The great divide between the Dark and Light.

The wizarding world having no logic at all.

Dumbledore paying the Weasley's and Granger to help mold Harry and keep him in control....... Yawn.........

When all you need to cast super magic is a super intelligent snake telling Harry wand motions and incantations

Slash...

Slash...

Slash....

Animagus form being reflection of your soul.

 

This one isn't so bad. If we look at the canon wizards/witches who are animagus what do we see?

Peter P. - Rat Traitor,surviver,"Only eats after the big animals"=follows the biggest,strongest

Minerva M. - Cat Territorial,Strong individual, cares for her charges, Loyal

James P. - Stag Kind of a leader, egocentric,prideful, narcissistic

Sirius B. - Dog Loyal,Playful,brash

If we go along these lines ,then we can say that the animagus form is the reflection of the wizard/witch personality("Soul").:awesome

 

Hmm...Harry's a natural leader (as shown with the DA and the DoM fiasco)...he's a survivor, hardened due to the crap he put up with growing up and his...'adventures' at Hogwarts...he has a short temper/can get stressed easily...when he gets truly pissed off, he blew up Dumbledore's office...he has a great capacity to love, and cares deeply about his friends...

I wonder what animal Harry would become? And is there any canon evidence/anything implied that links animagus forms and patronus forms together, somehow?

Also, pet peeve: people just ploughing into storylines without a realistic (or at least believable) build up.

 

You could make an arguement for Harry being a type of large fairly wild dog, sort of alpha male type dog, or even go as far as wolf, you get all of those aspects you listed in these animals. Well, wolves not so much the leadership aspect, but they are very much about dominance and being the stronger animal, which could translate.

 

He'd absolutely be a motherfucking cockroach. You know it in your hearts.

 

I like reading stories where the hero is the child of the villian, or brother of the villian or something similiar as most of the time it brings out a conflict within the main character and makes for a much more interesting story, the only problem is I only know of three shows that have done it, and one decent fanfic. =/

 

Oh my goodness. I just read through 10 pages on pet peeves. Before doing my homework that has been waiting for a while now....

1. The General stuff (Harem, Victim!Harry, 11 year old children having sex,blah blah)
2. When I first started HP fanfics, I loved stories filled with animagus transformations, etc. Now I hate it with a passion. (Especially when it's some sort of awesome phoenix/basilisk/dragon that can cause Voldemort cringe in fear and splutter nervously.)
3. Manipulative!Dumbledore. I mean, I get it already! He's some sort of evil nut that loves the Greater Good. W/e.
4. Awesome super parselmagic. This comes with a bonus ancient snake familiar that has all the deep knowledge in ancient Dark Arts and other spells that would make Harry invincible.
5. fem!Harry without a proper reason. If he was morphed, changed, or it's relevant to the plot I don't think I would mind it. But otherwise if the author is rewriting canon with a fem!harry that has to constantly watch her back in fear of getting raped by Draco Malfoy, than -,-
6. Excessive use of the Weasley twin's splitting dialogue. I mean, the way they talk is cool and all, but I don't want to freaking read 5k words of them talking like that in one chapter.
7. Harry ranting about how muggles can wipe out Wizarding world easily. Maybe I'm just biased here, but the the Wizards could all just apparate away, safe from any super nukes that the countries will unleash. Actually, why don't they just shrink any bombs that come? A quick imperio to world leaders, and tada, Wizards win! The end.

 

Don't want to derail the thread, as by all means the more peeves in 99.9% of all HP fics out there mentioned, the better, but how could spells which can be dodged by human reaction times hit something thats travelling at over 17,000 ft per second?

Also apparation isn't instanteneous, yaxley was able to grab hold of hermione while she was apparating, and bullet/missile velocities are far far greater.

In regards to a voldemort takeover, I read a oneshot where tom riddle after hogwarts instead masqueraded as a muggle politician, gained office, and then powned fudge when he came through the fireplace:awesome

 

Taure wrote that, I believe. Something I would've liked to see fleshed out more, but Taure updating is as often an occurrence as him being wrong in a canon fight.

 

My #1 pet peeve... ships and all the stupid shit that goes with them.

It always pisses me off to start reading a story; start to find myself enjoying it and then it all comes crashing down as soon the character from a 'rival' ship makes their appearance.

Nothing like looking at the scrollbar and realising more than half of a 5k word chapter one massive long speech by the authors chosen mouthpiece about how wrong Y is for X and how Z is clearly Xs soulmate.

Easy example; all those H/Hr fics that begin with a some god, godlike being or paper-pusher for heaven launching into a rant about how Hermione is Harry's soulmate and it's the end of the world if he doesn't see how wrong Ginny is for him.

