Harry Potter and the Poorly-Conceived Magic System

[quinron]

With Fantastic Beasts about to premiere soon, the Harry Potter brand is getting some steam rolling again. As someone for whom the series served as a gateway to more complex fantasy, I've been scrutinizing the Potterverse's magic system lately, and... it's really bad. Mind, I don't think the Harry Potter books are bad, but with the adaptation of Fantastic Beasts, it seems to me that Rowling has plans to turn this into a proper franchised setting - or at least the executives plan to. I'm just not sure the world as it exists will be able to support an expanded universe.

Some questions I came up with off the top of my head:


How are magic items made magical? Did Gryffindor charm his sword? We've seen that horcruxes like Voldemort's diary can become magical items; does that mean Gryffindor's soul is in the sword?
What's up with the Sorting Hat; how does it read people's minds? Can it read minds for the purposes of anything other than sorting students?
Parseltongues are "usually evil"; Harry's thought to be an exception, until it turns out he got that ability from his magical bond with Voldemort. Why is that? Snakes aren't evil. Are there other animals you can talk to other than snakes? Are there names for those other languages?
What's up with ghosts? Can a ghost move on to the afterlife, which we know exists? Can a dead person choose to come back as a ghost after having been dead for a while?
Phineas Nigellus in the Order of the Phoenix showed that the people in magical portraits are able to travel between portraits of themselves - does that mean the portrait-man on the other end just disappears, or is he wandering some kind of nether-zone between the paintings? If discrete versions of the same portrait-man do exist, do they develop distinct personalities and memories based on their individual experiences?
Is potion-making a form of hermetic magic, or is it just cooking/chemistry with fantastical ingredients? We know love potions exist - how do you make yourself the target of a love potion? You don't do it as part of the brewing process, otherwise the love potions Fred and George sell at WWW wouldn't have any effect. What's going on with Felix Felicis - is it affecting the laws of probability, or does it grant you subconscious omniscience?
Are there "sorcerers" out in the world - people born able to do magic but who didn't get school training in it? Does every nation/region have schools of magic that are able to accommodate every single student who needs to learn magic? Are magic schools always free of charge, as Hogwarts seems to be?



And more. Now, I'm sure some of these have been answered by Rowling at Pottermore (wouldn't know; I've not kept up with the fandom), but I can't imagine all of them have, not to mention my hundreds of other questions. Does the Harry Potter universe have a fixed set of rules, or did Rowling just come up with new ideas and implement them as she wrote? If the latter is the case - as I surmise to be true - will we be given explanations in additional materials? Most importantly, is a universe where the default answer to any question is "A Wizard Did It" going to to be sufficient to support a whole franchise instead of just one series?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

How are magic items made magical? Did Gryffindor charm his sword? We've seen that horcruxes like Voldemort's diary can become magical items; does that mean Gryffindor's soul is in the sword?
Items are charmed, becoming magical. The normal enchanting process is best shown when the twins are creating their own merchandise. Gryffindor partially charmed his sword (at the very least, to come out of his hat when a true Gryffindor needed it), but much of its powers are due to Goblin manufacturing, not Gryffindor enchantments. Not everything is a horcrux, and most definitely you do not need to sever your soul to charm an object. In fact, the idea that you would confuse the two is baffling.


What's up with the Sorting Hat; how does it read people's minds? Can it read minds for the purposes of anything other than sorting students?
Unexplained


Parseltongues are "usually evil"; Harry's thought to be an exception, until it turns out he got that ability from his magical bond with Voldemort. Why is that? Snakes aren't evil. Are there other animals you can talk to other than snakes? Are there names for those other languages?
No, they are not "usually evil". Sllytherin and Voldemort being famous parselmouths has not helped matters, but other than prejudice, nothing indicates that parseltongue makes you evil. Books are silent on similar abilities towards other species.


What's up with ghosts? Can a ghost move on to the afterlife, which we know exists? Can a dead person choose to come back as a ghost after having been dead for a while?
From Nick's explanation, you chose at time of death, and are stuck forever after that point - but there might be spells that might change that.


Phineas Nigellus in the Order of the Phoenix showed that the people in magical portraits are able to travel between portraits of themselves - does that mean the portrait-man on the other end just disappears, or is he wandering some kind of nether-zone between the paintings? If discrete versions of the same portrait-man do exist, do they develop distinct personalities and memories based on their individual experiences?
There is no portrait-man on the other end.


Is potion-making a form of hermetic magic, or is it just cooking/chemistry with fantastical ingredients? If it's the latter, then how is a glorified chemical solution able to affect the laws of probability?
Magic is involved, even if there isn't any foolish wand-waving, since the magic is present in the ingredients themselves, and modified by how they are picked, cut, cooked, etc.


Are there "sorcerers" out in the world - people born able to do magic but who didn't get school training in it? Does every nation/region have schools of magic that are able to accommodate every single student who needs to learn magic? Are magic schools always free of charge, as Hogwarts seems to be?
See: Haggrid for first two books. There are other schools. Not all need to be free, but many do seem to be run by governments.


Does the Harry Potter universe have a fixed set of rules, or did Rowling just come up with new ideas and implement them as she wrote?
She had vague ideas of what can and cannot be done with magic, and added to them as she went along.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that all these questions need to be answered before creating a franchise. I cannot imagine why you'd think that would need to be the case. You are giving them way more importance than they have.

Grey Wolf

[quinron]

It's not that I feel these questions all need to be answered; indeed, you pointed out how a few of them have been answered, sometimes in the text. These are just a list of things that damage the books' verisimilitude for me. When you're writing a self-contained series, the occasional inconsistency is pretty innocuous; it comes up once, it passes, and it doesn't really affect the plot. But if you want to establish an expanded universe, you need to be able to dictate what can and can't be done. My problem with the development of the series is that, as you say, Rowling simply added to the magic system rather than refining and clarifying it.

To address some of your points:

I wasn't under the impression that Gryffindor's sword was a horcrux. But the sword and the Sorting Hat are both clearly powerful magical items, more so than the typical trinkets, and I simply meant to posit that a personal spiritual investment could make something more powerfully magical based on the knowledge that investing a portion of the soul into a horcrux is able to make it magical. Not necessarily tearing a piece of your soul off, but possibly bestowing a portion of your spirit into it on death? It's a wild guess.

Phineas Nigellus states explicitly that he travels between the portraits of himself at Hogwarts and Grimmauld Place. As evidenced by Seamus's surprise at Dean's football poster not being animated, it seems that wizards magically animate all portraits and photographs. If portrait-people are able to travel between paintings of themselves, this requires that there be another portrait depicting the same subject, but this also means that there would, logically, be two copies of the person depicted in the painting. We have no explanation for what happens to that second person. Unless I'm missing something and it's been explained that anyone who has been painted can't be painted again, which I would accept.

Hagrid doesn't perform "sorcery" in the first two books; when we see him casting spells, he's using his umbrella, which contains the broken pieces of his wand. Presumably this is why his spells tend to be a bit unchained. We never see an adult wizard doing wild magic - the closest we get is a handful of wizards who can cast spells without a wand, but they're spoken of as if they learned to cast with a wand and eventually developed the ability to cast the same spells they would with a wand empty-handed.

In fact, after a wizard has learned to cast with a wand, breaking their wand is a form of severe punishment (see Hagrid), viewed as tantamount to cutting them off from the use of magic entirely; Hagrid's hidden wand is treated as the sort of secret he could face serious punishment for, and Ron's problems with a damaged wand in book 2 indicate that attempting to cast using a damaged or broken wand is irresponsible at best and more likely incredibly dangerous. But as children, wizards are able to do magic - albeit unpredictable magic - without a wand, and Harry's mishaps with wild magic seem to imply that strong emotion can cause spontaneous wild magic; wouldn't taking away the magical focal point of a deranged criminal like Barty Crouch, Jr., only make him more dangerous? It's possible there's a point at which wizards lose the ability to perform wild magic, but it's not immediately when they start wand-casting; Harry's incident with Aunt Marge proves as much. We're given just enough insight into the magical development of wizards that I'm left with more questions than answers.

Wands also raise a series of further questions: Since wand making is a profit industry, how is the wild magic of poor children who can't afford wands controlled? Are there wand subsidies provided by the government for this need? If so, where does the government get money? And are they also subsidizing the education of every single wizarding child and the salary of every school teacher? I don't remember hearing about wizard taxes, presumably because that's not very interesting or useful for the story, but we know that Harry had a massive income and won a large amount of prize money in book 4; was any of that taxed? More importantly, what do wizards do for a living? We've seen that there are Ministry jobs in administrative government and law enforcement, as well as retail, entertainment, and other businesses, but what do the lower and middle class do for a living when most of your problems can be solved yourself with magic? Consider Lupin - we're introduced to him as a newly hired teacher, but unlike the other DADA teachers whose previous careers we know, we're given no indication of what he was doing for a living before he came to Hogwarts or what, if anything, he does after he resigns.

A lot of these questions are boring; they're about day-to-day life, which doesn't make for good stories. But they're the questions you need to answer if you want to go from "self-contained linear story" to "expanded universe meant to be used as the setting for a variety of new stories."

