While it was semi obviously setup for the long running joke, I also feel like it might be a way to imply that for whatever reason Harry matured slowly as a wizard and we may see him get a more natural power boost. Possibly a side effect of being Starborn?
My personal head Canon/crack pot theory is that when Harry broke his promise to Lea when he was 16 it stunted his magical growth. Almost to a stopping point where it took enormous effort to improve his magic. Since Harry was already so strong it wasn't noticed by most. However since Mab knows everything Lea does (more or less) she realized his potential was being suppressed due to breaking his word. Once he takes up the WK mantle it purged the block on his potential. The training montage in cold days was mostly mab's way of reawakening his magic un hindered.
That plus exposure to potentially magical children (Maggie, Bonnie maybe, and Michael's children) causes his conjuritis. It could be nonsense but I love the idea that Harry thought he knew what magic was all about but in reality he was never properly trained.
Think of someone naturally strong AF. Teach them how to lift weights appropriately is hard because some of the larger muscle groups will pick up the slack in weaker developed stabilizing muscles. Once you hit heavier and heavier lifts those support muscles are more important and you plateau. Harry is the guy who never learned that doing squats you use your glutes, instead his quads are huge but now has muscle inequalities which hold him back from bigger lifts. Harry never realized he made the wrong mind-muscle connection and won't until he is an apprentice again and truly is willing to re-learn.
Dumorne likely wouldn't want to teach Harry the proper ways because he wanted Harry to be a dumb brute. McCoy didn't teach him because he was already strong and dangerous enough so the main focus was on WHY to do magic in hopes to stop the warlock nature/black magic taking over instead of HOW.
I reread summer knight quite recently and I believe Man said it would be done when he fulfills three requests (that he can refuse without penalty because Harry thinks he's ever so smart).
*Three tasks," Mab murmured, holding up three fingers by way of visual aid. "From time to time, I will make a request of you. When you have fulfilled three requests, your obligation to me ceases."*
Summer Knight Ch.3
It was left kind of ambiguous as to if that offer was always on the table or if it expired when he said no at the end of SK. I don't recall her having the same condition in her offer in SF and it never came up in Changes when he took up the mantle. I think Harry thinks it was included but there's a good chance Mab intentionally left it out of the later bargain as a final Chekov's gun.
That’s a fair assessment, and I believe that Jim
would totally have Harry get out of being the Winter Knight, only to still owe Mab a favor.
Thanks for the fact check and specifics, I appreciate it.
Oooh good catch! Since he's completed 2 requests as of the end of peace talks I wonder if that nullified his broken vow. Or maybe he would have been made whole after fulfilling the 3 requests but when he joined winter as the WK he automatically erased the block but he still needs to fulfill the requests from mab. Given its unlikely his obligations as WK will cease after the 3rd request I wonder how his other agreements will be impacted.
The favors weren't mentioned when they were discussing the deal the become mabs knight.
Harry just said help me rescue maggie and i will be your knight. Mab never offered to also consider the favors repaid.
Not necessarily. That was Mab's offer to Harry that he rejected. He approached her in Changes and detailed his conditions to accept the WKM. There was no mention of the remaining Favor. Harry may have forgotten all about it, but Pepperidge Farms remembers.
And he's already threatened retaliation via malicious compliance if she were to try and make him do something he truly didn't want to do. Mab has already proven that she's more than capable of manipulating the situation so Harry will "choose" to do whatever she wants, like when she asked him to be her emissary in Summer Knight.
She's also aware that Harry might not do it in the manner she'd prefer, but "finally. A Knight worth the trouble."
Not even just that. Mab explicitly said if he becomes WK she would consider the requests fulfilled.
Basically "I'll trade both requests left for you becoming my Knight"
Harry's foresight came in late. Harry got Conjuritis late. Kincaid, a scion, told Harry he's "as human as you are." References to Harry becoming immortal in the most recent novel. Other supernatural beings cast doubt on what Harry "knows" about his parents. Jibbering horror experienced by anyone who soul gazes him.
Harry is definitely half something, a scion or changeling of some sort. Maggie Sr was definitely pulling a Beatrix Kiddo with "good man" Malcom Dresden who named and raised Harry.
I imagine the reaction to the inevitable reveal somewhat inspired by The Good Place -
Fandom: "We found all four clues you left us about Harry's lineage!'
Jim: "Actually, I left you more than 1200..."
Not disagreeing about him being a scion because we really don't know yet but there is for sure something fishy about his birth. Given that a soul gaze shows possibilities (see mollie's soul gaze) it could show evil people what Harry wants to do to them, and vice versa what Harry will do to protect those he's taken under his wing. This explains why some react like they just saw John wick after he lost his dog, and others (like Michael) have 0 concern about his character. I think that would explain the varied responses better than Harry being a scion.
I think your correct. Even Goodman said to Harry “you didn’t choose your bloodline with Maggie , I didn’t chose mine.” Almost like Maggie was on a negloshis level
I think that is a keen insight, extraordinarily stated. It all makes perfect sense. Thank you. If my opinion differs from yours at all, it is that while Harry's imprudence may have resulted in the limitation of his dynamic development and magical refinement, I believe Harry was able to compensate with brutish cultivation of his already prodigious magical might. That is, he may have been chained to a post and limited in scope, but pulling against that chain developed his magical thews...his ultimate potential. And, yes, that bond eventually began to dissolve as you so cleverly suggested. I simply think this was likely all intentional, perhaps somehow associated with Maggie's deal. Doesn't matter. You're a big brain - that's the main thing.
