What is "Hogwarts"? Just the castle? The greenhouses? The grounds? How would you know when you are "in Hogwarts" and when you are not? Also, WHERE exactly, is the point you are NOT in Hogwarts (which would allow you to disapparate)? Snape Disapparated near Hagrid's hut, which lies on Hogwarts grounds, and so should technically be part of "Hogwarts". Hence, if it was merely an ontological boundary, there would be complications as if the grounds were not considered part of "Hogwarts", Snape should be able to Disapparate immediately after leaving the castle itself, but if the grounds were considered "in Hogwarts", he should have to run much further into the Forbidden Forest to Disapparate.

There has to be elements of physical boundaries involved. If you would just think clearly about it, it is quite impossible for a spell of this nature to be merely casted on an abstract idea since in casting it over a 'place", you would have to define the land, area, and whatnot that constitutes the "place", hence even there would be still physical boundaries involved. With so much complications that can arise if the spell is casted over merely an abstract idea, it is more likely that it is casted over a physical area.

 

The felxible definiton is half the fun. So much more magical than casting a spell over a circle with radius x metres. There are complications, yes, but advanced magic is supposed to be complicated. It's problems like this that make the idea of "advanced magic" viable, otherwise magic is just words and wand waving.

As for how it is decided, there's nothing in canon to indicate this, but if I were to speculate, I'd say it would be down to the caster of the spell.

Yes, Hogwarts has physical boundries. A wall if I remember correctly. But the spell wouldn't be cast on the land, but on Hogwarts itself.

Would you? Wouldn't all this information come under the word "Hogwarts"? By casting the spell simply on Hogwarts, you avoid all need to specify area etc. as all of this is part of the definition of Hogwarts.

 

Physical boundaries would still be involved. If not, then what constitutes "Hogwarts"? What or where exactly is "out of Hogwarts", where a person would not be under the effect of the anti-apparation ward? Where exactly has a person got to run until before he can disapparate? Out of the castle? Then this would mean the grounds are not part of Hogwarts, and Snape WOULD have disapparated immediately after exiting the castle. But he didn't. Into the Forbidden Forest? But Snape did not have to flee into the forest; he disapparated near Hagrid's hut, which lies on Hogwarts grounds. This is the primary complication (Where exactly is "out of the place" if you don't involve physical boundaries?) if you cast the ward purely on an abstract idea. Hence like it or not, casting on physical areas seem more feasible and more in line with canon.

What I've mentioned here I've already pointed out in my previous posts, but it seems you are just avoiding these points and brushing it off with statements like ooh, "flexible definition...so much more magical than...blahblahblah".

 

Magic is an art, not a science. When you say Wingardium Leviosa, what decides where the feather will go? Left, or right? Up, or down? There's nothing in the words to indicate this. When you make a Portkey, where in the word "Portus" is expressed the physical location? Nowhere. Magic is flexible and intuitive.

I've already pointed this out in my previous posts, but you are just avoiding it by saying the same thing over and over again, "But it would still need boundries!"

 

You are just running out of arguments against anti-apparation wards requiring the involvement of physical boundaries, hence you bring up the convenient counter-argument of "magic is flexible". You have precious little to back up your argument that there is no physical boundaries involved (and hence wards don't exist), while at least I have brought up related canon examples and use them to back up my point. If you are to refuse to even consider them, but simply choose to brush it off with the ever reliable 'Lol magic is flexible, it can do anything; a spell can just be casted on an abstract idea and it will iron out any complications on it's own since I can't explain them myself".

Again you keep bringing it examples which have little to do with the present argument. What does a Portkey creation spell and a Levitation spell have to do with anti-apparation wards? Nothing. Magic behaves differently in each of these cases. Well, it is flexible like you said. But to humor you, Wingardium Leviosa will generally make the object float upwards or hover. Is that not the point of a Levitation Charm? Whether it floats upwards or hovers is up to the wizard, and his control over the magic. Same for the Portkey spell, the wizard has to internally know where he wants the Portkey to take him. There is no need for the location to be verbally expressed. Similarly, a wizard probably does not have to express aloud the physical boundaries of a ward when he is casting them. He just needs to know the extent of area he wants the ward to cover, the physical boundary of the ward (in the case of Hogwarts the boundary line would lie somewhere between Hagrid's hut and the Forest- this boundary is also taken to be the boundary of the school), and the magic will take over the rest. Like you said, magic is intuitive.

 

Again, you bring up canon examples and provide your interpretation, while I provide mine. That's all we have here, interpretations.

My theory works just as well as yours when explaining the actions of Snape when apparating out of the school, and has the added bonus of working as a general rule when applied to other realms of magic.

