Ages ago, on JKR's old site, she released the WOMBAT tests. She never gave out the answers so they've always been a slightly dodgy source of canon, but there are some useful bits and pieces on there. There are also some questions which, through careful reasoning, we can know the answer for sure and thus gain some novel canon information.

All the questions are here: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Wizards'_Ordinary_Magic_and_Basic_Aptitude_Test

Going through, there are a few interesting bits and pieces which catch my eye:

The way this question is presented means that they all occurred, it's just that historians disagree about which one was the direct cause of that rebellion.

Most interesting to me is D: Attempt of wizards to regain control of Gringotts bank. "Regain" means wizards used to have control of Gringotts. So Gringotts was in fact originally a wizard bank, but at some point the goblins managed to take it over.

The phrasing of this question means only one of them is false. Conveniently, we already know which one is false: C. We know from the Black family that elves can be ordered to kill themselves. Since D is false, that means all the others are true. This settles the issue of House Elf origin. They're not like boggarts and Dementors, creatures that magically appear. They're fully biological beings which reproduce.

Again, this phrasing allows us to know what is already the case, as the question is all about changes from the current state. So there are basically no young people on the Wizengamot (hard luck, independent Harry), you don't have to be pure-blood (as proof of being pure-blood is suggested as a change), and there is either no maximum term, or a maximum term of greater than three years.

Again, the phrasing of the question means these were all causes, it's just the level of contribution which is in question.

Some good historical information here as, once again, all are presented as true events. We now even have a date for the official recognition of Gringotts as goblin-owned rather than wizard-owned.

Only one of these is correct, and we know from Deathly Hallows (which came out after the test, I believe) that it's C. Hermione uses basically that exact phrasing. This means that all the others are false, including "It is impossible to make the inedible edible."

Amazingly, this means that my deduction (in several threads here, also in my headcanon doc) that "nutritive capacity" is a binary magical property (or in JKR's words, edibility/inedibility) which is preserved through magical transformations is 100% correct. Further, it also shows that JKR had already thought about it in that way, which is a nice "fuck you" to everyone who trots out the idea that JKR never thought about her magical rules in detail.

We know now from Pottermore that E is true. That means that the others are false. Occlumency can't guard against possession (this is perhaps surprising, but it doesn't mean that there's no defence at all), and a curse, while we know it is darker than a hex, is not necessarily stronger.

This one is extremely tricky, because it seems that more than one is false. It's possible that JKR has changed her mind since writing it.

We know that A is false; PoA and HBP tells us that the form of the Patronus is a reflection of the caster's character.

We know that B is true.

We know nothing about C; it could be true or false. It's likely true, given that we already have two answers that appear false.

D is the really tricky one. We saw the Cruciatus blocked in HBP, but the specific wording of the question may allow us to call this false. The question says "defensive spell against". This could be interpreted very narrowly as meaning a specific anti-Cruciatus spell belonging not to Charms but to Defence Against the Dark Arts, aka a counter-curse. This allows Charms like the Shield Charm to remain effective: it's simply that the Cruciatus has no counter-curse. Alternatively, you could interpret it as slightly broader as speaking of all spells, but not including techniques. Blocking is a technique not a spell, so it's not included. Still, its ambiguity means we can't really use this question as a source of knowledge.

E we know to be true.

 

I disagree. My personal experience with such questions mean that while some are true, at least one or two will be false. But, the way it's phrased, it could mean that while they happened, they were insignificant, on the large frame. The others, where MOST is used, are much easier tobe assumed being all true.

You mean C.

That is extremely interesting, it makes sense on the seemingly original roman Senatorial nature of the Wizengamot.


8 and 13 were a nice fuck you to fanon arrogant little pricks, that think DARKS IS AWESOME!!11!!! and that they are better 'writers' than JKR.


14, I agree with your reasoning. But I had always assumed Hags to be quite powerful, like House Elfs, because of the Baba Yaga.

 

Uh, I'm not seeing at all how that follows.

C is correct. Therefore statement D is incorrect. D is a statement of impossibility and if such a statement is false then the action is, thus possible. Thus it is possible to change things from inedible to edible. Therefore your statement that "nutritive capacity is retained through magical transformations" must be wrong if we assume that edible = digestible.

Unless I've missed a negative somewhere.

 

Hags are treated by wizards with less respect than they give vampires, so I wouldn't think they're much of a threat to an adult. They're allowed to hang out and sell things in Knockturne Alley.

My own headcanon is that Baba Yaga was a witch who chose to become a hag, making her even more bizarre and distasteful than the average hag who was born wanting to eat children.