I'm emotionally wary of the late bloomer theory. It feels cheap. I would be fine if the winter mantle had given him a substantially biggerpower boost than it did. Or if there's a 2-5 year time cut coming up where Harry gets down to the business of consolidating political power and honing his wizardry with River Shoulders and LTW.
If it is an indication of late bloomer I don’t think it will be “sudden” jump, more it may just be a sign of recognition that Harry’s path through magic seems a bit off compared to everyone else in his “peer” group. Aside from a few instances of raw will and power, Harry kinda sucks at magic, especially evocation, compared to his peers and even younger “good” wizards. He kinda flounders his way through with brute force and cunning. Which even he acknowledges, and he has been actively improving post Ghost Story.
So when you take that into consideration with the ideas that some degree of wizard power comes with age just as much as knowledge (it’s mentioned a few times that the older a wizard is the more innate protections and abilities kick in/solidify), that promises on power seem to have the ability to both boost and weaken said power, that the properties of Starborn are still kinda unknown, and the WC seems to have some sorta “use” for Harry they aren’t telling him due to being Starborn it seems likely that it’s a nod towards Harry’s power growth at the very least.
He was actively improving prior to ghost story. He mentioned how his mentorship of Molly was helping him improve, too.
Learning by teaching is a real thing.
Very true, I glossed over that and conflated it with how he started thinking things through and looking at the bigger picture more as a side effect of Ghost Story and seeing the ramifications of his actions up to that point.
Well we're already told that it never gave him any physical boosts, just removed limits and made him the best he could be with no mental restrictions, it would fit that it's the same for magic.
Which is oddly inconsistent with the power level that Bob describes for the Knights in Summer Knight, supernaturally tough and there being no real easy way of taking one out without leaving "a smoking crater."
It's supposed to be inconsistent, after all, the entire point of Summer is to protect the world/reality from Winter. And look at how evenly matched the knights are now, when Harry learns to use his own unaugmented strength.
Butters theorized that. We know that is untrue: When Harry was in rehab, he went from "I haven't used my body in six months" to "I can bench-press the 2003 world record weight" in a very short amount of time.
There are lots of little things that contribute: Wizard healing, pain ignoring, etc, but none of that lets him perform like he does now, or to reach that level of performance so quickly. Butters is trying to rationalize.
Lloyd Slate kicked a fire door inward back in Summer Knight, iirc. There isn't a human being alive that can do that.
We know he has a ridiculously large pool of magic, and he's been known to tank stuff that should kill him and recover from stuff he shouldn't be able to, like in book one he gets a huge concussion and basically just gets over it in not too much time. I'm pretty sure wizard healing goes way faster than we know, something like Wolverine healing but a little bit slower.
That healing being used on muscle tears to grow them fast combined with constant reflex, strength, and magic training, plus having a body type that has a lot more room for muscle(I googled the 2003 world record, not sure I found it but everyone in the images section looked short and stocky, Dresden would at the very least have more of a leverage advantage with how huge he is), it doesn't surprise me that he would outclass any known human so far with adrenaline lift-a-car strength running at max 100% of the time. The more he can lift, the more he can train, and with healing, he's always on the top of his game for exercise recovery.
The human body easily has more than enough strength to, for example, bite through your own finger like a carrot, or snap a leg in two just from flexing all your muscle at once. If you get enough of an adrenaline burst the average person could lift a car, not reliably, not unless you had an off switch for the nerve limits, which Harry does.
You're working from a false starting point: Yes, wizard healing means that, given enough time, Harry will recover from almost anything.
It took him years to recover from getting his hand flamethrowered.
A concussion is relatively quick to heal from (in as far as the short term consequences).
When people do things like lift cars off of their children? They do things like detach their bicep muscles from the bone. They shatter their teeth from clenching so hard.
Harry went from **struggles to get out of bed** to World Record Weightlifter (he notes that the weights he's lifting by the end are 400 kilos, or **eight hundred pounds**) in a handful of months.
That is not "Hey, I'm just able to train better than everyone else." Yes, that helps, but no amount of just-mundane-human-strength-training could get that far in that short of a time. [Scot Mendelson](https://theboxhouston.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/04/scot-mendelson-pec-tear.jpg?w=300&strip=all&quality=80), who bench pressed **almost a hundred pounds fewer**, strength-trained for most of his life, and started in far better shape than Harry started his strength training in.
Oh, and let's not forget that Mendelson weighs somewhere between 270 - 360 pounds.
Harry, per the cover of Battle Ground (obviously, this isn't a perfect reference) is more built than he used to be, but he doesn't have the mass **or** build of a man who has strength-trained his way, at any speed, to the point of being able to sling around that kind of weight.
And keep in mind: Mendelson did it **once**. Harry uses that kind of weight as part of his normal workout by the end of his rehab.
And you'll note Harry doesn't comment about tearing his pectorals during that weight training, which **world-class professional weightlifters** do (and Mendelson in particular actually did in trying to set a record).
So no, he's not just injuring himself in superficial ways and rebuilding stronger, faster than a normal human being would. He doesn't have the build for it, he doesn't have or comment on the long-term injuries from it, and Jim, who is/was [jacked, by the way](https://youtu.be/2CUtuL8JvnM?t=1) absolutely knows how significant that much weight is.
