A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration

Transfiguration is the field of magic which concerns itself with temporarily and locally changing the essence - rather than the properties - of its target.

Elemental Transfiguration compartmentalizes this field into elements or techniques that may be combined to successfully transfigure, animate, conjure, or vanish any object that falls within certain requirements. Gamp's Law states that any imaginable transfiguration is possible, outside of certain exceptions.

The five principal branches of Transfiguration are as follows:
 * Transformation (turning things into other things)
 * Vanishment (causing things to cease to exist)
 * Conjuration (bringing things into existence)
 * Animation (causing things to sense and react to their environment)
 * Untransfiguration (undoing an existing transformation, vanishment, or conjuration)

Limitations
There are five exceptions to Gamp's Law. These five things cannot be produced: (To learn more about the exceptions to Gamp's Law, see Appendix I below.)
 * Food/drinks/medicine (cannot affect the body as it should)
 * Information (limited by the caster's knowledge, not their imagination)
 * Magic (affects mundane essence, not magical properties)
 * Permanence (all transfiguration is by definition temporary)
 * Untransfigured things (this should be self-evident)

While understanding Transfiguration is useful to becoming an Animagus, the process is not elemental and will not be covered here.

Elemental Transfiguration is inherently nonverbal, but mastering transfiguration techniques will not contribute to your ability to cast spells nonverbally. While spells do exist to transform, conjure, vanish, or reverse objects according to the principles of elemental transfiguration, they limit the caster and will not be covered in this text.

You may not transfigure any object larger than eight cubic feet. You must be near the object you are transfiguring; for example, Switching Spells may work between your desk and your bookbag if both are in the same room, but will not work between the classroom and your dormitory.

Mechanics
Roll for each element you have not yet mastered; each mastered element is an automatic success.

If you succeed at all the elements, you succeed at the transfiguration! If you fail, you botch it in some way. How is up to you. Perhaps nothing happens, perhaps a similar (and potentially much harder) transfiguration occurs instead (but it's one you didn't want), perhaps a very different transfiguration occurs to the target object. Very commonly, the desired transfiguration mostly happens: the rat is vanished, but the wiggling tail remains behind; the mouse is now a snuffbox, but the snuffbox has whiskers; the hedgehog becomes a pincushion, but one that curls up in fright when approached with a needle.

Transformation
(See appendix II for more information on partial transformations.)
 * 1) Size of starting object (effective year in parentheses)
 * 2) * Very small (1) - fits in one hand
 * 3) * Small (2) - fits in two hands
 * 4) * Medium (3) - fits in a microwave, e.g. book, kitten, or rabbit
 * 5) * Large (4) - fits in a broom closet or the boot of a car
 * 6) * Very Large (6) - fits in a space no larger than eight feet on a side
 * 7) Type of starting object
 * 8) * Object or Plant (1)
 * 9) * Invertebrate (2) - e.g. insects, spiders, snails, worms, jellyfish
 * 10) * Vertebrate (3) - e.g. amphibians, reptiles, mammals
 * 11) Type of goal object
 * 12) * Object or Plant (1)
 * 13) * Invertebrate (4)
 * 14) * Vertebrate (5)
 * 15) Additional extras (optional; if more than one, roll in order below)
 * 16) * Switching-based partial (3)
 * 17) * Focused partial (5)
 * 18) * Multiple objects at once (2)
 * 19) * One into multiple (2)

Vanishment

 * 1) Size of starting object (effective year in parentheses)
 * 2) * Very small (4)
 * 3) * Small (5)
 * 4) * Medium (6)
 * 5) * Large (7)
 * 6) Type of starting object
 * 7) * Object or Plant (4)
 * 8) * Invertebrate (5)
 * 9) * Vertebrate (6)
 * 10) Additional extras
 * 11) * Multiple objects at once (5)

Conjuration

 * 1) Size of starting object (effective year in parentheses)
 * 2) * Very small (6)
 * 3) * Small (6)
 * 4) * Medium (7)
 * 5) * Large (7)
 * 6) Type of starting object
 * 7) * Object or Plant (6)
 * 8) * Invertebrate (7)
 * 9) * Vertebrate (7)
 * 10) Additional extras
 * 11) * Multiple objects at once (7)

Animation
Animation is a single year 4 technique.

See Appendix III for more information on what you can and cannot animate.

Untransfiguration

 * 1) Elements of Transfiguration used
 * 2) * Known (1)
 * 3) * Unknown (7)
 * 4) Success of initial transfiguration
 * 5) * Botched (1)
 * 6) * Successful (4)
 * 7) Branch of Transfiguration
 * 8) * Transformation (1)
 * 9) * Conjuration (5)
 * 10) * Vanishment (6)
 * 11) * Animation (7)

Appendices
''This section is not mandatory reading, but discusses transfiguration theory in a more complete way. If you have a question about how something is done or why something else can't be done, chances are it can be found below. If not, contact the worldbuilding team and we'll do our best to answer your question in a lore-friendly way!''

I. Exceptions to Gamp's Law
Transfiguration has limits beyond mere imagination, and thus so does elemental transfiguration. (This section does not concern the branch Untransfiguration.)

