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Hey brother!
Ben, the magic system in Harry Potter
allows our characters to do basically anything.
You can shoot magic out at the end of your wand.
You can bottle it up in a potion,
You can transform your physical body.
You can even hide a piece of your soul
inside of another object to prevent you from dying.
Although I'd really not recommend that last one.
And not only are there lots of ways
for the magic to be used,
but there's almost an endless number of uses for the magic,
like anything you need to do,
there's a spell for that.
The obvious catch being you need to know what the spell is,
how to do it, practice it
and then also have the pure, magical fortitude
and instinct to pull that spell off when you need to.
Will you have what it takes
to unlock your front door when you get home?
Probably.
Not everything's life or death people.
Okay, some things are just run-of-the-mill spells.
In fact, outside of the Harry Potter story,
I dare say most things are just run-of-the-mill spells.
They probably don't need to know
how to cast Patronuses, in everyday life.
But that said, not all the spells
are run-of-the-mill spells.
Some of them, in Harry Potter, seem to require
a little bit more,
power?
Practice?
Umph?
Intuition?
Mana?
Some how all of those and none of those seem right.
The amount of "energy" required to do any spell
is never really dived into, in the books
and yet certain spells definitely seem harder?
At least they require a little extra.
But the ambiguity has left a lot of people wondering,
like, could a witch or wizard ever just run out of magic
or at least need time to recharge their magic.
Like, could casting several really big spells
drain you of your power for awhile?
Well, today we find out.
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So can a witch or wizard run out of magic?
Well, you might be surprised to learn that the answer
is yes and no.
It really depends on how you want to define the parameters
of that question.
So first of all,
let's just have a look at the kind of magic
we are dealing with in Harry Potter,
by instead looking at Name of the Wind.
In any given fantasy world that contains magic,
which is all of them, I think, by definition,
the magic can either lead to a really soft magic system
or a really hard magic system,
or really anywhere in between,
it's not just two buckets,
or in some cases both.
For example, in our other favorite book series,
The Name of the Wind,
which you should all definitely go read,
there is a very hard magic system
and a very soft magic system.
In Name of the Wind,
our lead character Kvothe,
uses a kind of magic called sympathy,
and this is a very hard magic system,
there are lots of rules
and it can be explained in very literal ways.
It's honestly kind of like physics,
there's like math and percentages
and conversions and slippage,
and you have to like literally split your mind
into several pieces
to think about multiple things at the same time.
The catch with sympathy though,
is that the more of it you do,
the more it wears on your mind and body,
there is a physical cost to doing the magic.
And again, that's a hard magic system,
lots of very well-defined rules.
On the other hand,
there's also the soft magic system called "naming".
This is a very soft style of magic
and has very little explanation behind it.
Taborlin the Great said to the wall "break",
and the wall broke.
You see, he knew the name of all things,
so all things were his to command.
Oh, okay, but like how, how does that work?
Exactly like that, he said "broke", it breaks.
I don't, wha-
Harry Potter, on the other hand,
falls somewhere right in the middle of hard and soft.
- It's leviosa, not leviosar.
- We the readers all accept
that magic can accomplish basically anything,
but at the same time,
we don't expect any given character
to be able to solve literally any problem,
just because they can do magic.
Instead, the obvious limit is, what magic you know,
and how much you have trained yourself to use it.
And as such, a lot of the characters in Harry Potter
have specific specialties.
Like, say for example,
there's an angry bear charging at you
and you want to transfigure it into a teddy bear,
before it, you know, mauls you.
Certainly, anyone who can do magic has the potential
and the capability to solve this problem in this way,
if they know what to do,
but I bet we'd all rather
just have Professor McGonagall there.
But if this is the way magic works in Harry Potter,
it does give you that feeling
that given enough time and study and practice,
any given witch or wizard
could become the most powerful witch or wizard, right?
And yet this just definitely isn't true,
like certain characters definitely are just more powerful.
Take Voldemort for example,
before he's even 10,
he is already starting to master non-verbal wandless magic
to accomplish his goals,
and he doesn't even know what magic is.
Ron, on the other hand,
grows up in a pure blood family with wizards,
and has five, very accomplished, older brothers
and doesn't even know
what a spell is supposed to sound like.
- Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,
turn this stupid fat rat, yellow.
(rat squeaking)
- Why would you think that was a spell Ron?
As an adult, Voldemort is also the agreed upon leader
of all the dark wizards,
whom without, the dark wizard takeover can not even happen.
Which always confused me as a kid,
like, just because he was gone,
the whole dark movement fell?
Because, yes, he is very evil,
but there are other characters
who are very terrible and powerful and evil also,
and yet they all seem to follow Voldemort specifically,
based on his power alone,
or I don't know,
maybe they just think he can't actually be killed,
he is actually pretty open
about his quest for immortality with them.
Dumbledore is very much the same way.
He's always simply described as more powerful,
like, yes, he's also very brilliant,
but it's his power that everyone talks about
and which Voldemort fears.
Even Harry gets this treatment
and he's sitting right next to Hermione,
who definitely studies more, practices more,
knows way more spells,
and can do definitely the most number of things with magic.
And yet it is Harry,
who always seems to have that little extra, umph.
Like sure, plenty of the D.A. members
learn to cast the Patronus,
but only Harry's is the super Patronus,
that can take on a hundred dementors at once.
It's almost like Voldemort, Dumbledore and Harry
just had extra stat points to allocate than everyone else.
They just get to benefit from it
and only benefit really, because here's the thing,
there is no consequence for using more powerful spells
in Harry Potter, at least, not for the user.
It's not like, oh sure, Harry can cast really strong spells,
but it also wears him out.