 

I'd point out it says "It is impossible to make the inedible edible" not "It is impossible to make the inedible edible with magic." All the others specifically reference magic in their mechanic. This one doesn't. So the fact that you can grow crops from inedible dirt would make it false.

Even setting that aside, it may be possible to make the inedible, edible through charms, rather than transfiguration. Imagine a charm which makes a plant grow very fast. The magic effects the speed this happens had but the process where by inedible becomes edible is a mundane. This charm could reasonable be said to make the inedible edible without violating transfiguration rules.

 

Something that's very interesting is that some of these questions seem to be assessing one's political opinions, especially in relation to the rights of Beings, muggles and Ministry policies.

Examples:

If we assume that these questions aren't for polling purposes (which seems to be true as they aren't marked as such) then it seems that the Ministry considers the views of wizarding superiority necessary to exist in the wizarding world. This seems to be the kind of thing that Hermione would rage about.

 

Hah, that's embarrassing. You're completely right.

I take a small pyrrhic victory in that JKR still does make a binary edible/inedible distinction which seems to be magically significant, but yeah, this seems to imply that it can be magically altered (it doesn't specify magic, but I think that's a bit of a technicality).

Which is weird, because that seems to directly contradict the exception to Gamp's law regarding food. This seems to imply that either:

1. The food exception to Gamp's law is extremely limited in terms of what branches of magic it applies to. (E.g. just transfiguration, or even more narrowly just conjuration).

2. The food exception to Gamp's law is limited in terms of what objects it applies to. This draws on the falsity of "Any object can be transfigured into food" by saying that, while the exception says "you can't transfigure anything into food", that doesn't necessarily imply "you can't transfigure anything into food". If you have the a starting object of the right kind, you may be able to make food from non-food via magic.

The problem with both is that they make Harry, Ron and Hermione's inability to make food in DH weird. Yeah, you can't conjure it (1) or you can't transfigure it from rocks (2), but there's nothing stopping them from using a different type of magic or finding a starting object of the right type.

I guess you can always go for the "the just lack the skill to pull it off" explanation, but that seems weak given Hermione's general skill with transfiguration.

 

Actually, you're not wrong—depending on how you're defining capacity. If you are using the first definition: the maximum amount something can hold, then Steelbadger is correct. But, if you're using the second definition: an ability to do something (like hold nutrition), then you're correct.

Or, to put it another way, the issue at hand is retention of nutritional capacity. So, do you mean, "what is the top amount it can hold" or "it has the ability to hold X amount"?

When an object is transfigured from inedible to edible, it may retain the ability to hold x amount, or it may gain more (x+y=z), but if it has the ability to hold z, then it still has the ability to hold x.

And to be honest, I thought you meant capacity as in ability, rather than limit.

 

That is indeed what I meant, and indeed what this question appears to preclude from being true. I said that something being able to provide nutrition was basically fixed and couldn't be changed by magic. This seems to say that it can be: inedible things can be made edible, contrary to what I previously held.

... sigh. I'm going to have to edit my headcanon document at some point.

 

On the subject of Gringott's: it doesn't necessarily imply that Gringott's was founded by wizards, just that they controlled the bank at some point in the past. It could have switched hands more than once.

 

You may maintain your headcanon regarding the binary nature of nutrition if you consider that something being inedible does not necessarily means that it lacks nutritive value, something merely unsafe to eat can also be defined as inedible while still providing calories.

So, you could magically turn the inedible edible, but only if that inedible thing already possesses nutritional value, like a poisonous fruit or a partially rotten piece of meat.

 

LOL. Then again, "edible" and "food" are two different things. If you don't agree, come over to my house when I try to make gravy sometime. It's a talent that thoroughly escapes me.

 

"Edible" may not necessarily mean "nutritionally substantial." Paper, for instance, is technically edible; you can eat it - but it still has no nutrition. If you tried to live on it, you'd die.

Hence, you might be able to turn a rock into an apple; that apple would just be nutritionally void.

However, I always imagined that the exception to Gamp's law applied specifically to conjuration, not transfiguration. In other words, I think it would be possible to transfigure a rock into an apple and have it be nutritionally valuable.

So far as I know, JKR has stated that conjured objects do eventually disappear on their own. Conversely, if transfiguration is the real deal, total transformation of one object to another, then there really is no reason my correctly transfigured apples should not provide me with all the nutrition of a regular apple. The only difference between a regular apple and a transfigured one might be that one has magical traces indicating that it was not always an apple.