[Gnoman]

I wasn't under the impression that Gryffindor's sword was a horcrux. But the sword and the Sorting Hat are both clearly powerful magical items, more so than the typical trinkets, and I simply meant to posit that a personal spiritual investment could make something more powerfully magical based on the knowledge that investing a portion of the soul into a horcrux is able to make it magical. Not necessarily tearing a piece of your soul off, but possibly bestowing a portion of your spirit into it on death? It's a wild guess.


There is nothing in the series that suggests such a thing. A horcrux does not contain a soul so it can become a powerful magical item, it contains a soul fragment because that is the only purpose for it existing. Your statement is like saying "gas cans are waterproof, so we know that putting gas in something makes it waterproof, so do they put gas in rain slickers?"



Phineas Nigellus states explicitly that he travels between the portraits of himself at Hogwarts and Grimmauld Place. As evidenced by Seamus's surprise at Dean's football poster not being animated, it seems that wizards magically animate all portraits and photographs. If portrait-people are able to travel between paintings of themselves, this requires that there be another portrait depicting the same subject, but this also means that there would, logically, be two copies of the person depicted in the painting. We have no explanation for what happens to that second person. Unless I'm missing something and it's been explained that anyone who has been painted can't be painted again, which I would accept.

The very first magical portrait in the series we see, Dumbledore's Choclate Frog Card, specifically shows the image of Dumbledore leaving the picture entirely and leaving a wizardless scene behind. Several times in the series, the Griffindors are unable to enter their common room because the Fat Lady had wandered away to other paintings for one reason or another and left an empty scene behind. With the paintings of Phineas, there is exactly one image of him, and he moves back and forth between the copies of that painting. Simple as that.



Hagrid doesn't perform "sorcery" in the first two books; when we see him casting spells, he's using his umbrella, which contains the broken pieces of his wand. Presumably this is why his spells tend to be a bit unchained. We never see an adult wizard doing wild magic - the closest we get is a handful of wizards who can cast spells without a wand, but they're spoken of as if they learned to cast with a wand and eventually developed the ability to cast the same spells they would with a wand empty-handed.

In fact, after a wizard has learned to cast with a wand, breaking their wand is a form of severe punishment (see Hagrid), viewed as tantamount to cutting them off from the use of magic entirely; Hagrid's hidden wand is treated as the sort of secret he could face serious punishment for, and Ron's problems with a damaged wand in book 2 indicate that attempting to cast using a damaged or broken wand is irresponsible at best and more likely incredibly dangerous. But as children, wizards are able to do magic - albeit unpredictable magic - without a wand, and Harry's mishaps with wild magic seem to imply that strong emotion can cause spontaneous wild magic; wouldn't taking away the magical focal point of a deranged criminal like Barty Crouch, Jr., only make him more dangerous? It's possible there's a point at which wizards lose the ability to perform wild magic, but it's not immediately when they start wand-casting; Harry's incident with Aunt Marge proves as much. We're given just enough insight into the magical development of wizards that I'm left with more questions than answers.

The magic Harry did before he went to Hogwarts was completely uncontrolled. He didn't choose to do it, and the results were often only vaguely connected to the situations he was in at the time. We know from the tale of Dumbledore's sister that magic can "boil over" if it is not used, and Harry wasn't even aware magic existed at the time. Thus, Harry's pre-Hogwart's use of magic was nothing more than a force growing in him that he didn't know how to control, and that he let out reflexively. Once a wizard starts using a wand, it stands to reason that the constant use of magic prevents the pressure from rising, and the wizard will have learned enough control that it won't burst out like that anyway.



Wands also raise a series of further questions: Since wand making is a profit industry, how is the wild magic of poor children who can't afford wands controlled? Are there wand subsidies provided by the government for this need? If so, where does the government get money? And are they also subsidizing the education of every single wizarding child and the salary of every school teacher? I don't remember hearing about wizard taxes, presumably because that's not very interesting or useful for the story, but we know that Harry had a massive income and won a large amount of prize money in book 4; was any of that taxed? More importantly, what do wizards do for a living? We've seen that there are Ministry jobs in administrative government and law enforcement, as well as retail, entertainment, and other businesses, but what do the lower and middle class do for a living when most of your problems can be solved yourself with magic? Consider Lupin - we're introduced to him as a newly hired teacher, but unlike the other DADA teachers whose previous careers we know, we're given no indication of what he was doing for a living before he came to Hogwarts or what, if anything, he does after he resigns.


Neville spends much of the series using a hand-me-down wand from his father, just as Ron uses one that his brother handed down to him. Both did better once they got replacements that had properly chosen them, but the ones they had were serviceable. Ron's wand also shows that wands need replacing - he complains in the first book that the unicorn hair is almost poking out, probably why Bill got rid of it in the first place. Poor wizards probably get their wands the same way they get their spellbooks - secondhand.

The source of the Ministry's money is unknown. We know that the Malfoy family gives generous donations, but nothing other than that.

While we don't know much about Wizard careers, we do have strong indications of what job Lupin had before becoming a teacher. It is strongly suggested that anti-werewolf prejudice kept him from having one.

[Sapphire Guard]

I don't get why any of those questions are so important. They're side details left unexplained, but not inconsistencies until they're actively contradicted by something we know. None of those questions are actually about inconsistent magic.

[Prime32]

I wasn't under the impression that Gryffindor's sword was a horcrux. But the sword and the Sorting Hat are both clearly powerful magical items, more so than the typical trinkets, and I simply meant to posit that a personal spiritual investment could make something more powerfully magical based on the knowledge that investing a portion of the soul into a horcrux is able to make it magical. Not necessarily tearing a piece of your soul off, but possibly bestowing a portion of your spirit into it on death? It's a wild guess.
Most magic items seem to have at least some degree of intelligence. Wands choose their wielders, for instance, and then there was the flying car...


Hagrid doesn't perform "sorcery" in the first two books; when we see him casting spells, he's using his umbrella, which contains the broken pieces of his wand. Presumably this is why his spells tend to be a bit unchained. We never see an adult wizard doing wild magic - the closest we get is a handful of wizards who can cast spells without a wand, but they're spoken of as if they learned to cast with a wand and eventually developed the ability to cast the same spells they would with a wand empty-handed.

In fact, after a wizard has learned to cast with a wand, breaking their wand is a form of severe punishment (see Hagrid), viewed as tantamount to cutting them off from the use of magic entirely; Hagrid's hidden wand is treated as the sort of secret he could face serious punishment for, and Ron's problems with a damaged wand in book 2 indicate that attempting to cast using a damaged or broken wand is irresponsible at best and more likely incredibly dangerous. But as children, wizards are able to do magic - albeit unpredictable magic - without a wand, and Harry's mishaps with wild magic seem to imply that strong emotion can cause spontaneous wild magic; wouldn't taking away the magical focal point of a deranged criminal like Barty Crouch, Jr., only make him more dangerous? It's possible there's a point at which wizards lose the ability to perform wild magic, but it's not immediately when they start wand-casting; Harry's incident with Aunt Marge proves as much. We're given just enough insight into the magical development of wizards that I'm left with more questions than answers.There are references to wars being fought over the right of non-human species (most of whom can use some form of "wild magic") to own wands. IIRC Tom Riddle was also able to bend weak minds to his will before he was scouted to Hogwarts. I'd assume that receiving a formal magical education, along with "common sense" on how magic is supposed to work, would cause most people to lose the mindset required to perform wild magic.

[quinron]

There is nothing in the series that suggests such a thing. A horcrux does not contain a soul so it can become a powerful magical item, it contains a soul fragment because that is the only purpose for it existing. Your statement is like saying "gas cans are waterproof, so we know that putting gas in something makes it waterproof, so do they put gas in rain slickers?"

Yeah, I know it's a pretty huge leap of reasoning. It was mostly just a way to point out that we've been given no explanation how powerful items are made - at least not items as powerful as sword and Sorting Hat. And when I talk about the enchantment, I don't mean that it's a real swell sword; I mean that any true Gryffindor can pull it out of the hat, regardless of where it was last left. So that enchantment might come from the hat, not the sword.


IIRC Tom Riddle was also able to bend weak minds to his will before he was scouted to Hogwarts. I'd assume that receiving a formal magical education, along with "common sense" on how magic is supposed to work, would cause most people to lose the mindset required to perform wild magic.

If I remember correctly, Tom Riddle also talked about the wild magic he was doing as if he had a significant degree of control over it. He couldn't necessarily choose what would happen, but if he wanted something bad to happen to someone, something bad happened to them in a fashion roughly befitting the punishment he thought they should receive.


I don't get why any of those questions are so important. They're side details left unexplained, but not inconsistencies until they're actively contradicted by something we know. None of those questions are actually about inconsistent magic.

It's not that the magic is inconsistent, it's that it seems the ramifications haven't been thought through, and without a concrete rule system set out for magic when the series was less serious, its power inflated to the point that it makes the world seem illogical. And it's not that the questions are important, it's more that I have very few answers to any of them and it didn't take a lot of close scrutiny to come up with them, just a few second of thinking.

[5a Violista]

Having been a huge fan of all the books and having read through Pottermore stories and short stories recently, I believe I can answer some of these questions slightly differently from some of the other have written. I'll try to back up with sources as much as possible (but if the sources come from the books, I'm not going to include them because I can't remember which comes from which book).