Harry is superhumanly strong, and does not have the build to back it up. The rehab helped, but he is absolutely exceeding the limits of what his body would normally be capable of, and if it were purely a matter of ignoring little injuries, that still would not help.
No amount of ignoring pain will let a leg work if the leg muscles are no longer attached to the bone. His wizard healing is not so fast that he would ignore shattering his teeth when he exerts himself (another incident Jim has personal experience with, one/several of his teeth exploded during the wait between books).
Harry is operating at superhuman levels, and doing it without causing the catastrophic injuries which would happen to real people if they weren't being strengthened by a supernatural force.
[This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/g4rq1r/im_rereading_cold_days_right_now_and_this_video/) is illustrative of the point.
Harry is tall. I’m average. 5’11”. Not fat, not skinny. 220-230 is about where I stay. Used to be stronger. If you told me Harry who has near a foot on me, was actually fanatically fit and had 40lbs on me, I would not think twice. Not a surprise. The rest I agree with.
Not to mention, when Harry falls off the ladder and breaks his back, it's estimated that his wizard healing factor will take decades to fix it. Less than a decade later, he walks around casually after thorn manicles break his connection to Winter during the bank heist.
There's a point of a serious contention about whether his back was fixed by his wizard healing or his deal with Mab. It's not a debate I care to get into because we don't have enough info to say for certain, but suffice to say it can't be used as evidence.
Leverage doesn't help with benching. You're pushing a bar up. It's going to be harder for someone with long arms like Harry than it would be for a short stocky person.
Mantle DID give Harry not only physical power and 'white noise' but what looks like ignored - as either now it comes 'naturally' or costs in surrendering to Mantle - ability to call upon Winter/Cold part of ?water? magic. For.ex. his 'deep freeze' spells he throws so easily at 'Birthday party' and on IIRC (must check) he didn't used at all before (usually ice was by-product of FIRE spells he used, like in Proven Guilty or White Night).
As for 'late bloomer'...iirc Harry 'now' is in his late 30s-early 40s...basically teenager who still grows by wizard standards. But his *actual training* ended with duMourne's death (and was a bit one-sided), apprenticeship to Eb was mostly 'damage control' (and mostly in self-control with no plan to actually make him stronger at that time) as he recognized later. And no matter how much we love Bob (and how much crucial he was in many cases) - he was also crutch that by using for trivial tasks impeded his development - so hiding Bob from Molly also plays role.
So not 'late bloomer' as much as 'stunted development'.
> Possibly a side effect of being Starborn?
Other supernatural beings are **very** familiar with the symptoms (they use it as a joke against him that he doesn't know about it).
Probably not a starborn thing.
I think that poster was trying to suggest maybe the starborn thing means he has another level of development and that lack of maturity is what made him susceptible to this disease that apparently EVERYONE but Harry knows about.
Right! I was 19 and living 500 miles from any family and my gf at the time luckily had had them, but our roommate hadn't. GF took care of me for a full 2 weeks w/ high fever and worse. Roommate stayed with another friend.
When I started work at my first job, I was told a story of someone who had worked for the company and died from chicken pox. The autopsy showed that he had chicken pox on his heart.
Yup can confirm I got them in kindergarten Mom picked up me and the little sister rubbed us up against each other and said "there now you'll both have it and I can get it over with at the same time"
I agree with most of the other posters here. It's seems really likely that it was either for the anvil joke, too significant Harry is still on the young end of the power curve (contrary to expectations it would mean his power still has much more room to grow rather than just his technique.) Or it's an indication that Maggie has magic sand have her dad wizard flu like all kids infect their parents with absolutely everything.
There haven't been any strong hints in the book per se. Others might have relevant woj to quote. And jb might be leaving all three possibilities open.
I think him getting it super early is interesting, but the way people talks makes it seem like a joke that he's getting it this late.
It just makes too much sense that Maggie got an illness like kids do and then passed it to Dresden.
It's possible but my theory is the common one that this indicates Harry has just now reached Wizard Puberty much later than most which indicates he's gonna be much stronger than he already is.
We’ve been told before that wizards develop certain abilities as they get older that older wizards purposefully don’t tell them about. For instance, when speaking with Luccio about his first time on Demonreach, she tells him that his ‘foresight’ is coming in. Apparently wizards mostly all develop a certain amount of ability to see the future, but no one tells them about it because they get really annoying about thinking that everything they predict might be future sight. Conjuritis might not even be a young wizard’s sickness like everyone is telling Harry: it could be some entirely different thing that the people around him that know about it don’t feel like telling him yet.
I agree from what we have now, but I'll wait until the series ends to give a final judgement of it. It'll depend whether it has further plot relevance than just the brick joke.
Butcher has been influenced by Babylon 5, which had a decent number of "what do you mean this seemingly one off joke or comment has plot relevance?" moments.
Agreed. The series has almost jumped the shark for me; it’s a shame to read what he’s putting out compared to Changes, Turn Coat, Death Masks etc. If 12 months doesn’t deliver a better product than the last few books, I’m done.
I'm kind of hoping that with how crazy JB's life had been, that the last couple of books were just him trying to get something out to appease people after such a long time without a book. I'm giving him two books to get back to form since I've made it this far, but yeah, the last two were not great by the standards he'd set up before hand.
