Without its vessel, the soul is forced to pass on, as it would have when the body died. The vessel is the only thing tying it to this plane. The piece of soul is not the Horcrux. The vessel that contains it is the Horcrux, in my understanding. So to destroy the vessel is to effectively destroy the Horcrux.

And I think, since the vessel is needed to contain the soul, the latter saturates and taints the former, so that they are essentially one. The vessel comes to reflect/protect the soul it contains, in addition to whatever protective enchantments the wizard placed on it.

 

So in Engand, do you not have the 5 finger essay (also called the sandwich)? The opening paragraph with 3 detail paragraphs then a conclusion is an American English standard writing style; we even test to it on the SAT and in AP classes, and it's THE expected form of essay form (with an expanded detail section) for thing like research papers and essays even at the college level (i've attended 3 colleges in Florida, and my experience branches from 2-year and 4-year level schools in 3 states from friends). Is there an english equivalent with the same basic structure, or do you do something else?

 

There's no standard template everyone is expected to follow, beyond having an introduction and a conclusion, and each paragraph in between being on an identifiable and somewhat unified point. The number of paragraphs will depend on the subject matter, how much you have to say, etc. And your wqord count, of course.

At A-level standard essays are around 1500 words, undergraduate work at university is generally around 2500-3000 (with maybe a bigger 4000 essay per class per term). Plus a 10,000 word dissertation in third year, if you're doing a dissertation.

 

The only classes I ever took that explicitly taught English grammar beyond the absolute basics were foreign language classes. Freshman year of my Latin class spent almost as much time on teaching us how English worked as teaching us Latin.

 

If you have good teachers, then English is taught in virtually every class. Every piece of homework turned in is corrected for both content and structure of presenting that content (outside of math, of course, or single word answers). I found this to be even more true the higher I went in education.

 

My drama classes taught me more about paragraph composition (PQC - Point, Quote, Comment), and my science classes taught me more about essay composition.

 

Was it ever explicitly mentioned if Malfoy had taken the Dark Mark or not? I know it was heavily implied, but I don't remember if there was definitive proof.

 

What did he show to Borgin at his shop before sixth year?

 

How long did the First War last?
It was also mostly run in the 'shadows' right? Voldemort+Deatheaters vs the Order?

 

No more than ten or twelve years. It is pretty explicit that Voldemort's war started "in the 70s" and ended in 1981. My understanding was that it was not a shadow war (Giants were involved) and the Ministry's aurors fought Voldemort just as much or more than the Order of the Phoenix did.

 

I think this is the kind of question that magical historians would argue over endlessly. I mean, there are a ton of different issues here:

1. The years in which Voldemort was politically active in some form or another.
2. The years in which people started dying and disappearing.
3. The years in which the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix were fighting without ministry involvement.
4. The years in which the Ministry had recognised Voldemort as an enemy and were in all-out war against him.

 

According to Dumbledore in the first chapter of PS they had ''precious little to celebrate for eleven years." So I'd say that's when people started disappearing at least.

 

I have a question about grammar that is probably pretty basic. If you're using quotation marks but not in the form of speech, does the punctuation go inside the quotation mark or outside?

 

Are you talking about quotations like:

Ron Weasley is an insufferable "git".

"Ron Weasley is an insufferable git." Hermione said.

I don't know...a lot of my professors have contradicted themselves on this topic. Most of them said that any form of punctuation, including comma, semi-colons and punctuation points go inside the quote, whereas if you're quoting a title/work -- ie, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", the punctuation is outside.

Great, now I'm confusing myself.

 

I wonder if in the HP world there are magics which allow one to create illusions. Say for example I wanted to create a fake double of myself to distract the enemy.

I don't recall seeing something like this in the books, but would it be possible, given what we know?

 

Seems like a silly spell branch to specialize in given that we have the human revealing spell and the like.

 

Oh, I agree about that. But, even the human revealing spell takes a moment to cast and in a fight where seconds are precious, it may make a difference.

 

Imperio is basically mind control, it wouldn't be surprising if spells that manipulated senses i.e. illusions existed.

 

Hogwarts appears to be a ruined castle plastered with warning signs to Muggles. Probably it is possible to make something that will affect also magicals.

 

Actually, didn't Moody create an illusion that looked like the 'ghost' of Dumbledore at Grimmauld Place?