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On the Harry Potter wikia's page for Killing Curse, the following lightning bolt shaped icon is displayed as the wand movement.

I literally described the image already, plz don't add redundant info here

This icon is stylized like the ones that appeared on the old, pre-2015 Pottermore's dueling game. However none of the four unlockable spellbooks on Pottermore had included Avada Kedavra, and Avada Kedavra wasn't a useable spell in that game.

The wiki just sources it to "Pottermore" without explaining any further.

Where is the picture from? Was it indeed on Pottermore, and if so, where specifically could it be found?

Rand al'Thor
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ibid
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  • This one has been bothering me for some time, so I'll offer a 250 point bounty to anyone who can find the source. – ibid Jun 10 '21 at 04:59
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    https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/121454/why-was-harrys-scar-lightning-shaped/121465#121465 – Alex Jun 10 '21 at 11:13
  • @Alex - I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that answer was based entirely on the wiki, and the person writing it had never actually seen it there themselves. They never did respond to my comment asking for more details. – ibid Jun 10 '21 at 16:14
  • Supercarlinbrothers made a video about this, I hope it answers your question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW2fe5YTWxU&t=4s – The Boy Who Lived Jun 18 '21 at 12:33
  • @SoaringDragon25 - That video was just a load of nonsense (typical for SuperCarlinBrothers) and doesn't even touch upon the topic of my question. Their video is about Harry's scar, my question is about the out-of-universe source for a particular image alleged to be from Pottermore. – ibid Jun 18 '21 at 22:27
  • Oh, sorry about that. – The Boy Who Lived Jun 18 '21 at 22:37
  • @SoaringDragon25 - Sorry if I came across dismissive over there. I do appreciate the help, I just really hate that particular youtube channel. – ibid Jun 18 '21 at 22:42
  • It's alright. I respect your opinion. – The Boy Who Lived Jun 19 '21 at 04:38
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    I'm assuming you've seen this. I have the feeling that the image wasn't ever actually shown on Pottermore, only stored, and you could access the image by changing the URL (e.g. site.com/pictures/Expelliarmus.png -> site.com/pictures/Killing_Curse.png). There was a favourite spell function for profiles apparently, maybe it was designed but ultimately not used? – fez Jul 01 '21 at 15:43
  • @fez - I thought I read through that talk page, but I did not see that comment. I had assumed the most likely source was playing with the url, (there were even JKR writings at the time which had leaked early from Pottermore that way), but I was just looking for confirmation that this is what happened here. That quote from the talk page could make a great answer. – ibid Jul 01 '21 at 18:53
  • @fez - Oh I see. It's not in the part of the talk page I read. You have to click through to see an archive of older discussion. TIL – ibid Jul 01 '21 at 18:55
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    @ibid - there was another talk page I found on another wiki where the same user (Hunnie Bunn, and I'm 99% sure it's the same user) described how they got the image by playing with the URL. Can't find it at the moment though – fez Jul 01 '21 at 19:05

1 Answers1

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The image came from Pottermore by changing the URL of an existing spell's wand movement to the one you wanted to see.

The revision that added the wand movement to the Harry Potter wiki page was done on the 2nd of August, 2012 by user Hunnie Bunn (see the previous revision to confirm).

On the talk page archives there is an entry where Hunnie Bunn appears to be replying to an unsigned comment or edit that mentions changing a portion of the URL of an image to 'killing-curse' in order to see the wand movement:

This image is extracted from Pottermore. Simply open the image of any curse and change it to killing-curse.

http://i44.tinypic.com/2wcpsns.jpg

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "open the image of any curse", but I'm going to take your word for it and add that to the hand movement part of the infobox. Thanks for your help, but next time please sign it.

User:Hunnie Bunn 21:13, July 17, 2012 (UTC)

The user who was trying to explain the process wasn't extremely clear, but I read it as: "the wand movement was initially found by opening an existing wand movement's image, and changing the URL" - from /assets/expelliarmus.png to /assets/killing-curse.png for example.

A few months later Hunnie Bunn posted a blog post titled Hidden Pottermore Images. The blog post primarily focusses on whether or not the images are canon, but it also mentions a "glitch" that allowed people to view unreleased wand movements.

1337star (The user who originally uploaded the Killing Curse wand movement image to the wiki incidentally) commented on the post, and linked the Hover Charm talk page, where an anonymous user explained the "glitch":

If you add that spell to yout (sic) favourites on Pottermore and view it in your "Favourite Spells" tab, you can see that the hand movement of the Wingardium Leviosa spell is the same.

1337star says in the information only recently came to their attention. The entry to the Hover Charm talk page was made on the 18th September 2012 and 1337star uploaded the image for the Killing Curse wand movement on the 17th of May 2012, so they could not have known about this "glitch" when they uploaded the image.

The comment on the image (which has not changed since the original upload) further drives the point home:

This image is currently unused on Pottermore, and thus may not be suitable for use on articles.

Taking into account that 1337star had already uploaded the image for the wand movement prior to knowing about the "glitch", and the fact that other wand movements were found to be legitimately from Pottermore by looking at the spell's image URL on the favourites page, makes me firmly believe the image came from Pottermore and was retrieved by changing the spell's name in the image URL.

fez
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  • This is great, and just the type of answer I was looking for. Nice Google-fu skills. Minor nitpick, but you probably shouldn't use hover charm as an example of what something was changed from, when it itself was also only found the same way. – ibid Jul 02 '21 at 00:00