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harry potter - Do all spells require wand movements?


In Harry Potter's early years, when he's taught the 'Wingardium Leviosa' spell, the spell require some wand movement. If you get the movement wrong, the spell will not work or it will malfunction. But in some cases there's no sign of wand movement: they just point-and-say the spell to cast it. This is especially true in the films. Does every spell require wand movements?



Answer



When Harry reads "Levicorpus" from the Prince's book, there's no mention of wand movement instructions. He just points the wand at Ron and bang, it works like a charm (or curse...)



@KeithS has mentioned that Harry does in fact make an upward movement when using Levicorpus. So instead I'm going to quote other spells:


From The Goblet of Fire, when Moody is showing the unforgivable curses to the students:


(rough translations)



Moody pointed his wand and whispered:
-Imperio!



Then,



Pointing back at the spider, whispered:

-Crucio!



And,



Moody lifted his wand [...]
-Avada Kedavra!



This is the first time that the spells are explicitly introduced in the series (Avada Kedavra being a somewhat exception), but the book is not describing any kind of wand movements from Moody. He just points his wand at the spider (not even a flick is given).


So no, not all spells seem to require wand movements.


As a side note, I'm under the impression that future uses of Wingardium Leviosa in the books don't describe any wand movements from the users explicitly. This might be just to simplify the reading though.



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