Language of Magic - why latin? Does Japan or Egypt use another base language to perform magic? If so are there equivalent spells with different incantations? Or is latin the universal language of magic? Would probably go well with Runes.

Magical Objects - a class that not only teaches about various magical objects in history and present day, but also teaches students how to create their own enchanted items. Everything Harry gets in canon is given to him by someone who created it; the cloak, the map, two way mirrors, hell even Hermione created the communication galleon. It would've been nice to see him learn magic to create his own stuff.

 

Too interesting a topic not to comment:

Rites and Rituals
Non-wizard Magic (studying how magical beings such as centaurs, goblins and house-elves use magic differently than wizards)
Thaumaturgy (if the discipline exists in HP universe)
Magic Places (the location and qualities of known magical places both natural and man-made)
Artificing (crafting of magical objects--as mentioned by other posters)

Kwan Li's AU in the WBA story Hogwarts Battle School has several different classes that could be made into electives.

 

Wizarding Culture - Hogwarts is a school for wizards from a wizard society which already has a wizarding culture. I doubt something like that would be introduced just for muggleborns since they aren't seen favorably by certain groups anyway.

I can't say anything for Politics since I didn't even know such classes exist in the real world (I didn't have them). Although I will say that I find having a politics class for 13 year-olds a little strange (though not impossible).

Arts, Music and Literature - I get that all of these can be done using magic and can be made to be about wizarding stuff, but despite that they just seem so muggle. Hogwarts is a school of magic where students learn how to use magic or how to interact with magical things. To wizards who could most likely create paintings with a wave of a wand, these would be hobbies and not actual classes.

Except muggle studies, but then again it probably only exists so that wizards can hide among muggles better.

 

The above is so obtuse, brief, silly, and later defended, that it merits a contrary yet more acute(and silly) dismissal.

While the Flitwick choir is a movie invention, the Weird Sisters are a canon set-piece during GOF. There is also the Wizarding Wireless which ostensibly plays music as well as talk radio(maybe just music, we know that Dumbledore liked Chamber Music, but there is no Howard Sternly mentioned in cannon: looking at you NMB) - thus there is a music industry in the wizarding world. If you consider also that all human cultures have cultural music and that all societies see changes in musical taste and style that echo technological and cultural upheaval, then music in the wizarding world could actually be a major conflicting factor in the pureblood/muggleborn-influence struggle that stages the political backdrop for the Harry Potter series. It might be more clear, of course, if there was some sort of class that covered this sort of thing, like a culture or politics course.

Why, you might ask yourself, would the wizarding world have conflict with muggle influence in music? Well, how about syncopation? African rhythmic influence and its mixing with western instruments and British folk chordal structures began to change the muggle world in the States in the late 1800's. Over the intervening 75 years its impacts have influenced nearly every piece of western recorded music ever created, everyone you have ever met and everyone they have ever met have been informed by this influence. If you haven't heard of jazz, gospel, or blues; maybe rock and roll? The Beatles, The Cream, Led Zeppelin? Sting? Adele? Jamiroquai? Surely someone in the UK has at any rate.

If the magic that drives wizarding music is based in the Western music that thrived for nearly 400 years prior to this exportation-importation miracle it may have some real functional issues keeping up to date. Or is that not how wizarding music works - are there charmed instruments? Do witches and wizards use the sonorus to perform concerts or can they partially transfigure their physiology to perform otherwise impossibly feats? If only there was some field of study that could elucidate this complicated and, admittedly, very modestly interesting conundrum. Perhaps a wizarding music class or world wizarding cultural elective could help shine some light.

And of course the dialogue might take place either allegorically or explicitly in some wizarding academic circles if nowhere else. How would that work, would they write it down in books... It is the sort of things that academics like to write about, culture, music, politics - all of the things which they couldn't do but can teach. Perhaps the authors of fictional stories might insert it into pieces to give them greater temporal significance and speak to their audiences in the now as it were. What might one call that, literature? Maybe a wizarding literature class then to determine the historcial significance and creator of the Ass-a-lele and other interesting musical instruments.

Isn't this and overriding beauty in the world of HP - that it is only murkily defined? There is so much - a world within the world - that it can fit any fancy of the audience and can be eternally and thoroughly filled in and rehashed, its plot changed or its underlying mechanics reworked, yet leave so much more - another whole world's worth. Don't be so quick to dismiss.

I wish that someone would do a first rate job looking at another Magical culture. Someone with a real cultural insight - so many American writers try to do terrible things with Native Americans that are as clearly obtuse, pardon my redundancy, that there should be a No Reservation clause in potter law.(That's where Native Americans were summarily relegated by the federal government in days not gone by far enough. It was very sad, there was a Trail of Tears, we read poems about it and there were even songs.)

I might quite enjoy the exploration of Pre-Roman magic in the isles. Or some more Vaults of Valbone updates for that matter.

It does seem to me that JK must not have payed much attention during her own history classes and thus we see History of Magic as the most boring time sink in cannon after Divination which it certainly shouldn't be. Why wands, why Latin, when London itself, where Diagon is located apparently, wouldn't exist for some 425 years after Ollivander's was founded?

