Ask Us Anything!

[alt_moderator]

The cast thread is filling up rapidly, and while we don't have to fuss about comment collapse, it is getting difficult to navigate...

So here's a new post, where we're asking YOU to ask US: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

Comments

[keshwyn]

Why did Frank get his magic back but George didn't?

[gwendolyngrace]

Ah!

Because the Neo-Fidelius spell is highly unpredictable and no one knows what effect it would have.

There were three instances of its use in canon: Frank used it, lost his magic for a while, and it came back. George used it, lost his magic forever. Dumbledore used it, and it killed him.

For this reason the Neo-F was considered a brilliant effort, but ultimately a failed piece of spellcraft.

[jenett]

And to add to the range of outcomes (and why Albus was quite certain he wasn't coming back from the Ministry), he knew that the risks got greater the more area you encompass with it.

The Ministry, besides having huge amounts of years and years of accumulated magic, is also canonically really big.

(For any runes geeks out there, the wiki has our geeky runes theory explanation of why the Neo-Fidelius works, how it's different from the charm Fidelius, and the theory of an original version of a runed Fidelius, but the charm version works better.)

[naomikritzer]

The neo-Fidelius spell is unpredictable. Sometimes it kills you outright (Dumbledore), sometimes it just robs you of your magic. Sometimes you get it back (Frank), sometimes you don't (George).

I think with Frank we may have done a random determination (dead or just magic-deprived? permanently or temporarily?). The others may have been done because it would make for a really good story. (We did not want to kill ONE TWIN like somehow that's less bad than killing any of the other Weasleys, but one of them paying a profound price along the way seemed like something we needed.)

(Does this answer sound right to the rest of you? Please chime in with corrections/alterations.)

[lucky_guess]

Yes, I think Frank was highly experienced with regular Fielius and George was new to it, which mattered, and the sheer area that Albus was attempting to encompass played a part too.

Basically, we didn't want it to be world-breaking -- a really fascinating tool, but one that came at such a price (and an unpredictable one, at that!) that our characters wouldn't use it CONSTANTLY.

[jenett]

Albus dying was because we'd decided he should die somewhere (other options were taking out one of the Horcruxes, or in one of the battles) before the end of game, and we hadn't decided how.

I like what we chose a lot: I'm glad he got his grand Gryffindor gesture and it actually worked, and that his death wasn't because he was being actually stupid.

[gwendolyngrace]

I said it on the other thread, but we really did try so hard not to force anyone to hold the idiot stick.

I was worried right at the end because the plot we'd devised for Justin had a tinge of it - but then in the final moments we found a workaround that satisfied me, so he wasn't actually running off alone, particularly when he had promised Hydra he would not take on Dolohov by himself.