TNFG-501 Lessons

Oops I Did it Again

Welcome
Professor Mitchell entered the classroom behind her students with all of her usual confidence and grace and subsequently tripped over her robes, falling on her wrist. Professor Wessex, who happened to be passing by, heard the snap of bone from the hallway and rushed in to help immediately. Unfortunately, in that moment, a student approached and asked her about the magical revival of Phags-pa right as she was casting the spell, distracting the professor from her work. She couldn’t leave a student's question unanswered! Unfortunately for Professor Mitchell, her arm glowed yellow as the spell miscast, and her wrist and hand turned to a floppy glove as the bones disappeared. Ah well, at least it stopped hurting. On with the lesson!

Introduction
Well, class, this is sure an interesting coincidence given our topic for today.  While you all know vanishment can cause some pretty nasty backfires, it can also be the result of some pretty nasty backfires!  Now, I know you haven’t learned much about backfire theory yet - and probably won’t until your post-Hogwarts studies - but it’s truly an intriguing aspect of magic, especially where vanishment is involved. In studying backfires, we get a glimpse into the personality and quirky traits of magic; unfortunately this is in the form of its temper tantrums, but I digress. At this point in your magical career, you have heard countless times about the danger of magic and casting spells carelessly, so you’re all probably beginning to tune me out and planning your class time nap, but let me remind you that overconfidence is what often leads to the worst mistakes.

Backfire as a Result of Vanishment
We have talked about this topic some already in the past couple weeks, but just to get us warmed up, I want to review some of the things that can go wrong when casting a vanishment spell.  Of course the most common issues come in the form of partial vanishment and vanishment of the wrong targets. Both of these can have disastrous consequences if proper action is not taken immediately. There are a few spells that can fix an inadvertent partial vanishment, but not much to help a complete accidental vanishment, as you know.  As such, the best way to prevent any vanishment-induced disaster is by taking precautionary measures, such as using the spells we covered last week and ensuring that you are confident in your abilities before casting any vanishment spell. You don’t want to be losing any fingers!

Another semi-frequent backfire of vanishment spells is spontaneous combustion.  Given the amount of raw power that is released during vanishment, it is unsurprising that it can manifest itself in this way if cast incorrectly.  While anything completely destroyed in a backfire blast is irreparable, minor damage done to surrounding objects and people alike can typically be reversed with a couple simple spells. However, severe damage to your person should be treated by a healer.  Ensuring nothing flammable or of too much value is around before casting is a good preventative measure to take when practicing new vanishment spells for this reason. Actually, this is a good habit to get into when practicing any new spell, as you never know what may go wrong.

Vanishment as a Result of Backfire
There are plenty of times where vanishment is the result other improperly cast spells or charms as well.  Teleportation spells are especially prone to vanishing backfires. It would seem that in the process of travelling from one place to another, particles can go astray, getting lost and failing to make it to their final destination. The risk of vanishment during teleportation increases with the distance from which you are trying to transport an item.  Other spells with vanishing backfires include certain concealment charms and memory charms.

If any of you are planning on entering a career in spell or potion creation or experimentation, you also should be well prepared for vanishing backfires, as they are very common in that line of work.  The spell invention process typically involves large quantities of raw magical power that you must shape to fit your goal. However, this power can be unpredictable and difficult to control, causing massive backfires if not given careful consideration.  In potions, mixing the wrong ingredients or adding too much heat can cause the same outburst of magical energy.

Vanishment and Medicine
While this topic is one that might not seem to fit with today’s theme, it is rather closely related. As you can probably imagine, one of the worst times to encounter a backfiring spell is when casting a healing charm.  As these spells are ones that are used only when there is already illness or injury, the last thing you want is something else going wrong.  On top of that, even small backfires can have disastrous results, as the body is a complex and delicate thing. Even a slight variation in your blood’s chemical composition or a small piece of bone out of place could have you bedridden for a week.  This is why you don’t jump into complex healing spells in your first year learning magic, and the ones you learn in Second Year Charms are simple and very stable. You see, one major risk when performing any kind of healing or mending spell is vanishment. Magic is finicky, as you know, and may make improper leaps in intent if a spell is not performed correctly. For example, mispronouncing an incantation or lacking concentration may cause a spell not to fix a broken bone, but find the easiest route to make it not broken: vanish it.  It can’t be broken if it doesn’t exist, right? There are other backfires that work similarly, such as confusing hurt and pain and causing an extremity to go numb rather than healing a bruise, but those are a discussion for another day and a different course.

