Harry Potter magic question

[danzibr]

Why don’t they have/use a spell to check what flavor jelly bean it is? Pretty sure Dumbledore didn’t want that earwax jelly bean.

[Razade]

Because part of the fun is getting a bad flavor. Also because it's a small bit of world building in a children's book and applying logic and reason from our world to it destroys the magic.

[factotum]

If you want an in-universe explanation, just assume that the manufacturer puts a spell on the beans to make it difficult or impossible to pull a trick like that.

[Kitten Champion]

Besides, there are real-world candies sold with the same mystery flavour gimmick. You'd probably not buy them in the first place if you weren't up for the adventure.

[Delicious Taffy]

Why don't they just use their summoning spell on the bean they want, if we're gonna go that route? All they have to do is say "Accio lime-flavor!", right? Anything else would be less than optimal, so why do they even bother manufacturing a candy with mystery flavors? It should be Bertie Bott's Exactly The Flavor You Want Right Now Beans, if we're being honest.

[Razade]

Why don't they just use their summoning spell on the bean they want, if we're gonna go that route? All they have to do is say "Accio lime-flavor!", right? Anything else would be less than optimal, so why do they even bother manufacturing a candy with mystery flavors? It should be Bertie Bott's Exactly The Flavor You Want Right Now Beans, if we're being honest.

Because part of the fun is getting a bad flavor. Also because it's a small bit of world building in a children's book and applying logic and reason from our world to it destroys the magic.

[Peelee]

I kind of want this thread to get some good legs under it just so I can see how often Razade needs to toss that out.

[Delicious Taffy]

Because part of the fun is getting a bad flavor. Also because it's a small bit of world building in a children's book and applying logic and reason from our world to it destroys the magic.

Yeah, I read it the first time. I was being a smart-ass.

[Razade]

I kind of want this thread to get some good legs under it just so I can see how often Razade needs to toss that out.

Unlike the jelly beans, there's only one flavor in " Razade's Stop over-anaylzing stuff and let peoeple have fun....Beans..."

[druid91]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

[JNAProductions]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

Because the wizards in Harry Potter are kinda dumb.

Edit: I say that, despite liking the series a lot. They just are.

[Murk]

Because the wizards in Harry Potter are kinda dumb.

They aren't just dumb, they are completely crazy. My own unsupported theory is that magic makes you a lunatic. The only way that the majority of the setting can be explained is by saying "because wizards are lunatics".
I'm not sure if it is the magic itself that makes you a lunatic, or the power that comes with it. The fact that wizards live longer, have no physical harm to fear, can solve any mundane problem with ease and do not seem to need any sort of functioning economy could very well make them lunatics as well, in the same way that being an invincible immortal spoiled billionaire would make most people lunatics.

[factotum]

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

How do you know there aren't? If the in-universe version of DFS is actually run by wizards summoning sofas from thin air, why would the books ever need to show or tell us that unless those guys actually got involved in the plot at any point?

[Saintheart]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

If I may offer a weak in-universe possibility: because that sort of venture is likely to expose the wizarding world openly to muggles. One can imagine Ikea spending a lot of money and trying to figure out where exactly Albus Dumbledore is hiding his factories, and perhaps eventually concluding to their horror that his factory is basically his office. Ergo, the Ministry probably makes sure that sort of thing is ... stopped. The wizarding world likely doesn't have enough magicians going bad that they can't free up a couple of Aurors to terminate some enterprising witch who decides there's a lot more cash to be made in computers that never fail than in betting on Quidditch matches.

[Brother Oni]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

Because it's a children's book and the whole world falls apart if you over-analyse things.

[Anonymouswizard]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

There probably are wizards selling conjured goods to muggles, although probably passing them off as hand crafted to avoid suspicion for the lack of factories.

Alternatively conjured goods don't last indefinitely and most wizards don't want to go through the hassle of setting up somewhere new every year.

There's also likely a bunch of wizards (likely mostly muggle born with a few half-bloods) serving in muggle hospitals, both serving the magical patients who can't make it to wizard hospitals and curing a select list of diseases with magic. Probably a mixture of nurses and doctors, and only a couple per hospital. The same goes for universities, the Ministry like wants at least a vague idea of what muggles are looking into, if only to make sure it won't expose magic.

[Frozen_Feet]

Because the wizards in Harry Potter are kinda dumb.

Edit: I say that, despite liking the series a lot. They just are.

You don't need to defend yourself. Wizards are called out as lacking logic and common sense in the series, starting with Philosopher's Stone. It's a plot point that the Wizards are, largely, either idiots or crazy as a cuckoo clock.

