This is exactly my problem. I don't want to, but from everything in canon and from interviews with JKR, this is the conclusion that I'm forced to draw. I believe I've mentioned before that I don't like that conclusion. It is easy to make the conclusion that this system is based on A-Levels because it is to an extent.

The problem arises because in Rowling's world there is nothing after. All of the jobs presented in canon do not require anything beyond NEWTs and a bit of on the job training. Her interviews where she does briefly cover the topic of what is after Hogwarts are usually short and along the lines of there isn't any schooling after Hogwarts. In her mind, it would seem that Hogwarts and NEWTs are it. It doesn't really matter how logical it is, or if she based the Hogwarts system on A-Levels or not because it is quite obvious she stops there.

 

Not entirely.

Beyond Hogwarts, there are a few indications of greater achievements that require further training.

The Aurors, in Tonks' case, took 3 more years of instruction. I don't think HK is off in comparing them to FBI, in the sense that they are elite law-enforcement. On the flipside, that doesn't mean that every Auror is a field agent. Obviously, this is an area where fanfiction can romp.

Healers looked to require advanced instruction (IIRC, Hermione considered it for a later career for the challenge)

Mastery- in Snape's case, he is afforded the title of Potions Master. (I believe Slughorn is also considered one). It doesn't seem to be a result of simply getting an 'O' on your potions NEWT. This would seem to indicate that there are either Apprentice and Journeyman paths or at least some sort of Guild that would set standards for such a title (if there wasn't, you'd just know that Lockhart would claim to be one).

As JKR was trying to meld together elements of boarding school stories with a Dickens-like 19th century charm, we can maybe accept the notion of a high NEWT score being the equal of 19th century bachelor degrees- sufficient to accredit a potential hire in their specialty.

Where Hogwarts has the biggest known library is the only reason to afford it that much weight as an educational institution. Since no adults aside from staff are seen at the school, and no Universities exist by author fiat, explorations into deeper subject knowledge become a matter of tracking down who has the books worth reading about it. This again suggests a Mastery/Journeyman model for post-Hogwarts learning.

That's my take on it.

 

Yes, but that still goes nowhere towards supporting the idea that NEWTs are anything like University Degrees. For some reason you have gotten it into your head that there needs to be direct parallels between the wizarding and muggle worlds. That there needs to be physics and logic involved in magic. There just isn't for a great deal of the time.

The Aurors and DMLE are nothing like the FBI or SWAT. Hogwarts is nothing like a University and magic is inherently illogical.

Far more likely than NEWTs being the be all and end all of wizarding performance and seeking of employment, those fields that require specific talents or expertise (DoM, teaching positions, etc) go out of their way to recruit those who demonstrate those talents or expertise.

For example, nowhere in Books 1-6 is it ever described that Harry learns how to enchant or produce magical objects in school. But clearly the twins have done the research else where in order to learn this skill by their sixth year.

The point I'm trying to make is that although there is no Magical University, it doesn't necessarily mean that Hogwarts replaces the concept. Instead it is far more likely that for certain jobs, posts or professions formal education and examination results can only take you so far and instead you are valued on a different set of criteria.

I for one refuse to believe that they allow 19 year old wizards with 'a bit of on the job training' anywhere near the DoM.

 

I disagree with this point. "Potions Master" is, I believe, a throwback to British boarding schools where the most senior teacher in an area would be called the "X Master". It still occurs at some schools. My father was the Boarding Master of a school.

But yes, Harvest King, you're making an assumption that there has to be official training available up to the highest levels of magic. I find it likely that Hogwarts covers all the basic principles you need. Once you're out, unless you get vocational training (e.g. healing, Auror training) it's entirely down to you to increase your skill and spell repertoire, based on the principles you learnt at Hogwarts.

For example, sticking with Transfiguration, I find it likely that by the end of NEWT Transfiguration, if you understand the lot of it, you know everything you need to know to theoretically Transfigure anything you want.

This does not mean, however, that you're up to Dumbledore's level. You may know the principles, but Dumbledore has a certain talent for applying them with great skill. It's the difference between someone who can tell you Schrodinger's equation and do a few simple problems with it and a physicist involved in string theory.

With Charms you probably know the general process of casting charms of a wide variety of types (e.g. casting charms on people, casting them on objects, casting them on places, etc.). But you don't know every charm there is. And some charms may be very tricky to cast, even if you know the general theory behind them.

 

This is the best thing to come out of this thread. I'm happy to accept this. It would actually make sense that the higher level magic would be more self taught considering the power such magic has the potential give you. Being able to animate every suit of armor in the castle wouldn't exactly be knowledge that you'd want everyone to be able to cast for instance. Plus, it may come down to natural talent in certain fields of magic as to if you could learn certain spells at all.

