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Lesson 2 - Magical Abilities

Lucky Charms cereal on a blue backgroundThis lesson will cover what magic is, how magic is passed on and possibilities/limitations of magic.

Magic can be thought of as a natural force that can be used to override the usual laws of nature. Magic is not limited to humans; many animals exhibit magical characteristics such as the phoenix, which can be "reborn" from its own ashes. Other more "ordinary" animals, such as owls, are utilised by the magical community. Objects can also be magically enhanced.

Magic in humans is not an easy thing to comprehend. There are many terms one needs to know when dealing with the magical abilities found within certain humans.

Firstly "witch" or "wizard" are the terms used to refer to a human female or male (respectively) with magical abilities, while "muggle" is the term used to describe a person with no magical abilities. Fairly basic right? But wait it gets more complicated.

Occasionally children can be born to muggles that have magical abilities; these children can be referred to as "muggle-borns". Or alternatively the reverse can occur where parents with magical abilities can give birth to children who have none, these children can be referred to as squibs (this appears to be rare but does occasionally happen). Squibs have been known to take courses, such as Kwikspell, to try to enhance whatever skills they may have.

So now that's been clarified we can discuss what determines whether someone will have magical abilities or not.

It's believed that the ability to perform magic is a generic trait. This means it is passed on to a child via the parents DNA. A popular theory is the "magic" gene is recessive, this means that a child must get the magic gene from both parents for it to be expressed, ie for them to be able to perform magic. This goes a long way towards explaining the existence of muggle borns (as people with only 1 "magic" gene would not have magical abilities thus would be considered a muggle). It does not necessarily explain the existence of squibs however. We won't delve any deeper into this subject, as it's not a genetics class ;) but if this interests you then you may want to look at the extra credit questions (?).

Discrimination can occur in the wizarding world just as it does in the muggle world; however the discrimination is slightly different. Wizard discrimination occurs due to the "purity" of someone's blood. Someone born into a family whose magical abilities spans back countless generations may be referred to as a "pure blood". There are people within the magical community that hold pure bloods in higher esteem than other magical folk. A child who has both a muggle and a witch/wizard for parents may be referred to as a "half blood". "Mudblood" is an extremely insulting term some magical folk use to refer to a witch/wizard who herald from muggle parents.

The purity of a witch or wizards blood does not seem to have any impact on how magically successful they will be. For example He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had a muggle father and therefore was a half-blood yet he became an extremely powerful wizard... evil, but very powerful. So to be honest it is not really known what determines how powerful a witch or wizard will become. However, just like muggles, magical folk need to learn to harness their abilities, which is why schools such as Hogwarts were established. Also similarly to muggles, each witch and wizard seems to have strength in certain areas. For example Neville Longbottom seems to have a natural ability when it comes to Herbology while he struggles through Potions; of course the Professor could have something to do with that ;)

There are limits to magical ability of course. The most obvious being the fact there is no method to date that can bring someone back to life once they are dead. But there are other limitations for example, while it is possible to conjure objects from seemingly nothing, those objects only exist for a limited time before vanishing again.

Anyway I think we've covered enough about magical ability for the time being so let's look at some more charms and break them down. We're going to discuss some that can be used multiple ways by changing the target.

There is Mobiliarbus which is made from the Latin word mobilis, meaning moveable and adding the ending arbus or arber which represents tree. Pronounced MO-bi-lee AR-bus, the prefix Mobili is used for moving just about anything. So you see, it's up to the caster to decide the ending. Personally, I can only think of one good use for this charm, however, which would be for a gardener rearranging plants and trees.

So, now that we have the Mobili prefix, we see it's also used for Mobilicorpus. Corpus is from Latin, meaning body. Pronounced MO-bi-lee COR-pus, this spell is used for moving a body. Now, I know it sounds morbid! But, we saw Sirius Black use this spell to levitate Snape's unconscious body so it could be pushed along the secret passage back to school from the Shrieking Shack. Also very handy in putting a child, who fell asleep in a chair, in his bed.

Now, Reparo is an all-encompassing type of charm. It is pronounced re-PAR-oh and is from the Latin word reparare, to repair or restore. It can be used on any number of items from broken glasses to a broken teacup. You must remember to point your wand at the target and a simple flick will do the trick. *g*

And yet another handy charm is Sonorus. From the Latin word sonorous meaning loud, it will amplify your voice so that you can be heard over long distances. It is pronounced so-NO-rus and you should point the wand at your own throat to amplify your own voice (makes sense, yes?).

You can also return your voice to its normal level by using Quietus, KWY-uh-tus. The Latin word it's derived from is quietus meaning quiet or peaceful. Ludo Bagman used both of these spells at the Quidditch World Cup and also the Triwizard Tournament.