Harry Potter

I can forgive the disfigurement for two reasons, a) because Hermione did it ahead of time as part of the contract to screw anyone who betrays the group which make her actual reasons for doing so largely irrelevant, and b) "Permanent" disfigurement is a hard claim to make in a setting where magical cures exist for everything and anything. If they can grow a person's bones back, I should think the experienced medical professionals of the magical world can deal with magic face boils cast by a Fifth-Year student.

edited 17th Mar '15 9:36:07 AM by TobiasDrake

Apparently not since she still has the disfigurements in Half-Blood Prince. harry smirks about it.

The truth potion makes you tell the truth but does it also force you to speak? Cho could have just kept her mouth shut.

It probably does. It's frequently been described as being able to make people spill their darkest secrets, which implies that they couldn't even refuse to answer.

Veritaserum forces you to answer truthfully, to the best of your ability. It can be resisted via methods like Occlumency, but it can't be outsmarted via silence, clever wordplay, or other tricks meant to get around the honest truth. Under its influence, you WILL answer in complete honesty whether you like it or not.

edited 17th Mar '15 11:15:49 AM by TobiasDrake

I'd ask how that's legal, but the wizarding world has funny definitions of personal rights as it is.

Quite.

According to the wiki, veritaserum is banned for use in legal courts due to the fact that it can be resisted, and also the fact that while it does require the person to be 100% honest, they can't be truthful about things they don't know; for instance, if Bob murders Alice under the Imperius Curse but Jack thinks he did it because he was jealous of her boyfriend, Jack will testify the latter as the reason for why he did it, because that is what he believes to be true.

It's too easy for the presence of veritaserum to create a false sense of security that the testimony 100% perfectly reflects the reality of the situation, when the person could a) be skilled enough to resist the effects and lie their ass off, or b) just plain be wrong. Thus, it's forbidden from use in court for being reliable enough to create perfect confidence in its results while still unreliable enough to potentially create a false testimony.

Or, in short, people stop questioning what they hear using veritaserum, and in a legal proceeding, that's not good.

edited 17th Mar '15 2:29:43 PM by TobiasDrake

I think on a level the traitor thing was J.K going on a personal thing, she apparently has a serious loathing for traitors.

edited 17th Mar '15 2:29:26 PM by Silasw

Wouldn't figuring out a way to prevent someone revealing that information been better? Like enchanting the paper with the Tongue-Tying Curse in case.

i think it also did that.she was only able to reveal the Room,wasnt she?

Maybe she couldn't get the spell effect to kick in until after Marietta'd already spilled the beans?

Or what alekos said, I can't recall.

Which is interesting, given that Snape totally turned on his (vile, vile) team.

They should have set up a Fidelius Charm. They never showed that one being put into practice, and then have someone outside of hogwarts be the secret keeper, like Bill.

I know Hermione's hella good at spells, but Filtwick describes the Fidelius as "immensely complex" and she's about two-thirds of her way through school at the time, so I doubt she could pull it off.

I think that would be a bit beyond their skill level.

edited 18th Mar '15 6:33:07 PM by Silasw

Of the three uses that I can think of off the top of my head two of the groups had Dumbledore cast the spell. It's probably far too complicated and easy to mess up even when someone like Hermione is using it.

Makes me wonder how people even bother with it.

What makes certain spells more difficult than others? Is the wand movements, incantations, or do the need some elaborate setup. I mean even seemly simple spells seem dangerous if performed wrong.

So I'm sorely tempted to re-read the books. Well, it's more like re-listen because I use the audiobooks but you get the idea. It's been many years now since I lastwent through any of them in their entirety.

Also this is the best part of Order of the Phoenix:

Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic, denied that he had any plans to take over the running of the Wizarding Bank, Gringotts, when he was elected Minister for Magic five years ago. Fudge has always insisted that he wants nothing more than to "cooperate peacefully" with the guardians of our gold.

BUT DOES HE?

Sources close to the Minister have recently disclosed that Fudge's dearest ambition is to seize control of the goblin gold supplies and that he will not hesitate to use force if need be.

"It wouldn't be the first time, either," said a Ministry insider. "Cornelius 'Goblin-Crusher' Fudge, that's what his friends call him, if you could hear him when he thinks no one's listening, oh, he's always talking about the goblins he's had done in; he's had them drowned, he's had them dropped off buildings, he's had them poisoned, he's had them cooked in pies...."

Ah, The Quibbler. Ever the last bastion of journalistic integrity.

...I still think that Veritaserum would be super useful in a courtroom. I mean, just because one person doesn't have access to all of the truth, doesn't mean that it wouldn't speed things up to ensure they can't lie about what they know/think they know?

...I mean that's sort of the thing with eyewitnesses, anyways...the memory of traumatic events changes, or focuses on some things rather than others. it's not super reliable anyways.

That's the point though. If the memory of the traumatic events change, Veritaserum would not bring up the unaltered memory, the memory as it is currently, as in, altered. Because it makes the person tell what they know the truth to be, but what if the truth they think is correct is wrong?

Yes, and he paid for being a Triple Agent via spending the rest of his life alone and unloved, mourning for a dead woman who never reciprocated his feelings, having to defend the love child she had with his bitter rival, and then being murdered by a snake for reasons largely unrelated to his treachery.

After turning on his vile, vile team, Snape lived a life of misery, despised by all and only exonerating himself in his final moments, spent in the company of a person he resented more than almost anything.

Exactly. The use of Veritaserum would not guarantee a wholly reliable testimony. What it would guarantee is a jury or judge assuming the testimony to be wholly reliable because it was delivered under Veritaserum. It's no guarantee of absolute truth, but it suggests to the people considering, "Consider this absolute truth and do not question a word of it."

My understanding was that some spells need more magical force, which I suppose accumulates with age and practice (Moody said in Goblet of Fire that a bunch of 14 year olds casting Avada Kedavra would probably give him at most a nosebleed, IIRC). It also might be related to intent of spellcasting vs effect of spell, like with Harry's experiences with Unforgiveables (spells could be stronger with deeper emotional intent).

More complex wandwork is another possibility, but it's probably not the only one and probably not true in all cases.

edited 19th Mar '15 12:20:33 PM by akillesheels

I think "magical force" is like a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger it gets.

Add in muscle memory for more precise motions, enunciation, complex wandwork, etc.

edited 19th Mar '15 3:26:28 PM by TobiasDrake

I love Quibbler articles. It's a shame that we only got to read two of them.

When Harry tries it later on a Death Eater (I can't remember which one, might be Bellatrix Lestrange), he's told "You have to really mean it." This must be at least part of the reason a bunch of students wouldn't be able to harm him (none of them, including Draco Malfoy, really wants to kill someone). In addition, the wand movements and incantations are there to help the caster focus (when Snape teaches Defence against the Dark Arts, there are lessons about silent magic and magic always first manifests without wand or incantation).

This goes against evidence from the first book, however (unless that was just a joke Flitwick was telling) where he mentions some anecdote about somebody who "said S instead of F, and ended up on the floor with a buffalo on his chest."

That if someone said "Avada Kadabra" they'd just make the target smell permanently like chamomile or something.