*How are magic items made magical? Did Gryffindor charm his sword? We've seen that horcruxes like Voldemort's diary can become magical items; does that mean Gryffindor's soul is in the sword?
> I feel this one has been sufficiently answered by other posters. Magic items are generally made through charming them. J.K. Rowling is very much against putting part of your soul in any object, saying it is the darkest magic and is incredibly evil, going so far as to say on Twitter that the idea of anyone believing a non-vile wizard (such as Dumbledore) has put their soul in an object "is strangely upsetting" to her. Given her views on the subject, it's safe to say that enchanting an object in the Potter Universe in no way puts a part of their soul or spirit into the object. (That doesn't mean you can't enchant it to act with your personality, like the Maurader's Map, or to match your ideals, like the Sword of Gryffindor, or your skills, like the Diadem of Ravenclaw...)
Notably, both Gryffindor's sword (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-sword-of-gryffindor) is considered a magical enchanted object in the same manner as Excalibur. It was not enchanted by Gryffindor, but was "was made a thousand years ago by goblins, the magical world's most skilled metalworkers, and is therefore enchanted." So, it appears the metalworking process Goblins follow imbues it with a natural magic. Potions must follow this same principle. It appears some magical objects are made magical through charms (most invisible cloaks, most magical objects, brooms, the Sorting Hat), and others are made magical through the inherent magic in the materials and in the process. Not to mention three magical objects in particular seem to have been received from Death himself.

*What's up with the Sorting Hat; how does it read people's minds? Can it read minds for the purposes of anything other than sorting students?
> The Sorting Hat (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-sorting-hat) is also a magical object; Pottermore states that it "literally contains the intelligence of the four founders" due to an enchantment cast on it by all four of them. This does not mean it contains their spirits or souls (given Rowling's views on the matter) but it instead is an intelligent object containing a copy of their knowledge and intelligence at the time of the enchantment, maybe similar to the way a pensieve works.
It officially reads minds through Legilimency, likely meaning one of the founders was good at Legilimency and it inherited that skill when they enchanted their intelligences into it. Since it is skilled at that, it can in fact read their minds for whatever purpose if it chooses to do. (Edit: after a bit more digging: turns out it was Salazar Slytherin who was the skilled Legilimens, so the Sorting Hat gained its mind-reading powers from Slytherin. My hypothesis was correct.)

*Parseltongues are "usually evil"; Harry's thought to be an exception, until it turns out he got that ability from his magical bond with Voldemort. Why is that? Snakes aren't evil. Are there other animals you can talk to other than snakes? Are there names for those other languages?
> As said before, Parseltongues are not "usually evil" officially. It just has a bad reputation owing to be a genetic skill passed through a racist purebloodline to the most recent dark lord as well as several previous dark wizards such as Herpo the Foul (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Herpo_the_Foul). Slytherin was a dark-ish wizard but was not particularly evil; Rionach Steward and her mother Isolt Sayre (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/ilvermorny) (and her parent who likely was a Parselmouth as well) were definitely not evil. In fact, although it is somewhat magical, non-parselmouths can speak it: Ron spoke in it, Dumbledore learned it, and the Slytherin password was (if I remember correctly) always in Parseltongue. It seems like (https://www.pottermore.com/features/everything-you-didnt-know-about-parseltongue) it was just a magical connection to snakes passed generally through lineage. Some people have a natural affinity to it, but it still can be learned anyway; it's seen as evil because all the people who stick out in history are also seen as evil.
There are presumably other languages. Barty Crouch Senior is known for being able to speak over two hundred different languages (but most of them are likely the languages for magical creatures, such as Mermish or Giant or Gobbledegook...). Pretty much only those three languages were named. Presumably, the other couple hundred languages he knows also has names.

*What's up with ghosts? Can a ghost move on to the afterlife, which we know exists? Can a dead person choose to come back as a ghost after having been dead for a while?
> I also feel this one has been answered. In-universe, you make a quasi-instantaneous decision "I'm going to pass on" or "I don't want to pass on" when you die. Those who don't pass on are ghosts, probably forever (there's no statement one way or the other, which implies it's not something that happens) but there appears to be no way to come back after having already been dead.
(Edit: Except, of course, through the Resurrection Stone. That's the only way for dead person to come back, but it's not by choice. Plus, I guess, there's that weird wand-connection thing Harry Potter and Voldemort did once, where Harry Potter's wand "reversed" the killing curses in The Goblet of Fire)

*Phineas Nigellus in the Order of the Phoenix showed that the people in magical portraits are able to travel between portraits of themselves - does that mean the portrait-man on the other end just disappears, or is he wandering some kind of nether-zone between the paintings? If discrete versions of the same portrait-man do exist, do they develop distinct personalities and memories based on their individual experiences?
> The books state that that specific thing only happens with Headmaster portraits, and that there is only one "portrait-man" between the two portraits. Every other painting can move left and right or up and down to other nearby portraits, visiting them and maybe never coming back. They are enchanted that way (or the camera/paintbrush/etc are enchanted). The Headmaster portraits, of which there are only 2 frames for each portrait, are uniquely enchanted in that the headmaster can travel directly to the other enchanted frame. As previously stated, there is no other "portrait-man". If you paint a copy of another painting (besides the Headmaster ones), then you have two of those paintings and two of the characters in existence.

*Is potion-making a form of hermetic magic, or is it just cooking/chemistry with fantastical ingredients? We know love potions exist - how do you make yourself the target of a love potion? You don't do it as part of the brewing process, otherwise the love potions Fred and George sell at WWW wouldn't have any effect. What's going on with Felix Felicis - is it affecting the laws of probability, or does it grant you subconscious omniscience?
> Potion-making is probably the same as goblin metalcrafting: there is some inherent magical properties in the whatevers and the process, but there also exists some imbuing of magic (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/potions) and wandwork; officially, a muggle cannot make a potion even if they follow the exact same ingredient mixture.

*Are there "sorcerers" out in the world - people born able to do magic but who didn't get school training in it? Does every nation/region have schools of magic that are able to accommodate every single student who needs to learn magic? Are magic schools always free of charge, as Hogwarts seems to be?
> Officially, everyone who is a wizard is also a "sorcerer" according to the first part of that definition, but not all magic-users are "wizards" then. Note: Potter Universe doesn't use the same terminology as D&D. In the Potter Universe, a "wizard" is someone who is born able to do magic. A "wizard who as gone to school" is a someone who has gotten school training in controlling magic. Getting training has nothing to do with wizardry, only control. Every continent has major schools of magic and there are minor ones all around; they are probably not all free. The government-subsidized ones (like Ilvermorny and Hogwarts) are officially "free" for native citizens, and according to J.K. Rowling the British Magical government provides stipends to people who can't afford the books, etc.
However, not every country has a school. Most wizards are, in fact, home-schooled. (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/wizarding-schools) Overall, there are eleven prestigious and registered schools; one in England, one in France, one in the USA, one in Brazil, one in Japan, one in Russia, one somewhere in Africa, and the rest I don't know. All throughout Africa (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/uagadou), there's also smaller wizarding schools.

*A lot of questions about wands.
>"Wands" is a European (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/uagadou) invention (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/ilvermorny). Since the Europeans settled and/or explored most of the world, wands have likewise propagated with them. Native American wizards learned and taught wandless magic; African schools still teach wandless magic. ("The most glaring difference between magic practised by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a wand." and "The wand is a European invention, and while African witches and wizards have adopted it as a useful tool in the last century, many spells are cast simply by pointing the finger or through hand gestures.") This is also the official stance on wand-magic: "Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality. As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and Transfiguration are very difficult without one."
So, basically: wands are a channel to make it stronger and more precise, and that Charms and Transfiguration specifically are difficult without a wand (but other kinds of magic can be done without it). However, to cast magic without a wand is more difficult especially if you've never been trained in wandless magic (most Hogwarts students haven't been). Becoming a stronger wizard doesn't necessarily make you any good at wandless magic; only practicing wandless magic makes you better at wandless magic. American and African wizards have gotten good at wandless magic because they practice wandless. European wizards use the wand for everything (and can freely carry wands around, legally, unlike in North America) and so rarely have any reason to learn the skill of casting wandless.

*What do wizards do for a living?
>This Wiki (harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Jobs_in_the_wizarding_world) has made a list of the jobs stated throughout the books, movies, &c. There are several other jobs that are implied or can be inferred or that logically fit (or are logically needed).

Also, I don't think "wild magic" is a thing, in opposition to "learned magic". It makes sense that this "wild magic" is simply an unfocused application of the natural magic wizards are born with.

Although, yes: ramifications haven't been completely thought through, because J.K. Rowling is an author first. Quidditch has horribly exploitable and nonsensical rules, as do some of the other sports mentioned. Languages are also a weird one; she's not as good as Tolkien at considering the ramifications of languages. Some of the math is really off. The economy requires an unspoken illogical agreement to not exploit it. Wizards (including muggle-born ones) seem to know nothing about anything non-magical, and are canonically terrible at logic of all forms. Healing magic has absolutely no explanation on how it works, how people learn it, where they go to school, its relations to Potions, etc. Population numbers and demographics are a little wonky, and demihumans are only cursorily explained. And, worst of all, the magic seems to have been designed for storytelling purposes with things wrapped in mystery and wonder rather than gaming purposes with everything packaged and thoroughly explained.

