IMO, new thread for Ch 82, not before—the “show all” button is still here, and the thread proliferation is getting silly, this is the third in a week. Alternately, can we get better forum software?
(Not that these comments will make a difference; someone or the other’s gonna notice the comment-count and instinctively think “Over 500!! Ah, there’s my chance to be of service! …… HEY GUYS NEW THREAD HERE!”)
I don’t think it would be that difficult for him to “destroy” it in the sense of making it no longer a practical method of imprisonment. All he would have to do is start disseminating knowledge of the true patronus charm, and using dementors as the primary guards of a prison would cease to be viable.
People could still be tormented by the dementors when their wands are taken away, and left unable to escape, but using dementors as a torture device which itself needs to be guarded from anyone who might decide to obliterate them all is probably a lot less politically viable.
In terms of retaining political advantage, this may not be the best method available to him, but it may be the easiest.
Attempting to coerce the dementors directly and break their pact with the Ministry retains more power, as does taking away everyone else’s ability to use patronuses, leaving himself in control of the dementors, but both are vulnerable to interventions such as, say, kidnapping him and crucioing him until he surrenders.
There is no reason to think he doesn’t need his wand for actual Dementor crushing. The Dementor scaring wasn’t him casting anything. It was due to Dementor’s own ability to commune with Harry turned against it (plus, hypothetically, some expectation manipulation—the “BOO” there was probably more than just for show, but also to prime Harry’s mind into expecting the thing to be spooked).
Normal wizards need their wands and the ability to cast patronus in order to deal with a dementor on their own.
Harry can deal with dementors without his wand. That is, they cannot eat away at him. He can stand in their presence without becoming demented. And that is unusual.
Yes, he can. Fawks is completely good and Harry has a connection with him. Fawks would take him there and Harry would destroy the Dementors. Azkaban is Dementors in a convenient package. Once the Dementors are gone, the packaging is no longer really Azkaban.
Harry believes he can do it and EY doesn’t make it look like he can’t.
Opinions about whether Harry could actually destroy Azkaban?
In the sense of getting rid of the Dementors, probably. In TSPE he seems to think he might be able to do it, though with high probability of dying. In the last chapter, he was planning to take Fawkes with him, which is quite likely to have kept him alive. Note how Dumbledore says that he would have died after his duel with Grindelwald if not for Fawkes, that phoenixes seem to heal (give life, opposite of Dementors), and that a Patronus-nuke seems to be Cast from Vitality.
I comprehend your nature, you symbolize Death, through some law of magic you are a shadow that Death casts into the world.
If this is true, it’s possible that as long as death exists (for wizards, anyway), it will continue to cast its shadows, and so the dementors can never be all destroyed. Maybe they’ll just respawn or something. In fact, maybe when Harry destroyed that one in Ch 45, a dementor respawned back at Azkaban without anyone noticing. Do the guards keep a count of dementors?
That’s an interesting possibility, but I favour the interpretation that this is the source of dementors:
Even so, the most terrible ritual known to me demands only a rope which has hanged a man and a sword which has slain a woman; and that for a ritual which promised to summon Death itself—though what is truly meant by that I do not know and do not care to discover, since it was also said that the counterspell to dismiss Death had been lost.
Canon makes reference to fog being produced by dementors breeding, which doesn’t sound like a light ritual or a respawning option. I don’t know if Yudkowsky has kept this part.
Given how Dumbledore worries about how to explain losing one to the ministry, and that they’re considered “weapons of war”, I’d say someone keeps count.
Dementors don’t act like death incarnate, though. Death isn’t reactive to human expectations and sensibilities. Death doesn’t go out of its way to try to destroy people. Death is just a force of nature (or, rather, the point at which a force of nature terminates). Dementors act like a superstitious anthropomorphization of death.
We also know that there is a dark ritual that summons Death, which Quirrel knows but is afraid to perform.
We know, too, that spells modify reality based on the caster’s understanding of the natural world, rather than using the most simple and nature-compliant approach.
I have a very strong suspicion that the first dementors were created by the ritual that Quirrel spoke of. They are a fearful, human-imagined depiction of death, created by the spells of primitive wizards who didn’t understand death’s impersonal and causal nature. What I wonder, though, is whether casting that ritual is the ONLY way to create new dementors, or if they are also capable of reproducing on their own once summoned. According to the books, dementors can reproduce via a mysterious process that bathes the countryside in fog, but Yudkowsky’s dementors are already quite different from Rowling’s. It may be that their numbers remain constant unless someone uses that dark ritual to create more of them or a spell like Harry’s ubertronus to destroy some.
The dementors serve at least three purposes in Azkaban: they drain the magic from prisoners to render them helpless, they notify the guards when prisoners escape, and they chase down and incapacitate escaped prisoners and intruders. If Harry destroys 90% of the dementors, there probably won’t be enough left for the first or third purposes. That would make Azkaban much less secure, and the perception of Azkaban’s security would go down if there are hardly any dementors since the dementors are what make it infallible. Even just demonstrating that Dementors CAN be destroyed would probably force them to completely remake Azkaban to not depend on the dementors.
434 comments. Is it getting to be time to start a new thread?
