Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

Reading through that I had a thought - could you Horcrux your own skin? You'd be invulnerable to anything save basilisk venom, Fiendfyre and other extremely destructive attacks. Combine it with other Horcruxes and you'd almost never have to worry even about resurrecting yourself.

Regards Patronuses, I do have a dim recollection of them obeying orders in canon - I think it was Book 7 when Harry has his Patronus protect the people on trial for being Muggleborn at the Ministry. Patronuses in MoR can act independently, like when HJPEV's raised its hand to warn him of Dumbledore's Patronus, but they could just be portrait-style imprints of the caster.

edited 30th Sep '12 1:32:55 PM by LogicDragon

I've seen it suggested in places that Horcruxes can be destroyed with Avada Kedavra. Which makes sense with extrapolated mechanics, since the best description I've ever seen of AK's effect is to sever the soul from the body; soul fragments would presumably be similarly affected. AK is also explicitly unblockable by magic. Of course, the obvious objection is "if that works, then why would the three not have used it in Deathly Hallows rather than waiting around to get the sword?", but this actually makes sense with HP canon's demonstrated grasp of applied morality; AK is eeeevil, after all, so even if it would solve all your problems you can't have a protagonist casting it.

Also, my impression of how Horcruxes worked was more along the lines of "it's just an object, nothing special, and if it's destroyed the soul fragment goes away", and it was just obvious best practices to absolutely cover one in defensive and auto-repair spells such that it couldn't ordinarily be destroyed. Hence the need for powerfully magical destructive attacks like Basilisk venom or Fiendfyre. AK would presumably also pierce all such defenses and sever the soul fragment from the object, leaving (if I understand correctly) an undamaged object with all its indestructibility intact, except it's not a Horcrux anymore. Some support for this from canon: both the diary and the locket seemed to have at least rudimentary sentience and would attempt to possess or sway the holder, which can be assumed to be a function of the soul fragments; however, only the ring had the secondary function of making you wish strongly to put it on and then messing you up terribly when you did so, so it's probably the result of defensive spells apart from the Horcruxy nature of the thing.

It's worse than that - if AK could kill Horcruxes, Harry and Dumbledore could simply have casted it on the Horcrux in the bowl of poison in Half-Blood Prince - the poison was supposed to keep the Horcrux inaccessible, but as Avada Kedavra cannot be blocked the precaution would become useless. Presumably Voldemort would not have bothered with such a useless precaution. Oh, and it's not just Harry and Dumbledore who could have tried that - Regulus Black, a Death Eater who was surely familiar with Avada Kedavra, should have used the spell himself when trying to destroy the same Horcrux. Also note that your "not for protagonists" view of AK is not entirely correct - this is particularly true in the later books, where various protagonists attempt casting it.

At least in Methods, Horcruxes have added strength even absent other spells; see Quirrell's discussion of the Pioneer plaque.

edited 30th Sep '12 7:23:39 PM by Exetera

I always got the impression that Dumbledore put on the ring not due to a spell, but rather due to his long-standing guilt over his sisters death and a desire to find out if he was the one who killed her.

edited 30th Sep '12 7:13:01 PM by 32ndfreeze

Less than 24 hours until we're informed that we get to wait until November!

edited 1st Oct '12 12:14:51 AM by Savoie

That's not Schedule Slip strictly speaking... he hasn't given us a schedule for him to slip, you see. Unless the announcement itself is late, I guess...

I do wish that the wait announcement happened a bit earlier than 1AM on this coast, though I guess it doesn't really matter now that I'm back in school.

At least in Methods, Horcruxes have added strength even absent other spells; see Quirrell's discussion of the Pioneer plaque.

I interpreted that was Quirrel putting defensive spells on it as well as making it a horcrux.

Canon!AK isn't explicitly stated to sever the soul, that's Methods and a possible source of Harry's unnoticed feeling of confusion - how could anyone know AK severs the soul? AK may simply cause instant brain death. I got the feeling AK only works on living organisms, and (non-animal) Horcruxes don't count because they're just objects that serve to bind soul fragments to the world. Animal Horcruxes might be vulnerable to AK, but I wasn't talking about Horcruxing yourself, just your dead surface skin cells. On further consideration, it might be that Horcruxed organisms (e.g. Nagini) are immune to AK - the only animal Horcrux known in canon was killed with the basilisk-poisoned Sword of Gryffindor.

edited 1st Oct '12 8:23:11 AM by LogicDragon

It was my understanding that the extra sturdiness of Horcruxes was due to protective spells placed on them, and the reason they are vulnerable to Basilisk venom or Fiendfyre is because those are so destructive they actually cannot be magically warded against. If this is the case, then there's no point in Horcruxing your skin; just put the same defensive spells on yourself, without doing the whole soul-magic thing.

