Dementors have a wearying effect on people so in all likelihood that instance can be explained away by Harry losing normal, everyday energy rather than magical energy.

 

Maybe in that instance since it was an actual Dementor. However, Harry had the same problem against the Bogart Dementor when he was learning how to cast a Patronus Charm. Then again, it could replicate some Dementor abilities...

I dunno. It's fairly inconsistent throughout the books. I was just thinking aloud. XD

 

lol at your rationalizing. Dumbledore said "amount of magical power". If that isn't explicit, I don't know what is. If he meant intellectual power he would have said that, or at least implied it. Taking Dumbledore's word at its face value is the simplest way to interpret the passage. What you are doing is coming up with a wholly different meaning based on your own bias. Basically, you're stretching.

Power levels arise not only from DD's quote, but from Voldemort's mechanism. If Voldemort is concerned with the amount of magical power crossing the lake, that implies that there are differing levels of magical power among wizards; hence, power levels.

 

Read Taure's post. It's clearly intended to stop two fully trained wizards from passing, but doesn't stop one wizard who shows more "magical power" than any three wizards combined, outside Voldemord and perhaps Snape. The magical power he's talking about clearly doesn't vary that much from one fully trained wizard to the other.

 

Again, when Dumbledore said "amount of magical power", that is pretty explicit. It leaves little room for alternate interpretations. If we go by Occam's Razor, then Dumbledore is speaking 'truth', and other explanations are secondary and unnecessarily convoluted. I might agree with magical power = skill if DD's statement wasn't so explicit and the word 'amount' wasn't in the quote. Something quantifiable can be measured. 'Skill' is an abstract, something not easily measured. How do you measure skill? One can be skilled in one area of magic and unskilled in another area (or 2 or 3, etc.). If so, which 'skill' is Voldemort's enchantment measuring? Overall skill? Dueling skill? Even with magic, I find it hard to believe that something as abstract as skill can be measured by a single non-interactive spell. Again, it's much, much more complicated than accepting that Dumbledore's words mean exactly what they say.

See above

Yes, it is undeniable that intent is important; however, I don't find that magical power and intent are mutually exclusive concepts. Subtle desires and intent are entirely compatible with 'magical power theory'.

That's not what the passage states. It doesn't say anything about not allowing large amounts of magical power across. It states that only one wizard can sail in the boat at a time, while implying that it measures magical power in order to do so. This part of the passage is more open for interpretation, and how exactly they both crossed with no problems. Dumbledore says that Harry's power will likely not register next to his, but he also mentions Harry's status as an underage wizard. What exactly the enchantment has to do with being of age depends on how you interpret it. Considering this, "Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place", a likely conclusion is that Voldemort's enchantment only takes adult wizards into consideration. However, that itself does not invalidate my theory, or prove yours.

A nice theory, but still just a theory.

tl;dr, you come up with unnecessarily complicated explanations that conform to your own biases while disregarding more simple and explicit ones.

 

We could be overthinking it here. Maybe Dumbledore's magical power is so ridiculously 'bright' and 'apparent' to the enchantments that relative to him, it wouldn't even notice Harry.

 

Yeah, I stopped watching DBZ when I was like 13, but nice dig, if a little obvious.

And I never said that you can give a wizard an exact numerical value for magical power. I was stating that it's possible to do simple power comparisons (given Voldemort's enchantment), such as X is more powerful than Y; not that X has a power level of 15,000 while Y's is only 5,000.

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Possible. Dumbledore is described as a very powerful wizard on quite a few occasions, and wields undoubtedly the most powerful wand ever crafted, so it's not an absurd notion by any means.

 

Here's a thought: all wizards can access magic, but only the really, really smart ones can use it very well.

When people are talking about Dumbledore they use two adjectives: Either he is a genius or he is extremely powerful. Now, what if genius = power? The smarter the wizard, the better the effect of their spell will be, how well they can control it, etc. It would also explain why Crabbe could use Fiendfyre but not control it. He could access the power necessary to conjure it, but did not have the intelligence and know-how to operate it.

This could also explain why squibs study books in order to enhance/try and get magic and not just buy a magical item to "raise their power". It seems that magic is something fundamentally tied in to the mind. Emotions and intelligence. That would explain something Hermione said to Harry way back in PS about how courage and such were just as important when it comes to magical power as book knowledge.

Just a thought.

 

I wouldn't exactly put it that way, but yeah. >.>

Edit: Who could shoot a gun better? Someone who just picked it up off the ground or someone who understood the ballistics behind bullet trajectory, proper hand grip, and how to aim? Certainly, both could shoot the gun, but one of them would get better results.

 

Though it feels really clunky as far as explanations go, is it possible that Voldemort's boat detection system works through "calibration?"

In order to open the Horcrux cave, Dumbledore first shot some unknown magic at the door, then used his blood to open it. He was the one to find the boat and make it return to shore. In other words, he did all the magical heavy lifting. Prior to arriving on the island in the middle in the cave, Harry did nothing more than a Lumos and a failed Summoning charm - both examples of underage, 'underqualified' magic.

So if we think of the cave as a sort of unified system, then it might have "detected" skilled magic from one person, and basic/unskilled magic from another person. Obviously the user of skilled magic would have been the one allowed on the boat.

If the cave had detected the signature of more than one skilled wizard, it would only have allowed one to use the boat at a time. As Harry didn't do anything special himself, he might not have "registered" as a second signature, and therefore would have been ignored by the boat.

