Magical Beings

Overview

Magical inheritance does not follow the normal rules discovered by Gregor Mendel and other mundane biologists, but rather follows its own rules. However, every magical creature is in fact a mix of magical and non-magical elements. The magical elements follow magical rules, the non-magical elements follow non-magical rules, with a few exceptions.

Periodically, a non-magical trait will get locked in as ‘fixed,’ that is all successive generations will inherit this despite the probabilities laid out by mundane genetics. It has essentially become a magical trait and will follow magical inheritance. No one knows why this happens.

Very rarely, some magical trait will become ‘unfixed’ and gradually start to fade away over successive generations. This is essentially the inverse of the trait becoming magical, and again, no one knows why this happens.

When the trait in question violates the normal mundane rules of the natural sciences, the deviation from those natural sciences tends to fade rapidly, but take several generations to fully disappear. Alternately, to the extent that only the inheritance pattern deviated from the natural sciences, it may revert to normal Mendelian genetics effectively immediately.

The nephilim themselves talk about two cases that require special attention: squibs and muggle born. To understand these, you will need to refer heavily to the magical rules of inheritance.

A true squib is the result of the miniscule chance that for all magical traits, nothing is inherited. While it cannot be said that this has never happened, it is certainly the case that nearly every squib is in fact … not one. Rather most child identified by the nephilim as squibs are in fact still nephilim, but have inherited a power level too low to be detectable by the prevailing methods of the society in question. For the England’s entire recorded history, this has been the Hogwarts’ Quill of Acceptance and Book of Admittance.

Because it is possible for a child to inherit the sum of both parent’s abilities, occasionally two such “squibs” marry and produce a child who does meet the criteria for Hogwarts. This is where the so-called muggle born come from. Since this typically happens only generations later, it is rare that the child in question has any immediate connection to the family members who were cast out from the magical world.

When the Church describes and categorizes magic, it does so in terms of the angelic chiors from whom the magic is derived.¹ Hogwarts is entirely unware of this classificaiton of magic, but if Hogwarts were aware of it, then it would be possible to quantify what the Quill of Acceptance and Book of Admittance are looking for in accidental magic.

Using the power levels from the Church’s classification system, a child born with a power level of 2 or below in all categories of magic will be called a squib. A child with a 3 or below in all categories of magic will not be invited to any magical school, but might be able to effectively use some magic. Programs like Kwick Spell prey upon such people. These children are sometimes also called squibs, particularly by the families that are more self-obsessed with power and prestege.

Hogwarts requires at least a 4 in each of the following categories: Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; at least a 4 in one of Archangels or angels and at least a 3 in the other; and at least a 3 in each of Cherubim and Principalities. However, a child who got in just barely meeting these minimums would be very unlikely to get into NEWT level classes other than Muggle Studies.²

Muggle Born nephilim are usually relatively low powered, frequently a mix of 3s, 4s and 5s when they re-enter the magical world. The spread is because it is extremely uncommon for the child to suddenly meet the bar in all required categories at the same time. Rather, once ejected from the magical world, a child might have several 3s and even 4s, but if it is not enough to trigger an acceptance letter (in English terms), they are still not yet elegible for reentry into magical society.

While low power is the norm, there is always a base rate of something bizzare happening. Thus it is not totally unheard of for there to be a high powered muggle born student, and all but the most xenophobic members of magical society are happy to make exceptions for a first generation student who shows exceptional promise (power is always something the nephilim want). This is why a student like Lily Evans was so accepted, however the overall effect of the first [Riddle] war had a sufficiently negative effect on society, that Hermione did not experience the same acceptance.

This tendency for “first generation” students to be low powered feeds into the bias against them. The children of two high powered nephilim will more frequently be high powered themselves, and will sometimes exceed both parents. The child of a high powered nephilim and a low powered nephilim has a low but non-trivial chance however of producing a child of much lower power than his/her same gendered parent. When you add in the xenophobic culture that has developed following the Statute of Secrecy, it becomes no wonder that these “first generation” nephilim are persecuted.

