You'd think that, except the Weasley twins demonstrate standard Apparition (you just appear) early in the film at Grimmauld Place as they do in the book. Later Apparition in the last three films still follows that 'just appearing' effect (Harry & Dumbledore; the Trio escaping the wedding to Tottenham), while still showing the Death Eaters using wraith-form travel to cause mayhem.

 

That's just movie-canon being inconsistent.

 

In the movies, even the Phoenix Order members are shown flying in the battle scene in OOTP. I wouldn't put much stock into the movies because they changed the canon facts and even the events. The Burrow is never burnt down in the book canon while it is in HBP movie.

 

Inconsistent with the books- sure. Inconsistent with itself? I don't think so. Apparition in the 'just appears' version shows up first at the Quidditch World Cup, when a bunch of people pop in to try and stupefy the trio for being the cause of the Mors Mordre. Later in the film, the bad guys arrive in the Little Hangleton graveyard via smoke meteors.

We next see the villains using the smoke travel effect at the Department of Mysteries. By this time, Dumbledore has probably deconstructed the spellwork, because the Order enters the Veil chamber using a similar, white smoke effect.

Why? Anti-apparition jinx, maybe? The Department of Mysteries is probably protected from unwanted visitors, so only a new mode of travel would confound them.

Both styles of travel are used throughout the rest of the films.

 

I've got another question. Is there any initiation filled with malice and perversion before a DE wannabee gets his Dark Mark?

Or is just a fanon concept?

Look at this. 6 years have passed since the last book came out and still the interest in fandom is strong as ever even if the number of good quality fanfics came down.

Harry Potter will live on as long as our generation lives and breathes. After that, there are always the hallows.

 

No. Pure fanon.

 

Then why wouldn't they fly the same way?

I said nothing about him developing it at Hogwarts. Unless you mean as Headmaster? In which case an escape plan would be both sensible and the kind of thing Snape would do. And because we know Snape to be someone who experiments with magic. So why not? And Voldemort wasn't around for Snape's flight anyway.

Does he reward people? I always felt that to be a bullshitting technique of his. And you yourself just said that two people being able to fly kind of shows up Voldemort. So why would he teach someone he likely knows to be the only wizard anywhere near as competent as he is his next feat of incredible of magic? Not really "more than plausible."

If anything, his gift to Snape was Headmastership of Hogwarts.

 

He gave Wormtail a pretty badass new hand.

 

That later strangled him to death.

 

Snape killed Dumbledore. If there was ever a reason for Voldemort to reward someone, killing his nemesis would be it.

 

He did reward him, I just don't think it was with the power to fucking fly, which he himself had just discovered that year, for all we know. I'm still not even sure Snape was flying, as opposed to just pulling a Batman and gliding down to the gates from a tower window. Even if he was actually flying, the descriptions just don't match.

I think Snape's reward was guardianship of Hogwarts.

We also know Voldemort traveled and existed in wraith form before 1991, which might have given him a leg up with being able to fly "like smoke on the wind."

 

We've had this discussion before, as you well know.

The key there is the word "like". It's a common writing technique known as a similie, where you use a non-literal comparison in order to evoke some kind of reaction in the reader. "Her smile was like the summer sun." That doesn't mean it's blindingly bright and so hot it can burn your skin. It means that some aspect of the smile is reminiscent of some aspect of the summer sun, metaphorically, poetically, or whatever.

Likelihood that literal smoke is actually involved in Voldemort's flight: very low.

As for Snape, we're pretty much told point blank that it's the same flight as Voldemort: "his master must have been teaching him new tricks". That means that the flight is the same as Voldemort's.

 

The hand only strangled Wormtail when he wanted to help Harry.

 

I must have missed it.

Except we're given no other way to imagine it, and it's magic, so it could very well be like smoke. It's kind of disingenuous to act as though "smiling like the summer sun" and "flying like smoke on the wind" are operating at similar levels of metaphorical representation. We know what smiling is like, so when someone says a person is smiling like the sun, we know it's metaphorical exaggeration. Describing the flight of a wizard is an entirely different ballgame. It is, unlike a standard smile, ostentatiously supernatural. For all we know, it could actually look like "smoke" or "mist" or any number of other physical phenomena that could be magically reproduced.

Well . . . obviously. I'm not saying it actually involves smoke, just that when she says "like smoke on the wind" she could be describing a state of matter analogous to Voldemort's as he flies.

So McGonagall is infallible when it comes to knowledge of the workings of Voldemort's inner circle? Really? Seems like kind of a weak argument to me.

Especially when Harry himself, our narrator, describes the two flights in differing ways? Why should McGonagall's entirely unfounded conjecture regarding Voldemort and Snape beat out Harry's description of the actual events in question?

 

The descriptions aren't "entirely different". There are two instances of unaided flight in DH. I don't remember how to phrase it formally, but there's a principle that says it's a lot safer to assume that they're the same thing rather than different things.

 

Did JK ever go into what happened after the war with Gringotts? Like did Harry ever just go back to Gringotts to get some gold, all the while goblins were just grilling him?

 

Now I want to see a fic where the Goblins go out of their way to ruin Harry's life in revenge for the break-in. Why can't I think of an example off the top of my head?

 

I don't think Occam's razor applies here. If that's the principle you mean. But that's not really what it says. It says that the simplest of two explanations is usually correct. Or it does apply, and the simplest explanation is that, according to what we know (two different ways of flying, Voldemort's paranoia and narcissism, Snape's genius, etc.), Voldemort never taught Snape how to fly.

There are two instances of unaided flight, but you're reducing them to "flight," which is what McGonagall did. There are two descriptions of flight from Harry, and they really don't have anything in common except the word "flying," and there are two "entirely different" similes used to describe them. So yes, they are two "entirely different" forms of flight.

One is "like smoke on the wind," and the other is "a huge batlike shape." Bats aren't smoky, last time I checked. Nor did smoke have any definite "shape."

Did McGonagall ever even see Voldemort fly? I don't recall that happening. Her statement sounds like she made an assumption that Snape can fly because she heard Voldemort can, not one based on actual observation and comparison.

 

Here's the full quote describing his flying:

And here's a description of him in Half Blood Prince

You're over-thinking it. He learned to fly from Voldemort. He just also happens to look like a bat.

 

The Game Is Afoot