Technomancy, History and Magical Policies

Theodore Hirschall Jackson, III

Introduction
As most individuals of magical descent now know, the story
known as James Potter and the Hall of Elders Crossing has
become rather widespread on the Muggle electronic Internet
device. Having been eyewitness to the events which led to the
necessity of this story, it has been determined that I, Theodore
Hirschall Jackson, should provide a final analysis of the event,
and an explanation of why the release of such a tale was
required.

(It has come to my rather incredulous attention that James

Potter and the Hall of Elders Crossing is currently being read
even by some members of the magical community. If this is the
case, please be aware that the following account contains what
I must call- for want of a better word- spoilers.)

During a year-long summit at the European wizarding school

of Hogwarts, my associates and I were unwitting counterparts
in a carefully crafted plot of subterfuge, the aim of which was
to destroy the international magical law of secrecy. As was
revealed, this was in an attempt to thrust the Muggle and
wizarding worlds into direct relationship, and to eventually
orchestrate an all-out war. By an unusual series of
interventions and fortunate coincidences, this plan was foiled
and the perpetrators were brought to justice.

However, an unavoidable circumstance of this conspiracy was

the introduction of a Muggle news reporter upon the grounds
of Hogwarts, whereupon he was witness to many magical feats.
This individual was of such stubborn mental constitution that
complete obliviation was deemed impossible unless his entire
mind was to be rendered blank. Thanks to the resourceful
thinking of Hogwarts new Director of Security and Muggle
Counter-Intelligence, Denniston Gilles Dolohov, a plan was put
into place to preserve both the Muggle reporters sanity and the
security of the magical world.

During a regimen of careful memory modifications, the

reporter was convinced that he had purposely imagined all of
his recollections of the wizarding world for purposes of writing
a fanciful fantasy novel. With the cooperation of both the
European and American administrations of magic, a
fictionalized version of the events of that year were inculcated
into the reporters mind. The reporter now believes that he
created the entire affair in his imagination, and has
subsequently written the story for the consumption of the
Muggle public as a fictional novel.

Fortunately, the story has received somewhat less attention than

it might have, partly because it has been deemed a copyright
addendum to the previous series of magic-related books
written by known Muggle insider, J. K. Rowling. Despite this,
however, James Potter and the Hall of Elders Crossing has been
read by over a quarter million Muggles (not to mention more
than a few members of the magical community). This has not
been considered a threat to the magical world, however,
because of the patently fictional nature of the story, as well as
the fact that, thankfully, the reporter (who uses the pseudonym
G. Norman Lippert) is not that good a writer.
The following is a short dissertation on many of the new
wizarding policies and heretofore little-known Technomancic
magical details that were featured, with little accuracy, in Mr.
Lipperts book.

1. Student Transfers

The policies regarding the acceptance of students of

international origin vary somewhat from country to country
and region to region, however the policy in place at Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry represents a generally
accepted standard.

Hogwarts accepts students based on the following list of

criteria: magical capability, reason for transfer, and duration of
career. Any individual witch or wizard, regardless of national
origin, living in Europe at the time that he/she turns eleven
years old will be recorded by the Ministry of Magics
Department of Magical Census, thus assuring his/her validity
as a genuine wizard. Therefore, said foreign student may apply
for a transfer to Hogwarts based simply on the matter of his
residence in Europe at the beginning of his/her school career.
If, for example, an American parent is working in Europe for a
year or more, they may determine that it would be better for
their magical child to attend the European wizarding school
during that time, rather than send him back to the States to
attend the American equivalent, since that would make
communication and visits much more difficult. This would
most likely be allowed as a satisfactory reason for that students
admission to Hogwarts, since the duration of said students
educational career would meet the necessary minimum
requirement of one school year.
 Incidentally, any transfer student who completes two
consecutive years of his/her career at Hogwarts may apply to
complete his/her education there, regardless of the initial
reasons for that students transfer. Effectively, any foreign
student who completes his/her first and second years at
Hogwarts, even if their parents return to their nation of origin,
may apply to attend for his/her remaining five years, assuming
parental consent.