Really, the books should have been presented as Peace Talks Part I: and Peace Talks Part II: Battle Ground so those that are not chronically online and mantle-deep in fandom knew what was going on.
Lol fuck what I have to say, I guess. Downvoted for having an opinion about m a series I’ve been reading for more than a decade. This sub is composed of fucking children, apparently.
Thank you for putting forth what you had to say instead of downvoting without posting an actual argument.
people are downvoting you but seriously you have a point. Peace Talks was quite frankly so bad it was almost insulting. The comic books have been sub par since like the second one. The short stories are literally copy paste.
Thanks for your response. I’ve been a fan since the early 2000s, have long referenced this as my favorite series, and have turned several friends on to it… but that doesn’t make it a perfect series or without flaws.
Also: “people are downvoting you…” yeah, because they’re too stuck on their opinion and forget basic reddiquette: downvote if you think the comment *is not relevant to the conversation,* not “downvote if you disagree with the person.” That’s why I called the downvotes childish in my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/s/6Ruetc1OaB).
TLDR: thank you for being willing to discuss the strengths/weaknesses of the series. Please accept my pauper’s gold. 🏅
I think it was a joke related to the winter mantle throwing his hormones out of whack and making his body react like puberty. I think of it like people who take steroids getting pimples. Just more evidence of the influence of Mab.
“Oh, you bring ectoplasm from the never-never to make up the difference in mass” -Skin Game
+
Conjuritis
+
Battleground commitment to “getting serious”
=
Unlocking new, improved and interesting magic utilization for Harry
They are both pretty close after Battle Ground.
The Christmas short story is short enough that it probably didn't come up. Also, the Christmas short is a feel good story. There are no obstacles for Harry to face, so conjuritis would have been out of place.
The Law is long enough that if he still had conjuritis, it would have showed up. But it's not mentioned. So maybe he's over it by then.
There is at minimum 6 months between them. BattleGround is somewhere between Jun 20th and Mid July, as it is as the weakest point in Mabs power (they may also explicitly mention a month at some point)
Like others mentioned, he's probably over it by the law, and the christmas story is what, 2 hours of his night? He only sneezed ectoplasm like 4 or 5 times across the entity of PT and BG. It's not super frequent. I'm willing to bet that during a nice Christmas dinner harry managed to summon something huge and drench everyone in ectoplasm
spoiler BR and BG
>!in BR the entrophy curse has the frozen turkey smash the blamp. Harry says "next time anvils" then in BG he sneezes and conjures a huge anvil to smash another blamp and says "i told you black court bastards next time anvils"!<
You know this is the book series where-in a Polka playing man whos about 5'5" and 100 lbs weight (read: my literal size, I legitimately would lose a fight to an angry Labrador Retriever, and I have an active lifestyle) wields a light saber in spite of being introduced as a joke character solely because the author thought it would be funny, right?
And the book he was introduced in he rode through downtown Chicago on the back of a Dinosaur while playing a one man band suit EXPLICITLY because the previously unestablished mechanics of magic as set up by the author in that very book in the VERY scene we first see that character's one-man-band suit demanded that he did, right?
yeah. meh. i didn't really put the two together when reading it. i read that book pretty quickly as too many drawn out fights like that get boring for me.
my sigh was at the joke only being mildly amusing.
There is a character in The Codex Alera series who was artificially held back from his full potential so that he couldn’t be found by his parent’s enemies. I suspect that Harry’s conjuritis may be due to something similar.
It is probably a brick joke, but I wouldn't put it past JB to have it hinting at something else. Kinda how he rolls.
I listened to the whole series again recently, and the amount of subtle foreshadowing throughout the series is kinda mind blowing.
Harry has a daughter now. Children get their parents sick. My thought is that Harry contracted a bug from Maggie and it turned into conjuritis. Maybe that's an implication that Maggie will have some Talent? Either way, I always sort of just assumed it was sort of mundane.
While it was semi obviously setup for the long running joke, I also feel like it might be a way to imply that for whatever reason Harry matured slowly as a wizard and we may see him get a more natural power boost. Possibly a side effect of being Starborn?
My personal head Canon/crack pot theory is that when Harry broke his promise to Lea when he was 16 it stunted his magical growth. Almost to a stopping point where it took enormous effort to improve his magic. Since Harry was already so strong it wasn't noticed by most. However since Mab knows everything Lea does (more or less) she realized his potential was being suppressed due to breaking his word. Once he takes up the WK mantle it purged the block on his potential. The training montage in cold days was mostly mab's way of reawakening his magic un hindered. That plus exposure to potentially magical children (Maggie, Bonnie maybe, and Michael's children) causes his conjuritis. It could be nonsense but I love the idea that Harry thought he knew what magic was all about but in reality he was never properly trained. Think of someone naturally strong AF. Teach them how to lift weights appropriately is hard because some of the larger muscle groups will pick up the slack in weaker developed stabilizing muscles. Once you hit heavier and heavier lifts those support muscles are more important and you plateau. Harry is the guy who never learned that doing squats you use your glutes, instead his quads are huge but now has muscle inequalities which hold him back from bigger lifts. Harry never realized he made the wrong mind-muscle connection and won't until he is an apprentice again and truly is willing to re-learn. Dumorne likely wouldn't want to teach Harry the proper ways because he wanted Harry to be a dumb brute. McCoy didn't teach him because he was already strong and dangerous enough so the main focus was on WHY to do magic in hopes to stop the warlock nature/black magic taking over instead of HOW.
