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Velorien comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong
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It can be dodged. My point was that if the hover charm is instant and cannot be dodged, then accelerating the victim into something (e.g. sky then ground) can kill them without giving them time before the spell hits. And with sufficient acceleration, the victim won't be able to react.
True. But that would have to be an extreme amount of acceleration, whereas in MoR it takes several casters just to fully counter the effect of gravity on one teenage boy. Also, it seems unlikely at best that the Hover Charm can accelerate people downwards - and if you lift someone high enough for a fall to kill them, you give them time to react while they fall.
Also, it's possible that the Hover Charm could be blocked by a pre-cast shield - in fact, this seems likely, otherwise people could just get around non-spherical shields by lifting the target and then shooting them from underneath.
Several first-year casters. Quirrell stuck 50 people to the ceiling. You might say that he has better ways to use his power - but the killing curse is not one of them. His killing curse is little better than anyone else's.
There's got to be a spell for that, and it it likely to work similarly to the hover charm, i.e. instant effect.
If by a specific anti-hover shield, then one needs to always keep up a large number of shields against various spells. If by a generic shield, well, that isn't in my mental model of shields, but I guess it's possible. In which case I agree that the killing curse is superior agains a raised shield, but it is still inferior against an unsuspecting enemy.
Ah. Hundreds of girls Summoning a Harry Potter into their arms?
I imagine SPHEW's battles vs. the bullies would have looked different if Protego didn't protect against telekinesis.
An unsuspecting enemy can apparate when they realize they are being affected by the hover charm. When they realize they are being affected by Avada Kedavra... they're dead.
You make some excellent points. I can only conclude that the Hover Charm (and your proposed opposite) must have some built-in limitations, otherwise no-one would bother using anything else against unshielded targets.
I do suspect that the spells we think of as instant are actually very fast invisible missiles - this would account both for the fact that one aims them with a wand, and for the fact that the likes of Quirrell can sneeze away spells which have no visible missiles.