For so long as we will bear in mind, we’ve been fascinated by the spell Flipendo, now often known as the Knockback Jinx. It’s such a foolish incantation, and it stored showing in all of the Harry Potter video games we performed — although not as soon as in any film or guide. Each time it confirmed up, we had just a little sense of pleasure in recognizing it, as if Flipendo was our personal private spell that had grown up and began spreading across the Wizarding World. Sooner or later, we determined to take a seat down and monitor the historical past of Flipendo; here’s what we discovered.
The primary look of Flipendo was in 2001 within the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone online game. In it, Professor Quirrell teaches Harry this spell in his first Protection Towards the Darkish Arts lesson. Flipendo is used to assault enemies and push objects, equivalent to blocks, which Harry can climb to succeed in greater locations. However that was just the start. The next 12 months, Flipendo made it into the Harry Potter Buying and selling Card Recreation within the Diagon Alley extension pack — it’s clear that the spell had made an affect. From then on, the spell continued to look in lots of video video games, together with the Lego diversifications.
Quickly sufficient, because the spell grew to become an increasing number of well-liked, a idea began to kind within the Potter fandom. Many followers began associating the Flipendo incantation with the Knockback Jinx talked about within the books. We had by no means heard the Knockback Jinx’s incantation, and seeing as its results had been the identical as Flipendo (which didn’t have an official spell identify), who’s to say that they couldn’t be one and the identical? This idea grew to become so well-liked that even Pottermore indicated that Flipendo was the Knockback Jinx’s incantation on its record of spells. Nonetheless, the time period Flipendo had not but been utilized in any official Harry Potter publication… however that was all about to vary with the Wizarding World’s enlargement into a brand new medium.
In 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster got here out. In fact, the canonicity of this play remains to be a hotly debated topic amongst Potterheads, however you possibly can’t deny that it was no less than an author-approved story. In a duel between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, Flipendo lastly reached canon:
DRACO: Flipendo!
HARRY is distributed twirling via the air. DRACO laughs.
DRACO: Sustain, outdated man. (CC 130)
As of that second, Flipendo grew to become as official as a spell could possibly be. It began showing in additional video video games, equivalent to Harry Potter: Hogwarts Thriller, the place it was recognized as soon as extra because the Knockback Jinx’s incantation, and in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the place gamers used it very often when battling Confoundables. Increasingly more fashionable followers, who hadn’t identified the spell’s glory age within the early 2000s, bought to be taught all about Flipendo via these new video games.
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Enjoyable truth: Do you know that each occasions that the Knockback Jinx is used on Harry within the novels, he had simply known as the caster a coward? The primary time is when he confronts Snape, who’s working away with the Loss of life Eaters after Dumbledore’s demise. The second is throughout his confrontation with Lupin in Grimmauld Place, when Harry calls him out for desirous to abandon his spouse and future baby.
So what can we be taught from Flipendo? Nicely, we be taught to not take ourselves too significantly. We be taught that we matter, regardless of our origins. And most significantly, we be taught that typically, all we want is just a little push.
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