O for Occlumency (ABC Wednesday)

Occlumency: “The magical defence of the mind against external penetration. An obscure branch of magic, but a highly useful one.”

Severus Snape to Harry Potter in The Order of the Phoenix, Ch 24

While Harry is spending the Christmas holidays at the house of his godfather Sirius, his most hated teacher, Snape, turns up and delivers the very unwelcome message that during the next term, the Headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, wants Harry to take private Occlumency lessons from no other than Professor Snape.

‘Dumbledore wants to stop you having those dreams about Voldemort,’ said Hermione at once. ‘Well, you won’t be sorry not to have them any more, will you?’

‘Extra lessons with Snape?’ said Ron, sounding aghast. ‘I’d rather have the nightmares!’

When the lessons start, Snape explains things a bit further. The reason why Dumbledore wants Harry to learn Occlumency is that the Dark Lord (Voldemort) is “highly skilled at Legilimency”, which is “the ability  to extract feelings and memories from another person’s mind”. (A Muggle would call it mind-reading, but in the wizarding world it gets a little more physical.) Occlumency, on the other hand, “seals the mind against magical intrusion and influence”.

Since Harry has a rather emotional personality, he never gets very good at occlumency; but, to quote Dumbledore further on in the story: “in the end, it mattered not”, because he has other qualities that serve him better.

Snape, however, is sort of the embodiment of Occlumency; his character remains a mystery throughout the series, and where his true loyalty lay was one of the favourite subjects of debate while readers were waiting for the last book in the series.

M for Marauder’s Map (ABC Wednesday)

Click here to watch the YouTube video clip from The Prisoner of Azkaban where the Marauder’s Map of Hogwarts Castle is first introduced.

The map is presented to Harry by the Weasley twins Fred and George, who in their first year nicked it from the office of the very impopular school caretaker, Argus Filch. He in turn had confiscated it years before, from the makers of the map, the four Marauders who called themselves Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs – all of whom we get to know more about before the end of the third book.

It was a map showing every detail of the Hogwarts castle and grounds. But the truly remarkable thing was the tiny ink dots moving around it, each labelled with a name in minuscule writing. (PoA 10)

The spell to open the map is: “I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good.” And to close it: “Mischief managed.”  Which makes it go back to just a blank piece of parchment for the eyes of those who don’t know its secret.

The map is also put to use in the rest of the series. One of its really tricky qualities is that the little moving dots always show the true name of the person. Something which can be both helpful and deceitful in a world where wizards and witches sometimes use magic to take on someone else’s appearance…

The map is one of the magical objects that come to Harry as a sort of heritage from his father, although he is not aware of it at the time.

… … …

This post is linked to ABC Wednesday.

K for Killing Curse [Avada Kedavra] (ABC Wednesday)

Since last week I wrote about jinxes, I thought I might continue on the same track this week and write something about the Killing Curse used in the Harry Potter books: ‘Avada Kedavra’.

In an audience interview at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2004, Jo Rowling was asked a question about the use of Latin spells in her books. Here is part of her answer:

“Occasionally you will stumble across something in my Latin that is, almost accidentally, grammatically correct, but that is a rarity. In my defence, the Latin is deliberately odd. Perfect Latin is not a very magical medium, is it? Does anyone know where avada kedavra came from? It is an ancient spell in Aramaic, and it is the original of abracadabra, which means “let the thing be destroyed”. Originally, it was used to cure illness and the “thing” was the illness, but I decided to make it the “thing” as in the person standing in front of me. I take a lot of liberties with things like that. I twist them round and make them mine.”

Rowling's “twist” in this case was probably  influenced by Latin cadaver meaning corpse.

Avada Kedavra is the most feared of all spells in the Wizarding World, because it means instant death. The only person known to have survived it is Harry Potter. Lord Voldemort used the feared curse to kill Harry’s parents; but with Harry, who was still just a baby, he failed. Not until the last book in the series do we find out why.

It is often stressed in the HP books that the power of a spell does not lie in the words alone – you have also got to focus, and mean what you say. Bellatrix Lestrange says to Harry in a fighting scene at the end of The Order of the Phoenix, about another of the Unforgivable curses, Crucio (a torturing curse):

‘Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?’ she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. ‘You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain – to enjoy it – righteous anger won’t hurt me for long – I’ll show you how it is done, shall I? ‘ (OP36)

Curses are also accompanied by flashes of light from the wand used, making the power visible. The Avada Kedavra curse comes with a flash of green; green also being the colour associated with the House of Slytherin, and thus with the Dark Arts.

While power does not lie in the words alone, it is also worth thinking about the idea that words can sometimes be more powerful than we imagine. In the HP books, magic spells are used both to hurt and to heal, to destroy and to defend. This should remind us of the power that we all have.

