Er, two things:

1. You never actually made any such specification. If you mean "JKR's magic is clearly a system" you could clearly be meaning wither wizardry or magic in general (and yes, it's canon fact that there is more to magic than the magic wizards use, not "a broad definition that exists outside of HP itself").

2. Even had you done so (and you have now done so), most (and by most I mean all) of my arguments still apply.

So please don't try to wriggle out of actually responding to my arguments.

 

I think I'm confused on the point of argument.
Is it that folks think magic in HP fiction should have a larger scale, or that it should have more 'bells and whistles'?

I'll try to be clear what I mean.

When the first few HP movies came out, I was jazzed by the set touches- floating candles even in Moony's DADA lab and strange artifacts stuck in every crevice of Borgin and Burkes- this made it seem like there were ten thousand stories behind every corner, because at some point a wizard (or witch) had to make each thing happen. Dumbledore raising his arms and making a feast appear was just cool. Yes it was showmanship, but at the time I didn't care whether he did it himself or he was just giving the green light for the elves to do their stuff.

So it is with the Quidditch World Cup and the Burrow and the main entry of the Ministry of Magic.

It isn't magic that makes it nifty, but the description of detail. We can come up with a .45 cal pistol with magic bullets and a magic endless supply of ammo but all that does is break a rule or solve a problem. What makes magic 'magical' is when you add in the whimsy. Why do the stairs change their position at a moments notice? Because it's funny. If you want there to be a reason you can say that they shift in accordance with astrological phenomena at an accelerated rate, so that third years and above navigate them with ease because they understand the star charts. Still funny, but with a reason. There's nothing in physics to explain why a nebula looks so freaking awesome, but it does. Nice work there, maker.

On the alternate there is Scale. One of the reasons Japanese media have such an outrageous scale in their fantasy and sci fi has to do with the generation of authors and artists that grew up in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I see it every time I watch the movie Akira- these people personally understand the idea of Devastation, horrible Mutation, and the danger of unlimited power in the hands of those too immature to handle it.

When Bobmin wrote Sunset over Britain, I wasn't impressed with the character struggles or power-ups, until Harry Warded Britain. That was scale and grandeur. It was also a cop-out on dealing with the threat directly, but it was cool anyway. That said, it really wasn't Potter magic anymore.

Maybe what is missing is people having FUN with magic. I can't remember the story, but in one HBP remake Harry visits Slughorn who describes a goldfish that he received from Lily Evans that did some special tricks, and that it turned into a lily floating in the fishbowl on the day that she died.
It was small, but meaningful. I could probably come up with some meta-babble to explain how Lily did it, but it wasn't necessary. It was plausible and poignant.

Magic may follow rules but we don't need to know exactly what they are in order to write a gripping story.

On the other hand...

You can always tell a Harry Stu fic if he breaks the rules that we DO know. No one but the Headmaster can Apparate in Hogwarts. No one comes back from the dead. Snape isn't nice to anyone. Riddle and Dumbledore are the most gifted and powerful mages of the twentieth century.

People can play within the parameters but nothing quite ruins the flavor of a Potter concoction than the addition of trump card magic.

I think we can add in the wonder without disrupting the scale of effect. Akira can stay home. Let's pull out the crayons.

 

The thing with the goldfish does not come from any fanfic, it comes from the HBP movie.
I just thought you should know that.

 

No wonder it seemed so visually stirring. Still, kudos to Steve Kloves for knowing how to keep the wonder alive.

 

"You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!", Commander Vimes, Thud!

 

Talking about the system of magic that wizards use necessitates a conversation on magic as a whole everywhere as a broad definition, does it not? If we are talking about the applications of electricity in, say, televisions, we need to know how electricity works in general and how to apply it. So, if, as Taure says, 'wizardry' is a sort of subset of all magic, then we need to understand the latter in order to talk about how it works in the former.

In my opinion, the whole idea of new inventions and areas of magic means that that subset of magic that is wizardry is slowly and steadily growing to include items that were not earlier part of it. Thus, if we can scientifically examine that particular bracket, then how does that extend to the rest of magic? Does it, too become quantifiable?

(That's not dismissing the idea, by the way - I'm just wondering...)

There was a discussion going on in another thread about how magic is imprecise, and some similar points were raised - how could we teach magic if it is imprecise, prophecies are not necessarily fulfilled in exact ways, etc. This could provide a possible solution, in that there are certain aspects of magic that interact with wizards but are not 'wizardry', and so cannot be fully understood. Perhaps these parts of magic are out of human reach forever, or perhaps they are simply not understandable right now, and future generations can extract hard facts from prophecy. (seen Minority Report?)

Edit: I missed the whole second page somehow...
Oh well. My points still stand. Also,

Lol.