Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26259483-20150404062952/@comment-24218364-20150405070527

I think it depends on the nature of the magic, how it was brought to the LWM, how it was being used, and how it fit in the Story. Emma's magic is more likely to work because she wasn't subject to the Curse, she wasn't conciously doing anything with it (it just kind of ran wild when giving birth to Henry or messing with stuff at the carnival), and because her Story as the Savior demanded it just work sometimes. The flying monkeys working in the LWM may be in part to it being Oz-based magic instead of Storybrooke or Enchanted Forest magic, and in part due to the proximity to Emma. Walsh might have been under a Dark Curse-like spell and not even able to turn back into a flying monkey until Emma drank the potion herself, believed in magic again, and exposed him to that belief. And the Dragon likely has magic from a great number of sources. He's probably a classical Chinese dragon in his own right, and as such, he hoards a huge trove of magical treasures. (In fact, I bet he's the dragon from that tale in which the dragon hoarded so much and ate so much that he couldn't get out of his cave; in OUAT metaphor, the dragon came to the LWM and hoarded so much of its wealth and magical power that he got stuck here with it.)