Skip to main content

harry potter - Fred's or George's transfiguration skill



After reading this question and its answer I realized. How come one of the twins, Fred or George, does not matter that much was able to transform Ron's teddy bear into a great spider? Let's quote Professor McGonagall:



‘Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,’ she said. ‘Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned.’ Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again.



After this, everybody is excited to transfigure something. But:



After making a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile.


Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone, ch. 8, The Potion Master



And this is only one of the mentions about Transfiguration being one of the hardest magic. Not to mention, that wizards normally get a wand at the age of eleven. Although, against this argument might stand the fact, that Weasley family was rather poor, unable to buy new wand for Ron - he used old Charlie's wand, so Fred or George might have nicked the wand.



I mean, Fred or George would not care, if it was dangerous - on the contrary. But how come, was one of them able to do such magic at the age of five? Think about what he would need:



  • a wand (I assume from what J.K.Rowling said about wandless magic)

  • to know the proper incantation

  • the proper pronunciation/articulation of the incantation

  • the correct wand moves



Answer



There's next to no details in what Ron says, and it's ambiguous at best, but I think the most reasonable canon explanation is unintentional magic. Especially since Ron would have been at an age where he'd possibly carry a teddy bear around with him everywhere he went, and therefore the two incidents may have happened at much the same time.


In the Potterverse, unintentional magic is generally done by witches and wizards under school age (eleven years old) during times of extreme stress, fear or anger. They also tend to manage feats that they couldn't dream of performing intentionally when first learning to control their magic. Harry was able to either levitate or even apparate onto the roof of his school and make his hair grow back, neither of which he would have been capable of doing intentionally in his first year.



However, we've also seen that it doesn't require a particularly stressful situation to trigger unintentional magic; Harry made a pane of glass disappear just because Dudley pushed him over. It's not entirely unreasonable to think that, at the age of five, Fred may have been upset enough at Ron breaking his toy broomstick that he could have unintentionally transfigured a teddy bear into a giant spider.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...