I'm of the opinion that not expecting children to appreciate or even want any sort of consistency or underlying logic to their story is as about as about wrong as you can get. In my experience, it's normally it's the child in the room that hasn't quite grasped the concept of suspension of disbelief and will stubbornly poke their heads through the plot holes until finally an exasperated parent/older sibling/caretaker will throw up their hands and say 'it's just a movie/TV show/book/whatever'.

I'm not saying that the output of a wand in ohms should be documented, I just think there should be some underlying consistency to it. And doing it Dresden-style is far from the only way to do it. Belgariad style, pure will shaped by words. Unknown Armies style, grooves in reality left by Comte-only-knows-who that result in a specific set of actions getting a specific set of results. Lovecraft style, manipulating the bleed-through of the underlying rules of another reality. Nightside style, where belief is a form of energy that can be manipulated. Discworld style, where it works because the narrative imperative says it should. And this is just off the top of my head, using already-used ideas.

Basically, I don't necessarily want external consistency, just internal consistency. But when it's set in the real world, making everything work with the real world is part of being internally consistent. And hints like enchanted cars and magic shorting out electronics prove that there is something there behind all the handwaving, but it's so vague and self-contradictory that it just makes matter worse than if it was just Wizards Doing It.


[This post has been troperized because I hate you.]

 

DERAIL
For those willing to 'fess up to having read at least the first 5 books in LotW's series:
Agree/Disagree: Her system of magic is far superior to JRK's.

 

I just caught up with this thread, and I can't reason why having a young audience is any excuse for inconsistency or mixed messages. Treating child readers as if they deserve a consistent world is one way to teach well. You don't need to explain it all, so long as what is presented fills out enough of the picture to not interfere with reader enjoyment.

If I were to fix a few things in the canon novels, it would be to find a more reasonable explanation for Dumbledore's absence at the end of PS, and to give a more complete explanation of how Harry could use Levicorpus and Sectumsempra- spell notes on visualization or such. Let Harry wrestle with his intent in harming Draco that shows in how horrible the resulting injuries are (and maybe squash some of that 'it's repressed love that makes them fight' bullshit).

Basically, she should've decided whether magic was a black box that worked like computer apps, or an exercise in will and visualization made manifest.

 

Children may in fact get more irritated by gaping plot holes than adults. I doubt it, but maybe. But I have yet to meet any child whose enjoyment of the Harry Potter series was in any way effected by not having an overarching explanation for how the Harry Potter system of magic works. You know why? They accept that its magic and move on. It's only among older, more critical, heavily invested groups like DLP that it becomes an issue. Which again is fine. But the series was not written for groups like DLP that dissect it.

(Although its worth pointing out that many people actually do believe the system forms a coherent whole. I may think they're crazy but the viewpoint does exist. (CoughTaureCough))

And wordhammer, maybe we should expect more from childrens lit. It couldn't hurt. But the fact is, as the world works now, the world HP was published in, the same amount of attention to background, detail, worldbuilding and consistency that we expect in more "serious, adult works" is not usually anticipated or asked for in kids lit.

Anyway we're just going in circles at this point. So on the original topic, I actually agree with Tehan, et al. who think that the HP magic system needs a complete revamp to mesh into a coherent whole. I love fics that redefine the magic system in a way I feel makes sense. I just don't necessarily expect to find that in a young kids fantasy series.

 

Back on topic, since we seem to have abandoned it, I see HP magic as being completely omnipotent, it's just that wizards themselves haven't realised that yet.

Just look at the fundamental laws that govern the HP magic system: You can't block the Killing Curse, except when you can. You can't fly unaided, except when you can. You can't bring back the dead, except with a Deathly Hallow. When faced with this can you really say that an internally stated 'Law' of magic is likely to be entirely accurate? Personally, I think that any law of magic wizards have made up is simply a stopgap until someone discovers how to do it.