My personal favorite was a Naruto fic; the idea of the fic was Naruto finding a letter his father wrote to him, when he realised he was going to die. The letter of course included advice on love with such wonderful fatherly wisdom such as "stay away from pink haired bitches, they're crazy" and "find yourself a Hyuuga".

 

Exactly. I mean if you want to give Harry or someone else a different type of wand, why not just have a different type of wand pick him when he's at Ollivanders during the first year? I mean the guy has hundreds of wands just sitting in his shop, there's got to be one that is at least partially suitable. If there isn't, then you can go into the backroom of Ollivanders with Harry for that pick your wood and core -session. Of course the actual process of making the wand should probably take at least a couple of months.

Have Harry buy a somewhat compatible wand and leave for Hogwarts and have Ollivander owl the new wand later on, maybe some time during Christmas -break. Of course Harry should have some problems with the slightly off wand, but he can still use it. Hell Ron used his brother's old wand until it broke and Neville used his dad's old one until the end of the DoM -fight and he actually did alright with it.

As for the whole core process, use a little common sense. One or two woods and core materials for the wand should be the limit. Any more is just overkill and plain ridiculous. Dragon Heartsrings are the most common core-material for a reason, a single dragon (obviously dead due to the name of the material) can supply dozens of wands. Unicorn Hair and Phoenix Feathers are obviously much rarer due to the rarity of the creatures (only one Phoenix mentioned and seen in the entire series, which only gave feathers for two wands) and the fact that Unicorns don't let people close to them.

Sure Ollivander might use a rarer core material if he got his hands on it, but he probably doesn't just have a ton of them lying around, because if he did, he'd have already used them for wands. And he himself stated in GoF, that he doesn't use Veela Hair, not that I blame him. I mean would you be crazy enough to try to plug a hair from a woman's head, when said woman can transform into a Bird Bitch From Hell and will then rip you apart with her claws, before frying your ass with a fireball? I didn't think so.

There are other things that really annoy me, such as this: Ice Phoenix/Shadow Phoenix/You-name-it Phoenix. Phoenix means Firebird. That means it has abilities of fire and heat (and rebirth/healing), not the exact opposite or something else. The color of your Phoenix is not all that big of an issue but if it's not associated with fire, then it's no longer a Phoenix. And Hedwig is a bloody owl, not a Phoenix. I've lost count at how often I've wanted to strangle an author for screwing up the poor bird. Unless they get screwed in a humorous manner like this:

Also a Thunderbird is not a Phoenix. A Thunderbird is a totally different creature from Native American mythology (God knows how many times I've seen this bloody mix up). If you want to use some mythical beast look it up on Wikipedia, they have a lot of information about different beasts. Hell, if you want to spice it up, look at things like supernatural -wiki, which has some unique ideas about how some "monsters" come into being.

Another thing that annoys me is exploring the Chamber of Secrets. Truth be told I never understood why it was not checked out by the teachers in the books. For Christs sake, it's a priceless relic from one of the founders of Hogwarts . If there is to be some exploration of the damn chamber, then it should be done by experts, not second or third year students, who have no idea as to what they are doing.

 

What, specifically, about the wand making process warrants a belief that it should take more than a few minutes to make?

Let's assume that lack of evidence is evidence of lack: in this case, we never see Ollivander use a spell that magically carves a stick into a perfect wand in mere seconds. Guess what? A standard lathe with a pattern can carve a stick into a perfect wand in mere seconds.

Let's assume that he doesn't just use a switching spell to switch a wand core component with a little bit of the wood material inside the wand. A band saw lets you cut the wood lengthwise, whilst a router would let you strip out a small section of the inner wood from it. Place the core inside it, then cast the reparo spell and the whole thing goes back together seamlessly as if it had never been cut in the first place. That this entire process couldn't be automated with a few flicks of the wand and an incantation seems more unbelievable to me than the idea that it could.

The cost, in my estimation, is not in the labor, but in the materials. Phoenix feathers might not be easy to come by. They might be heavily regulated such that only licensed wand-makers can even buy them (as with dragon heart-strings and unicorn hairs). We don't know if one needs a license to make a wand or not, but it is possible - even probable given that you likely have to kill dragons to get those heart-strings, and dragons are heavily regulated magical beasts. Such a license could conceivably carry with it a hefty application and renewal fee (liquor licenses are very expensive).

It just seems illogical to me that making a wand should take a long time. It is, after all, just a piece of wood with a core component inserted in some manner.

