What prevents a wizard or witch from transfiguring their enemy? We know it can be done.

My theory is that a prepared wizard cannot be transfigured due to the 'active' magic around, if you know what I mean. Draco was turned into a ferret because he was unprepared and perhaps because he was still untrained.

Obviously, trained wizards can self transfigure themselves (Book 6), and perhaps sufficiently skilled, or if one subscribes to the theory of differing magical power, a sufficiently powerful wizard can undo a self transfiguration, but they themselves cannot force a prepared opponent to transfigure.

Opinions?

 

Why do you think there needs to be something preventing it? Why not just say that wizards do it?

 

I don't think wizards actively prevent themselves from being transfigured in a duel. I think it's more like an instinctive automated defence that only activates when one is actively using magic. The concentration of magic also probably prevents the opponent from transfiguring the wizard's wand.

 

Wouldn't hitting your enemy with an Avada Kedavra or a stunner be easier than trying to transfigure him?

 

Those are good reasons for why it wouldn't work in-story, sure.
But I think Taure is asking for the reasons why it shouldn't work that are out of the story.

Like, why do you (and others) think this is something that should be prevented?

 

Percy Transfigures Thicknesse (partially? Wholly?) in the final battle, so as far as canon goes you're dead wrong. If you want to use your theory in fanfic, then fair enough, but that's it really.

 

Ok, I just looked that up. Perhaps this can be explained by the fact he was under the Imperius, and was particularly resistant to it apparently. So could he have subconsciously been fighting his own automatic defence mechanism, allowing Percy to transfigure him. Or perhaps it's just another mistake in the books?

Transfiguring enemies would be the go to option, especially by the Order, if it was possible. Not even Dumbledore does it.

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Those are line of sight spells, so easier to dodge if aware. And Avada Kedavra is quite permanent.

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I have no opinion either way on whether it should or not, especially out of the story. Simply just thinking that some of those duels could have ended quite differently if it was indeed possible to transfigure someone in a duel. One could imagine Dumbledore entering battle, waving his wand and a whole bunch of Death Eaters transfigured, simply to be picked up and stored until needed for interrogation or Azkhaban. But it's always materials around the area that are transfigured instead of the person or even his/her wand.

 

Why, when there are so many quicker spells that do the job just as well? And there's a pretty simple explanation that doesn't involve unnecessary ideas about 'automatic defence mechanisms' - Transfiguration is pretty clearly one of the more complicated magical disciplines, so it doesn't seem a stretch to suppose that the vast majority of the characters are either flat out incapable of it or just aren't able to do it in the heat of battle. As for Dumbledore, perhaps he thinks physical mutilation on such a scale is cruel and unusual punishment?

 

I agree it's difficult, but as for why someone like Dumbledore doesn't, I don't think being transfigured causes any pain. After all, Slughorn uses self transfiguration as a defence. Even if he wouldn't want to transfigure the person, the wand should be fair game. But that doesn't seem to be an avenue of disarming that any wizard goes down.

 

Dumbledore probably could've done it if he wished. iirc in OoTP he handled the Death Eaters at the Ministry with ease and most likely could've transfigured them all at once if he wished. However, as for why he didn't try it against Voldemort I assume that a wizard such as Voldemort is capable of reversing any attempts at human transfiguration before the spell even starts to transform him.

As for others I am under the impression that human transfiguration is extremely difficult. It's possible that not many people are capable of using the magic and those that do use it might not do the spells perfectly. In a duel the last thing you want to do is use magic you are unsure will work.

 

Does the transfiguration appear just after the wand motions? Maybe you still have to connect with a coloured beam for something to transform are there any canon qoutes for this?

 

Considering we see Dumbledore fight a proper duel all of once, you seem to be extrapolating a hell of a lot from one fight. Especially as his opponent in that duel was Voldemort, whose ability to defend himself from Dumbledore's attacks is not at all typical.

I don't think we see nearly enough fighting in canon to have any real idea of what is and isn't normal in duels. Especially as most of the fighting we do see involves some special circumstance that means things don't go as they normally would in a typical duel (students not adult wizards doing the duelling, need to hold back so as to not damage the prophecy, brother wand effect, etc).