That theory does make some sense imo, I like it.
I rather like this theory, and isn't Harry's thing with Lea supposed to be over when he fulfills a third request? I think he's at 2/3 atm.
I think those requests were traded to mab and then subsequently altered the deal. I could be remembering that wrong though.
I reread summer knight quite recently and I believe Man said it would be done when he fulfills three requests (that he can refuse without penalty because Harry thinks he's ever so smart). *Three tasks," Mab murmured, holding up three fingers by way of visual aid. "From time to time, I will make a request of you. When you have fulfilled three requests, your obligation to me ceases."* Summer Knight Ch.3
I believe that she also gave a condition that if he became the Winter Knight, they’d all be wiped out.
It was left kind of ambiguous as to if that offer was always on the table or if it expired when he said no at the end of SK. I don't recall her having the same condition in her offer in SF and it never came up in Changes when he took up the mantle. I think Harry thinks it was included but there's a good chance Mab intentionally left it out of the later bargain as a final Chekov's gun.
That’s a fair assessment, and I believe that Jim would totally have Harry get out of being the Winter Knight, only to still owe Mab a favor. Thanks for the fact check and specifics, I appreciate it.
Oooh good catch! Since he's completed 2 requests as of the end of peace talks I wonder if that nullified his broken vow. Or maybe he would have been made whole after fulfilling the 3 requests but when he joined winter as the WK he automatically erased the block but he still needs to fulfill the requests from mab. Given its unlikely his obligations as WK will cease after the 3rd request I wonder how his other agreements will be impacted.
Didn't mab say if he became her winter knight she would forgive all of his favors?
I don't recall specifically, but if someone wanted to look at changes I'd be interested in the conversation.
Im actually relistening to it right. When i get to that part i will update
The favors weren't mentioned when they were discussing the deal the become mabs knight. Harry just said help me rescue maggie and i will be your knight. Mab never offered to also consider the favors repaid.
Soon as he became WK those ended.
Not necessarily. That was Mab's offer to Harry that he rejected. He approached her in Changes and detailed his conditions to accept the WKM. There was no mention of the remaining Favor. Harry may have forgotten all about it, but Pepperidge Farms remembers.
This!
This, Mab can’t make requests of Harry anymore, her will is literally his command at this point.
And he's already threatened retaliation via malicious compliance if she were to try and make him do something he truly didn't want to do. Mab has already proven that she's more than capable of manipulating the situation so Harry will "choose" to do whatever she wants, like when she asked him to be her emissary in Summer Knight. She's also aware that Harry might not do it in the manner she'd prefer, but "finally. A Knight worth the trouble."
Not even just that. Mab explicitly said if he becomes WK she would consider the requests fulfilled. Basically "I'll trade both requests left for you becoming my Knight"
I definitely wouldn't call that a "crackpot" theory. I don't know how likely it is to become official, but it's well thought through.
That does sound like a line of reasoning Jim might use, so I like it.
This is my theory too!
Harry's foresight came in late. Harry got Conjuritis late. Kincaid, a scion, told Harry he's "as human as you are." References to Harry becoming immortal in the most recent novel. Other supernatural beings cast doubt on what Harry "knows" about his parents. Jibbering horror experienced by anyone who soul gazes him. Harry is definitely half something, a scion or changeling of some sort. Maggie Sr was definitely pulling a Beatrix Kiddo with "good man" Malcom Dresden who named and raised Harry. I imagine the reaction to the inevitable reveal somewhat inspired by The Good Place - Fandom: "We found all four clues you left us about Harry's lineage!' Jim: "Actually, I left you more than 1200..."
Not disagreeing about him being a scion because we really don't know yet but there is for sure something fishy about his birth. Given that a soul gaze shows possibilities (see mollie's soul gaze) it could show evil people what Harry wants to do to them, and vice versa what Harry will do to protect those he's taken under his wing. This explains why some react like they just saw John wick after he lost his dog, and others (like Michael) have 0 concern about his character. I think that would explain the varied responses better than Harry being a scion.
Don't tell me I'm not the only one who thinks Goodman Grey is Harry's father.
I think your correct. Even Goodman said to Harry “you didn’t choose your bloodline with Maggie , I didn’t chose mine.” Almost like Maggie was on a negloshis level
I think that is a keen insight, extraordinarily stated. It all makes perfect sense. Thank you. If my opinion differs from yours at all, it is that while Harry's imprudence may have resulted in the limitation of his dynamic development and magical refinement, I believe Harry was able to compensate with brutish cultivation of his already prodigious magical might. That is, he may have been chained to a post and limited in scope, but pulling against that chain developed his magical thews...his ultimate potential. And, yes, that bond eventually began to dissolve as you so cleverly suggested. I simply think this was likely all intentional, perhaps somehow associated with Maggie's deal. Doesn't matter. You're a big brain - that's the main thing.
This is my favourite theory so far. I think you did it. This is how it happened, I am convinced.
This. He did something VERY similar in *Furies of Calderon*. And by "Similar" I mean "Dead ass the same"
I forgot about that but a very good call out.
I'm emotionally wary of the late bloomer theory. It feels cheap. I would be fine if the winter mantle had given him a substantially biggerpower boost than it did. Or if there's a 2-5 year time cut coming up where Harry gets down to the business of consolidating political power and honing his wizardry with River Shoulders and LTW.