The few, sane competent ones work all day to keep the rest contained. That's also the answer to "why don't they sell conjured furniture to muggles?" They do, but it's a crime and gets the Ministry's goons breathing down on your neck. Again, established in the first two books.

As for the beans, if you want candies of a particular flavor, you just buy candies of that flavor. The whole point of eating mystery meat candies is not knowing what you will get. Anyone using magic to get around that lacks common sense even worse than the wizards.

[Sapphire Guard]

We only get Harry's perspective, and he doesn't know everything. Not that many teenagers have a detailed knowledge of the banking system, so we don't get to see how it works.

I don't think that it's particularly a problem of wizards. Imagine the population of a small nation has to keep a secret. Including the children, the cranks, the unstable or genocidal people. It's not particular incompetence, it's just people being people, and it's hard work to keep it secret.

Chair summoning is done by two top tier casters, McGonagal and Dumbledore. I don't think everyone can do that so easily.

[Bohandas]

If you want an in-universe explanation, just assume that the manufacturer puts a spell on the beans to make it difficult or impossible to pull a trick like that.

Agreed. We've seen that there's spells like that (like on the marauder's map)

[Traab]

To heck with conjuring, open an antique shop and REPAIR that stuff! Get the most damaged garbage for cheap possible, cast reparo then sell it for a huge markup.

[rooster707]

Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?

[Cikomyr]

Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?

What i was thinking.

I think wizards just dont mix in Muggle society to avoid upsetting that society's economy and societal balance. Wizard society is a parasite that lives on top of Muggle society, and any parasite needs a healthy host to survive long term

[Cazero]

Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?

Why even bother conjuring money when you can conjure the commodities money would buy?

[Anonymouswizard]

To heck with conjuring, open an antique shop and REPAIR that stuff! Get the most damaged garbage for cheap possible, cast reparo then sell it for a huge markup.

That's actually something quite a few wizards likely do. Magic would also help them in tracking down potentially missing parts of collections, so it's a win win.

Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?

IIRC the official rules for magic in the Potterverse specify that five things can't be created by magic. I believe that this includes love (lust is okay), but the three I clearly remember are life, food and money (it can summon them, but that's slightly besides the point).

I suspect the problem with creating money is magic not being able to copy the details to the required accuracy, and wizard money likely has a goblin enchantment on it that wizards can't copy. While summoning muggle money from other locations is completely okat by the rules the Ministry almost certainly keeps tabs on those with the intelligence to do so (probably because those willing to interact with muggle society are ministry employees, a lot of pure bloods would never summon or create muggle money).


I suspect the reason they don't is that wizards live in a near post-scarcity world, at least compared to muggles. Although the Weaslys make that problematic.

[5a Violista]

I suspect the reason they don't is that wizards live in a near post-scarcity world, at least compared to muggles. Although the Weaslys make that problematic.

Somewhat related to the post-scarcity and the huge meddling by the Ministry:
If I remember, I'm pretty someone did the math and calculated (based on the available job positions and population numbers of the wizards/witches in Britain, the five basic career paths are essentially small-business-owner, St Mungo's employee, Hogwarts teacher, Quidditch player, and Ministry Employee. And, the sports jobs and Hogwarts jobs have an extraordinarily small number of available positions relative to what people would normally assume. What that means is that the majority of magic-users are employed by the wizarding government or, in some other way, depend wholly on the government. (Pretty much every other job requires living outside the country, in Romania or Egypt and such.)

Well, it explains why the Ministry reaches so deeply into everyone's lives. With most of everyone employed by the Ministry it makes sense that they can easily make rules banning (for example) selling conjured furniture.

(Not to mention, even the resident Muggles EXPERT Mr Weasley knows laughably little about Muggles. If that's not evidence of extreme isolationism, I don't know what is.)

[Frozen_Feet]

Conjuring up modern currency is actually a huge hurdle, because bills have finicky details up to and including individual identification numbers. The goblins likely have magical equivalent. I suspect all wizard currency is handmade by goblins, and every goblin remembers the coins they've made... so even if you create a big fat pile of coins which are of the right material and look correct, the moment your forgeries reach goblin hands, they will quickly realize the coins weren't made by them.

[Anonymouswizard]

(Not to mention, even the resident Muggles EXPERT Mr Weasley knows laughably little about Muggles. If that's not evidence of extreme isolationism, I don't know what is.)

Picking up on this bit specifically, we've got to take the case of muggleborns (and some half-bloods) into account, who probably have more practical knowledge of the Muggle world (being in it for at least six weeks every summer, potentially up to a good third of the year depending on how long Hogwarts holidays are, and having grown up entirely in it until they're eleven). Not the kind of knowledge that people like Mr Weasley would likely be interested in, but enough that they could probably muddle through primarilly living in the muggle world.

