I know you can transfigure rocks into common animals, like Cedric making a dog from a rock, and people in fanfiction use tigers, wolves, bears, etc all the time, but can you transfigure something into a magical animal?

I know it's generally assumed that you can't be a magical animagus, but could someone for instance, change a rock into a griffin, or a dragon, or a blast-ended skrewt? If so, would that animal have its magical properties, like dragon fire?

 

Yeah man, and you can transfigure a rock into a person as well.

 

I can't tell if that's sarcasm, but I can't recall anything from canon that says you can't. However, there are definitely a lot of inconsistencies in canon so I wanted to know for sure.

 

Afaik, we never see anyone transfigure something into a magical animal in the books. We can speculate, but I'd assume that it can't be done.

 

Ah, shame. Could you give a possible explanation though? I need this answer for a fic, and I'd like to explain why/why not so it's not just hand waved away.

 

Presumably there's no hard answer. I can't see anything stopping you from transfiguring something into a facsimile of a hippogriff, but you wouldn't be able to transfigure something into a phoenix capable of death and rebirth.

 

Fair enough. A phoenix though, has clear examples of magical abilities. Some animals that we know are magical animals, like griffins, don't seem to have magical abilities though. They are just magical animals because muggles don't know about them correct?

 

I would say so. There seems to be a clear line between 'magical' creatures and magical creatures.

 

So would it be safe to assume that one could transfigure something into a magical animal that had no magical abilities, but not something like a dragon, or phoenix?

 

You could go with that. I mean, there shouldn't be anything stopping you from transfiguring something that looked like a properly magical creature, it just wouldn't have any of the abilities/powers.

 

Excellent. For something like a Cerberus or a Griffin, having its physical features of wings, claws, sharp teeth would be enough.

But here's the kicker: I follow Taure's idea that transfigured things are permanent, and I'm not sure if you do, so based on that premise, would the transfigured 'magical' animal be able to reproduce and lay eggs/birth young?

 

I may be missing something from canon, but even though there is distinction between non-magical and magical creatures, what would prevent you from transfiguring a something into a magical creature?

 

I'm of the school of thought that the permanence of the transfiguration depends on the skill of the caster and any future interference by another witch or wizard; you've also got the cases where things go wrong and the transfiguration can't be reversed, resulting in people living with things live cacti for ears and the more common patients of the Spell Damage ward of St Mungos.

Mostly because I find it doubtful that it would be possible to recreate a creature capable of cheating death through mere Transfiguration.

 

There are laws to transfiguration. In the books, we're given one nice example - five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, of which food is the first example. You can't create food out of nothing.

Laws, rules, exceptions... if you can't create food, I'm willing to bet that you can't create magic either.

But like Tomato said, there's obvious differences between magical creatures. Dragons, phoenixes, and unicorns are obviously different from flobberworms.

It's all horribly complex, I'm sure. My personal theory is that if it's called a magical creature, there's something magical about it, even if not immediately obvious, which means that it's distinctly separate from nonmagical creatures. You can't become a magical creature animagus and so on. But this is just a theory.

 

I guess I can understand this, I was just wondering if there was any canon evidence for or against this. Though it doesn't appear that there is.

 

Quintapeds are a magical creatures transfigured from a family of wizards. So clearly it can be done; at least in a limited sense. Whether it is possible to transfigure someone into a specific, existing magical creature is less clear.

 

Hagrid created Blast-Ended Skrewts as well, though we don't know if that was through breeding or more direct magical means.

 

I read about them. Attempts to untransfigure them all failed, and the quintapeds went on to reproduce, giving credence to the fact that transfiguration can be permanent, and that transfigured animals can reproduce.

Although, were the quintapeds really magical creatures, or was it a creature that became magical because it was transfigured from wizards/witches?

 

From the transfiguration-is-not-permanent side of the aisle(my admittedly questionable headcanon on this matter is that that's what alchemy is for); if some magical creatures, such as the runespoor and the griffin, don't have inherently magical characteristics aside from their origins and the fact that they exist as they are; then yes. Your own list of creatures on that list may vary depending on what you think of each creature.

Otherwise, or in other cases, do you have to reproduce these characteristics for a transfiguration job? Assuming you don't need to create an actual phoenix or an actual dragon (both of which, I imagine, would be waaaay beyond the scope of almost every wizard), you can just transfigure a faux-griffon as it doesn't appear to need anything else to go and if you're working on a dragon or a phoenix... I'd say that transfiguration won't cut it there but that you can charm what you've transfigured to function like one. It doesn't need to actually get reborn as a phoenix, a sufficiently advanced charm should be able to make it turn into ash and rejuvenate (which raises the question; any reason beyond authenticity that you wanted this thing to die and get reborn as opposed to keep going for as long as it can?).

Of course, actually making something as sturdy as a dragon or as unyielding as a phoenix or as... pure(?) as a unicorn would take an extreme amount of magical ingenuity and work (and I'd imagine in certain cases would be flat out impossible) and even if you can make a transfigured pile of rubber into an actual functioning unicorn, at that point you might as well go and enchant a horse instead. But you can make something that looks and acts and reacts like a magical animal, if you're satisfied with that interpretation of transfiguration. I mean, you can make fake unicorns and watch as someone tries to survive on their blood and dies.

 

I think there's a line between creatures that are magical and creatures made by magic.

Hippogriffs appear to be magical chimeras.

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I prefer to pretend Gamp's laws don't exists, or maybe just that law. It really doesn't make much sense even when you consider how magical laws are arbitrary.

For example, what stops your from transfiguring an animal and then butchering and eating it? Does it vanish when you try turn it into food?