I'd agree with this, but from canon I'd take that the deviation from the original enchantment is tied to the physical condition of the object. Thats why you polish your broomstick and trim its twigs. A cup might be charmed to warm whatever is placed in it. As long as the condition of the cup remains unchanged, so does the charm. As the surface becomes worn, if the lip gets cracked, the charm starts to fritz slightly. When you accidently drop it and the handle breaks off, the charm starts to go haywire!

 

Quidditch players are in shape similar to racing drivers. While their brooms rewrite the laws of gravity, they're still subject to G-forces in the air and need to be able to handle them. For school matches, it's casual conditioning. The pros are in damn good shape.

Wandless magic is limited to area effect type spells like summoning and banishing. Point and shoot spells aren't possible without a focal point.

Magic as a whole is getting better, more efficient, with time, just like muggle technology. Staffs, runic circles, ritual magic are all old school things that, while effective, aren't nearly as efficient as modern spells. The Founders were exceptionally talented and skilled practitioners but, considering the advancements in magic over the course of a millennium, would be utterly useless against someone like Dumbledore.

Ancient Runes is basically a history class. The only people who apply that knowledge are curse breakers who are charged with taking down complex wards leftover from ancient civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, etc.). Modern warding is done through spells and the occasional ward-stone anchor for larger areas.

 

Eh? What's 'warding'?

 

Ancient Runes: This is a branch of magic that seeks to create permanent magical effects on objects through the carving of runes. This is why even though it is stated that charms tend to wear out on magical objects there are still quite a few very old magical objects that haven't degraded over time. This branch of magic is limited though. You can't just throw runes on any old thing. The material needs to be sufficiently sturdy and magical. This is why the invisibility cloak is so special for being able to last so long without the charms going bad because you can't use runes to create that due to material limitations.

Arithmancy: Study of the magical nature of numbers. It's clear that numbers like the number 3 and 7 hold special power when it comes to magic. This branch of magic seeks to understand this and apply it to improving the effectiveness of certain types of magic e.g. ratios of potions ingredients to create more effective potions. A subset of this also involves predicting the future with numbers, but I like to separate this from Divination by assuming it is predicting the future actions of magical objects or spells. It's a way for curse breakers to analyze and predict the effects of triggering unknown curses so that they can prepare appropriate counters.

Alchemy: Seeks to overcome the limitations of Transfiguration and Potions. Requires a certain level of knowledge of both Transfiguration and Potions to even hope to grasp the basics. The more advanced you get in the field the more stringent the requirements on your knowledge of Transfiguration and Potions. At a certain point, you need a firm understanding of Arithmancy and Astronomy as well.

 

Magical society is more accepting of risk because magical medicine is really effective at curing non-magical injuries.

It's why I hate "safety" stories where self-insert Hermione whines about how dangerous Hogwarts is. If normal humans were twice as tough as we are now or we could easily regrow limbs, you sure as hell can bet that our risk acceptance would go up too. Safety glasses? Pfft, just grow new eyes it you break them. Guard rails? It's going to have to be really high up to bother with that when you can survive 10m+ falls with trivial injuries. Poisonous animals? Meh, I can buy antidote off the shelf at the supermarket.

I've not seen anything in canon to suggest that with prompt enough medical attention, even things like broken necks or decapitation would not be survivable. They can mend broken bones with a flick of a wand. It does not matter if some kids gets his face smashed in by a bludger because Madam Pomfrey will be out there in a jiffy to save your life.

It only matters when magic is involved: things like mucking with transfiguration or trying to become a cat with polyjuice or dark magic.

 

Wandless magic isn't rare. Every witch or wizard can do it. It just isn't all that powerful. Even for wizards who are on the more powerful end of the spectrum of magic, it still isn't all that useful. Unless you are facing an untrained witch or wizard or a muggle it isn't going to do much. Similarly, it has very limited effects on magical creatures and objects. In my mind, the reason you don't see wizards using it more is that pretty much everything laying around their house is magical so they default to using their wands out of habit even when it might not be needed. I think this does a good job of explaining that snippet of Harry's paper on why witch burning was completely pointless and why wizards tend to view muggles as not being a real threat. Even their weakest magic can deal with something so long as it doesn't have any magic of its own.

 

I like the notion of "always on" magic myself. Some fanfictions have a scene where Dean and Harry try and set up a game of football or somesuch thing. I think football would be as difficult for wizards to play as blind football would be for a reguarly sighted person. The ball would keep performing impossible curves. Quiddich excercises all the capabilities of a wizard.

