Comment author: Aureateflux 10 August 2013 04:57:20AM 0 points [-]

Well, really, what evidence is there that Avada Kedavra EVER works on infants? There's only one datapoint here as far as we know. It doesn't particularly stretch the imagination that even the inventor of a Killing Curse might have been repulsed at the idea of the spell being used against infants even if they didn't consciously consider the possibility.

For that matter, considering how important it is for a certain kind of thought to be used for both the AK and the Patronus (or status of the soul), perhaps an infant's innocent outlook on life offers it protection from the curse.

Unless someone were to step up and risk death or infanticide, there's no way to disprove it, but I doubt there would be many volunteers for an experiment like that.

Comment author: Thrasymachus77 11 August 2013 07:21:29AM 3 points [-]

Well, the Killing Curse works on animals, or as Professor Quirrel puts it, "anything with a brain," so that's gotta count as some kind of evidence that AK works on infants. They should possess the same "innocent outlook" an infant has.

Plus, I thought it was part of canon that Death Eaters were known to have Avada Kedavra-ed whole families during the first war on Voldemort. We don't know explicitly of any other attempts to Avada Kedavra infants, but it stretches the bounds of plausibility to think that nobody else has ever tried to Avada Kedavra a baby in the history of the curse. Distraught mothers trying to kill their babies is common enough (too common), and AK would probably seem like an attractive option to such witch mothers. No pain, no struggle, just death. That's not to mention the infanticide that happens during wars and feuds.

Comment author: topynate 25 July 2013 09:36:27PM *  4 points [-]

Perhaps gewunnen, meaning conquered, and not gewunen. I don't think you can use present subjunctive after béo anyway. Here béo is almost surely the 3rd person singular subjunctive of béon, the verb that we know as to be. If gewunnen, then we can interpret it as being the past participle, which makes a lot more sense (and fits the provided translation). The past participle of gewunian is gewunod, which clearly isn't the word used here.

Edit: translator's automatic conjugation is broken, sorry for copy-paste.

Comment author: Thrasymachus77 25 July 2013 10:19:33PM 2 points [-]

Good catch, I wasn't even thinking if there were a different, related verb that might be used there, nor of the particular grammar. That's just where that form gewunen showed up in the translator.

If the verb is winnan or gewinnan, the past participle would be gewunnen. In either case, the sense is conquering to obtain, or alternatively resisting, struggling against, enduring or suffering. And there are less ambiguous words to use if the sense was that Death would be defeated and eliminated, i.e. destroyed, or even mastered or overcome.

In other words, it still looks ambiguous enough to me that it could mean that "...three shall be their devices by which Death shall be tolerated."

Comment author: solipsist 25 July 2013 04:46:29PM *  6 points [-]

In case anybody else made the same mistake as I did, the two bits of Old English are the same.

Thrayen beyn Peverlas soona ahnd thrih heera toal thissoom Dath bey yewoonen.

and

Þregen béon Pefearles suna and þrie hira tól þissum Déað béo gewunen.

Three shall be Peverell's sons and three their devices by which Death shall be defeated.

Comment author: Thrasymachus77 25 July 2013 08:17:42PM 2 points [-]

According to the Olde English Translator, gewunen doesn't mean defeated or destroyed. It's the present subjunctive plural form of the verb gewunian, which means "to remain continue stand to habituate oneself to" which puts me in mind of "tolerate" or "get used to."