Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter…obviously.
Magical Theory: A Study in Wizardry
By Oddment Tweak
So this is it, you've finally decided to begin your journey into the mystical world of magic. Some of you have spent your entire lives witnessing you family accomplish great chores with a dismissive wave of a wand, and others are just now trying to grasp at this new world that you didn't even realize existed before a rather persistent owl delivered you a most wondrous letter. No matter your background, you will be starting this journey together. I would love to tell you that it will be an easy road which you will travel, but this is not the case for magic is as complex as it is beautiful.
Luckily for you, this book is the best place to start your journey. It might be the most important purchase you've made other than your wand and robes (casting magic in the buff is a hazardous affair at the best of times). The basic theories you learn here will be the foundation on which all of your magic will be built. It is most important then to clear up some common misconceptions so that we may all start on the same road even if later on we decide to leave this path for another more inviting road.
Magic is simply magic. There is no more or less of it in you than the next wizard or witch. Sadly, the opposite is also true. Those born without magic will always be without magic. No manner of trying to overcome this will bear fruit. In this world, power is not determined by birth but by skill, hard work, intelligence, and perhaps, a dash of natural talent! So fear not that you come from muggle parents or that you had fewer episodes of accidental magic than your peers growing up. All things are equal within the eyes of magic.
All of you have no doubt experienced the wonders of accidental magic even if you didn't always notice when it happened. After all, some magic is a bit more subtle than you would expect. You might be wondering if magic is so easy that you can do it without training then why would there be so many books dedicated to the arts. Perhaps, a few of the more clever of you have even managed to control small bits of magic without a wand! If you had then you obviously came to the realization that your accidental magic is more likely to occur during high levels of emotion. Why is it that magic reacts to your emotion in such a way? It all comes down to communication.
Communication is essential when it comes to casting spells of any sort. It is true that as a magical being is both your right and privilege to be able to command magic, but as with any command, you must be clear on your intent. There is only so much clarity capable with emotions alone. No doubt you remember your experience buying your wand. That moment when you picked up the wand most suited to you and the magic seemed to rush through your veins as everything felt right with the world. That feeling was the connection with magic for in that instant your ability to communicate clearly with magic increased a thousand fold!
The wand chooses the wizard is an old maxim often muttered by wand makers the world over. It is, perhaps, not an entirely accurate sentiment. It would be more accurate to say that the magic chooses the wizard. It does so by finding the wand that allows the clearest communication with magic. This is determined by a number of traits including personality, the arrangement of the stars on the night of the wizard's birth, and various arithmatic ratios that make up your body to name a few of what is probably one of the most magically complex occurrences the average wizard will ever experience.
The rest of your life from this moment on will be dictated by the study of the best way to achieve clarity in your communication with magic. You will soon find that the movements of your wand, the pronunciation of the spell, clearly picturing the nature of the spell in your mind, your emotions, and the confidence in casting will all inevitably determine how well you communicate your intentions to magic. In that respect, you will find that you will most likely not learn a vast quantity of spells during your education. As a general rule, each class will cover 7 new spells a year with the notable exception of transfiguration which teaches only 3 spells a year. Each spell is often very general with heavy emphasis placed on the theory behind the spell.
It would be unrealistic to expect such intrepid young minds to memorize thousands of spells. That is why a general base spell is often focused upon. I find it best to think of a spell as a set of effects such as {A, B, C, D}. The better you understand the theory the easier it becomes to make clear which effect you desire and how strong the effect manifests itself. The best example of this would be the locomotor spell often taught to first years. It has a virtually limitless set of effects so performing the wand movement and incanting locomotor is often ill advised as every object not charmed against the spell will take flight and even a master of the spell would be hard pressed to control a vast number of objects. This could result in yourself or others getting injured.
The solution then would be to narrow the set to a single object such as locomotor trunk to move your trunk around though you may find it difficult to control the object at first as your theory and confidence builds you will find that you can keep perfect control over your trunk. Over time, you will come to be able to do things like cast a locomotor trunks spell to assist the younger students with their trunks while maintaining perfect control of multiple objects. This would be the case of using the spell to create a subset effect where the better you understand the spell the greater number of objects you can place within that subset.