 

Defense the Dark Arts and the Dark Arts are two sides of the same coin. If you're good at one, you're going to be good at the other. Sectumsempra isn't easy to cast, Harry is just naturally gifted at dark magic.

 

I figured that was more or less canon after Hermione's rant towards Umbridge about Slinkhard's shitty book in OoTP. How Slinkhard doesn't like any jinxes or counterjinxes but that Hermione thinks that they're fine and dandy when used defensively.

 

The invention, dissemination, and rapid evolution of firearms and firearm based military tactics played a major role in the creation and enactment of the 1689 Statute of Secrecy.

Yes, a shield charm can stop a bullet. But massed firing lines and cannons paired with being grossly, ridiculously outnumbered?

 

I don't view Defense Against the Dark Arts as a specific branch of magic. I just see it as the application of magic against dark wizards, creatures, and objects. Similarly, I think the Dark Arts themselves have more to do with intent. Some jinxes, hexes, curses, etc. require that you mean to do something terrible and that separates them from say more childish pranks that might also be classified as a hex or jinx.

Why even read a book about magic if you want people without magic to be overpowered? Not to mention the fact that wizards routinely show zero respect towards things Muggles create. They clearly know about them too. Even Draco knows what a helicopter is at 11 years old and he would be one of the least knowledgeable people about Muggles.

My headcanon on this is that wizards really just can't be bothered. They've lived through Muggle wars and none of them ever died to a bombing or even lost their house, but they can't be bothered to protect the Muggles too. The Muggles should just be content that wizards stop dementors from slaughtering all of them because even magic can't kill a dementor only contain them and drive them away.

 

My headcanon on Dark Arts is that it's simply magic that's not fully understood yet and has no well known counters. That's why "Petrificus Totalus" is not a dark spell but something a first year can use on their peers without getting expelled: instead of being total paralysis without cure as the name suggests, it's pretty much harmless as long as there's someone to cancel it. On the other hand we have things like George's ear that can't be fixed because it was "removed by Dark Magic"; my headcanon is that If someone finds a way to cure that curse and that cure is widely available, it stops being dark magic, and becomes yet another "ordinary" spell.

 

Hmm.... A headcanon of mine: Lucius is more knowledgeable about Muggles and their inventions than he lets on and has told Draco quite a few cautionary tales. As in, the Malfoys (other than Draco) see Muggles as the enemy, but not just because of fear of the unknown or bigotry or anything like that. They see them as dangerous.

 

Whats your basis for believing that a shield charm couldn't stop multiple bullets?

 

Relevant headcanon: Hagrid's disbelief about the Dursleys excuse that James and Lily died in a car crash wasn't simply because wizards are too durable. It's that wizards in general are all a bit prescient. They can sense impending harm if it comes from a mundane source, and some even have a bit of danger sense when it comes to targeted spells.

All the muggle-wank won't help if the wizard instinctively disapparates right when a sniper pulls the trigger.

 

There is actually some evidence to back this up from canon. “He had sensed rather than heard it: Someone or something was standing in the narrow gap between the garage and the fence behind him” That's from when Harry notices Sirius in dog form looking at him, and Sirius doesn't even mean any harm.

Also, there are the the Shield Hats, Shield Cloaks, etc. that Fred and George made. They seem to automatically activate per the explanation given in HBP.

 

Literally nothing other than I hate wizard-wank the way most people hate muggle-wank. Something about a single shield charm being able to absorb and dissipate the sheer amount of kinetic energy from multiple centerfire bullets feels lazy.

A single bullet? Totally acceptable. A handful at once? Believable. Several but not all at once? Yup.

It's one of the reasons that I like The Dresden Files so much. There's some rhyme and reason to magic and human's/non-magicals have some advantages.

 

On my part, I hate both wizard-wank AND muggle-wank. Edit: by that, I mean in the sense that yes, wizards can get ahead of Muggles, at least if they use their talents cleverly, but Muggles are so numerous that wizards aren't going to be getting rid of them, either, nor are Muggles as harmless as Arthur thinks them to be.

 

That's not really Harry Potter though. Theoretically, wizards would have lived through multiple muggle wars including the two world wars which would have included the blitz. They still treat muggles dismissively at best. Even muggleborn students aren't busting out guns. These are people who can turn themselves invisible and teleport onto a military base and take whatever they please. So you are left with two options either every wizard is monumentally stupid or those things just aren't an actual threat to them.

This actually brings me to another part of my headcanon which is that part of the reason why wizards find muggles so amusing is that they are attempting to understand how the world works when they aren't capable of observing quite a bit of it.

 

Wizards can create matter from nothing. I don't think the kinetic energy of a few or a couple hundred bullets would bother them.