Harry Potter thoughts and interpretations

Kolmen Sielun Solmu. Inspired by kklusmeier's Kolme Imeytyminen from fighting fire with fire.

A Finnic ritual that made the Finnish mages of old so famous. The root of the muggle Finnic faith in three souls, Henki or Löyly the soul of the body, Itse or Vapaasielu the soul of the personality and all that defines someone, and Luonto or Ihmisenhaltija a supernatural entity acting as a 'guardian angel'. The ritual was most often performed as a coming of age ceremony for traditional Finnish mages, and only the two childhood spells meant to guarantee a child lived to teenage years would be active on the mage at the time. A now nameless body reinforcement spell cast on infants would ensure perpetual good health and fitness, and the spiritual familiar binding that is often taught as the first proper spell provides impressive versatility and protection from ill fortune. The third 'spell' in the traditional Finnish mage would actually be occlumency, as the discipline is nowadays known. Seemingly innate occlumentic defenses are why no true Finnish mage has ever been known to die on shamanic voyages.
-Absorbs three "spell-form" magics into the very magic of the caster. Spell-form as in magics that can be cast without any measure of preparation, and aren't fully innate to the caster either.
-Absorbed spells can from then on be cast at will, needing neither focus nor power to wield in their base state. Modified use and skillful displays can be trained with unfair ease. Modern spellcrafters often frown on the ritual as crude, in causing the mage's magic to fizzle upon casting anything else. Natives laugh at these foreigners however, as such fizzling would only ever be a problem to an untrained novice that can't even regulate the alignment of their magic.
-The layered structure of the ritual means that the magics need to be in order of power, with the weakest first. The differing power is compensated for by greater attunement to the magic. A well-known example is a Finnish invoker (manaaja) employing the body reinforcement spell to the degree where mundane fire couldn't burn him without extended contact.
-An unexplored side effect is that any attuned magic can be accessed while in animagus form, and will even influence the form if training for animagus after the ritual.

#Väinämöinen, the Finnish equivalent of Merlin, was said to have been born from Mother Nature herself, and having been born already elderly. Outside polite company, he was a bastard, having been left to a swamp to perish much as many unwanted children, and only re-entered society as a teenager. Having never had the childhood spell cast on him, and having never bound a spiritual familiar, Väinämöinen did not attune to those spells upon his coming of age. While the magics he attuned to are unknown, it is speculated that the first was an elementary compulsion to catch the attention of any that hear you speak, and the second a charm that grants anyone the proverbial silver tongue professional bards are known for; As such, Väinämöinen could chant like no-one's business, and capture even the attention of magic itself when spelling his incantations. Being well known to casually visit various locales for entertaining soirees on shamanic voyages, Väinämöinen's skill with Finnic occlumency was legendary enough to make it obvious the last magic was occlumency, as traditional.

Fiendfyre, the pinnacle of enchanted fire, sadly lacks an incantation. Fiendfyre is not only considered great dark magic, but also appears so, from the struggles of dominance between its burning manifestations and rampaging nature. Thus I consider Fiendfyre to be an approximation of, the equivalent of, if not outright summoned hellfire.

"Malum Ignis Flamma Infernalis- FIENDFYRE!"
"Az-reth."x6
"Ignis / Flamma / Immolo / Incaendium - Maledictus / Malum / Infernalis / Diabolica."

Gray incantations, no longer fiendfyre, but also no longer true Dark magic.
"Divinum Flammifera.", "Igneus Numen."
"Flamma Inextinctus"
"Verum Flamma Vis."
"Morsfyr." thank you kklusmeier for this marvelous word of power. I might not consider it fiendfyre, but magical fire sponsored by death itself is quite grand to have.
"Werfyr" human-fire inspired by above, sounds quite like warp fire, doesn't it? as intended.
"Fyrgeld" money for fire, the tax of fire. wergeld, couldn't help but come up with this after the above.

Light incantations, really not fiendfyre, light / white magic if it existed in the potterverse.
"Igneus Patronum", "Flamma Praetor"
"Flamma Vestalis", "Flammae Sol Invictus.", "Amaterasu."
"Flammargenteo.", "Shaelalfida.", "Silma-úr" ~silver fire, the divine blessing of mystra is quite striking, silver fire is a must. I'll not apologize for the horrifyingly butchered arabic.

Fiendfyre is rightfully special, as one of the three canon compliant means to destroy the magic horcruxes, if not the soul shards themselves. By my own view of souls in magic, fiendyre will be able to consume physical magic, and magic cast on it itself. Being only encouraged by almost all extant flame retardant wards has given it a fearsome reputation, but specific magics that do little else but counter fiendfyre do exist, along with rarer arcana equaling it.