This is why you will often find books in the book store or your school's library dedicated to one spell. I believe one of my colleagues just recently published a new book entitled the 'Invisible Book of Invisibility Revised Edition (Now Even Harder to Locate)' which is 637 pages dedicated to an in depth study on invisibility and what can be accomplished with that spell. Unfortunately, my friend's invisibility charm has become so potent in the past 5 years she dedicated to mastering it that even a summoning charm is unable to locate the books. Personally, I think it was a rather cheeky ploy to gain government funding for her proposed 6 year study on the revealing charm. If all goes well, shop keepers everywhere will be able to sell her book on invisibility in 6 years time right after they buy the sequel, 'The Revealing Book of Revelations'.
To be honest, I was thinking of calling this the 'Magic Book of Magic', but my solicitor informed me that randomly discharged bursts of magic could potentially cause me to be on the receiving end of enough lawsuits to bankrupt me. Wizards these days have no sense of fun I tell you. Bunch of stuffy old codgers wouldn't know fun if it bit them on their *censored by Censors Utilizing Negation Technology Systems (CUNTS)*.
Now, the more proper minded wizards among you may have bought some additional reading such as 'Curses and Counter-Curses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying, and Much More)', and after you got done congratulating yourself on being the right sort, you noticed that there seems to be a great numbers of spells listed in the book. Similarly, those of you with the wrong attitude may have noticed a large number of spells in your spell books that aren't taught in class such as the blue bell flames and flagrate which are passed over in favor of the more commonly used incendio. Maybe, you are wondering why this is. Did those old duffers on the school board cut back on your education in order to have a board meeting in Hawaii? Well, they probably did, but that has nothing to do with why you aren't memorizing loads of spells that you will likely never use again in your life.
There are billions of spells in existence, and it would be impossible to learn even a fraction of them with the level of mastery needed for them to be actually useful. So, magical schools worldwide tend to focus on making sure you are up to snuff on the most commonly used spells. After you graduate, you will receive a crash course in spells specific to your chosen profession, and you may find yourself crafting some spells of your own to make your life easier. Some of you may even begin to create your own spells while in school. Former Hogwarts' Headmaster Snape was invented a new cutting curse among other spells while still a student, but he is probably best remembered for his contribution to the field of potions where he modified a great many potions to make them more effective.
At this juncture, you might be asking yourself why some spells such as the fire spells exist in several forms while there is only one shield charm from which is simply modified to perform different tasks. The answer comes back to purpose. What good does having a shield charm that only blocks one specific spell do? Why would you create one that blocks magic and not physical attacks when a quick banishing charm could render the shield an effective strategy? In a battle, having a shield that is the most effective shield ever created for blocking one spell would be useless because no wizard will rely on one spell. It is simply easier and much more logical to modify the protego since it blocks both physical and magical forms of attack.
For instance, should you find yourself going basilisk hunting, you could modify the basic protego to block your vision and present a reflective surface to the king of snakes allowing you to fend off physical attacks and should the snake glance at the shield it would find itself paralyzed by the reflection of its own gaze. Note this shield doesn't hold up if the basilisk bites it as the venom will destroy it, and basilisks are not naturally occurring creatures. They are created by dark magic, and they do not possess the ability to breed with other basilisks which is why it is affected by its own gaze. This spell would be fairly useless outside of fighting a basilisk or a magical creature with a similar weakness.
The average witch or wizard has no need to know which impervious charm works best when used in conjunction with a poly cotton blend. Similarly, if you make your living crafting clothing then you don't need to know the proper spell for brushing a dragon's teeth. The difficulty associated with learning and inventing better spells is what allows for an economy to even exist in the magical world. When you make a purchase from a store, you are buying the custom spells and the quality of the materials that go in to crafting the magical object.
Go to the quidditch pitch to observe the team practice on a rainy day. You will see a great deal of people stopping to cast and recast the impervious charm on their clothing and glasses. A decent tailor would be able to create a robe that has an impervious charm that would last for 3 years if you were willing to pay the additional cost. You could study the general impervious charm for 20 years and not be able to cast one that stays on the fabric that long. At a certain point, the benefits of expanding on the theory of the spell become too much, and it becomes easier and more effective to craft a spell specifically designed to work best with a specific type of magical fabric.
You will find those with enough money will occasionally order a one of a kind custom robe. This is an often arduous undertaking for even the most experienced of tailors. Taking measurements of the individual in question, getting high quality fabric, designing a unique robe, and crafting the spells are all needed in this instance. A single impervious charm must be altered to fit the both the type and amount of fabric used as well as the other spells requested for the robe so that that the robe will last for a long time and not fade away after a few uses like a general impervious would due to the nature of the spell and how it interacts with the other magic and the natural magic of certain materials.
