[HPforGrownups] Limitations of magic

[Jesta Hijinx]

No: HPFGUIDX 41366


>I've allways wondered about the limitations of magic. It seems pretty
>certain that you can not just conjour up whatever you want (food,
>clothes etc) because then nobody would be poor and all the stores
>would go bankrupt, but in PoA Dumbledore conjors up sleeping bags for
>the whole school, while searching the school for Sirius. This doesn't
>make sense. If you can make sleeping bags by magic then you can make
>anything else you want, but that doesn't work as I've written above.
>
>My theory is that you can conjour things up only for a certain amount
>of time and then they disapear. Thus food made by magic will disapear
>afte a while and leave you just as hungry as before, clothes made by
>magic will also disapear after a while as will money and everything
>else. This would make it necesary to earn money and either buy or
>make other things, since the ones aquired by magic will not last.
>
Eledhwen:

I haven't bothered to go through and match up a lot of the inconsistencies 
in this vein, but that doesn't mean I haven't noticed them.  :-)  I think 
we're all trying to figure out what "the rules" of the wizarding world are.

I think JKR, mostly, is trying to show that wizards live by a strong sense 
of ethos which, if slightly different than the muggle world, is nevertheless 
strong and binds wizards and witches to act with honor.  Beyond that, what 
are they really capable of?

It might be that conjuring sleeping bags is something only a wizard of 
Dumbledore's powers can do.  (On the other hand, he never seems to have 
enough socks.  :-))  My first thought in the sleeping bag scene was that, 
like the food that comes up from the kitchens and isn't just conjured out of 
thin air, perhaps the sleeping bags are stored elsewhere - underground in 
giant "emergency equipment lockers".  Perhaps the school even has an 
equivalent "emergency response plan" - note that the prefects don't respond 
at random during times of crisis, they direct their charges to go certain 
places and in certain ways.

So much of this happens "offstage", as it were, that it's fun to guess 
about, but impossible to know for sure until JKR tells us!

Felinia

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