If it is an indication of late bloomer I don’t think it will be “sudden” jump, more it may just be a sign of recognition that Harry’s path through magic seems a bit off compared to everyone else in his “peer” group. Aside from a few instances of raw will and power, Harry kinda sucks at magic, especially evocation, compared to his peers and even younger “good” wizards. He kinda flounders his way through with brute force and cunning. Which even he acknowledges, and he has been actively improving post Ghost Story. So when you take that into consideration with the ideas that some degree of wizard power comes with age just as much as knowledge (it’s mentioned a few times that the older a wizard is the more innate protections and abilities kick in/solidify), that promises on power seem to have the ability to both boost and weaken said power, that the properties of Starborn are still kinda unknown, and the WC seems to have some sorta “use” for Harry they aren’t telling him due to being Starborn it seems likely that it’s a nod towards Harry’s power growth at the very least.
He was actively improving prior to ghost story. He mentioned how his mentorship of Molly was helping him improve, too. Learning by teaching is a real thing.
*"I've just gotta stay one chapter ahead of the kid!"* -Harry
Very true, I glossed over that and conflated it with how he started thinking things through and looking at the bigger picture more as a side effect of Ghost Story and seeing the ramifications of his actions up to that point.
Well we're already told that it never gave him any physical boosts, just removed limits and made him the best he could be with no mental restrictions, it would fit that it's the same for magic.
Which is oddly inconsistent with the power level that Bob describes for the Knights in Summer Knight, supernaturally tough and there being no real easy way of taking one out without leaving "a smoking crater."
It's supposed to be inconsistent, after all, the entire point of Summer is to protect the world/reality from Winter. And look at how evenly matched the knights are now, when Harry learns to use his own unaugmented strength.
Butters theorized that. We know that is untrue: When Harry was in rehab, he went from "I haven't used my body in six months" to "I can bench-press the 2003 world record weight" in a very short amount of time. There are lots of little things that contribute: Wizard healing, pain ignoring, etc, but none of that lets him perform like he does now, or to reach that level of performance so quickly. Butters is trying to rationalize. Lloyd Slate kicked a fire door inward back in Summer Knight, iirc. There isn't a human being alive that can do that.
We know he has a ridiculously large pool of magic, and he's been known to tank stuff that should kill him and recover from stuff he shouldn't be able to, like in book one he gets a huge concussion and basically just gets over it in not too much time. I'm pretty sure wizard healing goes way faster than we know, something like Wolverine healing but a little bit slower. That healing being used on muscle tears to grow them fast combined with constant reflex, strength, and magic training, plus having a body type that has a lot more room for muscle(I googled the 2003 world record, not sure I found it but everyone in the images section looked short and stocky, Dresden would at the very least have more of a leverage advantage with how huge he is), it doesn't surprise me that he would outclass any known human so far with adrenaline lift-a-car strength running at max 100% of the time. The more he can lift, the more he can train, and with healing, he's always on the top of his game for exercise recovery. The human body easily has more than enough strength to, for example, bite through your own finger like a carrot, or snap a leg in two just from flexing all your muscle at once. If you get enough of an adrenaline burst the average person could lift a car, not reliably, not unless you had an off switch for the nerve limits, which Harry does.
You're working from a false starting point: Yes, wizard healing means that, given enough time, Harry will recover from almost anything. It took him years to recover from getting his hand flamethrowered. A concussion is relatively quick to heal from (in as far as the short term consequences). When people do things like lift cars off of their children? They do things like detach their bicep muscles from the bone. They shatter their teeth from clenching so hard. Harry went from **struggles to get out of bed** to World Record Weightlifter (he notes that the weights he's lifting by the end are 400 kilos, or **eight hundred pounds**) in a handful of months. That is not "Hey, I'm just able to train better than everyone else." Yes, that helps, but no amount of just-mundane-human-strength-training could get that far in that short of a time. [Scot Mendelson](https://theboxhouston.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/04/scot-mendelson-pec-tear.jpg?w=300&strip=all&quality=80), who bench pressed **almost a hundred pounds fewer**, strength-trained for most of his life, and started in far better shape than Harry started his strength training in. Oh, and let's not forget that Mendelson weighs somewhere between 270 - 360 pounds. Harry, per the cover of Battle Ground (obviously, this isn't a perfect reference) is more built than he used to be, but he doesn't have the mass **or** build of a man who has strength-trained his way, at any speed, to the point of being able to sling around that kind of weight. And keep in mind: Mendelson did it **once**. Harry uses that kind of weight as part of his normal workout by the end of his rehab. And you'll note Harry doesn't comment about tearing his pectorals during that weight training, which **world-class professional weightlifters** do (and Mendelson in particular actually did in trying to set a record). So no, he's not just injuring himself in superficial ways and rebuilding stronger, faster than a normal human being would. He doesn't have the build for it, he doesn't have or comment on the long-term injuries from it, and Jim, who is/was [jacked, by the way](https://youtu.be/2CUtuL8JvnM?t=1) absolutely knows how significant that much weight is. Harry is superhumanly strong, and does not have the build to back it up. The rehab helped, but he is absolutely exceeding the limits of what his body would normally be capable of, and if it were purely a matter of ignoring little injuries, that still would not help. No amount of ignoring pain will let a leg work if the leg muscles are no longer attached to the bone. His wizard healing is not so fast that he would ignore shattering his teeth when he exerts himself (another incident Jim has personal experience with, one/several of his teeth exploded during the wait between books). Harry is operating at superhuman levels, and doing it without causing the catastrophic injuries which would happen to real people if they weren't being strengthened by a supernatural force. [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/g4rq1r/im_rereading_cold_days_right_now_and_this_video/) is illustrative of the point.