A true “first generation” magical user would not be a nephilim at all, rather per my base assumptions, it would be human who has interacted in an unholy union with a fallen angel. The child of that human/fallen angel would be the true first generation nephil, and would have only one category of power, but would be exceptionally strong in that one category.

In practice, this has not happened in centuries, but magical society remembers adults suddenly having magic where none had been present before. From this comes stories of magic being “stolen.” This is not true of course, no one lost the magic the witch gained from her unholy union, but most magic users do not believe in angels, much less fallen angels, and have a strong distrust for the Church.

Specifically human/nephil

• At some point in history, each nephil descends from a witch. This witch had magic of only one type, that of the angel that seduced her. The nephil inherited only that type of magic, and is called a “primordial” nephil.
• Per the above, in practice, most modern nephil have mixed inheritances, and thus magic in a broad range of categories.
• nephilim do get one straight up advantage over humans in addition to using magic - they live longer. This is actually a side effect of their magic, which, regardless of type, will offer some protection against disease and against the effects of entropy (and thus old age). It does not halt the decay of old age, but it does retard it. The extent to which it extends the nephil’s life depends on the nephil’s average (not highest) power level (only including power levels where present at all).
• European nephilim communities are obsessed with so called “purity of blood.” Interestingly, any family that consists of unmixed nephilim heritage for approximately six generations tends to experience at least one instance of something that Rules of Magic and magical rules of inheritance would describe as “truly bizarre.”³
• There are a number of species that decend from the nephilim. Each is the result of at least one hereditary “truly bizarre” mutation. Most had several things happen at once, a few had several different situations across history.
  • mermen - These were once a magically powerful people who used inheritances from the Dominions to transmute themselves to survive [the great Flood].
  • dwarfs⁴ - The dwarfs also decend from nephilim that were punished for their actions at the time of [the great Flood]. At that time, they were one of the most diverse populations of nephilim (that is, they had a broad cross section of different powers).
  • goblins - people, descendant from the dwarfs, who are highly susceptible to greed, envy, and wrath. Their form has been distorted by the sins of their forefathers centuries ago. Once, they would have ranked in this list below the veela. However, over the centuries a gradual increase in average effective inteligence.⁵ Similarly, the physical changes wrought on them have “softened” and so they are less hideous than described by authors like Tolkien who have packaged aspects of the magical world as fiction. Overall, despite their flaws, these populations retained their cognative ability and magic. They are particularly strong inheritors from the Virtues, Powers, and Archangels, with lesser inheritances from the Principalities and angels. Their creation of the trolls at the beginning of the goblin wars explains why they were punished so harshly (as to have originally lost nearly all free will - 90% impact).
  • hags - a people who are consumed by envy and lust. They have particularly strong inheritances from the Thrones, reasonable inheritances from the Virtues and Powers. Some have partial inheritances of random other types. Hags are known for using infant sacrifice in evil magical rites. These sins robbed their ancestors of all they can now value.
  • centaurs - a nearly primordial people (inheriting from both the the Seraphim and Cherubim) who, not just as individuals, but as a people, selfishly abused divination magic until something truly bizarre happened.
    • Their form transmuted to a half animal form to reflect the fact that their free will is nearly gone. They now have a herd instinct that rules much of their behaviour.
    • They became nearly immune to the magic of the Thrones as practised by other mortals. It is next to impossible to confound or imperious a centaur for example. This is in part because they perceive the magic of the attempt. This is a mitigation of their curse, which happened because while divination is evil, their intentions were not, and their understanding of their act flawed.
    • Centaur communities are almost universally violent, wrathful and even more highly xenophobic people. This is in part because their herd instinct cannot sense non-centaurs and they reject the personhood of those who do not appear to their herd sense. It is in part because they depend so much on that herd sense that they do not significantly develop individual self control. They could develop it, they (typically) do not.
    • they remain addicted to divination, as such they perpetuate these effects to the next generation endlessly.
    • the ranking in this list between centaur and veela is debatable. Any single centaur is probably less free than any single veela, but as a herd, centaurs are capable of slightly more autonomy than pure veela are either as individuals or in groups (since veela have no herd, or in their case flock, effect).
    • centaurs are unique amoung the decendants of the nephilim in that the remain nearly unchanged, with inheritances only from two choirs, and little to no physical change since their inception.
  • veela - a people punished primarily with changes to their magic, reproduction, and lifespan. The placement of veela on this list is highly controversial. In raw cognative ability, a veela is roughly equivalent to a normal human. The problem is in her emotional inteligence. Many veela have essentially no control over their emotions, and this triggers the magic of her punishment.
    • See The Veela Curse for an in depth description.
    • Veela are also complex to categorize because the nature of the veela “curse” makes it difficult for researchers to distinguish between the so-called “full” and “partial” veela.
    • The veela is the only example of a “race” that is purely female, it depends on cross breeding to survive. Due to the nature of its magic, any female child is born veela. See The Veela Curse for more details.
  • giants - Church records show that the giants come from the creators of the house elves. Behold in them what man would be if left without his mind, the only hope they have is that their intellects are so clouded that it is nearly impossible for them to actually commit a mortal sin. Should any be willing to be missionary to the giants, the grace of baptism would be nearly unopposed, because these beings have so little ability to freely choose to do anything, and even less ability to understand something is gravely wrong.