All this said, your ideas about wizards transfiguring themselves back doesn't work in canon. In HP canon, when humans are transfigured they no longer have human mental capacities, unless they are an animagus.

I really think this is a huge non-issue, even ignoring the fact that our sample size of magical duels is tiny.

It's kinda obvious why most wizards wouldn't use transfiguration in battle: they can't. Transfiguration is repeatedly shown to be the most rigorous of the "wand disciplines", and even students getting Os don't necessary successfully transfigure items in a single try. That's reserved for masters like Dumbledore and McGonagall. For most wizards, even ones considered good at it, a transfiguration is a long process involving a multitude of tweaks and adjustments to get the object as they desire.

This will be even more true of human transfiguration, which is presented as the most difficult form of transfiguration we know of. Even Hermione, who typically got Os in transfiguration, was only able to transfigure individual facial features like a nose or an eyebrow. A whole human body is going to be beyond all but the most skilled witches and wizards.

As for why those highly skilled wizards don't use transfiguration to directly attack opponents (and ignoring the obvious point that they very well may do exactly that and we just didn't get to see it), there's an obvious explanation in the form of relative utility. Why would you transform your enemy into a cat instead of using any one of a number of other, significantly easier, ways of disabling your opponent?

 

Remember that most people never move past a seventh year education. Krum, as a Tri-Wizard champion, could seemingly at best transfigure part of his body during the second task. He has essentially been picked by a magical device as the best wizard coming out of his class, and most of his peers will never be able to even hit that level of magical competency. Dumbledore was doing things with a wand by fifth year that Marhbanks had never seen, by comparison.

We can assume that both Voldemort and the Auror recruiters like to pick from the cream of the crop, but I doubt that many of these individuals would be picked as magical champions. I think from this we can assume that transfiguration is such a demanding discipline that legends like Moody and Dumbledore are two of few magicals capable of in-combat, human transfiguration.

Also, McGonagall silently reversed Moody's transfiguration on Draco. Perhaps it's such an easy thing to reverse that it just isn't viable in combat even if it was more simple to pull off. After all, most animagi are able to reverse their own human transfiguration with no words or wand. Ignoring animagus revealing potions and inner journeys to find your spirit animal, that is...

 

With regards to Krum, it's strongly implied that he's an animagus who has yet to complete the process.

(He keeps his mind while transfigured into a shark, and the only way we know to do that is the animagus transformation)

 

It was Barty Crouch Jr., not Moody.

 

Human trans is hard and require concentration of the caster so its hard to use in battle, its NEWT level after all. Oh and the rebound if the spell would quite messy to the target and the caster themself, remember there is a lot of spell that explode in caster own face now think what would happen if you use a high level spell in the heat of battle and the spell backfire. That would instant lose no?

 

McGonagall though is presented as a master of Transfiguration, probably second to Dumbledore in the whole series, the way to reverse such things would be second nature to her.

I'd say however, given curses tendencies to rebound and when they rebound to potentially have somewhat ill effect, would you want your ally fighting another enemy to suddenly be turned into a newt before their enemy? They wouldn't even have time to get better.

I may or may not have been watching the Holy Grail today.

 

Perhaps in this case it's a sense of will or self? Transforming a rock into something else is simple because you're transfiguring an object which has no will or anything comparable to resist against it. Against a human or anything with a will of its own your fighting against that. The more advanced it is the harder to change it to something else.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is that Draco got blindsided by Crouch's ferret transfiguration. I'd imagine in a straight up duel against an older, more experienced opponent such a spell would be deflected or resisted with ease.

 

I'd be more inclined to say sense of self, yeah. The idea of a battle of wills outside of mind magics rubs me the wrong way, but a so-called sense of self seems to fit the canon explanation of animal Transfiguration. We're told that when something is turned into an animal, it has no conscious memory of being human/a rock/whatever else. It just is that animal, after the fact.

To speculate, a human's sense of self is far more develolped than any other creature we know of. We define ourselves not only down to the most minute details of our appearances, but how/why we exist, how we perceive the outside world in contrast to ourselves, etc. That sounds ridiculously difficult to change on top of all of the physical stuff.