CHRM-601 Lessons

Welcome! I am sure that you all are looking forward to actually starting to enchant little badges today, but before we get to that, we will be talking about a bit more theory. Rest assured, today’s lesson will definitely end with you casting spells. This is, after all, the most important part of an applied class like Charms.

As you are about to cast new spells, it is always important to quickly discuss backfires. Weaving is a bigger process than the regular spells that you have been working with up until now, so one might assume that possible backfires would be more severe as well. To prevent any unwanted disasters from happening, we will briefly talk about the reasons they occur, as well as noting the worst possible cases.

Most backfires happen for either of two reasons. It is possible that the weaving process is faulty, meaning that your web unravels and dissipates instead of sinking into the object. Another reason for backfire might be that the material rejects the application of the web and reflects it back to onto you. This sounds scary at first, but compared to other backfires that we have discussed, it is rather harmless. Given the amount of magic that a living creature naturally contains - especially a witch or wizard - it is impossible for the web to latch onto you. Therefore, only the residual magic will pass over you, resulting in some minor side effects, but none of the effects of the spells. The reason for this is that the efficiency of these depends on their combination as a web; both initiation and power forms do not have any function by themselves and dissipate promptly.

What does this mean for you? You will be losing a lot of work, as casting a web is not easy. The only effect it will have on you is akin to being subjected to a lot of static energy, making you look shockheaded. Due to lingering magic, this effect may last for a while, but it usually recedes within a couple of days at the longest. However, depending on the material you are trying to enchant, the hair-raising side effects may prove to be permanent. This is especially true for more complex webs which naturally require a greater amount of magic.

There is only one example of a badly backfiring spellcasting web in recent history. In the late nineteenth century, enchantress Lorelei Kleid was supposedly working on hiding an area within her home, for reasons unknown. While acquaintances of hers claim that its purpose was to brew love potions in secret, Mrs. Kleid insists she was trying to recreate the entry to Diagon Alley. This piece of magic had fascinated her ever since she was a little girl and stepped through the enchanted doorway for the very first time. Details of what exactly went wrong with her work are unknown, as are the exact spells that she was using. All information provided to the public was actually taken from her memoirs, which is why we need to take this story with a grain of salt. It is possible that this is not the complete truth. What is most certainly correct though, is that an enchantment like this is most complex and requires many different spells to be applied in exactly the right order. This is presumably where Mrs. Kleid failed with her enchantment: for some unknown reason, her web tore apart and collapsed spectacularly. Though she was by no means an amateur charmer - Lorelei Kleid was one of the most famous enchantresses of mirrors (which would provide make-up tips to their users) in the nineteenth century - she had failed to do her calculations correctly, and one of the last spells of her massive weave led to the most extraordinary backfire. On September 17th, 1891, the massive explosion shook the small magical village of Winterwald, located in southern Germany. The entire village was destroyed, and the aftershock even affected the nearby non-magical communities. Fortunately, the accident happened when no one but Mrs. Kleid was left in the village at the time. When the obliviators arrived, they were met with a scene of utter destruction that made it seem unlikely that anyone survived the blast. Yet they found a relatively unharmed Lorelei Kleid in the midst of her ruined home, by a miracle with nothing but scratches. Only her appearance was affected severely: the massive discharge of static energy led to her hair changing its structure completely and permanently. No longer straight, it looked as if it had exploded, remaining uncombable. During her lifetime, Mrs. Kleid never managed to find a cure for that condition and left to live in a secluded place from there on, ashamed of her untamable hair.

It is often assumed that there were even further consequences in addition to the obvious misfortune of Lorelei Kleid. Some researchers, the most notable being Welsh spell crafter Hieronymus Rose, claim that there were more effects than the destruction of several windows on the Muggle houses closeby. As proof of this theory, Rose claims that the hairstyle of Muggle physicist Albert Einstein was not caused by genetic means, but was rather a consequence of him living too close to the site of the backfire. His main adversary when it comes to this theory is another researcher, Hilarius Kruckel. As it is impossible to actually prove whether Einstein’s tousled hair was caused by a spell backfire or genetics, the debate between the two is as heated as ever and is not likely to be resolved any time soon.

