After the Azkaban sequence, Quirrell mentions Avada Kedavra as a technique that can’t be blocked and must be dodged, and therefore essential to magical duels. So that’s half your answer. If spamming AK isn’t the dominant strategy, it follows that there must be other considerations: perhaps it takes more time to execute, or drains more magical power.
In canon I believe it requires actual hatred for the target, not mere killing intent, which would limit its usefulness for people who aren’t YA-lit Nazi pastiches, but I’m not sure if we can consider that reliable in MoR. It doesn’t seem to fit comfortably into the fic’s themes.
In canon I believe it requires actual hatred for the target
In HPMoR too:
Chapter 25: “Who’d been silly enough to build in a spell for Avada Kedavra that could only be cast using hatred?”
It doesn’t seem to fit comfortably into the fic’s themes.
Perhaps update your model on what the fic’s themes are?
If anything, HPMoR makes a person’s mind-state even more significant than in canon. It buffs up the Patronus charm, it affects pretty much anything having to do with Dementors (how they look like, whether you can hear them, how much they affect you, even how they act like or whether they’ll obey you), it directly affects how the Sorting Hat will behave towards you (as it borrows intelligence from your own mind), spells don’t work if you only know the incantation and nothing else about them, “knowledge” can’t pass backwards more than 6 hours, knowledge of powerful charms can’t pass through books at all as it requires person-to-person communication...
Hmm, you’re right. Odd that Quirrell was able to use it on Bahry, then. My model of Quirrell(mort) allows for him killing obstructive strangers if it happens to be expedient and not feeling at all bad about it, but hating them? That seems a little personal to mesh well with what we’ve seen of his style.
Perhaps he’s got the narcissistic-personality thing where any impediment automatically becomes a hated enemy, but if so he’s hiding it exceptionally well. Or perhaps he’s using an Occulumens trick to self-modify into such a person… that seems to fit pretty well, actually. And would be a significant advantage in combat, not to mention a significant obstacle to using AK if you can’t self-modify that way.
Perhaps update your model on what the fic’s themes are? If anything, HPMoR makes a person’s mind-state even more significant than in canon.
Nope, I’m going to stand by this one. It’s made fairly clear that MoR magic is tied closely to wizards’ thoughts and expectations—it imposes Aristotelian physics, for crying out loud—but in this specific case, I read the canonical situation as an intrusion of J.K. Rowling’s moral universe into the Potterverse. We’ve seen enough subversions of that ethic elsewhere in the fic that I didn’t want to allow it to constrain my expectations of the text.
Hmm, you’re right. Odd that Quirrell was able to use it on Bahry, then. My model of Quirrell(mort) allows for him killing obstructive strangers if it happens to be expedient and not feeling at all bad about it, but hating them? That seems a little personal to mesh well with what we’ve seen of his style.
I’ve never parsed “cast with hatred” as “you must hate the target.” In canon, Crouch Jr. as Moody demonstrates it by killing a spider (although I suppose it’s possible he’s an arachnaphobe.) I imagine that it’s like the patronus charm, which you can cast by calling up a happy thought, even if you weren’t already happy. Even if Quirrelmort doesn’t hate everyone personally, I doubt he has any trouble calling up feelings of hatred.
Do not be so quick to assume that everyone is like you. I have great difficulty recalling emotions and, in a minute of introspection, am unable to make myself feel or relive hatred towards anything.
If, for any reason, you find yourself incapable of casting the Killing Curse
So it’s surely not unheard of.
Canonically, I think it also took substantial magical power to be able to cast it, so I suspect that the average adult witch or wizard wouldn’t be able to use it (most ordinary adults were made out to be fairly incompetent at the magical skills they didn’t use regularly,) but Quirrel seems to be imposing rather higher standards on his students.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Quirrel could recall emotions—I was only defying the claim that “any one of us” could do so without much trouble and am using the counter example of me.
As a perfect Occlumens, presumably Quirrel would be able to generate a mental construct who is full of hatred, then use it on demand whenever he needs to cast AK.
That’s very interesting. If you don’t mind elaborating, what happens when you try to recall an event or person that made you feel hate in the past (like Harry uses the memory of Snape)? Are you able to recall the memory itself at all, but it doesn’t cause the emotion any more?
First, I have very few events that I can recall where I was angry, and for most of them I can’t really seem to recall the exact reason I was angry or else it seems fairly unimportant now. For example, I have vague memories of anger toward a sibling in childhood, but I don’t remember why other than some generic reasons—no specific reason. I can recall being angry at a computer for crashing or whatever, but in retrospect this is not much of a thing to get worked up over and I cannot recreate the emotion. Or being angry at an unintended insult to my abilities to play a game I considered myself good at—this was perhaps the angriest I have ever been but I cannot relive that emotion now. Other than that, I guess I am not a very angry person or life has happened to not give me many angry situations.
