Harry Potter's magic system?

[Dwarven Gold]

I was reading the discussion about magic systems on the home page, and it got me thinking. Is there a magic system in Harry Potter?

My gut tells me that JK Rowling has a system, but I can't identify it.

 

[Ophiucha]

Not really. There are some vague rules, some underlying logic in certain things (the wands, for instance, can be used for specific purposes - some are good at charms, others transfiguration, etc.). You need to say some words and wave a stick to get magic to happen, unless you are a very powerful wizard indeed. The words themselves are important, and intent alone does not drive magic. Wingard LeviosAH will cause an explosion, when Wingardium Leviosa will levitate a feather. But intent has some function, muttering words with no magic behind them can cause a spark of nothing (or an explosion - that seems to be the case often).

There are some rules, there are some standards, there are links between everything. But it isn't really a system. There is nothing truly comprehensible about it. The logic is hazy at best. Nearly every rule can be broken, and some things just seem to be exceptions. I suppose one could call it a system, but it isn't the sort of thing you could play a round of D&D off of. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. You focus too much on that sort of thing, and you can just have a shite story with a lot of worldbuilding.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

good point Ophiucha... I don't think Rawling had a defined system for her magic in HP land LOL... I think she had a simple outline of how she wanted things to be done... Like your wand had to be whole or who knows what it might do.. Like Ron's broken wand was unpredictable... AND there was another interesting thing about her system.. Cause she did have one even if it was on an elementary level... You couldn't use a wand that didn't "choose" you correctly. If you remember, Harry had a phoenix hair in his wand.. He ws able to use Voldemort's wand because it too had one of Fawk's feathers. Now she did have it where other people's wands could be used.. Like when Harry used Malfoy's wand.. But it wasn't as good as using his own wand That has to count as some form of a system doesn't it?

 

[Amanita]

I can't really make out a real system there either.
Usually, wizards need wands to achieve what they want. Some spells work just by saying the incantation, others such as the Patronus charm or the Unforgivable curses do not. Some magic is supposed to be "dark", some isn't but even in Harry Potter-forums there are endless discussions on how exactly the two are separated.

Book seven destroys many of the things that might have been seen as rules in the books before. Such as the fact, that a wand suddenly serves everyone who manages to beat its owner/aquire it in a completely random way that might count as beating its owner. If the wand has to match the wizard's magic this doesn't make any sense at all. The law that magic can never bring back the dead is also not really respected anymore.

As you are maybe able to tell, I'm among the people not really happy with the seventh Harry Potter-book for various reasons. To me, it seems as if many rules suddenly changed to suit Harry so he can win, where he actually shouldn't have been able to. Unpredictable magic is fine and well, but it shouldn't only have effects that help the hero.

Some rules, such as the one that food cannot be created with magic also seem rather random to keep wizards from having too much power without adding any explanation.
In the first books I didn't mind this, because it didn't harm the plot, but in book seven I felt rather cheated by the "resolution" of the story. If Harry had won due to some skills, abilities or whatever he had and Voldemort did not, I still wouldn't mind but the ending of Harry Potter for me is an example of how magic should not be used in a good story.

 

[Ophiucha]

@Amanita, I agree. The magic has rules, but there is no sense behind it. At least none every coherently explained. And at times it seems like there are many ways around it. You can't bring somebody back from the dead, except if there soul is on Earth, if they have two souls, or if you use this Resurrection Stone here. You can't use somebody else's wand, except you are perfectly capable of using somebody else's wand and any competent wizard seems to be able to use it just fine (Harry and Malfoy are as opposing as you can get, but he still could cast a spell with it), and there is more than one wand that works with you (Neville and Ron both got replacements, Harry presumably did after he fought Voldemort). And the whole 'you can't create food' thing seems limited by the fact that you can create unlimited and self-powering food creating materials. You can certainly create flowers. We have seen that magic used multiple times. It is hence sensible to consider that they could create an apple tree, just not an apple, or at least apple seeds that could water themselves magically. And I feel certain they could change things into animals, which are food really. They aren't vegetarians in this world.

And I agree, the seventh book was anticlimactic. It should have had more training, but that was essentially never touched on. They had plenty of time to do it, too, but they just... didn't seem to, really.

 

[Kelise]

Was so disappointed by the seventh book.

While I agree that there's no sense behind it, I quite like that as a fact. There's often not much sense in a lot of things, and it gives it more a magic feel, rather than scientific.

I think a lot of the basis behind it was inner strength, how far you're willing to go, lending your own life-force to your cause, that kind of thing. I think the magic represented the characters wielding it, in a way. Ron wasn't that good because he lacked confidence. Harry was good, but often did 'bad' things - parseltongue, sectumsempra - because of all his angst and anger. Voldemort basically twisted all the rules because he was twisting life - doing things no one else dared to try... and so on.

That's about as far as I figured it. The magic had limits when the person had limits, and it stretched and made no sense depending on the will of the person.

