Wizards are metahumans that are born with the ability to perform magical acts.
An individual male human with a capability to perform magic is known as a wizard (plural: wizards), and an individual female human with a capability to perform magic is known as a witch (plural: witches), though "wizard" is sometimes used as a gender-neutral singular noun like "man".
Performing Magical Acts[]
In childhood, wizards or witches may exhibit spontaneous, uncontrollable bursts of magic in select situations, such as stress, being threatened, et cetera. These skills are honed and controlled as they progress into full maturity.
In order to be able to perform controlled magic, almost all wizards and witches need a wand in order to do so, although sufficiently advanced wizards may learn the ability of wandless magic, in order to perform magical acts at will without needing a single wand, such as the deceased Albus Dumbledore demonstrated during Harry Potter's first year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, or when Tom Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort demonstrated this ability during the Battle of the Seven Potters atop the skies of Britain in 1997.
Heredity[]
The ability to perform magical acts is a genetically inherited trait, often passed down from parent to child. Wizards are usually classified by their blood status. Pure-blooded wizards and Witches are born of 2 Wizard parents and have at least 4 generations of grandparents who were also capable of performing magic before them. Howewer, some believe that a ideal pureblooded family tree should have absolutely no muggles included within their ancestry, despite the fact that in recent history, a predominant majority of pureblooded families often has at least one person of muggle origin within their family tree by the 1990s and 2000s. Half-blooded wizards are usually born of one wizard and one muggle (Or Muggleborn) parent, and are the most common type of wizards within the wizarding community in recent history, due to truly pureblooded wizards dying off and the neccessity to slowly integrate with muggles. Muggle-born wizards and witches are distantly descended from a Squib (A wizardborn person whose magical abilities never truly awakened, thus rendering them muggle-like ) married into a Muggle family. The magical gene from that given squid often resurfaces many years later in a Muggle-born descendant of such given Squib, when said branch of the family has often lost most if not all traces of their wizarding heritage/legacy.