 

Though it's not explained, McGonagall's transfiguration of her desk into a pig shows that you can make basically a limitless supply of food out of other objects. Hell, the Avis spell does similar if you want some duck or other birds (extrapolating on 'changing' the effect of a spell by adding in another latin word).

If that's the case, the only reason I would possibly see for not just going into your backyard, grabbing a stick, and transfiguring it into the food you will make your meal with tonight is 'finite incantatum'.

Imagine if your family just got done eating a nice, fat duck your transfigured from brick and you let your son clear the table. He sweeps his wand across, doesn't properly minimize his 'intent' and casts the canceling spell.

Now everyone across the table dies when the food in their belly is untransfigured back to brick. Yay.

 

Remind me of this magic system's details. I think I read the first 3 or 4 waaay back when. The only thing I remember in stark clarity is the initial description of Augustus Starrise, which sounded pretty badass. It's a long-term project of mine to at least skim the rest to see what happens.

 

One thing that I wish HP magic system would have is the source. Where is the magic coming from? Is it a manipulation of some form of life energy ala Star Wars, or maybe just some mysterious 'wheel' that guides the universe like WoT? Why are only certain individuals born with it? I wish she had gone into detail with this just a little in the later books. The part where Ollivander explains to Harry the nature of the Elder Wand is perfect for SO MANY explanations.

Also, someone here said that wizards don't apply magic to many uses as they should. Prey tell, what would those be? They have there own transport, communication, entertainment, et cetra...all magic.

Compare it with a scientific theory. Until relativity arrived on the scene, everybody believed the Newtonian physics to be the only possible explanation of how the forces worked in our universe. Then, a brilliant mind shattered all concepts, making new rules which were better, leading to re-formulate all the old ones.

Killing curse thing was a special situation, mixed with co-incidences. Also, couldn't you say the same thing about science? We believed the earth was in the centre, until someone proved otherwise. We didn't believe we could fly, until the Wright brothers showed us how to.
The one good thing that Rowling did here was to show the price that would be payed if you messed too heavily with this stuff. The second brother's love who was brought back was never 'truly' alive. So, magic isn't really omnipotent.

 

What's the LotW series?

 

Lords of the Underworld series. Book 8 (i think) was the last to come out. Here

 

Err, no. It's Lightning on the Wave's series, the Sacrifices arc.

@silverlasso (spoilers for the series):

Spoiler

There are two primal magical forces: Light Magic and Dark Magic. Officially declaring via specific ceremonies for either will grant you greater proficiency with affiliated spells but strip you of your ability to use the opposite. These forces seem to be sentient given events in books 4-7.
Another big change are individuals who have Lord-level power: people like Dumbledore, Voldemort, and Harry. They most often use their magic wandlessly and based on intent instead of using specific spells.
The final significant addition is two-pronged: special magical abilities and extreme proficiency in certain areas of magic. Abilities include parseltongue, compulsion, and the like. Extreme proficiency is being able to use, for example, fire or illusion spells wandlessly, with much greater power, and mostly effortlessly.
There are also the webs, but those are rather tangential to the system of magic itself.

 

(This is all starting with the fact that JKR's magic is full of inconsistencies, so I'll probably finish this and think, 'Wow, I just wasted part of my life on something useless')

Honestly, I think one thing that many people throw out and then forget about is the most important part of Harry Potter magic: the magic wand. I think the magic wand may be the key to explaining why wizards are able to cast spells without ever getting tired or slowing down.

If you think about it, the wand chooses the wizard, so the wand obviously has magic of its own, without the wizard involved. This leaves the possibility open that it's the wand itself that actually does the heavy lifting while the wizard shapes the spell.

This would help explain why wizards never seem to get tired. You could maybe say that wands connect to magic directly through a link with a magical animal, which seem to be made from magic, unlike wizard humans, who only seem to be able to use magic. It would also explain why a wizard can't just pick up any old wand and cast a spell; what's really the difference between Hermione's wand and Harry's wand if Harry's "magical core" is what's important, or if magic just 'changes' shit without any supply of energy?