Transfiguration operates on the level of discrete objects and animals and their observable parts. It does not act on the level of molecules--small linkages of the atomic building blocks of matter, the level where chemical reactions take place. Consequently, even a wix with a strong understanding of the chemical makeup of a substance or object cannot use transfiguration to create water that truly hydrates (rather than fooling the body into considering thirst slaked), air that oxygenates, or food or indeed fertiliser that nourishes the animal or plant that consumes it. Conjured arsenic will not poison. A sugar pill transformed into aspirin will not suppress pain. Conjured fire will not burn--transformed wood will not burn with unconjured fire, unless the substance it has been transformed from would--conjured metal will not rust or tarnish.

This, together with the inherently temporary nature of transfiguration, should help to make sense of the fifth of the Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. A thing created by transfiguration is inherently different from the "same" thing created through mundane means. Thus, all transfiguration can be undone, and indeed all transfiguration will be undone at the wand of Time.

It is for this reason that money is often mistaken for a Principal Exception, although in Hester Gamp's time trade with Muggles was common enough, and trade with goblins uncommon enough, that the ability of a well-trained wix to determine if a given coin was created through transfiguration was barely worth mentioning. The British Ministry of Magic takes counterfeiting money extremely seriously, principally because the goblins of Gringotts take counterfeiting money extremely seriously. (Using Transfiguration, or indeed any magic, to earn money in the Muggle world, opens a wix to prosecution on a number of possible charges ranging from fraud to Muggle-baiting to felonious violation of the Statute of Secrecy.)

Since transfiguration is guided by the user's understanding of the world (augmented, in the case of switching-based partial transfiguration, by both of the targets), anything created by transfiguration has the properties and behaviour expected by the wix who performed the transfiguration. Thus, it is impossible to create information using transfiguration. An auror who transforms an umbrella stand into a murder suspect to interrogate will be no closer to succeeding at the investigation; a student who seeks to produce, through transfiguration, completed homework or an answer key will be disappointed. A conjured animal or plant is no help in understanding the real thing; an animated portrait often provides more insight into the portrait animator than the subject.

Finally, because transfiguration affects the mundane essential properties of objects, not magical, transfiguration cannot create potions ingredients, potions, enchantments, or spells. Nor can it create objects or animals that are, at the time, under the effects of potions, charms, enchantments, or (other, unreal) transfigurations. Elemental transfiguration cannot create or affect animated (magically sentient) objects, except by means of animation. Conjuring, or transforming an object into, an animated portrait, talking mirror, or wand, is quite impossible.

II. Partial Transformation
Though it's quite common to accidentally transform only part of a target object or animal when attempting whole-object transformation, it's not easy to deliberately direct a transformation so that only certain specific parts are affected.

The easiest method is to simply allow an existing object or animal, or part thereof, guide the transformation process, using the "switching" partial transformation element to link two transformations, at least one partial. If done successfully, this gives the appearance of swapping the targeted part for the linked object, animal, or part. One advantage in using this method is that the two "type" elements can be chosen based on what's easier for the caster; someone who has mastered vertebrate-to-object transformation but not the reverse can still use the switching element to transform a tortoise's tail into a teapot spout and a teapot spout into a tortoise's tail simultaneously.

(The switching element can also be used for whole transformations, though this is less often useful, since someone with both a hat and a rabbit rarely finds much utility in changing that state of affairs to having both a rabbit and a hat.)

Deliberately transforming specific parts of things without such a link for guidance is considerably more difficult.

When performing a partial transformation, the size element of the transformation is based on the size of the part to be transformed, not of the overall object or animal. Partial transformation thus adds considerable flexibility to the repertoire of the wix who intends to use transfiguration in combat or other adventurous situations. An entire door may be too large to reckon with, but the doorknob, doorjam, and hinges are all fair game with the use of partial transformation. A brick wall is certainly too large to transform completely--but the mortar is not, and neither is a yard-by-yard square of the wall which would make a useful hole to crawl through, were it turned to a substance easier to remove.

III. Animation
While the formula for animation is simplicity itself, consisting of one element of arithmantic difficulty four, the materials requirements are anything but. Unlike conjuration, vanishment, and transformation, animation can only be performed on a very particular class of targets.

The target for animation must not be sentient (meaningfully capable of sensing and responding to its environment). This rules out animals, many plants, and even a good number of Muggle devices.

The target for animation must meaningfully resemble something the caster recognises as sentient (through non-magical means). A portrait of a young woman, a statue of a Venus flytrap, or a doodle of a snake are all acceptable targets, but a mirror which by virtue of being a mirror resembles a talking mirror would not, because that sentience is achieved using magic.

The target for animation must be completely mundane--not enchanted or cursed, not conjured or transformed, not under the effects of a charm at the time, certainly not previously animated. No problem is caused by the use of crafting-related charms to produce the object, such as origami, knitting, hedgetrimming, or sculpting spells, so long as the object itself is not magic.

Another attribute which sets animation apart from conjuration, vanishment, and transformation is that there is no known method for undoing animation. The only way to end an animation is by sufficiently destroying the animated object. (Indeed, while the natural "lifespan" of a conjuration, vanishment, or transformation is measured in hours, animation does not wear off until the target reaches a state the caster considers effectively destroyed.) It is thus very important that the caster clearly and comprehensively visualise the desired goals, behaviours, personality, habits, and responses of the animated object before casting, lest all the effort be wasted on a technically successful, yet in practice unsatisfying, animation.