Yes in canon transfiguration is definitely permanent. I just like the idea and think it would have been elegant if it wasn't, that's all.

 

I think that permanent transfigurations make it really hard for any balanced interpretation of the wizarding world to exist. Why struggle to buy clothes when you can transfigure them? Why can’t any wizard live extravagantly when all it takes is a flick of a wand to make the most elaborate decor?
I might get flamed for this but MoR’s interpretation transfiguration makes a lot more sense than canon with the whole temporary transfiguration. To be fair I’m not sure if JKR ever really thought about it, but it does make the hp world seem more surreal.
If it was like MoR she would have never needed to make the device that was Gamps laws. She needed to justify why they couldn’t just transfigure food on the run so that tensions would escalate between Ron, Hermione, and Harry. That’s the only reason she came up with them.

Instead of that inelegant solution just making each tranfiguration temporary makes a lot of sense.

 

Remove magic from this and it's easy to see the fault. Why struggle to buy clothes when you can make your own, why not make your own high quality furniture? Or do quality DIY.

 

Easy @Donimo it’s easier to conjur a robe than diy. DIY is neither convenient nor does it usually give good results while conjuring can.

 

Source?

 

I’m making an assumption that one can transfigure a damn robe after Krum transfigured his head into a shark in GoF.

 

Krum was a Triwizard champion it makes sense that he would be significantly more talented than the average student. So more likely to be able to do much more impressive magic.

 

Just like real-life humans, most wizards are mediocre and not very talented and/or hard-working at most things. A better explanation than MoR's temporary transfiguration explanation that, IMO, takes much of the wonder out of HP.

 

I assume if transfiguring animals is a standard on OWLs which any qualified wizard has passed then they can transfigure a robe. You’re overestimating the difficulty of transfiguring robes.

 

Firstly, there's no indication that "any qualified wizard" has passed their Transfiguration O.W.L. Indeed the opposite seems likely: most wizards probably fail a number of their OWLs, and the ones they do pass are likely to be low passes, maybe doing well in one subject. This maintains the correspondence between OWLs and the Muggle GCSE exams which OWLs are modelled after, and finds textual support in the fact that most adult wizards cannot cast the Shield Charm, which is part of the Defence OWL. Transfiguration is frequently said to be very difficult, so I would expect the fail rate there to be even higher than average.

Secondly, you place too much emphasis on what it means to pass an OWL. A pass does not signify mastery. From third year exams:

Imperfect transfigurations are normal; even Hermione, a student who consistently gets Oustandings, has not completely mastered the transformations in question. So even if transfiguring robes were something that is theoretically within the scope of the Hogwarts transfiguration curriculum, you would expect maybe one student a year to have the requisite skill to achieve it.

Thirdly, there's no reason to think that animals would be easier to transfigure than robes. Indeed, from the fact that food and gold cannot be made with transfiguration, the most difficult things to transfigure would appear to be those things which are important within human society. We know from FB1 that robes can be transfigured, but I wouldn't be surprised if doing so was extremely advanced transfiguration (perhaps one of the non-principal exceptions to Gamp's law).

 

I'm more fond of the idea that the robe-changing in FB was a switching spell to swap one owned outfit for another one. Perhaps a case of un-Vanishing one while Vanishing the other. It's still Transfiguration, but considerably easier from a conceptual standpoint.

 

@Taure even if you suppose that wizards very rarely pass the OWLs it can still be assumed that transfiguring a living, breathing form of life would be more difficult than a non-animate transfiguration. Secondly, you quote Third Year Exams. That is 4 years before students take NEWTS and graduate as well as 2 years off of OWLs. If we can assume they can transfigure such small animals perfectly by graduation, a reasonable conclusion, then by the end of Hogwarts they should be able to transfigure a large in-animate object.

Anyway all this takes away from my main point that Gamp's laws were created to close plot holes and other plot reasons. It wasn't well thought out, but JKR's response to implausibilities in the wizarding world.

 

Why?

I'll throw you a bone: I agree that as a general rule, complexity is a factor in the difficulty of transfiguration. However, we don't actually know what magic considers complex, and given Gamp's law and its exceptions, clearly there are many other factors aside from complexity. It could easily be the case that those other factors combine to make robes more difficult than animate transfiguration. As I say, it's a running theme that socially valued items are more difficult to create with transfiguration, and robes being difficult would fit that.

Firstly, this comes off as being deliberately obtuse. The section quoted was just one example of a theme we see continuously throughout the books of students being far from mastering the material. See for example in the OWL exams:

Another example are the mice which are half-snuffboxes.

In fact, other than Cedric transfiguring a rock into a dog, I don't think we have any example from any student of a successful animate transfiguration. And Cedric is noted to be particularly talented. To completely ignore this running theme of imperfect transfiguration and pretend that all students master the material is wilfully blind.

Secondly, each year introduces new material, it's not like the students are sitting around practising the third year material from years 4-7.

Thirdly, most students probably are not going to even take Transfiguration NEWT. It's considered the most difficult subject; McGonagall only accepts those who scored an E in their OWL; and even Hermione was struggling with it in HBP.

A completely unreasonable assumption for the very reasons outlined above.

Completely irrelevant to the discussion of the in-universe rules.

 

@Taure What are your rules of transfiguration or your understanding of how transfiguration works if you believe that a robe which is a lot less complex than a life form is harder to transfigure. What are the other factors which make it impossible to transfigure robes?

 

@Sesc even if you suppose that it’s whimsical there is a clear progression in the books from inanimate transfiguration to transfiguring animate life forms. My point is that the complex inner workings of a living breathing thing so therefore it should be a lot easier to transfigured inanimate objects. What’s the reason for starting with transfiguring a needle in their first lesson and then moving up to animate objects? Why is that progression taking place? Maybe as the things they are trying to transfigured become more complex so do the spells.

 

By complex inner workings I mean that living things have processes they go through such as respiration and other chemical reactions which take place in their body for them to continue to live. Also, living beings have organs which are composed of several different things. For example, the brain has many different parts for it to function properly, therefore it is complex. That is what makes them complex. By contrast, a robe is just fabric that has none of these life processes taking place.

That's my view, but I understand that you think that transfiguration is conceptual as in it's hard to transfigure "life" as a concept. So what concept are the robes hard to transfigure by? It's the same logic as transfiguring a needle; the wizard or witch is transfiguring an object.