Wizardkind

"Wizards represent all that the true 'Muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!"

- J. K. Rowling's overview of Wizardkind

Wizardkind are humans that are born with the ability to perform magic. An individual male human with magical ability is known as a wizard (plural: wizards), and an individual female human with magical ability is known as a witch (plural: witches), though "wizard" is sometimes used as a gender-neutral singular noun like "man".

Performing magic
In childhood, wizards and witches may exhibit random bursts of magic, called accidental magic, which are honed and controlled as they progress to maturity.

To perform controlled magic, almost all wizards/witches need to use a wand, although the skill of wandless magic may be mastered in later life. A few highly advanced wizards can do controlled magical acts without a wand, such as Albus Dumbledore, who demonstrated the ability at the close of Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and Lord Voldemort, who once demonstrated this ability during the Battle of the Seven Potters in 1997.

Heredity
"Most wizards these days are half-blood anyway. If we hadn’t married Muggles we’d’ve died out."

- Ron Weasley discussing blood purity

Magical ability is an inherited trait usually passed from parent to child. Wizards and witches are classified by blood status.

Pure-bloods are born of two wizarding parents and at the very least, four wizarding grandparents. However, many believe a pure-blood family tree should have no Muggle ancestors despite the fact that every family tree has at least one Muggle ancestor by the 1990s.

Half-bloods are mainly born of one wizard and one Muggle or Muggle-born parent.

Muggle-born wizards and witches are distantly descended from a Squib who had married into a Muggle family. The magical gene resurfaces many years later in a Muggle-born descendant when that branch of the wizarding family has usually lost all traces of its wizarding legacy.

Physiology
The physiology of wizards is subtly different from that of non-wizards. As such, wizards would react differently to the effects of contact with a magical creature, such as being attacked by a murtlap. Wizards also by nature could not be fooled by certain types of magic or magical barriers. It was, for example, possible to hide certain magic from Muggles via Muggle-Repelling Charms, which naturally would have no effect on wizards.

Wizards have the power to cure 'mundane' illnesses and injuries, and contact with non-magical creatures that Muggles cannot. However, they can struggle to repair any damage caused by magical means such as the Memory Charm and Unforgivable Curses.

Life span
Wizard life expectancy in Britain reached an average 137¾ years in the mid-1990s, according to the Ministry of Divine Health, although the oldest wizard on record reached the age of 755 in late 1991; wizards have a much longer life expectancy than Muggles.

Sub-types
"I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick."

- Filius Flitwick sets Seamus Finnigan lines Some wizards exhibit special inborn (or acquired) attributes which mark them as unique amongst their kind. They are listed as follows:

Inborn Attributes
These often hereditary traits mark subdivisions within wizardkind.

Seers
Some wizards are born with abilities beyond those of the average wizard. Seers, for example, have the skill of insight into future events. They may garner this insight through visions and dreams or through scrying physical objects like tea dregs, tarot cards, and crystal balls. Some seers include Sybill Trelawney and her ancestor Cassandra.

Metamorphmagi
Other wizards may have the ability to change only their physical appearance rather than their bodily form. This type of wizard is termed a Metamorphmagus. Such a wizard can change the shape of their noses, hair colour, and other physical attributes. Nymphadora Tonks and Teddy Lupin were known Metamorphmagi.

Parselmouths (and other animal communication)


Some wizards and witches have the ability to talk to animals. For instance, a Parselmouth can speak to snakes. This ability is extremely rare. Salazar Slytherin was an infamous Parselmouth, and his descendants, such as Lord Voldemort, inherited this trait. Harry Potter also acquired this ability when part of Voldemort's soul bonded with him the night he tried to kill Harry.

Rubeus Hagrid has demonstrated an uncanny ability to communicate and bond with all kinds of animals, though this may not be a true magical trait but merely a gift, a mere knack at interpreting animal behaviour, that some Muggles show. Animagi have also demonstrated being able to subtly influence animals while assuming their animal forms.

Maledictuses
Some witches are the carriers of a blood curse, one that would eventually lead them turning into a beast permanently. The curse was carried from birth and was passed down from mother to daughter. The beast a such a Maledictus woman ultimately transformed into could vary based on the curse.

Half-Veela
Veela have been known to marry wizards, and wizarding children of these unions are half-Veela, and they will inherit magical ability from their wizarding parent, as well as the beauty, charm, and seductive dance from their Veela parent. Veela traits seem to persist for at least a few generations (examples being Apolline Delacour, and her daughters Fleur, and Gabrielle). It is unknown whether half-blooded Veela can throw fire or transform into harpy-like creatures as their full-blooded relatives can.

Late-bloomers
There exist some individuals that continue to exhibit a lack of magical power past age 11 and yet spontaneously — in desperate circumstances — manage to perform magic later on in life. However, this is rare, possibly more so than squibs.

Animagi


While some wizards have the ability to turn into animals, it is not an inherent power, but rather a trained technique. This type of wizard is called an Animagus (plural Animagi). Babbitty Rabitty was said to be an Animagus with the ability to transform into a rabbit. Professor McGonagall is an Animagus who can turn into a cat. The first recorded Animagus was Falco Aesalon, who could turn into a falcon.

