I mentioned this in the comments recently, but I thought I’d open a post on it. In my discussion of Chapter 14 of Half-Blood Prince, I wrote about Harry, but didn’t give any attention to our first look at the lucky potion, Felix Felicis, in action.
Is Felix Felicis a hoax?
The potion itself seems completely absurd – that taking a drink of it will not only affect you, but cause external circumstances to change in order to give you a better day. Slughorn claims that he took Felix twice and had “two perfect days.” Harry takes Felix when he wants to retrieve Slughorn’s memory, and believes that Felix keeps telling him what to do.
But Ron simply thinks he takes Felix, and has the same great day – external circumstances and all. The weather is great for Quidditch, two of Slytherin’s best players don’t show up, and Ron is suddenly able to make save after save. If Ron hadn’t been told Harry had only pretended to put Felix in his pumpkin juice, he’d probably have thought Felix got him his snog with Lavender later that day as well.
Faux Fortune?
But Beedle’s tale, “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” might just be a tip that Felix never actually did anything at all. The three heroines and the knight make it to this magical fountain. Three of the four are rid of their problems without the fountain, and while the fourth seems to think the fountain has given him magical fortune, we are told quite plainly by Beedle that the fountain never had any magical properties at all.
Is the Beedle story a fairy-tale parallel to real-world superstitions that have no basis in reality? Certainly, the whole Wizarding World seems to believe in the power of Felix Felicis every bit as much as Beedle’s imaginary world does. There are even laws regulating the use of Felix. If we’re right to speculate that prior to Harry’s journey to the cave, Dumbledore sent Harry back not to get his cloak (which Dumbledore knew Harry had on him!), but to give his friends lucky potion, knowing the Death Eaters were on their way, we might even say Dumbledore believes in it. (That last point is a long shot, but there it is for discussion, anyway.)
Luck and Choice
Is Felix Felicis a hoax? I think so. And it gets us back to where Rowling stands on choice and fate. No potion, fountain, or prophecy can change your circumstances. Only you can change, by your own choices.
And recall her quoted line from Plutarch: “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.“ Ron, the knight in Beedle’s tale, and other believers in magical fortune think that the magical transformation of outward reality (whether one has good or bad luck in one’s circumstances) makes for a better day or a better life. Rowling, Plutarch, and Beedle believe that it is inward change that makes all the difference.
Of course, the catch is that Ron and the knight had to be deceived first. But Ron later learns that it wasn’t magic at all; it was his own work on the Quidditch pitch.
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Travis, the characters believe the potion gives you luck. There is nothing in the text to suggest that it is a hoax. Your argument is based on the preposterousness of the magic the potion performs, and its similarity to the fountain of fair fortune.
You’re making quite a few assumptions there: that JKR is talking about similar bits of magic, that both pieces of magic harken back to the same idea – that we make our own luck and fortune and destiny – and that she was thinking the same way about that idea both times. Unless she confirms, we have no way of knowing these things.
As for the preposterousness of the magic itself, we can list a hundred pieces of magic that are equally unbelievable, unsupported by any laws of physics or probability. Splitting your soul. Placing bits of your soul in objects. Changing the shapes of objects. Taking the form of an animal. Making a stone that can confer near immortality. A man turning into a werewolf. Vampires. Giants. Elves. Teleportation. Port keys. Things that are larger inside than outside. Time turners. Patronus. Need I go on?
If JKR herself announced that she conceptualized the potion the same way as the fountain – a placebo – then I personally would accept it. But even then, some 33% of respondents to a poll which you put up here some time ago would reject it as being extre-textual and hence not canonic.
Just fun speculation, yo. Let me rephrase the beginning of my conclusion: “Is Felix a hoax? Maybe.”
Now:
Right. That’s the point. Beedle’s entire magical world believed the fountain gave good fortune, and the parallel is that in the “real” world, everyone thinks Felix gives you the same. Fairy tales parallel real world stuff.
There’s nothing in the text that says it’s a hoax or introduces a character who’s skeptical of it. I agree. But we still have the example of Ron getting really “lucky” when he hadn’t had the potion.
