Cho Chang as 7th DADA prof after book 7 and Expelliarmus

Ok, so since I did my big manifesto and all that I am just throwing up minor posts of tidbits etc (although this post will be of a bit substantial size since it will combine two such tidbits), and I was going to throw this in a comment at the end of the big manifesto with the comment # 21 predictions but thought I would throw it up here just in case anybody is more likely to stumble across it here etc. The material details of my pertinent comment 21 prediction: Rowling said somewhere along the line in an interview that Harry would not be returning as a teacher to Hogwarts (I speak to that at length in the manifesto, that I think he has been and will be involved in the founding of a new DADA focussed school instead), but that one of Harry's fellow students will be returning to Hogwarts as a teacher. My prediction thus far has been that this will be Cho Chang as the 7th and final DADA teacher for the series - that there will be no official staff appointment to the DADA post for the 7th and final year of Harry's class and that the class will be being taught round robin/ad hoc by the whole staff (although I think this prediction could also work even if there is a 7th year DADA teacher, with Cho as 8th and final DADA teacher, and the numerological aspects could still work ... there is much in the Christian Tradition of eschatology, particularly in St Augustine, who is often covered in Medieval/Classical Studies, on the 7th day as the culmination of the first, natural creation, then superceded , especially in the East Sunday is often refered to as the 8th day, the "ogdoad," that mirrors the first day of creation being called in the Septuagint of Genesis 1 not the "first" [protos] day, but the "one" [mia] day and following Jeiwsh tradition of circumcision on the 8th day etc). My reasons for making this prediction, if any wish to read further, are in the material in and attached to the big manifesto post (please note, just so you know what you are getting into ... my method of argumentation for such things - I'm not saying " this is the way it has to be" - I'm saying that if I take a guess, this is my guess based on how I read what I see as the narrative and imagery logic). The last bit of this prediction is that the uniqueness of Cho as the final DADA teacher at Hogwarts, and what has contributed to that uniqueness and its relation to Harry and central themes, is that her Patronus will change - it will become the shade of Cedric that emerged from Voldy's wand in the graveyard. (As further support for this Cedric Patronus as a possible culmination of a specific progression in the works: it seems to be a general rule that a patronus always takes an animal form - Cho's Patronus is a swan and Hermione's is an otter [OotP 606-607]. But In two cases at least, and two very important cases, we have a Patronus that takes not just a particular animal, but a particular individual animal that is either the animagus form or an animal another human transforms into even if not by choice - meaning Harry's stag that is his father's animagus form, and Tonks' Patronus changing to become Lupin's werewolf form. Tonks' is especialy important as evidence that Patronus forms can change. I believe that Cho will have to lose the sort of tone of distancing herself from Harry that she has in HBP and that part of this will be coming to grips with Cedric's death and what it was that she was looking to Harry for in OotP that went south after Marietta's acne outbreak from ratting on the DA, and that this progression/closure will transform her Patronus into the first individual human Patronus as a culmination to the Patronus progression in the works as symbolic of DADA. I have also noted that the role of the shades that emerge from Voldy's wand in the graveyard, of which Cedric is the first [last to be murdered, "the first shall be last and the last shall be first"?], as that of the "Communion of the Saints" and here I would note, as is noted below under some other linguistic considerations provided in part by John Granger, that the word used to conjure a patronus is the verb lifted from the Creed's "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" - "Expecto") Now, I have to look up the Rowling Quote on the student returning as a teacher, to see Rowling's exact words on it ... one of "Harry's year" or one of "Harry's fellow students." I just looked Cho up on the HP Lexicon and one possible problem, if the wording is the former, is that Cho is a year above Harry (HPL lists PA chapter 13 on Cho as a year above Harry). But I'm sticking with this one ... there are a lot of details to keep straight in writing such a series, let alone giving interviews etc. and it is possible for even as meticulous of an author as Rolwing, in the hustle and bustle, to mis-state the forecast of a student returning by saying "one fror Harry's year" rather than "one of Harry's fellow students" (in one interview online with kids early on she was asked what position James Potter played and she said he was a chaser, which she then apologized for later because it is obvious