Warning, children, be prepared for a very long and scientific lesson. This does go into Muggle science, because it all applies to us too, of course. Professor Flitwick learned this in her grade 8 year of Canadian school (they teach Muggle subjects as well as magical there, and this was the sort of thing she was good at), but she was taking an Advanced Science course. If you have any trouble understanding it, please email her and she'll explain it. You'll have to learn this sometime, so if you don't already know it, look at it as a chance to get ahead of your classmates.

Now, as I said last class, this will adress how you are magic - how you, yourself came to be magic. It isn't, as some *glares at a few members of the Malfoy family* would like to believe, something that is granted you because you are better than anyone else. It is just like having blonde hair - you didn't get it because you're better than anyone else, you got it because your parents had some of it and passed it on. The gene that has whether or not you are magically inclined on it is a very special gene - to be fully magical you must have two [of four] "magic" alleles to be truley magical like you and I. You can, however, have just one or no magical alleles. The magic gene [I'll call it that because it has that information on it] is more complicated than the gene that has whether you're a righty or a lefty on it. That gene has two possible alleles: thr Righty and the Lefty. Let's say a H is a righty (capital is always dominant) and a h is a lefty. You can have: HH (righty), hh (lefty), or Hh (righty) (alway written with the big letter, if there is one, first). That is a simple gene. Here is what the magical gene could have on it. M=positive, magical, m=negative, not magical. You could have: MMMM, MMmm, mmmm, MMMm, or Mmmm. 3 of five will give you a witch or wizard, and 2 will give you someon who is not a witch or wizard. MMMM is magical. If two Homozygous (all the same alleles) Magical people have a child, that child will definately be magical. They'll be Homozygous Magical. There's no way they could give any m's to their children. MMmm is also magical. A person with those alleles is Heterzygous (different alleles) Magical. They have 2 M's versus 2 m's and M is dominant, so the person is magical. They are If you're magical, you're magical the whole way, because it is so consuming. So if you got the following people: MMmm, MMMm, and MMMM together, they would be equally powerful based on their genes alone. Those are the three magical combinations.

I remember hearing of a student who went here just over 50 years ago (I think it's 55 years, now ... ). His mother was a Homozygous Magical witch, and his father was a Homozygous Non-Magical Muggle. There are various ways of discovering what sort of child (magical or non) this couple would've had. The easiest would be a Punnet Square, but that only works with two Alleles, not four. So, another way would be to take all the possibilities. Each parent must give 2 alleles, because each cell going into the child (the sperm and egg) is only half of each gene. If it were more, you have a double person and that would be really strange. So, you can figure out which sort of child they can have by exploring all the different combinations of M's and m's you get if you make sure to take 2 from each parent. In this case, you could only have a MMmm child, because the mother has to give MM, because all she has are M's, and the father has to give mm, because all he has are m's.

Because magic is dominant, most people are actually magical. Even long ago, when witches and wizards were burned, most people were magical. They just hid it, or lived in secret societies. Most witches and wizards that were sucessfully burned were Muggleborns, who didn't know what was going on or why any of this was happening, or really how to save themselves. A few did manage to acidentally magic themselves away. So now you know that you are actually part of a mahority, not a minority, in the population of the world. It's just a widely hidden majority.

So, now we've talked about the magical aide of combinations, but how about the Muggle side? There is actually only one combination that will make a true "muggle". That is mmmm. Because magic is so dominant, even one M will give you a little magical ability. You won't know it, and normally it'll happen accidentally, but these people can sometimes feel magic and see creatures that only show themselves to magical peoples, such as fairies, evles, and dwarves. They are also more in tune and perceptive to things like ley lines and fairy paths, which are the same things, as well as the energies in Stonehenge (and other stone circles) and under the sea that lead to Atlantis. These people are also better at finding treasure and cities that have some sort of folklore connection, such as artefacts from King Arthur's legends and people who have found the stone roads and even location of Atlantis. They can also sometimes work small magics consiously (only if they try and have realised their "sixth sense" early), and large magics when in great danger subconciously. Concious magic doesn't work as well in stress and hardly at all in panic (it never does what you intended, although normally it does something), but unconcious magic only works under those conditions. These people are often more comfortable with the idea of magic and magical people, and all muggle psychics and witchdocters are of this type. These people are referred to by us as the Enimerotitamancoi [en-aym-ero-tay-ta-man-soi), Or Enimancoi (en-ay-man-soi) for short.

