There seem to be two forms of leglimency, one that requires an explicit spell and a wand, and can be performed by most wizards. That’s what Mr. Best in MoR uses, and what canon!Snape uses while trying to each Harry Occlumency. The victim knows what’s going on, but usually can’t do anything against it.
The second one is the form that Dumbledore (and canon!Voldemort), which just requires looking into the eyes of the victim, and lots of training. This is the “stealth mode”, and most victims don’t notice the intrusion at all.
It was always my intuitive understanding that the first form allows you to dig deep into one’s memory, wheres the second form only shows you what the victim is thinking right now.
If I remember right, a moderately big deal is made of wandless magic in the last couple books of the canon. I don’t think it’s come up in MoR yet, but it seems simpler to suppose that Dumbledore and canon!Voldemort are performing a wandless version of Snape’s Legilimency than to assume a more fundamental difference between the types.
It could just be a power difference. If wandless magic came with no penalties attached, you’d have to be mad to continue to use wands if you can manage wandless magic like Dumbledore can. It strictly dominates wands—you can’t be disarmed nearly as easily. (And when we see wizarding children ‘naturally’ use wandless magic, isn’t it weaker than what they can manage with wands?)
A big enough difference of degree can look like a difference of kind.
Two things, one: being more difficult to disarm isn’t really as much of an advantage as it might seem. Remember, we have some idea of how magical combat works in MoR, and it seems to revolve around layers of active and passive defenses—during Bahry One-Hand, veteran Auror, v. Polyjuiced!Quirrel, the description went
According to the Defense Professor, the essential art of dueling consisted of trying to put up defenses that would block whatever someone was likely to throw at you, while trying in turn to attack in ways that were likely to go past their current set of defenses. And by far the easiest way to win any sort of real fight—Professor Quirrell had said this over and over—was to shoot the enemy before they raised a shield in the first place, either from behind or from close enough range that they couldn’t dodge or counter in time.
If telekinesis-type spells (Accio, Expelliarmus, Wingardium Leviosa) are relatively easy to shield against, fights would tend to end by incapacitation rather than disarming whether you had a wand or not.
And two: interestingly, ‘accidental magic’ (used by wizarding children before they get their wands, generally in times of high emotion) is actually somewhat more impressive than what just-got-their-wands first years can do. Example: before he went to Hogwarts, canon!Harry once managed to get from standing on the ground to standing on the roof of his school without quite being aware of how he did it—the text seems to imply some kind of teleportation / Apparation, but it could have been self-levitation—either way, much more impressive than anything he could do for a while afterwards.
And two: interestingly, ‘accidental magic’ (used by wizarding children before they get their wands, generally in times of high emotion) is actually somewhat more impressive than what just-got-their-wands first years can do.
So? This is like someone saying, after scraping a violin for a few minutes, ‘pfft, I can whistle more musically than this darn thing’. It’s a tool, and like all tools, takes time to master, but when it does, you’re much better than without the tool. (Think about how long it takes to learn a computer, and what one can do with it.)
Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis: Act 2
…
The line of reasoning continued: Atlantis had been an isolated civilization that had somehow brought into being the Source of Magic, and told it to serve only people with the Atlantean genetic marker, the blood of Atlantis.
And by similar logic: The words a wizard spoke, the wand movements, those weren’t complicated enough of themselves to build up the spell effects from scratch—not the way that the three billion base pairs of human DNA actually were complicated enough to build a human body from scratch, not the way that computer programs took up thousands of bytes of data.
So the words and wand movements were just triggers, levers pulled on some hidden and more complex machine. Buttons, not blueprints.
And just like a computer program wouldn’t compile if you made a single spelling error, the Source of Magic wouldn’t respond to you unless you cast your spells in exactly the right way.
The chain of logic was inexorable.
Under that hypothesis, accidental magic by wizarding children — otherwise without appreciable magic power, could be a Source of Magic initiated emergency “Help” spell.
I’ve been thinking about magical training that doesn’t look like conventional schooling, and training accidental magic would be an interesting place to start. Would it be like learning jazz? Improv? A soft martial art?
interestingly, ‘accidental magic’ is actually somewhat more impressive than what just-got-their-wands first years can do.
Harry (in cannon) performs accidental magic during times of high emotion and when he’s not able to cast spells (ie, before he has his wand or summer vacations). This is also true with Ariana Dumbledore, Snape, and Neville in each other occurrence of accidental magic in the series. In HP:MoR, wizards use the mana/muscle system for magic. It seems likely that magic can ‘build up’ if unused and release in an explosive (sometimes literally) fashion in the form of accidental magic. Furthermore, since nobody seems to intentionally use it, it must have a drawback; extreme draining of magic disproportionate to the effects seems like a logical effect.
Interestingly, both Tom Riddle and Lily Evans were able to consciously control ‘accidental’ magic as children. They both ended up the greatest spellcasters of their year. This would further reinforce the hypothesis that it extremely drains your ‘magic’ muscle, given that working out one’s magic has been established to make one a stronger spellcaster.
Furthermore, since nobody seems to intentionally use it, it must have a drawback; extreme draining of magic disproportionate to the effects seems like a logical effect.
Lack of control seems like the biggest issue. ‘Oops, I nearly killed someone’ (Ariana), ‘Oops, I didn’t mean to make that glass disappear’ (Harry), etc.