in bok 5 he was a seeker). I think Cho is definitely in that class with "Harry's fellow students" as a group more than Fred and George and Lee Jordan and Angelina Jolie, as students who are "older" - the next rank up. I think the prediction is possible even if the interview quote uses the specific words "one of the students in Harry's year." Of course, July 21st is only weeks away and I could be eating my words then ... but for now I am sticking with this prediction. So, this is something that popped up for me in reading the "HogsHead" chapter of OotP. When some are giving a defense of Harry against skeptics like Zachariah Smith, it is Cho who chimes in with "all the tasks he had to get through in the Triwizard Tournament last year - getting past dragons and merpeople and acromantulas and things" (OotP 342). I have a serious question about how she knew about the big eight-legger in the maze in book 4, but even if that can be answered, I will note an importance to this passage. The question, though, of how indeed she knew about the spider in the maze is a real one. The only possibility (outside of the possibilty that it might be just one of the things that is bound to fall between the cracks in a series of this much detail) is if the stands in which she was sitting were high enough to look down in, which they probably were, to a certain degree (depending on how high the hedges were ... I do not have my copy of GOF here at work with me, but I think the height was either 12 or 20 feet, which is pretty high and hard to see down in on, although the Quidditch stands seem to be pretty high up in order to get a good perspective on the pitch for matches). The text details are a bit fuzzy on this part of the story. If the crowd could see down into the maze to see the spider they should have probably been able to see down into the center to see Harry and Cedric touch the cup together and disappear, but the reaction upon Harry's return with Cedric's body and the subsequent descriptions of the scene of confusion on his disappearance and return seem to indicate that what was in the maze was not very visible (but, of course, this seems to be sort of a let down for that audience, sitting up in the stands and waiting without getting to see any action). This is all not to mention that all the descriptions in the maze fit more of a scene of being cut off visually from the crowd and stands. and of course, if the action was visible from the top, then the stands would be visible from the ground inside the maza and the "point me" or "four points" spell would not be as necessary to gain bearing and direction within the maze. So if it was not as visible, how did Cho know about the spider. She never got to talk to Cedric again and Harry has not talked to her about it in text. But, even if there is an explanation and this "anomoly" is not distinctly a textual tip-off, Cho still acts as a delivery device for a distinct and succinct statement of the triwizard tournament as characterized by 3 particular elements. I have already stated a number of times how I think the tournament functions as a symbol, as a miniature of the whole series as a battle against Voldy and his followers and their drak arts, which thus makes Cho as a delivery person for a concise overview of the trounament very possibly quite central to the core issue of DADA in general and the DADA post at hogwarts. Expelliaramus (XP - please don't sue me Mr BG lol) Now, here is another interesting thing that is related to chiasm and I was going to have it in a separate small post, but I just decided to put it here because in all that poking around on the HP Lexicon I came across an interesting fact ... Cho has difficulty with the disarming spell, Expelliarmus (OP 394 - but the HP lexicon notes that it may just be, as she says there, that she is nervous because Harry is there, which is what she says, but it is also obviously the truth because Harry confirms it by telling her that he had been watching her from over further and saw her perfom the XP well when she was not aware of his attention, but, as I will say with the XP in general, I am not looking for strict material "causality" but rather literary conjunction ... but even on the level of material causality it is notable that emotions affect Cho's performance of the XP in this way, particualrly romantic/courtly love emotions - just as they affect Tonks' powers in HBP ... If I had to gues at a possible book 7 DADA teacher prior to Cho, it would be Tonks ... but then, on the level of mechanical plot, why not her as the lasting DADA teacher unless she dies, and I simply haven't the heart to go there in the electrically tense anticipation this close to the release of the book that will answer all such questions of who lives and who dies). Expelliarmus, I am going to say, is the single most intriguing thing to me in the Potterverse right now ... it is simply loaded. Before I go further though I have to establish the importance of Expelliarmus as evidenced in text. First, a 2-4-6 "dueling chiasm." It is in the dueling club in Book 2 that we first see the disarming spell, and who introduces it? None other than Severus Snape. This all by itself should be a huge in text tip off if we are reading the books the way a literary text should be read. No, Snape, of course, did not invent the spell. But such a detail matters only for a materialist read (actually maybe more of a result of the current pre-book-7 online scramble of preoccupation to "nail down" text details about Snape and get the right prediction about him in the next 3 weeks, whether he has always been a white hat or a black hat etc). It is NOT that it would NOT be significant if he did invent it, but it would be important in different ways than it is at present. If he invented it it would actually be important in exactly the opposite direction as it is important here (and I don't mean "opposite" as any type of negative term - simply that the flow of meaning would run in the other direction, both directions being viable in literature, but distinctly different): the character of the spell would then tell us something about Snape's character, as opposed to, as it is here, Snape's character telling us something, via the in-text conjunction, about the importance of the spell as a literary symbol and device. The question when examining a thing like this in literature is not the material question of who invented it, because ultimately ... Rowling invented it. It is the question of with whom she introduced it, or at least who is in close conjunction with the introduction (and the actual material agent of introduction is about as close as you can get on this level). This type of "conjunction investigation" has been used by others in the realm of tracking material clues for what the Horcruxes might be ... Felicity did a pretty cool and innovative job of tracking the conjunctions in her essays on the Riddle Merit Badge as the transfigured Hufflepuff cup and the Aunt Muriel's Goblin made Tierra as two of the Horcruxes. If I remember correctly she did a really good job of picking up on Peeves' presence in the trophy room at certain times as a clue to the former, from detail drops from when Harry is using the map ... which is actually at least intuitively a very good catch ... Peeves is a Poltergeist and, as an image/character, he is by nature connected with and drawn to things that are "out of order" (he is not "normal" like a ghost, in the potterverse a "psychic trace" of a particularly departed person, but rather either another type of spirit or psyche or the localization of particularly disrupted psychic/psychological phenomena ... theories on real world poltergeist phenomena range from distinct non-human spirits to human subconscious "psycho-kinesis" ... although, in my book, to posit the latter without some theory or eveidence of a possible explenation of a physiological medium for such, you might as well be positing spiritual causality ... but that is another debate for another day and probably another venue) The books 4 and 6 instances are where it gets really interesting. I'll list book 6 first because that is the one I will focus on less, even though it is very telling. Draco disarms Dumbledore with the XP on top of the tower. This is pretty tight positioning of characters in relation to meaning elements. Snape introduced the disarming spell in book 2 in a dueling club event where Harry and Malfoy face each other for the first time (and it is the revelation of Harry being a parslemouth to boot). Now Harry is frozen watching Malfoy use the XP to disarm Dumbledore as the set up for Snape unleashing the AK on him. And Dumbledore is pretty sharp on Draco's behavior on the tower. Some of Draco's meandering by disarming Dumbledore first before "getting ready to kill him" may be attributable to nerves and novice precautiousness, making sure to disarm so that no possible defense is possible. A quick veteran like Snape probably could have surveyed the scene in an instant and noted Dumbledore's pre-occupation with freezing Harry and known that the same window for an XP was a window for an AK, but that is Snape, not nervous 16 yr old Draco. But I still think it shows a clarity to Dumbledore's read of Draco's character as not a murderer that he was, in general, more inclined to use the XP instead of the AK upon coming out onto the rooftop. So, now we have the book 4 instance ... the graveyard fight with Voldy at the end of GOF. For, the tower-top in HBP is only really a recurrence of, or the second time, the AK curse and the XP spell have shared the stage together, in interaction with each other. The first time is when they lock horns through Harry and Voldy's wands in the graveyard. I'll just state it bluntly that I think it is VERY intentional on Rowling's part that the spell that locks against the AK is the XP spell. And this is an odd one that should jump off the page. Harry is no dummy and it is pretty obvious that all Voldy's language of "manners" and something less threatening like a duel along the lines of the "dueling club" is dripping with sarcastic mockery of Dumbledore's emphasis on manners (which is distinctly mentioned by DD himself on the tower top - "a game/joke? No Amicus, this is manners") ... so why is Harry thinking back to the dueling club and lamenting that he only ever learned one "dueling specific" spell, the disarming spell "Expelliarmus"? Obviously this situation is a lot more along the lines of life threatening things he has faced recently, like dragons and merpeople and 10 foot long skrewts and HUGE spiders the size of Aragog, and he just spent weeks and weeks learning plenty of spells like Impedimenta and the stunning spell etc for those tasks. So why get all myopic on the XP as the only "dueling spell" he has ever learned (and, indeed the one he goes with when he comes out from behind the tombstone to face Voldy)? One almost wants to ask Harry, "Boy, why are you thinking about dueling clubs? This guy is out to end your life here, and as far as he is concerned the more suffering he can inflict on you along the way, the better." It puts me personally in the mind of some lyrics from the Talking Heads song "Life During Wartime" that I used in one of the comments after my manifesto, the one on Dobby and Hargid, the skies and the depths: "This ain't no nightclub, no CBGB's, this ain't no fooling around, this aint no disco, no lovey-dovey, I aint got time for that now" (my apologies to David Byrne and Co if I fudged that around a little ... it's off the top of me head at the mo ... my personal faves in the "Life During Wartime" lyrics are from my own more recent history: "Why go to college? Why stay in night school?" and "I got some groceries, some peanut butter, to last a couple of days" - and those who have known me for a while will smile at the lines "I got 3 passports, a couple of visas, don't even know my real name .... I changed my hairstyle so many times now, don't even know what I look like" ... or for us grads and the potter characters "we dress like students, we dress like house-elves [sorry, housewives - from John Granger], or in a suit and a tie [thank you Mr Crouch]" ... right now it is, "I sleep in the daytime and I work in the nighttime, I might not ever get home" and on Thursday night when I drive back to PA for a week to do some wirk there it will probably be the various Merlins talking to each other tooling down I-80 at 3 in the morning "Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving, you ought to get you some sleep"). Of course, to say this to Harry at that time would be just a little unfair - it is pretty stinking obvious he knows exactly how dire the situation is - he has just felt it, as I noted in another post/comment, "like fire in his bones" (the cruciatus curse). What this is is a textual tip-off from Rowling. It is like the record scratching in the movie score music that makes you go "hunh?" and sit up and pay attention. The point is that, like Harry, we go "XP against AK? ... you have got to be kidding me!" but Rowling's point is "No! this is how it works ... keep in mind that the only thing that EVER stopped an AK in the history of everything was a mother laying down her life and dying to protect her son." This is pretty much exactly the point of Harry's retort on OotP 392 when Zacharias Smith complains that XP doesn't seem like it will do much good against Voldy, "I've used it against him ... it saved my life last June." So, having laid that all down, here is the stuff that those of us working in languages find really crucial and go "WOW! fascinating! ... holy cow!" while the rest of the crowd rolls eyes and says "here we go again ..." lol. I have noted before the sort of "artistic license" Rowling has with Latin and French in the names of spells. In Latin "Evanesco" (which is playing more of a role than I originally thought ... I originally just noted Snape vanishing Harry's potion sadistically in OotP, but I am pretty sure, although the name is not spoken in text in Minerva's class, that this is the vanishing spell McGonnegal is focusing on to prep the 5th years for Transfiguration O.W.L.s ... could it be that Harry can just vanish a Horcrux with as much ease as he stabbed a diary with a basilisk fang?) is an intransitive verb in Latin - literally this form would mean "I vanish" and not the transitive meaning of making something else vanish. But the imperative form is not going to sound as catchy on page, so there is some license and leeway here. In general I think brevity is prefered, especially the punch of the 1st person singular long "o" ending (which is why I think she wnet with "evensco" rather the imperative "evenesca" or "evenesce") ... so why a longer spell like "Expelliarmus" (have you ever noticed how hard that is to say without slipping in a connecting vowel before the "mus" - as is indeed the case with first person, plural, present tense verb forms to have the connecting vowel before the conjugated ending ... which, as will be explained in a moment, would be an "e" for this verb, since it is a second conjugation verb in Latin, at least in the indicative mood). So, my take is that since Rowling has not stuck with the brevity rule for forming the spell specifics here, what she has done is important to pay attention to because being "out of the ordinary" it is much more likely to be consciously chosen with very specific nuances behind it. But before all that, there is the semantic range of this verb in the Christian tradition ... and it is a big range, and only broadened out in VERY telling ways particularly by other elements in book 5, and even thematic elements from book 4. This is the "exorcism" verb. It can mean to "drive out" or "expel" ... as in traditional exorcisms. It can also mean to "banish" or "disown" - which is precisely how Barty Crouch Sr contributed to the tragedy of his son (note that I said "contributed to," not "caused" - I find I always have to C my A on these matters lol). It can ALSO mean to "reject" - it is almost the opposite pair of the verbs "Credo" (the standard Creed from Nice/Constantinople in the standard Wstern Latin Translation: "Credo in unum Deum") and "Expecto" of "Expecto Patronum" (Granger was the first, to the best of my knowledge, to note that this is the verb used in the Creed for "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come"). The use of this very verb itself is almost a credal statement by those who use it, a statement of rejection that is the flip side of the affirmations contained in the "Expecto" verb. As far as what is being rejected, there is a presence in the word "ExpelLIARmus" that I wll try to describe what I think are the sources of, even though I find it difficult because it is not technically "following the specific rules" of Latin, but rather can merely be suggested and picked up on loosely through knowledge of a memorization device in learning Latin. The end interest is, I believe, not anything connoted or denoted positively by the Latin source, but rather simply the availability of the presence of the word "Liar." The device is called "We Fear a Liar" and it is the common device (which I would find it HIGHLY difficult to believe Rowling has no knowledge of whatsoever) for memorizing the changes of the connecting vowels of the four primary verb conjugation types when the verb is put into the subjunctive mood (every verb is only of one of the four conjugations, which is why it is important in translation to know your vocab, to know what conjugation a verb is, by knowing its principle parts, and so what the vowels mean as far as translating it as indicative or subjunctive mood). In first conjugation verbs the "a" changes to "e" ("we"), in the second conjugation verbs the "e" changes to "ea" ("fear"), in third conjugation verbs the "i" (which is often "invisible" in regular third conjucation verbs, but sometimes will be visible in the what are often refered to as the "third i-o" verbs, such as, say, "accio") changes to an "a" ("a") and in fourth conjugation the vowel goes to the "ia" ("liar") diphthong. Like I said, this use is not following the technical rules, since "expello/expellere" is a second conjugation verb and the subjunctive vowel/diphtong would be "ea," not "ia." But I think that the adaptation of this device to get the word "liar" in the spell, in combination with the semantic domain of the verb, makes this spell a nice little twist on Voldy's attachment to the fear with which he has infected the wizarding world: instead of "we fear a liar" it is "we reject a liar" - as in "we reject the father of lies." When you combine this all with the "-mus" ending, which is the standard first person plural ending, you get an emphasis on communal solidarity in rejecting the liar. (This sort of thing is sort of like some "loose" but very good recipes in cooking, when handled by a chef with a "feel" for things, or maybe rather the way Snape handles potions as opposed to Libatious Borage's laboriously boring and meticulously rigid instructions - it's not something you can describe like you can a math formula, it's more tossing ingredients together according to a "feel" that comes out with a spell that comes out with a cool sound and a bunch of "flavor-hint" nuances of meaning ... you know, how Slughorn notes that Harry added the just a hint of a little bit of pepperment, which would tend to counteract some of the negative side effects, which Harry of course got from Snape's book -Rowling is somebody who likes to play with language and "tweak" little things here and there to get what she wants in it, just the way Felix Felicis is about the same thing that Felix the cartoon cat started off as, a way to "tweak" the circumstances [in Felix the cat's situation they used him for getting a visual read on lighting conditions for live television to tweak the settings, but you know, cats also always supposedly land on their feet, just like Felix Felicis helps you get your feet under you and things "righted" for what you want to accomplish by tweaking the situation) Aside: In regards to the "exorcism" quality of the XP, if one has trouble accepting this reading, recall that the material on the XP has become focussed on Voldy and one of the key powers of the dark lord (one that some such as Red Hen and Swythiv have suggested as a prowess closlely linked to the ability to make Horcruxes) is one that is highly modeled on a distinct literary genre (that is in turn based in an ecclesial/religous tradition) that can be found even in recent film history: from the cult classic "the exorcist" to the recent "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" (in which the importance of getting a demon's name so that an exorcist may call on it with authority to leave the person, also plays an important role, just like Voldy's name plays an important role in the Harry Potter series ... and in Emily Rose they did that scene REALLY effectively - very chilling to hear the demon list the 6 names in 6 languages, especially to hear the counting to 6 in the 6 languages, particularly German in light of the WWII Holacaust, which Rowling has repreatedly either made note of herself or concurred with others making not ... that scene in Emily rose downright gave me chillsm, the counting to 6 in German) - that of "possession." On the side of some of the other meanings of the verb - the import of these themes especially in book 5 can be seen in Harry's obvious pre-occupation with Umbridge using the spell on him figuratively. He is constantly in danger in book 5, even before the school year begins (with the Ministry trial) of being expelled from Hogwarts. End Aside But I think the "r" in and of itself has a special meaning in the spell too, and one that is highly significant for the meaning of the spell as a symbol. "R" is the standard "morpheme" letter of the passive voice in Latin. I do not think it would be at all accurate to follow a literalist rendering here and interpret the meaning passively as "we are rejected" (such literalist renderings are not how literature works) ... but rather, "we reject by 'passive' means." I know I am going to be umpopular in some camps for saying this, but, while I do not think Rowling could be classified as a radical "dove" of the "peace-nick" variety, I think she can even less so be placed in the "hawk" camp (for the unfamiliar, the terms "dove" and "hawk" are "pidgeon-hole" designations standard in informal discussion in the United States and in some places in Europe, especially online, of one's disposition toward foreign policy esepcailly in the arena of the use of military force ... but I think this type of classification falls under the heading of what I have spoken of before as "false binary thinking"). Rowling spent years working for Amnesty International - I can't see her being a "hawk" and so I feel justified in making these comments. If you look at Dumbledore's pronounced statements on alliance with the dementors and something like the dementor's kiss as a "safeguard" or a "punishment" (which I think is very analagous to the death penalty) and his approach to DADA (as I have said, contra that of somebody like Karkaroff), or at the negative portrayal of Barty Sr for authorizing and advocating the use of unforgivable curses and death in combatting death eaters, or Sirious' praise of Moody in saying something along the lines of "say what you like about Moody, but he never killed unless he had to, always brought the person in alive if he could" ... it all adds up to a preference for as peacefull and as not violent/violative means and ends as possible. Agree or disagree with Rowling as you like, but the evidence for where she stands seems pretty clear to me. The one place that somebody might offer as a counter-argument is the fact that Dumbledore has pretty much confirmed, in no uncertain terms, for Harry that Harry will indeed have to kill Voldemort in order to end this thing - and this is where I think we get into some serious theme content. Rowling has said that Dumbledore's read is "never far off/wide of the mark" (basic jist), but this is not the same as saying that he is dead on on everything in every detail and nuance of detail. I think it will be true that Harry must concretely, and with full intention, patrake in the central actions that undo Voldemort and ratify his death, but therein, in my used of the word "ratify," is the crux of what I have to say here. Technically, without the protection of the Horcruxes, Voldy's use of the AK against baby Harry was, although maybe not full and intentional "suicide," what I would call "auto-cide." It was his own AK that should have killed him according to the natural order of things, aside from the unnatural protection of the Horcruxes. In effect, I see Harry's necessary actions, even on Dumbledore's read, as not necessarily necessitating him actively killing Voldy ... the parameters of concrete involvement in the final demise of Voldy could be simpy concretely and distinctively, clearly, allowing him to die from something, possibly of his own doing. I would not, myself, even be surprised if this plays out in a very concrete way ... I am personally thinking, since Voldy is already "under the curse" (to use Biblical language) of his orginal AK, that it might be another spell or bit of magic that "finalizes the deal" begun by the Godric's Hollow AK. I have said before that I personally really like the idea of it being Sectum Sempra and Snape (and Harry along with him, in whatever way he is concretely able to help) refusing the aid he gave to Draco, the healing incantation that is like a song in HBP "Sectum Sempra" chapter. Thus Voldy would be forced, without the aid of his now destroyed Horcruxes, finally to die by bleeding to death (what he has been doing to Harry and everyone else for 14 or 15 years), "giving back" (into the ground, the Hufflepuff element of the fallen Cedric) the blood he took from Harry. Much of this, on the level of the deeper meaning, dovetails with my reading of the "physics" of the AK as "psychic invasion." If the AK is psychic invasion then it would seem that, by normal logic, the only way to stop an AK would be being willing to kill in retrun, to strike down the invading psyche (and nobody in general having discovered this yet, or at least not making it common knowledge, the curse is generally thought to be unstoppable, and maybe unstopable on the practical level since, thematically, the "only way to stop an AK" would invovle having the very same will to kill and applying it against the psychic invasion, the invasion by the other person in which what they invade with is their own psyche/person. and further on the practical level it would require a very high level of prowess to focus one's own "anti-AK AK" on the specific point of invasion, making the AK virtually unstopable). But if the XP is by its very nature, on the symbolic level as evidenced in the literary sourcework, a communal credal rejection of the offending person ... I'm not saying it necessarily would stop the AK in any other situation than that one with the wand cores conflicting, but I think there is at least something to seeing a symbolic connection between the XP and the AK onthe level of the meaning. Beyond this, on the level of the established natural realm in the Potterverse it is has been en-fleshed in the first 6 books, the only thing that has stopped an AK has been the radical soelf giving love of the mother ... not trying to kill the invading psyche but surrending her own to death out of love for her son. (Go back to thinking abut what I said about Cho having trouble with performing the XP when Harry is right there, but think about it along the lines of the XP as the best response to the psychic invasion of the AK. Maybe Cho has trouble with the XP when Harry is near simply because of how she feels about him at that time ... she simply doesn't want to expell, or exorcize, or in any other way reject his personal, psychic presence at that time ... she rather wants it to continue. I know, a silly romantic notion, but such are the things of which love and reality are made.) Expelliarmus is thus basically a communal spell of exorcism, with morphological traces of basic pacifism (the "r" as a trace of the Latin morpheme of the passive voice") by way of a communal credal statement of rejection of the violence-peddling liar, symbolized in a spell that is not killing but simply disarming. That is my read of the thing. As a little final teaser on Expelliarmus and maybe Snape (as per discussions all over the net on the connection between Snape and spiders and the spider in the maze of task 3) .... how did Harry get the spider to drop him (albeit 12 feet onto an already wounded leg)? ... you guessed it - Expelliarmus. The End So, there you have my stuff on the importance Cho: she was one of the best at producing a patronus, she began with trouble with a VERY key DADA spell and needs to go through a transformation on it, the same transformation we the reader need to go through ... and whether or not there is a natural explanation of not for her knowing about that Acromantula in the maze, she IS the delivery person for a succinct synopsis of the Triwizard tourney in book 4, which is pretty much a symbol of the series as a whole. As a final parting shot on the deal: Cho is a seeker and Quidditch seekers are the best at DADA. The textual warrant for saying so? "Voldemort raised his wand, but this time Harry was ready; with reflexes born of his Quidditch training, he flung himself sideways onto the ground, he rolled behind the marble headstone of Voldemort's father, and he heard it crack as the curse missed him" (GOF 662 .... and how is that for a five line sentence? lol :) ) As with all of these predictions, I am not going to be heart-broken if I am wrong, or, more importantly, I am not going to think less, or differently in any way, about book 7 on these grounds. Based on what I have read in books 1-6 and the narrative and literary logic I think I see there, these are my pics for where I think the stroy is headed, or rather what I think would make the most fitting end based on books 1-6. Rowling is free to introduce new elements in book 7 that alter or evolve the parameters of those books. I am simply saying that based on those books only (1-6) I believe that these elements and plot would make the most sense ... but I have no doubt that when I get and read book 7 it will be Rowling's story as she sees best fit for it to be - and that I wlll thoroughly enjoy it. Anyway, fortunately there is now less than a month to wait before all the waiting is over and the questions answered ... or at least till we have all the necessary evidence, or at least all the evidence we are going to get :)