Other Races

Other “races” are not really people at all, they have varying levels of intelligence, but are all effectively the same as meeting different qualities of AI players, as if you were encountering cyborgs.

The creation of these “races” is an abomination, and the more nearly human, or in other words the more perfectly they simulate free will, the greater the abomination. This will definitely have had Screwtape style bizarre effects on the perpetrators of these crimes against creation and their descendants. This is true because of the moral confusion it causes - these “races” do not have immortal souls the way humans, angels, nephil, or the nephil descended races do, and yet they appear as if they should. It is true because their creation mocks the creation of man. And lastly, it is true because their creation, particularly that of the house elves and the trolls, has created groups that exist at odds with true charity: in the case of the trolls a “race” that cannot rise above rage, and in the case of the house elves a “race” that can never be fully freed.

• Acromantula - created from spiders (obviously) by an unknown nephil or group of nephilim. Acromantula are capable of learning human speech, but do not speak anything that could be defined as a language in the wild.⁶

• Bowtruckle - created by the extreme use of magics on tree branches by an unknown agency (may be directly demonic).

• fairies/imps/doxies - created by the extreme use of magics on (different) insects, these beings appear humanoid, but still reproduce by laying eggs like insects. Unlike gnomes, they have some ability to form long term memories, but only very limited ability to learn from these experiences; their actions are guided by incredibly strong instinct rather than by reasoning. They are very like domesticated cats and dogs in this respect; a dog might remember its owner, but its behaviours will always be more governed by instinct than not. It is known that, in addition to her crimes of enslavement, fairies and doxies were created by the woman who became the first veela. It is unknown who first created imps.

• ghoul - unknown origin. Often treated as a pet.⁷

• gnomes - created by the extreme use of magics on clay figures, these beings have no long term memory at all. It is unknown who created these.

• house elves - created by the extreme use of magics on an unknown mammal (not a human), they are the most nearly human of all created beings. They are capable of learning, loyalty and betrayal; they have memories equivalent to ours. They closely mimic having true free will, just as some human scientists speculate the highest animals do. When bound, and elf can “feed” on the bond, using its master’s magic to amplify its own. This stronger magic also slows the elf’s ageing process. Any bond at all will slow an elf’s ageing by a factor of 2 (age half a year for each year you live). If the elf feels itself to be part of the family, the bond can slow ageing by an additional factor of 2 (each year ages you a quarter of a year). If the elf feels its contribution is critical, then, independent of the feeling of family, (but not independent of being bound) the elf can gain a factor of 2. If the elf feels that it is fully utilised (kept free from idleness), it gains a factor of 4. Where a human gets stressed by being overworked, an elf actually gets healthier if it cannot complete the work necessary. However, not just any work will have this life extending effect, only disinterested work does. That is, only work done for work’s sake, or work done altruistically has the life-extending effect. These effects, including the limitation on types of work, was (cruelly) built into them to ensure that elves would remain loyal.