I’d like to take a look instead at what happens when something within the body gets vanished. There is actually a special “branch” of vanishing spells known as “medical vanishment” that fundamentally works the same way as our unfortunate backfires, but are caused intentionally. This is kind of a misnomer, though, as these spells are technically transformations rather than vanishments, but they function similar to the latter. Rather than scattering particles into the atmosphere, like typical vanishment, medical vanishment spells must scatter particles into the body.  If this was done like any other vanishment, it would be a rather uncomfortable experience that would probably lead to some further complications, as the bits and pieces of whatever was “vanished” would be in places they probably shouldn’t be. In order to remedy this little hiccup, the particles, when scattered, actually transform to assimilate with the surrounding tissue and organs.  For example, vanished bone mass may turn into blood, muscle, or tendon particles.

While certainly convenient, it is currently unknown how or why backfires - such as accidental deboning - transforms the particles in this way rather than truly vanishing them.  It took researchers years to be able to replicate the effects in spell form and the process is still not perfect. There are, however, spells for deboning, removing wisdom teeth, and vanishing kidney stones, among others.  Research is still being conducted into the magical removal of cancerous tumors, but progress has been slow due to the risks involved with this type of treatment. Given the aggressive and infectious nature of cancer tissue, if not done properly, vanishing a tumor could easily cause the cancer to spread to various other parts of the body rather than eradicating it.  Before this treatment could be anywhere close to approved for use, researchers would have to prove with a certain reliability that every single cancer cell would be transformed. It has also been a touchy subject among some who believe this remedy, if and when it is found, should be made available to Muggles suffering from the disease, despite the ISoS. Others, however, believe that sharing such a groundbreaking discovery would do more harm than good for both the Muggle and wizarding worlds.

Historical Context - Atlantis
I’m sure some of you have heard of the lost city of Atlantis.  There are countless rumours in both the Muggle and magical worlds surrounding its existence and eventual disappearance. You see, Atlantis was one of few all wizarding civilizations in history.  The island nation was founded around 9500 B.C.E., and due to their ability to practice magic freely, with no need to worry about the thoughts, feelings, or needs of Muggles, the Atlanteans’ knowledge grew rapidly. Because of this, they soon became one of the most advanced civilizations of the time.

With all this knowledge came great power, which the people of Atlantis guarded intimately. While travel to and from the islands wasn’t prohibited, they were wary of outsiders and had strict border control, not allowing any books or other texts to leave their numerous libraries. Eventually, the high council of the nation decided to take extreme measures to ensure no knowledge would ever be leaked to the outside world.  They came together in 9200 B.C.E. to cast a shielding charm on the island such that only those of pure mind could enter the premises and all who left would forget their time in Atlantis completely. As you can imagine, it was a very complicated and powerful spell to cast, requiring the 37 wizards to simultaneously cast a number of enchantments from various corners of the islands. Needless to say, the execution did not go as planned and a massive backfire occurred. The entire civilization vanished along with much of the knowledge it had accrued. Some of this knowledge did survive, however, through the stories of those who left the island before the disaster.  

This event is by far the largest case of inadvertent vanishment in history.  Plenty of other buildings and small towns have gone missing throughout the years, but very few enchantments as large as the one attempted in Atlantis have been tried since.  It is safe to say that wizardkind has learned from the mistakes of the past in this instance.

Conclusion
That’s all I have for you today! I hope you enjoyed and learned a couple of life lessons.  You have two short essays for homework, but be sure to also study hard for your midterm next week!  There will be a few questions from previous years on it to help get you all ready for you O.W.L.s in a few weeks. Now scurry along, I have to go see Madam Pomfrey for some Skele-gro...

*Combustion image credit: https://c-k.com/black-friday-and-emojis-on-twitter-and-instagram/firecracker-emoji/*
*Cup image credit: http://shop.hauntedcuriosities.com/PEARLS-ON-THE-STAIRCASE-OF-MAGICAL-PROPERTY-box-3-GH-061013052.htm*
*Spine image credit: http://tattoo.bletak.info/dark-tattoos/*
*Medical symbol image credit: https://misfitsandheroes.wordpress.com/tag/medical-symbol/*
*Atlantis image credit: http://earthmysterynews.com/2016/11/10/lost-city-of-atlantis-believed-found-off-spain/*