In general, though, even for emotions that I have a clearer memory of, I usually cannot relive the emotion. Feelings of success may be a counter-example—recalling being successful in the past seems to make me feel like I will be/ am being successful and recreates some of the associated emotion. I can also make myself sad to nearly the point of crying by recalling either a specific memory or general ‘sad’ things—atomic wars, death, etc. Physical feelings such as heat, cold, pain, and nausea I cannot recall at all.
I wonder if the 4 upvotes my comment has indicates that anyone else here is in the same situation as me or just support for questioning assumptions?
I can recall being angry at a computer for crashing or whatever, but in retrospect this is not much of a thing to get worked up over and I cannot recreate the emotion.
This is way OT at this point, but… when you remember these things, is your memory represented as third-person or first person? Still image or moving? For that matter, is there an image at all?
First person, definitely. I am basically recalling events that happened and narrating to myself what happens and thinking through my actions, with some very vague imagery. I wrote about my visualization ability and mental thought process in the “Describe the ways you think” thread if you really want details…
I actually meant, “do you see memories as though through your own eyes or from an omniscient POV”. Sounds like from your link that you don’t see them at all.
Are you able to recall positive memories in a way that stimulates emotion? (If you can, I’m guessing they are not recalled in verbal form, but are represented in some other sensory system.)
No, I don’t really ‘see’ them, but other sensations such as motion and touch are more tangible to me and those I see relative to my head—as I experience them in actuality. So it is very much a first-person experience from my POV even if color, texture, etc. is missing.
I upvoted both because you are correct and because I am the same way. I am somewhat skilled at manufacturing happiness, but can not make myself angry for the life of me. Which, TBH, I’m fine with.
I also don’t have the ability to recall and feel anger but that might just be because I can’t remember any instance being significantly angry for the past few years (I don’t believe any have occurred).
I used to be able to make myself cry by remembering sad events but I can’t anymore for the same reason, there have been no recent incidents of sadness.
Quirrel is known to be good at dissociation. Harry’s (Demented) dark side hates everything that moves. Even if Harry’s dark side is not (part of) (the original) Voldemort, I wouldn’t be surprised if Quirrel can dip into a hate-everything personality for the time it takes to cast the Killing Curse.
(Of course, there is insufficient evidence either way.)
“Who’d been silly enough to build in a spell for Avada Kedavra that could only be cast using hatred?”
I’m not sure exactly what Harry was thinking, but if it simply means that you must “call up feelings of hate” as suggested below, then it might simply be intended as a simple safeguard. Presumably almost anyone can call up such feelings if they tried, but it wouldn’t happen by accident unless you really hate someone. (Given the apparent age of the spell and its character, I don’t think its creator would worry much about accidentally killing someone you hate, if it even occurred to them.)
After the Azkaban sequence, Quirrell mentions Avada Kedavra as a technique that can’t be blocked and must be dodged, and therefore essential to magical duels. So that’s half your answer. If spamming AK isn’t the dominant strategy, it follows that there must be other considerations: perhaps it takes more time to execute, or drains more magical power.
In canon I believe it requires actual hatred for the target, not mere killing intent, which would limit its usefulness for people who aren’t YA-lit Nazi pastiches, but I’m not sure if we can consider that reliable in MoR. It doesn’t seem to fit comfortably into the fic’s themes.
In HPMoR too: Chapter 25: “Who’d been silly enough to build in a spell for Avada Kedavra that could only be cast using hatred?”
Perhaps update your model on what the fic’s themes are?
If anything, HPMoR makes a person’s mind-state even more significant than in canon. It buffs up the Patronus charm, it affects pretty much anything having to do with Dementors (how they look like, whether you can hear them, how much they affect you, even how they act like or whether they’ll obey you), it directly affects how the Sorting Hat will behave towards you (as it borrows intelligence from your own mind), spells don’t work if you only know the incantation and nothing else about them, “knowledge” can’t pass backwards more than 6 hours, knowledge of powerful charms can’t pass through books at all as it requires person-to-person communication...
Hmm, you’re right. Odd that Quirrell was able to use it on Bahry, then. My model of Quirrell(mort) allows for him killing obstructive strangers if it happens to be expedient and not feeling at all bad about it, but hating them? That seems a little personal to mesh well with what we’ve seen of his style.
Perhaps he’s got the narcissistic-personality thing where any impediment automatically becomes a hated enemy, but if so he’s hiding it exceptionally well. Or perhaps he’s using an Occulumens trick to self-modify into such a person… that seems to fit pretty well, actually. And would be a significant advantage in combat, not to mention a significant obstacle to using AK if you can’t self-modify that way.
Nope, I’m going to stand by this one. It’s made fairly clear that MoR magic is tied closely to wizards’ thoughts and expectations—it imposes Aristotelian physics, for crying out loud—but in this specific case, I read the canonical situation as an intrusion of J.K. Rowling’s moral universe into the Potterverse. We’ve seen enough subversions of that ethic elsewhere in the fic that I didn’t want to allow it to constrain my expectations of the text.
