Hogwarts Open Day

[MillicentMargaretAmanda]

If you were a Muggle parent, wouldn't you be concerned that you literally never get to visit your kid's school? I mean, you'd had them all prepped to go to the local good Ofsted rated comp, whose catchment area you had carefully researched before moving in year 4. You'd been to two open evenings, and gone on a separate day visit, and then at some point in Year 6, a weirdo with an owl turns up and tells you your child is magic and is going to a boarding school you've never heard of in the wilds of Scotland...
Your requests to visit are refused, there don't seem to be any open days, parents evenings or speech days to attend. You don't even get asked to come when your little darling is lying petrified in the San....

All seems very unfair given that certain parents seem to be there every other week (looking at you Malfoy senior.)

plus presumably some manufacturing jobs making wands, robes, printing text books, etc. Though why can't they just magically make all their stuff appear, rather than having to buy it?

Because as we know (and I made of point of writing this into some fanfic I wrote!) when a wizard or witch passes away, their spells cease to work. When Dumbledore died the spell paralysing Harry broke immediately. So all goods would need to be produced physically rather than brought into being by magic otherwise the wizard who magicked up a load of chairs (say) would die and all the wizards who bought them would suddenly end up on their arses.

Pyongyang, another example would be Francis the fish going "pouf" when Lily died

Exactly. And heartbreaking :(

There is also wizards like the Malfoys who are just wealthy.

Me and DD have just been rewatching the films.
Why doesn’t Dumbledore recognise Kings Cross as a place, did he never get the train from there?

There are

Why doesn’t Dumbledore recognise Kings Cross as a place, did he never get the train from there?

He's over a hundred years old - he won't have have caught the Hogwarts Express since September 1898. Plus it was probably a lot dirtier than it is today back in the time of steam engines and Victorians - so the cleaned up Harry death version might just pass the cusp of recogniseability for someone who hasn't seen it since cholera was a major killer.

Because as we know (and I made of point of writing this into some fanfic I wrote!) when a wizard or witch passes away, their spells cease to work. When Dumbledore died the spell paralysing Harry broke immediately.

Huh - I'd never even thought of this. I wonder if JK Rowling realised all the ramifications of that when she had Dumbledore's binding spell break. How far does it go - if you get all the bits you need to make something together and then use magic to build it - will it break apart after death? What if you used magic to fix something - will it break again? Madam Malkin uses magic to make robes, when she dies will everybody's clothes fall off and revert back to material - or is it enough that the cloth and thread were properly manufactured?

There are certainly items that retain their enchantments once the people who enchanted them have died. The Hogwarts Express, (Hogwarts itself for that matter), the marauders map, the deathly hallows, the sorting hat ...

TaliZorah of course the Malfoys are liars. They're Death Eaters.

I think it’s things that require magic to power that stop working upon death. So Dumbledore’s spell on Harry was never meant to be permenant- it would have stopped fairly soon even if Dumbledore had lived.

And I think conjouring things (like chairs for example which happens a fair bit) is also temporary. How long something lasts depends on the skill and power of the wizard. That’s why the Weasley’s don’t conjure themselves beautiful expensive furniture - it would be a constant job going round the house redoing charms.

Permenant possessions need to be made physically not just conjured.

Though if magic is used to make something permenant eg the Marauders map or Hogwarts it stays even after death. Although physical parchment, stone and masonry are involved in the construction.

The spells breaking after wizards die thing makes no sense. Sirius’s ancestors made No 12 Grimmauld Place Unplottable and impossible to Apparate into etc etc - that didn’t all collapse once the Blacks were dead - Sirius was in Azkaban and couldn’t renew them. Mrs Black and the Permanent Sticking Charm. How would magical portraits work if that happened - stop moving once the artist was dead?

@Icantreachthepretzels

Dumbledore you do not abandon babies on doorsteps overnight and why does nobody just fucking shoot Lord Voldemort in the head?

OK, fair point about the baby bit, but you can't just go shooting Voldy in the head.
Cos Horcruxes. He'd still be tethered to life, to bump him off completely you have to get rid of all those first!

^but you can't just go shooting Voldy in the head.
Cos Horcruxes. He'd still be tethered to life, to bump him off completely you have to get rid of all those first!^

Tethered to life with a bullet through the brain is different to walking around in a brand spanking new noseless body. Gives you a lot more time and space to go horcrux hunting. Never made sense not to at least attempt to destroy his new body just because 'horcruxes'.

The spells breaking after wizards die thing makes no sense. Sirius’s ancestors made No 12 Grimmauld Place Unplottable and impossible to Apparate into etc etc - that didn’t all collapse once the Blacks were dead - Sirius was in Azkaban and couldn’t renew them. Mrs Black and the Permanent Sticking Charm. How would magical portraits work if that happened - stop moving once the artist was dead?

Agreed. I think Dumbledore's binding spell stops working for plot reasons viz and to wit Harry was frozen in place under his invisibility cloak, if the spell hadn't broken he would have been trapped there until someone happened to bump into him - and who knows how long that might have been?
I can head canon that - knowing this was surely the moment he was about to die - Dumbledore cast a spell that would specifically only last until he died, to stop Harry interfering with his and Snape's plan - but so he wouldn't be reliant on waiting for Hermione to come looking for him to free him.

But there are too many examples of enchantments that last beyond the life span of the wizard who cast them for it to be a blanket rule that all spells are undone once a wizard dies. To take that to its end point ... if a wizard had used magic to kill someone, once all their spells were undone then surely that person would come back to life? That's not only obviously untrue but is canonically stated that nothing can resurrect the dead - so avada kedavra is a permanent spell. But there's nothing to suggest that conjuring or transfiguration are not permanent as well or any reason why one spell in particular would be permanent but all others are not. In fact - leprechaun gold is noted for its unusalness in that it does disappear after a while. So, obviously, conjured items melting away over time is not a regular occurrence in the wizarding world.

Conjuring or ‘Conjuration’ is a specific branch of magic though- and JKR has said that conjured items tend not to last long.

harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Conjuration

Conjuring or ‘Conjuration’ is a specific branch of magic though- and JKR has said that conjured items tend not to last long.

So why don't the Weasley's just transfigure all their old stuff into new stuff instead?

Because it’d be a full time job stopping it all disappearing. And it’s very advanced magic I doubt the Weasley’s (or anyone) had the skill or power to do all of their stuff all of the time.

My understanding is that using magic on physical items (say 12 Grimmauld Place, which already existed) is fine, but conjuring items out of thin air isnt. So Francis the Fish was conjured by Lily and so died when she did, but The Marauders Map was a piece of parchment that had had magic used upon so still worked even after all the creators had died.