Now, I do not want any of you to worry. Given the simplicity of both the spells and the materials we are working with, the worst backfire that you may expect is a (really) bad hair day. The backfire described above was only permanent and vast due to the amount of magic required to create such an enchantment. The more magic is used, the more severe backfires might become. Yet I am urging you to be very careful, as frequent exposure to even small backfires extends the period over which the magic affects you, even for low-powered webs. In fact, you can usually recognise enchanters by the look of their hair. Especially in early years, it is only natural for mistakes to happen. They become less frequent as you advance, but most enchanters’ hair never quite recovers from it, leaving them with permanent frizz.

Given this risk, you may ask yourself why one would even attempt to enchant naturally magical materials as they might reject the enchantment. Last lesson, we only discussed how you make a spellcasting web sink into a material. Today, we will also focus on longevity, to give you an idea of why naturally magical materials are much more preferable to synthetic ones. As you learned in your Second Year, the more magical the materials of an object, the longer an implementation will last and the stronger it will be. Putting it briefly, this is because the magical material anchors an enchantment by melding it with its innate magic. This is what increases the longevity of enchantments cast on naturally magical materials. If you do not remember the specifics, take out your notes from Year Two and review, as we will not discuss it in depth today.

For relatively simple enchantments such as those on pranking supplies, you will hardly ever find a naturally magical material used. I would even go as far as claiming that it never happens, at least nowadays, but it is hard to rule anything out completely. You never know what people come up with. Let us look at an example enchanted object that is likely quite common in your lives: enchanted mirrors. Moving on to the mirrors in the castle: have you ever spotted any differences between them? Certainly, there are those mirrors that are chattier than others - but if you pay attention, you will realise that certain mirrors talk very slowly, almost as if they were moving in slow motion. This is, in fact, a sign of the magic slowly fading, making the mirror’s voice more and more unrealistic until the talking ceases completely. That said, witches and wizards know how to watch out for these signs and will usually replace a mirror before the enchantment runs out.

The longevity of an enchantment is based on the material, so let us take a look at that of mirrors. If you take a mirror you bought at a random Muggle store, it is probably made of either wood, glass, or plastic, with only a thin metallic layer. It is this layer that would be enchanted, hence even if you had a plastic (i.e. synthetic) material as a base, the enchantment would be anchored on the mundane surface area of the metal. Those enchantments usually last for a couple of years at the very least. The average lifespan is approximately seven years, after which you will start to notice effects as mentioned above.

That is only the case for Muggle mirrors, however. If you think back to the different kinds of effect forms you got to know in Year Two, the Reflection Form will do just as its name implies and enable an enchanter to create a reflecting mirror surface on any object. If you wanted to create a magical, talking mirror, the Reflection Form would need to be interwoven with other effect forms. The massive advantage of using the Reflection Form is that you are no longer limited to enchanting a thin layer of metal and can use whichever material you like as a base: mundane material such as ordinary wood, or even magical materials such as wand wood. A prime example of an enchanted mirror made from naturally magical material is the Mirror of Erised. Created centuries ago by an unknown witch or wizard, this mirror is enchanted to show not only the person standing in front of it but their deepest wishes and desires as well. Researchers and theoreticians in the field of enchanting have tried for years to determine the mirror’s age, but have so far been unsuccessful in finding any clues. Muggle approaches require taking a fragment and dating it, which may destroy the enchantment, and magical dating methods (which you will learn about in Year Seven of Ancient Runes) tend to produce unreliable results due to the interaction between the dating spell and the spellcasting web. They may even interfere with the enchantment, leading to unpredictable backfires. No one is willing to take this risk, as the Mirror of Erised is one of a kind. What we do know, though, is that it is at least 700 years old, perhaps even as old as 1,200. This age of the enchantment alone requires the mirror be made of magical materials, as otherwise, it would have dissipated long ago. An analysis has revealed that the base material is magical wood, like that used to make wands, and enhanced with other magical materials, which as of this day still baffle researchers. Apparently, the wood has been coated with powdered unicorn horn, among other things, but this is a rather technical discussion that will not provide you with any new insights. The average wizarding mirror is made from a piece of wood, which leads to an increased longevity as opposed to enchanted Muggle mirrors, which are most often made of plastic.

