I came up with a set of rules that govern the Magical world let me know what you think.

Every wand has a series of blocks put on it. The blocks can only be lifted by authorized personal or a very determined individual with a lot of power.

The blocks would regulate dangerous spells kind of like how we regulate the sale of weapons.

A Witch/Wizard would need to go through certain training to be able to have the block removed on a certain spell. Once the training is complete the block is removed and documented as removed and the Witch/Wizard receives a permit.

For example Aurors will have the blocks on there wands removed as they complete the training program. Thus enabling them to cast the necessary spells to bring in Dark wizards.

Also only trained Obliviators would be able to erase memories making it so not just anyone can erase someone’s memory.

The advantage of having to go to the ministry to have blocks removed is that the ministry would have documentation of who can cast what thus making the investigation of murders and crimes easier.

However there are always those who get spell authorization illegally. Such as Voldermort who is powerful enough to break the blocks on his wand himself.

I think it would be a sort of rite of passage for Death Eaters to break the blocks on there wands. The more blocks they have broken on there wands the higher in rank they go.

One thing I would also like to address is the Unforgivable curses and there limits.

Cruciatus Curse - Bellatrix describes the curse as needing severe amounts of hatred and a desire to love the pain you are causing. I don't know about you, but I think it takes a twisted person to love to cause pain. It is my belief not just anyone can cast that curse making it a true Dark art because you have to be consumed by the dark arts to cast it. In order to cast this curse you must either be a sociopath i.e. Voldermort or go through rituals to make yourself feel nothing, but the desire to cause pain i.e. Bellatrix

The Killing Curse - The bane of fanfiction in my opinion. It is to powerful in my opinion. For my stories I put limits on it. In order to cast the Killing curse you must steal the soul of someone killed by non-magical means. Once the victim is dead you then perform a complicated ritual with the body and there soul is placed into your wand and is now ready to be launched as a killing curse.

The Imperius Curse - I think this one is simple enough once you get past the block in the wand. You just have to be stronger than the victim.

 

Are you intending to make this ruleset follow canon (and do we count HPB in that) or is it just for your fics? I'm thinking of Sectusempra, which is admitedly a dangerous spell and IIRC Dumbledore calls it dark. Yet, Snape was able to develop it as a student and Harry was able to cast it just fine.

If the Death Eaters are able to break the blocks themselves, then we can safely assume that anyone can. After all, Crabbe and Goyle are Death Eaters. In that case, what's the point of having blocks?

Also, what happens if a foreign wizard visits Britain? Gregorovitch would not have any reason to place blocks on the wands he creates and blocking all visitors' wands would be a logistical and diplomatic nightmare, I think.

 

No! I think it's more like learning a skill or piece of info (Like using a PC), otherwise no one could cast an unforgivable could they?
As they are banned by the Ministry.
I think it's more a tapping into the magic you were born with and utilizing it. Plus think how many people it would take to implement the blocks.

 

About sectumsempra. Maybe the wands have only a Standardised default of spell blocks updated every 80 or so years. Just a basic list of spells blocked on every wand like AK, Crucio, Imperio, General pain curses, Powerful damage spells(ie Bludgeoning,bone breaker, asphixiation hexes) Or more powerful demolisher spells strongerv than reducto.If you created a new spell and never told anyone about it then noone could block it because they didn"t know it existed.

 

The block on the AK is extreme. You have to kill someone, steal there soul, just to be able to use a spell. That's unrealistic, Voldemort fires them constantly and fired three at Godrics Hollow.

 

But then you got the old cliche of "Picking someone up with a levitation spell and dropping them off a building" all spelss are potentialy dangerous. Also that sounds like magical censoring something I am strongly aposed to.

 

The easiest and best explainable restriction on the AK is that it is extremely draining to use.

Maybe the average Death Eater can throw out two or three before becoming too tired.

Also, the AK should be hard to learn and would need a powerful wizard to cast. Not every wizard could cast it if they just say the words.

In addition, I think the curse is not very well known. I mean, everyone knows the "Killing Curse," but it must have been something new for fake Moody to say the incantation. Maybe dark families know the incantations, and bookworms might stumble on it (Hermione).

