Creating spells

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186079

Becks3uk wrote:
> 
> I think it has less to do with the word and more to do with focusing the wizard on a certain thought. Wizards can do magic when they are young and have not yet learned that they are wizards. Some wizards  can do non verbal and even wandless magic. Wizards use their wands as a focus for their magical energy (for want of a better word) and though they could do wandless magic before they went to school (e.g. setting a snake on Dudley), they later find it difficult to do magic without a wand. I think the incantations work the same way, it is about finding a word and a way to express what they want to do to themselves and to their wands and that enables them to do it. Then when they have learned it a certain way they can only do it if they repeat it exactly because that is how they focus on that one narrow thought. I mean, even patronuses require the wizard to find their own thoughts within themselves that enable them to produce one. If the incantation was so important how could they do non verbal spells?

Carol responds:

With regard to your final question, I think that the incantation is still important. The Witch or Wizard simply *thinks* it rather than speaking it. Of course, brilliant, powerful, experienced Wizards (notably Dumbledore and Voldemort but perhaps Snape, McGonagall, and a few others) can probably conjure nonverbally without an incantation, just a mental image and force of will, but someone like Hermione, who masters nonverbal magic fairly quickly, probably still thinks the incantation. Certainly, the students in Snape's DADA class are still thinking in terms of incantations, whispering them instead of thinking them. (It reminds me of kids who can only read silently if they move their lips.)

Carol, who thinks that both the incantation and wand movement are important in most magic or Flitwick wouldn't make such a fuss about them in the first Charms lesson