Opinions about whether Harry could actually destroy Azkaban?
IMO, new thread for Ch 82, not before—the “show all” button is still here, and the thread proliferation is getting silly, this is the third in a week. Alternately, can we get better forum software?
Seconded. 2 threads in 3 days = BAD IDEA.
(Not that these comments will make a difference; someone or the other’s gonna notice the comment-count and instinctively think “Over 500!! Ah, there’s my chance to be of service! …… HEY GUYS NEW THREAD HERE!”)
We could try to use a subreddit.
I don’t think it would be that difficult for him to “destroy” it in the sense of making it no longer a practical method of imprisonment. All he would have to do is start disseminating knowledge of the true patronus charm, and using dementors as the primary guards of a prison would cease to be viable.
People could still be tormented by the dementors when their wands are taken away, and left unable to escape, but using dementors as a torture device which itself needs to be guarded from anyone who might decide to obliterate them all is probably a lot less politically viable.
In terms of retaining political advantage, this may not be the best method available to him, but it may be the easiest.
Attempting to coerce the dementors directly and break their pact with the Ministry retains more power, as does taking away everyone else’s ability to use patronuses, leaving himself in control of the dementors, but both are vulnerable to interventions such as, say, kidnapping him and crucioing him until he surrenders.
Harry doesn’t need his wand. I think that’s only because he mastered his Hallow.
There is no reason to think he doesn’t need his wand for actual Dementor crushing. The Dementor scaring wasn’t him casting anything. It was due to Dementor’s own ability to commune with Harry turned against it (plus, hypothetically, some expectation manipulation—the “BOO” there was probably more than just for show, but also to prime Harry’s mind into expecting the thing to be spooked).
Normal wizards need their wands and the ability to cast patronus in order to deal with a dementor on their own.
Harry can deal with dementors without his wand. That is, they cannot eat away at him. He can stand in their presence without becoming demented. And that is unusual.
Yes, he can. Fawks is completely good and Harry has a connection with him. Fawks would take him there and Harry would destroy the Dementors. Azkaban is Dementors in a convenient package. Once the Dementors are gone, the packaging is no longer really Azkaban.
Harry believes he can do it and EY doesn’t make it look like he can’t.
In the sense of getting rid of the Dementors, probably. In TSPE he seems to think he might be able to do it, though with high probability of dying. In the last chapter, he was planning to take Fawkes with him, which is quite likely to have kept him alive. Note how Dumbledore says that he would have died after his duel with Grindelwald if not for Fawkes, that phoenixes seem to heal (give life, opposite of Dementors), and that a Patronus-nuke seems to be Cast from Vitality.
In Ch 45, Harry thinks:
If this is true, it’s possible that as long as death exists (for wizards, anyway), it will continue to cast its shadows, and so the dementors can never be all destroyed. Maybe they’ll just respawn or something. In fact, maybe when Harry destroyed that one in Ch 45, a dementor respawned back at Azkaban without anyone noticing. Do the guards keep a count of dementors?
That’s an interesting possibility, but I favour the interpretation that this is the source of dementors:
It fits very nicely. Dementors (Death) were unkillable (undismissable) because the “true” patronus charm (counterspell) had been lost.
Canon makes reference to fog being produced by dementors breeding, which doesn’t sound like a light ritual or a respawning option. I don’t know if Yudkowsky has kept this part.
Given how Dumbledore worries about how to explain losing one to the ministry, and that they’re considered “weapons of war”, I’d say someone keeps count.
Dementors don’t act like death incarnate, though. Death isn’t reactive to human expectations and sensibilities. Death doesn’t go out of its way to try to destroy people. Death is just a force of nature (or, rather, the point at which a force of nature terminates). Dementors act like a superstitious anthropomorphization of death.
We also know that there is a dark ritual that summons Death, which Quirrel knows but is afraid to perform.
We know, too, that spells modify reality based on the caster’s understanding of the natural world, rather than using the most simple and nature-compliant approach.
I have a very strong suspicion that the first dementors were created by the ritual that Quirrel spoke of. They are a fearful, human-imagined depiction of death, created by the spells of primitive wizards who didn’t understand death’s impersonal and causal nature. What I wonder, though, is whether casting that ritual is the ONLY way to create new dementors, or if they are also capable of reproducing on their own once summoned. According to the books, dementors can reproduce via a mysterious process that bathes the countryside in fog, but Yudkowsky’s dementors are already quite different from Rowling’s. It may be that their numbers remain constant unless someone uses that dark ritual to create more of them or a spell like Harry’s ubertronus to destroy some.
The dementors serve at least three purposes in Azkaban: they drain the magic from prisoners to render them helpless, they notify the guards when prisoners escape, and they chase down and incapacitate escaped prisoners and intruders. If Harry destroys 90% of the dementors, there probably won’t be enough left for the first or third purposes. That would make Azkaban much less secure, and the perception of Azkaban’s security would go down if there are hardly any dementors since the dementors are what make it infallible. Even just demonstrating that Dementors CAN be destroyed would probably force them to completely remake Azkaban to not depend on the dementors.
They also stay in Azkaban, instead of being everywhere else.