Sed of Ramesses. Inspired and expanded upon from the work of Darth Marrs.

-The Heb Sed of the God-King Ramesses of the land of the Nile, was a grand ceremonial ritual devised by the court mages and high priests of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. In it, the lives of a hundred adoring and pious servants or subjects or inferiors in general are sacrificed in premeditated disembowelment, so that their lifeblood could freely intermingle with the earth of an holy site, and the flayed body of the subject of their adoration and faith.
-The ritual begins with a chant by all participants to venerate their sovereign, and the carving of their flesh in all limbs, the head, and torso; everywhere a bone is within immediate reach under the flesh. Afterwards, the sacrifices are bled out as quickly as possible, while at least one mage chants a sermon of worship and joining and binding, while the recipient of the ritual bathes in magically directed blood. Upon conclusion, the elevated mage, their body and magic, the sacrificed blood and life of the hundred, and the distinguished land upon which the ritual is performed are all made one.
-In layman's terms, the recipient gains the vitality and stamina of all one hundred sacrifices, their body becomes a magical focus, all benefits to their body apply to their magic and vice versa, and they permanently add the mana of the land they performed the ritual on to their magic. Mana as in the units of magic from Magic: the gathering; mana as in a unit power where a single unit of mana can deal 3 units of damage and 1 unit of damage can be enough to wipe out an entire nonmagical foot army. Depending on the universe of origin, this mana can either be added to the "natural" capacity of the mage's magical core, or simply made available in realities without magical cores. Nevertheless, the amount of power granted by the ritual beggars belief, and almost always does the recipient fail to restrict it enough to wield magical foci not created to channel such levels of magic without breaking.
-The original ritual was not perfect, as would be obvious from the lack of an Egyptian magical empire. Originally, only the willpower of the recipient maintained the magic that kept them alive, and only the carefully cultivated ruler worship of the ancient Egypt made it possible to find even one sacrifice with enough adoration and faith to meet the requirements after so little as thirty years of rule. Nowadays, there are magics known invented both before and after the Sed that can be added to it without interaction with the properties the ritual affects. The Imperius curse functions by overwhelming the mind with a positive sensation, and then replacing it with what is essentially a command input module. This combination of idealistic obedience and positive feeling functions perfectly as needed for the ritual, and does not interfere with it.

Occlumency, Thank you Wu Gang for your marvelously inspiring story: The Mind Arts.

The catch all term for the passive or chiefly defensive among the mind arts, and the more exact word for the specific discipline of countering legilimency.
In occlumency, strictly as its own discipline, the practitioner "clears their mind" in any way they prefer, and then uses their magic to project that state of non-thought outwards. The usual legilimency probe has two returns, a look into the mind of another, or a subtle fizzling that signals a truly mindless target, such as a wall. An occlumentic barrier is essentially a negative value to the zero of a mindless target, and as such the probe noticeably disintegrates after contacting it, often accompanied with the sensation of bouncing off of a rock. A legilimens can attempt to force the issue by employing more magic to bolster the probe, just as an occlumens can defend themselves by directing more magic to their barriers. As a fully mental magic, the backlash of a violent confrontation between the two magical arts can and often does leave both participants with extreme headaches to mild migraines.

Modern practitioners most often use occlumency as a term for a more complete set of meditation exercises comprising select choices from Texomency, Augeomency, and Occlumency. The fact that all three of these disciplines benefit immensely from the practice of the others has led to some debate on their division in the first place. In order, it is easier to compartmentalize memories and feelings with a clear head and focused mind, it is easier to augment a well structured mind that is without obstructions, and it is easier to clear a focused and orderly mind. The three disciplines weave together with such ease and completeness that the public misconception about occlumency including everything within their purview might as well be more correct than the academic semantics of their division left over from now forgotten authors. Perhaps it was one ploy among others for the aristocratic families to weaken the newbloods with.

-Mutomency, the mind magic of altering the manner in which magic interacts with your memories and thoughts. It is possible to translate your thoughts into any language of the spoken tongue rather than of meaning, or simply cipher them into gibberish through meaningless words and symbolic associations.
_-Uromency, pelagomency, effluomency, molamency, etc. various more active varieties of mutomency, these not-so-vaguely elemental mind arts do not only make comprehending the mind and thoughts of their practitioner more difficult, they also significantly increase the strain and backlash of reading them on the legilimens' end.
-Cavamency, a highly effective defensive magical art where the practitioner 'displaces' their mind from their body. Offenders of legilimency have commented it "dark and unsettling" to talk face to face with a man and yet feel no mind behind their eyes. Those rare few proficient with this art sneer at the fearful and remind them that mental privacy is a right written in law, even if offenses are often decriminalized.

