It's well-known that the word "wards" is never used in canon. The purpose of this thread is not to make that trivial semantic point, but rather to consider the substantive ways in which the idea of "protective enchantments" goes beyond the concept of "wards". These ideas will in turn constitute an argument against the use of "wards" in fanfic -- not because the word is uncanonical, but because the concept of wards is inferior to way protective spells are employed in canon. This should in turn inspire more inventive magical protections in our fanfic.

For the sake of completeness, let's note that "wards" generally mean permanent protective spells placed on a physical location with a geographical boundary. Further, they are generally three-dimensional and typically geometric (a dome being the most common). This is a meaning derived not just from HP fanon, but also from a large body of fantasy worlds where "wards" are used. While a given fic may try to use "wards" in a different manner, it will be fighting an uphill battle against the well-established mechanics which come part and parcel with the word.

We should also note that there are some spells which behave like "wards" in canon (for example, the Shield Charm and its variations) but plenty which do not.

The idea for this thread is to:

A) consider canon examples which demonstrate the varied use and nature of protective spells compared to "wards"; and

B) to come up with canon-ish ideas for magical protections.

I'll start us off.

Fidelius

The Fidelius Charm is not a spell cast on a location, but rather on a piece of information (a secret), which is contained within a person's soul. While the spell has an effect on a physical location, it is not itself on that location.

This distinction is not just academic: we know that breaking a Taboo will collapse all magical protections on a location; we also know that the Taboo does not collapse the Fidelius Charm. The fact that the Fidelius is not cast on a location seems to make it immune from the Taboo.

Unplottability

When you think about it, the spell to make a target Unplottable cannot be cast on the target's physical location. A spell on a physical location must have a physical border, a place where its effects end. But the very effect of Unplottability makes this impossible: such a border would constitute an act of mapping, in that the border of the spell would act to geographically locate the target.

So Unplottability must be cast on an entity directly, not on its geographic location i.e. it's Hogwarts per se which is unplottable, not the land which it occupies.

Bond of Blood

The Bond of Blood Charm is the charm which Dumbledore cast on Harry, sealing in Lily's protection and harnessing that power to make him safe when he shares a home with Petunia. This example is particularly egregious, because it's a piece of magic which is explicitly explained in canon, but nonetheless the vast majority of the fandom gets it wrong -- the idea that there are "blood wards" on Privet Drive.

There are no protective spells on Privet Drive itself that we know of. The Bond of Blood Charm is on Harry, not Privet Drive. There is a reciprocal relationship between the Charm and the house: Privet Drive is the recipient of the protection granted by the Bond of Blood by virtue of the fact that it is Harry's home: the Bond of Blood continues to exist only so long as Harry lives with Petunia (his mother's blood) at Privet Drive.

Cursebreakers

This is something that fanon ignores to its detriment. Bill Weasley is a cursebreaker, not a "charmbreaker". This indicates that the most common/effective form of protecting a property is the use of curses, not charms. As Dark Arts, they will be difficult to reverse. They are also an aggressive form of defence.

Fanon continually gets Bill's job all wrong. For a start, fics often depict him as an expert in erecting defences, when in fact his specialty is getting past them. Secondly, fics often depict Bill as an expert in "warding" rather than in curses.

The underuse of curses as a form of protection in the fandom means that we often lack for interesting defences. For example, it appears common in the magical world to not only cast spells to prevent access to the property (i.e. a spell protecting the property's border) but also to curse objects within the interior of the property, so that the trespasser can enter but does so at great risk. Two examples of this are Voldemort's curse on the ring horcrux and the Gemino curse on the contents of the Lestrange vault. The Egyptian tombs are another example, albeit one we never actually see.

I suspect we can think of many other interesting uses of curses in a defensive fashion. I encourage replies which propose inventive curses employed as defences.

Hogwarts

Fanon often depicts Hogwarts as possessing some kind of permanent shield around its borders like a bubble, but it's clear from canon that this is not the case -- in DH, Flitwick needed to cast such a shield to put it in place.

In canon, we know of the following enchantments on Hogwarts:

Anti-flying enchantment
Anti-apparition jinx
Anti-legilimency enchantment
Muggle repelling Charm
Muggle-deluding Charm (makes the castle look like a ruin)

The anti-legilimency one is referenced by Snape in OotP, where he says that there are spells protecting the residents of Hogwarts from mental attack, and that Harry's scar connection to Voldemort bypasses this enchantment.

But there is no general "keeping people out" enchantment like a magical wall. There would seem to be a good reason for this: Hogwarts has a physical wall already. It seems likely that Hogwarts' walls are themselves enchanted to be unbreakable and to withstand a certain amount of magical damage, as well as to repel those who would climb over them.

So instead of a single "magical barrier" we have an interesting combination of defences: a physical wall which is likely enchanted to keep wizards out; plus no-flying and anti-apparition enchantments to prevent you from bypassing the wall.

 

I think there's nothing wrong with having wards in fanfic--as noted in the OP, a long-established device in fantasy literature--along with protective enchantments. Or calling protective enchantments wards, because it serves the purpose of brevity and you don't have to explain anything, because you can pretty much assume that a reader of fantasy fiction (or someone who plays video games) will be familiar with the concept.

 

I think even "Protective Enchantments" can be overly limiting. For much the same reason saying "wards" makes you think domes of energy, just saying "Protective Enchantments" makes you just think of spell-type protections. When we look at magical protections more generally, we see more than just that.