 

Judging by random references to dueling that popped up in canon, I'd guess that dueling was only outlawed fairly recently - this is conjecture on my part. The references that come to mind are:
- Draco challenging Harry to a duel in the first year. This leads me to think that high society still thinks that they are in fashion, even if illegal, think Three Muskeeters.
- Dueling club as organized by Lockhart. Again while there are some very anachronistic clubs out there, considering how popular this one was I'd say that dueling is still something considered more or less current, rather than something outlawed years ago (like say doing magic in front of muggles, which is by now an ingrained reflex).
-Flitwicks (hearsay?) status as a past dueling champion. My personal interpretation is that Flitwick was champion before it was outlawed.
-If Percy is talking about a ban in GOF than we can assume that this is current events, rather than old history.

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I'm not entirely sure that, we shouldn't throw out the idea that Hogwarts offers a complete education all together.

OWLs as far as I can tell are a requirement for an adult wizard to be allowed to "legally" do magic. They'll snap your wand if you try doing magic outside of school before getting your OWLs. They did it to Hagrid, and there was some talk about how the Weasley twins could only make a break for it because they already passed their OWLs. To me that means that OWL establish that you know enough magic to be a danger to yourself and other people. Things like you won't mispronounce a shrinking charm and blow up the store you are shopping in. OWLs don't even mean that you know how to do a shrinking charm, simply that you won't be stupid enough to try if you aren't sure you can do it properly.

NEWTs... I don't know. We don't really see them in canon, but the 6 & 7 year electives seem more like a watered down apprenticeship than regular classes. Look at Snape's approach to NEWT potions - no Outsdanding, no class. That feels more like a Master handpicking people with the aptitude for his subject, than a teacher or professor.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the only reason there isn't more personal bias for exactly which students can take which advanced courses is because Hogwarts was specifically instituded to teach everyone magic and not just the people you personally liked. I figure before Hogwarts magic was passed down in families and from Master to Apprentice. Very jelously guarded.

But NEWT's are a watered down apprenticeship - more about showing you the possibilites in several subjects than teaching you everything the teacher knows about their subject. It's not one on one instruction but still a class with a curriculum designed around what the Wizengamot or whoever designs the NEWTs wants. It's not there to help apprentices become masters, but see if they show proficiency in specific areas of magic.

I would guess that advanced magical study is still acquired either through trial-and-error or via apprenticeship. But, how many actually pursue it? By the time you have your OWLs you should be able to support yourself without having to worry about a job. Maybe you won't have piles of gold, but I can't imagine anyone who's passed their OWLs starving on the street. So you graduate and most people deal with mundane problems - like finding a girlfriend/boyfriend/sheep, touring the world, having fun, advancing their status in society, kids, dealing with bureaucracy.

Don't forget that magic is both a way of life, and just a tool. It provides for their basic needs, but they are still human with all the distractions that entails. The pursuit of magic for it's own self is limited to a special breed of crazy.

 

That's true speculation, and essentially scouring for a more complicated answer than there needs to be.

Interesting, but again I think it's overcomplicating the answer. You later concede that it has to break a single law of physics in order to work... in a roundabout way, the process might well be easier for something that taxes the force of gravity a little less.

You have acceded that matter under the effects of magic still has some relationship to a physical environment (in saying that not all physics in the universe is suspended per spell), which I obviously agree with. That said, I don't think magic suspends or disables various combinations of physical absolutes. I'd argue that the magic is an energy like any other. And it may well not be a 'lift' or a 'pull' or anything so easily defined, especially not in summary, because it serves completely different purposes per spell.

If magic is not a energy to counter the laws of physics and manipulate matter, but rather a tool to negate the laws of physics and allow matter to behave in a certain way, why is there the aspiration of magical 'power' for wizards? Surely an ability with no natural limits needs minimal power behind it if it's simply something that can disable or modify natural law? There is no extent to that practice; if magic was, in levitation, simply telling something to 'float' by switching off the thing that makes it impossible to do so, there would be a) no control over it, and b) no need for 'power' because once you can do it, you can apply that to anything without any limit whatsoever, because the fundamental laws of physics that you're suspending for these spells aren't greater or smaller or more or less true for individual matters or actions. They simply are. There is no degree to which you can remove or place a law like gravity - more or less of it is invoking forces, which is manipulation instead of negation, and requires it to obey some of its own rules.

As you said, it's conjecture, but does it not fit the Harry Potter universe better to treat magic as an energy? Or as energies? Wizards aspire to be powerful. Dumbledore for example is treated as powerful, which I've always taken to mean 'able to control or affect his environment with above-average precision, speed and quantity'. If magic isn't energy or at least a collection of forces, the 'power' of an individual is irrelevant, as is the application of that power in a quantitative sense. The word then comes to mean 'intelligence' or 'resourcefulness'... but we have clear references to a wizard's power.

