That doesn’t seem like sufficient payoff, especially since there was no way to anticipate that meaning ahead of time. Also, that’s not really something Harry forgot, more something he didn’t even notice.
Whether it’s “sufficient” is a matter of taste, I’d say. It’s just sufficient enough payoff for me and avoids becoming ludicrously much payoff—the Remembrall is a child’s toy, afterall, not an ancient Artifact with DarkLord-detecting capacity. Indicating you neglected to do something (forgot to lock your door, forgot to apply your knowledge of physics) is more in tune with what I’d expect it to do.
More to the point it correlates heavily where locale is concerned—the first broomstick lesson. So it’s more likely that it indicates something near those events, instead of something in Harry’s remote past.
That just doesn’t feel like how Remembralls work, though. For one, “forgotten something” involves having known it: using Aristotelian instead of Newtonian physics seems like a mistake, not a forgetting. Like, if he had learned through some comically painful experience that broomsticks did indeed follow Newtonian laws, and then put a rocket on his broomstick: I would expect the Remembrall to be glowing this brightly at this point.
For two, a simple magic item that works exactly as intended, no matter how trivial or gigantic the task—that feels like how magic items in the MoR Potterverse ought to behave.
For what it’s worth, I believe Vaniver has the right answer.
Considering the language used to describe the brightness of the remembrall, I’d guess that it’s supposed to imply that he’s forgotten something of great magnitude or importance.
Magic doesn’t appear to think in terms of natural laws (insofar as it can be said to think,) so forgetting to apply Newtonian physics in a particular situation doesn’t sound like something the remembrall should mark as a major lapse of memory.
Magic doesn’t appear to think in terms of natural laws (insofar as it can be said to think,) so forgetting to apply Newtonian physics in a particular situation doesn’t sound like something the remembrall should mark as a major lapse of memory.
Regardless of what magic thinks the laws of physics are, it ought to notice how important they seem to Harry. However, I still doubt that they’re important enough to Harry as all that (although the writing in Ch 60 may suggest otherwise).
That doesn’t seem like sufficient payoff, especially since there was no way to anticipate that meaning ahead of time. Also, that’s not really something Harry forgot, more something he didn’t even notice.
Whether it’s “sufficient” is a matter of taste, I’d say. It’s just sufficient enough payoff for me and avoids becoming ludicrously much payoff—the Remembrall is a child’s toy, afterall, not an ancient Artifact with DarkLord-detecting capacity. Indicating you neglected to do something (forgot to lock your door, forgot to apply your knowledge of physics) is more in tune with what I’d expect it to do.
More to the point it correlates heavily where locale is concerned—the first broomstick lesson. So it’s more likely that it indicates something near those events, instead of something in Harry’s remote past.
That just doesn’t feel like how Remembralls work, though. For one, “forgotten something” involves having known it: using Aristotelian instead of Newtonian physics seems like a mistake, not a forgetting. Like, if he had learned through some comically painful experience that broomsticks did indeed follow Newtonian laws, and then put a rocket on his broomstick: I would expect the Remembrall to be glowing this brightly at this point.
For two, a simple magic item that works exactly as intended, no matter how trivial or gigantic the task—that feels like how magic items in the MoR Potterverse ought to behave.
For what it’s worth, I believe Vaniver has the right answer.
Considering the language used to describe the brightness of the remembrall, I’d guess that it’s supposed to imply that he’s forgotten something of great magnitude or importance.
Magic doesn’t appear to think in terms of natural laws (insofar as it can be said to think,) so forgetting to apply Newtonian physics in a particular situation doesn’t sound like something the remembrall should mark as a major lapse of memory.
Regardless of what magic thinks the laws of physics are, it ought to notice how important they seem to Harry. However, I still doubt that they’re important enough to Harry as all that (although the writing in Ch 60 may suggest otherwise).