What can/can't a wizard or witch conjour up?

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "dungrollin"
<spotthedungbeetle at h...> wrote:
>
> "foodiedb29" wrote:
> > I was wondering what sort of rules, laws, etc., govern what a wiz. 
> or witch, can or cannot conjour up?  For example, why doesn't Ron's 
> parents just conjour up money for their family?
> Thanx all,
> > David
> >
> 
> Dungrollin:
> 
> Here are some pre-OotP posts from the main list which might interest 
> you. It's a subject which gets discussed every so often, and there 
> are plenty more hiding in the archives, so the following examples 
> are by no means definitive.
> 
> CMC 6376 "The Limits on Magic" 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/6376
> Aberforth's Goat 7262 "Thermodynamics and Wizarding"
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/7262
> Amandageist 11361 "Theory of magic food"
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/11361
> Amy Z 20352 "Spells & Charms; the nature of magic"
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/20352
> 
> Hope that helps,
> Dungrollin

bboyminn:

Excellent list of posts from Dungrolling, but they are kind of long
and deep, so for simplicity, I will give the short explanation.

When JKR set up her world and her /brand/ of magic she wanted some
degree of realism, so she set certain boundaries on the world. For
example, you can not truly raise the dead. Once dead, you are
completely and forever dead.

Another rule related to 'conjuring'. Things that are created from
nothing are not premanent, they are created from nothing and in time
return to their original state - nothing. 

So, you could create food using conjuring, but before you had time to
digest it, it would return to the /nothing/ from which it came, and
you would starve. So, conjured food might satisfy you in the short
term, but in the long term, you would die.

That's not all bad though. For example, when the cream sauce comes out
of Molly's wand, that could have been intentional if we assume she
conjured it. Cream sauces are very heavy and loaded with calories and
fat; not very healthy eating. But if it was conjured, it would
disappear in an hour or so; no calories, no fat, but all of the flavor.

Think of the implications here. You could eat a gallon of conjured ice
cream, and not a single calorie or a single gram of fat. You could eat
to your hearts content. Even foods that are filled with fat and
cholesterol wouldn't affect your health if they were conjured. 

So, a good/smart cook would probably blend conjured and non-conjured
(normal) food into a meal to give maximum nutrition with minimum
negative health effects.

Personally, I'll skip the conjured steak and conjured potatoes
swimming in butter and go straight for the conjured ice cream -
mmmmmmm.... yummy.

As a side note; keep in mind that not everything that appears to
appear from nowhere is conjure. For example, when Dumbledore made the
 squashy purple sleeping bags appear; we don't know if he created them
from /nothing/ or if he just transferred them from their storage
location in the castle. Also, the food that magically appears on the
Hogwarts House tables is cooked normally and transferred up from the
kitchens below; it's real food, really cook, but magically served - so
it's not /conjured/.

Transfiguration becomes more complicated, in general, I think you can
transfigure anything as long as you know the proper spell and are
sufficiently powerful. But complications do occur, for example, if you
transfigure a living thing to an inanimate object, what happens to its
life force? Or even more confusing, if you tranfigure an object into a
living thing, is that living thing truly living or is it merely animated? 

Just a thought.
Steve/bboyminn