Magical Theory for the Muggle-Born Dummy

As an awestruck first-year, Myles had ventured into the magical theory section of the Hogwarts library for answers to his thousands of questions about the inner workings of the magical world. But his vision was assaulted by an oversized, sparkly purple book whose front cover blared:

Magical Theory for the Muggle-Born Dummy!

Myles had winced, feeling slightly insulted. He was a child, but not an idiot. He decided to ignore the sparkly book on principle.

And yet it called to him.

Five musty volumes on magical theory later, Myles's curiosity overcame his disdain and he flipped open the cover with only the barest of eye rolls--and was greeted with large print and bright, colorful illustrations of maniacally happy, anthropomorphized cat-witches and dog-wizards. He turned the pages. They made cute noises and waved at him. On page five, his eyes slowed down to read a few paragraphs.

"These laws aren't laws you can break. They're just the three most important things to know about magic!" said a pink dog through a speech bubble.

Law I

Humans are the source of all human magic.

Any kind of magic you perform, for whatever purpose, requires an energy source, and that energy source is you!*

YOU are the battery powering your own magical spells.

When you cast "Lumos," the wand constantly channels magic from you to the bright light. When you say "Nox," you cease to supply the light with your magical energy, and the light goes out.

This is why, when people die, their enchantments die too.

*All legal purposes. Certain forms of Dark magic are exceptions to this rule.

Interesting, thought Myles. Though he suspected the information was a bit oversimplified, he had to admit that this clearer presentation was preferable to some of the others. He read on.

Law II

All magic, like life, is temporary.

"Whatever you change WILL change back eventually," said the pink dog. "That's why it is an all-around BAD IDEA to eat Transfigured food! You don't want that gooey dessert to literally become a rock in your stomach!"

A transfigured object, for example, will always return to its original form when magic no longer sustains the transfiguration. A skilled wizard can sustain such an enchantment for a few seconds or for many days, according to his wishes.

But as previously stated, when a wizard dies, all of his magic dies also.

Therefore a "Permanent Sticking Charm," for instance, is a misnomer. No single person has the power to cast a Sticking Charm that lasts until the end of time.

It may be useful here to describe the situation in terms of economics.

Sole proprietorship

Say, for example, that you are a freelance wizarding carpenter. Someone pays you lots of money to cast a permanent sticking charm on a painting in his house. The sticking charm that you cast will never absorb his magical energy; it will absorb yours, for the rest of your life. When you die, the sticking charm will die also, and the owner of the painting will have to hire someone else to re-cast the charm.

Partnership

You decide to enter a partnership for a business that casts permanent sticking charms. You are now at a considerable advantage; your magical reservoir has now not doubled, but squared! Not only can you now cast many more sticking charms than you could before, but each one of those charms now has an insurance policy: if you die, all those charms will not necessarily die with you. Instead, your partner will have time to find someone else to take over your job and keep the business running. The downside to this is what would happen if your partner died first, leaving you with the partnership's huge magical burden and only a fraction of the magical energy required to sustain it. This could possibly strip you of ALL the magic you ever had and turn you into a virtual Muggle until you find a new partner.

Corporation...

And the sparkly book went on to explain that the corporation was the safest and most efficient way to run such a magical business, because in this kind of cooperative no one person is liable for damages, and because it is in this way that spellwork can become, like the corporation, nearly immortal.

"And that is how people can make everlasting fire," said the pink dog. "It's sustained by the masses. Just like when everyone is singing, nobody notices when one person stops to take a breath."

Law III

A wand is, and always will be, merely a tool.

Guns don't kill people; people do.

-American weapons activist slogan

Even though magic in itself is neutral, Dark magic is usually described as magic that is cast with evil intent, violates human rights, draws magic from others (see Blood magic), or disturbs the natural order of things. Dark magic is punishable by law. There are only three spells, however, which are strictly prohibited by the government.