Harry didn't know the incantation till he was in 4th year.

 

The way I see it is. Sectsempra is a spell someone made up and didn't sell it to the ministry for obvious reasons. That would make it impossible to block.

In order to break a block you must have a good deal of power and intelligence thus making it the perfect thing to show rank. Take Malfoy Sr. he seems to have intelligence and power so he would theoretically be able to break more blocks than Crabbe or Goyle Sr. giving him a higher rank. Not just anyone can break a lock it is a hard feat not many accomplish.

I would say as a wizard or witch comes through customs where there wand would either be blocked or unblocked depending on the country they came from or there destination.

The Dark Monarch - That's exactly why I think Snape made up that spell because he knew it wouldn't be blocked from his wand. I picture most dark wizards as having there own personal arsenal of spells that they created to escape the blocks.

If my memory serves me correctly in the books we hear Voldermort say "Avada Kedavra" 4 times. Not sure on that number someone could double check me. One on Harry when he was a baby. One Peter uses Voldermort's wand to kill Cedric. One on Harry in the graveyard. One on Harry in the ministry. The rest of the time he uses silent spells that result in a spell that resembles the killing curse. I think there is more than one killing curse out there, but the Avada Kedavra is the only unblockable one. Only the Avada Kedavra requires the ritual to use. I don’t see it that far out that Voldermort manages to steal 4 souls. If you think about it each time he used it was meant to be a landmark victory.

I think Lockhart is charming enough to get someone to unblock his wand for him. I think that would be right up his alley to be able to do such a thing. All some poor witch has to do is unblock some wand, and she gets to have dinner with the famous Lockhart.

Who said that Wingardium Leviosa could be used on living objects? It is my belief that there is more than one spell to levitate things. I don’t think they would teach a spell to first years that would allow them to drop someone off a building. I would say that there is a much darker spell used to levitate humans. The same thing falls under the Reductor curse. Why would they teach a spell to fourth years that allow them to blow a hole in some one’s chest? I would think there are darker spells that would blow a hole in some ones chest but definitely not the Recutor curse.

Is denying guns to someone under eighteen censorship? Is not allowing someone to legally own a gun until they have taken a safety class censorship? I see it the same way as not allowing just anyone to own fully automatic weapons or bazookas. It is just a way to keep the public safer. Of course anyone willing to complete the proper training and safety classes can get access to the spells they need.

 

Isn't the block supposed to be there to limit potential dark wizards? If they can all come up with their very own lethal spells, then what's the point? I think it might be better if it was made clear in your fic that it's exrtemely difficult to create new spells or modify existing ones.

ok.

That sounds like the visa waiver program in the US

You need to tweak your example a bit. What you wrote implies that a dark wizard who is visiting from a friendly country could have his wand unblocked, while an auror visiting from an unfriendly country would have his blocked. Or let me bring up the classic "the imperius can be used by healers to cure phobias" example. Would a healer be allowed to have an unblocked wand for this reason? If yes, how about visitors from countries where healer training is not standardized? It seems like there would have to be lots of rules to cover all possible situations. Or, you could claim that very few wizards actually travel internationally so it's easy to treat each case separately.

I was going to say that it's more like having a gun anyway but being only able/allowed to use rubber bullets, but I changed my mind. A gun is for killing. A wand is much more versatile, more like a swiss army knife, but even this analogy is not enough. Don't forget that they use a wand for everything, even cooking. I think that's why the other poster sees the block a lot like censorship. Once you start blocking things, it can soon get out of hand (case in point: the confiscation of books (!) at some airports, after the recent security scare).

 

I like thr original idea to an extent, the idea of havign standardised blocks on wands makes sense.

Someone said somethign about the reductor curse being taught in 4th year. It wasn't, Harry (or more likely Herman) looked it up, and learned it.

I agree with the sentiment that there is more than 1 levitation charm. The one that is mentioned in 1st year is a very basic one, and I would think it was only Ron's emotions running high that allowed him to levitate the trolls club. The idea that a 1st year would learn a spell that could levitate a what? 100, 200 pound club, and drop it on a troll, is laughable. They wouldn't dare teach children that. The outcry from Muggleborn's parents would be devastating.

