We've seen throughout the HP series various magical species and races, each with their own special brand of magic. House-elfs have their wandless telekinesis and popping, Centaurs have thier divination abilities, phoenix have a whole variety of abilities, and so on.

But what do wizards have?

At first, you think the answer is obvious: they have the magic that we see them doing ever day with their wands, Transfiguration, Charms, Dark Arts, Potions, and all that jazz. Basically, what they learn at Hogwarts.

Wrong!

Think back to GoF, the scene where the Dark Mark has been conjured and Harry, Ron and Hermione have fled to the woods. After finding Winky, the Ministry officials have no problem believing that a house-elf would be able to conjure the Dark Mark - their only objection is how she would have known the incantation. Clearly, house-elfs can use wands to do "wizard-magic" too. This is further backed up Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, where it mentions a law being passed, banning the possession of wands by non-human magical beings. So, not only house-elfs can use wands to do what we have thought as wizard's magic, but also a whole variety of other magical creatures can too.

So, if wand-magic is a brand of magic that all magical beings can use, so long as they have a wand, what magic does a wizard possess that is his own?

The answer to this question comes if you think of what magic wizards are capable of that does not use a wand or incantation:

Occlumency.
Apparition.
Animagus.
Metamorphagus.
Parseltoungue.
Legilimency (this one does have an incantation and a wand can be used, but it can also be done wandlessly and wordlessly by looking into a person's eyes).

There are probably others, but I can't think of them right now. Feel free to add to the list.

Anyway, those are the various skills that a wzard can use which are solely his own - they are used without a wand, and I postulate that other magical beings cannot replicate them (though some beings have similar tricks, such as a house-elfs popping).

Taking a closer look at that list, a common link between all of the skills begins to show. All of them have a mental component. Occlumency and Legilimency is clear with this. Apparition requires a mental focus on destination and determination. Animagus, since it is not a wand-spell and has no incantation presumably requires some sort of mental push of will to transform into the animal. For Metamorphagus you have to want your appearance to change, and it does, from what we can see from Tonks' example. She focuses, and the change occurs. Parseltounge is really the odd one out, but I suppose to use it without a snake near one must have mental focus to imagine a snake.

Anyway, what this all comes down to, and what I'm suggestion is thus:

The special brand of magic of wizards and witches is Mind Magic.

Thoughts?

 

I think they have no specific brand of magic, just versatility in being able to imitate many other kinds, and strength of will. Other magical beings could, if they wanted to, probably do things like legilimency and occlumency, and we already know house elves can do apparition. Being a metamorphmagus seems to be the one thing unique to humans, but it too could be just versatility.

 

Ah, but what House-elves do isn't apparition, its a completely different piece of magic with exactly the same effect.

They can pop around inside Hogwarts, but you cannot apparate within Hogwarts grounds. Apparition involves turning on the spot, House-elves simply pop out of existence.

Moreover, a JKR interview:

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm

And:

http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=73

 

But that's the thing, and my point, disregarding that messup (Yeah, I meant house elves can teleport, not apparate). Wizards can do a lot of things that other magical beings can't, but few things are unique to them. Their versatility is their power.

 

I generally agree with what Taure said: house-elves and other creatures may have an extremely refined wandless magic, but they are severely limited in it's use - for example can you see House-Elf casting something impressive like Fidelius Charm, even with a wand?

I liked this paragraph from Erised Burning story:

 

If that is true, then why is mind magic so obscure? It isn't taught in Hogwarts, and only a few people can claim mastery over it. Also, from what I've read, it isn't particularly easy to learn.

 

I think Nobody has the right of it in this discussion. Wizards can use everything surrouding them, copying the abilities of other creatures to make their own lives easier.

Metamorphmagi are not the only shape-shifters. Think of that creature -can't remember it's name- that transforms into a horse to lure victims out into the water before it drowns them.

Umm . . . Parsletongue is the snakes' own language. We took it from them and used it for our own purposes. I don't think it's far-fetched to believe that someone could be taught parsletongue(it's a language just like any other). Also, what have we seen that says parsletongue does anything besides allow you to talk to snakes? Their's no magic to it, no increase in damage of spells. that's fanon.

We truly just don't know enough about the other species of the world to decide if wizards are the only beings able to apperate, use occlumency/legilimency. As I said, Nobody has the right of it by saying that the versatility of wizards is their biggest advantage.

 

Versitility? What versitility? Any magic that can be done with a wand can be done by all magical creatures, not just wizards. Only those skills I listed are done without a wand, and so these few skills are the very few that we can contemplate other Magical Creatures do not possess.

If we then say wizards are not alone in these skills either, then a wizard has no magic of their own, which is contrary to the JKR quote.

 

It's versatility in the way that we can do the magic of any creature, and also that while creatures are limited to a few abilities, wizards have millions. It basically comes down to the the fact that for a wizard, where there is a wand there is a way to do anything, but I don't think it'd be the same for a non-human.