These three curses are the curses of death, torture, and mind control, respectively. According to wizarding law, they are unforgivable because each one serves only to commit a crime against humanity. (Humans, the law states, have certain natural rights, including the rights to life and free will.*)

Pursuits such as alchemy/immortality, time travel, and the resurrection of the dead are also tightly scrutinized and restricted by the government either because they can have wide negative repercussions beyond the spell caster's control or because they violate the 'natural order.'**

*Whether humans have the right to their minds and memories or not is up for debate, as of recent Obliviation/Legilimency controversies.

**It could be argued, of course, that this statement is hypocritical, based on the observation that any number of spells could be said to violate the 'natural order,' ranging from birth control spells to pesticides, but that is another story.

Myles was coming to realize that this was not really a children's book at all.

"There are three basic ways to use magic," continued the stupid pink dog.

First form

A basic spell, requiring a constant stream of power from you. This form is the most common.

Second form

You can fashion an object so that it takes power only from the magical person who is using it at the time.

A Muggle can easily watch a wizard riding a broomstick, but a Muggle would never be able to fly on the broomstick by himself. The wizard makes the broomstick work, just as a battery makes a flashlight work. The energy must come from somewhere.

Likewise, moving photographs are not supplied with a constant stream of magical energy from the photographer. If they were, wizarding photographers would collapse from exhaustion after a few hundred photos! Instead, each photo only absorbs energy while it is being viewed, and it must absorb this energy from the wizard who is viewing it.

That is why Muggles are unable to see Wizarding photographs move.

In fact, because so many magical objects are made using the second form (including the book you hold in your hands), there are hardly any that the average Muggle can use, with a few notable exceptions...

Third form

It is also possible to siphon off some of your power and separate it from yourself.

This way is particularly useful when you want to make a special time-released spell, say, to lie dormant and then become active after you are dead. It also works when you want to create something that Muggles can use, but that will not constantly sap your power until they do. This is the technique used in portkeys. It is also the technique used by those who put curses in the ancient Egyptian pyramids.

Magic and Muggles

"A spell will work on a Muggle, but most potions will not," said the pink dog.

This is because the power for a spell comes from the wizard who is casting it (first use of magic), whereas the power for a potion usually takes magic directly from the drinker (second use of magic). It is possible to create a potion of the third use of magic, a potion which would be usable by Muggles as well as by people whose supply of magic is sorely depleted; however, the third use of magic takes a great deal more magical energy from the potion maker--a process from which it will take said potion maker some time to recover.

Using the third form, it would be possible to create a broomstick usable by Muggles and squibs, but like the third-form potion, it would be expensive. Furthermore, the broomstick could only work for a limited time, after which the enchantment would need to be renewed periodically.

But Muggles can and do use portkeys, taking advantage of the fact that a portkey is powered for a short time by the wizard(s) who enchanted it in advance. Most "Muggle-baiting" is done with the third form of magic as well.

"Guess what? Bludgers are only dangerous to wizards, not Muggles, because in fact they are not only attracted to, but also powered by the wizards they seek!" crowed the pink dog.

Myles, who at the time had no idea what either a Bludger or a portkey was, frowned and turned the page.

Strength in Numbers

He was greeted by a full-size image of the pink dog jumping up and down on a bed.

Say, for example, you are a student living alone in a one-bedroom apartment, read the accompanying text.

"I have an apartment!" said the pink dog, whom Myles was starting to hate.

Although it would be possible to enchant your tiny apartment so that it looks like a luxurious mansion, to do so would be very unwise. If you did the spellwork yourself, the constant pull of all those spells on you (and only you, because you live alone) would put a severe strain on your magical ability over time. If you hired a team of charmers to do the magic for you, the effect would be very expensive. Imagine your power bill skyrocketing to a thousand Galleons a month.

"Aww," said the pink dog.

But what if you were not the only person living in your house? What if there were others to share the magical burden?