  The effects of the bond have, by and large, had the desired effect. Since the elf’s base average lifespan is only twenty years, being unbound is a huge thing for elves. Elves have grown/matured enough to start working by age three, and reach full physical and mental maturity around age five, which is the earliest they can be bound. They were created by the ancestors of the giants, before they lost their magic, but after they had already grown large enough to need helpers with more nimble fingers.

  • a bound elf (1/2) who feels him/her self part of the family (divide by 2 again), is critical to the family’s welbeing (another 1/2 on top), and is fully utilised (1/4) would thus age at a rate of 1/32nd normal. In other words they would live to on average 485 years old instead of 20 years (5 years ageing at a normal rate before being bound, added to 15*32).
  • from this we can conclude that Dobby would be, in human terms, considered very nearly suicidal in his desire for freedom. He was bound (factor of 2), and fully utilised (factor of 4 on top of that), but neither part of the family nor critical. He thus, prior to being freed, aged at a rate of 1/16 normal (out of a possible 1/32th).

• Leprechaun - created by the use of extreme magics on an unknown mammal, by an unknown being.

  More intelligent than the fairy and less malicious than the imp, the pixie or the doxy, the leprechaun is nevertheless mischievous.⁸

• Pixie - The pixie largely resembles an imp in behaviour and intelligence, but the fact that it bears live young suggests a different origin. We have no true history of how they came to be.

• Red Cap - even less intelligent than trolls, it is suspected that like them they were originally created for some type of combat. That being said, no real knowledge of their origin is known.

• Sphinx - created by the extreme use of magic on a lion by an Egyptian nephil, the only true unknown is how the sphinx survived the great Flood. We are fairly confident, mostly by process of elimination, that its creators did not.

• trolls - created by the extreme use of magics on apes, the most intelligent trolls might be able to perform similarly to a human with mental retardation capable of living in a group home. This is not a fair comparison however, the human is suffering from a disability; the troll is performing with unusual capability. Believed to be created by the ancestors of the goblins.

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1. Or at least the in-world version of it, see Rules of Magic.↩︎

2. At the NEWT level, Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, and Potions all require significant abilties similar to those required for any wandless/silent potions brewing. See the description of potions in Rules of Magic.↩︎

3. Author’s note: I’m building off of the statement from cannon that if magical users hadn’t intermarried with muggles they would have all died out, and infering that most families simply hide their muggle connections, and/or that the “sacred 28” list simply omitted them in an act of historical revisionism. I’m also guessing there are some missing generations in the one family tree we have, that of the Potter family.↩︎

4. Author’s note: I really dislike what Mrs. Rowling did with the dwarfs in the Chamber of Secrets. I am giving them my own Goblin based back story, since her version of Goblins is a mix of Tolkien’s Dwarfs and Goblins.↩︎

5. Author’s note: The scholars here do not have the knowledge to be more precise, if you refer to the author’s section of Inheritance, you can see the effects of abusing magic on concupiscence. Over the centuries, this effect has been gradually reduced by goblins who have successfully lived virtuous lives against probability.↩︎

6. This is an exaggerated version of Mrs. J. K. Rowling’s “Acromantula” Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Kindle Locations 265-266. Pottermore. American Kindle Illustrated Edition.↩︎

7. Mrs. J. K. Rowling Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Kindle Location 564. Pottermore. American Kindle Illustrated Edition.↩︎

8. Mrs. J. K. Rowling Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Kindle Locations 694-698. Pottermore. American Kindle Illustrated Edition.↩︎