 

Yeah, Rin's right.. i mean come on.. Death himself just ripped a branch off of an Elder tree, and shoved some random core in it, in a matter of seconds and presented it to the 1st peverell brother...

 

That never happened. It was just part of the fairytale.

 

And it was Death himself.

 

Is death a wand-crafter? No he's a fucking reaper of souls.
If even he could do it, then it's no problem.

 

In my head (never the safest place, but always fun to visit) I've always pictured the wand-making process to be:

1) Magic-less ie. no switching spells, no reparo, etc. Make it by hand with woodworking tools. I can't picture the slightly behind-the-times wizarding world using band saws, altho I think that lathe's were foot-powered at one point and could be something you'd find in a wandmakers shop.

2) Requires a unique skill to find the right combinations of core and wood (think Metamorphmagus, something rare that people are born with). If not then anybody and everybody could be making and selling wands. Hell, family's could just buy the materials and make them at home.

3) Core's are powerful magical substances, capable of acting as a transfer for a wizards magic to the outside world. I'd want someone very well trained handling that shit, and I'd want him taking his sweet sweet time to make sure he doesn't fuck up and waste (probably) very expensive materials.

 

What you say is perfectly reasonable, and I can't really pick any holes in it. But...it's a wand. As far as we can see, it's the most important possession a wizard or witch has. Except under exceptional circumstances, it'll be with them from the age of eleven until their death. I prefer to think that there's a little more to it than simply the Wizarding equivalent of a factory line.

 

Well the official idea is that the Tales of The Beetle Bard were wrong and that it was the Peverell -brothers that created the Hallows. But on the off set, that Death existed in a conscious form and did what the story said it did; Death would be a deity-level being, with powers beyond mere mortals. No mortal, with or without magic would be able to match it. Thus for Death, making a wand is as simple as picking up a branch and some core-material and fusing them together with the snap of it's fingers. But no wizard would be able to match that.

If Death created the hallows, then they were obviously a test, one that the two elder brothers and almost all of the other users of the first two hallows failed. That is why almost of them were killed. As for the cloak, I seriously doubt Death would truly give mortals a means of avoiding it, as that would upset the natural order and all that. If Death was real, I think the users of the cloak survived, because they did not abuse it.

Exactly, the wandmaker needs to be careful. It's only common sense, that a poorly constructed wand could be as dangerous as a damaged one.

 

I suppose it's possible that no magic might be used to make a wand, but I don't see why that would either be necessary or desirable. Lathes of one sort or another have been around longer than recorded history, so there's no reason for Ollivander not to use one, even if it isn't powered by muggle means (a spell could power it).

I will agree with you 100% that if the wands Ollivander or any other wandmaker produces has a fancy, hand-carved handle, then yes, a lathe or spell might not be desireable alternatives to the simple pleasure of carving the wood into something beautiful. But that's the handle, and not the wand itself.

Again, I suppose this is possible, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Canon (along with word of God) indicates, at least to me, that Ollivander uses 12 woods and 3 cores, giving us 36 different kinds of wands. No unique skill seems necessary to me. What stops people from making their own is that it is the wand who chooses the wizard, not the other way around. This means that if, as we all seem to agree, the materials themselves are expensive, one would have to produce at the minimum, 36 different wands, and hope that one of those particular productions agree with you. Ollivander could have produced hundreds of Holly-and-Phoenix-feather wands in his career, but of all of those, I sincerely doubt any but Harry's would have chosen him.

Ollivander uses phoenix feathers, dragon heart-strings, and unicorn hairs. Harry grabbed hold of a phoenix feather after his adventure in the chamber of secrets, and by doing so, Fawks flew him and Ginny back to the surface. It didn't burn him, irradiate him or do anything otherwise bad to him, so I don't see why "handling" one would require skill or training.

I do agree, and stated in my previous post that the materials themselves are probably rather expensive (well, maybe not the wood, but who knows? Maybe only special trees can be used and not just any tree? That could make even wand wood from a seemingly commonplace tree expensive as well).

The importance of an object has nothing to do with how long it takes to make, or how complex the process of making it might be. It's one of those weird quirks of life.

For all we know, people like Gregorovich and Ollivander privately joke with one another about all these suckers who think it's so complex and difficult to produce a wand and they have a good laugh at the expense of the public, simultaneously thanking their lucky stars that some upstart doesn't open up shop across the street from Ollivander and start selling wands for 5 galleons instead of Ollivander's 7.

The Elder Wand is little more than a stick of Sambucus nigra and tail hair of a Thestral. It seems more than likely it was made by Antioch Peverell.