Your argument was that the term "Hogwarts" was vague, and therefore my theory couldn't work, because there is no way to say with certainty where Hogwarts begins and ends, thus you can't just cast a spell on Hogwarts without specifying the boundries. To counter this, I provided examples of spells where magic is vague, and simply follows the desire of the caster, such as where the feather moves with Wingardium Leviosa, or where a Portkey goes.

Levitation charm also allows you to move objects around in directions other than the vertical axis.

Or he could just cast the spell on Hogwarts and let magic take care of the rest. Every single piece of magic we have seen in Harry Potter has been of this nature. You place a taboo on a name, you place a curse on a job, you place a curse on a necklace, you place charms on a stadium, you place a curse on a ring, you cast the Fidelius charm on a piece of information etc. In all of these, the magic has been cast at the object - it is attatched to being - not to physical parameters.

 

Except in all these cases, the specified target is not an entire location. Indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect physical boundaries to be involved when placing a curse on a necklace or ring. But a location, like Hogwarts (the castle)and a certain radius of it's surrounding grounds, or Hogsmeade town is a different thing altogether. What could work for one may not work for something else totally different. Like you said, magic is flexible, and varying.

As for the stadium, we don't exactly know whether the charms/spells are placed on the idea of the stadium, or its physical construct or the area containing the stadium. I admit that it's more likely to be placed on the physical construct since it's temporary and relatively small compared to large areas like Hogwarts and its grounds or a whole town. Anyway, there isn't any anti-apparation wards or anything placed there, as far as GoF tells us. And as I have said, we don't exactly know how the charms on it work, same goes for the Taboo and the cursed necklace, you have no concrete proof.

Taking Apparation as an example, if you want to Apparate to a specific location accurately, it'd be best if you've been there before since Apparation requires concentration on the destination (of course, if you were just Apparating randomly, like the Trio did in DH on their "quest", this wouldn't be really necessary).

I imagine Portkey creation to be same- requiring a lot of concentration on the location such that the caster can actually picture it mentally, the image of which serves as the coordinates. He can't just create a Portkey for a location so unknown to him (say a pub in some town he's never been to in his life) that he can't even imagine it mentally.Throughout the book, there has been no evidence of anyone Apparating to a highly specific (note the words in italics) destination without having been there before. Portkey creation should be no different.

The point I am trying to make is that while magic is flexible and intuitive like you said, it's not that intuitive. It has it's limits. Just like how you probably can't create a Portkey to say, the Finnish Ministry of Magic, because you probably aren't even sure of it's existence, much less be able to picture the location, you also probably can't erect an anti-apparation ward over say, Hogsmeade if you yourself do not know where you want the boundary to be; from whereon you want the ward to end, and stop protecting.

Magic is intuitive, but it's not a brain, it's not smart, and can't think. That's where the wizard comes in- he has a brain for a reason, and that's to think and to decide on the parameters of the spell (in the case of a ward). You can say the examples you brought up support your theory, but I say bullshit. With a ring or necklace, you just need to place a curse on it, there is obviously no boundary involved. But with a town, a whole town with separate buildings, grounds etc, man, that's a whole new story. If you can't even see this point, then I really have nothing to say.

 

There are anti-Muggle spells.

Neither do we know how any of the spells in Harry Potter work. JKR never really went into the how.

The older Weasley siblings apparated to the World Cup location without having been there before.

Also, you can't just start adding in qualifications to your argument such as "highly specific Apparition". It either has to explain the entireity of the phenomena, or it is no longer a valid hypothesis.

Certainly magic is not self-aware (as far as we have seen) but it is smart. In POA, Hermione cast the spell Impervious on Harry's glasses, preventing water from touching them. In DH she cast the same spell, same words, on the trio, this time protecting them from coming into contact with the burning coins in Gringotts. This shows how magic is smart: it interprets a spell not to the letter of the law, but takes into account what the wizard wants.

Oh? There is no boundry to the necklace? No point at which the world stops being necklace and starts being something else? I disagree. A necklace, or any other physical object, has very clear physical boundries that make up the edge of it's body.

A town is no different. A town is made up of different buildings, grounds etc. A necklace is made up of various metals, jewels, connecting pieces, and if you wanted to go even deeper, you could go all the way down to atoms.

No, the spell is simply placed on "the necklace", not "x number of atoms to the left, y number of atoms to the vertical". A necklace and a ring and a town are all analagous, they are all made up of a variety of componenets. A town is just much bigger. So just as you simply place a spell on a necklace, or indeed, a person, or ring, or coin, or anything, so too you simply cast a spell on a town.