I’ve never parsed “cast with hatred” as “you must hate the target.” In canon, Crouch Jr. as Moody demonstrates it by killing a spider (although I suppose it’s possible he’s an arachnaphobe.) I imagine that it’s like the patronus charm, which you can cast by calling up a happy thought, even if you weren’t already happy. Even if Quirrelmort doesn’t hate everyone personally, I doubt he has any trouble calling up feelings of hatred.
I doubt any one of us would have much trouble calling up feelings of hatred. Or feelings of nearly anything for that matter.
Typical Mind Fallacy.
Do not be so quick to assume that everyone is like you. I have great difficulty recalling emotions and, in a minute of introspection, am unable to make myself feel or relive hatred towards anything.
As Quirrel said in his very first class
So it’s surely not unheard of.
Canonically, I think it also took substantial magical power to be able to cast it, so I suspect that the average adult witch or wizard wouldn’t be able to use it (most ordinary adults were made out to be fairly incompetent at the magical skills they didn’t use regularly,) but Quirrel seems to be imposing rather higher standards on his students.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Quirrel could recall emotions—I was only defying the claim that “any one of us” could do so without much trouble and am using the counter example of me.
As a perfect Occlumens, presumably Quirrel would be able to generate a mental construct who is full of hatred, then use it on demand whenever he needs to cast AK.
Interesting… Can I please interview you as a case study for my paper on Wittgenstein?
PM’d.
That’s very interesting. If you don’t mind elaborating, what happens when you try to recall an event or person that made you feel hate in the past (like Harry uses the memory of Snape)? Are you able to recall the memory itself at all, but it doesn’t cause the emotion any more?
First, I have very few events that I can recall where I was angry, and for most of them I can’t really seem to recall the exact reason I was angry or else it seems fairly unimportant now. For example, I have vague memories of anger toward a sibling in childhood, but I don’t remember why other than some generic reasons—no specific reason. I can recall being angry at a computer for crashing or whatever, but in retrospect this is not much of a thing to get worked up over and I cannot recreate the emotion. Or being angry at an unintended insult to my abilities to play a game I considered myself good at—this was perhaps the angriest I have ever been but I cannot relive that emotion now. Other than that, I guess I am not a very angry person or life has happened to not give me many angry situations.
In general, though, even for emotions that I have a clearer memory of, I usually cannot relive the emotion. Feelings of success may be a counter-example—recalling being successful in the past seems to make me feel like I will be/ am being successful and recreates some of the associated emotion. I can also make myself sad to nearly the point of crying by recalling either a specific memory or general ‘sad’ things—atomic wars, death, etc. Physical feelings such as heat, cold, pain, and nausea I cannot recall at all.
I wonder if the 4 upvotes my comment has indicates that anyone else here is in the same situation as me or just support for questioning assumptions?
This is way OT at this point, but… when you remember these things, is your memory represented as third-person or first person? Still image or moving? For that matter, is there an image at all?
First person, definitely. I am basically recalling events that happened and narrating to myself what happens and thinking through my actions, with some very vague imagery. I wrote about my visualization ability and mental thought process in the “Describe the ways you think” thread if you really want details…
I actually meant, “do you see memories as though through your own eyes or from an omniscient POV”. Sounds like from your link that you don’t see them at all.
Are you able to recall positive memories in a way that stimulates emotion? (If you can, I’m guessing they are not recalled in verbal form, but are represented in some other sensory system.)
No, I don’t really ‘see’ them, but other sensations such as motion and touch are more tangible to me and those I see relative to my head—as I experience them in actuality. So it is very much a first-person experience from my POV even if color, texture, etc. is missing.
I upvoted both because you are correct and because I am the same way. I am somewhat skilled at manufacturing happiness, but can not make myself angry for the life of me. Which, TBH, I’m fine with.
I also don’t have the ability to recall and feel anger but that might just be because I can’t remember any instance being significantly angry for the past few years (I don’t believe any have occurred).
I used to be able to make myself cry by remembering sad events but I can’t anymore for the same reason, there have been no recent incidents of sadness.
Quirrel is known to be good at dissociation. Harry’s (Demented) dark side hates everything that moves. Even if Harry’s dark side is not (part of) (the original) Voldemort, I wouldn’t be surprised if Quirrel can dip into a hate-everything personality for the time it takes to cast the Killing Curse.
(Of course, there is insufficient evidence either way.)
I’m not sure exactly what Harry was thinking, but if it simply means that you must “call up feelings of hate” as suggested below, then it might simply be intended as a simple safeguard. Presumably almost anyone can call up such feelings if they tried, but it wouldn’t happen by accident unless you really hate someone. (Given the apparent age of the spell and its character, I don’t think its creator would worry much about accidentally killing someone you hate, if it even occurred to them.)
Quirrell was planning to teach it.