Welcome back to your final year of Charms! I’m sure you know what to do by now, so without more ado, here are the lessons.
1. Design Your Own Enchanted Object
There are countless enchanted objects that are common in the magical world, and you’ve almost certainly used some yourself. What you may not have realized is that they are almost always made using charms.
The example we’ll be looking at today is one you’ve probably used, or at least seen other people using: a broomstick. Broomsticks have a simple purpose, and that is to fly, but this is a complicated thing to achieve and it takes many different charms for a broomstick to work. Not only does it have to fly, it also has to be comfortable to ride on, able to handle well, and easily ridable.
Charms commonly used on broomsticks include the Flying Charm, the Braking Charm, the Charm to Cure Reluctant Reversers, and the Cushioning Charm (Molliare).
The Flying Charm is, of course, what makes a broomstick fly. The Braking Charm is what allows the rider to stop the broom, and different models of broom often use different variations of the Braking Charm as a way to compete with other broom companies, as some specific Braking Charms allow a broomstick to stop faster and more accurately than others.
The Charm to Cure Reluctant Reversers is an example of a charm used in broom care, and is presumably used to fix brooms that are having problems with reversing. The Cushioning Charm creates a cushioning effect, much like an invisible cushion, which is used to make broomsticks comfortable to ride. Imagine how unpleasant it would be to ride on a broomstick without this charm!
It takes a lot of thought and many different charms to make magical objects work, and the people who design these items have to make sure they work the way they should, as well as being safe and easy to use.
Homework
Now it’s your turn to design your own enchanted magical object. Tell me what it is, what it’s used for, and which charms you would need to use to make it work. You may invent new charms for this, but make sure you also include at least one existing charm.
2. Deeper Look: The Trace
The Trace is a charm used by the Ministry of Magic so they can monitor the use of magic by underage individuals. It’s actually a very mysterious spell, which you’ll see as we take a deeper look at what it is and how it works.
The Trace can only be placed on people under the age of seventeen, and it automatically breaks upon an individual’s seventeenth birthday. It doesn’t work on adults.
How it’s actually placed on people, though, is unclear. It could be that one elaborate spell was cast that places the Trace automatically on every wizarding child, or they might have to be placed under it individually. When or how the Ministry would do this is a bit of a mystery, though.
What the spell does is detect any magical activity that occurs in the vicinity of an underage individual. It isn’t able to tell who actually caused the magic, just that magic happened. This can lead to false accusations, such as the time Dobby cast magic near Harry and the Ministry assumed that Harry, as the only wizard in the area, had been the one to cast it.
There are lots of instances where underage individuals are in the presence of adults casting magic, especially those who have grown up in a wizarding household. Young witches and wizards also tend to cast magic unintentionally before they learn how to channel their magic. This might mean that the Trace is not used in many cases. It could be that it’s only placed on those who have begun their magical educations, and who aren’t living with magical parents. It also either isn’t monitored within wizarding schools, or doesn’t work in them.
This seems to limit the usefulness of the spell, though, since it could only be used in very specific cases. And even then, as we’ve seen with the Dobby example, it isn’t foolproof. However, it could be that the Ministry has decided they mostly only need to track those living with non-magical families, since a magical family would know the importance of preventing their children from casting magic outside of school while underage. Those living in non-magical areas are much more likely to cause problems by casting magic.
Homework
Choose one of the following options to complete.
-
Write a persuasive letter to the Ministry explaining why they should stop using the Trace.
-
Pretend the Ministry has announced that it’s going to remove the Trace, and write a persuasive letter explaining why they should keep using it.
-
Come up with a method that the Ministry might use to place the Trace on people, and explain how it’s done.
3. Deeper Look: Unplottability
Have you ever been inside an unplottable location? You may have, as many wizarding houses are hidden from Muggles using this method. It doesn’t only work on houses, though; there are entire forests and islands that have been made unplottable for various reasons.
So what is unplottability? First of all, it’s impossible for a location that has been made unplottable to appear on any map, mundane or magical. Unplottability also prevents locations from being found; however, the details of this are a bit unclear. The explanation that seems most likely is that anyone who doesn’t know where an unplottable location is won’t be able to find it at all. But, those who already know where it is, or who are guided to it by someone else who knows, can still find it.
There are lots of places around the world, large and small, that are currently unplottable, but in this lesson we’re going to look at three examples.
Number 12 Grimmauld Place is an unplottable house, and because of this it doesn’t show up at all to those who don’t know it’s there. Instead, the houses with numbers 11 and 13 appear right next to each other, without number 12 in the middle. This house was also protected with the Fidelius Charm when it was used as the Order of the Phoenix’s headquarters, making it even more hidden, but before that, its being unplottable was enough to keep it hidden from Muggles and possibly some magical folk as well.
There’s also an entire island which has been made unplottable, called the Isle of Drear. This is because of its population of Quintapeds, a dangerous magical creature native to the island. The island was made unplottable to protect people from accidentally stumbling upon it, as Quintapeds are particularly aggressive toward humans and like to eat them.
Durmstrang Institute is also unplottable, its location only known as being somewhere in northern Europe. To keep the location completely secret, visitors to the school must agree to have their memories of how they got there wiped. This means that unplottability alone can’t hide a location from people who know where it is. If someone doesn’t know its location, however, it will remain hidden from them even if they’ve been there.
It’s also important to note that locations can be protected and hidden without being made unplottable, such as Hogwarts. The school is enchanted to look like an old ruin to Muggles, so they can’t find it even though it’s plottable. It can be found by other magical folks, though, such as the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang who came to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament.