Then again, this is J.K., and she loves riddles. Maybe brand means nothing more than the method. Our brand is wands. It's a self-created brand, yes, but a brand that we as humans have reinforced as ours, and it can be said that no one can use our brand as well as us, even if they can cause trouble with it. A House Elves brand might be the magic that requires only a snap of the fingers, and again, it can be used on a baser level by others, like Dumbledore.

 

But we know from canon that this isn't true. We know House Elves can use wands, and so have access to those millions of "wizarding" abilities - its just that they are banned by law from doing so. And if House Elves can use wands, then why not other creatures?

Anyway, I think people missed my point a bit on the mind magic part.

Those skills I listed (animagus, occlumency etc) are not themselves the special magic that wizards possess - they are simply by products of it. In other words, a wizard's special brand of magic is that his strength of will and mind is stronger than other magical creatures, and this then enables these other non-wandal skills such as Animagus which other species cannot do.

The reason why these skills are not that common is simply because they are not taught at Hogwarts (for the most part).

 

What I meant by the fact that a wand can only be used to full capacity by a wizard is only that. Yes, it is quite possible for an elf to use a wand, all I'm saying is that it can have no where near the same efficiency with it as a man. In the same way that Dumbledore can only achieve limited magic by snapping his fingers, whereas a House Elf could do any number of things with a snap.

It goes back to the brand being the method of use. A wizard's brand of magic is the type that can be channeled through a wand, or maybe even perhaps through any conduit. There are too many possibilities in J.K.'s magic for us to really know. The types of magic you mentioned is just a wizard channeling his magic through some other conduit than a wand, but either way, to use magic efficiently, a wizard will always need a focus, whereas maybe a magical creature might not.

A legilimens needs to use eye contact, an Animagus channels his magic through his personality to change into his closest animalistic reflection of self, a metamorhmagus channels through the body to change appearance, so on so forth.

It might not be the same for a creature, who uses it's magic without the requirement of a focus of any sort. A brand is simply a type or branch of something that is part of a greater whole, and maybe in this case magic comes in two brands: Channeled and Unchanneled, perhaps Wizards dominate the channeled branch.

If it is exclusivity you're looking for, then it can still be found in that it is unlikely that any other thing than a wizard will ever be able to use a wand as well as a wizard can, just as a wizard can hardly replicate most of House Elf or Magical Creature magic.

 

Humans have the will be be better than they are.

We may infact be the most magically weak of all magical creatures but we have the will and the drive to use ever ounce of power at our disposal.

We may have weaker magic than the other creatures but it is us who are the top of the food chain.

We are not stronger or neven smarter we are the most ruthless sons of bitches this planet has ever seen.

A magical race is stronger than us? We will bind their powers and turn them into slaves. We will lonk them in a building and make them guard our money. We will trap them in a forest and not reconise their independence.

We have the the same magic as everyone else that sometimes manifests its self as a magical power (metamorph). Just like other creatures powers are manifested in other ways. I don't think their are different types of magic really. Just a predispositon to use it in a certin way.

Imagin a million years ago the ancestors of house elfs having the same ability to do anything we can. Then comes along one who has a ability to "pop" around more easily than the others. This skill gets stronger through his off spring because of practise of this skill. But their other skills decline because of it.

We don't have special powers. Just ones that we are slightly better at grasping than others. The reason we seem powerful is the human mentality not our power.

EDIT: 500th post!

 

I think it is a mix between Taures and TEAOSs ideas. If all the non-humans couldn't use a wand as well as a wizard could, why should it be banned?

So if the difference in the magic between humans and non-humans isn't the ability to use wand, then the difference lie in what non-wand abilities the different races got.

This is why I think wand-magic was banned, the magic abilities of non-humans are much more specific than that of wizards. But this means that the non-humans got a lot of control over these abilities.

I haven't read that throughly through the books, but it seems to me that the non-human magic we hear about is very equal from House-elf to House-elf or from veela to veela etc. Each member of each race have whatever non-wand magical abilities that accompanies that specific race, and that is one thing that humans don't have.

It is clear that the level of a wizards control and power is very individual, and not all is able to do non-wand magic. To this I agree with both Taure and TEAOS.

I think that, yes, a wizards power is tied very closely to their strength of will, and therefore the extra powers they posses is a kind of mind-magic, but I think that this is what governs all the magic each wizard have, and also what Rowlings idea with magic was:

Some wizards are born more powerfully than others, but it is what you do with that magic that counts. This supports that strength of will, emotions, hard work etc, etc. counts for just as much as power, and because of this I agree with TEAOS.

 

Is it not it possible that it is not just wizards but all magical races (or atleast scentiant ones) that have these abilitys - occlumency, animagus, metamorphagus, parseltoungue, legilimency and any other "wizards ability" and that a wizard could have the ability of any magical creature.
Magical creatures could have evolved so that there entire species has the same abilitys eg: vela with there charm, phoenixes with there flame telleporting and houselves with there finger clicking.
eventuly wizards might evolve to all be metamorphagus and animagus.
with houselves popping being different to apperating its just 2 different forms of telleporting out of potentialy hundreds, I think it is likely that a wizard would be able to do learn to do them if they tryed and that the reason popping works in hogwarts is that there anti apperation-wards not anti-telleporting wards.

the reason wizerds rule the world is a high birth rate and and therefor high population and that humans are powerhungry and love to discriminate anainst annybody or thing.

