At last night’s MTV movie awards – or as they should be called, The Twilight Saga awards – Emma Watson presented a new clip from the upcoming Harry Potter film. In it we see half-man half-bear Hagrid in a spot of bother with Voldemort’s gang, while Harry stumbles to the rescue. ‘The dark Lord’ then turns and utters the famous words, “Harry Potter, the boy who lived, come to die” and casts a killing curse on the hapless hero. The clip cuts out before we can see the result of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s spell, but I’m guessing Harry lives.
It has to be noted how similar this most famous of curses sounds to another magic word, used by stage magicians worldwide: abracadabra. Why Rowling chose such a similar name for the most notorious curse in Potter lore is a mystery. If you imagine Voldemort as a stage magician who’s just made a dove disappear, or conjured a rabbit it kind of kills the clip’s atmosphere. Still, it does make it an interesting watch, even if it isn’t for the reasons indented.