Homework
Choose one of the following prompts and write a story about it.
Prompt #1 - Someone is trying to plot an unplottable location on a map. What happens?
Prompt #2 - Several forests in Burkina Faso have been made unplottable to allow Runespoors to live there safely. How was this done?
We don’t know exactly how these situations would work, so go ahead and make something up - just make sure it makes sense with what we do know about unplottability.
4. Deeper Look: Fidelius Charm
One of the most secure ways to keep a secret is with the use of the Fidelius Charm, but even this can fail. The famous example is its use to protect James and Lily Potter from Voldemort. They used Peter Pettigrew as their Secret Keeper, knowing that Voldemort would expect them to choose Sirius Black, but Pettigrew betrayed them to Voldemort.
The Fidelius Charm is actually incredibly complex, and works by concealing a secret inside a person’s soul, making them the Secret Keeper. Once the spell is cast, the only way for anyone to learn the secret is if the Secret Keeper divulges it freely. It can’t be coaxed out by use of torture, Veritaserum, Legilimency, or any other means that doesn’t involve deliberate disclosure by the Secret Keeper. The likely exception to this is for anyone who already knew the secret before the charm was cast.
The Fidelius Charm was also used to protect the location of number 12 Grimmauld Place, with Dumbledore as Secret Keeper. This became a lot less secure after his death, however, when everyone who knew the secret became a Secret Keeper themselves. This means that anyone who knew where the house was at the time of Dumbledore’s death could have disclosed its location to anyone else. If a Secret Keeper dies without ever revealing the secret, though, the secret dies with them, and no one can ever learn it.
If a Secret Keeper wanted to tell the secret to someone, there are a few different ways they could go about doing so, including writing it down or showing it to the person. If the secret was a location, for example, the Secret Keeper could take someone there by side-along apparition, and this would let them in on the secret.
Homework
Write a short essay/reflection answering one of the following questions.
-
Since it involves implanting a secret in someone’s soul, how might this charm be cast?
-
When, if ever, is it a good idea for the Secret Keeper to divulge the secret to other trusted people?
-
Other than locations, what secrets could you protect and keep hidden with the Fidelius Charm?
-
What is an example of a situation where this charm wouldn’t be a good choice for hiding a secret?
5. Deeper Look: Memory Charm
The Memory Charm is used quite often by the Ministry of Magic, to remove the memories of Muggles who accidentally witness magic. In fact, there are people whose jobs are completely dedicated to this, called Obliviators. The charm is quite delicate and difficult to preform, and it can have drastic negative effects when preformed incorrectly.
The Memory Charm (Obliviate) is used to erase specific memories from a person’s mind. It’s different from the False-Memory Charm, which can create new memories. The Memory Charm cannot create or alter memories, it can only remove them. It can be quite specific in what it removes, though.
Gilderoy Lockhart gives us a great example to use when looking at Memory Charms. Despite his lack of skill with most magic, he managed to master the Memory Charm, and used it for his own gain. He would find witches and wizards who accomplished great feats, then erase their memories of doing so and claim their accomplishments as his own. He wrote many books about "his" achievements, taking all the credit for other people’s work to support his own vanity.
This is a clear example of how the Memory Charm can be misused, but it can also be very dangerous, as we can also see with the case of Lockhart. He tried to preform a Memory Charm on Harry and Ron to steal their glory, but he was using Ron’s broken wand at the time, which caused the spell to backfire. It ended up erasing nearly all of Lockhart’s memories, making him a permanent resident of St Mungo’s hospital.
The Memory Charm has also been known to cause other damage when preformed with too much power or not enough skill, such as making someone permanently forgetful about things other than the memory removed by the charm. It also leaves people disoriented for a while after removing particularly intense memories.
Another magical means of memory removal is with Swooping Evil venom. The Swooping Evil is a small, blue and green magical creature that looks similar to a butterfly, and its venom has powerful memory removal properties when properly diluted. It works differently than the Memory Charm, though, because instead of removing specific memories chosen by the caster, it removes bad memories.
Homework
Compare the Memory Charm, the False-Memory Charm, and Swooping Evil venom. Which do you think is the most dangerous? Why? Of the two spells, which do you think would be easier to preform?
6. Exploration: Charms Textbooks
A good way to learn about something really well is to teach it to someone else, and a method often used for teaching something is writing a book about it. There’s a wide range of educational books out there on the subject of Charms, from cookbooks to reference books to books of philosophical theorizing; and all of these can provide a deeper understanding of the subject as a whole, or of a specific subset of it.
A Charms textbook might cover practical casting techniques, instructions and tips for using charms in your daily life, the mechanics of charms, charm creation, charm analysis, the history of charms, or the implications and influence of charms in different areas. Some can be found in scholarly collections, while others would be better suited to a kitchen or workshop.
So what better way to delve a little deeper than to write and design a book page about a charm?
Homework
Choose either a charm you invented or a charm we know very little about, and design a textbook page for it. Make sure you include the charm’s name, incantation, wand movement, and effects.
Other details you could include are (but not limited to) the charm’s inventor, date and place invented, possible dangers or side effects, limitations, appearance when cast, similar spells, impact on the world, history, laws or regulations regarding its use, images or illustrations, etc. You don’t need to include all of these, but you should make sure you’re covering more than just the spell’s basic information.
You might also want to choose a theme to focus your page. Consider what kind of book it’s from; a page from The Standard Book of Spells is going to look different than a page from Quintessence: A Quest or Charm Your Own Cheese. You don’t have to choose an existing book, but the context is something you might consider when designing your page.