 

The Ollivanders most likely didn't work from the same location for all that time. The date on the shop is more likely signifying the length of time they'd been in business making wands.

 

This is some nerdy shite right here...

Good Point! But there is still room for creative speculation:

What sorts of spells were they using in this murky past, I wonder? If the Ollivander family business began pre-Roman conquest did wizards use common Brittonic as the linguistic basis for their spellcrafting, or did the Roman magical influence spread farther and faster than the exploits of muggle Rome?

Did the early Ollivanders make functionally 'modern' wands, or cliche'd staffs or a proto-wand better suited to bygone magics? Was the first Ollivander even English? Perhaps he was from Scotland or Wales.

To explore this might lend itself to info-dump writing rather than something with a plot, but I think it provides world-building potential.

 

What about a piano that spits out fire with every keystroke and captures the moans of excited witches?


Nah, that's still dung.

 

What about an organ?

 

Wandlore.

I think JKR said somewhere on Pottermore that Alchemy is actually a canon seventh-year elective.

In terms of what could be created as a substitute, I would, as others have, say perhaps Enchantment. But then, enchantments strike me as a type of charm anyway, while Alchemy has both a wider range of methods and applications and a more psychological element to it, I think, than Potions does. It's enough for Alchemy to be its own subject, as opposed to Enchantment being its own.

For expansions on CoMC, there could be more on what Hagrid and Slytherin were actually doing, which was magical husbandry. Though perhaps that, as well, is a seventh-year thing (could apply to Herbology as well). A quandary I find is that a lot of these could be explained away by adding them as a seventh year course, rather than making them a subject all their own.

 

Though if you're reading a seven year fic it is far more interesting to have those subject deviations early.

No point in having Canon courses for 200k words and then popping up with those electives. That's the time when Harry should be attempting to put those skills into practice.

 

That is very true. I also meant to say "seventh-year extension of existing courses." Your point stands either way, though.

Additionally, in the spirit of clarification: in my headcanon, the subject/field of "Wandlore" would include the creation of wands, which involves specialized knowledge in a number of areas (wand-quality wood recognition, the aforementioned creature-hunting, wood-shop skills, and more, depending on how complex you want wands to be). That way you could make it last for four years (or perhaps seven, if you wanted to just go ahead and add to the core curriculum).

 

Ollivander would be annoyed as hell. He has a monopoly in magical Britain.

I do agree it would be massively interesting, especially if you take into account the pottermore info.

 

Part of me thinks all of the NEWT level coursework should be different classes entirely. OWLs prove competency with the foundation skills and the last two years involve fields of focus towards a career.

 

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Zappa/Costello depending on who you ask.

"Dicussing" literature...who wants to do that? Academics and assholes probably. Proof: academic asshole here!

"Lots" of people seem interested in reading "literature" wherein Harry attends a magic school and then go on discussing it themselves. Can't imagine the audience for some sort of existential two-body problem exploration in such a vein. Proof: uhh...what's the website for dlp?(Beatle and the Bard? Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.)

Yep no-one...stupid to entertain such silly notionz, such obvious noobery.

Pillars of Power is as dry as sherry with bitters, yet I QUITE liked it. Different strokes I suppose.

#dickcussing @ /malmsteenballs #hamburgler

 

Honestly, I think a Politics class could be an elective for Fifth Year (there aren't plenty of 13 years old teenagers interested in politics after all), but there are a few problems with that. We know that the Board of Governors has some degree of influence in the hiring of professors, and Lucius and other pureblood supremacists have plenty of influence there, but so do Dumbledore and his supporters there. Therefore, it all comes down to one question: "Who will teach it?" The current political state puts people in a black or white situation: either you are with us or against us, so both sides would block a professor who supports the rival ideology, and finding a perfectly neutral teacher? Pretty hard, and I don't think it would satisfy any of them, since the students would end up drawing their own conclusions, and that could go either way.

Or perhaps I'm reading too much on it, Firenze and Hagrid were hired as professors after all.

For other classes, Basic Healing would be dead useful. Simpler healing potions and spells like Episkey could save the students a lot of pain, especially Quidditch players and people whose failed spells have more...violent reactions.

The Duelling Club is a no-brainer, they have a former Duelling champion in their staff and an additional sport would add some entertainment for the students (as cool as Quidditch is, there are too few games for an entire year). Advanced Flying would be nice too, since it would give non-quidditch players the opportunity to keep the skills they learned in First Year and beyond.

And of course, Enchanting. Damn, how cool would be making a Flying car? Not so cool having to hide it from the Ministry, but they can sort out those small details later.

Also, did Rowling ever mention an wizarding world's equivalent of University? Just a stray thought.

 

Going by Alexandra Potter and the Transmogrifian Torture, is this some form of Dark variant to Transfiguration?

 

Lockhart, at the very least, seemed to think Transmogrification is a form of torture.

There are others, actually, Ollivander is just the best. We learn it after Ollivander is kidnapped.

Latin would be a good idea simply so Harry would know what "Sectumsempra" does.

Spellcrafting seems interesting.