2. Visiting Faculty

The American Wizarding school, Alma Aleron, enjoys a

rather larger student populace due to the fact that it functions
as a university of higher learning and a graduate school as well
as a primary education facility. The result is that it has an
equally greater population of teachers. This occasionally allows
faculty members the freedom to take extended leave. Reasons
for leave might include educational travels, limited-term
teaching engagements at other schools, scientific or historical
expeditions, or, as in a well-known recent case, attendance at
international summit meetings with magical leadership abroad.

The Alma Aleron faculty enjoy an unusual freedom

insomuch as the travelling headmaster, Benjamin Amadeus
Franklyn, can meet daily with his American staff via their
unique Trans-Dimensional Garage. This allows him to continue
administration of the school during any extended travels. It is
customary for faculty members to bring along a contingent of
students when visiting another school for a period of time.
While attending the destination school for the duration, these
students function as teachers assistants, researchers, secretaries
and assorted staff for the visiting faculty.

Less common but not unheard of, as in the case of the Alma
Aleron summit of the previous year, a delegation of members of
the local wizarding government, along with their guards and
staff, may accompany the faculty on any international visit.
These individuals, after travelling with the delegation and
touring the grounds of the destination school, usually proceed
to official government quarters for the duration of their stay.

3. Benjamin Amadeus Franklyn

Known worldwide as one of the most colorful figures of the

American Revolution, Benjamin Franklyn has served as
chancellor of Alma Aleron, the American Wizarding School and
University, for one hundred and twelve years. While Franklyn
has been credited with defining the essential concept of
American democracy, and was certainly instrumental in the
founding politics and diplomacy of the young nation, Franklyn,
being a wizard, chose to avoid high political office.

His inventiveness and interest in machinery made him a

legend among his Muggle compatriots, while his magical
background allowed him to push the limits of understood
technology beyond that afforded by strictly non-magical
thinking. Franklyns age (just over three-hundred years) is
great, but not unheard of among powerful wizards with a
desire for longevity. Franklyn utilizes a self-formulated variety
of methods to prolong his life, only a few of which he has made
known to the wizarding world. Among them is a daily dose of
clarified sun and starlight, enhanced using a complicated rig of
mirrors and hexed lenses. Some argue that this system is
simply a complicated ruse, invented to hide the more
questionable methods of Franklyns longevity. Regardless,
Franklyns fascination with the stars and atmospheric
phenomenon is undeniable.

Franklyns identity as a wizard, while known to such

notable founding fathers as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,
was a carefully guarded secret from the American population.
This was seen as a necessity, considering the history of magical
intolerance among the puritans, leading to the well-known
witch-hunts of the eastern colonies. As a result, Franklyn
deliberately chose a Muggle version of his name, dropping the
Amadeus and altering the spelling of his last name to
Franklin. Using this means, Franklyn was able to
differentiate between correspondences from his Muggle and
magical associates.

Today, Franklyn has long-since retired from public

political life, since there would be no Muggle explanation for
his longevity. Despite this, American presidents, upon being
sworn in, are briefed on the existence of the American Magical
community by Franklyn himself, since he considers himself the
best representative and, indeed, proof that said community
exists.

4. Transfiguration of Food and Masses

According to Gamps Law of Elemental Transfiguration,

nourishing food cannot be created out of non-nourishing
objects. For instance, a rock cannot be transfigured into a form
of food that would be life-sustaining for a starving wizard.
However, that is not to say that a rock could not be
transfigured, by a skilled wizard, into something that looked
and perhaps even tasted like food; it is merely to say that food
transfigured from a rock would be exactly as nourishing as the
rock. In fact, much skullduggery has been accomplished via
the transfiguration of non-foods into objects that appear edible.
According to legend, King Kreagle, first king of the wizarding
world, was assassinated by starvation when his wifes brother,
in charge of the kings kitchens, transfigured all the kings
meals out of dirt. In other historical examples, poisons, or even
venomous snakes and spiders, were transfigured into food
items and used for murderous purposes.

At Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry,

Headmistress McGonagall has been known to transfigure
objects of minimal nutritional value into food items for
illustrative purposes. This is a harmless enough example,
although it is widely recognized that such transfigurations are
very difficult. As she herself has pointed out, Transfiguring a
book into a sandwich is one thing. Making the sandwich not
taste like a book is quite another.

One of the greatest mysteries of transfiguration is the

alteration of masses. Transfiguration of one object into an
object of similar size and/or density is only the first level of the
art. The ability to transfigure a small, light object into a large,
heavy object requires a special skill called transferrance of
masses. This secondary skill allows the wizard to borrow
mass from carefully chosen locations, such as deserts, deep
underground, or even, in the cases of some highly skilled
witches and wizards, distant planetary bodies. Since magic
cannot simply create matter, transfigurations that require an
increase in mass must acquire that mass from elsewhere,
adding it to the mass of the original object. Therefore,
transferrance of mass subtracts the necessary matter from
another location, relocating it and transfiguring it at the same
time. Careless transferrance of masses has been known to
contribute to weakening of Muggle structures, usually blamed
(fortunately enough) on termites, rust or structural failure.
This has led to very careful restrictions on such
transfigurations, although in small amounts the Ministry
usually grants some leeway.

5. Remote Physio-Apparation

Defined as the ability to project a separate manifestation of

ones being to another place, remote physio-apparation (RPA) is
primarily the specialization of practitioners of Indian and
African magic. The Ministry of Magic officially qualifies this
ability as a method of communication, rather than
transportation, since the practicing witch or wizard does not
physically travel anywhere. RPA is considered by many to be a
form of dark magic. Despite this, it has not been banned by the
Ministry of Magic, likely because it is practiced by so few
witches and wizards under the Ministrys jurisdiction.

RPA differs from apparation mainly in the fact that the

practicing witch or wizard sends only their spirit to a different
location, stringing it out from their body on a sort of magical
tether known as the silver cord. Physical manifestation of the
spirit is accomplished via borrowing matter from the host
location and forming it into a sort of puppet that the spirit can
control. These physical forms can be made to look like merely a
version of the practicing witch or wizards actual body, or
virtually anything else, from the prosaic to the monstrous.
Because the raw matter that forms the puppeted body is drawn
directly from the area the witch or wizard projects their spirit
into, no apparation can be said to occur in the traditional sense.
Strangely, some witches and wizards who are very
accomplished in RPA have shown the ability to retrieve objects
from locations they have projected to, although this has rarely
been observed and very little is known about the process
involved.

Historically, RPA practicing witches and wizards have often

been used as spies, leading to a ban on such activities by the
international magical community in nineteen forty-five. It is
commonly believed that the Egyptian myths of falcon- and
jackal-headed men are based on the practices of ancient
wizards who, using remote physio-apparation, could choose to
appear in those forms to instill fear and loyalty.

A widely believed misunderstanding about RPA practicing

witches and wizards who use their art to appear in monstrous
forms is that refusing to believe in them renders them
powerless. In fact, a remotely apparated individual using a
body formed of raw, local matter is even more dangerous than
any actual living monster, since the puppeted body can neither
feel pain nor receive wounds, and the projecting witch or
wizard is quite often safely far from the actual confrontation.
 6. Morphic Resonance Fields

Most witches or wizards have the ability to alter the

appearance of small geographical areas, although this more
often relies on fool-the-eye techniques, such as the visum-
ineptio charm, rather than actual physical transformation.
Using these skills, most magical individuals can cause an object
to appear newer than it actually is, or of a different color.
These techniques can also be used to hide objects, or even
individuals, by making them appear as something else.