Even if turning something into a horcrux does imbue it with special protection, that doesn't mean that you couldn't achieve the same effect with other protective spells.

That is a general thing with the methods universe : there is not really much point in exploring all the various ways any given spell can be twisted, because magic is versatile enough that once you move any significant distance from the original purpose of the spell, it is probably a better idea to just find or create a dedicated spell that does exactly what you want. There is no such thing as a wizard capable of making a horcrux who would need to use it as a defense against physical attacks. If you are powerful enough to make a horcrux, you are powerful enough to deploy kickass defensive spells that do not require you to maim your mind any further. (.. and having a horcrux skin defeats the entire point of a horcrux-as-a-horcrux, as anything that kills you is rather likely to destroy it at the same time.)

.. And given the kind of crap the characters laugh of in canon, I very strongly suspect that every wizard in the UK gets basic defensive spells slapped on them by the attending nurse/their parents at birth.

I've seen it speculated that magic, being will-based, has a sort of inherent effect that increases the durability and healing rate of wizards over muggles even if no spells are being used. I'd be willing to believe that, given that their major sport has ten-inch iron balls flying around at high speeds colliding with people indiscriminately, and yet deaths are rare.

Certainly it's mentioned in Methods as just being inherent to wizards rather than a result of special spells or protections... see the end of Chapter 17, for instance, in which Harry slams into Minerva in the hallway. I believe it's discussed elsewhere in Methods as well, but I can't recall citations off the top of my head; of course, this has little or no applicability to canon, unless it's reflective of research Eliezer conducted.

edited 1st Oct '12 5:06:36 PM by Exetera

Tee-minus thirty minutes. The countdown begins! I'm betting that the result is in the neighborhood of 20000 words (perhaps 18000?), but largely pre-revision. Any takers?

edited 1st Oct '12 9:33:26 PM by Savoie

Well it's pretty clear in canon that Wizards can take a lot of punishment (and their arteries can too), but I don't think it's ever explicitly stated to be a wizard trait.

I'm guessing that in the original canon it's simply down to Rowling not thinking very hard about whether certain accidents, such as being hit by a flying iron ball the size of a cannonball and falling from tens of feet, realistically ought to be fatal.

Hmm, well. Nothing happened on the Morfront, but Eliezer did announce a new sequence. He also didn't provide us with a "come back in a month" date like the last few times, so hopefully we'll be getting new stuff from him soon. (Or at least before next month.)

Oh god, he's been reading Negima and Unequally Rational and Emotional, of all the damn things. No wonder I was off with my estimation.

edited 1st Oct '12 10:06:59 PM by Savoie

A million words? Wow. The .mobi format version of that would be ginormous.

Cool.

And I am now on Chapter 4.

edited 2nd Oct '12 4:39:46 AM by TamH70

If Horcruxes are simply warded heavily, then why don't people ward themselves? The Horcrux spells don seem to require continual energy. Also, is there a limit on how big your Horcrux can be, or could you just Horcrux the whole planet?

I think the size thing would work the same as transfiguration. Anything that is one discreet object counts.

If someone were to turn a bacterium into a horcrux, and that bacterium divided... would both be a horcrux? if yes you could just distribute some cyanobacteria in the seas and lakes of the world, and it would be a horcrux every bit as hard to destroy as the Pioneer plaque.

PS. I just did our site search for "Harry Potter and", guess what came up before Goblet of Fire, Deathly Hallows, and even Harry Potter?

edited 2nd Oct '12 1:50:14 PM by Qeise

Dunno what you're on about - it only showed up below Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows.

Google customizes those per-user.

Well, in the original canon, the answer could very easily be "J. K. Rowling never thought about that." In Mo R canon, maybe people do ward themselves, but only the sort of people who're paranoid enough to make horcruxes in the first place.

Or maybe one can't use the same sorts of spells on oneself that one would use on an inanimate object, much as one can't safely use free transfiguration on oneself.

Worth considering: in the original canon, Harry was a horcrux, and it didn't seem to make him particularly impervious to harm.