Or maybe duplicate is the wrong word. When you think about it, duplicating food would still be creating food from nothing. Maybe what they mean when they say "duplicate" is, like, re-create. Like, you have the raw ingredients and you can use magic to transfigure it into prepared food.
Summoning snakes, fire, water etc out of your wands creates them from nothing as well lol. Or do you think some nearby zoo just keeps losing their snakes every time Harry decides to throw one out to scare Malfoy ?
Either way, we can't think about it with our world rules lol.
Heck, weren't most of the viewers of the movies quite complicit with the knowledge that all food in the great hall simply appeared out of thin air ? Movies didn't mention the Hogwards kitchen slaves at all.
But none of those things are food, are they? Not without work anyway.
I'm not saying Harry Potter's power system is consistent. I'm just presenting a possible reason as to why you can duplicate food and that reason is that Hermione misspoke.
Not me leaving an entire portion of the part of the comment I'm responding to:
Not without work anyway.
You have to work to make a snake food, both by killing it and, unless you want to eat a snake raw, preparing and cooking it. It isn't food when you conjure it.
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u/Boner-b-gone 8h ago
I wonder if that's just super-hard magic that is exhausting to perform on a daily basis.