This leads us to the question of the material we will be working with today. In the last couple of years, Charms professors of all different wizarding schools have discussed whether to use synthetic or mundane material for your first attempts at enchanting, and we have finally settled on wooden badges. Due to its innate increased compatibility with magic because it is a natural, mundane material, it will allow your enchantment to cling more easily, while at the same time not having a great resistance to magic being applied to it. You will not need to worry about your spellcasting web backfiring on you during the last step here, so that ought to make things a little easier!

So far, I have only told you that we would be enchanting a little badge. Now, it is time for you to get some more information on what I will require you to do. Take a little badge and look at it. Calling it a “badge” might be a little bit misleading, perhaps, as it is only a circular wooden chip. It is up to you to decorate it with colour-changing charms and other magic that you have learned so far. Maybe you can even apply some transfiguration? For now, a simple colour change will surely suffice, but when you are practicing for your homework assignment, I am sure that you will be able to think of many other things to do. I have brought you one decorated badge that I have created this morning, but yours will probably look different: you are to create a Quidditch badge.

What is your badge supposed to do? I am sorry to disappoint you, but we will not be able to create very complex enchantments. That is something that you would only learn if studying to become a professional charmer. Our badges’ functions will be rather limited. You will be showing your support by the colour, obviously, and we will include an audio form as well. As soon as you activate the charm, the badge - if enchanted properly - will continuously shout out whichever message you programmed into it until the magic runs out. From a theoretical perspective, this is a simple enchantment: you naturally need both one power and one initiation form, but the audio component is only a single spell for our effect form. In this way, your first weave will be simplistic from an enchanter’s point of view, but still challenging for you. For the structure, I ask you to go back and check your notes from last lesson. What we will be doing now is looking at the different forms and exploring some more of their background information.

First of all, we need to think about the power supply and how to initiate the effect. A badge does not need to have much longevity, and they are items which are meant to be disposable. Those badges that you can buy at a Quidditch store are a bit more elaborate than ours, but there is one key feature that remains the same: they have to be safe to use for every age group. One thing we will not reproduce is the ability to turn the badge off, so to speak. Once activated, the effects will be active until the power supply has run out. Naturally, this kind of initiation form should be paired with either a Charged or a Collection Power Form as you would not want to create a constant drain on your personal power. The use of a Charged Power Form is the most common found in any kind of merchandise and is the one we will be working with as well. Even if it were possible to turn the effect off, a Personal Power Forms is not recommended as it has a small effect on one’s inherent magical limits. While harmless for adults or teenagers, it may accidentally cause magical exhaustion for toddlers whose magical core has just started to develop. Additionally, the spells of the Charged Power Form are the easiest to handle, another advantage which I am sure you will enjoy. You will be able to turn the effect on by tapping the badge with your wand, but it will be impossible to end the effect until the stored magic has run out. The supply of magic will be stored within the enchantment.

Naturally, you may believe that a badge which you could turn on and off would be preferable, yet there is one major disadvantage to this kind of enchantment: its longevity. Those of you who are Muggle-raised may have heard about batteries and how you should avoid turning a device on and off for risk of ruining its battery. It is similar with magic: the amount of energy provided by the power form is, roughly speaking, a magical battery. Your first attempts to create this enchantment will be rather feeble and not contain a lot of stored energy. It is possible that your enchantment could run out before you manage to turn it on a second time. In fact, this is to be expected. To give you an idea about how this activation works: you need to be holding the badge and, by tapping it with your wand, you will provide an external power source to jump-start the stored energy. Once the enchantment is up and running, so to speak, it will run its course.

