But how would that be compatible with a wizarding economy? The vast majority of the population would have to be incredibly inept for there to be a market. And a wizard's socio-economic status would be directly correlated to magical skill, which clearly isn't the case.

 

Three answers:

1. It isn't compatible. It's the biggest plot hole in HP.

2. Precisely what you said: the vast majority of people are inept. Most can't even cast a shield charm. And transfiguration is harder than Defence. We've never seen Harry cast a fully successful transfiguration. Everything he's done has retained elements of the previous object.

3. Anyway, magic fucks an economy whichever way you take it. Even if transfiguration didn't change the object fundamentally, but rather superimposed properties on it (e.g. taste, shape, size, strength, flexibility, durability, colour, texture, and so on) then for all intents and purposes you might as well have changed the object itself. Functionally there's no difference, and so your conception of transfiguration is just as incompatible with the economy as presented in canon.

 

Well, under my conception of transfiguration, functionally, there would be a difference. The quality and duration of the transfiguration (or illusion) is dependent upon power - operating under the assumption of an inept wizarding population, most wouldn't be competent enough to transfigure dress robes and maintain them.

Laws against transfiguring food, money, or potions ingredients (or really, any other good for which there is an easy and transient market) would be akin to current day anti-fraud laws, or anti-counterfeit laws.

 

Does Finite Incantatem reverse transfiguration?

So if all shops had a system by which they reversed any glamours or transfiguration on the money they receive, conjured or transfigured money wouldn't be viable.

 

Ugh, not a great definition for Finite Incantatem, there - as worded, big chunks of that are unsuported. I went there and noted that it listed the "WOMBAT" test as its source - IIRC we never got confirmed correct answers for that one, so that's not a good source.

Thinking again about this, I wonder if Gamp's Law actually says something like this: "Transfiguration is a magical discipline through which a thing can be permanently changed into another thing."

In that case, the five exceptions could include things that can only be temporarily changed into other things. But enough about that - it's just another way of stating my earlier opinion. Here's something relevant to the thread, though...Hermione's original quote about food:

"It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some..."

One person already quoted it, but it was sort of ignored at the time. Hermione specifically mentions that you can't create "good" food out of nothing. To me this implies that you can create food that is not good for you. This could mean that it has no nutritional value, or it could mean that transfigured/conjured food reverts back or disappears.

 

It's a sensible interpretation, but there is a problem: at the time, they were arguing not about a lack of sustenance, but about how crap everything they cooked tasted. If they could create good tasting food that had no nutritional value, you'd think that they would, and then mix the real food in with it. So the fake food would be just for flavour.

That said, the above practice is kinda supported by the fact that we saw Molly pour a sauce out of her wand.

 

Question:
When Malfoy was transfigured into a ferret, was he completely identical to any other ferret in the world?

The ease with which Moody/Crouch was able to transfigure him back to human suggests that: (1)he was inherently different from other ferrets in some way, or (2)any ferret (or other woodland creature) could be easily transfigured into a wizard.

(2) seems unlikely.

 

That the metals inside my body were created in a star does not make them a star now, but the fact that they are not a star now does not change the fact that they used to be one.

The fact that Malfoy was turned into a ferret does not make the ferret Malfoy, but nor does it mean that the ferret has a history which includes being Malfoy in the past.

With this in mind I see no problem in the idea that a transfigured thing is entirely that thing, and yet it can be changed back into something it was previously - not because it retains properties of that thing, but because it is linked to it spatio-temporally.

Or something.

 

One question: Does you hand stink after you use it to pull things out of your ass like that?

 

My thoughts
Love in its magical sense is impossible in all ways. However in the biological sense probably but it would take a highly complicated spell and great deal of scientific research to figure out the triggers in the body.

I agree with self-sustaining life cannot be created through willful acts of transfiguration/use of magic. Ashwinders though are born from magical fire and do reproduce but those fires are no longer controlled, so its safe to say life cannot be made by any human magic that is within one's power.

Food, its certainly possible to conjure food and it would be nutritious I bet. However I bet its suggested that you don't do it. Imagine eating conjured food for over a year that has a life span of 2. What happens when the magic holding that food together, which has been processed and converted into the stuff you body, finally expires? Part of your body would just disappear. As for water, I bet that spell summons it from the environment or because its such a simple composition (two hydrogen and one oxygen) its a permanent conjuration.

Money, while not impossible not suggested either because it would literally break the economy of any nation or the world itself. If the philosopher stone was used to mass produce gold... You get the picture.

Knowledge, another impossible, unless you were to alter how the universe works creating and conjuring knowledge should be impossible, same goes for creating non-real concepts through conjuration like trying to create something that would work only in 2D world in a 3D world. You could use magic to gleam or study and develop knowledge that already exist but hasn't been discovered.

That's my idea anyways.

