Unless I'm mistaken, vanishing cabinets are used more for the purpose of transport to another place, rather than vanishing objects. I think they were used in the First Wizarding War when Death Eaters attacked - victims could just leap into the vanishing cabinet and appear in the other one, making good their escape. That means that for these cabinets, a twin is necessary, though a charmed object designed to vanish anything thrown into it would not be out of the realm of possibility.

I have a question along the same vein. What happens to living beings who are vanished? I get that they vanish into the non-being, but what does that exactly imply?

 

1. The atoms they're made of are dispersed sufficiently enough that they can no longer connect and affect each other thereby no longer form the living being they did previously?

2. A local mini-wormhole sends them to the center of the galaxy?

3. They vanish into another dimension and the universe actually loses the vanished mass forever?

4. ... ?

The sixth film showed the bird dead when the cabinet malfunctioned, but don't recall if that was in the book. My best guess is some weird combination of 1 and 3, coupled with the death of the subject being vanished, but that would either constitute an overlooked, easy way to kill people (Vanishing Charm instead of AK) which has frightnening implications, or it's a plothole.

I suppose the dead bird from the film could have just been there to show us that 'ooooh, cabinet not work, bad, very bad' without the screenwriter thinking of the consequences. The Charm may not actually work on living beings and the cabinet only worked on the bird because it was broken, which would explain why shoving Montague into the cabinet could have ended very badly indeed.

 

Disintegration? I actually wanted to put it here too, but then I realized that I don't like that explanation. In this particular case, I have no problems stating that they just disappear.

...

I just checked with Hp wiki and it says that

I am not sure if I trust HP wiki of all things, but there is a DH book citated as a source.

 

Yeah, it was the answer to the Ravenclaw common room entrance question. It kinda has a certain logic to it. Nothingness, being nothing, has no location, so it can be accessed from everywhere.

 

I read Taure's posts and always think he must operating in some other stream of consciousness. Or maybe he's achieved a higher state of awareness. And it makes me feel bad. Fucking science and philosophy.

 

I'm pretty sure that it works on living beings. In OOTP, I think that they were vanishing snails, and McGonagall told them that they'd soon progress to vertebrates. That's what led me to ask this question, because it seems like a particularly nasty way to dispose of somebody.

Hermione even progresses to vanishing kittens in OOTP, I checked. There's also a disease, called Vanishing sickness, which is again mentioned in OOTP. According to HP Wiki, it causes random parts of a person's body to disappear.

I crossed my legs a bit when I read that.

Got this off HP Wiki too, but they cited Pottermore. I wish somebody would write a fic on this.

 

So... what's the oddest HP crossover fic that you've encountered (and not necessarily have read)? As in, what's the most unexpected crossover you've come across. I ask because I happened upon a HP/Dune fic, albeit only 4 chapters and abandoned long since.

 

Probably Glee.

 

Ruskbyte's got some good, if wacky, crossovers. Culture Shock (IM Banks's Culture series) and Evil Be Thou My Good/All Problems Solved (Hellraiser) for example.

So I finally got access to my copies of the books and had enough time to look for why I think the vanishing cabinet(s) may have been thought to be for vanishing specifically and not transportation. It, as it happens, may also help answer your question.

While Fred's statement that he doesn't know "where he sent him" might mean that Vanishing Cabinet(s) are known to transport things, his use of the word "reappears" may mean something else. Yes, it could mean "get back from where he came" but it seems like an odd word to use. "Reappear," to me, suggests that Fred believes that Montague disappeared not that he traveled some far, unknown distance. Then, "where we sent him" is that unknown place where vanished objects go.

If that logic holds, then it may answer the question of what happens to vanished living objects: if Fred believes that (1) the Vanishing Cabinet vanishes objects instead of teleporting them and (2) things vanished by the cabinet return in some fashion after weeks then vanished objects return after some period of time regardless of sentience or intelligence. It would also explain why vanishing wouldn't otherwise be on some list of extremely restricted spells if all it took to murder someone and disappear all the evidence permanently was a spell taught before NEWT-level studies.

