Magical Beings

From: <redacted> of the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano

To: <redacted>, Provincial of the <redacted> Province

Re: Summary of Magical Beings, their kinds, and natures

This document represents a summary of what is known from private revelation and empirical study both. No effort has been made to distinguish derivation in this document.

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 choirs from whom the magic is derived.¹ Hogwarts is entirely unaware of this classification 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 prestige.

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 eligible for reentry into magical society.

While low power is the norm, there is always a base rate of something bizarre 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, it would be human who has interacted in an unholy union with a fallen angel.³ 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.”⁴
• There are a number of species that descend 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.
  • Merfolk
  • Dwarfs⁵
  • Goblins
  • Hags
  • Centaurs
  • Veela

Other Races

Other “races” are not really people at all, they have varying levels of intelligence. Analogy is always suspect, but this one illustrates well. If you were yourself in a game, these would be computer generated players controlled by artificial intelligence. Each displays at least some appearances of being a true being with the degree of mimicry varying considerably.

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 (in some cases the Church knows this from history recorded in the archives). 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
• Bowtruckles - created by the extreme use of magics on tree branches by an unknown agency. Some researchers speculate the power required exceeds that granted to any of the nephilim.
• 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 other crimes, fairies and doxies were created by the woman who became the first veela. It is unknown who first created imps.
• Ghouls - 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. House elves form symbiotic bonds with nephilim, the bond is, however, an unequal one. The elf is very much bound to the nephil in question, unable to unbind itself of its own will, though it can be freed. Unbound elves are omnivores with diets similar to monkeys, while bound elves may or may not eat at all, depending on the strength of the bond. 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. Some, but not all, elves evince an inability to disobey orders from the nephil to whom they are bound. In some, this inability extends to those related to the bond holding nephil. It is unclear if the inability to obey is genetic, or happens as an optional part of the bonding process. If optional, it is unclear what effect, if any, the additional restrictions have on the elf, other than the obvious limitation of choice.

  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 (½) who feels him/her self part of the family (divide by 2 again), is critical to the family’s well-being (another ½ on top), and is fully utilised (¼) 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”, mentioned in your letter, 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).

• Pukwudgies - some researchers believe these are a highly mutated form of house elf. Others that they represent a something totally different. A few have suggested that they may in fact be miscategorised and that they are in fact a true ‘race.’ Very little is known about them except that they exist solely in North America, and are found almost exclusively in the New England region even there.

• 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, shortly after the great Flood