Post by Big Brother on Sept 18, 2004 6:59:38 GMT -5
As usual, today I will be desperately trying to apply the laws of physics to magical phenomena and describe them in a scientific manner.
In the Potterverse, spells are occasionally described as "reflecting" or "deflecting" off of some surface. I'm sure there are the occasional half-joking references to spells bouncing off mirrors or somesuch, but the most famous incidence of this happening is when Voldemort's AK spell bounces off Baby Harry and instead turns the caster into Vapormort.
This begs the obvious question...can we really treat wand-cast spells as if they were electromagnetic radiation? The Avada Kedavra spell is often decribed as a flash of green light, after all, but obviously spells are not literally merely flashes of light, or they would not do anywhere near as many things as they do. However, the question remains...do spells follow straight-line paths as if they were indeed electromagnetic radiation, or can they bend in mid-trajectory without the need for a refracting/reflecting/scattering medium?
The answer to that question may provide the answer to the question of what exactly happened when Voldy tried to AK little baby Harry.
If spells do indeed behave as if they were rays of light or other electromagnetic radiation, than one could treat the magical protection Harry recieved due to the sacrifice of his mother moments beforehand as a shield or mirror, reflecting Voldy's AK spell back in his own serpentine face. The question then becomes...is this shield still in place? Dumbledore's belief that Harry is safe with the Dursley's, and the fact that this has so far been somewhat true, argues that the shield is still in place. The Dementor attack in Little Whinging in Book 5 argues against that idea, unless somehow the protection is specifically only against Voldy and/or his minions (Umbridge may be a evil old biddy, but she's not directly working for Voldy).
However, this is magic, not physics. Although the books themselves are far from clear on this subject, the commonly accepted theory as to how magic works int he Potterverse is something called "The Intention Theory". What one INTENDS to happen is all-important, and the various incantations and wand-waving motions are merely mnemonics and aids to mentally focusing on what one intends to happen with a spell or charm.
Thus, if spells are not electromagnetic radiation or other rays, their reflection, refraction, scattering, and deflection, if and when they occur, are not due so much to any sort of physical interaction with the reflective surface or a scattering medium, but instead are due to the BELIEF in the mind of the spellcaster (or perhaps even another wizard in the area) that such a reflection would occur.
Take the following scenario as a demonstration of what I mean by this:
Our own Professor Snape is walking down the hallway at Hogwarts when he sees that notorious murderer and Azkaban Escapee, Sirius Black, coming around a corner at him. Snape whips out his wand and fires a Stunning Spell down the hallway at Sirius. Spry and alert as he is, Sirius quickly transmogrifies into his animagus form and becomes Snuffles the Dog. Snuffles is significantly shorter than Sirius in human form, and the Stunning Spell zaps throug the air a full meter above his big brown puppy-dog eyes. Before Snape can fire off another Stunning Spell, however, he notices a mirror hanging on the wall behind where Sirius was walking. "Oh, bugger," he subconsciously mutters to himself, "It's gonna reflect right back at me!" And so that's exactly what it does. As the Stunning Spell whips back at Snape, he just has time to realize that the big black dog Sirius has now become looks a bit like the Grim, and is profoundly grateful that he didn't fire off an Avada Kedavra spell for about half a second before the Stunning Spell reflects off the mirror and right back into Snape's pale, waxy-skinned face and he collapses on the floor, unconscious. Snuffles then uses his unconscious form as a fire hydrant and goes about his doggy business.
Now, granted, Snape is far too experienced a duelist to let something like that actually happen to him. And, according to this hypothesis, if Snape HADN'T noticed the mirror, and hadn't EXPECTED it to reflect his Stunning Spell right back at him, it WOULDN'T have reflected at all.
So...WTF does this have to do with Moldy Voldy and the Badass Baby?
Voldemort was coming after the Potters in the first place because he'd heard rumors about some sort of prophecy about a baby being born who was destined to destroy him, or something along those lines. He didn't know the exact wording of the prophecy, but was taking no chances and was gonna kill the kid when he was still an infant and thus, theoretically, in no possible manner any sort of threat to him at all.
So Voldy easily swats aside the feeble defenses of both Harry's parents (Why the heck didn't either James or Lilly just try an AK on Voldy? They were members of the Order...surely the Order intended to use something against Death Eaters more powerful than harsh language?) and then goes after the baby in his cradle (Wy try a spell in the first place? Surely holding him underwater in the nearest bathtub, crushing his skull with a table lamp, or any number of other non-magical means of killing a fricking BABY would have worked just as well, with much less chance for a supernatural prophecy to turn around and bite you in the butt!).
At the very last minute, as Voldy finishes the last syllable in "Kedavra" and the green light exits his wand, but before it hits Harry, something like that flashes through Voldy's mind. "Oh, Crap," he thinks to himself, and it's the last coherent thought to go through that mind for quite a while. According to this interpretation, what actually made the spell reflect back and vaporize Voldy was Voldy's own sudden realization that he may have just made one of the classic Evil Overlord Blunders: actually confronting the one who had been prophesied to kill you, and confronting them in a manner allowing supernatural forces to easily intervene to make the prophecy come true. He suddenly EXPECTED the spell to bounce back at him, and thus that's exactly what happened.
