there has to be a very, very small amount of it actually impacting (i.e. low potency, whether due to it being from an incompetent caster or some physical attributes or sheer magical badassery of the defender).

Anyway, that's about the best I can come up with at this point. Sorry for the essay

 

Like any piece of magic, how it's cast and who casts it will determine what it does. As its use is outlawed and testing it on humans is impossible, different characters in the series may state it does something absolutely when in reality, it may not.

Barty Crouch Jr. in GOF states that those who are beginners will cause little harm and will be incapable of killing with their curse.

Dumbledore is propelled over the ramparts, others just fall where they stand. People die with terror on their face where they stand (Riddle's father).

I imagine wand movements and Latin and other archaic languages serving as the basis for how magic works was the original groundfloor when Rowling began; as the series progressed and her world become more convoluted, she searched for ways in which to speed up action.

Same with mediocre spells defending perhaps the most valuable object in the Wizarding World in Philosopher's Stone. Did the Gemino charm exist in PS/SS? No. Did the myriad of protection spells that would better serve to protect it exist? No.

Neither did silent casting.

So in conclusion, by Book 7, magic is no longer restricted by much. Its broken the rules even set forth by Gamp. There is no absolute way the killing curse works. I imagine "spell creation" is simply using magic in a certain way, the inventor imagining a color and a method by which it travels; people who are apt and intelligent and imaginative making it work and those incapable learning how it is done and adopting crutches (wand movement and spoken word) that will assist them in remembering how such magic works.

 

The bit where the killing curse causes the desk to burn is perhaps a reaction to the fact its wood and therefore used to be alive?

 

Another idea on the light source is that creating a physical manifestation of the spell helps (probably immensely) in making a change in our physical dimension.

If there was no manifestation of the spell in the real world, wouldn't it be difficult to imagine and will the spell to change something (or just to believe it could)? It would seem illogical and impossible to most casters, so having spells exist as a bolt of light would become the common practice.

By how few real, solid rules there seems to be in the Harry Potter world, though, it seems theoretically possible to wave a hand, think hard enough, and have something simply change without any bolt of light. It would just take believing it could work to make it work.

 

@Lutrishysics? In my magic? AW HELL NAW.

I think Bioplague is onto something though. What if the killing curse does cause death, but in a way that we can visualize it, subconciously or not. So say Voldemort cast the killing curse on a statue, but he would only consider the statue 'dead' if it was shattered into pieces. As a result, when the killing curse hits a statue, it magically causes it to explode 'killing' it. Same way for anyone elses killing curse, Voldemort wanted his father to be terrified before he died, and so his killing curse caused his father to become so scared he had a hearth attack, or something similar. The curse causes something that 'kills' whatever it hits.

 

The whole "look of terror" thing could also have something to do with the fact that (in Riddle Sr's case) he's been attacked by someone who looks exactly like him and who has probably just tortured him without laying a hand on him. I dunno about the rest of you, but I would be scared shitless if that happened to me.

For all other victims, the look of terror comes from a) the fact that they're about to die and/or b) Voldemort/Bellatrix/whoever is killing them is scary as hell. It doesn't seem to be a universal thing, which makes sense because not everyone sees it coming, not everyone is afraid of death, and not everyone is afraid of their killer.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

On theories of operation, I kinda like Lutris's explanation. It makes sense in a weird, physicsy (is that a word?) sort of way. For the spells that aren't visible (if they exist), it could be that they travel on different frequencies of radiation rather than just visible light. Remember, visible light is just a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

 

I like Lutirs's idea with light and the idea of intent having an affect on the spells properties makes sense. Personally I ascribe to the unexplainable idea that all spells that have a motion, or a color or an incantation are constructed using Arithmancy, which I view as a combination of Physics and Engineering in the magical world. If magic is a manipulatable force then I would surmise that if one has enough control over it and enough will power one can simply make things bend to their desires using magic.

 

"You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!" — Commander Vimes, Thud!

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" — Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius