Oh dear god.

[prillalar]

In PoA, when Lupin forgets to take his potion, he doesn't actually change until they go outside and the moon comes out from behind a cloud.

How am I supposed to work with this? Why would anybody need that stupid potion if all they had to do during the full moon is stay indoors with the shades drawn?

I'm just going to ignore that particular passage.

I find it interesting, though, that after Lupin changes, he's then referred to as "the werewolf" and "it" rather than "Lupin" and "him".

Also, snow day! The buses are running, the schools are open, but my office is closed! I think this is a gift from the fic gods so I can get a good start on my Snape/Lupin fic, which I've been putting off. I hope that makes all the kids who have to trudge to school through the snow feel better.

Comments

[lannamichaels]

I think it might partially be because Lupid has been a good boy most days and took his potion. He just didn't take it that night.

[florahart]

I mostly choose to ignore that passage by concluding that there is a *time* at which the full moon technically begins. You know, like spring officially begins on March 22 at 4:27am eastern or some such. I also try to remember the corresponding assumption that sunrise is not necessarily when it officially ends.

Because that at least doesn't make no sense at all.

I hate gaping holes in canon. Sigh.

[ari-o.livejournal.com]

Well, the moon does have rising and setting times - just like the sun does.

[pauraque]

Yes, and the moon frequently rises during the day, and can be seen during daylight, so I wonder if werewolves would end up transforming during the day some months.

[semielliptical]

This is such an interesting question, and something I think about whenever I see the moon during the day. But I can't think of a single fic that mentions this, which seems strange to me.

[ari-o.livejournal.com]

Its possible. And could make for a funny fic - if the moon got screwed up and kept rising and setting unexpectedly.

[prillalar]

Good point! Now I'm thinking that a werewolf could avoid the change altogether simply by apparating somewhere else where the moon hadn't yet risen.

[pauraque]

I've definitely read a fic with that premise, but unfortunately I haven't a clue where I found it.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

thistlerose has a story - well, the first one is "In Theory", where Sirius proposes exactly that, and then there's a sequel, the name of which I can't recall (I didn't like it as much as In Theory *g*) which deals with how it works.

[maidenjedi]

Hmm. But are werewolves able to get apparition licenses?

JKR oughta put out a book about the Magical Creatures laws so we know what's what.

[prillalar]

Now that's a wrinkle I never considered. Yikes!

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've wondered about that myself.

I suppose they'd all have lunar charts detailing the exact moment - to the second - of when the moon rose, much like this: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

The way the moon "works" is that the time it rises and its fullness slowly change together (because the reason it looks "full" or "half" or whatever is because of its position relative to the earth and the sun, which also determines when it's visible) until at the full moon it rises shortly after sunset and sets shortly before sunrise.

Therefore, the full moon is NEVER visible during the day. Conversely, the full moon lasts the entire night.

(Actually, it turns out that this NEVER must be qualified slightly. At latitudes close to 66.5 degrees, occasionally this might happen very briefly. See http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=341 for details.)

[prillalar]

Ah, you are smart. Thanks for the info and the link. I think one of the reasons I find the phases of the moon so puzzling is it's a big spatial relations thing and I suck at those.

[ari-o.livejournal.com]

I don't think its that he needs to stay indoors - I think its that the moon hadn't risen yet. Maybe? But yes the cloud thing is troublesome. woe.

[jjtaylor.livejournal.com]

That passage has always driven me crazy. It makes NO sense, and trying to puzzle out any way that it could possibly work (maybe it's the way the Wolfsbane potion works? Somehow the moon coming from behind a cloud triggers the transformation when it's being held at bay by the stress of the situation....) gets me all flustered and frustrated. I'm right there ignoring it along with you.

[laurakaye.livejournal.com]

At first I was thinking that maybe the change is triggered by direct moonlight, but untreated lycanthropy induces an irresistable urge to go into the moonlight, so people *can't* just stay indoors, but then I realized that that doesn't take into account that apparently you can lock a werewolf up before the moon rises in a basement and he'll still change. So that's right out.

Oh well. Fun while it lasted.

[contrariwise.livejournal.com]

Oh, this has bugged me since I first read it, lo these many years ago! He does change inside, and under the potion's influence, because he says it allows him to spend the night curled up on his office floor as a harmless wolf. I think it must be that the moon just rose, and that coincided with the clouds moving? Is that too many straws to grasp at? *g*

[prillalar]

I think it's too many straws. Though I suppose I don't know a lot about how the phases of the moon work. But this:

A cloud shifted. There were suddenly dim shadows on the ground. Their
party was bathed in moonlight.

makes it sound like the moon was already high in the sky. Though maybe it had just reached "fullness", as noted above by ari_o.

All in all, though, the intent of the passage seems clear. :(

[semielliptical]

All in all, though, the intent of the passage seems clear. :(

Which is why, despite all of the possible loopholes others have come up with, my (boring) response is that JKR is careless. This particular problem makes me grind my teeth with frustration, and it's hard to remember that problems in canon can lead to good fanfiction.

[prillalar]

No matter how much I bitch about the mess that is HP canon, it's a glorious mess and it's still my fave fandom to write in. And I think the messiness is why. Though this particular item is messier than most. *g*

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Though maybe it had just reached "fullness"

I suppose that's possible, but the actual moment of fullness (or whatever the scientific term for it) can be in the morning:

As in June of 1994 (which is when the Shrieking Shack scene happens in PoA)

FULL MOON
d h m
JUNE 23 11 33 <- this is GMT, so the moon reached fullness at 11:33 am on 6/23/94 (I think she's got the date is wrong PoA - isn't it early June? - but let's not bother about that), and Hogwarts is in GMT isn't it?

So if that were the case, would it mean that some months, werewolves change during the day?

I think we just have to forgive the huge honking plot hole and say, "it's magic!"

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

In PoA, when Lupin forgets to take his potion, he doesn't actually change until they go outside and the moon comes out from behind a cloud

Please don't remind me. I try to repress that passage whenever possible, because it makes no bloody sense.

If the potion stopped the change altogether, then maybe we'd have wiggle room (i.e., "Oh, well he took it for six days, so the change was delayed until he was actually touched by moonlight"), but no!

[visionshadows.livejournal.com]

In PoA, when Lupin forgets to take his potion, he doesn't actually change until they go outside and the moon comes out from behind a cloud.

I just reread that yesterday and had the same reaction you did. wtf? It doesn't make sense. Gah. Plot holes! They hurts us so.

[ursulakohl.livejournal.com]

What if it's like a more familiar sort of moon-induced change? You know, it gets to be that time of the month, and you sort of have a feeling you're going to begin bleeding/ growling and shedding fur any time now, but you don't know exactly when, except that it's bound to happen sometime and will definitely happen if you wear white trousers?

Snow day here, too. Yay!

[prillalar]

Oh, that's funny. :) Poor Remus and his PWS.

[ursulakohl.livejournal.com]

I feel like there's a terrible academic article in here somewhere: The Demonization of Feminine Desire: Lupin, Angua, and the Moon.

[prillalar]

Hee! I posted something related back in August: Werewolves and Jedi make good boyfriends.

The werewolves in Pratchett are interesting because they're a separate species instead of a cursed human.

[ursulakohl.livejournal.com]

Werewolf-ism in World of Darkness Werewolf is inherited, though not a separate species; but I think that's because they had done all the angsting over a Curse already with vampires.

[penknife.livejournal.com]

This is my favorite piece of canon to ignore, because I can't for the life of me reconcile it with the rest of what we know about how lycanthropy works in the Potterverse. It has to be that the moon hadn't risen yet (or wasn't full yet, if you're taking the tack that the change isn't triggered until the precise moment of the full moon).

[mad_maudlin]

This is an interesting conundrum.

Using the lovely and cheap Expert Astronomer software, I determined that the "real" full moon in June 1994 occured approximately on June 23 in Scotland. It was 99% percent full at 3 pm on June 22, and was 99.9% full (or as full as it's gonna get) from 5 am to 5 pm on the 23rd. It dropped to 99% again at 8 am on the 24th. Unfortunately, it didn't rise over Scotland (or at least, over Aberdeen, which is one of the only Scottish cities in the program's database) until 7.57 pm on the 22rd, and it set at 3.27 AM on the 23rd. These times are similar for Edinburgh and Glasgow, but don't jive with the meticulously calculated information at the Lexicon for the end of PoA, unfortunately.

[prillalar]

Perhaps the time-turner screwed things up somehow? Or maybe we all just got hit with a massive memory charm. :)

[thessaliad.livejournal.com]

Ha! They could live in Portland where clouds cover the sky nine months out of the year. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lore/]

I've actually thought long and hard about this...Rowling screwed up, of that I have no doubt. But if you wanted to cover that base....

What if part of the physical change is psychosomatic? Granted, if a werewolf is directly in moonlight, the change is triggered, there's no helping it. But werewolves have been taught for years, from the moment they are bitten, "when the moon is full, you will change into the beast." This is part of werewolf lore, part of their shared history as a species (species? Maybe. Subject for later debate).

Werewolves feel the moon. Lupin starts to look more poozley just before the full moon. They know it's coming. So, like clockwork, they all change on the night of the full moon...maybe for the hours it is at its fullest, to explain away why they don't change in the daytime.

They change whether they are inside, outside, in a coma, apparating to the other side of the world. They change because they KNOW they have to. But what if they *could* fight it if they weren't in moonlight? What if there is choice there, but they're too brainwashed to know it?

Lupin is utterly distracted that night in the shack. Faced with his fugitive friend and one he thought long dead; revelation after revelation....for a while there he forgot everything but the events unfolding before him. Forgot what night it was, forgot to feel the pull of the moon, forgot everything until that beam of light fell on him....He unconsciously fooled that impulse inside him that says "you must change when the moon is full." He had it good and fooled until that moonlight fell on him...and THEN he had no choice...the effect is too direct and intense in moonlight.

But until then, he wasn't changing, he'd clean forgotten to. Psychosomatic. Ta da.

Anyway, babbling. Why am I always finding your entries late and when I have to run? :)

love, lore