We are facing one last major problem, and unfortunately, there is no way around it. It is impossible to see whether you cast a spell correctly until you have actually woven the spellcasting web and implemented the enchantment on the object. If it does not work, it’s a sign that at least one spell is faulty. Observing the object may give the caster an idea of what exactly went wrong, but there is no diagnostic charm to help you here. Most students, however, agree that at least power forms and initiation forms are easy enough to cast, and I am sure that given enough practice, you will succeed as well.

Non-rechargeable power supply
Incantation:	Magicarrico (mah-jee-CAR-ree-coh)
Wand Movement:	From top to bottom, following the depicted shape.
Willpower:	Medium to high; determines the amount of magical energy that is stored in the enchantment.
Concentration:	Low.

The amount of magic stored within your implementation is determined by the amount of willpower that you apply. Before you start casting, let me utter a warning: so far, at least one student of each Sixth Year class has tried to outdo their classmates by having their enchantment last the longest - and has ended up in the Hospital Wing. You know your limits; do not exceed them and remember that you have to cast two more spells today in Charms class alone, not even counting your other lessons.

Another point that you have to keep in mind, unfortunately, is that charged enchantments are never permanent. Those among you who are Muggle-raised may have heard of self-discharge already. For the rest of you, this means that the original charge of an enchantment is lost as time progresses, even if it is not being used. If I kept one of your unactivated badges to show to our current First Years in five years once they take this lesson themselves, it would still work, but the effect would run out more quickly.

Taking a look at this spell, you may wonder why we need the Activated Initiation Form as opposed to the Triggered Initiation Form, because the latter appears easier. While this is true for handling an object from the user’s point of view, it is easier to cast activated initiation enchantments than those of a triggered initiation. As an enchanted object contains the power supply and the effect form(s), the initiation form’s job is to start the effect. What you need to do, at the most basic level, is to give it a boost. Once a bit of additional energy is added, the enchantment will “connect” the effect form(s) with the power supply and thus become active. A triggered initiation would work with a general action, whereas the activated initiation requires a specific indication or touch of a witch or wizard to provide the first spark. While activating an enchantment via a wand tap is not a spell per se, the intention component nevertheless means that you have to direct your mind to activating the enchantment. As we are using a wand-based initiation, it will channel the boost required to start the enchantment.

Lastly, we are only missing the effect: an audio loop. Before we take a look at the spellcasting components, I would like you to consider the type of message you would like your badge to emit, as well as the volume and tone. It is essential that you will be able to see, or rather hear, all of this in your mind’s eye.

This spell will probably seem familiar to those of you who have taken Magical Art this year, as you have already discussed a related spell to animate a painting, namely Vocifico Revolvo. As a slight variant to that spell, however, we do not record the message from someone speaking aloud, but rather from our concentration only. This is harder to accomplish, but does not limit you to the nature of your own voice. The downside is possible backfires: not focussing sufficiently on the message that you are recording can add in random filler words, change the language of different words, or just make it all sound like gibberish. Similarly, if you lose your focus while casting this spell, your enchantment may be a hilariously high-pitched squeak, or barely audible, or any other random effect such as a sped up message or one so slow that it is impossible to understand.

Before you start casting, keep in mind that you will be unable to stop the object from replaying your message, which is why it is essential that you focus on your recording. Just imagine that you get distracted by thinking about your crush - and the badge shouting out their name instead, for everyone to hear. I am certain that all of you would like to avoid that!

I will end the lesson here, but I will stay in the classroom for a bit so that you may continue practicing your enchanting. If you would like to check whether your enchantment works properly before the next Quidditch match, feel free to do so, but only in a silenced area of the room. Remember that your enchanted items are for one use only, so you will need to enchant a second object (or re-enchant your badge) if you would like to support your team in the next match. For next lesson, I want you to complete a quiz on the theoretical aspects of what we dealt with today, as well as reflect on your first attempt at enchanting objects and the resulting badge. Until then!

Professor Cassandra Virneburg

 Image sources: Here and here.