[tantric]

simple fact, the potterverse has zero verisimilitude. for one thing, why would wizards in places like ethiopia and the congo have any interest whatsoever in keeping the secret? versus twitching their asses and saving millions of people from horrible deaths. and those native american wizards really took their genocide with a stiff upper lip. the the imperial japanese wizards, who had their thumbs up their asses while they got nuked.

don't try to think about it - just enjoy the show.

[Tvtyrant]

simple fact, the potterverse has zero verisimilitude. for one thing, why would wizards in places like ethiopia and the congo have any interest whatsoever in keeping the secret? versus twitching their asses and saving millions of people from horrible deaths. and those native american wizards really took their genocide with a stiff upper lip. the the imperial japanese wizards, who had their thumbs up their asses while they got nuked.

don't try to think about it - just enjoy the show.

Pretty much this. Harry Potter wasn't designed to be realistic, it was designed as a coming of age story. As well go putting holes in Hunger Game's economic system or Gotham's continuing population (come live in a city where thousands of people are killed a year!)

[Olinser]

How are magic items made magical? Did Gryffindor charm his sword? We've seen that horcruxes like Voldemort's diary can become magical items; does that mean Gryffindor's soul is in the sword?

Gryffindor's sword in particular is explicitly goblin made - and goblins don't like sharing their secrets.

Magic Items in general appear to require specific components and spells during their creation, not unlike potions requiring specific components added at specific conditions and times. Generalized magic items appear to be pretty commonplace (things like broomsticks or moving paintings, for instance), so for specific functions it would just be a matter of enough experimentation and study to get the manufacturing method right.


What's up with the Sorting Hat; how does it read people's minds? Can it read minds for the purposes of anything other than sorting students?

A variation of the explicit technique wizards already use to read minds - Legilimency. The spell already exists so it was just a matter of making an item that could use it properly, and enough pseudo-intelligence to parse the results. Its also completely possible that it actually holds a wizard's personality like one of the paintings.

And yes, it can read minds in general. Harry had a 2nd conversation with it in Dumbledore's office years later.


What's up with the Sorting Hat; how does it read people's minds? Can it read minds for the purposes of anything other than sorting students?
Parseltongues are "usually evil"; Harry's thought to be an exception, until it turns out he got that ability from his magical bond with Voldemort. Why is that? Snakes aren't evil. Are there other animals you can talk to other than snakes? Are there names for those other languages?

Dumbledore explicitly said that there were Parseltongues that were great and good. Probably just one of those things that gets a bad reputation because a couple well-known Dark wizards like Voldemort and Slytherin were Parseltongues.



What's up with ghosts? Can a ghost move on to the afterlife, which we know exists? Can a dead person choose to come back as a ghost after having been dead for a while?


Not a lot of info exists on ghosts, their creation, or how they can pass on. Nick gave the impression that you had to chose to become a ghost at the time of death - implying that it was just a well-known spell. As for passing on, this was never really covered.


Phineas Nigellus in the Order of the Phoenix showed that the people in magical portraits are able to travel between portraits of themselves - does that mean the portrait-man on the other end just disappears, or is he wandering some kind of nether-zone between the paintings? If discrete versions of the same portrait-man do exist, do they develop distinct personalities and memories based on their individual experiences?

We were shown several cases of portraits, including Nigellus, explicitly leaving their painting and going to a different location. They have at least some level of consciousness, as people like Nigellus were able to take in new information and understand it, like the death of one of his descendants. YMMV as to whether that means he's a different person than the original Nigellus.

Hogwarts paintings all wander freely around the castle but there is only one instance of the actual character.


Is potion-making a form of hermetic magic, or is it just cooking/chemistry with fantastical ingredients? We know love potions exist - how do you make yourself the target of a love potion? You don't do it as part of the brewing process, otherwise the love potions Fred and George sell at WWW wouldn't have any effect. What's going on with Felix Felicis - is it affecting the laws of probability, or does it grant you subconscious omniscience?


A bit of both. The ingredients are magical, but at the same time we were shown explicitly that things like preparation and mixing affected the results (Half Blood Prince adding in a counter-clockwise stir drastically changed the end result).

Love potion - the implication was that it works the same way as Polyjuice potion. The Polyjuice potion they brewed turned them into multiple different people - the original potion didn't actually turn you into anything until you added a bit of the target. Love potion presumably works the same way - you brew a big cauldron of love potion, then they individually bottled it and sold it BEFORE adding a target. So they sell a generic love potion, and you buy it and drop in a bit of your own hair to complete the potion and give it a target.

Felix Felicis - From the descriptions given when Harry took it, it didn't seem like it just made him 'lucky', but it gave the impression that he is simply able to accurately interpret factors he didn't really process before, use them to accurately predict what will happen, and act accordingly to get to his desired result. Harry was able to accurately predict the logical outcomes of everything he saw and act to achieve his desired outcome, but it didn't seem like it actually changed anything itself. For example, it feels to me like taking Felix Felicis wouldn't make you arbitrarily roll a winning number in a dice game, but it WOULD allow you to accurately predict what number would come up based on speed and angle of the roll and the surface it rolled on, and allow you to achieve the desired result by appropriately manipulating the factors.



Are there "sorcerers" out in the world - people born able to do magic but who didn't get school training in it? Does every nation/region have schools of magic that are able to accommodate every single student who needs to learn magic? Are magic schools always free of charge, as Hogwarts seems to be?


There aren't 'sorcerers' in the sense that they have different magic. Harry, Voldemort and Neville had all explicitly used magic prior to any kind of training (and in Harry and Voldemort's case, even knowing magic EXISTED).

With Harry and Neville it was unconscious, but Voldemort was shown consciously directing his powers. The Ministry obviously has a system of identifying these people, and they put the Trace on underage wizards to track them.

YMMV as to what exactly would happen if somebody refused to attend a school, but this was never shown. Since it is illegal to use magic underage, presumably it is illegal to use magic without proper training, and somebody refusing to be trained as a wizard would have a permanent Trace put on them to ensure they didn't use magic.

[137beth]

There is no portrait-man on the other end.
Just to add to this a bit more:
Portraits normally have none of the knowledge of the subject depicted in them. The portraits in the headmaster's office are unique, in that they have been taught to mimic the people they represent.
The specific image of Nigilus in the headmaster's office is able to travel to another portrait, provied that either
a)The portrait he is traveling to is also of Nigilus, and is of sufficiently high (magical) quality, or
b)The portrait he is traveling to is in the same building.


Using other examples from the series, the Fat Lady was able to travel to other portraits in Hogwarts, because they were in the same building. She wouldn't have been able to appear in the Black house, unless they had another portrait of her. Likewise, the image of Nigilus could travel to the other portrait of Nigilus in the Black house during DH, but the image of Dumbledore couldn't. Hence, Harry couldn't talk to Headmaster's-Office-Dumbledore-Portrait for most of book seven. If Harry had obtained a chocolate frog picture or something of Dumbledore earlier in DH, it wouldn't have helped him, since normal portraits of Dumbledore don't possess any of the knowledge Dumbledore had that would have been useful to Harry at the time.

IIRC, the "portraits must be in the same building" rule is one Rowling made up before the first book was published, but she didn't make explicit use of it until the seventh book.

[Friv]

Most importantly, is a universe where the default answer to any question is "A Wizard Did It" going to to be sufficient to support a whole franchise instead of just one series?

I mean, it's worked out pretty well for Star Trek and Star Wars, so yeah, I think it'll work out just fine for Harry Potter. As long as Rowling provides rough guidelines for what wizards can and can't do, which she's done for the last several books, the details and edge cases can be as contradictory as the expanded universe provides and it won't change a thing.

There'll be a handful of super-fans trying to extrapolate dozens of contradictory pieces of information into a functioning system, and most people will just shrug and say "Magic".

[Olinser]

Just to add to this a bit more:
Portraits normally have none of the knowledge of the subject depicted in them. The portraits in the headmaster's office are unique, in that they have been taught to mimic the people they represent.
The specific image of Nigilus in the headmaster's office is able to travel to another portrait, provied that either
a)The portrait he is traveling to is also of Nigilus, and is of sufficiently high (magical) quality, or
b)The portrait he is traveling to is in the same building.


Using other examples from the series, the Fat Lady was able to travel to other portraits in Hogwarts, because they were in the same building. She wouldn't have been able to appear in the Black house, unless they had another portrait of her. Likewise, the image of Nigilus could travel to the other portrait of Nigilus in the Black house during DH, but the image of Dumbledore couldn't. Hence, Harry couldn't talk to Headmaster's-Office-Dumbledore-Portrait for most of book seven. If Harry had obtained a chocolate frog picture or something of Dumbledore earlier in DH, it wouldn't have helped him, since normal portraits of Dumbledore don't possess any of the knowledge Dumbledore had that would have been useful to Harry at the time.

IIRC, the "portraits must be in the same building" rule is one Rowling made up before the first book was published, but she didn't make explicit use of it until the seventh book.

