Introduction

Household Magic pertains to domestic spellwork. It is a category often overlooked as mundane, yet is essential to the operation and maintenance of most magical households, bordering the line between luxury and necessity. The term groups together spells for cooking, cleaning, repairing, and gardening.

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Masters of Household Magic make for formidable magic users. It is speculated that this is due to their constant, casual use of spellwork, rendering them comfortable with arcane multitasking. They are quick, cunning, and capable of hasty improvisation. [More]

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Examples of significant Household Magic spells include:

• Candle Magic — Igniting and floating candles in midair.
• Dishwashing Spell — Causes tableware to clean itself.
• Growing Charm — Engorgio increases something's size.
• Shrinking Charm — Reducio, counter of Engorgio, or to shrink something.
• Extinguishing Spell — Extinguo puts out fires.
• Fire-Making Spell — Incendio starts them.
• Water-Making Spell — Aguamenti conjures clean, drinkable water.
• Hot-Air Charm — Aer Calidus, ideal for drying things, such as laundry.
• Knitting Charm — Bewitches needles to knit autonomously.
• Mending Charm — Reparo undoes damage to an object.
• Permanent Sticking Charm — Indefinitely sticks one object to another.
• Scouring Charm — Scourgify cleans targets with frothy soap bubbles.
• Siphoning Spell — Tergeo draws off blood, oil, ink, etc. from a surface.
• Locking Spell - Colloportus, closes and locks doors.
• Unlocking Charm — Alohomora opens locks, such as on doors or trunks.
• Undetectable Extension Charm — Capacious Extremis causes objects to hold more than their outer dimensions would seem to allow. Wizard Space is created with this and is highly regulated by the Ministry.

Application

Because electronics malfunction in areas of concentrated magic, such as a wizarding home, Household Magic is vital for the typical family's day-to-day. Proficiency in this category is not only admirable, but necessary to prevent catastrophe, such as that of Archibald Alderton, infamous for blowing up a hamlet in Hampshire while attempting to magically mix a birthday cake. Its application ranges from fundamental to recreational, as the community- just likes muggles- enjoys hosting competitions in cooking, gardening, and design. Regrettably, entries in the Annual International Wizard Gardening Competition have been scarce since the ban on crop-related charms, as muggles kept coming across the remains of the Contorting Cereals Competition, which they mistook for "alien crop circles".

Many books have been released on the subject, such as Practical Household Magic by Zamira Gulch, One Minute Feasts - It's Magic!, Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, and Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Household Pests. For messes which can't be cleaned with a simple Scourgify, there are a plethora of magical cleaning products. Mrs. Scower's Magical Mess Remover is a popular household product, as is Doxycide, a black liquid typically applied via spray bottle, which renders doxies unconscious so that they may be disposed of. Diluted bundimun secretion is an ingredient of multiple magical cleaning fluids, and use number twelve of dragons' blood is to apply it as an oven cleaner.

Although magic is common in wizarding households, it isn't often used by children at home. A universal charm called the Trace allows the Ministry to ensure wixes under seventeen aren't casting spells outside of school, per the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. When any magical activity takes place in the presence of someone underage, the Improper Use of Magic Office is alerted to the spell, its location, and the time of casting. However, they cannot tell precisely who the caster was unless they live among muggles, so it isn't uncommon for those living in a magical household to use spells in secret. Those living in muggle households cannot get away with it so easily. The Trace breaks automatically on a wix's seventeenth birthday.

Security

Although protective magic is its own branch apart from household magic, it is commonly used in wix households. Wizarding locations are frequently laced with magical security measures. While this is to be expected in places like Hogwarts and Gringotts, it isn't uncommon for your average arcane family to place protective spells around their private property to stay safe from fantastic beasts, muggles, or even other wixes. These often require maintenance.

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Other means of security involve inventions or more complex creations. Gargoyles, for example, are staunch defenders of their assigned areas. It should be noted: the Ministry of Magic created a law which outlawed granting objects sentience without their explicit approval. That way, they could prevent dangerous objects from becoming dangerous creatures. This also resulted in a registry of sentient objects being created, so autonomous gargoyles are less common than they once were. There is also a general restriction on what objects can or cannot be charmed. These artifacts are listed in the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects, and consists of items used regularly by muggles. It aims to prevent the risk of enchanted objects winding up back in non-magical households.

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Examples of Protective spellwork includes:

• Caterwauling Charm — When an unauthorized person enters an area with this charm in place, a high-pitched alarm screams to notify others of the intrusion.
• Disillusionment Charm — Causes a target take on the exact color and texture of its environment, making it difficult to see. This is often used on pets such as winged horses and hippogriffs, which the ministry required to be Disillusioned daily in order to hide them from muggles.
• Fidelius Charm — Protected a dwelling by making it intangible, invisible, and soundproof. An ancient spell, it is known for its use by members of the Order of the Phoenix, who cast it to hide their homes and meeting locations
• Intruder Charm — The Wizarding equivalent to a burglar alarm, this detects intruders and sounds an alarm. Creates a loud ringing, unlike the harsh scream of the Caterwauling Charm.
• Muggle-Repelling Charm — Repello Muggletum prevents Muggles from seeing or entering an area.

*Lore by Pericles Dralt.