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The United Confederation of People With Too Much Time On Their Hands

Present:

Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling

We present for your perusal, an abridged copy of the Hogwarts required supplement Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling. Magical Theory is an entry level text of an advanced and mystic subject. For many generations of students, both Hogwarts and abroad, it has been the jumping off point for understanding the basic functions and laws of magic. It is this basic understanding of how the very smallest, simplest things work, that every other grand enchantment is built upon. This was the starting point for every great wizard from Albus Dumbledore to the more recent magical golden boy, Neville Longbottom.

This copy is an updated and revised reprinting of the original 1880 work, distributed in a digital medium in 2017, a few years after the reconstruction following the third World War. The language was edited by Fred and George Weasley to better reflect the modern vernacular. A foreword was written by Hogwarts Professor and Chair of Magic Circuits Marcus Montefiore.

Please keep in mind, in this narrative, time turners do not exist. No spell can manipulate time.

We are legally obligated to inform you we have no creative rights to anything we are writing about.

Foreword, Backward, and Edward by Marcus Montefiore

Adalbert Waffling was the 19th century's most eminent magical theoretician. His flagship work, Mesolithic Conduits and Their Influences on Transfiguring Rubber Ducks, redefined how the wizarding world approached the problem of retroactive combinatorial conjuring and, to a lesser extent, communal bathing. Within his lifetime he would write a further 37 books, one of which, Simplified Locomotion, is 187 volumes long and any library that wishes to add it to their collection has to build on a new wing.

It was after this whale of a textbook with its sadistically deceptive title that Adalbert Waffling stepped down from his cloud and realized, inspired as his work was, the common wizard could never understand it. The common witch had a passable handle on it, but it was just beyond the common wizard.

This was a common problem at the time. All over the world witches and wizards were using magic without actually knowing how it worked. The results were as disastrous as you would expect. Kelpies were running amuck in a loch in Scotland. Fire rained down Burwick upon Tweed. For three weeks, a bunny ruled over Britain. Mr. Cuddles implemented social welfare reforms the Muggle Kingdom of Great Britain is using to this day.

In those chaotic, admittedly entertaining, times there was no widely accepted theory of magic. The research on it was scattershot, books on the subject were thin on the ground, and the headmaster of Hogwarts had his hands full looking for his pet rabbit. Adalbert Waffling took up the call and assembled a rudimentary explanation on the fundamentals of magic that a beginner could grasp and build on in the future. It took him two years to complete the work, and another twenty of editing before he could get all the words under seven syllables. Despite his honest intentions, the book is still a hard read and takes up the whole first three years at Hogwarts and is referenced in Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions. The Houselves have strict instructions to whisper passages from it to sleeping students.

The publication of that work, Magical Theory, was one of those rare and beautiful things that did exactly what the maker wanted it to do: it gave the general wizarding public a working knowledge of magic. While it's true that there are some wizards and witches that, through a limit of their own talent or inclination, will only ever think of magic as pretty lights that make things happen, there were wizards that ingrained the new information and ran with it to the cutting edge. That basic knowledge of how the smallest parts work they could gradually build up more complex spells. In the decades following Magical Theory's addition to the syllabus of Hogwarts there was a dramatic increase in magical innovation. In the centuries before, new spells were invented once in a lifetime. In the first year of Magical Theory's publication, seventy-two new charms were invented. Concurrently, God only knows how many new curses were invented that first month, which goes to show that knowledge is the arms dealer that sells to both sides.

Nightmarish implication of tailor made curses notwithstanding, Magical Theory, while debatable as a force for good or evil, was indisputably a force to be reckoned with. When the pureblood supremacists lost the battle to have muggleborns excluded from Hogwarts in 1880, their next move was to attempt to have Magical Theory restricted as reading material. Their plan backfired in the most hilarious way possible; nothing makes a book more popular than banning it. Magical Theory has been translated into more than thirty-two languages, though the title has never been available in French. When wizard kind came out of hiding at the conclusion of the WWIII, Magical Theory was the first title to be digitized under the new government's reformation initiative. The second title was Simplified Locomotion;no library would ever have to build a new wing. Honestly, with the advent of digital storage, no library would ever have to be built at all.

You, dear reader, are about to embark on that same journey of enlightenment our forerunners made so long ago. The journey from unknowing into the unknown. You might think you're coming in late in the game; that everything that can be invented has been invented; what with our forests that generate electricity, and floating buildings. However, I remind you of a time when fire was high tech. We had a long way to go then; we have a long way to go now. You could be the one that brings us to the next level and it all starts here: the first level.

Best Regards,

Marcus Montefiore