You know I don’t buy that (as you suggest later, referencing the poll). I’m not interested in “unless JKR confirms.” I don’t know that she was thinking of the same thing with both, of course. I’m positing the possibility based on strong thematic similarities between what happens with the four at the fountain and what happens with Ron and Felix. It’s not an unreasonable connection to make. Harry’s goal, after all, was to get Ron to realize he could do it himself (make his own destiny, so to speak).
Furthermore, we don’t need to be talking about similar bits of magic when we’re talking about fairy tales. As Dumbledore says in the commentary, only one of the five tales comes close to obeying the laws of the WW anyway. But there are thematic parallels in the Tales, such as the Warlock’s heart and Horcruxes. I’m just suggesting the possibility of another, and showing that it would be consistent with JKR’s themes.
Well, of course, but this misses what I’m saying. What other potion in the Wizarding World – potions only affect the drinker of said potion – can change reality itself? The premise of Felix is that when Ron drinks it, Slytherin players get sick and the weather gets nice. There’s “not according to the scientific laws of our world” (which is obvious – it’s fantasy fiction), and then there’s “not reasonable within the laws of the created fantasy world” (which we can examine). I’m suggesting Felix might be the latter.
An interesting idea, but Harry’s description of what happens when he actually drinks Felix Felicis later in the book leave little doubt that something magical is going on. The potion directs him out of his usual path to Hagrid’s Hutexactly to the place where Slughorn is standing talking to Prof. Sprout. It is pretty hard to accept this as mere coincidence and that Harry’s mind has arranged a bunch of random events into a narrative about being lucky.
SPT, it’s a good point, and I’ll probably debate myself when I get back to that chapter. But is it unreasonable to suggest that Harry was more confident to trust an intuition when convinced Felix was on his side? I mean, how many times have random things like that happened real life, without any lucky potion?
But I do think it’s fair to argue that in that chapter – though we are experiencing the typical “Harry filter” – the language is pretty confident and unambiguous. Felix is doing this or that, guiding here or there.
The really interesting question to me is, “Can Felix be read in this paradigm, even if Rowling didn’t intend it that way?” And I’ll explore that more when we get around to Harry’s experience with Felix – whether in further comments here, or when we get to that chapter. And we’ll have some fun talking about literary theory.
Exactly the point I was going to make, SPT. Ron never actually drinks the potion. Draco paid whatshisface to seek in his place because he needed time while the castle was empty; the other guy injured himself the prior day. The weather is the weather; lots of times it’s sunny. A “placebo” does work as a confidence builder; he always had it in him to do well if he didn’t lose confidence.
When Harry does drink Felix, no “external reality” changes. Instead it inspires him to go to a giant spider’s funeral he was going to take a pass on and to go by way of the greenhouses. Now, unless he happened to overhear Slughorn making an appointment with Sprout earlier in the day, why would he do that absent help from Felix. Furthermore, when he gives the potion to his friends, they manage to duel the Death Eaters for a long time and not get killed. Ginny dances around dodging curse after curse. It’s Bill who didn’t drink the potion who gets mauled.
In neither case of actual use does the potion change external reality. So, Travis, I disagree with your premise in that regard.
However, interesting theory, Travis, about why Dumbledore sent Harry to get his cloak when he knew he had it on him, or was supposed to have it on him. You’re assuming he knew that Harry won the potion in his first day of class. I’m not sure he would know that unless Slughorn bragged about Harry winning it; Harry never told him how it was he got the memory from Slughorn. My theory for why D sent Harry for his cloak was that D wanted the time to go warn Snape that “tonight’s the night” the Death Eaters are coming and he’ll have to kill D (poor Snape sitting in his office all evening anticipating that).
Hey, Travis, wrote my comment before I saw your reply to SPT posted, though I stand by it.
I think you’ve got a really interesting theory going on here, Lily Luna, but Travis, I see your points, too. I think I’m going to go more along with Lily Luna on this one though. Even before I read her comment, I kept thinking of what Ginny said about the curses just missing them and things of that nature. Great theory though, Travis. I’d be interested to hear some further thoughts.
To all, This is where (this Blog) we have so much fun – having a wonderful dialog exploreing all aspects of what the chapters can tell us. Again great fun…
With the curses missing Ginny & the others, it really plays into an area of extreme speculation. Did the curses miss Ginny & the others because they themselves were just better than they thought & the idea that they took “lucky” potion reinforced that idea in them? Or did the potion actually play a role in causing them to avoid curses? Arguments could be made, as with Ron, on both sides. Although with Ron, it’s quite clear that Felix does nothing of itself because Ron never took the potion. The problematic one is Harry’s use of the potion.