There are only four spells in canon that we know of that include a mental effort: the Patronus, the Cruciatus, the summoning charm and Legilimency. Now, I'm sure that there are more, but we can't just conjure them out of the air at will. The vast majority of spells are just words and (sometimes) wand movements, and all that seems to be necessary to making them work is practice, and eventually the spell begins to work (example, Harry practicing for the third task. Harry practiced the Protego all night and at the end of the night it was still flimsy but he had improved the spell. Now, only a certain amount of that improvement can be put down to pronouncing the word better - it's a pretty simple word - so we can only conclude that to make the spell better all that was needed was practice).

 

I was not talking about mental effort. I was simply meaning the words in bold. You said so yourself, the wizard has to know what he wants. He has to know where he wants the boundary of the ward to be and stuff like that. Magic will do the rest. But the bottom line is, he has to know what he wants. He can't just want to place a ward on a town and expect magic to do everything else. So like I said, magic is intuitive, but it is not without limits.

Okay, so there are boundaries to a necklace. Still, like I said (and you haven't addressed), the magic involved are totally different. Why should they work they same way? Magic is ever varying. I better phrase my earlier statement differently- Placing a curse on a necklace doesn't require a physical boundary: You will obviously want the curse to cover the entire necklace, every atom, if you will have it. Here, the boundary is quite clear (every molecule or atom pertaining to every part, jewel or metal, of the necklace). It is an object, not an abstract idea like the location "Hogwarts" is.

But it's different from placing a ward, since you will want to know where it ends, from whereon can a wizard, say, Apparate out. Who decides what the abstract idea, "Hogwarts" is? The caster. He will have to decide what area and objects/structures contitutes "Hogwarts", and in doing so, is actually laying down the physical boundaries for the ward. In other words, in form an ontological boundary over a location (note: not an object), he is actually forming a physical boundary too.

Hence, no matter what, physical boundaries will always be involved.

 

God... why are you people trying to make so much sense of it all? Harry Potter is not a very logically consistent universe.

There is a point where further debate become redundant, and silly. You should be heedful of that line.

 

Aye, guess you're right. I can't see us agreeing anyway. Taure is as stubborn as a mule when it comes to his views, and so am I.

 

Addressing your final points:

Random thought: What if there isn't a set point where apparition becomes possible? What if the strength of the spell (or, if you want to call it a ward, a ward) is like a field that decreases slowly in strength the further away you get from Hogwarts?

The reason why I never addressed this is because I disagree. I see no difference in the essence of the magic involved between Charms and Dark Arts, other than the fact that a different effect is involved. A curse is no more different to a charm than one charm is different from another charm. In the end, they're just all spells and words like Dark Arts and Charms are just classifications.

Upon further thought, the idea of Hogwarts isn't that abstract. Somewhere there will be papaerwork saying what is part of the school and what isn't. It certainly isn't as abstract a classification as "whereever you call home".

I would say that the boundries were decided by the Founders. If anyone were to later cast a spell on Hogwarts (for example Voldemort on the teaching position) then they would be working the the Founder's definition, not their own.

But yeah, stubboness.

/me shakes Lucullus' hand.

Good argument.

I don't even know why I care so much about all this crap lol. I guess I just like the individualness of the Harry Potter magic system and dislike the D&D invasions into fanon.

 

I side with Taure on this (the anti apparition magic issue) for two reasons

1. Hogwarts is the only location we've heard that such magics exist as a matter of "fact". As such we're left pretty much with speculation as to whether or not it is possible to duplicate the feat.

2. Even the ministry appears to not have such wards/spells in place since Voldemort disappeared right out of the atrium in OotP. If the ministry doesn't have them to secure their facilities, then its quite possible that they're either incredibly difficult or perhaps a lost magical art.

That said, there is anecdotal evidence that there are other locations wherein apparation appears to be blocked as well.

Gringott's would be one, and Riddle's lake and cave would appear to be another (otherwise Harry and Dumbledore could have gotten the chalice and just apparated out instead of dicking around with it as they did in HBP.

Now, myself, I put that down to JKR not writing the characters realistically and doing what real people would do... but that's just me.

As such, we've got a lot of evidence that preventing apparation isn't trivial and that assuming it is is actually contradicted by canon.

 

I seriously have no wish for another argument on this- I'm still panting from exhaustion after debating with Taure- but just thought I would point something out. Apparation, along with Floo are the only ways of entering the Ministry besides the entrance from muggle London, which few wizards seem to use. The fact that there are no anti-apparation wards/spells/whatever on the atrium cannot be used as evidence that casting these magics are a difficult art as in this case, the reasoning behind the lack of such protection is clear enough- convenience. Putting up such wards would mean cutting off ministry employees from one of the major means of magical transportation.

 

Dumbledore said to Harry in HBP that most wizarding homes are protected from Apparition as well, so it seems that the MoM is an exception as a public place.