If power becomes the extent to which a wizard can exert control over magical energy, surely it better supports your theory that 'the limit is not in magic but in wizards'? Magic as an amalgamation of physical and meta-physical energies that are able to, with the right force applied, counter any physical or natural law by exerting more than an equal-and-opposite reaction to whatever it is working against would explain why Seamus Finnigan's feather explodes in the first charms class (too much force), why accidental magic occurs (improperly channelled), why a broken wand can backfire spells (misappropriation or -direction of force), why someone who can do human transfiguration might not be able to become an animagus (devoid of that specific power, force or internal energy), why Harry couldn't have fought off the inferi as well as Dumbledore even if he hadn't choked (raw magical power), and why an iron ring set in concrete neither of us can envision being able to levitate independent of its immediate environment without additional power applied to also remove, accomodate or levitate the concrete too.

And, either way, if a levitation charm is just 'making this thing lift', surely one might assume a little ole physical thing like being wrapped in concrete (or embedded in mud) might hinder the success (or general sufficiency) of it slightly?

 

That's an interesting point - how much is magic like a muscle and how much it is simply a clearer understanding of the the universe and what we can do with it?

I don't remember any specific reference in canon to magical power per se. As far as I remember Voldemort wasn't looking for ways to build bigger magical muscle/reserve/whatever, but immortality. He wanted power, but mostly it was just power over other people, his environment and so on. I don't remember a specific reference to actual gimme more magic type of power.

To me this whole thing is academic, since I think it can be written both ways, or argued into being the same thing but seen from different angles. But it is a curious point - is it about having more magic power or a better understanding of how to apply the same amount of power that everyone has.

 

GL:

On the topic of "magical energy": I have argued this point many, many, maaany times. I won't tire older DLP members by doing it again. Instead, have a link:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5025577/1/Magical_Theory_by_Adalbert_Waffling

Also,

http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=9652

 

Yo, GL, I don't want to rain on your parade, but I'm going to have to let JK Rowling handle this one for me. "Everyone who shows magical ability before their eleventh birthday will automatically gain a place at Hogwarts; there is no question of not being ‘magical enough’; you are either magical or you are not."

Magical power is a somewhat fanon concept. There are things that can make spells much easier to cast and people might have a natural talent towards certain types of spells, but it is not a question of magical power.

There are references to power such as in HBP when Dumbledore talks about crossing on the boat, but I always looked at it in a different manner. I think the more magic you cast and the higher level that magic is then it is likely to leave an impression on you. Consider it a sort of lingering effect of the magic you cast staying with you. The more difficult the feat of magic the larger the impression. Tom Riddle is a prime example what with the way the magic twisted him. Of course, this is my own theory on the matter.

EDIT: Also, I forgot to add that as far as the levitation issue is concerned, I think you are trying too hard to justify yourself. First year Ron casting it successfully on a big club in the grip of a troll swinging it vs. Harry unsuccessfully casting it on things with magical resistance seems cut and dry to me. We have no evidence of such problems with casting on things that don't have a magical resistance of some sort. Until you find an example that doesn't have magical resistance (I'll accept failed spells of any sort that a wizard should be able to cast), we are going to disagree.

 

Ach, cop-out lol. That's what this thread is for, as some haven't had a chance to contribute to the debate. I read a bit of the essay before, and doesn't it specifically state somewhere that it won't address what magic is or might be, but rather how it's used? I'm trying to best fit what it might be to what we see in canon.

If you will, just give me an answer to the closing question, as it is directly pertinent to a principle criticism of spell use in HPAC and you did write the 'success versus general sufficiency' words yourself;

Pretty please.

Please do not dismiss my entire interpretation of how magic in canon works when a) you created the 'canon magic' thread, b) you subjected every reader of that thread to two thousand words of nonsense in your OP, and c) you are going to lose your own argument with contradictions like 'Magical power is a somewhat fanon concept' then 'There are references to power such as in HBP' in yet another post full of conjecture.

I am aware of what Rowling has said about the matter. Prior to her saying this and from canon directly I drew my theory about how magic relates to the physical world. The strive to be powerful in any way aside (though it is referenced a lot in canon), the mechanics of canon magic I think better fit my interpretation, which is why I'm contributing at all to the discussion. I used 'power' as an aspiration, but then gave actual examples.

 

I disagree that there is a contradiction. Two different types of power are being discussed. What you are proposing seems to indicate a difference in the amount of magic one possesses. JKR and canon do not support this in any way that I've seen.