If this seems complicated that is because it is. It is probably even more complicated than you realize. If it was easy our entire economy would fall through and there wouldn't any competition between broom manufacturing companies. The more complex the magical object, spell, or potion you intend to create the more complex the process is. Some objects such as the Philosopher's Stone are as much a product of luck as they are genius.
It most certainly isn't a case of our ancestors knowing more about magic than we do! Creating an object like the Philosopher's Stone requires an in depth knowledge of alchemy, herbology, magical creatures, astronomy, arithmancy, and potions. If your goal is to create an object of such immense magical power then you will need only the highest quality of ingredients. This means finding experts in herbology and magical creatures that know how to raise the plants and animals to produce superior quality materials, but this is only half the battle. The age of the plant or animal, the phase of the moon, and how the materials are harvested can all affect the potency of your ingredients. Then you have to realize that the longer that the materials lay around without being used can also affect the potency as some things become more potent over time while other ingredients become less so.
Just acquiring the ingredients needed to begin the process is an exercise in luck and will no doubt set you back a pretty penny. Then there is the process of creating the stone which would involve some very advanced arithmancy to balance out the reactions and predict the outcome of many phases of the creation of the object. Months of making sure the process is kept at the right temperature, proper mixing of ingredients, keeping contaminates out of the process, and making sure the ingredients are prepared and placed properly add to the difficulty of such a project.
When you add in the astronomical calculations needed to determine how the movements of planets and stars in the galaxy affect the process, you begin to grasp the very nature of why so few incredibly powerful magical objects have ever been created. If you consider that such a process might need to be carefully timed so that it coincides with a rare astrological occurrence that happens once every thousand years, then you finally gain an understanding of why such objects are so rare. The odds of a genius being born in the right time period, with access to the right materials, and studying the proper field are just beyond comprehension. This doesn't even take into consideration the unpredictability of magic at the highest level.
By now, you have probably come to the conclusion that magic is infinitely more complex than you ever imagined that it could possibly be! We have seen examples of different levels of mastery of the same spell as well as modifiers to increase and decrease the spectrum of a spell. I've even dropped some hints about how arithmancy can be used to predict the outcomes of potions and new spells. So you are probably wondering why are some spells considered to be charms while others are curses? The difference between transfiguration and other spells is quite clear, but other categories aren't quite as defined. What separates a curse from a hex? What purpose do these categories have outside of teaching?
Yes, the list of questions is ever expanding. This is the curse of knowledge. For every answer, there are usually multiple new questions that emerge. Some questions simply don't have answers. We know that arithmancy can be used to predict the outcome of new spells, potions, and magical objects, but we have no clue as to why arithmancy works. Why is 7 the most powerful magical number? Why is it that when you break down a potion into arithmatic format love potions work best when arithmancy equals 9? The short answer would be that for some reason magic recognizes the number 9 as love or at least lust. In the end, it comes back to communication with magic.
There are many theories as to why certain numbers, wand movements, and words seem to communicate better with magic. Some people are of the opinion that it has to do with history. At one point in time, Latin was the predominate language of the world and a large number of modern languages descend from Latin. Is it a matter of the number of people creating such a large influence that causes magic to interpret this language more clearly than others? I'm not so sure. If it was a question of language usage then you would think there would be a great many spells based in Chinese.
The other theory is one of True Names. This implies that the pronunciation of the spell is so very important because through various languages we are slowing working our way towards finding the True Name for the magic being used. This theory maintains that Latin is the closest that we have come to the True Language of magic. Whatever the case might be in the end it comes down to communication so we can let the old duffers with nothing better to do with their time argue about which theory makes the most sense as this doesn't affect the spell creation process. Arithmancy is generally the safest way to go about crafting most spells, potions, and magical objects though it is oftentimes the longest method as well. That is when people turn to trial and error which can have disastrous results resulting in your death as well as the death of others.
Spells pronounced clearly with confidence and the proper emotions placed behind it will always produce the most effective magic. As time goes on, you will no doubt start to notice that your classmates have started walking different paths than the one you all started out on together. Some students will seem to have a natural talent for certain areas of study. Some people are just simply more talented at transfiguration or charms than you are. That isn't to say that you can't surpass them in that area, but you will often find that they can produce the same results with much less effort.