 

[Amanita]

I think the magic represented the characters wielding it, in a way.

Yes, I thought along those lines as well. Neville also has trouble with his magic due to his traumatic experiences and this changes when he grows more confidence while other characters like Tonks lose their powers while troubled. (Don't get me started on the reason.) Stuff such as the Elder Wand didn't really fit with this however, at least in my opinion.
I think one of the main problems JKR had with her seventh book was that belief of hers that killing is always absolutely evil based in her metaphysics (splitting the soul.) Therefore she wanted to avoid having her main characters do that. This is good and fine but just doesn't work anymore if the author also wants war and great battles in her story. In a war, enemy soldiers get killed. That's what war is about. Tolkien and many others avoid this problem with Orcs, Undead and so on but Rowling had already created human enemies. The readers know about many Death Eaters' children, siblings and so on and they also know that some aren't in because they want to anymore. Having Harry and the others actually kill any of them would have driven the books into much darker, "not for children"-territory.
That's why I think it would have been better to keep the "imperfect state against terrorist organisation"-setting from the previous books where the normal cause of action is arresting the enemies alive and eveything else can be rightly critisized. The off-screen terror regime didn't add much to the plot anyway.
Sorry for the off-topic but having spend lot's of time on Harry Potter I'm always interested in new opinions on it.

 

[Meg the Healer]

Just some minor points....Harry could use Malfoy's wand just fine because he "took" it from Draco, the had trouble using the wand that Ron lent him that Ron took off the Scavangers, which is why Hermione had trouble using Bellatrix's wand. She wasn't the one to win the wand. But Ron, Harry, and Hermione all used each other's wands throughout the series, but it was also more conducive to the type of magic they were using. I also don't think JK had issues with killing being inherently evil, just murder being inherently evil which is what split the soul - an inherent act of evil which was murder. Just because the Trio didn't use the killing curse, they stupified the hell out of DE flying on broomsticks and letting them plummet to their deaths.

Moving on off that.

There was a slight system to the magic. Wands had to be used. Wizards weren't even able to disapparate without their wands. The magic of the House Elves was different from the Wizards so I think the HP world used a loose system for the races. But, for the most part, you had to use a wand and "most" spells could be used without saying the words. You just needed the movements except when it came to some of the darker/more powerful magic when infliction and inflection were necessary for the spell to works.

I think it should have been stated - as power is given to words that are spoken and not to words that are thought. (in my opinion)

 

[Ulutar]

Spells...

Wand in hand + words from mouth + moving of arm (optional) = MAGIC
^ [odd words, a hodgepodge of various languages]

I love Harry Potter but the magical system is just so flawed. I don't like that the use of magic has no cost, nothing is lost for the gain. Harry could run around all day long, firing avada kadavras and sectumsempras at passing strangers and feel just dandy. It just doesn't sit well with me.

Also, the spells are based off of so many different languages, some individual spells even containing a blend of more than one source. Alohomora for example is derived from the Hawaiian "Aloha" meaning "goodbye," and the Latin word "mora," meaning "obstacle." It just seems silly, almost as if at some point someone decided that these words were magic, and opened doors!

It could be argued that magic and language are interwoven and no one created alohamora or that many different languages were born of magic spells, that would be fine if it were not for the fact that new spells can be created. Sectumsempra for example was a spell that Snape created while he studied at Hogwarts. It just doesn't add up, the system isn't final, it's far too open.

Another issue is that the words mean nothing unless the speaker has a wand in their hand and is of course a witch or wizard. So which has the magic? The language, the person, the wand? Does the wand 'know' all of the spells? How does spoken word turn a cup into a mouse? If a tree is transfigured into a flock of pelicans do they just pop into conscienceness?

Tree... Tree... Tree... BIRD!

Sorry JK, just think about it next time

 

[Amanita]

almost as if at some point someone decided that these words were magic, and opened doors!

That's how I imagine the Harry Potter-spell creating process to work. People choosing the spell words and using Latin most of the time, because that is rather well-known but not used everyday. But I'm not sure if this is correct of course, it was just my interpreation.
I'm not a huge fan of magic systems where the users have to sacrifice parts of their bodies, life time or whatever, though. I don't know why, but somehow I prefer magic to work similiar to other human abilities, only making the user tired or something of the sort.
It is true, that there could have been more along those directions in HP however, the spells seem to be a bit too simple. I especially didn't like the fact that spells could be used without any intention or even knowledge of what the spell would do as with Sectumsempra.