A particularly common method seems to be guardian beasts. We see this in "Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone" with Fluffy and the (already dealt with) troll used to guard the Stone. Likewise, we are also told Acromantula were originally bread to guard treasure, security trolls are often mentioned, Gringotts uses dragons to guard its vaults and in the origin story of the Unlocking Charm we hear of a thief that uses a Nundu pup as a guard.

I wonder if Potions could also be used in magical protection? We see a few sort-of examples in canon. Again the stone was guarded by a potion. To get through the magical fire you needed the correct one. Later we also see Voldemort guard his locket horcrux with the Drink of Despair, which is a more direct example of a potion used to guard something. Though in both these cases potions are combined in spells.

 

If Taure was a sing, he would be dropping a song everyday while still keeping it original and catchy.

Like seriously though, this forum has been around for over a decade and Taure is still finding new things to discuss.

 

The way I always thought of protective enchantments was that they tended to be more focused on stopping you from finding a location rather than stopping you from entering said location. Wards are more the latter (according to fanon).
The difference is kind of similar to fanon occlumency which often has Harry put a large metal dome around his mind to stop anyone from reading it.
An example of a protective enchantment in canon would be in HBP, where the cave that hid the locket horcrux was hidden by a seemingly normal stretch of rocky wall that took someone of Dumbledore's caliber to find.

 

Another source we see for curses/protective enchantments is at Grimmauld place in the seventh book. The cursed figure of dust on the doorstep that Moody set up was to stop Snape entering. I don't think we ever see what it would have done had Snape arrived but it is an example of a targeted, or at least conditional defense.

The conditional nature of protective enchantments is also reflected in the protections Harry receives at Privet drive. The whole wish him harm thing. You could even say the Fidelius charm is conditional on if you know the secret. The conditional nature is interesting but can take away from the magic a bit. It takes away from the idea of a magical bubble shield protecting a location but it does open the way for logic-gate-esque IF protections which just don't seem magical enough for me.

Something interesting to consider is that from Snape's attempts at cracking the marauder's map that authority might have some powers over protective enchantments. Would the DMLE be safe from all conditional protections provided they were doing their duty?

 

I must disagree with your idea that curses and charms are not the same thing.

Though I don't have a canon dictionary definition anywhere it's clear that charms are magic for performing actions or applying effects. Either by making objects or people do things (such as the levitation charm or the cheering charm), or applying effects to people or objects (disillusionment charm for example). The Imperius curse for example is quite clearly analogous to the first example; it's magic that makes a person do something. Sectumsempra is another example, a cutting curse of some sort with an added ability to resist healing. It performs an effect on a person. Gemino would be "curse" example of the latter, it applies an effect to an object.

I will therefore contend that curses are charms and that the word curse is used when the charm causes harmful effects. There is nothing to suggest they are separate fields of magic.

 

This is correct. Per the Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 article on Pottermore: "Dark charms are known as jinxes, hexes and curses. This book does not deal with such spells."

So it seems curses are a sub-type of charm. They are magic that adds a (unwanted and harmful) magical effect. That matches the definition of a charm.

 

Why can't the Anti-flying enchantment and the Anti-apparition jinx be considered a type of ward? Simply by the semantic meaning of the word? And even then one could simply say Hogwarts is warded against apparition or broom-mounted invasion.

In consideration of fanfiction, a Waste-vanishing Enchantment in, let's say, a St Mungus bedroom could also be considered a ward. I see no problem with that.

 

This ties back in to what Sree was saying.

According to JKR, jinxes, hexes and curses are all dark magic:

From JKR's old website.

Now, "dark magic" can mean different things in different contexts. Sometimes it means something is just dangerous, or gruesome, or in some sense immoral. However, when used in a technical sense to describe the nature of a spell, it generally refers to the fact that the spell resists reversal. The effects of the Cutting Charm (Diffindo) can be reversed with a simple Repairing Charm (Reparo). The effects of Snape's Cutting Curse (Sectumsempra) can only be reversed with the specific countercurse, without which the spell cannot be undone. The curse on Dumbledore's hand is another good example: the spell could only be slowed down, not removed.

Now, you are correct that jinxes, hexes and curses are part of the body of Charms. However, they are a subset of Charms called Dark Charms (this was stated on the old Pottermore, in the section on The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1). So while curses have Charm-like effects, there is a distinction between them and other Charms -- namely, the presence of dark magic, which is a real magical effect, not just a social connotation. That effect makes these spells more difficult to reverse and therefore also makes them a superior form of protection.

 

And more precisely they were described on old Pottermore as "dark charms".

 

Fidellus and Unplottability I consider belong to the realm of divination.
They hide information and limit your capability to share information.
They effect our perception.

too me domes of energy always sound like poor shielding method and lazy writing Wizards and Witches suppose to be crafty and knowledgeable.
(I currently by pass the geometric failure of the strength of a dome, compare to focus attacks)

I prefer to bring your enemies to your territory and let them experience like entering hostile jungle where everything is out there to kill you.
Earth construction that will rise form the ground, trees, bushes or other inmate objects that will attack you.
Magical plants and creatures.
Magical traps, and while try to overcome it, you are faced also by the owners return fire.
Dumbledore faced some of it in Gaunt shack.


Maybe wards in the form of domes were used in the past and fell out of favor because breaching them became quite easy.

Anti flying, Anti portkey, anti apparition seems like charms that disable or prevent the magic from taking place in single point (or alter some conditions that lead to the magic failure), and the further you are from the point (or points) the effect deteriorate, so at certain distance from Hogwarts you can.

You can't apparate anywhere in Hogwarts from out to inside, inside to inside and inside outside.