 

Maybe only the Atrium in the Ministry is open to Apparition/etc? In that case, the remainder of the Ministry could be protected against Apparating and Disapparating.

 

If only the Atrium were unprotected then Dumbledore wouldn't have felt the need to place the caught Death Eaters in the Death Chamber under an anti-apparition jinx.

 

ahh yes but magic could regulate the flow - once in the death chamber, or in any other region of the ministry perhaps, you could apparate out of the building, thus the need for the jinx. However, you cannot apparate in.

 

That could make sense - a one-way anti-Apparition spell, so in an emergency Ministry people could leave quickly if they needed to, but it would keep opportunists, thieves, spies, etc from being able to easily sneak anywhere they like.

 

It saddens me that my first post on this forum is to express my hate on DH, but I couldn't resist the temptation.

After reading books 1 through 5 to near triple figures, I was immensly dissapointed at the painful reading presented in HBP. Honestly, of all the angles the HP universe could have taken she narrowed it into a tunnel of rpg-rip off.

In my naivety I held out a hope that JK would make up for it in DH, and thus set myself for an exciting end to the series. I became involved in the wonderful world of fanfiction during the break between 6 and 7, and now one of my biggest regrets is not stumbling over this site earlier, and was anticipating the release. I am now unimaginably ashamed to admit I actually strayed away from a fanfic I was reading to stand outside the store at 11:55 pm. Why did I do that to myself?

In my ambition to be an author I have wrote many pieces of fiction, and am now getting into fiction, and I truely cannot in any shape or form try to enjoy this piece of shit called DH.

The start was lower then my admitidly high expectations, the middle was just slower then the London underground and the ending actually made me cry; in frustration. Honestly, if I wanted 600 pages of camping I would have bought a Ray Mear's survival book and saved myself £10. Honestly...

I stood outside, in the fucking rain, for this garbage. I should have ripped it up and used the paper to dry myself off when I got home. The best part of the book was the fact that Dumbledore turned out to be a manipulative bastard, unluckily it was something I have said since reading PS; enter the trap thoery.

Things majorly wrong with it?
1) She killed Hedwig; what the fuck? What did Hedwig ever do to deserve to die? Dod he shit on the Dark Lord? No, he did jack all. What a waste of a death, fuck you Jk, just fuck you... I loved that bird.
2) The battle scenes, while much better then her ealier works, sucked balls. I mean I wouldn't feed these pages to a goat just in case it choked on the crap she lined it with. I've read so many better fafic battles, and she gets fucking paid to write them. Sure, we finally do get some description, but she skipped so many different aspect.
3) Albus Severus... Poor fucking kid. I'm sure that the child will be very popular, with the queers. He's named after a man who has recently been labled a homosexual by a woman who has now taken the place of Tony Blair on my dart-board and (Thats you JK, thats you...) of a man who was hunted his whole life for doing the right thing, and did it all because of some fucking school-yard crush on a ginger... Good luck kid. Don't get me started on Teddy Lupin... Holy shit...
4)Since when could Molly Weasley, someone who spends all her god damn time in the kitchen, kill Bella... Honestly, while Molly Wobbles was fornicating like a fucking rabbit, Bella was neck deep in Dark Arts, yet the mother of 7 bests her in a duel? This woman fucking beat Sirius Black, and then gets handed by Molly? Get. The. Fuck. out.

I can't bring my mind to remember the rest of what I hated, having blocked it all out when i read the book in a 13 hour period. What did JK do to me? Get me hooked so much that I would shun sleep in order to read that rat's piss she trew together in seeming 2 weeks beforehand... Please give me a break.

Overall I gave it a 1/5, but believe me if we could have gone lower I would have done. I've seen better endings on rulers, better plots in my garden and character development on the long running series of Lost... I'd rather read one of the leaflets given out by Jehovah's Witnesses than re-read this pile of dog turd. Glad to get that off my chest.

The best bets? So rare that I have to struggle to remember them. Possilbe Griphook owning everyone... Dobby's death made me admire the girft JK has for being a heartless whore- Honestly, she skips over Tonk's and Remus's death like nothing, but spends basically an entire chapter on Dobby. He had more lines then harry did in DH....

Edit: I would like to add something which stuck out to me when reading through the 14 pages of reviews. Someone nailed it when they said 'it should be named Hermione Granger and the Deathly Hallows'. It was worded differently, but the point is the same. The most Powerful Dark Lord ever, EVER, gets beaten by a school-boy with nothing more then three super items thrown at us in rapid succession, a bloody Stevan Hawking in what I assuse is a fuckable body for a ebst friend and utter godly luck. Please JK, give us something to make Harry stand out more then him being an underfed piece of shit escuse of a wizard who must be fucking lady-Luck on the side or be sweating Felix Felicis .