The Animagi have to register themselves at the Ministry of Magic, because human Transfiguration can go horribly wrong. However, there are some unregistered Animagi. Examples are James Potter, who turned into a large red Stag; Sirius Black, who turned into a large black Dog; Peter Pettigrew, who turned into a small grey Rat; and Rita Skeeter, who could turn into a Beetle to gather information for her articles. In the case of the first three, they turned into Animagi to assist Remus Lupin to transform into a werewolf in a place where there are no humans. Peter also turned into a rat to convince people that Sirius killed him, while masquerading as "Scabbers", Percy Weasley's and Ronald Weasley's former pet.

Werewolves
Some wizards are permanently infected with lycanthropy (also known as werewolfry) when bitten by a werewolf, which forces the infected wizard to become a fearsome and deadly near-wolf upon the complete rising of the full moon. Werewolves appear in the form of a wolf but, there are distinctions between them and regular wolves.

Legilimens


Legilimens are wizards who can perform Legilimency. These wizards can tune into other people's minds, but have difficulty reading the minds of those people who can perform Occlumency. The act of Legilimens is referred to as "mind-reading" in the Muggle world.

Occlumens
Some wizards have the ability to protect their minds from others who can perform Legilimency. This ability is called Occlumency. Severus Snape tried teaching Occlumency to Harry Potter during Harry's fifth year in Hogwarts.

Obscurials
An Obscurial is a witch or wizard who, due to being raised in an environment where their magic is viewed negatively, develops an Obscurus; a dark parasitic force resulting from their own magic being suppressed and tainted by negative emotion. Obscurials hardly ever live beyond the age of 10, the only verified case being that of Credence Barebone.

Due to the extensive time spent suppressed, their magic, when unleashed as an Obscurus, can perform feats far more powerful than that of the average witch or wizard (indeed, the power of Credence's Obscurus impressed even Gellert Grindelwald), though usually only for short spans of time, as the user's death often follows soon after. At this point, the magic is in the control of the Obscurus itself, and cannot be directed by the Obscurial's will.

Social habits


As decreed by the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, wizards maintain a society entirely separate from Muggle society, with their own culture and traditions. Wizards populate areas all over the globe. At the 1994 Quidditch World Cup, over 100,000 wizards were in attendance. At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, there are several hundred students in residence at any given time.

It is not clear how many witches and wizards are in the entire world, but some hints are given. It is stated that there are ten times more Muggles than wizards in the world. If the global Muggle population was about 5 billion in the 1990s, it would mean that the wizard population was 500 million. However, it is also said that the British wizard population is about 3,000, one third being Hogwarts students. This would indicate a very low birth rate (although wizarding families are big, they live more than their Muggle counterparts) and mean that other countries are much more populous than Britain or that there is somewhere in the world where a very large concentration of wizards occur (one much larger than Britain's). In all likelihood, however, the former is a dramatic overestimate, the latter something of an underestimate.



Wizards may live together in communities such as Godric's Hollow or Hogsmeade. Other wizards live in solitary locations such as Spinner's End or 12 Grimmauld Place. The first wizarding communities are said to have come up in India and the Middle East. More sophisticated communities would come up in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. Most wizards maintain little if no contact with Muggle society and find Muggles strange and unpleasant. They are somewhat ignorant to the Muggle world but in a different manner than Muggles as of the Wizarding World. While Muggles are completely unaware of wizards, wizards appear to be ignorant of certain aspects of the Muggle world, such as electricity and other modern technologies that become redundant and, at times, non-sensical when one is able to use magic. While certain aspects of Muggle society are evident in the wizarding one, wizards seem to be a number of decades if not centuries behind Muggles in other areas. In addition, wizards are sometimes just as progressive, if not more, on certain issues than their Muggle counterparts, such as women's rights.

Some wizards do not like to talk about their Muggle relatives, or even deny their existence altogether. Other wizards, such as Lord Voldemort, have even killed some of their Muggle relatives altogether. Other wizards, like Arthur Weasley find Muggles to be highly intriguing and ingenious. Hermione Granger, a Muggle-born witch, took up Muggle Studies at Hogwarts because she felt it would be fascinating to think about Muggles from a wizarding perspective.

Behind the scenes

 * The origins of wizardkind are unknown. Whether, in ancient times, some humans randomly discovered they had magic, or there was some sort of ritual or potion or pact, their origins remain a mystery. However, if it was the first, then some Muggle-borns may not be the descendants of Squibs (as is most often theorised) but entirely new wizards, like the very first members of wizardkind.
 * Despite their science and living conditions being almost Medieval, wizards are, ironically, probably healthier than Muggles, presumably due to their inherent magic protecting them from most mundane illnesses.
 * Muggles who perform illusions or tricks to make it look as real magic is known as a magician. A true wizard being called magician is a grave insult to them, as Vernon Dursley did to James Potter I.
 * Some wizards bear unusual physical characteristics. Rolanda Hooch, for instance, was mentioned to have yellow eyes. This is consistent with some magic being shown to affect bodily appearance, especially the eyes (as, for instance, Tom Riddle's eyes turned bright red after his constant use of Dark Magic).

Appearances

 * Harry Potter Prequel
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Notes and references
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