(Photo from one of the Potter films – I think)

Read more: Wikipedia (Abracadabra)

ABC Wednesday

 

J for Jinx (ABC Wednesday)

Among the various things students at The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry come across is a variety of magic spells. The line between different kinds of spells used in the Potter books is sometimes a bit blurry, but basically, a good kind of spell is called a “charm”, while the really bad ones are called “curses”. A jinx is milder than a curse – causing some trouble, but no lasting bodily harm. Jinxes are sometimes used for practical jokes, sometimes defensively to prevent something more serious. (If you happen to be reading this post without having read the books, I should perhaps point out that “the Dark Arts” are not taught at Hogwarts; but “Defense Against the Dark Arts” is.)

The etymology (origin) of the word jinx is obscure. In folklore too it is connected to minor misfortunes and bad luck. One theory is that it may come from the Latin name iynx, for a kind of small woodpecker. In English it is called wryneck, from the ability to turn its head almost 180 degrees. When disturbed at the nest, this bird twists and turns its head in a snakelike way, also making a hissing sound. This odd behaviour led to it being connected with witchcraft.

Picture of Wryneck/Jynx from Wikipedia.

Harry Potter and I

… or How To Grow From Reader To Fan …

In 2001, I listened to the first Harry Potter book on tape (in Swedish translation) and in 2002 the three following ones (that is, all that had been published so far). I read them because I was curious; I had heard and read discussions about them, and I wanted to form my own opinion.

(I should perhaps add that I was more than grown-up myself when I first read them, and did not have any children to read them to or with...)

I remember that one of my very first impressions of the first book was that I did find the style of writing kind of exaggerated. Not really the magic stuff - because how does one judge that? - but how Harry was treated by the Dursleys, for example. But I certainly couldn't understand all the fuss and worry expressed by some people about the "magic" in the books. I could only guess that most critics probably hadn't bothered to really read them. To me, Harry Potter seemed to be firmly rooted in the same tradition as lots of earlier children's books within British literature: From the stories of Merlin and King Arthur, to Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland), Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda), Edith Nesbit (e.g. The Enchanted Castle), P.L. Travers (Mary Poppins), Mary Norton (The Borrowers, The Magic Bedknob), C.S. Lewis (Narnia) and many others. Funny, imaginative, playing on the borderline between reality and fantasy. And to me, the magic in the Harry Potter series translated just as easily as for example in Lewis or Tolkien, to spiritual power that can be used either for good or for worse.

By the time I got to the 4th book in the series, The Goblet of Fire, it also became clear to me (as to a lot of other readers) that this was not just a series of separate stories starring the same heroes and villains, but that it was all ONE ongoing story, heading towards an end, but also with each book revealing more and more of the past. So that with each new book, if you went back and reread the previous ones again, they seemed to have more to say than the last time you read them… That makes "magic" reading, and that made the Harry Potter books stand out compared to many others.

When the 5th book was published (The Order of the Phoenix, 2003), I did not wait for translations or pocket editions or library queues, but bought it the day it was released… I also bought the previous four in English, and had to admit that I was "hooked"… (or under the spell, if you wish…) This book is still my favourite, because it fit so perfectly into my own mood the first time I read it. I know it is not the author's own favourite, but it is mine!

Shortly after the publication of the 6th book (The Half-Blood Prince, 2005) I found my way to the internet discussion forum Leaky Lounge , which turned my private reading experience into a literary hobby shared with thousands of other people all over the world, while waiting for the 7th and last book in the series (The Deathly Hallows, 2007). This was an awesome and unique experience in itself; which new readers of the series will never be able to share in the same way. "Everyone else" around them will already know how it ended; and they themselves will be able to just read on and find out.

Waiting for The End together with all these other readers was not all about wild speculations either. For many of us it also lead to a lot of "extracurricular" reading, mostly classical, as we tried to figure out what J.K. Rowling had in mind, what her literary influences were and so on. I also explored a lot of websites that I would never have visited otherwise. It was quite simply a lot of fun - but also educational.

In a previous post, I have listed books that I read and reread because of Harry Potter and the discussions at the Leaky Lounge – mainly in the subforum Obscurous Books - between 2005 and 2007. The list includes several works of classical fiction, as well as collections of Celtic and Norse and other mythology. Looking at it now, I think the list in itself probably more or less explains (if anyone still wonders) "how to make a literary hobby out of Harry Potter"…

I have to add, though, that without the discussions, I probably would not have thought of even a third of the connections that came up in interaction with others. (If any other old LL members, especially Obscurous Books enthusiasts and Scribbulus authors, ever happen to find your way to this post – a great big thanks to all of you!)

What I'd like to do here is to try and collect some of my own Harry Potter-related "research" and speculations, and also links I have found useful.

I suspect this will be a slow process, in some respects more like cooking a polyjuice potion than using a time turner. I'm doing this mostly for my own enjoyment, but hoping that a few other people might perhaps get some amusement from it, too.