(Emphasis mine)

To me that suggests that while the original purpose of the Vanishing Cabinet at Hogwarts was for transportation after it was broken this purpose was lost to history. Yes, I think Arthur Weasley said something about their popularity during the war, but I think that conversation only occurs in the movies not the books (or at least I couldn't find it in my copy of the books). At best I think you could say that a Vanishing Cabinet would teleport you somewhere, but the idea that such cabinets would be linked is either rare or unique.

 

As I love Iain Banks's Culture series, I found Culture Shock to be very enjoyable. Unfortunately, it was abandoned before things could get interesting. I suppose a problem with that particular cross-over was the obscene power disparity between the Culture and the wizards--an instance where technology is overwhelmingly stronger than magic (if not quite capable of the same things) and with no exaggeration!

 

This snippet you quoted sounds disturbingly like the effects of balefire from tWoT. :fire

Now I'm wondering if there's a way to filter out all the "Harry & co. get sent 1000 years into the past!!!!!" fics. I can't remember any off the top of my head that I'd care to read through again.

 

Well, sending 20th century people a thousand years into the past could result in potentially awesome stuff, but someone from DLP would have to write that. Most of the existing fics do some monstrously stupid mistakes, like attempting to be all grimdork while forgetting about basic things like the language barrier.

Whoops, I meant grimdark...

 

I don't necessarily diagree, but I did some research. According to my potentially fallible source, after Montague was locked, vanishing cabinet was already broken, so Montague travelled back and forth between cabinets and couldn't escape. In the end, he apparated and ended up in that toilet, if my memory serves. I think that it was also mentioned somewhere in canon, but I am not sure.

If that is true, then twins could probably decide to which cabinet to send Montague, but simply didn't check.

 

Montague being forced to apparate is in the quoted passage from HBP above. The important bits here are that (1) Fred doesn't know what happened to Montague but expects him to return at some point and (2) Dumbledore is surprised that the Vanishing Cabinet is one of an interconnected pair. This to me suggests that Vanishing Cabinets are either not typically used for transportation or if they are used for transportation it is not normally to another Vanishing Cabinet. Whether that's a random spot on the globe or a specific place decided by the user or creator of the cabinet is not known.

 

Possibly a tie between HP/Vicar of Dibley and HP/Keeping Up Appearances: Just because of the why??? factor. There are two of each on FFN (which doesn't bar the possibility that there are more that aren't properly categorized, because the average FFN user is one hair away from a shit-flinging baboon).

Although... I could see Hyacinth fitting right in on Privet Drive. Hey, and another flower name, too.

(An honorable mention should probably go to Doghead Thirteen's Harry Johnson series, not because the stuff it's crossed over with is strange, but because it crosses with nearly everything in existence and still comes off seeming internally consistent. HP crossed with WH/WH40K, Star Wars, Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, DC {Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman...}, Marvel {Wolverine, X-Men, Captain America...}, Duke Nukem, AD&D/Spelljammer, Dune, Star Trek, Discworld, The Matrix, Dominion: Tank Police, Ghost in The Shell, Tenchi Muyo, Girl Genius, Akira, Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, Undocumented Features, B:TVS, FFVII, Full Throttle, Artemis Fowl, Supernatural Investigation Department, Hellsing, Firefly, Elder Scrolls, and the list goes on. Most just get name-checked somewhere along the way, but still... amusing and impressive in equal measure. Sadly, he hasn't updated anything in ages, AFAIK.)

That's a problem with almost everything Ruskbyte writes. Either it's a oneshot so good you wish it were a novel-length fic, or it's supposed to be novel-length and it gets abandoned.

I'm dying to see updates for, oh, pretty much everything he's left unfinished.

 

Man... Lavoisier!

 

Ah, you're trying to apply the known Laws of Science on Magic. That's adorable.

 

Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.

 

Nay. Once I read Taure's post I instantly thought in the law of conservation mass.

No problem!

 

Anyone remember a fic about Harry and Dudley (kids) going to the lord of the rings world?