I personally think that the Hogwarts curriculum is flawed, badly. Somethign I would dearly like to do is do a re-write of the series as an AU, making Hogwarts fit with my idea of a good magic school. Something like is being done in Wit of the Raven. I would personally make the schooling much more intensive. Each class would be more specialised (like Charms wouldn't be a subject as such. THere would be classes for different forms of charms. And Transfiguration would be a separate class from animation or conjuration.) and the school day would last longer. the children are in the building all day for what about 7 months of the year. They could learn so much in that time. When Harry is in 3rd year, if you asked him t cast 40 different spells, he probably couldn't. Thats another thing I disagree with. There should be classes on memorisation skills. I mean, the entire idea of HP magic is memorising different spells. Its all very well in real life, to take 5 minutes out of any given situation to look something up, but they use magic for literally everything, and thus have to be able to remember spells for any given situation.

Anyway, sorry for going OT, somethign else that was mentioned was Imperio being used to cure phobias. How would it cure a phobia. My recolection is that it forces a persons mind to retreat to an extent, and they are minimally aware of what is going on around them. TO cure I phobia, as far as I know the person has to actually conquer the fear. Imperio would merely force their bodies to do the actions and their mind would be removed from what was happening. This would not let them confront their phobia.

Sure, magic could be used to cure phobias. Immerse a person in an illusion of their fear, or even surround a person with a shield and throw them in with their fear. For instance, with Ron Weasley, put a shield round him, and throw him into a glass cage of spiders. He would either have a heart attack and die, or eventually overcome his fear.

 

I've seen it in several stories. I think it stems from experiments on using hypnosis to cure phobias. I'm too lazy to look it up

 

As I said after that, imperio makes the mind retreat, which means that it wouldn't work. To cure a phobia the mind has to be exposed to it and overcome the fear.

 

For the traveling part let’s say that a Blasting curse is illegal in England, but legal in Denmark. An English wizard going into Denmark would have that curse unblocked at customs. The opposite holds true for a Danish wizard the blasting curse would be blocked from his wand going into England.

I am not sure, but I think making someone live out there worst fear is hardly a way to conquer it. Even if it does conquer the fear I think a doctor would find another way instead of causing the trauma the experience would produce.

I would say only potentially lethal spells would be blocked. There is no reason to block cooking charms or cleaning charms seems pointless. The blocks would act like restrictions on who gets what weapon in the real world. A normal citizen can only get maybe a handgun or a shotgun tops. The higher up you go the more authorized you are to have such weapons. For instance if the government could erase people's memories then I am positive a normal citizen would not be able to learn to erase memories. The same concept applies to my system of magic.

 

I think this violates Occam's razor:
"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
This is normally understood to mean that when multiple competing theories have equal predictive powers, Occam's Razor recommends selecting those that introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest hypothetical entities.

I think this introduces a lot of unproved assumptions to be plausible.
Come to think of it, this just gave me a huge insight on why so many fics' magical theory explanations suck--they violate occam's razor.

 

Who the fuck is Occam, and what do his shaving practices have to do with spell restrictons?

 

William of Occam was a 14th century philosopher and Occam's razor is a maxim he formulated that is used as a rule of modern science, namely in formulating and choosing between theories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

I think the theory formulated here violates it.

 

Who cares, magic isn't science, therefore cannot be ruled by the same theories (created I might add in the dark ages, and thus maybe not particularly well formulated for todays science).

 

I think you might be under a slight missaprehension here.
Regarding Harry Potter--we have the canon, right?
I am saying that the less assumptions that have no basis in canon are made, the less farfetched the theory prduced is going to sound. This theory, for instance, sounds completely farfetched--no offense to the author.

And modern science obviously disagrees, since this is a principle widely used.

 

There is very little in canon we can base any theory on. JKR doesn't write to let others write fanfics. there are few to no facts that any theories can be based on, no matter what the theory deals with. To write decent fanfiction with a shred of originality, you need to extrapolate upon the bare bones you get in the books.