The creation of an articulate mindscape is considered the pinnacle of all mind arts, and rightfully so. Involving exercises from all subsections of the passive mind arts, mindscapes are masterpieces of expanding the mind and altering the thoughts. Often taking the symbolic appearance of easily defensible keeps or landscapes, mindscaping combines mutomensic principles with texomency, in order to shape thought patterns into representations of physical existence. At their most basic, mindscapes work as defense by information overload, as a legilimency probe cannot properly process the sheer amounts of data in physical structures, and the legilimens either has to let go of the probe or almost fully extend their own mind into the targeted mindscape.

-Lethemency, the occlumensic art of the warlocks. A ""dark"" and massively illegal magic of the mind, lethemency somehow distances mind, magic, and soul from each other, until the practitioner can both create and freely shape a dummy mind over their brain, and equally freely alter or even remove any magical bindings over themselves. This meant that a practitioner lethemency could never be truly held to their word, as even the bindings of unbreakable vows are subject to their manipulation. The exact manner in which the lethemency operates has been struck out of all known writings, and independent research into anything resembling the art often comes with an indefinite stay in the isolation cells of Nurmengard-level prisons.

Animagus, metamorphmagus. Noodlehammer, LeadVone

Animagi, the practitioners of animagus transformation, are the elusive mages that have acquired the ability to near instantaneously shift their body from their natural state to that of an animal. Most often, the animagus-form is restricted to a single, nonmagical animal, even if legends speak of magical animal forms. The often neglected truth in this case is that all animagus forms are magical, it is possible to maintain ones' faculties indefinitely and change back whenever after all. A mage in an animagus-form would not be any more restricted from employing focus-less magic than a mage outside of it, meaning that apparition for example would be perfectly possible. Granted that all the successful propaganda against magic to weaken the masses has made wandless magic considered a thing of legends, and the masses would not be able to associate with their animagus form enough to avoid splinching.

Methods to obtain the animagus ability are many and varied. From a simple meditation (cough occlumency cough) exercise to discover the inner animal to imbibing daily the psychedelic poison of a single mandrake leaf to reach a necessary state; and then simply giving the animal-self the go ahead to transform to a meticulous ritual ingestion of difficult potions over an extended period of time. In general there are quick ways, and slow ways.
- meditation variants
- mandrake leaf regimen
- revealing potion variants
+ learned transformation
+ instinctive transformation
+ transformaton potion variants
Care should be taken to have redundancies and mix as many methods as possible, as after all there are no specific methods to obtain a magical animal, but magic begets magic so more can only help. Significant enough external magic used during any of the 'slow' methods has also been observed to affect the process, think extended potion use, constant magical performance, time turners... etc.

Animagus magic is closely aligned with living nature, and is thus organic in the manner to seek simplicity. Hence animagus forms are often known to carry some defining trait of their human state, whether an unusual eye or hair color or markings tracing an accessory, as leaving such impressions is simpler for magic than suppressing them. This nature is also fundamental to the transformation as well, as anything worn or small enough to be carried is known to vanish into the transformation and return upon reverting. Heavy magical research eventually proved that the animal form exists as an extraneous property of the soul, and the transformation causes it to switch places with the natural physical properties detailing the body, and anything that qualifies as worn by consequence. How exactly the transformation displaces matter not of the body appears numinous to present magical analysis. Any mass discrepancies between the mage and their animal forms can be waived as magic, or an existential effect as the soul tells reality its physical conduit is in fact that of the animal, and reality doesn't care enough to nitpick.

Metamorphmagus is a rare variant of the animagus branch of magic which had most likely spontaneously emerged as a bloodline. A metamorph's animagus state is the same as their original state, which creates a magical short circuit that enables focus-less motionless silent self transfiguration with the ease of an animagus transformation. A metamorph can perform fully cosmetic changes at will, such as lengthen hair or superficially elongate body parts or change the color of anything, but anything that deviates from the norm enough will require an appropriate level of understanding of what is changed. Making your nose the shape of a pig's is simple, giving yourself a pig's actual nose adapted to a human skull is not so simple. A metamorph is not necessarily limited by their physical composition or mass either, as engorgement charms create matter but are not considered conjurations, and thus a metamorph can autotransfigure extra-natural structures at leisure and engorge their biology to maintain livemass.