There seems to be a big difference between pictures and paintings. Pictures just seem to go through basic motions and don't appear to be capable of speech or more than moderate variance in action, while paintings appear to have a moderate level of intelligence and are capable of independent thought.

Developing basic moving pictures seems to be pretty easy (Colin Creevey talked about doing it in his first year of Hogwarts), but actual paintings seem to be much rarer and more valuable (none at the Weasley's house, for instance).

[Rodin]

I mean, it's worked out pretty well for Star Trek and Star Wars, so yeah, I think it'll work out just fine for Harry Potter. As long as Rowling provides rough guidelines for what wizards can and can't do, which she's done for the last several books, the details and edge cases can be as contradictory as the expanded universe provides and it won't change a thing.

There'll be a handful of super-fans trying to extrapolate dozens of contradictory pieces of information into a functioning system, and most people will just shrug and say "Magic".

In a lot of these cases, I think the fans put a heckuva lot more thought into it than the writers do. They come up with magic/technobabble that either serves the plot or fills in a nice bit of background atmosphere without considering the ramifications on the macro-economy of the Asian subcontinent.

Sometimes, a floating beer stein is just a floating beer stein.

[Anonymouswizard]

With Fantastic Beasts about to premiere soon, the Harry Potter brand is getting some steam rolling again. As someone for whom the series served as a gateway to more complex fantasy, I've been scrutinizing the Potterverse's magic system lately, and... it's really bad.

I agree with you here, heck I've made the point in person. Your average 'Harry Potter fan' has never read another fantasy novel (even though there's a decent number they might like, Rivers of London is close in tone to some of the books, if funnier), and so couldn't really care that there's no real limits to what magic can do (there's five things magic can't create, of which one I believe is money [which makes no sense], and then you just have 'what can this magician do?').

I on the other hand, being a supporter of Sandersonian Magic (although I'm willing to suffer softer systems if I know the limits, I love The Dresden Files [with it's outlined magic system but explicit limits vague] and Rivers of London [where I have no clue where the limits of one character are, but the story follows another character who has better defined limits]). While I can get on with someone waving their stick, saying 'incendo' or 'fuego' and summoning fire, or other specific abilities, Harry Potter has a much larger amount of stuff that might be possible but we don't know. Can I cast a spell allowing me to locate something/someone? It's not actually banned by the rules of magic Rowling has set out, and would have ended the seventh book if anybody had thought of it (assuming Voldemort didn't use the 'immune to being magically located' spell also viable under the rules we've been given). You can likely go through several iterations of this until a D&D wizard would be proud.


Most importantly, is a universe where the default answer to any question is "A Wizard Did It" going to to be sufficient to support a whole franchise instead of just one series?

I don't think it is, I really hope Rowling lets somebody else take over so that they can add in some more concrete rules. Nothing to the level of Sanderson, but to the point where I'm not just asking 'why didn't they just use spell X from book/film Y that it's established that many wizards know?', which I'm worried will come up at some point (e.g. this Fantastic Beasts film might introduce a spell that would have solved the original series back in book 5 or something).

Oh, and finally, I was all for this new film until I saw the advert. It looks like a mess, and continues 'magic is just a plot device'. I think I'll wait until the inevitable friend gets it on DVD.

[137beth]

simple fact, the potterverse has zero verisimilitude. for one thing, why would wizards in places like ethiopia and the congo have any interest whatsoever in keeping the secret? versus twitching their asses and saving millions of people from horrible deaths. and those native american wizards really took their genocide with a stiff upper lip. the the imperial japanese wizards, who had their thumbs up their asses while they got nuked.

Except it wasn't the wizards being killed off in any of those cases. There was a point in one of the books where one of the trio (I forget which, it might have been Harry) was doing a report for history of magic about witch-burning. Despite the rampant "witch burning" that muggles tried,
a)Most of the "witches" that the muggles burnt weren't actually witches, and
b)If they did capture and burn a real witch, a simple charm could protect the witch in question from harm. Protection from nuclear weapons would probably be within their reach too.

Also, the International Statute of Secrecy wasn't established until 1692, so at least some of the genocide of North American wizards occurred before then.

There's plenty of verisimilitude in the Potterverse, you just have to look at what Rowling wrote.

There is at least one glaring plot hole in the movie of Goblet of Fire which is not present in the book (it involves Veritaserum). There are a large number of online blog posts and articles which proclaim Rowling's utter disregard for consistency and point to this plot hole as "proof" that the books don't make sense. Without bothering to check the actual book:smallsigh:

[druid91]

How are magic items made magical? Did Gryffindor charm his sword? We've seen that horcruxes like Voldemort's diary can become magical items; does that mean Gryffindor's soul is in the sword?
What's up with the Sorting Hat; how does it read people's minds? Can it read minds for the purposes of anything other than sorting students?
Parseltongues are "usually evil"; Harry's thought to be an exception, until it turns out he got that ability from his magical bond with Voldemort. Why is that? Snakes aren't evil. Are there other animals you can talk to other than snakes? Are there names for those other languages?
What's up with ghosts? Can a ghost move on to the afterlife, which we know exists? Can a dead person choose to come back as a ghost after having been dead for a while?
Phineas Nigellus in the Order of the Phoenix showed that the people in magical portraits are able to travel between portraits of themselves - does that mean the portrait-man on the other end just disappears, or is he wandering some kind of nether-zone between the paintings? If discrete versions of the same portrait-man do exist, do they develop distinct personalities and memories based on their individual experiences?
Is potion-making a form of hermetic magic, or is it just cooking/chemistry with fantastical ingredients? We know love potions exist - how do you make yourself the target of a love potion? You don't do it as part of the brewing process, otherwise the love potions Fred and George sell at WWW wouldn't have any effect. What's going on with Felix Felicis - is it affecting the laws of probability, or does it grant you subconscious omniscience?
Are there "sorcerers" out in the world - people born able to do magic but who didn't get school training in it? Does every nation/region have schools of magic that are able to accommodate every single student who needs to learn magic? Are magic schools always free of charge, as Hogwarts seems to be?



Now, having never read Pottermore....


Judging by the creation of Portkey's and other such magical items, someone takes out a wand and says spells at them. Putting the spell on the object so that the object becomes the key to the spell.
Yes it can, as demonstrated in the Chamber of Secrets, when Harry put the hat on again to ask it questions and also to get clunked on the head with Gryffindor's sword.
Snakes have a long history of use alongside the Dark Arts and have largely become a symbol of such. Which personally aggravates me along with all the other "Slytherin is full of Terrible People and only Terrible People." things that were slipped into the lore.
As I recall? No. I don't remember which book it was, but I vaguely recall a conversation with Nearly Headless Nick who states something to the effect of "I was dying, and I was given a choice to go on. But I was too scared to go, so here I am." And how he sort of regrets that.
Personally I always pictured it as all the portraits of a particular person merging into one multifaceted individual. Because there ISN'T another Phineas on the other end. It's just a blank stretch of parchment when Phineas isn't in it.
Judging by the rather.... bizzare astrological requirements on some of the potions they make, I'd say Potionmaking is a form of magic. Probably the same way Polyjuice Potion worked. You brew it and THEN add the targeting data in the form of a hair or whatever. Maybe you Sigh on it. Or something? Fred and George just sold the Raw, Un-Sighed upon Love Potion. Then the customer adds the target. And judging by how Felix Felicis worked, I'd be more inclined to say the latter. A sort of guided Omniscience.
Hagrid is the typical example of such a person.


I hope that was helpful.

[Avilan the Grey]

Please don't take this the wrong way, I am not trying to offend, but:
If you have to ask these kind of questions about the Potterverse, then maybe books written about wizards for 6-15 yr olds are not your thing. Next you start asking questions about Narnia, or why Intelligent Super-eagles won't fly assorted Jewelry to volcanoes.

[Anonymouswizard]

Please don't take this the wrong way, I am not trying to offend, but:
If you have to ask these kind of questions about the Potterverse, then maybe books written about wizards for 6-15 yr olds are not your thing. Next you start asking questions about Narnia, or why Intelligent Super-eagles won't fly assorted Jewelry to volcanoes.

Yes, this is completely true. However, as the new film is aimed at adults, as soon as that comes out we can pick holes in the magic system as used there, right?

[Olinser]

Snakes have a long history of use alongside the Dark Arts and have largely become a symbol of such. Which personally aggravates me along with all the other "Slytherin is full of Terrible People and only Terrible People." things that were slipped into the lore..

It happens. Its present in several things in our world, too.

Case in point:


http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/b8/b8e77390b1a5941f7b2b882453514eaa7f93d2f69221e643af fc8a713f6cdfb8.jpg

[Sapphire Guard]

I'm still not seeing any holes in any of those questions as such, just things that are left unexplained. It's not a hole in the magic system that a story about an English schoolboy doesn't account for Congolese politics. You can think of questions off the top of your head, other people can think of answers just as easily.

For instance: Food explicitly cannot be conjured. As for the wars and genocides, you're assuming that the winning side's wizards had nothing to do with it? But we're skirting forum rules now, so best to drop the real world politics.

[The Glyphstone]

Yes, this is completely true. However, as the new film is aimed at adults, as soon as that comes out we can pick holes in the magic system as used there, right?

Isn't Fantastic Beasts also aimed at teens?