I think what happened in the fifth book with Harry's wand helps support this. He cast 'lumos' without having any contact with his wand, and it lit up across the room. They have a deep connection, so the wand heard him and lit up, but it seemed to do the lighting. He wasn't focusing, he wasn't casting. He simply said a word and the wand itself lit.

Now, I won't even go into wandless magic, as I truthfully can't remember what's canon and what's not when it comes to that one. There's just too much shit in my head from years of fanfiction.

I will say though that squibs and the 'what gives a wizard the ability to use magic when a muggle can't?' questions aren't answered by this, but they aren't really answered by anything. We think that squibs can do some tiny bit of magic, but you never actually see it happen. Filch's whole deal in second year could have been a total scam, sorta like a 'get thin quick' pill on the TV. /shrug

 

Oops, I'm getting my fantasy mixed up today...and that's a weird sentence.

 

I'd argue that it doesn't necessarily show that. It seems most likely, but it's also possible that while you can eat the transfigured desk, it doesn't have any of the nutrients, etc. which would be gained by eating a real pig. That's really the only way that all wizards not having all the food they want all the time makes any sense.

 

JKR (if we're going to take her out-of-book declarations seriously, which is a whole different debate) has stated that Transfiguration doesn't overlay a magical effect to change a thing's properties (which is the definition of a Charm), but rather actually changes the physical make up of the thing.

So the desk->pig isn't a desk dressed up as a pig. It is, physically, a pig.

So it should have nutrients.

Edit: That said, if you're going to eat a transfigured thing you'd better be sure that your spell was perfect. We often see in the books that a transfigured object, when the transfiguration was not perfect, keeps some properties of the object it used to be e.g. we see, if I recall correctly, a teapot with a turtle-shell pattern.

Presumably eating something that wasn't perfectly transfigured would be bad for you. Who knows if that pig you're about to eat actually still has some characteristics of the wood you made it from. Even Harry, who got an E in his transfiguration OWL - generally considered a good grade - was still transfiguring stuff imperfectly.

So you'd have to be a master of transfiguration to safely eat a transfigured animal.

 

Ah. I was not aware of her statement on this. I tend to not pay attention to out of book declarations of authors. That being said, if we accept her statements as canon, then you're correct.

Which again goes to the issues in a coherent system of magic and corresponding world. Either the magic system needs to be revamped or wizarding society and daily life need to be revamped (as in your Lord of Magic).

 

I'm not sure whether it's ever explicitly stated in canon or not but I'm under the impression that transfigurations/conjurations are never permanent, therefore eating a transfigured animal is incredibly stupid.
In fact, it's never stated that you can't transfigure/conjure gold, so if you could do it permanently, masters of transfiguration would never need to work.

 

Transfiguration =/= conjuration, therefore eating a transfigured pig does not necessarily carry the same risks as eating a conjured pig:

- Perfectly transfigured pig = exactly the same as eating a regular pig
- Imperfectly transfigured pig = eating a pig that carries traits from the starting object, depending on the degree of imperfection

Vs.​

- Perfectly Conjured pig = will taste like a pig, but still disappear
- Imperfectly conjured pig = will either be incomplete somehow (i.e. having no taste?), or disappear faster. Either way, will still disappear.

---

And I was under the impression that gold cannot be transfigured or conjured. Not because of anything explicitly stated, but because of the fact that alchemy exists in canon - which is the only stated process that can change anything into gold.

 

If transfiguration isn't permanent, then eating a transfigured object will likely kill you unless you transfigure it out of water or something that's otherwise harmless in most parts of the body.

Also, I understand the part about alchemy, but do you think that implies that you can't transfigure things past a certain atomic weight or there's just something unique about gold that prevents it? Because the second is suspiciously like a Word of God plot point, and thus eww.