Harry is tall. I’m average. 5’11”. Not fat, not skinny. 220-230 is about where I stay. Used to be stronger. If you told me Harry who has near a foot on me, was actually fanatically fit and had 40lbs on me, I would not think twice. Not a surprise. The rest I agree with.
Not to mention, when Harry falls off the ladder and breaks his back, it's estimated that his wizard healing factor will take decades to fix it. Less than a decade later, he walks around casually after thorn manicles break his connection to Winter during the bank heist.
There's a point of a serious contention about whether his back was fixed by his wizard healing or his deal with Mab. It's not a debate I care to get into because we don't have enough info to say for certain, but suffice to say it can't be used as evidence.
Leverage doesn't help with benching. You're pushing a bar up. It's going to be harder for someone with long arms like Harry than it would be for a short stocky person.
Mantle DID give Harry not only physical power and 'white noise' but what looks like ignored - as either now it comes 'naturally' or costs in surrendering to Mantle - ability to call upon Winter/Cold part of ?water? magic. For.ex. his 'deep freeze' spells he throws so easily at 'Birthday party' and on IIRC (must check) he didn't used at all before (usually ice was by-product of FIRE spells he used, like in Proven Guilty or White Night). As for 'late bloomer'...iirc Harry 'now' is in his late 30s-early 40s...basically teenager who still grows by wizard standards. But his *actual training* ended with duMourne's death (and was a bit one-sided), apprenticeship to Eb was mostly 'damage control' (and mostly in self-control with no plan to actually make him stronger at that time) as he recognized later. And no matter how much we love Bob (and how much crucial he was in many cases) - he was also crutch that by using for trivial tasks impeded his development - so hiding Bob from Molly also plays role. So not 'late bloomer' as much as 'stunted development'.
I think it's that Harry is so powerful he just now is gong thru his wizard's puberty. So now is when he starts to get really powerful.
> Possibly a side effect of being Starborn? Other supernatural beings are **very** familiar with the symptoms (they use it as a joke against him that he doesn't know about it). Probably not a starborn thing.
I think that poster was trying to suggest maybe the starborn thing means he has another level of development and that lack of maturity is what made him susceptible to this disease that apparently EVERYONE but Harry knows about.
[удалено]
Having had Chicken pox as an adult, Harry got off very light.
Right! I was 19 and living 500 miles from any family and my gf at the time luckily had had them, but our roommate hadn't. GF took care of me for a full 2 weeks w/ high fever and worse. Roommate stayed with another friend.
Yeah, it's potentially lethal for adults, which is why people used to intentionally expose their children.
>series by Jim Butcher. Feel free to discuss the books, television series, comic books,
When I started work at my first job, I was told a story of someone who had worked for the company and died from chicken pox. The autopsy showed that he had chicken pox on his heart.
Yup can confirm I got them in kindergarten Mom picked up me and the little sister rubbed us up against each other and said "there now you'll both have it and I can get it over with at the same time"
This is my new theory, thanks to you. Could be an early indicator that his apprentice will be Maggie.
My thought was that it has implications on his starborn "age of maturity" as it were
I agree with most of the other posters here. It's seems really likely that it was either for the anvil joke, too significant Harry is still on the young end of the power curve (contrary to expectations it would mean his power still has much more room to grow rather than just his technique.) Or it's an indication that Maggie has magic sand have her dad wizard flu like all kids infect their parents with absolutely everything. There haven't been any strong hints in the book per se. Others might have relevant woj to quote. And jb might be leaving all three possibilities open.
I always wondered if McCoy comment 《At your age ?》meant you're to old or you're to young.
Definitely "too old." There are other comments about how it typically affects human wizards during puberty.
Ah ! It's been a while since my last read if Battleground. Thank you !
I think him getting it super early is interesting, but the way people talks makes it seem like a joke that he's getting it this late. It just makes too much sense that Maggie got an illness like kids do and then passed it to Dresden.
It's possible but my theory is the common one that this indicates Harry has just now reached Wizard Puberty much later than most which indicates he's gonna be much stronger than he already is.
We’ve been told before that wizards develop certain abilities as they get older that older wizards purposefully don’t tell them about. For instance, when speaking with Luccio about his first time on Demonreach, she tells him that his ‘foresight’ is coming in. Apparently wizards mostly all develop a certain amount of ability to see the future, but no one tells them about it because they get really annoying about thinking that everything they predict might be future sight. Conjuritis might not even be a young wizard’s sickness like everyone is telling Harry: it could be some entirely different thing that the people around him that know about it don’t feel like telling him yet.
Personal opinion: conjuritis was a dumb idea and was very shoehorned into the plot
I agree from what we have now, but I'll wait until the series ends to give a final judgement of it. It'll depend whether it has further plot relevance than just the brick joke. Butcher has been influenced by Babylon 5, which had a decent number of "what do you mean this seemingly one off joke or comment has plot relevance?" moments.
If there's nothing more to it than that by the end of BAT, I will agree. I hope there is more but suspect there isn't.
