A Consolidated Guide of Different Spells for a 1st Year {Charms}
Worried that you might forget the implementation of several spells over time? Do you remember what each spell does but forget what is the procedure to cast it correctly? Then look no further because this is the book for you. Covering each spell taught in Charms-101, with this handy guide in your collection, you'll never have to panic about how exactly you have to go on casting different spells. This book deals with all the objective components of spellcasting.
Last Updated
07/05/21
Chapters
21
Reads
537
The Sorting Hat and the Invisibility Charm
Chapter 20
The Sorting Hat is one of Hogwarts’ most magical charmed objects. It is a thousand years old and was originally enchanted by the four founders of Hogwarts. Don’t be deceived by its battered and frayed appearance. After all, a true Gryffindor can even pull a sword from it. Early on in J.K. Rowling’s five years planning the Harry Potter stories, she decided that there were to be four school houses – Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin – each with their own distinct characteristics. However, working out exactly how the students would be sorted took a little longer.
Rowling spent a lot of time brainstorming, compiling notes, complete with doodles and scribbles in the margin, which help us understand how she finally came to decide on how the Sorting Hat, and its performance of a key piece of magical school administration, worked. When she finally cracked it, Rowling noted down the logic: ‘Finally I wrote a list of the ways in which people can be chosen: eeny meeny miny moe, short straws, chosen by team captains, names out of a hat – names out of a talking hat – putting on a hat – the Sorting Hat.’
At the bottom of another page of her notes is an illustration of a hat with a mouth, which talks and sings and looks remarkably like the Sorting Hat as it is represented in the Harry Potter films.
The Sorting Hat would be nothing without the Sorting Hat Song, which is sung at the start of every academic year as first-year students are sorted into their houses. J.K. Rowling’s working draft contained some crossings-out and additional edits, as she worked out the rhymes, rhythms and what to include, but most of its lines survived in the final published version of Philosopher’s Stone.
The Sorting Ceremony begins when the hat sings a song explaining the qualities favoured by each of the houses. A new song is composed each year. It’s not actually until his fourth year at Hogwarts that Harry attends another Sorting Ceremony other than his own.
Harry picked the shining, silvery cloth off the floor. It was strange to the touch, like water woven into material. ‘It’s an Invisibility Cloak,’ said Ron, a look of awe on his face. ‘I’m sure it is — try it on.’
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
‘Now you see me, now you don’t.’ From ancient myths to modern movies, people have harnessed the pleasures and possibilities of invisibility. For those who won’t inherit an Invisibility Cloak, other methods of disappearing must be found instead. The Book of King Solomon called the Key of Knowledge was an English manuscript from the 17th century. It featured an invisibility spell under the heading ‘How experiments to be invisible must be prepared’.
The method proposed existed in several versions because the book was widely shared, copied and recopied by students of magic. It was a manuscript treatise full of various spells. It alternated between black and red ink. Titles and spells themselves were written out in red, while the rest of the description on how to perform the ritual was written in black. The manuscript was spuriously attributed to King Solomon – the famously wise and wealthy king who is supposed to have lived nearly three thousand years ago. But the text – and the invisibility spell – probably date from the Renaissance (1300–1600).
The manuscript owned by the British Library once belonged to a 16thcentury Elizabethan poet and lawyer, an Englishman called Gabriel Harvey, who was a very serious scholar and a contemporary of Shakespeare’s. The manuscript was full of Harvey’s own annotations and highlights, so it was clearly not an ornament but a working magical manuscript that its owner used and studied.
Not only that, it wasn’t printed; it was copied out by hand. The Key of Knowledge wasn’t properly published until many years later. The spells or charms were described in the book as ‘experiments’, which followed a set process and could be tested, and then repeated, by yourself or others. So the select few magic scholars who had access to these spells were trying to replicate charms in the same way that today’s scientists might try to replicate controversial experiments to prove – or disprove – their worth. If you read the spell the right way you would become invisible (or maybe not!).
The last line, which was a supplication to make the speaker invisible, seemed to be an appeal to a higher power (presumably God) in the hope of influencing the spell. It suggested that replicating the process was important, but somehow so was the character and virtue of the practitioner – suggesting that the ultimate ability to do anything was granted by God. The charm’s effectiveness could never be technically disproved or discounted and so it endured through time. If it failed to have an effect, it was not because the words didn’t make you invisible; it was because you’re weren’t worthy.
Early on in the creation of the world of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling drew a picture of Argus Filch. In her vision, he had jowly cheeks, bags under his beady eyes and a very wrinkled forehead. His bald head protruded in front of his bony shoulders, which reached up to his ears. He looked like a haggard vulture. In one hand he held the keys to Hogwarts on a large key ring. In the other he held a lantern for patrolling the corridors at night.
Filch often came close to discovering Harry on his night-time adventures around the school. Harry only escaped detection thanks to his Invisibility Cloak, which once belonged to his father, James Potter. Light or no light, we know Filch could never catch Harry while he was hiding underneath his Invisibility Cloak, which is ironic given the root of Filch’s name. ‘Argus’ was a giant of classical mythology who had a hundred eyes. He was known as the ‘all-seeing one’, a description that can’t really be applied to poor old Filch, who spent a lot of his time hopelessly chasing Harry and his friends around Hogwarts trying to find them.
‘Ah — your father happened to leave it in my possession, and I thought you might like it.’ Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. ‘Useful things... your father used it mainly for sneaking off to the kitchens to steal food when he was here.’
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak was the greatest the world has ever seen; the cloak that once belonged to Death himself. It was especially precious to Harry as it was handed down to him by his dad. Without the cloak, Harry wouldn’t have been able to eavesdrop on vital conversations, sneak out of Hogwarts for essential missions or peek at the terrifying dragons before the Triwizard Tournament.
An Invisibility Cloak is a rare, precious and mysterious object. You must be desperate to see it…
Here it is:
Someone wearing an Invisibility Cloak and holding a book.
That is a real, genuine Invisibility Cloak. Bet you can’t believe your eyes!
Charms is a subject that illustrates more than most how magic has been used and abused over the years. There were some delightful charms, from turning yourself into a lion, to making yourself invisible – their effectiveness has never been completely disproved! But this form of magic has a darker side, too. Over the centuries, magic and witchcraft have been used to mask the persecution of vulnerable people, under the pretext that they were performing wicked and unholy magical practices. The image of the haggard witch was so effective that it still resonates today. You can trace the birth of science and the continuing respect for religion in the rigorous practice of charms. Charms have been used to ward off disease and even to make people fall in love.
In the wizarding world of Harry Potter, a hat can decide your school house and sing for you, and one tap of a brick can reveal a hidden street full of wizarding delights. All in all, charms are rather… beguiling.