The reason behind this could be partially due to your wand. Some wands are simply better suited to certain fields of magic due to the length, springiness, and core of the wand. These wands simply have an easier time communicating commands for that branch of magic. It is important to remember that the wand best suited for you is the one that you received if you got it from a proper wand shop. So if you received a wand that is better at transfiguration, it is probably because your personality has an easier time visualizing and feeling the emotions needed to clearly communicate the desires required for transfiguration to magic.
There are, of course, rumors of a magical wand so skillfully made that it allows almost perfect communication with magic. The legends say it was created by Death though the odds of this are quite slim. I find it far more likely that it was created by a genius born at the right time who was experimenting with magic related to the study of death. They say a wizard is at his highest communion with magic when he accepts that his death is an inevitable fact. It is speculated that Lily Potter's acceptance of death combined with the overwhelming emotion of love and a desire to protect her child at all costs could be the reason why even the unstoppable killing curse met its match on that fateful night when a mere child was elevated to legendary status.
We may never be entirely sure of the scope of magic. Arithmancy and knowledge of magical theory will only take you so far on your journey. As time passes and your experience grows, you may begin to notice that you make illogical assumptions about magic that contradict the numbers and general magical theory. This is considered to be one of the highest traits a wizard can obtain. Being able to feel and understand the nature of magic with just a glance is truly a wondrous feeling only a handful of wizard's will ever experience. To try and put in words what it feels like is impossible.
Be warned that should you be one of the select few wizards with enough skill to forge such a connection with magic, you will find that much like Felix Felicus this skill can be the undoing of a wizard. Magic is a murky subject at the best of times, and it does not do well for a wizard to become too reliant on any one method. A flicker of temptation can be all it takes to distract a wizard from the feel of the magic. Many a great wizards have been undone because upon seeing their goal their vision narrows so much that they find themselves unable to see the signs right before them.
Such was the undoing of, perhaps, the greatest wizard of all time, Merlin. It is a common story told in most magical families. His power to feel magic was such that it is rumored that he could predict the future with absolute certainty unfortunately so enamored with the witch who had captured his heart was he that he became blind to the darkness surrounding her, and it was his undoing. His heart's desire was so strong that is obstructed his vision. Such is the terrible power of love.
Love can transcend the boundaries of what we deem possible with magic. It is both the greatest asset and weakness a wizard will ever encounter. In the defense of the ones we love, we will often find ourselves capable of great feats of magic that we are otherwise incapable of performing. The most complex of spells can be cast with an ease never thought possible if your heart's desire is strong enough, but love can also bewitch our senses and ensnare our minds to the true nature of the ones that we love the most causing our downfall.
If the terrible power of love manifests itself in the form of incredibly complex emotions then the Dark Arts manifest themselves in the simplest and basest form of our emotions. They are often times the easiest spells to learn to cast offering a great power without the need for skill. Simply knowing that a spell is for enemies or meant to cause pain is enough when combined with an incantation. The wand movements often consist of violent slashes and jabs that are simple and ever so clear in their intent.
The ease at which one can learn to cause pain is often seductive to young witches and wizards thirsting for knowledge and a desire to prove themselves worthy. Surrendering to such base emotions will give the illusion of power because it is always easier to hurt other than it is to repair them. Anyone can use the Dark Arts, but it takes a special sort of twisted individual to truly excel at them. They say you can rank the power of dark lords in order of how little love exists within them. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was the greatest of them all because he alone did more to remove love from his life than any other before or sense him. He went so far as to rip his very essence apart making him something not even considered human.
Incapable of love, he took the Dark Arts to even greater heights of power. It was this that made him so feared. He thought foolishly by ridding himself of love that he would also remove the weakness that had been the undoing of those before him. Going so far as to rip his soul asunder in a blatant show of how he was incapable of loving anything including himself. Yet, he found himself defeated laying dead at the feet of a wizard whose very continued existence was made possible by the vast quantities of love contained within his soul.
Harry Potter is a wizard whose parents gave up their lives because they loved him so much giving him protection against the darkest of the arts. Yet, even after losing so very much he never gave into temptation. Indeed, year after year during Hogwarts he risked his life repeatedly in an attempt to save strangers and friends alike. His seventh year culminated in him knowingly walking to his own death once again showing the boundless love that only he was capable of, and once again he rose to defeat the most powerful dark lord to ever walk the face of the earth.
Love is what makes him one of the greatest wizards to ever live, and it is what makes him one of the most vulnerable as well. Regardless of the inherent weakness present in the greatest and most complex form of magic out there, it is impossible to escape the power of love. No matter what lengths you go to in order to remove love from yourself, you cannot escape the love of others.
