MoR!Harry’s opposition to killing has always been more of a philosophical objection than an instinctual one, foreshadowed heavily back in chapters 7, 10, and 16. Given the effects of Voldemort’s alterations to his brain during youth, depending on your idea of identity this not the typical situation of confronting the psychological cost of taking life.
Ironically, non-lethal transfiguration was probably available, even if Harry wouldn’t or couldn’t think of it—there’s no restriction to, say, converting people’s blood into propofol or methohexital, for example. That’d be unhealthy even beyond the normal health risks of human transfiguration, but in exchange for its risk of breathing issues and transmutation-related blood-clot-in-brain effects, comes with the benefit of exceptionally fast activity, and the volume required is well within the constraints of the problem. While the Deatheaters are more complicated a problem despite Voldemort calling them useless, there are a handful of other possible solutions that would be less likely immediately lethal. The only person Harry /had/ to maim was Voldemort, and that’s because direct transfiguration would have alerted him.
Given that Harry almost certainly killed Sirius, and probably killed Lucius, and we have a number of chapters left, this may well end up being a narrative complication and a flaw, even if an understandable one.
there’s no restriction to, say, converting people’s blood into propofol or methohexital, for example.
Free transfiguration requires wand contact with the object, right? Seems a little arbitrary at the quantum level, but I think that prevents Harry from just transfiguring someone’s blood from afar.
It’s implied that more experienced wizards and witches can freely transfigure objects at a range, but Harry can’t do that. However, even without Partial Transfiguration, objects that have been joined together can be transmuted as a whole (see chapter 28, with a wand touching one part of an object and converting parts into different components. We’ve also seen transfiguration operate differently on different components of a system. Once Harry has stuck spider-silk between his wand and a Death Eater, he can convert components of the Death Eater as easily as if he were standing next to them.
Harry’s not shown any interest in this sort of biochemistry (the closest we’ve seen is a reference to “knockout gas”, which means he knows less than nothing), and while propofol was well-known in 1992, it’s not referenced in the sort of literature he’s likely to read, he has been trained not to consider transmuting humans, his character isn’t really aligned with less-lethal conversions, and there is a very high complexity penalty to this plan.
There are also some possible volumetric issues. We hadn’t gotten an actual transfiguration rate since chapter 23, where he could only do five cubic centimeters per minute, while it would take about ~15 cubic centimeters of propofol to rapidly sedate this number of Death Eaters. The post-exam chapter gave an update of cubic millimeter “as fast as he can concentrate his will and magic” and “in a fraction of a second”, which is imprecise enough to be useless. He was able to transfigure a unicorn in about an hour and a twelve-year-old’s corpse fast enough to avoid notice, recently, and presuming unicorns are similar in volume to even a small horse he’d need to be moving much faster than 15 cubic centimeters a minute (900 cubic centimeters is less than a liter, a very small shetland pony would operate somewhere in the area of 180-200 liters, so… not sure folk did the math on that one).
But it’s interesting as a thought experiment.
This isn’t the only or even a particularly useful option—Voldemort’s gun could be rigged to fail in a cubic milimeter transfiguration, and to catastrophically fail in a cubic centimeter transfiguration; wands become dramatically less useful when they and their owner’s fingertips are coated in a fine layer of teflon, vocal cords or the median nerve turned into cheese at about 1.5 cubic centimeters per person would make even wandless spell-casting impossible. More destructive but non-lethal options are left as an exercise for the reader.
Ironically, non-lethal transfiguration was probably available, even if Harry wouldn’t or couldn’t think of it—there’s no restriction to, say, converting people’s blood into propofol or methohexital, for example.
Now, why didn’t you suggest this during the exam!?
MoR!Harry’s opposition to killing has always been more of a philosophical objection than an instinctual one, foreshadowed heavily back in chapters 7, 10, and 16. Given the effects of Voldemort’s alterations to his brain during youth, depending on your idea of identity this not the typical situation of confronting the psychological cost of taking life.
Ironically, non-lethal transfiguration was probably available, even if Harry wouldn’t or couldn’t think of it—there’s no restriction to, say, converting people’s blood into propofol or methohexital, for example. That’d be unhealthy even beyond the normal health risks of human transfiguration, but in exchange for its risk of breathing issues and transmutation-related blood-clot-in-brain effects, comes with the benefit of exceptionally fast activity, and the volume required is well within the constraints of the problem. While the Deatheaters are more complicated a problem despite Voldemort calling them useless, there are a handful of other possible solutions that would be less likely immediately lethal. The only person Harry /had/ to maim was Voldemort, and that’s because direct transfiguration would have alerted him.
Given that Harry almost certainly killed Sirius, and probably killed Lucius, and we have a number of chapters left, this may well end up being a narrative complication and a flaw, even if an understandable one.
Free transfiguration requires wand contact with the object, right? Seems a little arbitrary at the quantum level, but I think that prevents Harry from just transfiguring someone’s blood from afar.
It’s implied that more experienced wizards and witches can freely transfigure objects at a range, but Harry can’t do that. However, even without Partial Transfiguration, objects that have been joined together can be transmuted as a whole (see chapter 28, with a wand touching one part of an object and converting parts into different components. We’ve also seen transfiguration operate differently on different components of a system. Once Harry has stuck spider-silk between his wand and a Death Eater, he can convert components of the Death Eater as easily as if he were standing next to them.
Harry’s not shown any interest in this sort of biochemistry (the closest we’ve seen is a reference to “knockout gas”, which means he knows less than nothing), and while propofol was well-known in 1992, it’s not referenced in the sort of literature he’s likely to read, he has been trained not to consider transmuting humans, his character isn’t really aligned with less-lethal conversions, and there is a very high complexity penalty to this plan.
There are also some possible volumetric issues. We hadn’t gotten an actual transfiguration rate since chapter 23, where he could only do five cubic centimeters per minute, while it would take about ~15 cubic centimeters of propofol to rapidly sedate this number of Death Eaters. The post-exam chapter gave an update of cubic millimeter “as fast as he can concentrate his will and magic” and “in a fraction of a second”, which is imprecise enough to be useless. He was able to transfigure a unicorn in about an hour and a twelve-year-old’s corpse fast enough to avoid notice, recently, and presuming unicorns are similar in volume to even a small horse he’d need to be moving much faster than 15 cubic centimeters a minute (900 cubic centimeters is less than a liter, a very small shetland pony would operate somewhere in the area of 180-200 liters, so… not sure folk did the math on that one).
But it’s interesting as a thought experiment.
This isn’t the only or even a particularly useful option—Voldemort’s gun could be rigged to fail in a cubic milimeter transfiguration, and to catastrophically fail in a cubic centimeter transfiguration; wands become dramatically less useful when they and their owner’s fingertips are coated in a fine layer of teflon, vocal cords or the median nerve turned into cheese at about 1.5 cubic centimeters per person would make even wandless spell-casting impossible. More destructive but non-lethal options are left as an exercise for the reader.
Now, why didn’t you suggest this during the exam!?