Edit addition: And yes, I realize that this type of protection logic is not very effective, since it makes it fairly easy for more than one qualified wizard to cross the lake. But then, we're talking about the HP series here; there really aren't that many clever uses of logic in it, especially not logic backed by magic.

 

You're a bit of an idiot, aren't you? Do explain, how are these two things different?

The only thing you seem to have shown is a certain lack of imagination, and the fact that you don't understand some of Taure's arguments.

As for the theory of the charm being "blinded" by Dumbledore's power, the idea here is that the charm would be looking for the number of wizards, and that Harry wouldn't be detected by comparison. Following that train of thought, if the wizard next to Harry were less powerful, he might register, and therefore the charm would detect that there are too many people on the boat. Possible, but it seems to be in direct contradiction with "Voldemort would have cared about the amount of magical power that crossed the lake". It also bothers me because it's a bit too physical an explanation; this is magic, not physics. We aren't talking about voltmeter calibration here.

 

lol, nice reference.

And Radical, I wouldn't necessarily trust what comes out of Hermione's mouth, especially during PS when she was a 'fresh off the boat' muggleborn. You really think Hermione knows that much about magic to make such a statement after barely a year of classes + some extra reading?

I'd take anything Hermione says in early canon with a grain of salt. Hell, even later on in canon, she makes mistakes and gets proven wrong a few times (granted it was HBP, which most regard as one of the worst books of the series).

But that's a whole different argument, which has been done to death in various threads.

And even though it seems that intelligence is correlated with magical skill, there really isn't any evidence to say that magic is tied to the mind (brain), or any specific body part for that matter.

And I don't know where you got that bit about squibs. The only thing about squibs I remember from canon is Filch and his Kwikspell scam, and that Arabella Figg is one. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

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If you need me to spell out the difference, then perhaps it is you that is the idiot. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one.

It doesn't matter whether it bothers you or not. If the evidence points to something, denying it based on "it bothers me" is not a wise thing to do. Scientists generally follow the data/evidence, regardless of where it leads. It's stupid to do otherwise.

 

Yeah, I was talking about the Kwikspell scam. I thought for sure it was a book, kind of like idiots guide to magic, but it turns out it was a letter for a course. My bad.

 

Demon's main argument is that we're stretching the meaning behind Dumbledore's words to make power = skill.

This is clearly a bad argument, because canon sets a very certain precedent in using the words "power" and "skill" interchangeably, and treating skill as the only thing as contributing to magical power. Thus it is no stretch to say Dumbledore was referring to skill when he said power, because wizards do it all the time. Here's a few examples:

“‘You-Know-Who acted exactly as Mad-Eye expected him to,’ sniffed Tonks, ‘Mad-Eye said he’s expect the real Harry to be with the toughest, most skilled Aurors.’”


“‘It carries an enchantment by which it can identify the first human to lay hands upon it, in the case of disputed capture. This Snitch’—he held up the tiny golden ball—‘will remember your touch, Potter. It occurs to me that Dumbledore, who had prodigious magical skill, whatever his other faults, might have enchanted this Snitch so that it will open only for you.’”


“They were no match for her, even thought there were four of them against one of her: She was a witch, as Harry knew, with prodigious skill and no conscience.”


“‘. . .my Lord, their resistance is crumbling—‘
’—and it is doing so without your help,’ said Voldemort in his high, clear voice. ‘Skilled wizard though you are, Severus, I do not think you will make much difference now. We are almost there. . . almost.’”


“‘Your wand now contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort’s own deadly skill: What chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy’s stand?’”


“‘Oh, not death,’ said Dumbledore, in answer to Harry’s questioning look. ‘Not what he could do to me magically. I knew that we were evenly matched, perhaps that I was a shade more skillful..’”


“‘I have been sure that he would try, ever since your wand beat Voldemort’s in the graveyard of Little Hangleton. At first, he was afraid that you had conquered him by superior skill..’”


“Blank shock showed in Voldemort’s face for a moment, but then it was gone.
‘But what does it matter?’ he said softly. ‘Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: We duel on skill alone. . . and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy. . . .’”


There is also a further reason to support the idea that the spell was to stop not "quantities of magical power" but numbers of wizards: the nature of the protections of the Horcrux. The potion protecting the Horcrux is such that no single wizard - not even Dumbledore - could conquer it on their own. Two wizards, however, can get around it quite easily.

 

Canon!bomb ftw. I don't have the books on hand so I can't conveniently pluck out passages to support my argument.

Anyways, I'm not denying that power is sometimes used interchangeably with skill (as you've shown), but that doesn't mean that every single instance of magical power mentioned = skill, or that there is no such thing as quantifiable magic (although there are admittedly little supports for it). At best, it just means that skill is highly important and that there are multiple interpretations of the various mentions of magical power and of Dumbledore's words.

Your argument is well reasoned though, and I can't see any fault with it.

 

Yes, I'm an idiot. Explain plz.

Which might be why I said "it bothers me because" and not "this is wrong because". That said, when a theory isn't obviously right, whether it bothers me or how convenient it is becomes very relevant (to me), and as it happens I'd just made an argument against the theory.

Says the person who conveniently ignored the whole argument in the comment.

 

I think that it is quite as simple as this: the charm was designed to let only one wizard of age pass. Harry, being 16, was not of age, and thus did not register. A fairly succinct explanation, yes?