This is magic on the deepest level. It cannot be explained by theory or numbers. There is no set formula for this type of magic. The most intelligent witch I ever knew once told me that there is much more to magic than books and cleverness. I only wish that I would have been able to understand what she was saying all of those years ago then I might have realized why she had such devotion and unshakable faith in me. Of course, I should have realized the smartest witch I ever met would know more about what makes a wizard powerful than me. Such is the folly of youth.
Now, as a special treat for those of you who care about such things I will endeavor to do my best to give you an example as to what I mean when I say that arithmancy can be used to predict the outcomes of certain potions, spells, and magical objects. First we will start off with basic list of magical numbers and their properties before I give you an example and an extremely simplified version of the arithmancy behind it. This is by no means and extensive list of all important magical numbers nor does the example contain a completely accurate version of the arithmatic breakdown. I'm providing a basic overview here and nothing more in order to give you an idea of the process.
Common Magical Numbers and Their Properties:
1: This is the number that represents the origin and measure of all things. This is why the Philosopher's Stone exists as a singular object. There is one origin of life therefore there is one stone that grants eternal life. This is also the principle fallacy of the concept of the horcrux as it involves splitting your soul as a way to obtain immortality essentially the process works against itself as in order to obtain true immortality you need one soul not many.
2: This is the number of unity. It represents the unity found within marriage, charity, and friendship. Please note that unity is not to be confused with love.
3: This is the number that represents the past, present, and future. It is an incredibly powerful number often found to be the basis of the creation of magical objects that are meant to retain their magic for a prolonged period of time. Do you think it a mere coincidence that Ms. Granger learned about the dangers of time travel in her 3rd year at Hogwarts?
4: This is the number of solidarity and foundation. There are four seasons, four cardinal points, and Hogwarts (the greatest magical school ever built) was founded by the four greatest wizards and witches of the age.
5: This is the number of protection. A pentagram has five points and is the strongest way to set up protection spells around and area as it allows you to blind the five senses of would be attackers.
6: This is the number of creation, and it is considered to be the perfect number. It is the only magical number that reforms itself by addition of its half, its third, and its sixth reforms itself.
7: This number is considered to be the most magically powerful number in existence. It is the combination of 1 (origin) and 6 (perfection). There are seven days in a week and seven years of traditional magical schooling.
8: This is the number of fullness. Divide it once and the numbers are equal, divide it a second time and the numbers are still equal.
9: This is the number of bewitching. It is a common number used as a basis for the strongest of love potions and enchantments that ensnare the senses.
10: This is the number of completeness because it combines the numbers 1 (origin) and 0 (emptiness and nonexistence) together to form the complete whole. There were ten plagues that descended upon Egypt before the ancient curse ran its course.
As I said, there are more numbers and concepts than the ones shown here, but this is meant to be a general overview. Now, onto me doing my best to explain what will no doubt be a complex example. I think I'll choose a potion for the example as it is the easiest concept to understand.
A potion consists of ingredients which have multiple magical properties associated with them. For instance, if you wanted to create a potion that protects you against fire then you will need to use parts from a salamander. However because salamanders have more than one magical property you need to eliminate the excess properties by adding in ingredients that counteract the other magical properties. You can break their magical properties down to arithmatic form allowing you to see how much of a substance you need to counteract the amount of a certain property of the unwanted magic. This form of arithmancy has more to do with arithmatic ratios than it does magically powerful numbers.
The number of stirs can be used to determine the process taking place in the solution. 2 stirs clockwise would create unity in a potion whereas 2 counterclockwise would break up the unity. If you want to speed up the time of the reaction 3 stirs clockwise would be used because the number 3 represents unity. If the potion becomes unstable you may wish to bring the current stir count to 5 as this creates a protection that can prevent an explosion. So if you have completed 3 ½ clockwise then an additional 1 ½ would be needed to stabilize the potion. Similarly once you have achieved the desired result of the potion you will need to bring the stir count up to 10 and let it simmer until it the potion continues to completeness. Note that you need to let the potion set for the proper amount of time after each stirring to allow each reaction to go to completion.
As I said before, this is an incomplete list of numbers. I'm not going to get into the effects of half stirs and larger numbers as I just wanted to demonstrate how arithmancy could be used to predicts and stabilize the outcome of a potion. Similar things can be applied to spells and magical objects. This is a general overview of what you could learn to do by predicting the future with numbers should you decide to take arithmancy in your 3rd year of education.
