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A ranty thing on canon and lack thereof
OotP has some very useful spells in it. So it bugs me when I see the same old "he picked up his wand and threw locking and silencing spells at the door." Remember when we learned Silencing spells? We cast them on the things making noise and thus no more noise was made.
So unless we are dealing with one of those annoying doors which won't stop making lewd comments and belching loudly, a silencing spell is canonically a pretty pointless thing to throw at it. Most doors already are the silent type.
In canon, when people want to avoid being overheard, they cast an Impenetrable charm, which is presumably also useful in that objects and people cannot get through it, and so the occupants of the room are pretty much assured of privacy.
If this is not good enough, we might also remember Hermione's squelchy door-sealing spell in the DoM. (Colloportus, I think the word is.) And don't forget that handy spell for cleaning up messes, Evanesco. JKR provides us with some very useful spells, the least we can do is to use them.
"Locking and silencing spells" is just plain lazy writing. Pre-OotP it can be forgiven, but now that we know better, shouldn't our writing reflect this? Or is it a habit just too deeply ingrained to change?
Of course, this is the fandom which nine times out of ten willfully ignores the fact that Pepper-Up Potion has the side effect of making steam shoot out of its taker's ears. :/
[/ranty thing]
So unless we are dealing with one of those annoying doors which won't stop making lewd comments and belching loudly, a silencing spell is canonically a pretty pointless thing to throw at it. Most doors already are the silent type.
In canon, when people want to avoid being overheard, they cast an Impenetrable charm, which is presumably also useful in that objects and people cannot get through it, and so the occupants of the room are pretty much assured of privacy.
If this is not good enough, we might also remember Hermione's squelchy door-sealing spell in the DoM. (Colloportus, I think the word is.) And don't forget that handy spell for cleaning up messes, Evanesco. JKR provides us with some very useful spells, the least we can do is to use them.
"Locking and silencing spells" is just plain lazy writing. Pre-OotP it can be forgiven, but now that we know better, shouldn't our writing reflect this? Or is it a habit just too deeply ingrained to change?
Of course, this is the fandom which nine times out of ten willfully ignores the fact that Pepper-Up Potion has the side effect of making steam shoot out of its taker's ears. :/
[/ranty thing]