{EDITED BY LOLUA for spelling and formatting.}
In the Potterverse, spells are occasionally described as "reflecting" or "deflecting" off of some surface. I'm sure there are the occasional half-joking references to spells bouncing off mirrors or somesuch, but the most famous incidence of this happening is when Voldemort's AK spell bounces off Baby Harry and instead turns the caster into Vapormort.
This begs the obvious question...can we really treat wand-cast spells as if they were electromagnetic radiation? The Avada Kedavra spell is often decribed as a flash of green light, after all, but obviously spells are not literally merely flashes of light, or they would not do anywhere near as many things as they do. However, the question remains...do spells follow straight-line paths as if they were indeed electromagnetic radiation, or can they bend in mid-trajectory without the need for a refracting/reflecting/scattering medium?
The answer to that question may provide the answer to the question of what exactly happened when Voldy tried to AK little baby Harry.
If spells do indeed behave as if they were rays of light or other electromagnetic radiation, than one could treat the magical protection Harry recieved due to the sacrifice of his mother moments beforehand as a shield or mirror, reflecting Voldy's AK spell back in his own serpentine face. The question then becomes...is this shield still in place? Dumbledore's belief that Harry is safe with the Dursley's, and the fact that this has so far been somewhat true, argues that the shield is still in place. The Dementor attack in Little Whinging in Book 5 argues against that idea, unless somehow the protection is specifically only against Voldy and/or his minions (Umbridge may be a evil old biddy, but she's not directly working for Voldy).
However, this is magic, not physics. Although the books themselves are far from clear on this subject, the commonly accepted theory as to how magic works int he Potterverse is something called "The Intention Theory". What one INTENDS to happen is all-important, and the various incantations and wand-waving motions are merely mnemonics and aids to mentally focusing on what one intends to happen with a spell or charm.
Thus, if spells are not electromagnetic radiation or other rays, their reflection, refraction, scattering, and deflection, if and when they occur, are not due so much to any sort of physical interaction with the reflective surface or a scattering medium, but instead are due to the BELIEF in the mind of the spellcaster (or perhaps even another wizard in the area) that such a reflection would occur.
Take the following scenario as a demonstration of what I mean by this:
Our own Professor Snape is walking down the hallway at Hogwarts when he sees that notorious murderer and Azkaban Escapee, Sirius Black, coming around a corner at him. Snape whips out his wand and fires a Stunning Spell down the hallway at Sirius. Spry and alert as he is, Sirius quickly transmogrifies into his animagus form and becomes Snuffles the Dog. Snuffles is significantly shorter than Sirius in human form, and the Stunning Spell zaps throug the air a full meter above his big brown puppy-dog eyes. Before Snape can fire off another Stunning Spell, however, he notices a mirror hanging on the wall behind where Sirius was walking. "Oh, bugger," he subconsciously mutters to himself, "It's gonna reflect right back at me!" And so that's exactly what it does. As the Stunning Spell whips back at Snape, he just has time to realize that the big black dog Sirius has now become looks a bit like the Grim, and is profoundly grateful that he didn't fire off an Avada Kedavra spell for about half a second before the Stunning Spell reflects off the mirror and right back into Snape's pale, waxy-skinned face and he collapses on the floor, unconscious. Snuffles then uses his unconscious form as a fire hydrant and goes about his doggy business.
Now, granted, Snape is far too experienced a duelist to let something like that actually happen to him. And, according to this hypothesis, if Snape HADN'T noticed the mirror, and hadn't EXPECTED it to reflect his Stunning Spell right back at him, it WOULDN'T have reflected at all.
So...WTF does this have to do with Moldy Voldy and the Badass Baby?
Voldemort was coming after the Potters in the first place because he'd heard rumors about some sort of prophecy about a baby being born who was destined to destroy him, or something along those lines. He didn't know the exact wording of the prophecy, but was taking no chances and was gonna kill the kid when he was still an infant and thus, theoretically, in no possible manner any sort of threat to him at all.
So Voldy easily swats aside the feeble defenses of both Harry's parents (Why the heck didn't either James or Lilly just try an AK on Voldy? They were members of the Order...surely the Order intended to use something against Death Eaters more powerful than harsh language?) and then goes after the baby in his cradle (Wy try a spell in the first place? Surely holding him underwater in the nearest bathtub, crushing his skull with a table lamp, or any number of other non-magical means of killing a fricking BABY would have worked just as well, with much less chance for a supernatural prophecy to turn around and bite you in the butt!).
At the very last minute, as Voldy finishes the last syllable in "Kedavra" and the green light exits his wand, but before it hits Harry, something like that flashes through Voldy's mind. "Oh, Crap," he thinks to himself, and it's the last coherent thought to go through that mind for quite a while. According to this interpretation, what actually made the spell reflect back and vaporize Voldy was Voldy's own sudden realization that he may have just made one of the classic Evil Overlord Blunders: actually confronting the one who had been prophesied to kill you, and confronting them in a manner allowing supernatural forces to easily intervene to make the prophecy come true. He suddenly EXPECTED the spell to bounce back at him, and thus that's exactly what happened.
{EDITED BY LOLUA for spelling and formatting.}