Rather than two forms of legilimency, I thought it was a matter of the caster’s facility with the spell.
In other words, it was my understanding that amateur Legilimens had to use their wand and the incantation in addition to eye contact, and with practice they could do away with the wand and word. That branch of magic is easily made wandless, perhaps.
There seem to be two forms of leglimency, one that requires an explicit spell and a wand, and can be performed by most wizards. That’s what Mr. Best in MoR uses, and what canon!Snape uses while trying to each Harry Occlumency. The victim knows what’s going on, but usually can’t do anything against it.
The second one is the form that Dumbledore (and canon!Voldemort), which just requires looking into the eyes of the victim, and lots of training. This is the “stealth mode”, and most victims don’t notice the intrusion at all.
It was always my intuitive understanding that the first form allows you to dig deep into one’s memory, wheres the second form only shows you what the victim is thinking right now.
Does that make any sense?
If I remember right, a moderately big deal is made of wandless magic in the last couple books of the canon. I don’t think it’s come up in MoR yet, but it seems simpler to suppose that Dumbledore and canon!Voldemort are performing a wandless version of Snape’s Legilimency than to assume a more fundamental difference between the types.
It could just be a power difference. If wandless magic came with no penalties attached, you’d have to be mad to continue to use wands if you can manage wandless magic like Dumbledore can. It strictly dominates wands—you can’t be disarmed nearly as easily. (And when we see wizarding children ‘naturally’ use wandless magic, isn’t it weaker than what they can manage with wands?)
A big enough difference of degree can look like a difference of kind.
Except when you’re fighting trolls and need a Nasal Magic Delivery Device.
Or when you don’t know any spells but your opponent has perfectly good eye sockets. (Or when your wand is made of elder.)
Two things, one: being more difficult to disarm isn’t really as much of an advantage as it might seem. Remember, we have some idea of how magical combat works in MoR, and it seems to revolve around layers of active and passive defenses—during Bahry One-Hand, veteran Auror, v. Polyjuiced!Quirrel, the description went
If telekinesis-type spells (Accio, Expelliarmus, Wingardium Leviosa) are relatively easy to shield against, fights would tend to end by incapacitation rather than disarming whether you had a wand or not.
And two: interestingly, ‘accidental magic’ (used by wizarding children before they get their wands, generally in times of high emotion) is actually somewhat more impressive than what just-got-their-wands first years can do. Example: before he went to Hogwarts, canon!Harry once managed to get from standing on the ground to standing on the roof of his school without quite being aware of how he did it—the text seems to imply some kind of teleportation / Apparation, but it could have been self-levitation—either way, much more impressive than anything he could do for a while afterwards.
So? This is like someone saying, after scraping a violin for a few minutes, ‘pfft, I can whistle more musically than this darn thing’. It’s a tool, and like all tools, takes time to master, but when it does, you’re much better than without the tool. (Think about how long it takes to learn a computer, and what one can do with it.)
Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis: Act 2 … The line of reasoning continued: Atlantis had been an isolated civilization that had somehow brought into being the Source of Magic, and told it to serve only people with the Atlantean genetic marker, the blood of Atlantis.
And by similar logic: The words a wizard spoke, the wand movements, those weren’t complicated enough of themselves to build up the spell effects from scratch—not the way that the three billion base pairs of human DNA actually were complicated enough to build a human body from scratch, not the way that computer programs took up thousands of bytes of data.
So the words and wand movements were just triggers, levers pulled on some hidden and more complex machine. Buttons, not blueprints.
And just like a computer program wouldn’t compile if you made a single spelling error, the Source of Magic wouldn’t respond to you unless you cast your spells in exactly the right way.
The chain of logic was inexorable.
Under that hypothesis, accidental magic by wizarding children — otherwise without appreciable magic power, could be a Source of Magic initiated emergency “Help” spell.
I’ve been thinking about magical training that doesn’t look like conventional schooling, and training accidental magic would be an interesting place to start. Would it be like learning jazz? Improv? A soft martial art?
Harry (in cannon) performs accidental magic during times of high emotion and when he’s not able to cast spells (ie, before he has his wand or summer vacations). This is also true with Ariana Dumbledore, Snape, and Neville in each other occurrence of accidental magic in the series. In HP:MoR, wizards use the mana/muscle system for magic. It seems likely that magic can ‘build up’ if unused and release in an explosive (sometimes literally) fashion in the form of accidental magic. Furthermore, since nobody seems to intentionally use it, it must have a drawback; extreme draining of magic disproportionate to the effects seems like a logical effect.
Interestingly, both Tom Riddle and Lily Evans were able to consciously control ‘accidental’ magic as children. They both ended up the greatest spellcasters of their year. This would further reinforce the hypothesis that it extremely drains your ‘magic’ muscle, given that working out one’s magic has been established to make one a stronger spellcaster.
Lack of control seems like the biggest issue. ‘Oops, I nearly killed someone’ (Ariana), ‘Oops, I didn’t mean to make that glass disappear’ (Harry), etc.
Rather than two forms of legilimency, I thought it was a matter of the caster’s facility with the spell.
In other words, it was my understanding that amateur Legilimens had to use their wand and the incantation in addition to eye contact, and with practice they could do away with the wand and word. That branch of magic is easily made wandless, perhaps.