The Potterverse Wizarding World is generally not isolated enough that the extreme lack of knowledhe among everybody isn't very realistic, except maybe the very aristocratic pure bloods (such as the Malfoys). Especially as there's implied to be a good number of wizards marrying muggles, enough that a half-blood's parent being a muggle and not a muggleborn isn't shocking.

But yeah, the Potterverse falls apart if you look at it too closely. As do many fantasy settings which use the modern world, although ones where the supernatural is clued in do a lot better, especially as they can manage things like changing records and manipulating people to keep any evidence that is discovered secret. I suspect ummanned photo drones would get past a lot of anti-muggle protections, although they'd still fail to get past anti-electricity charms permenant places with them (like, say, Hogwarts) are going to become very suspicious indeed.

[Traab]

Picking up on this bit specifically, we've got to take the case of muggleborns (and some half-bloods) into account, who probably have more practical knowledge of the Muggle world (being in it for at least six weeks every summer, potentially up to a good third of the year depending on how long Hogwarts holidays are, and having grown up entirely in it until they're eleven). Not the kind of knowledge that people like Mr Weasley would likely be interested in, but enough that they could probably muddle through primarilly living in the muggle world.

The Potterverse Wizarding World is generally not isolated enough that the extreme lack of knowledhe among everybody isn't very realistic, except maybe the very aristocratic pure bloods (such as the Malfoys). Especially as there's implied to be a good number of wizards marrying muggles, enough that a half-blood's parent being a muggle and not a muggleborn isn't shocking.

But yeah, the Potterverse falls apart if you look at it too closely. As do many fantasy settings which use the modern world, although ones where the supernatural is clued in do a lot better, especially as they can manage things like changing records and manipulating people to keep any evidence that is discovered secret. I suspect ummanned photo drones would get past a lot of anti-muggle protections, although they'd still fail to get past anti-electricity charms permenant places with them (like, say, Hogwarts) are going to become very suspicious indeed.

Starting at the end, there arent any anti electricity wards, its just that magic cornholes science and by extent electricity. Its why harrys watch died. We have no way to be sure how effective this interference is. For all we know, in harry potter land, the muggles have a laundry list of places that refuse to be recorded by satellite or have such screwed up imagery as to be useless and have accepted it as a mystery of the planets geography or something, considering there are areas like that all over the world. Or, they talk about making things unplottable, hard to add hogwarts to google earth maps if the magic of the area keeps it from showing up. And while there are numerous problems with the hp universe, few of them couldnt be fixed by a little effort and expansion of the way things work. As an example, we know the british prime minister is aware of magic. By extension its possible that virtually all heads of state have knowledge of the magical world, why its hidden, and work to make sure it stays that way. And considering how easy it is to screw with memories and force people to talk magically, a politician who decides the secret should get out will find himself suddenly awash in career ending scandals with no memory of magic ever existing. Its not perfect, and hardly likely to last forever, but considering the timing of the series its not unbelievable that they havent had much issue until recently as tech advances further and further.

[Foeofthelance]

I suspect the reason they don't is that wizards live in a near post-scarcity world, at least compared to muggles. Although the Weaslys make that problematic.

Not particularly. The Weasley's might considered poor, but that's also by wizarding standards. I can't recall them ever mentioning not having enough, they just can rarely afford better. For example, they seem to have no problem taking in Hermione and Harry almost every summer, they have enough disposable income that Mr. Weasley can acquire muggle goods to experiment on, they own their own home, and there's never a mention of not having enough to eat. Their biggest obstacle is mostly personally crafted goods, such as wands and school books, hence all the hand-me-downs. Considering they have seven kids, that's fairly reasonable. There's no real reason for them to go buy Ron a new copy of the Potions text book, not when he can just use Fred and George's from last year, and especially not for curriculum that seem to very rarely change. The other side of that would be that the only one who seems to consider them "poor" is Draco, and by Draco's standard just about everyone is poor save maybe Harry. By any muggle standards, they'd fit well into the middle class.

[Traab]

Thats true, being able to afford to send seven kids to private school (Or the equivalent since you have to pay tuition) with up to FIVE being in the school at the same time, percy twins ron and ginny, thats some serious coinage there for a single income household, even if dad is a department head for the government. As an example when I went to a catholic school it cost 4 grand a year and thats not even remotely close to the top of the expense list. But for 5 kids? Thats 20 grand a year which is a very large chunk of change from any household not in the 1%