What if there were hundreds of others, as is the case at the Ministry of Magic, or at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?

One of the most important ideas in magical theory is the idea of combining the power of multiple wizards to achieve great ends. To understand the theory, you must first understand that the combined power of two or more people is not additional, but exponential. If we take the letter m to represent the magic of one wizard, the magic of two wizards combined is not 2m, but it is m^2, or m squared. So, even though the famous enchanted ceiling in the Great Hall of Hogwarts requires a tremendous amount of magical energy, the combined magic of five hundred wizards eating breakfast in the room below it would total m to the five hundredth power: far more than enough to keep it up and running smoothly.

At this point, you might wonder what happens to the ceiling during summer vacation, when there are not enough wizards in the Great Hall to power the ceiling's enchantment. The answer is that it simply stops working. The ceiling has also been designed to stop working early as a safety precaution, so that if there are only a few wizards in the room, it does not wring all the power out of them.

If that did happen, a phenomenon similar to a Muggle power outage would occur: any spells or charms that the wizards had cast before entering the Great Hall would stop working, as all of the enchanters' magic would have been pulled into the ceiling instead.

Measuring Magic

"Feel the power of m," said the pink dog seriously. Myles wanted to scratch its face out.

The standard unit of measurement of magical power is m, where one m is equal to the amount of power required to keep one Liter of water boiling in midair for thirteen days. The distinctly average wizard has 100m at any given time. Like an I.Q. score, a wizard's m-number is largely predetermined and consistent throughout his life. The m-numbers of the wizarding population as a whole can be represented on a normal distribution curve, as shown below.

Myles looked, and recognized the illustration as a standard bell curve-- a line graph that swelled high in the center and tapered off to zero at the left and right sides. Beneath it was a caption in smaller print:

Though the exact boundary line between Squib and very weak wizard is controversial, it is generally accepted that anyone with an m number of less than 30 will find it extremely difficult to get by in the wizarding world. For acceptance into Hogwarts, an m number of at least 65 is required. Special needs programs exist for those with less.

Some facts about m

*The average m is 100

*The average m of Hogwarts professors is 120

*The m of Albus Dumbledore was 137

*Ten Hogwarts students, working together, have 100^10 m of power

*Whereas ten Hogwarts professors, working together, have over six times that much power, or 120^10 m

*It takes one billion m to power the ceiling of the Great Hall (technically at least nine wizards)

*It takes one trillion m to power the entire Hogwarts school

(technically at least twelve wizards)

On the next page was a picture of the saddest, most dilapidated-looking old castle Myles had ever seen.

You probably know that from a Muggle's point of view, Hogwarts is only a ruin.

"What you probably did not know," said the pink dog with a slightly eerie smile, "is that Hogwarts really is a ruin."

The reason you have never seen it in its ruined state is because you have always seen it with all of its myriad layers of enchantments, sustained by the Hogwarts staff. But if, hypothetically, all of the wizards were to abandon Hogwarts and leave it deserted, the enchantments would fail and you would see the ruins too.

If ever you heard that the school is 90% enchantment, you heard right.

The wizards really are the lifeblood of the school.

Myles stopped reading. He stared at the page. Then he slowly closed the cover of the book and put it down on the table in front of him. He sat there. And as he sat there, Myles's gaze drifted up and out over the towering library shelves, the high vaulted ceiling, the sunlight streaming in over the floating dust and the silence, and the elderly librarian writing something down at her desk around the corner.

Myles took a while to wonder and to ask himself if it was all real, and if it wasn't, if it mattered, and if it mattered, if he cared.

He came to the conclusion that it didn't matter, and that if it did matter, he wouldn't really care. He would worry about the implications of the rest of magical theory later.

Myles shook himself mentally and went up to the librarian's desk to check out the sparkly purple book, blushing only a little as he did so.

The librarian gave Myles a mocking little smile, but at least she didn't make a comment, for which Myles was glad.

*