Magic that physically creates a new environment where

one did not exist before, or existed in a much different way,
requires a very powerful and difficult branch of transfiguration
known as Morphic Resonance Fields, or MRFs.

An MRF can, in theory, be created very quickly, though the

result would be rather violent. In essence, the field simply
disassembles the atomic matter of any given area and
rearranges it into a new pattern, as dictated by the witch or
wizard. The danger in such a process (and the reason it is, at
this point, purely theoretical) is that MRF magic works on all
the matter in the given area. Since, in most cases, the spell-
casting witch or wizard must be in the vicinity of the MRF, it
must be assumed that they would, unfortunately, also be subject
to it. The result is that the MRF producing witch or wizard
would find, to their great misfortune, that they had been
destroyed and remade as, perhaps, a Chesterfield sofa.

MRFs, however, can be accomplished using much slower

and safer means. This is usually done by quite literally growing
the desired environment from the substance of the original
environment. This may happen over a period of weeks or
months, depending on the complexity of the desired
environment and the liveliness of the existing material.
 In the case of a gradual MRF transformation, there will be a
period of time when the environment will be partly its old self
and partly its new self, by varying degrees. Commonly, the
environment is kept hidden or unplottable during this period,
often using circumstantial variable hexes (homunculus locks,
for example) to obscure it at any time other than that defined
by the casting witch or wizard. For instance, an MRF area in
morphic flux may be masked from view at any time other than
two-thirty on a Thursday, or when confronted with the color
mauve, or upon the speaking of a certain word or phrase.

In cases of very powerful magical objects, MRFs have been

known to be embedded into their very natures, recreating
certain surroundings wherever the magical object is left still
long enough. For instance, the treasured mask of the Nordic
Wizard-King Dagbjarti was legendarily affixed with an MRF
which caused a protective Nordic war boat to surround it no
matter where it rested for more than a day.

Astute readers will recognize that the Grotto Keep is, in

fact, an MRF induced environment embedded into the wood of
the legendary Throne of Merlinus (which is now, once again,
safely locked away in the European Ministrys Hall of
Mysteries).

7. Under-age Flight Regulation

Until recently, the management of under-age broomstick

flight was left to the discretion of parents and guardians. An
under-age wizard or witch was allowed to practice broomstick
flight, play Quidditch, or even go on short journeys, assuming
their safety was reasonably assured and there was no chance of
being observed by any non-magical persons. After several
incidents of careless flight, however, including the now
infamous Trafalgar Square Quidditch fiasco, the Ministry of
Magic moved to officially regulate under-age flight.
 Taking a page from the Muggle laws concerning
automobile operation, the Ministry of Magic developed a
licensing and education system to govern the preparation of
young witches and wizards for broomed flight. Officially, no
witch or wizard is allowed to fly a broomstick before the age of
eleven. Eleven-year-old witches and wizards will undergo
flight lessons with a registered instructor. These classes are
most commonly held as a standard part of a first year school
curriculum, but private lessons can also be arranged as
necessary. At the age of eleven, witches and wizards may fly in
the accompaniment of, or under the supervision of, a flight-
qualified adult. Once the young witch or wizard has
successfully completed broomstick flight lessons, that
individual will be registered automatically with the Ministry as
a qualified flyer, and will remain so until deemed otherwise for
misuse of flight, careless flight, or if the individual is rendered
physically unable to fly safely.

Despite the nearly unanimous passage of the Under-age

Pre-flight Developmental Wizards Norm (UP-DWN), the law
has proven rather unpopular and very difficult to enforce.
Typically, the Ministry has only addressed the most dangerous
or flagrant violations of the law against under-age flight.