If you are wondering how one would break down the magical spectrum into a number format you should look at it as a conjuration would be represented by the number 6 as it is a creation, similarly something meant to harm someone would be represented by the number 13 (bad luck). This doesn't mean that the spell is represented only by the number 13 though. Let us take the spell on Dumbledore's hand as an example. It would start out at a 1 (as all spells do) before accelerating to the number 13 and slowly kill him only finally reaching 10 (completeness) when Dumbledore died. Magical healing is based around forcing the spell to a 10, but some spells such as this one are impossible to force to a conclusion prematurely for a variety of reasons. Again, the actual process might by quite a bit longer and include quite a few more stops at different numbers along the way for a variety of reasons. I've simplified this theory for the sake of explanation and the fact that there are entire books dedicated to the process (and potential processes) that one spell/potion can take. I somehow doubt that students such as yourselves would care to wade through 600+ pages of theory regarding a single spell only to realize that said theory is still being improved upon. Arithmancy is, after all, a means to predicting an outcome.
Yes, there are a great many answers to be found within arithmancy. Some things are more an exercise of common sense though. You can modify the standard protego in a variety of ways, but you can never combine offensive and defensive magic together into one spell. The contradicting nature of the definitions of the spells would cause confusion within magic as it wouldn't be clear on whether the shield is meant to attack or defend. That is why you won't see shields randomly firing hexes at opponents unless it is reflecting them. It requires two separate spells to shield then stun.
Some laws of magic are not so common sense oriented. Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration has five principle exceptions to it. The first is that you cannot create food out of nothing. You may notice people who appear to have the ability to create food from nothing, but this is nothing more than an advanced form of summoning that most students will master should they make it to NEWT level charms. It eliminates the need for the object to physically travel from one place to another if you know where the object is. Food can be transformed or increased in quantity, but your mileage will vary based on the level of skill you exhibit with each spell.
These exceptions are often explained by complex arithmatic equations that stretch on for pages and pages. It primarily stems from the complexity surrounding the number 7. As the most powerful magical number, it combines the two things needed to create something from nothing 1 (origin) and 6 (creation). There is not a single number in the history of magic that has been studied in more depth than this number. It exhibits great power, but as with magic of great power, it has an equally large amount of unpredictability associated with it. This unpredictability is the reason why Felix Felicis can only be consumed in extremely small doses. You will also often find yourself accomplishing things that you didn't set out to accomplish under the effects of liquid luck. These things will turn out in your favor more often than not, but you may not have even realized that you desired the ends to which the magic was working.
I will leave you with this thought on arithmancy. The numbers are not always what they seem. Just because the overall length of your wand is 13 inches, it does not make it more suited for curses. Things are not so dreadfully obvious or dull. The magical properties of the wood and the core affect the arithmancy as does the amount of wood you remove to make room for the core of the wand. Do try to remember that if such things were easily figured out then any old person could come along and never truly need to buy anything other than ingredients. There is not the time in this or any other lifetime to truly understand the full measure of magic. Nicolas Flamel was genius whose life span greatly overshadowed any wizard before or since, and he still often found himself astounded by the sheer beauty of magic. Hundreds of years after the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, he still toiled away trying to learn more about the subject that had fascinated him his entire life. His many contributions to the advancement of the magical world are too numerous to count. So, young minds such as yourselves should rejoice for no matter how old and brilliant you are, there will always be a great many new and incredibly fascinating things for you to discover about magic. As Headmaster Albus Dumbledore once said, "Just when you think you have an area of magic figured out with absolute certainty, a baby goes and does the impossible simply by living!"
Author's Note: I wrote this as a way to find a canon complaint form of magic that is creative and explains what many may think are plot holes in the books. This is mainly used by me as background information for a rather long piece of fanfiction that I have been planning to write for some time now. It is a slow process, and I wonder if I will ever get around to fleshing out the rather ambitious project. It probably doesn't help that I just got sidetracked by inspiration for a new plot idea. That new idea will likely be published well before I get around to my initial story idea which is still in the planning phase. College and work doesn't exactly do wonders for my free time either.
Most of the definitions for the numbers are based off of Agrippa's numerology charts that he used to predict the future back in the day. Judging by how well those charts matched up with things in canon, I wonder if JKR didn't know of their existence during the planning phases of her books. Though, I did make some changes such as the number 9 which is meant to be a homage to the song Love Potion Number 9.