[Dragonexx]

You can't create food out of nothing. But I thought you could duplicate food that already exists?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

simple fact, the potterverse has zero verisimilitude. for one thing, why would wizards in places like ethiopia and the congo have any interest whatsoever in keeping the secret? versus twitching their asses and saving millions of people from horrible deaths. and those native american wizards really took their genocide with a stiff upper lip. the the imperial japanese wizards, who had their thumbs up their asses while they got nuked.

You might as well ask why rich person X doesn't do Y to alleviate problem Z. The question is meaningless - either they don't because of their own reasons, or they do but even with all their resources, there are still problems they cannot solve.

Also, for all you know they did help - dragonpox ain't killing muggles left and right, is it? And the number of people killed by giants must be way down since the magical population committed genocide.

Claiming that the books have "zero verisimilitude" because of things that have not been explored is shoddy argumentation. In the potterverse, it is strongly hinted that WWII was caused by wizards. Thus, so might all these other problems you brought up.

Grey Wolf

[137beth]

YMMV as to what exactly would happen if somebody refused to attend a school, but this was never shown. Since it is illegal to use magic underage, presumably it is illegal to use magic without proper training, and somebody refusing to be trained as a wizard would have a permanent Trace put on them to ensure they didn't use magic.
Hagrid was not allowed to do magic as an adult, since he was expelled in his third year. However, I don't think he had the Trace on him, since
a)Despite the ministry breaking his wand when he was expelled, he did do magic in the books (such as transfiguring Dudley), and wasn't caught. He may even have his old wand hidden somewhere, if Dumbledore kept the pieces and repaired it with the Elder Wand.
b)In the seventh book, there is speculation that Harry may still have the Trace on him after the death eaters find him the first time, but they eventually conclude that it is "impossible" to have the Trace on a seventeen-year-old.

Presumably, someone who isn't allowed to do magic wouldn't be allowed to have a wand, and the Ministry could just assume that almost anyone without a wand won't be able to control their magic in any significant way (since young Tom Riddle and Dumbledore are the only people ever shown to have any control over their powers without a wand, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement can probably assume most wizards aren't that powerful.)

There seems to be a big difference between pictures and paintings. Pictures just seem to go through basic motions and don't appear to be capable of speech or more than moderate variance in action, while paintings appear to have a moderate level of intelligence and are capable of independent thought.

Developing basic moving pictures seems to be pretty easy (Colin Creevey talked about doing it in his first year of Hogwarts), but actual paintings seem to be much rarer and more valuable (none at the Weasley's house, for instance).
IIRC, there was an interview in which Rowling distinguished between "Portraits" (which move) and "Paintings" which are like muggle paintings. I think it was in response to a question from a fan who asked her to describe the Hufflepuff common room. I'm going off my memory, though, so I could be wrong. I'll see if I can find that quote....

[Aedilred]

I don't think it's a secret that there are a number of holes in the HP universe, because it wasn't designed as a RPG setting or the like and because it was written almost entirely to serve the purposes of the story, with many details probably being made up as they went along.

I think the majority of questions about how wizarding society functions without having broken down can be answered fairly straightforwardly: wizards are not intellectually curious in the way that Muggles are. Their society is highly reactionary and growing up in an environment where "because magic" is not just a common but the default answer to any question that starts with "why" is likely to stunt their intellectual development to the point that they largely just accept the way things are without prodding at it too deeply, because everything works pretty well and they don't know that things could be different. Muggleborns have a bit of an advantage in that respect because they have probably at least been brought up in a Muggle environment where curiosity is encouraged, but they're plucked out of that education system before they've really got to grips with any advanced concepts. (This is one of the reasons that I think Methods of Rationality is better in conception than execution, because HPMOR Harry isn't a credible 11-year-old). They are still at an age where most of them will be wowed by magic to the extent they won't start poking at it. The rare exceptions, like Hermione Granger, most likely don't have the tools to exploit their situation.

For instance, Hogwarts education appears to include no mathematics except as an optional course at 13+, in a discipline apparently considered impenetrable by most wizards. We don't even know what it entails, but even assuming that it is actually some form of recognisable mathematics, wizarding students of arithmancy will still be two years behind Muggle ones (thanks to the lost years) and their education ends at 17, meaning even the best wizarding mathematicians are probably leaving school with a knowledge of maths roughly equivalent to GCSE. Most wizards will know nothing beyond basic arithmetic, if that.

And Hermione, who is probably the most intelligent witch of her generation, gets crushed under the course load when she tries even to take on all the wizarding subjects, without any Muggle subjects on top of that. Wizards who can translate thought processes and disciplines between the two worlds are likely vanishingly rare.

An idea I had was that perhaps part of the reason for the prejudice against muggleborns is that they're the ones who are constantly asking those awkward "why" questions and trying to change things. In wizarding society, change seems generally to be considered bad. Grindelwald, who appears to have been a revolutionary, is pretty much the original Wizard Hitler. Dumbledore seems to have turned his back on his youth of theorising. And because wizards are, apparently, so long-lived, that's going to make society even more reactionary. Of course, on the other hand, muggleborns also have advantages that wizard-borns don't, and may go on to be exceptional in their fields, which makes them even more dangerous.

On the question of money, firstly, I suspect the reason it can't be created from nothing is because wizarding currency is precious metal, and because the rules actually apply to precious metals rather than to money per se. If the wizards moved to fiat currency it wouldn't be a problem. Also, the entire wizarding economy is basically controlled by the goblins. It's unlikely many wizard have a real understanding of economics, so the goblins have been able to take over the money supply. But given the structure of wizarding society we probably shouldn't be looking at it in capitalist terms anyway: it's much more dirigiste than that, more comparable really to a medieval economy than a modern one. Which might also explain where the Ministry gets its money, through arrangement with Gringott's (which is not to say the Ministry probably doesn't also level taxes).

As to parseltongue, it seems that in HP-verse snakes are intelligent, which is why they have their own language. Intelligence of other creatures is not clear. Owls can apparently understand at least some English. There appear to be some magical animals more intelligent than muggle ones (Crookshansks, the rats in the pet shop in Book 3). Phoenixes appear to be intelligent, although may not have a language humans can speak. Hippogriffs appear able to understand English too.


Ultimately, though, I think to peer too closely at the fabric of the setting is to miss the point of the whole thing. Of course there are going to be inconsistencies, because it's a fictional world where rules of cool, narrative and funny predominate over consistent world-building. It's not really designed to be explored in detail outside the central narrative, or at least not on anything but a fairly superficial level. It's a story for kids and teens which can entertain adults but isn't intended to be analysed to death, inasmuch as any setting is (and I'm not sure many are, at least to the extent fans are wont to do).

[Sapphire Guard]

Even easier explanation: Money cannot be replicated because it's money and there's some magical countermeasure involved in its construction that makes it hard to replicate, similar to watermarks in etc in real world. There would be no point in having a currency if anyone could just make as much as they wanted.

There could well be elements of maths attached to various subjects like Potions or Transfiguration, that we don't see because you don't read a book about a magical academy to watch trainee magicians study maths. Ditto for other subjects.

What we get from the books is Harry's perspective. We don't get to see in detail how the overall system works because few 13 year olds are well versed in the intricacies of merchant banking.

[An Enemy Spy]

I wonder what kind of fantasy book the Playground would make if we all got together and made one to our exact standards. It would probably be very big, very detailed, and very boring, sacrificing plot for minutia and the obsessive need for there to never be any inconsistencies or details left unexplained. We'd love it, but oh dear lord would it be a mess.

[Dragonexx]

What exact standards? Everyone has differing standards on what makes a story entertaining. Some align closer to others, but I highly doubt there's one universally agreed upon on this site.

[Anonymouswizard]

I wonder what kind of fantasy book the Playground would make if we all got together and made one to our exact standards. It would probably be very big, very detailed, and very boring, sacrificing plot for minutia and the obsessive need for there to never be any inconsistencies or details left unexplained. We'd love it, but oh dear lord would it be a mess.

Dont forget that the wizard would always pull out the exact spell needed to solve the situation.

[tantric]

odd how this contrasts with 'the magicians' (tv) - they seem to have a large number of spells that are of very limited use. a spell to drive nails straight? and another to remove them? and they can't cure cancer, at all.

[Ceaon]

Your average 'Harry Potter fan' has never read another fantasy novel.

[Citation needed]

[Anonymouswizard]

[Citation needed]

[citation failed, because I realised I was extrapolating from a small data set]

I really should stop doing that, but I just can't be asked to edit the post and add 'in my experience'.

[Aedilred]

[Citation needed]

I think it is not an unfair assumption given the relative target ages of the first HP novel and most other fantasy novels. Many HP readers may go on to read other fantasy novels but I would not be surprised if for the average one it's the first one they read.

Then again I don't know what sort of currency the Narnia books or stuff like the Worst Witch has among current kids. I remember them being popular when I was young.

[Rodin]

I think it is not an unfair assumption given the relative target ages of the first HP novel and most other fantasy novels. Many HP readers may go on to read other fantasy novels but I would not be surprised if for the average one it's the first one they read.

Then again I don't know what sort of currency the Narnia books or stuff like the Worst Witch has among current kids. I remember them being popular when I was young.