Thank you for reading that long explaination! My gratitude is unending. Now, would you please do the following little things for me: Find out the possible different allele combinations for children with an MMmm mother and a Mmmm father, and also to find a person who you think is probably an Enimancoi(searching the internet would be useful) and writing a [short] explaination of what they did that would suggest they are Enimancoi. The allele project is out of 5 and the Enimancoi is out of 40. If I think it deserves more I'll give bonus. Do something you think would be work 40 or more marks. The whole thing is out of 45. It's due July 31st, because it's a fairly involved project. Email it to flitwick@charms.zzn.com. You may, if you like, send it as an attatchment, but only as .htm/.html, .doc (Windows word or Wordpad), .txt (Notepad). .pub (Publisher) or .ppt (Microft Power Point Presentation). No pictures are required but they're appreciated. I'll post the very best I get here.

Now that you know what a wand does, we can get better into the crux of a situation. By the time you leave this school, I want you all to be able to make your own charms. You shouldn't have to rely on some Charms Engineer at the Ministry of Magic. You should be able to do it yourself. To continue ...

You also know the basic procedure of making a charm. However, I could tell you how to ride a broomstick, explain it well, and you wouldn't nessicarily be able to fly like Vicktor Krum right away. It would take much more practice and fine training. Such is making a charm - you can't do it right off the bat, I don't care how powerful a witch or wizard you are, you can't.

But to get you more on your way, you must know where your power, this magical force you're lucky enough to be able to control, comes from. Its source isn't in you, it's much too powerful and good to be something a human can create alone. Magic, in its essence, is around us. We are merely people who have another sense, you could call it. We can pick up the magic, we know it's there, we can feel it, and we can harness it. It's much wilder than electricity or gravity, but it's a sort of energy. Not that that explains much.

Now, as I said, magic is good. All magic is good, there's no such thing as bad magic. This is part of the end question, so I'll move on.

Magic, how you get it, is genes. There is actually a gene that says whether you are magic or not, just like there's a gene that says your hair colour. It isn't a "magic gene", because everyone has that gene, it's the alelle, or form of the gene, which dictates magical people from muggles. Everyone has the hair colour gene, but the alelle of that gene says whether you have black or blond or brown or bright pink hair. For now, this is all you need to know on this subject, because this will be mentioned in next week's class.

Now, for your project! This week, tell me how wizards like You-Know-Who are possible if all magic is good? It has to do with humans, human nature, and what sort of person You-Know-Who is, to give you a hint, so keep in that vein when you tell me. Email your answer, name, and house to flitwick@charms.zzn.com. The due date is Monday, July 16th 2001.

This is your very first Charms class. I'm going to explain a little something. I'm going to assume you've at least heard a few charms before; on your way here, perhaps. You know they're just words and wand movements, when said, make something happen. I'll use the easiest charm, lumos, as an example. Go ahead, try it! Wave your wand and say "lumos". It lit, didn't it? That is about the easiest charm there is to do. If you look at it, and most of you will know this, lumos is the Latin word for "light". But saying "clean" in Latin won't clean anything much at all. This is because most Charm Makers don't start out with a word meaning something they want to do. They start with a problem. Then they wave their wand at something and will the thing they want to happen to happen. When it does, they pick a word - any word - to associate with that charm. Then they mentally - and this is very hard - connect that word with the charm they've just created. It's very hard and takes a long time of trying to be able to do it. But after they have firmly linked the word with the magic, as well as the wand movements which link themselves, they can do those things in that order and the effect of the charm will be reproduced. But you may have heard of wizards who don't use wands at all. It's possible, it just takes training and concentration. Why do you think that is? What is the difference between magic with a wand and magic without, hmm? Your homework assignment this week is to come with a theory and explain it to me of why you can do magic without a wand but it's exceedingly hard. When you're done, email it to me at flitwic@charms.zzn.com.