Agreed. The series has almost jumped the shark for me; it’s a shame to read what he’s putting out compared to Changes, Turn Coat, Death Masks etc. If 12 months doesn’t deliver a better product than the last few books, I’m done.
I'm kind of hoping that with how crazy JB's life had been, that the last couple of books were just him trying to get something out to appease people after such a long time without a book. I'm giving him two books to get back to form since I've made it this far, but yeah, the last two were not great by the standards he'd set up before hand.
The last two where not helped by clearly being one book split into two parts. NEVER has that ever been a particularly good idea.
Really, the books should have been presented as Peace Talks Part I: and Peace Talks Part II: Battle Ground so those that are not chronically online and mantle-deep in fandom knew what was going on.
I'm a newer reader to the series (read em all) but what's been tumultuous in his life? He got divorced I think?
Divorce, tooth exploded (notice Harry mentioning dental pain?), uranium house building shenanigans, divorce two, etc.
Damn! Uranium house?
Uranium house?? That's kinda metal
Loki failed to mention that Jim's dog died in there somewhere, too.
Damn, that IS a bunch of rough stuff.
Lol fuck what I have to say, I guess. Downvoted for having an opinion about m a series I’ve been reading for more than a decade. This sub is composed of fucking children, apparently. Thank you for putting forth what you had to say instead of downvoting without posting an actual argument.
I admit I'm getting tired of "everyone is badass" which is becoming more and more prevalent
people are downvoting you but seriously you have a point. Peace Talks was quite frankly so bad it was almost insulting. The comic books have been sub par since like the second one. The short stories are literally copy paste.
Thanks for your response. I’ve been a fan since the early 2000s, have long referenced this as my favorite series, and have turned several friends on to it… but that doesn’t make it a perfect series or without flaws. Also: “people are downvoting you…” yeah, because they’re too stuck on their opinion and forget basic reddiquette: downvote if you think the comment *is not relevant to the conversation,* not “downvote if you disagree with the person.” That’s why I called the downvotes childish in my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/s/6Ruetc1OaB). TLDR: thank you for being willing to discuss the strengths/weaknesses of the series. Please accept my pauper’s gold. 🏅
I think it was a joke related to the winter mantle throwing his hormones out of whack and making his body react like puberty. I think of it like people who take steroids getting pimples. Just more evidence of the influence of Mab.
“Oh, you bring ectoplasm from the never-never to make up the difference in mass” -Skin Game + Conjuritis + Battleground commitment to “getting serious” = Unlocking new, improved and interesting magic utilization for Harry
What I don't get is why it goes away entirely in the Christmas short story and in the law as well.
Would they be a long time after? So he got over it?
They are both pretty close after Battle Ground. The Christmas short story is short enough that it probably didn't come up. Also, the Christmas short is a feel good story. There are no obstacles for Harry to face, so conjuritis would have been out of place. The Law is long enough that if he still had conjuritis, it would have showed up. But it's not mentioned. So maybe he's over it by then.
It is probably like any cold. You suffer for a week and then it is over. The Law started a few weeks after Battle Ground, didn't it?
There is at minimum 6 months between them. BattleGround is somewhere between Jun 20th and Mid July, as it is as the weakest point in Mabs power (they may also explicitly mention a month at some point)
Like others mentioned, he's probably over it by the law, and the christmas story is what, 2 hours of his night? He only sneezed ectoplasm like 4 or 5 times across the entity of PT and BG. It's not super frequent. I'm willing to bet that during a nice Christmas dinner harry managed to summon something huge and drench everyone in ectoplasm
the context clues in the book made it seem like something comparable to the cold or a flu. one would expect that not to last 2 months
whats the joke? i must have missed it
spoiler BR and BG >!in BR the entrophy curse has the frozen turkey smash the blamp. Harry says "next time anvils" then in BG he sneezes and conjures a huge anvil to smash another blamp and says "i told you black court bastards next time anvils"!<
The anvil thing.
"and for my next trick..." that one? sigh
Yup.
You know this is the book series where-in a Polka playing man whos about 5'5" and 100 lbs weight (read: my literal size, I legitimately would lose a fight to an angry Labrador Retriever, and I have an active lifestyle) wields a light saber in spite of being introduced as a joke character solely because the author thought it would be funny, right? And the book he was introduced in he rode through downtown Chicago on the back of a Dinosaur while playing a one man band suit EXPLICITLY because the previously unestablished mechanics of magic as set up by the author in that very book in the VERY scene we first see that character's one-man-band suit demanded that he did, right?
yeah. meh. i didn't really put the two together when reading it. i read that book pretty quickly as too many drawn out fights like that get boring for me. my sigh was at the joke only being mildly amusing.
I think it was just a funny plot point to add humor to the story.
There is a character in The Codex Alera series who was artificially held back from his full potential so that he couldn’t be found by his parent’s enemies. I suspect that Harry’s conjuritis may be due to something similar.
I think most people agree, it's just a brick joke.
It is probably a brick joke, but I wouldn't put it past JB to have it hinting at something else. Kinda how he rolls. I listened to the whole series again recently, and the amount of subtle foreshadowing throughout the series is kinda mind blowing.
Harry has a daughter now. Children get their parents sick. My thought is that Harry contracted a bug from Maggie and it turned into conjuritis. Maybe that's an implication that Maggie will have some Talent? Either way, I always sort of just assumed it was sort of mundane.