The Rules of Magic

[David Burgess]

No: HPFGUIDX 99380

In canon, we are introduced to many interesting 'rules' of magic.  In
fact, the framework seemed strangely familiar to me.  I finally figured
out why last night.

My wife Tivos and watches an old TV show called "Bewitched."  I usually
ignore it, not being a huge fan of 40 year old situation comedy.  Let me
know if any of this sounds familiar:

In the series, we meet Samantha, who marries a Muggle (mortal on the show)
and proceeds to produce a pair of little wizards.  She tells him on their
wedding night and the zany antics run rampant from then.  The Muggle is
portrayed as a pig-headed bigot who pathelogically hates the Wizarding
World and rails against it at every turn.  In spite of the many ways that
it could make his life easier, he can't see the advantage of having a
wizard in the family.

His mother-in-law was clearly in Slytherin (all the way down to the
accent) and the father-in-law was from Beauxbaton.

Every time something happens, the husband blames the WW for his
inconveniences, and the in-laws spend the entire series trying to convince
Samantha that she has married below her station and that her children
suffer for it.  The husband never refers to them as 'your lot', but the
attitude and reactions are amazingly close to those of the Dursley's.

In the show and in HP, the wizards can't "produce" anything, per se, they
can only cause it to appear from somewhere else or can create a temporary
facsimile.  So, conjuring up an elephant requires an elephant from
somewhere else to pop into being.

Transfiguration of items happens all the time; from the elephant above
being pink with blue spots, to a Wizard with 'fast hands' being
transfigured against his will into the Loch Ness Monster.

The WW has its own medical establishment, as well as a putative
government.  Several episodes involve the equivalent of the Winzengamot
taking away someone's powers.

In fact, many of the episodes involve the antics of a couple of witches
that remind me of other HP characters.  One character (Esmerelda) can't
control much of her magic, and causes "funny stuff to 'appen" when she
sneezes, not unlike a young pre-wizard we know.

Another character (Aunt Clara) reminds me of many of young Neville's
problems.  Through mental defect (she's getting old, Neville's just been
memory charmed one time too many) both have lost their ability to remember
spells and can't perform completely well.

In the show, the Wizards live an ethereal existence for much of their
(effectively immortal) time.  In HP, the Wizard World lives wedged into
the muggle world through the use of alternative physical spaces (which
could be considered ethereal).

Of course, there are differences.  In HP, the wand is used as the nexus of
magical power.  In the show, there are no wands; all magic is wandless and
performed through the use of the waving of hands (or some other body part
as the focus), the incantation of a spell, and sometimes the use of some
kind of spell component.

The spells on the show are rhymes (usually bad ones) instead of
psuedo-Latin, although the 'turn this great fat rat yellow' spell was
pretty close to a Bewitched spell.

In addition, no one can 'undo' one of someone else's spells.  In HP's
Wizarding World, there doesn't seem to be a similar restriction.

In the show, they pop into and out of the human timeline virtually at
will.  Many come to Earth to interact with the mortals, and it sometimes
goes badly for them (the Salem witch trials are a good example).

Just some fun observations on the confluence of magical lifestyles in
popular culture.

Dave