I’m kind of torn between Travis’ position & the one articulated by Lily Luna. The answer that JKR gives in The Fountain of Fair Fortune, where she seems pretty clear that magical things cannot change one’s circumstances, only you really can, although the magical things can act as a placebo effect. But did she write The Fountain before or after she wrote HBP? Could she have meant one thing in HBP, that, yes, Felix Felicis really does something but it can also be used as a placebo too, while later on she comes to a different conclusion & thus we get her explanation in The Fountain?
And in the fairy tale itself the people in the story believe in the fountain’s properties but the people to whom the tale is being told are given the lesson that one’s fortune depends more on who you are & what you do with your life. So, the point of the story which the Wizarding world should’ve been learning through this fairy tale all along is that it’s more important to be who you are & to be confident in who you are than to trust in something that may or may not have reality changing effects, especially since the listeners are told point blank that the fountain has no real power.
But again we don’t see the fairy tale until after the main story is over. And if JKR had it in mind, one would think that Ron, being brought up on these stories all his life, might be suspicious of the claims of Felix Felicis. But then again Ron can be rather obtuse at times.
Hmm.
I like that challenge, that the Felix is not reasonable within the laws of the created fantasy world because it is the only potion which changes not the drinker but reality itself.
But are there not other charms and spells which are also unreasonable – in the sense of illogical – in the wizarding world? The Fidelius charm comes to mind – it treats the very relative and conceptual idea of “secret” like an object which can be hidden. And there’s its close cousin, the Tongue-tying curse: again, objectifiying an idea. There’s the Finite Incantatem: does it work on spells the spell caster doesn’t know have been cast? What is it’s range? And how about the Unbreakable Vow: who keeps track of the fine print? Or for that matter, who enforces it? How long does Snape have to kill Dumbledore? A year? Ten? If he hasn’t killed him by the time he dies, does the curse kill him the moment before? The nanosecond before? How about if he dies accidentally? At what point is the vow considered broken? What if Dumbledore dies of natural causes? Does Snape die as well?
Do you see what I mean? There are spells and charms which are inherently logically flawed.
Now I agree that Felix is not a typical potion. But I could conjecture about ways that it could reasonably work – within the magical realm. Assume that there are an infinite number of time lines that diverge at any given moment in time. In some of those timelines the Slytherin player gets sick. In other timelines, he does not. In some timelines the weather is nice. In others, it’s crappy. In some timelines Ron catches the ball – or whatever. In others, he drops it. The potion directs him to whatever timeline is the most fortunate for him, discarding all the ones which don’t work out in his favour. It does this reiteratively until he’s satisfied with his day. Or maybe it’s not luck. Maybe the potion amplifies the drinker’s magical abilities so that he is able – unconsciously – to alter reality around him: sicken his opponent, change the weather, make the ball drop slower, whatever. Unlikely? Perhaps. But not unreasonable.
BTW, I do accept your point that there are thematic similarities between Felix and the fountain. I’m just not convinced that the conclusion is the same. I think that writers play with ideas. Sometimes they come out one way, sometimes another.
I think what Felix Felicis actually (magically) does is make the drinker confidant in their own natural abilities, and it may work much like a pensieve and make one more in tune with their subconsciousness. It will make you confidant enough to trust your instincts, go after that memory, or ask out that girl (or boy).
Therfore, when one takes too much they become over confident and instead of rational thought mixed with natural instinct, it makes the drinker arrogant and oblivious to logic.
I like to think Felix is nothing but wizarding goldschlager.
Red Rocker, the only problem with using Ron is that he never actually took the potion. Felix did nothing at all because it was never used!
But otherwise your theory has some legs to it.
Lots of great responses here! Good points made about nothing external happening when Harry took the potion.
I think Red Rocker’s summary is on the mark:
A well-taken point. I think the possibility remains that Felix is, as Mark-Anthony put it, “nothing but wizarding goldschlager.” But RR’s point, paired with revgeorge’s point about the Beedle tale being written quite a bit after HBP, definitely favors the equal or probably greater possibility that there is something to Felix.