This argument may have worked when the books first came out, but it's rubbish now.

The first book was aimed at 11 year-olds. Those kids, that audience...

They're 30 years old now.

[Dragonexx]

So just got back from Fantastic Beasts. Good movie, though it clearly makes you wonder how muggles aren't aware of creatures like these. Also, doesn't do much to make me think that the magic system of Harry Potter is going to be easy to make an expanded universe around.

[druid91]

So just got back from Fantastic Beasts. Good movie, though it clearly makes you wonder how muggles aren't aware of creatures like these. Also, doesn't do much to make me think that the magic system of Harry Potter is going to be easy to make an expanded universe around.

Mind Wipes galore.

There's literally a career called "Obliviator."

[BWR]

Mind Wipes galore.

There's literally a career called "Obliviator."

I have long suspected that the majority of the wizarding world works in that capacity, to the extent where you have Obliviators on constant post in certain areas and just hanging around in various intelligence agencies and whatnot, constantly mindwiping everyone who passes by.

[druid91]

I have long suspected that the majority of the wizarding world works in that capacity, to the extent where you have Obliviators on constant post in certain areas and just hanging around in various intelligence agencies and whatnot, constantly mindwiping everyone who passes by.

It is pointed out now and then that most people seem to work for the ministry of magic...

[Tvtyrant]

Whoops, thought this was Magical Beasts thread.

[Dragonexx]

Might as well be

[137beth]

I have long suspected that the majority of the wizarding world works in that capacity, to the extent where you have Obliviators on constant post in certain areas and just hanging around in various intelligence agencies and whatnot, constantly mindwiping everyone who passes by.

IIRC, on Pottermore Rowling explained that the Ministry has a division that worked hard to convince muggles that all photographic evidence of the Loch Ness Monster is fake, with some help from the muggle prime minister.

[Avilan the Grey]

I have not seen Fantastic Beasts yet, but it looks good.
As for the original topic though... A proper fantasy doesn't need a "well thought out" magic system. In fact, the "higher the fantasy" the less of it you need. Nobody asks Gandalf, or Merlin, to describe the exact spell he is using.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I have not seen Fantastic Beasts yet, but it looks good.
As for the original topic though... A proper fantasy doesn't need a "well thought out" magic system. In fact, the "higher the fantasy" the less of it you need. Nobody asks Gandalf, or Merlin, to describe the exact spell he is using.

I quite like how this question is examined in the Kingkiller Chronicles (The Name of The Wind). The world has (at least) three different magic systems: a spell-based system that obeys the laws of thermodynamics, a programming-style enchanting system that, once explained, is treated as mundane, and a "naming" magic that explicitly cannot be described. Of the three, the last one is the only one that really feels magical - the point being, the more you explain the magic, the less magical it becomes.

Grey Wolf

[Talakeal]

I have not seen Fantastic Beasts yet, but it looks good.
As for the original topic though... A proper fantasy doesn't need a "well thought out" magic system. In fact, the "higher the fantasy" the less of it you need. Nobody asks Gandalf, or Merlin, to describe the exact spell he is using.


They are different types of stories though.

Merlin and Gandalf are mysterious mentor figures.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, inhabits an entire magical world and we follow him as he goes to wizard school for seven years.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

They are different types of stories though.

Merlin and Gandalf are mysterious mentor figures.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, inhabits an entire magical world and we follow him as he goes to wizard school for seven years.

They are not that different. Gandalf, Merlin and Dumbledore fit the same mentor shape. Aragorn/Frodo, various knights depending on the story and Harry all fit the grow into heroism archetype (including having and developing vaguely magical powers that are nowhere near the level of their mentors).

GW

[Talakeal]

They are not that different. Gandalf, Merlin and Dumbledore fit the same mentor shape. Aragorn/Frodo, various knights depending on the story and Harry all fit the grow into heroism archetype (including having and developing vaguely magical powers that are nowhere near the level of their mentors).

GW

Right, but Gandalf doesn't spend eight hours a day teaching Aragorn and Frodo spells which they will use to resolve the plot, and magic is a mysterious cosmic force rather than a technology substitute which is taught at trade schools.

[The Glyphstone]

I was going to say that Merlin and Gandalf cast maybe half a dozen spells between them (most of which are Gandalf in the Hobbit)? They're advisors and mentors before they are wizards, their wizard-ness is more the resume that justifies their worthiness to be advisors than it is a tool for them to use on a regular basis.

[FreddyNoNose]

With Fantastic Beasts about to premiere soon, the Harry Potter brand is getting some steam rolling again. As someone for whom the series served as a gateway to more complex fantasy, I've been scrutinizing the Potterverse's magic system lately, and... it's really bad. Mind, I don't think the Harry Potter books are bad, but with the adaptation of Fantastic Beasts, it seems to me that Rowling has plans to turn this into a proper franchised setting - or at least the executives plan to. I'm just not sure the world as it exists will be able to support an expanded universe.

Some questions I came up with off the top of my head:


How are magic items made magical? Did Gryffindor charm his sword? We've seen that horcruxes like Voldemort's diary can become magical items; does that mean Gryffindor's soul is in the sword?
What's up with the Sorting Hat; how does it read people's minds? Can it read minds for the purposes of anything other than sorting students?
Parseltongues are "usually evil"; Harry's thought to be an exception, until it turns out he got that ability from his magical bond with Voldemort. Why is that? Snakes aren't evil. Are there other animals you can talk to other than snakes? Are there names for those other languages?
What's up with ghosts? Can a ghost move on to the afterlife, which we know exists? Can a dead person choose to come back as a ghost after having been dead for a while?
Phineas Nigellus in the Order of the Phoenix showed that the people in magical portraits are able to travel between portraits of themselves - does that mean the portrait-man on the other end just disappears, or is he wandering some kind of nether-zone between the paintings? If discrete versions of the same portrait-man do exist, do they develop distinct personalities and memories based on their individual experiences?
Is potion-making a form of hermetic magic, or is it just cooking/chemistry with fantastical ingredients? We know love potions exist - how do you make yourself the target of a love potion? You don't do it as part of the brewing process, otherwise the love potions Fred and George sell at WWW wouldn't have any effect. What's going on with Felix Felicis - is it affecting the laws of probability, or does it grant you subconscious omniscience?
Are there "sorcerers" out in the world - people born able to do magic but who didn't get school training in it? Does every nation/region have schools of magic that are able to accommodate every single student who needs to learn magic? Are magic schools always free of charge, as Hogwarts seems to be?



And more. Now, I'm sure some of these have been answered by Rowling at Pottermore (wouldn't know; I've not kept up with the fandom), but I can't imagine all of them have, not to mention my hundreds of other questions. Does the Harry Potter universe have a fixed set of rules, or did Rowling just come up with new ideas and implement them as she wrote? If the latter is the case - as I surmise to be true - will we be given explanations in additional materials? Most importantly, is a universe where the default answer to any question is "A Wizard Did It" going to to be sufficient to support a whole franchise instead of just one series?
If only people put this kind of effort into things that matter.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Right, but Gandalf doesn't spend eight hours a day teaching Aragorn and Frodo spells which they will use to resolve the plot, and magic is a mysterious cosmic force rather than a technology substitute which is taught at trade schools.

Neither does Dumbledore. And yet Aragorn and Frodo still use magic to advance the plot (using the ring, having magic healing hands and an army of ghosts).

Yet, HP is also a boarding school story, but HP does not use magic to resolve the plot, just like LotR doesn't use the magic of the ring to solve the plot. They both come down to things such as friendship, bravery, duty, etc.

GW

[Aedilred]

I have not seen Fantastic Beasts yet, but it looks good.
As for the original topic though... A proper fantasy doesn't need a "well thought out" magic system. In fact, the "higher the fantasy" the less of it you need. Nobody asks Gandalf, or Merlin, to describe the exact spell he is using.


I quite like how this question is examined in the Kingkiller Chronicles (The Name of The Wind). The world has (at least) three different magic systems: a spell-based system that obeys the laws of thermodynamics, a programming-style enchanting system that, once explained, is treated as mundane, and a "naming" magic that explicitly cannot be described. Of the three, the last one is the only one that really feels magical - the point being, the more you explain the magic, the less magical it becomes.

Grey Wolf


They are different types of stories though.

Merlin and Gandalf are mysterious mentor figures.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, inhabits an entire magical world and we follow him as he goes to wizard school for seven years.
Jack Vance and Gary Gygax have a lot to answer for.

Well, maybe not Vance. But I think the way his stories' version of magic was ported into D&D and the creation of rules surrounding it has led generations of geeks to grow up expecting magic to be fairly clearly-defined in its scope, limitations and use, and indeed to have a "system", to the point where they'll aggressively pick apart instances of magic in fictional works and then decry them if they don't entirely hold together by their standards, overlooking the point that magic is, on some level, pretty fundamentally irrational. To come back to HPMOR, I feel that touched on this point without truly accepting it, at a couple of points: Harry comes to realise that magic doesn't run entirely on the scientific rules he's used to, but remains mentally insistent that it must still run on some sort of identifiable and exploitable rules. You get the impression that the author's conclusion is not that magic is inscrutable but rather that JKR designed her magic system badly.

