----Oh, really? So Ariana Dumbledore has the most interactive portrait in existence?
Was Ariana extremely powerful? I thought her magic was just extremely unstable.
----...Hm, I suppose that explains why her portrait actually contains an honest-to-goodness tunnel.
I've always assumed that the magic of the tunnel came from the Room of Requirement
----But a PORTRAIT? Something which is, we learn, nothing more than a storage device, a literal way to store loads of data with a rudimentary magical A.I. attached to prevent information being given to the wrong people, enable adaption to unforeseen situations, and possibly manipulate the weak-willed (if we stretch the "two-dimensionality")?
I strongly suspect that Rowling never gave much thought to the magical theory of portraits while she was writing the books. And I think that she may have written herself into a bit of a corner with portrait magic because it isn't entirely clear from the books how a headmaster's portrait is different from a horcrux.
----I previously supposed that portraits were a way of fixing ghosts in one spot - Snape said ghosts were only imprints of departed souls, after all, so I figured that their caricatured behavior aligned reasonably with those of portraits. I know that was a silly supposition, but I liked it better than this.
Yes, this is a much more elegant explanation, though it raises the question of why someone would choose to leave hir "imprint" behind as a portrait rather than as a ghost.
Was Ariana extremely powerful? I thought her magic was just extremely unstable.
----...Hm, I suppose that explains why her portrait actually contains an honest-to-goodness tunnel.
I've always assumed that the magic of the tunnel came from the Room of Requirement
----But a PORTRAIT? Something which is, we learn, nothing more than a storage device, a literal way to store loads of data with a rudimentary magical A.I. attached to prevent information being given to the wrong people, enable adaption to unforeseen situations, and possibly manipulate the weak-willed (if we stretch the "two-dimensionality")?
I strongly suspect that Rowling never gave much thought to the magical theory of portraits while she was writing the books. And I think that she may have written herself into a bit of a corner with portrait magic because it isn't entirely clear from the books how a headmaster's portrait is different from a horcrux.
----I previously supposed that portraits were a way of fixing ghosts in one spot - Snape said ghosts were only imprints of departed souls, after all, so I figured that their caricatured behavior aligned reasonably with those of portraits. I know that was a silly supposition, but I liked it better than this.
Yes, this is a much more elegant explanation, though it raises the question of why someone would choose to leave hir "imprint" behind as a portrait rather than as a ghost.
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