Im thinking that the injunction on even researching the Outer Gates works much the same way as the Law against necromancy. While you can find technicalities to do a bit and still fall within the laws (yay Sue), generally speaking going near the stuff is bad enough, cause the whole practice is considered vile. The outer gates are just a worse version. Its like how concealed weapons are illegal (without a permit, but in thins case there is only the one permit around), even if you dont shoot anyone with them. Or even better, its like working with biological weapons: sure making new vaccines is all well and good, noble and such, but the research requires you to make new and potentially dangerous viruses (virii?) which you dont want just anyone to be playing with.
That being said you still run into the same problem Harry saw during DB with mind control: nobody does it so nobody knows how to teach proper defenses against it. The ward that stopped (or at least slowed) the Outsiders in DB was something done by the man said to be the most powerful wizard on earth (who also specializes in wards and defensive magic) and the man who is probably the actual most powerful wizard on earth (and a specialist in Outsiders and the Outer Gates). I doubt anyone else could have done it without harry's outsider connection and even he would have needed a lot more power and class to pull it off (guess he needs to stop collecting bottle caps or something
)
On the Blackstaff as an artifact all its own, Harry once mentions that McCoy's staff came from the same grove in th Ozarks that Harry's did. Does that mean he's just wrong, or does Eb simply have two staffs (staves?). I dont see any reason why he
couldn't , I had just always imagined the staff as more personal and...i dunno...attuned?... than that.
And you can only have 13 people in a circle.
Says who?