And there again we have the "magic system", a troublesome phrase that keeps recurring. I wonder about the correlation between fantasy, geekdom, and scientific subjects; on the Venn diagram I suspect there is a substantial overlap, and that the rational thinking processes ingrained into people so inclined leave them both fascinated by and yet on some level completely unable to appreciate the concept of magic. In fact, and while it was good fun in its early chapters at least, I can't help but feel the very existence of HPMOR let alone its massive popularity is in some way evidence that a point has been spectacularly missed somewhere along the line. To borrow a phrase from Jarrod Kimber talking about Don Bradman vs Victor Trumper, it's like asking a calculator to understand a painting. Watching Carnivale recently the opening narration in which Samson notes the day man "forever abandoned wonder for reason" holds some relevance here I think. The common reading of Arthur C. Clarke's famous phrase about sufficiently advanced technology doesn't help either, and I find myself given to sympathy with David Eddings's grumbling that sci-fi and fantasy really don't have any business being on the same bookshelf. But then Eddings was also prone to coming up with magical systems that were, if not exactly systematic, at least fully rational and explicable. (In the first case, basically psionics; in the second case, essentially asking/commanding gods or demons to carry out the caster's will). So I'm just going to throw my hands up and wander off muttering under my breath.

[Guttercleaning]

Going to Universal for Christmas. Have not been to see how improved the Harry Potter section is yet.

[Avilan the Grey]

Jack Vance and Gary Gygax have a lot to answer for.

Well, maybe not Vance. But I think the way his stories' version of magic was ported into D&D and the creation of rules surrounding it has led generations of geeks to grow up expecting magic to be fairly clearly-defined in its scope, limitations and use, and indeed to have a "system", to the point where they'll aggressively pick apart instances of magic in fictional works and then decry them if they don't entirely hold together by their standards, overlooking the point that magic is, on some level, pretty fundamentally irrational.

I must say I agree. This has lead to two differnt kinds of Magic; there is the Magic as it's used in the expression "That night was magical!" and there is the Magic as in "Is he using the fireball or the firestorm spell? The storm spell is hotter but it has no AoE!"

[Anonymouswizard]

I must say I agree. This has lead to two differnt kinds of Magic; there is the Magic as it's used in the expression "That night was magical!" and there is the Magic as in "Is he using the fireball or the firestorm spell? The storm spell is hotter but it has no AoE!"

The thing is, there's a variety in how detailed magic is. In The Dresden Files I can accept that Harry Dresden might not be able to throw a fireball as he's tired, and this has been previously established before it becomes important. I can also except that he can't magic a sword out of thin air, because he's never been shown to magic anything solid into existence. Similarly in Mistborn it's been established that when Kelsier pushes on a coin the coin flies directly away from him, but when he pushes on an anvil he might fly directly away from it. The difference between these and Harry Potter is that here I have explicitly defined limits of what a wizard can do, while in HP I am left to wonder 'why didn't they cast 'Accio Sword of Grifindor' from outside the vault.

[Aedilred]

while in HP I am left to wonder 'why didn't they cast 'Accio Sword of Grifindor' from outside the vault.

Well that at least has has been fairly straightforwardly and directly answered in the story itself: summoning spells don't work on Horcruxes or the Sword of Gryffindor. (They were in the vault to get a Horcrux; they already had the Sword). Harry attempted an accio on the locket when he was with Dumbledore, and if I remember rightly he tried one on the sword before jumping into the lake to retrieve it. Indeed, in the film, they do try a summoning spell as soon as they enter the vault, and it doesn't work.

[SaintRidley]

Hagrid's wand pieces are in his umbrella, and Voldemort's mother, uncle, and grandfather never went to Hogwarts.

Just noting that for the sake of discussion since the question was raised.

[Starbuck_II]

You know, I'm sure, there are schools that Hagrid can go to relearn magic (learn wandless magic or silent type). But he can't afford it.
Doubt he makes much as groundskeeper and he already went to Hogwarts previously so won't get free stuff/tuition for being poor.

[GolemsVoice]

At this point I doubt Hagrid even wants to learn magic anymore, he seems to be pretty happy with his job.

[137beth]

Well that at least has has been fairly straightforwardly and directly answered in the story itself: summoning spells don't work on Horcruxes or the Sword of Gryffindor. (They were in the vault to get a Horcrux; they already had the Sword). Harry attempted an accio on the locket when he was with Dumbledore, and if I remember rightly he tried one on the sword before jumping into the lake to retrieve it. Indeed, in the film, they do try a summoning spell as soon as they enter the vault, and it doesn't work.

Also, IIRC, in Deathly Hallows, Hermione points out that there is a spell which can prevent an object from being summoned (she points this out in response to questioning from Ron and Harry as to whether it was appropriate for her to summon Dumbledore's books about Horcruxes. If he didn't want her to get the books, he would have either destroyed them or made them un-summonable.)

[JeenLeen]

One interesting tidbit of world-building in the new Fantastic Beasts movie, at least to me, was when the main character mentions that muggles are biologically different from wizards. It's a small comment with little bearing on the plot (except maybe to plug a plot hole or two), but I find it really interesting as a component of the setting overall.

We know magic is hereditary, but apparently having magic makes one biologically distinct from muggles in a real way other than just being able to do magic.

This is, of course, assuming that his comment is accurate and not just his belief (cultural 'racism' against muggles is not uncommon, and misconceptions could expound from that, but the movie at least seems to show such is accurate.)
SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE

The instance I'm talking about above is when Newt is treating the muggle of the beast-bite in his lab/briefcase. It's not clear how the biological difference matters (i.e., muggles show more severe or different symptoms), but he states it nonetheless while making a salve/antidote.

Also another possible example:
Are wizards immune to Obliviate? It seems that even folk inside are obliviated during the ending sequence, but the wizards aren't.
(I'll ignore the plothole that a guy showering indoors seems to be mind-wiped, but the muggle friend/love interest isn't until he walks outside.)

[Gnoman]

:
Are wizards immune to Obliviate? It seems that even folk inside are obliviated during the ending sequence, but the wizards aren't.



To answer the question, reread the last few sections of Chamber of Secrets.

[Knaight]

Well, maybe not Vance. But I think the way his stories' version of magic was ported into D&D and the creation of rules surrounding it has led generations of geeks to grow up expecting magic to be fairly clearly-defined in its scope, limitations and use, and indeed to have a "system", to the point where they'll aggressively pick apart instances of magic in fictional works and then decry them if they don't entirely hold together by their standards, overlooking the point that magic is, on some level, pretty fundamentally irrational.
This isn't a new thing though. If you trace back actual magical beliefs that predates the modern genre of fantasy by centuries you can still see that there is often a standard there. Magic is accessed in certain ways, it can do certain things, there's a certain level of predictability to it. Some of this is the use of magical explanations for real world events that obey consistent physics/chemistry/biology. A lot of the rest is just humans doing what humans do and finding and making patterns, listening to stories and telling stories that reflect what they've listened to, etc. Some modern fantasy has a level of exactness to it that isn't generally there for real beliefs, and this probably does reflect on games as a source of material where the games are more exact by necessity (particularly video games, where magic effects have to be exactly programmed in).

The push for all fantasy to have clearly defined magic is new - Sanderson's Law gets abused a lot here and the results tend to be obnoxious - but said push also sees a lot of push back. Superhuman abilities accessed through mysticism exist alongside magic as an inscrutable thing that happens in modern literature, just as it has for a long time. There's writers along the lines of Brandon Sanderson who spend pages explaining exactly how everything works, and there's the small matter of the entire genre of magical realism which does approximately none of that.


And there again we have the "magic system", a troublesome phrase that keeps recurring.
Again though, the idea of discrete magic systems makes a lot of sense even in an anthropological context. A lot of the better examples are in religions (a lot of real magical beliefs are tied into religious figures being the ones with magic, so that makes details tricky by forum rules), but there are examples from literature. For instance in older Chinese literature dealing with magic there's often a consistent system where there are certain magical beings with certain abilities that they generally have access to and that there is some magic available to humans who achieve enlightenment and then learn particular magical abilities like a skill - to use the four classics as an example there's Sun Wukong from Journey to the West along with his allies and adversaries, there's Zhuge Liang as a sorcerer-general in Romance of the Three Kingdoms and several of his adversaries, there's multiple magical conflicts in Water Margin. There are also consistent patterns across these books and other fiction - weather control over a large area is an ability that comes up repeatedly, there's the whole concept of qi and the ways to use it magically for medicine or poisoning, there's prophecy using the same few sources.

That last one is particularly prevalent - there are a lot of cultures that came up with the idea that the future can be seen by people using certain rituals. Just about any word with the -mancy suffix that wasn't invented for modern fantasy is one of these. Pyromancy is seeing the future through fires, necromancy is seeing the future through speaking to the dead, myomancy is seeing the future by watching the movements of mice, oomancy is seeing the future by looking at how eggs break. There's a system there - certain people can do certain things with certain techniques. These particular sorcerers can turn into animals, these particular witches can mix a bunch of stuff together and use it to give a prophecy (e.g. Macbeth), this magic staff can shrink, grow, extend, and retract. Then there's magical beliefs about non-human entities, which also often fit within particular systems fairly well, although details there that don't go into religion are even harder to find.