I'm not dismissing your argument about canon magic on basis of just dismissing it. I'm asking you to supply proof for your claim. I don't know of any from canon so I simply asked if you could supply it since I don't remember it. I've seen many arguments against your levitation charm argument that use canon examples such as the troll scene, and the distinct lack of people miscasting spells once they have properly learned them. Harry has even cast spells underwater with no problems before. The one example of magic that didn't work can be explained away by a magical resistance that was previously established in canon.

I would just like a bit of evidence. If I knew of any, I'd supply it myself. I'm more than open to the possibility of it. I gave your story a 5/5 so I wouldn't say I'm super hung up on the concept. I just disagree that it doesn't contradict canon because I think it does.

 

Cast spells underwater with no problem?

In GoF, Harry uses the spell 'Relashio!' to send sparks at the grindylows, but instead of sparks, boiling water came out instead.

Pro-tip: Do your research before making your argument.

 

I wont take position, but I will point out that he was using verbal spell-casting, the end result may have been different if he had know non-verbal spell-casting.

 

Really? It's been who knows how long since I've read GoF. I didn't even know there was a specific spell that sent sparks. My bad. I guess I'd chalk it up to botched silent casting or screwing up the pronunciation due to being completely submersed in water.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about the Auror/FBI comparison, but I disagree with this line of reasoning for disproving it.

IMO one of the most important tenets of Rowling's world as she conceived it is that, for most wizards, magic is boring. While it does have a vast effect on the lifestyle of any particular wizard (relative to Muggles), it does not seem to have a correspondingly vast effect on human nature, or the basic structure of society.

Normal wizards of that world still feel the same impetus to become part of successively larger units, just like us: immediate family -> overall family -> (optional for residents of wizard communities like Hogsmeade) local settlement -> national society -> international. Children (except the spoiled types) still do chores, still go to school, still get jobs working under employers, or alternately start their own businesses or live off of the family fortune.

Just like Muggles, wizards form government bureaucracies; within the bureaucracies they still divide themselves into power factions. Just like Muggles, some wizards choose to ignore the laws of organized society. Some Muggles and some wizards are sociopaths; some Muggles and some wizards hurt others; some Muggles and some wizards need to be stopped by the law enforcement agencies of society, or alternately by groups operating independently of the official government agencies.

All of that is a long way of saying that IMO, the vast majority of magic in Rowling's world is just an everyday tool. The fact that people can be stunned with a red jet of light instead of a rubber bullet or taser is not a game changer. Ditto with flying bird-memos instead of e-mail, or a Cruciatus curse instead of pulling fingernails. This is why I don't think your disproof works, NMB - when you get right down to it, Aurors deal with criminals, or sometimes "revolutionaries" - but then, I repeat myself.

Magic is inherently illogical, but under a quasi-logical frame of reference, it does tend to be predictable. And what happens when magic does things that it shouldn't? What happens when a baby in a crib manages to reflect an unblockable Killing Curse, destroying the body of the most fearsome terrorist in generations? People are filled with an almost supernatural sense of awe, or dread - just as we would be if we saw something that broke the laws of physics.

 

Or, that's what you get when you try to create painful flaming sparks underwater. He was waterbreathing, so it's unlikely he mispronounced it. Harry just wasn't thinking about being submerged at the time, as he was feeling very much in tune with the environment due to Gillyweed.

 

This is what I was thinking on the issue. It is impossible from this spell to tell much about casting underwater. Some other example is needed since if he did the spell correctly then the boiling water could be interpreted as the sparks heating up the water.

It's been awhile since I have read GOF so could someone else chime in on if the theory that the sparks heated up the water fits?

 

Magic is caused by trillions of miniature, invisible, non-corporeal, faster-than-light, omnipresent, telepathic, yellow and pink polka dot coloured ostriches headbutting things until the desired effect happens. Transfiguration is the ostriches headbutting all the atoms in a given area until they acquire/lose the correct number of atomic particles to become the object. The killing curse is the ostriches raping your cells to death. The Taboo is the ostriches listening for a specific word

Go ahead, disprove it. I can make up theories too. This makes about as much sense as the energy argument, since if magic is energy it doesn't behave in any way like an energy we know in the real world, doesn't fit the cliché of magical energy in that it doesn't cause exhaustion for even the grandest displays of magic, and it takes no more skill to levitate a feather than it does a massive wooden club. You could say that it's an infinitely full source that wizards tap in to with unlimited access, but at that point it's indistinguishable from Taure's theory, which fits better in the world that JKR has set up than some mystical energy source to the point where equating it to canon might as well be like calling on miniature, invisible, polka dot ostriches to do shit.

 

/applauds

Magic, muthafucker, how does it work???