 

[Ophiucha]

I don't know, Ulutur. I think we're so conditioned to seeing magic as this thing that requires a system, as something that should have rules and should be subject to limitations and sacrifices. But, personally, I hear the word magic, and I think of fairy tales. The only rules there seemed to be trades. "I'll weave all this hay into gold if you give me your kid." "What if I don't want to give you my kid?" "Then guess my name." And presumably the child is just going to be eaten - maybe we can postulate that eating babies gives Rumpelstiltskin the ability to weave hay into gold, but that does seem a stretch. Magic was always something abstract and with rules dictated only by the user. Harry Potter's system is certainly more coherent than that, but it does have that sense of magic that the old stories have and that I find to be a bit... lacking these days. There's certainly some fun in the "magic is science" department, and I love some magic systems that take that to a bloody T, but some stories just benefit greatly from having a sense of mysticism to their magic.

 

[Ulutar]

I'm not a huge fan of magic systems where the users have to sacrifice parts of their bodies, life time or whatever, though. I don't know why, but somehow I prefer magic to work similiar to other human abilities, only making the user tired or something of the sort.

I agree, some systems do this well but I'm mostly up for just tiredness like you said. What I meant was that there is no limit, Harry could use the killing curse limitlessly because the magic in the books is infinite. It just seems silly, it doesn't even make the characters tired.

And Ophiucha, I do love a good fairytale I guess I look at magic as an extension of our current understanding of physics.

 

[Digital_Fey]

The magic system in HP does falter a bit between trying to be logical and using the 'anything goes' approach. The fact that most of the spells were derived from Latin seemed a bit fake at first - I'm not a big fan of books that try to make up their own language/words for spells, because it always ends up sounding silly - but after a while it felt natural. In fact, JKR got away with an awful lot of wishy-washy 'rules' because the overall story was good enough to keep readers interested, instead of making them bored enough to nitpick.

There's certainly some fun in the "magic is science" department, and I love some magic systems that take that to a bloody T, but some stories just benefit greatly from having a sense of mysticism to their magic.

Agreed. The whole point of magic - as I see it - is that it is *not* science. It has rules, it needs rules, but only up to a point. Beyond that point, a lot of readers will simply accept things because this is magic. And skillful writing, hopefully.

But I digress^^;

 

[Sheilawisz]

Hello, I am new here in Mythic Scribes and this is the first time that I take part in a discussion thread =)

I have read the seven books of the Harry Potter series, and even though I like it (I am particularly an obsessed fan of Fleur!!) I am not one of those that really love the series and re-read it many times.. and I think that the magic system -yes, it has a system!!- has considerable flaws, like these:

That thing mentioned in the seventh book about the wizards and witches not being able to magically have food lacks of sense completely: In the fourth book Goblet of Fire, Cedric Diggory was said to have transfigured a rock into a dog so this dog would distract the dragon... then, turning a rock into a dog would be a form of getting food quickly even if you have only rocks around you

Harry and his friends were camping for weeks suffering starvation in the seventh book even though they could have transfigured rocks into dogs or even rabbits or chickens!!

Then, why do the wizards and witches need that Polyjuice potion when they have transfiguration???

I also think that they would never get old like Dumbledore, they would not need money, I mean... that sort of things do not really make sense in the Harry Potter world... what do you think??

Sheila

 

[myrddin173]

Well as for the gold we know it is impossible to transfigure stuff into gold, unless you have the philosopher's stone. So the money makes sense. The food problem (and now reading the linked link) the money problem have to do with Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration well its exceptions and it does mention the turning stuff into animals.

 

[Sheilawisz]

It has been said in the series that anything that is conjured "from thin air" cannot last for long, but the same has never been shown to apply when they simply transfigure something into something else completely different... like a rock into a dog, or maybe a cloak into a pizza, why not??

That thing about the HP wizards and witches not being able to magically get food is pointless, at least from my point of view =)

They can turn a human into a ferret just like that, which means that a little change in the genetics could easily stop the aging process and they would never get to be as old as Dumbledore or McGonagall- also the Polyjuice potion is pointless for the same reason, why create a potion to turn into a replica of someone else when they can transfigure??

I like the mystical, fairytale-like magic of the Harry Potter world (and I hate the idea of magic as science, like it happens in other systems) but the flaws that it has are too clear for me =P

Sheila

 

[Phoenix]

What if someone had a speech impairment? Could they not use magic? I think the wand idea is cool (they have different powers, strengths) but I hate the idea that the magic has no consequence for the user. Well not that I know of...

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Some wizards in HP can apparently use silent magic, wherein they can cast spells without vocalizing. It's implied to be a highly advanced technique.

The magic system in HP isn't internally consistent and does not withstand scrutiny. Don't try to explain it, you'll just get a headache.

 

[Elder the Dwarf]

Some wizards in HP can apparently use silent magic, wherein they can cast spells without vocalizing. It's implied to be a highly advanced technique.

There is no apparently or implied about it . This is a lesson that is featured heavily in the sixth book, and the kids are never able to learn it.

 

[Phoenix]

Yeah it just kinda of saddens me though. I mean people say this is one of the greatest Fantasy series (not mine). I guess this happens after you read something like The Name of The Wind. They explain it. I never paid much attention to this fact in Harry Potter, thanks for giving me thought.