 

You assume conservation of mass with the star analogy. But:

Malfoy = 7*10^27 atoms.
Ferret = 7*10^26 atoms.

Where do the extra atoms go? And conversely, how is the atom deficiency satisfied when Ferret reverts back to Malfoy?

Therefore, analogy doesn't work.

 

Nothing so scientific. Just that an object has a certain narrative to be told of its history. "The ferret used to be Malfoy" does not entail any kind of conservation of mass.

 

A wizard did it.

 

Doesn't McGonagall conjure a pile of sandwiches for Harry and Ron in second year after they crash the car? She doesn't want them going back to the feast because it would look as though they weren't being punished, but she also wants to feed them. So she conjures sandwiches.

I'd say it was a switching spell, but there is only one object involved, the platter of sandwiches. Another problem is that if it were a switching spell, the sandwiches would have to exist already. As far as I know, the house-elves do not include sandwiches on the Hogwarts Opening Feast menu, and to have them made specifically for Ron and Harry and ready, either before or at that exact moment, suggests a level of orchestration between McGonagall (not even Dumbledore, the functional elf-master) and the elves that is rationally impossible. Furthermore, for a switching spell to work presumably the wizard must know where both objects are to begin with, which again, would be impossible because that means that McGonagall had the sandwiches made, knew exactly where in the kitchen they were, and was able to switch them with a certain amount of thin air or "non-being", but this poses another problem. When wizards apparate, there is usually a crack of displaced air. Nothing like this occurs in the case of the sandwiches. Even if the air and the platter of food have the same mass, because of the fundamental atomic/physical difference between air and food, they would not have the same density or volume, and there would still be a loud sound of air displacement. Therefore we must assume that McGonagall has effectively conjured food. Not like, conjuring an animal and killing it. Fucking sandwiches.

This makes Gamp's law either a retcon, a legal guideline, general difficulty, or as Taure suggests, a moderately accurate view providing a general scope of what the average wizard to able or unable to transfigure. I doubt a legal guideline, as none of the trio seemed overly concerned with the legality of their actions in DH (Hermione especially).

It's probably a poorly-thought out retcon, which goes against previous canon, like the Trace.

Assuming that it isn't, then it is simply a combination of difficulty and the general flexibility of magical 'laws'. It'd be more accurate to call them magical theories (even 'theory' is stretching it, since theories can be experimentally proven). They are generally true, and empirically proven laws, because no one has broken them yet, but wizards like Dumbledore, Voldemort, McGonagall, Flamel, etc., who have sufficient mastery, are able to bypass these laws. I think it would be better to assume that in relation to Gamp's law, 'exception' doesn't mean something can't be done, so much as that it would take a hitherto unseen magical breakthrough to do so.

Having agreed with Taure on that point, I'd say that it establishes the simplest, and therefore best, explanation simply as the difficulty of that branch of magic. The logical explanation, which is backed up by canon, is that is extraordinarily difficult, indeed nigh impossible, to conjure/transfigure food, or even large enough game to eat. It is impossible to create gold and biological immortality, unless on has the aid of the stone.

At DLP, a lot of people (myself included) use the argument, "because it's magic." The reason this particular principle is giving us problems is because JKR broke that rule. The very existence of a "Gamp's Law" contradicts the notion that magic cannot be governed by law. To say that the exceptions to the law are justified by it being magic goes against the nature of that logic, because magic is an entity of exceptions. Magic is, by definition, an exception to the laws of reality. Ideally, and technically, there shouldn't be any 'laws of magic', and we see that wizards like Voldemort, Dumbledore, and Snape are, in fact, able to push these boundaries past what was previously thought possible. As open-minded as wizards are, you'd think they'd have given up on 'laws' of magic by now, having seen that virtually anything is possible with magic, if you're good enough. Wizards have an awful lot of preconceived notions, and it's important to remember that there were probably a great deal of laws like "Gamp's Law" which were probably discarded as untrue or obsolete after Voldemort/Dumbledfore showed up. Even Dumbledore could barely conceive of seven horcruxes, or of a seemingly alchemical process to create a body/homunculus (GoF), and dude was a master alchemist.

tl;dr:

1) Fallible law (anything is possible through magic/if the wizard is skilled enough)
2) Retcon/plothole
3) Transfiguration is hard

 

Ah, advanced summoning and banishing. I had forgotten that particular instance in HBP.

 

The parciality of the transformation does not indicate a failure of his part. His intention was just change his head so he could breath underwater and still be able to use his wand to revert the transformation himself. It doesn't serves as evidence of the difficulty of such magic. A complete shark would not do much good in the hostage rescuing department.

 

I would agree with everything except the Dumbledore bit. I maintain the elder wand allows you to do the seemingly impossible like fixing a clearly broken beyond repair wand with a very simple charm.

 

So... Mcgonagall can summon a plate of sandwiches but Dumbledore needs the elder wand to to pretty much the same?