Today I learned that in the world of Harry Potter, I would probably make a terrible wizard. Flying broomsticks and toasting with butterbeer sounds tempting, but I unfortunately fail at step one. I tried the new Hogwarts Legacy mod that lets you cast spells in your own voice, but it's really picky about pronunciation.

Like Harry Potter's Harmony, it's stuck in my brain forever as it plays over and over again in ABC Family. As I was frantically yelling "Confringo" into the microphone into my PC while being impaled by a goblin with an axe, I felt sorry for Ron.

At first I intuitively blamed all the unrecognized commands on this mod (which works by hooking into Windows' existing speech recognition system), but I think I had a "Leviosa" moment myself, as it worked consistently enough with other spells. I tend to mumble my words, but it was hard to accept that what I was saying sounded like "Cnfrengo" or "Kafrego". Slowing down, taking a beat, and producing the whole word actually worked very well, and on my second try, the killing spell "Avarda Kedavra" also worked well.

Watch my mediocre spellcasting prowess below (if the video doesn't display properly, watch it another way (opens in a new tab)).

There is enough of a delay that you probably don't want to use it for combat, but it would definitely work for everyday Hogwarts puzzle solving. Voice commands coexist with normal controls, so you can even cast spells manually. The mod is a small app where you listen for specific words and press a key, so there is no need to fiddle with the Hogwarts heritage directory.

One odd thing, though: the mod has been flagged by Nexus Mods' anti-virus scan, leaving it unable to be downloaded directly from the site; as Nexus notes (open in new tab), this means that the mod automatically not mean that it contains a virus, but it does mean that Nexus cannot guarantee that it is safe. I cannot guarantee that the mod is safe, but it has not been flagged by Windows as malicious or caused any noticeable damage to my PC (yet). Download at your own risk!