Does Fawkes actually transport a person using the fire-flash in the books or is that a fanfication invention?

 

Fawkes teleports Dumbledore away from his office in fifth year, iirc.

 

That technique/spell/whatever Death Eaters use to fly in the form of gusts of black smoke. Order members do the same in white. A movie concept, not present in books iirc, Voldemort's wraith escaping in PS probably comes the closest.

It's pretty damn cool, but it seems to violate the canon statement that Voldemort is the only one capable of unaided flight, yet this trick is present in movies 5, 6 AND in the last one (scene where Snape escapes Hogwarts after McGonagall attacks him), which would mean the moviemakers went even lower than retconning and didn't do it, because in the flight of seven Potters Death Eaters fly on brooms.

Okay, I'll stop useless shit now. If implemented into fanfiction, how do you think this could work? Is it a sustained, continuous spell? A manipulation of apparition?

 

Likely a combination of both. We are shown in the movies that apparition essentially involves squeezing the human body into a very a tiny space and coming out the other side - the books tell us this as well, though not nearly as clearly. The fact that this is the basic tenet of the idea behind FTL travel probably needs to be mentioned, but I digress.

My idea is that the user needs to constantly focus all of their magic - and we're going to pretend that there is such a concept as a finite amount of magic one person can use over a given period of time to support this - on manipulating apparition in such a way that the user is in a constant state of being partially inside of the space/time hole they've created. I have no idea where the smoke comes from, though.

Conveniently, this also answers why the Death Eaters used brooms in the seventh movie. Because they couldn't cast spells while using Voldemort's flight spell.

Someone who actually has some knowledge of physics could probably answer this better than me.

EDIT: Here's a thought I just had about that, a possible expansion on the theory if it comes across clearly.

What if the user of the flight spell is, effectively, ripping open holes in time-space at such a constant pace that they are in a state of constant apparition, and this is actually what allows for said 'unaided flight'?

 

I'm fond of the idea that Apparition and the smoke-travel thing are different but related skills. Standard Apparition involves the whole wormhole travel thing, but in order to survive the process, the wizard transfigures into a malleable thread that can traverse the distance. Most wizards don't even realize this, as the pseudo-physics of it is done by the magic (and/or the wand).

The smoke-travel is a slower, more physical transport, where the wizard self-transforms into smoke and is guided by some anchoring phenomenon- in the case of the Death Eaters they anchor to their Mark, whereas the Order members use their Patronus to guide them (which is why they appear white). If they didn't have an anchor, they'd probably be dissipated by the wind. The wizard has some awareness of the area around them as they travel, and skilled users can partially un-transform in order to cast simple spells. Voldemort knows how to sustain the partial transformation in order to fly and cast spells without restriction.

The downside of this compared to Apparition is the slower travel and the limits of being made of mist- you can't penetrate a vacuum-sealed room, nor travel through water, and you are visible.

In my head-canon, this was developed by Voldemort to work around the anti-apparition jinx. When Harry shared his experience at the graveyard with Dumbledore, the 'technology' was adapted by Albus to serve the members of his Order, allowing them to penetrate the security of the Ministry and rescue Harry and friends.

Side note of fun: in the movie, Tonks reappears from mist already in motion and fully ready to fight; self-transfiguration being an innate talent for her, she took to it easily.

 

Eh, I'm not a fan of smoke travel at all. Especially the fucking friend/foe colours.

 

Not to mention Deatheaters punching holes in a freaking building by smoke-travelling through it.

 

One of the reasons the fifth movie is the worst for me - smoke-travel battle at the end.

 

I stopped watching the Potter movies in the theaters after the smoke battle. I almost walked out of OOTP. White Vs Dark!!!!

 

I like it. I think it's cool.

I'm not saying I will, but if I were to write "smoking" into a fanfic, would you be opposed to me using this explanation? (your idea, so I'm asking permission, just in case)

 

Use it as you'd like. The pitfall of my explanation (aside from upsetting those who despise the concept entirely) is that later on the snatchers use the black smoke version as well. Perhaps they take a different Mark, or maybe Voldemort's Ministry has figured out how to work around that requirement. There's no reason why spellcraft wouldn't evolve during the series, particularly if it relates to an important combat or survival skill used in wartime.

 

I thought they just put that in to make Apparition look pretty? Characters popping in and out constantly would look like a B-movie from the 50s.

If you do go with smoke flight I think it should be something you accomplish with a powerful magical artifact. Anchoring it to the Dark Mark would make sense if Voldemort held the artifact and had total control or knowledge of DE whereabouts - I can't see him teaching or granting such a flashy ability without complete authority anyway.

 

They still have normal apparition, though: Fred and George in OotP, Harry and Dumbledore in HBP, Harry Ron and Hermione in DH-

 

And just to confound things further, if you watch GoF; at the Quidditch World Cup, when all the Ministry wizards apparate to surround Harry, they almost pop in... except for the barest whisp of smoke that precedes their arrival.

Damn Directors and their artistic license. Don't they know how much time we waste trying to reconcile these inconsistencies?

 

Not to mention Harry and Hermione apparating (normal version, not smoke) out of Godric's Hollow in DH and smashing the window as if they'd flown out.

 

The only good thing about the HP movies was Emma Watson's pretty face.

Everything else is meh. Not terrible, just meh.

 

I prefer to pretend such problems don't exist, and just enjoy the movies on their own. I'm not saying I like the smoke-apparation nonsense, especially how bad characters are always black while good characters are always white.* It's a bit obvious, and they never properly explained it.

*Wow, that sounds racist out of context.

 

Huh. My headcanon is that they were two separate but related spells, the black one being an easier to learn variant taught by Voldemort to his minions. It would be a less refined version, but to learn the better version would require years of practice or natural transfiguration talent.

 

Personally, I'll ignore the fact that Order members can do it, even though I like wordhammer's patronus/Dark Mark explanation. I just think Death Eaters, with how disadvantaged they are compared to the all around awesome Phoenix Dream Team, deserve an edge. Plus, the black smoke pairs up well with their dark robes and masks - intimidation factor goes up, better bad guys. The white smoke just looks silly.