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ygert comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: palladias 15 August 2013 02:18AM

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Comment author: ygert 15 August 2013 03:35:32AM *  6 points [-]

A short time later Harry Potter handed his wand over to an armored goblin guard who frisked him with all manner of interesting-looking probes,

Huh. With all the "the goblins aren't allowed to have wands" stuff, I wouldn't expect that this is how they'd have done it. It is true that all in all, the goblins couldn't do all that much of practical value with the borrowed wands of those in Gringotts meetings, but still... It means that the prohibition on goblins using wands is far from absolute.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 15 August 2013 07:16:53AM 14 points [-]

You have to spend time practicing with a wand in order to effectively use one. This is like handing your laptop to someone who's literally never used a computer or even a keyboard before — they aren't going to guess your password and read your email; they'll have a hard enough time knowing what parts do something.

Comment author: JTHM 15 August 2013 01:17:39PM 0 points [-]

Canon contradicts you: In book four, the house-elf Winky was able to conjure the dark mark with the use of a wand despite presumably never having wielded one before.

Comment author: Jadagul 15 August 2013 02:03:16PM 11 points [-]

I believe this is a misreading; Winky was there, but the Dark Mark was cast by Barry Crouch Jr. From the climax of Book 4, towards the end of Chapter 35:

I wanted to attack them for their disloyalty to my master. My father had left the tent; he had gone to free the Muggles. Winky was afraid to see me so angry. She used her own brand of magic to bind me to her. She pulled me from the tent, pulled me into the forest, away from the Death Eaters. I tried to hold her back. I wanted to return to the campsite. I wanted to show those Death Eaters what loyalty to the Dark Lord meant, and to punish them for their lack of it. I used the stolen wand to cast the Dark Mark into the sky.

Comment author: JTHM 15 August 2013 06:23:18PM 2 points [-]

You are entirely correct. I mis-remembered the events of book four.

Comment author: TobyBartels 22 August 2013 05:58:51PM 1 point [-]

This still shows us that people found it plausible that Winky cast a spell using a wand. (Of course, these were far from disinterested people, plus people are stupider in canon.)

Comment author: Velorien 23 August 2013 01:02:46PM 5 points [-]

I don't even want to come up with a list of things the general population thought plausible at various points in canon; it would be too depressing.

Comment author: atorm 15 August 2013 02:04:04PM -1 points [-]

Wasn't it the invisible Barty Crouch who did the conjuration?

Comment author: Velorien 15 August 2013 01:53:04PM 0 points [-]

While this is true, Winky is not a representative case for magical creatures in general, since house elves are powerful magic-users in their own right (though admittedly their magic doesn't appear spell-based).

Comment author: kilobug 16 August 2013 07:48:01AM *  0 points [-]

The prohibition is on using (and owning, I think), not holding wands. You can put wands in your Gringotts vault, ask an House Elf to bring you your wand, ... but goblins or elves aren't allowed to use wands. If they try to do it was a borrowed wand, I doubt it would go unnoticed for long. There is "priori incantatem" to check how a wand was last used for, and there may be global spells like the Trace that will warn the ministry if a magical creature uses wands.

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