8. Peruvian Ballistic Beans

Grown in the unplottable foothills of Mount Mururaju,

ballistic beans are well known for their small explosive charges.
Despite their militaristic name, the incendiary nature of
ballistic beans is far too small to be used in any form of
warfare. A single ballistic bean explosion is approximately half
as powerful as a Muggle firecracker (.4 Incendiary force units),
but, with a chemical rather than a gunpowder source, the
exploding bean does not create heat as a byproduct.

Ballistic beans grow with a two-chambered core separated

by a fine membrane. The flesh of each chamber contains a
different chemical infusion, both of which are individually
inert but react violently when mixed. When a ballistic bean is
squeezed or impacted, the membrane separating the chambers
ruptures, causing the chemicals to react, blowing the bean
apart. Since the complete genetic material of the ballistic bean
is present in both chambers, the exploding bean functions as a
unique reseeding mechanism.

The magical nature of the ballistic bean lies in the

incendiary chemicals that infuse its chambers. If extracted
carefully from individual chambers without any break in the
dividing membrane, each chemical serves a wide variety of
magical applications, from wand cleaning solutions to hair
growth on even inanimate objects.

Curiously, military experiments involving the extraction of

large quantities of ballistic bean chemicals for the creation of a
ballistic bean bomb have proven unsuccessful. The final
analysis shows that the chemicals only react explosively inside
the airless environment of the natural bean. The so-called
superbean bomb was an abject failure, never exploding once
in practical testing. The externally mixed chemicals, in fact,
rather than reacting violently, were discovered to create a very
tasty, if spicy, sauce. The sauce, used as a condiment in
Peruvian wizarding culture, is known as el salsa grenado.

9. The Sylvven Tower

The history of the magical world during the Middle Ages

saw a sharp rise in small nations, kingdoms and tyrannies,
filling the vacuum left by the lack of a legitimate, large-scale
governing body. The ruling structure of these kingdoms varied
greatly, from beneficent fiefdoms to tyrannical reigns of terror.
This led, of course, to constant conflicts, ranging in scope from
duels between rulers to all-out wars, usually fronted by
commoners. These wars were, often by design and usually by
necessity, very magical in nature, with powerful wizard and
witch generals entering the fray with their most potent and
deadly spells at the ready. The final result was great swathes of
land so tainted by powerful dark magic that they were unfit for
human occupation and were, in fact, often populated by
monstrosities and horrors. Some of these areas remain affected
even today, and are, in the worst cases, rendered unplottable
for safetys sake. One of the most famous of these quarantine
zones is the forest near Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry, which continues to this day to support the habitation
of many mysterious and occasionally horrific creatures.

In an effort to reduce the ravaging of the landscape by

magical warring, many ancient kingdoms adopted the custom
of representative hostile negotiation. Any ruler, during the
course of a battle, was afforded the option of calling a meeting
with the opposite ruler. This meeting would be held on neutral
ground, protected from magical contamination. There, the
rulers would either parley or duel, thus ending the conflict.

For this purpose, castles were outfitted with a very tall

turret, known as the Syllven Tower, flat-topped and equipped
with ten stone seats. Two seats, opposite each other in the
center, were for the rulers. The other eight, four on either side,
were for each rulers council. The council would serve as
advisors during the course of the meeting, and witnesses if their
ruler was defeated. Customarily, the Sylvven Tower was to be
the highest structure in any castle. This served two purposes.
First, the height was believed to protect the surrounding area
from any potential magical contamination. Second, since it was
understood that no one could call the sky property, meetings
held at altitude were considered ultimately neutral ground.

When a ruler wished to conclude the battle via

representative hostile negotiation, he or she would project their
voice for all in the battle to be heard, shouting, I declare a
meeting at the summit. Battle would instantaneously cease
until arrangements could be made and the meeting was held.
Quite often, battling soldiers from both sides would camp
together during the course of the meeting, knowing that, one
way or another, the fighting was over between them. Of
historical note: this practice is the origin of the modern custom
of referring to a meeting between world leaders as a summit.