PS: sorry for the spelling im still figuring out how to work the spellchecker on DLP

 

For evolution to take place selective advantages have to occur as a result of a fight for survival. There isn't a fight for survival among wizards so they won't be evolving much further, just like us Muggles.

 

Voldemort. Grindelwald.

 

I think we are all forgetting something... that the books are all written from a teenage wizard's point of view. A teenage wizard whose first conscious contact with magic happened when he was eleven year old, and every year since then he'd been cooped up in a castle, surrounded by other wizards, taught only wand-magic. Harry doesn't know much about magics/powers of other races, because he is hardly ever in contact with them. I refuse to believe that a fucking Centaur with the body of a horse and the intellect of a human only has bow and arrows as his means of defense. The only magical beings other than humans we consistently see are house-elves (and dementors to some extent). There isn't enough data. Not to mention the fact that any information recieved from other, adult wizards is suspect. They all have a rather vested interest in keeping the wizards' hegemony over all the other races. We only have Jo's word that Wizards have powers that house-elves haven't, and to me at least that sounded like an improvisation, i.e., made up on the spot to halt all those penetrating questions about her world-building that would've come otherwise.

To put my two cents, I think that the advantage wizards have over non-humans is... education. I mean, think about it. Wizards have experimented, assessed and documented spells for centuries. Documentation is important, since any beginner would then have the advantage of knowing just exactly what the pros and cons are in performing a particular spell. Unlike the ff's out there portraying Wizards as lame-ass retards who don't have the imagination or drive to put some labour into research, I think they have actually succeeded quite well. I don't think for a second that a swish-and-flick is as easy as it looks... probably every single gesture involved is associated with a state of mind (then again, considering they teach this charm to eleven-year olds, probably not. But I think this might be the case in, say, Fidelius). [If anybody here has read The Name Of The Wind, you'd know what I'm talking about.] So if all this knowledge is suppressed from the non-human magicals, along with a little "discouragement" to any non-Wizard trying for some research in wand-magic, it's very easy to reach a state where Wizards rule all. Non-humans being able to use a wand notwithstanding (Remember the debate about how would Binky(?) know the MorsMordre spell? Maybe knowing the word is not enough. It'll also explain why the hell Harry is using Expelliarmus after six years in a magic school. He knows this one. Probably that's why he could teach the Patronus too. There's no knowing a spell better. If you can do it flawlessly, you're good.)

We also have to remember that the wands have a core from a magical creature. A dragon heartstring? I mean, really... how close do you have to be to a dragon to pluck it? Okay, so the modern collector has a wand. What about really, really long ago? Is it credible that wizards have always been using parts harvested from dead creatures' bodies, some of whom are probably intelligent? Now, what about this... say all the magical beings once existed in relative peace. Then one wizard discovers that you can do some pretty amazing things using body parts from the other races. Naturally the others object, but the wands give the wizards a versatility that can't be matched by others. There's a war, long drawn-out, but combined with the potential of the wands and the rapid encroachment into magical lands by the muggles (LotR, anyone?) the Wizards win. Combine this with my earlier hypothesis, namely the suppression of wand-magic practice by non-humans, and you've got pretty much the wizarding world as we know it.

Damn, I wrote all that off the top of my head. It's probably even self-contradictory. Anyway, enjoy my first meaningful post on DLP... actually, dunno if I made any sense.

Summary: 1. All magical beings can do wand-magic. They just don't know how.
2. Spells are a lot more than shouting some pig-latin/Aramaic/Assyrian/Sanskrit while waving a stick with dead body-parts in it.
3. The non-human beings have come upon their very specific abilities by adaptation and natural selection.
4. Any specific abilities wizards have once had, have died out through lack of use (wand=crutch).
5. Any useful wizarding ability you could name, there's probably some magical creature that can do it better (apparate - house-elves, legillimency - dementors etc.).

 

Sorry to tell you mate, but she's the author, and thus her word is the word of God as it concerns the material of the book.

 

Fine, the wizards have powers that house-elves don't. Does that mean Wizards have powers that no other magical creature in existence has?
Summary point 5. I think it still stands.

[FONT=&quot]EDIT:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The ministry line (as in the bullshit Umbridge feeds the students in her speech in OotP):[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]'The ancient skills unique to the wizarding community must be passed down the generations lest we lose them for ever. The treasure trove of magical knowledge amassed by our ancestors must be guarded, replenished and polished by those who have been called to the noble profession of teaching.'[/FONT]



"Unique to wizarding comunity", or so she says. So... guarded from what? Being lost? Or dare I say... guarded from who?
[FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

 

What makes Humans diffrent from all the animals out their? I think its really our inugeunity.

Sure maybe any humanoid magical creature can use a wand but Humans invented the wand to make up for our lack of more natural abilities. Humans also invented/discovered (this is debatable) all of the spells the potions, the theories. Humans might not have any special abilities but we have the ability to adapt, to create, to change our environment to us in a much greater way they any other race in existence, I think this carries over to the wizarding world.