Transfiguration Notebook - Year One
written by Elizabeth Black
Here are my notes from Transfiguration year one! The last chapter has links to the rest of my books of notes for the other subjects, so be sure to check those out as well!
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
10
Reads
593
Lesson Three
Chapter 3
Intro
• These exceptions tell us what we are unable to do within the science of transfiguration, particularly conjuration
• additional things that are regulated by man-made magical law (the laws that are created by the Ministry of Magic that limit what we are legally allowed to do)
• the laws of magic (the natural laws of the universe that physically prevent us from being able to do certain things) are what the Five Principal Exceptions fall under
Five Principal Expectations:
- food
- magical energy
- love
- life
- knowledge
Food
• probably the one least explained
• Food cannot be conjured or transformed into existence
• It can, however, be summoned or duplicated
even if this were possible, it would be extremely dangerous because conjured items are not permanent
• Due to the fact that this conjured food would disappear, it could cause extreme harm to the body
• If you eat something and it is digested and used to create things within the body, anything associated with the digestion of that food would cease to exist, causing parts of the body to be damaged in the process. *so DON’T eat*
• important to note that there are spells that allow things to become food-like substances
• It is highly advised against trying to create food out of this pig
• it was originally a desk and life cannot be created (as will be explained below), there is no nutritional value to anything made of the pig
• eating bacon or ham created from a transformed pig would not give you any of the value that you would get from slaughtering an actual pig and eating it
• left with only the nutritional value of the desk. (For example)
Love
• It isn’t something that can be seen or touched. It is an emotion, something that can only be internally felt and is different to each person
• cannot be created falsely
• love potions such as Amortentia, they do not actually create love.
• under the effects of a love potion cannot actually feel love
• that magic thus creates the effect of an inability to love in the resulting child
Tom Riddle, more commonly known as Voldemort. His mother seduced his father by way of Amortentia
Life
• Life cannot be created in any form
something has died, that soul cannot be conjured to bring that thing back to life
conjured plants are not truly alive
mimic the appearance of life while they are conjured
• bouquet of flowers, they will not require food or water and they will not wilt and die.
They merely appear to contain life and mimic its qualities
Magical Energy
• matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
also true of energy
• can draw in this energy from ourselves and the world around us and shape it to perform spells, but there is currently no physical way to imbue something with a self preserving magical energy if it does not have it to begin with
• cannot conjure and materials, plants, or animals that have any natural magical ability
impossible to imbue a Muggle or a Squib with the ability to perform magic
• You will learn about these more in your Charms class, but these objects are merely charmed to have some effect
Knowledge
• Knowledge is the information and memories that reside in your brain.
• Thus, a book does not constitute knowledge, but rather a means to acquire knowledge. It is in instances like this where this exception gets tricky.
• It is impossible for someone to create knowledge that they do not have
• You can, however, conjure a book that teaches the language, presuming you know that the book exists and you are familiar with its content before conjuring
• Knowledge can be stored and shared
a pensieve
• Anyone can look into the pensieve and gain the knowledge retained in that memory
by viewing the memory, you are not automatically encoding it into your own mind
only know that which you can recall from viewing the memory.
• if you were to view someone else’s memory of reading a Spanish book and they were able to retain all the knowledge as they read, that isn’t to say that you would do the same by viewing the memory, unless, say, you read the book over their shoulder and were able to retain the knowledge yourself.