No, there is simply no indication, anywhere, in any book,
that suggests a witch or wizard
can be drained of their power,
by using their power.
They might mentally wear out,
the same way you might mentally wear out
after, like, a really long game of chess.
They may even physically wear out
from actually running around and casting all the spells.
But the magic supply itself is infinite.
Like it's not like in Diablo 2,
where after every 10 ice blasts,
you have to sit there and wait for your store to recharge,
before you can cast another spell,
anyone else getting tired of mana potions?
I swear, I spend half that game
just going back to town to buy more.
In fact, it would seem,
there's not even a way for, like,
the power level of a witch or wizard
to be dampened by other kinds of magic.
Like, Voldemort rips his soul into eight pieces
and is still the most powerful dark wizard.
Dumbledore drinks an entire basinful of the Drink of Despair
and still gets up and summons a raging inferno.
Yeah, his mind and body are frail,
but his magic?
Unaffected.
Now that said, there are extra efforts required
to cast certain spells,
like, Bellatrix says,
you have to really mean it to make the Cruciatus Curse work,
or Harry, has to focus on truly powerful, positive memories
to cast his Patronus,
but even in those situations,
these are merely requirement's, not costs.
So no, you cannot run out of magic by using too much magic,
but there are other ways in which a magic user
might lose their magic.
Tonks is actually a really great example
of this exact thing happening in Half-Blood Prince.
When we first meet her, she has bright pink hair,
she can morph her features around
and is one of the ministries elite aurors.
Fast forward to the next book though,
after Remus has spurned her advances
and she has fallen into a deep state of depression,
her hair is mousy brown,
and she has just physically become, like, more gaunt.
Hermione even says
"she can't change her appearance like she used to,
I think her powers must have been affected
by shock or something."
"I didn't know that could happen," said Harry.
"Nor did I, but I suppose if you're really depressed"
Now, granted, eventually she does overcome this
and by Deathly Hallows,
she is totally back to full strength,
before she, you know,
eh, dies.
But, but, the point is,
for a while she did lose some of her abilities.
A similar thing happens with Merope Gaunt,
Voldemort's mother,
for most of her life, she is looked down upon
by her father and brother
and leads a pretty abusive existence,
to the point where she can't even use her magic
to repair a pot.
According to Dumbledore,
"I do not believe that her magical powers
appeared to their best advantage
when she was being terrorized by her father.
Once Marvolo and Morfin were safely in Azkaban,
once she was alone and free for the first time in her life,
then I am sure she was able to give full rein
to her abilities and to plot her escape
from the desperate life she had led for 18 years."
Almost certainly, this is another case of depression
affecting someone's powers,
but it is also a little different from Tonks,
in that other people
are actively contributing to her terrible existence.
Not that it's actually their goal
to make her lose her powers,
but it is the end result.
And of course, ironically,
one of the things they continuously get mad at her for
is her inability to do basic spells.
But given the proper motivation and freedom from her abusers
Merope is able to make a full, magical recovery
and then abuse the muggle, Tom Riddle,
into having little Lord baby Voldemort with her.
Gross.
But I guess the point is, once again,
even though someone's magical powers were dampened
by depression and abuse,
she did recover.
Then, on the somehow even worse side of things,
there actually are characters
who are actively trying to get other characters
to repress their magical abilities
and the consequences are much worse.
Our big example of this happens in
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them,
where Mary Lou Barebone is forcing Credence
to repress all of his magical abilities,
and the end result is catastrophic.
Namely, he turns into a giant black cloud of destruction
and tears apart half of New York City.
This is all the end result of Credence developing
what's called an Obscurus,
which is kind of a magical tumor,
that in every other case that isn't Credence
kills its host.
Credence is pretty unique though,
in that he is not killed by it
and is actually able to get a semblance of control
over the Obscurus.
And once again,
like with Tonks and Merope,
once he's able to find some inner peace
and find some support in his life,
he's able to really get it under control
and after he's given a wand, he can do magic,
like, really powerful magic.
Overall, we see again and again, that witches and wizards
can have their powers weakened or dampened
by physical and/or emotional trauma,
but if they're able to escape their abusers
or overcome their trauma, or at least come to terms with it,
then their magic is still there, waiting for them.
Now, I will say there are a few other niche caveats here,
like it does seem like there's a difference
between someone forcing you to repress your magic
and you simply choosing not to do magic.
For example, going back to Merope,
after she finally releases Tom Riddle Sr.
from whatever enchantment was drawing him to her,
thinking that he'll stick around because of the baby,
he immediately abandons her
and she just vows to never do magic again.
McGonagall's mother is another example of this,
where after she marries the Presbyterian minister,
Robert McGonagall, she also chooses to give up on magic.
She very much misses it and is envious of her children,
who can practice magic freely in the Wizarding World,
but she also loves her husband
and understands that it may risk his position
in the community and his job if she uses magic.
So, can a wizard run out of magic?
No.
Can they be forced into a state
where it is weakened or dampened?
Yes.
But even then the magic is still inside them
and very capable of returning to full strength.
Anyway, in conclusion,
uh, therapy is a really great thing
and we should really focus on de-stigmatizing mental health,
and if you want to try out therapy,
even if everything is going great in your life,
you totally should,
because there's nothing wrong with that,
and it's probably healthy
almost no matter what situation you're in.
This whole video was metaphor
that magic is in you.
Celebrate yourself.
And read Name of the Wind.
Guys, thanks so much for watching today's video.
Don't forget to leave a like on it if you haven't already
and subscribe,
so you don't miss any future Harry Potter action from us.
We mentioned in today's video,
how Credence is really powerful,
if you want to see how he might actually be
an heir of Slytherin,
you can check out this video right here,
but otherwise, Ben, until next time,
I will see you in another life, brother.