I think Ron's remark in DH had more to do with the inconvenience leaving one's wand in enemy teritory would cause, than with apparition requiring them.

 

We do have evidence of a highly common use of wandless magic in canon, its called potions. No silly wand waving there. Considering how different it is from wand magic, it makes me think (at least in my head canon) that any wandless magic would come with its own set of theory and completely different from wand magic in execution and result.

So, if you wanted to have a Harry stun some other guy without his wand and had him say "Stupefy", with the Intent™ to stun while wishing really hard, I would probably hit the red X. But if you had him keep eye contact and repeatedly chant something under his breath as the victim slowly loses consciousness, I would be cool with that. And I wouldn't question why everyone else uses wands.

Like basium1, in my world building for the fanfic-that-will-never-be, I tried to come with different ways that wizards from other times and cultures came to use magic, but I made sure that wand magic would be superior, mostly by arguing that its ease and versatility made it popular, and from the great amount of users came progress in spell-crafting and more complex magical theories.

What was this thread about about anyways?

 

In the beginning of the Deathly Hallows Dedalus and Hestia came in and apparated the Dursleys to a safe location. I'm pretty sure that's proof of muggles side-along apparating.

 

I think the idea of requiring a wand for Apparition is asinine (not that it's definitely non-canon, just that I hate it). It's never mentioned in the Apparition lessons we saw, and it kind of comes out of nowhere in the last book, which is also the point when JKR decided to make wands more powerful, important to a wizard's magic and semi-sentient(?) than they were ever seen or implied to be before. From a writing perspective it removes the possibility of Apparating away in an emergency and leaving your wand behind, being stuck without one. Plus, due to a war taking place in the later books most characters always keep their wands on their person anyway - I think JKR just noticed that we'd never seen hard evidence of someone Apparating wandless in the last six books and decided, what the hell. Which isn't a huge continuity problem I guess, but not ever mentioning anyone pulling out their wand to Apparate implies that a wand stowed away in your pocket somewhere routinely reacts to the wizard's will to successfully Apparate. And deciding that this connection exists right after Harry's wand reacting on its own is portrayed as a huge deal, and at the same time it becomes a major plot point about wands forming connections or affinities to their masters just seems a bit contrived.

That said, I wouldn't mind if side-along Apparating someone else required a wand in addition to being generally more skilled at Apparition. It just doesn't sit well with me that in book 7 (where the Elder Wand stuff comes up) a wand went from being portrayed as a tool to a symbiotic being which is pretty much a necessity for a wizard to perform any magic. It's like if it was suddenly dropped on us that wizards have to have their wand stuffed in their robes in order to brew a potion. :facepalm

Anyway, sorry for the digression. I think side-along Apparition of a muggle is absolutely reasonable. Muggles can't do magic, but we know through many instances that magic being performed on them works perfectly fine, as well as certain potions (Merope's Love Potion and the Ton-Tongue Toffee come to mind). A more interesting question (in my opinion) is whether this extends to muggles using magical objects like Floo powder or some of the WWW trinkets (throwing Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder or doing whatever is required to slip someone else a Love Potion)... This opens up a lot of possibilities in fic writing, whether it would just do nothing, explode, turn into poison, or react in some other unpredictable way.

 

First post...

In my head I see wands as being tools that enable you to direct magic. Cursing someone for example requires you to direct a beam of magic and a wand enables you to do that. I also feel that the way you hold your wand increases the surface area of skin that has magic passing through it lowering a sort of magical resistance, casing out a finger for example means a lot of magic is directed out of a small part of your skin . So if you try to curse someone without a wand it jut goes in every direction.
Things that don't require a precise beam of magic though can in my mind be cast wandlessly up to a certain range. Say you want to animate a table, you could be very close of touching it and cast said spell.
I also like to think wandless summoning is possible up to a significant distance. It's like how you can't push something with a rope because it just bends but you can pull something.
Also, because you don't have a wand to do wand movements with you have to have a very good knowledge of the magical theory to cast wandless spells.