ok so i woke up an hour and a half ago to my cat puking up a hairball and my alarm isn’t supposed to go off for another hour from now but I’m wide awake so let’s do this: I’m going to explain a bit of Potter world building that Rowling never will b/c “European magic is oh so superior~!” AKA I’m still royally pissed off that Rowling spouted that “wandless magic is less powerful and precise than wand magic, although wandless is good too!” bullshit while describing Wizarding America (specifically INDIGENOUS Wizarding America) after spoon-feeding us for SEVEN BOOKS that wizards capable of wandless magic are badass.
Wands may or may not predate the International Statute of Secrecy, but they sure as hell became popular/a requirement afterwards.
Throughout the Harry Potter series, wandless magic is always seen as really fucking powerful and nearly impossible to do. Why? We are given EVIDENCE that children are fully capable of wandless magic and probably could become skilled at it if properly taught without a wand. But when they’re taught using a wand instead of their own skills, they basically become absolutely useless without their wands.
Here’s where I think the Statute of Secrecy comes in. Way back when, muggles were attempting (and occasionally succeeding) to kill witches left right and center. A child displaying magic became a safety risk, which I think is a large part of why Hogwarts was founded to begin with; bring all the wizarding children together and teach them all together, that way instead of individual and usually tragic cases the risk of magic leaks became contained. Without training, children are serious risks to the exposure of magic and even if taught wandless magic they can still use their magic at THEIR whims and as we all know children can sometimes be impulsive or just not see why they shouldn’t do a thing.
Wands, as a tool rather than an appendage, are rather useful. They help focus the magic different wands make for stronger spells of different magics (dragons for dueling and unicorns for the sort of steady hand needed in healing magic, for instance). I’m not Rowling, but A LOT of magic folklore attached to wands show them to be tools for specific needs rather than the basis of all magic. So if the muggle world still shows wizards and witches as casting wandless magic all over the place but occasionally having a super powerful tool they use to concentrate their spells, then it stands to reason that this stems from them having outdated knowledge of how witches and wizards work. But what if a wizard uses exclusively wand magic? Then it can become a dependency rather than a handy tool. You could disarm someone and leave them completely incapable of reaching their magic except under extreme duress.
So children were given wands, and discouraged from wandless magic. Grown wizards and witches capable of wandless magic became more and more thought of as being “stronger” because of their ability to overcome their need for a wand, and yet the stigma of “wand magic is more powerful and precise than wandless magic” remains. Take away a child’s wand, for instance like during the summer break when they’re not safely sequestered in school, and they exposure risk is limited.
I could also go on and on about how this plays into European views of Indigenous magic users and how there ABSOLUTELY would’ve been a magical version of the residential schools to “contain the risk of magic exposure to muggles/nomajs”, but I think I’ve rambled on enough.
(( OOC: I’ve tried to convince her to come with me, believe me. I HAVE TRIED. But unfortunately I can’t bring my Laina… believe you me, though, I will be calling my precious angel FREQUENTLY. *weeps* ))
i don’t mean to sound fake deep but the reason 2018 felt so long was because we’re being fed what’s trending at such a rapid rate that we literally can’t remember half of the shit that even happened anymore. “Black Panther came out in February!” Marvel releases so many movies a year that we completely forget about the last movie as soon as a new one comes out and it repeats in a vicious cycle. “Tide Pods/Ugandan Knuckles was in January!” The life span of memes have been rapidly declining for years and it’s gotten to the point where the average lifespan of a meme is about 2 weeks and then the next thing gets popular and then that lasts for 2 weeks and it just keeps going. We’re literally losing our sense of time because of our rapid consumption of media and pop culture.
write write write 