The Avada Kedavra on the Astronomy Tower

[felicitys_mind]

[This post is an expansion of the first section of an essay arguing the Stoppered Death theory.  I needed more room over there to describe the background to that theory, so I moved the AK evidence here and vastly expanded it.  Read about the Stoppered Death theory here: http://felicitys-mind.livejournal.com/2616.html]

The Avada Kedavra Snape Cast at

Comments

[travisprinzi]

Brilliant, just brilliant. You really have a way of answering the objections of the silly, fanciful theories with calm, reasonable, arguments. This should put a lot of odd theories to rest (including that new twist about the invisible "monitor" on the tower).

[travisprinzi]

Not that I'm a fan of the theory whatsoever, but it might be fair to note that the AK shield idea wasn't made up whole cloth, if I recall, but seems to be rooted in the initial Slughhorn Polyjuiced as Dumbledore theory, which is based on the "Horace Goldin" character (who had a mentor called The Great Albini) and his shielding from a gunshot magic trick (from Sally Gallo's theory). The parallels are probaby too close to say Rowling had no idea of this (with the "Horace," "Albini" and "Fawkes" connections).

Joyce seems to have taken the idea of the Polyuiced!Dumbledore (Slughorn) theory and applied the action to Dumbledore himself.

But your reading of what happened fits all the facts better, especially the point about her not showing us the gun previously. Polyjuiced!Dumbledore theories don't work for me, and I don't think they fit the text at all.

[felicitys_mind]

Thank you for pointing that out, Travis. I just went to have a look at Gumshoe's essay. She's theorizing on the idea that Horace Goldin was only pretending with the dinner plate since the "bullet" fired at him on stage was actually a blank, so following that reasoning, Gumshoe argued that Snape's AK was also a blank (that he used a "green light" spell that may have been Ron's "eat slugs" jinx). I had forgotten that she used that unnamed spell in her theory. The shield theory could well be rooted in the Horace Goldin history, but I don't know that for sure. I'll toss up a link to Gumshoe's essay in that section (I don't agree with the switching theory, but I love the history, and Horace Slughorn is a comically theatrical illusionist, so it's still a theory worth reading).

Thanks, Travis!

[travisprinzi]

Ah, I misunderstood exactly how Sally made that work...another one of those essays I must've read a touch too quickly. I don't know for sure that the shield theory is rooted in the Goldin history, and maybe I've got my chronology wrong...I thought Joyce had moved to a "shield" theory after interacting with Sally, but I could be way off there. Perhaps just another bad assumption I made by reading too quickly. Gotta slow down!

[brown65]

Your essay is very interesting and you've gathered a great amount of information. However, I disagree with conclusions. And this is why; Newton's law of motion. The spider continuing on (skidding) is because it was propelling itself forward when it was killed - this motion is not a secondary effect of the AK, but because of simple physics. It's motion would only stop when the force propelling it forward (it's scuttling) became less than the gravity around it. The same reasoning applies to the fox (which jumped UP the bank and then fell back

[felicitys_mind]

Thanks for reading. I see your point about the spider being in motion when the AK hit it, but the spider flipped onto its back the instant the curse made contact, so it didn’t just keep moving because of natural forces

[focusf1]

The AK that hits Dumbledore has to lift him up vertically - which is wrong trajectory for being struck in the chest by a force and then after raising him straight up; push him back to clear the rampart. Now let's look at DD's position just prior to being AK'd:
"Dumbeldore's face, which was even paler and rather lower than usual, as he had slid so far down the rampart wall" (and)
"from Dumbledore slumped against the wall", like the AK did to Frank Bryce and to the Riddles it should have just dropped DD the rest of the way to the ground (which is the direction he was already sliding in).

Yes - this was my pet niggle about the whole thing. If Dumbledore is leaning against a rampart, and the force of the AK comes face on - why would he be thrown 90 degrees in the vertical direction to it? Force cannot be exerted perpendicularly to the original force on command. A more plausible thing for JKR to have written would have been a complete blasting through of the rampart and Dumbledore falling off the tower with the rubble.

[larilee]

There is also a verbal retelling of the condition of three more corpses hit by the Killing Curse. From Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, American edition, page 2:

Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead.

The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village and roused as many people as she could.

"Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!"Now it doesn't say whether the bodies had been blasted in the air or not, but I suspect not. Cause of death was attributed to fright, but there is no mention of any disarrangement or bruising or anything else to indicate that they did more than dropdead. Considering how the villagers were gossiping about it 50 years later, I think that would've been mentioned

[felicitys_mind]

Thanks for reading and posting, but I think you've just given more evidence to confirms my argument

[jedibix783]

This is a fantastic essay, so well-researched and thought-out, it really contributes a lot to the discussion. I have to admit that, before I read this, I hadn't even considered that Dumbledore hadn't died from the AK! Thanks for writing!