This seems to me to be a confusion over senses of the word "real". "Real magic" as opposed to "Not real magic" here is simply used in the analogous sense of "Do you like like me?" vs. "Or do you just like me?". Whether "real magic" can in fact be done did not enter into the mind of the questioner in the above scenario. Hence "real" there is used in the sense of "genuine" instead of "actual".

This is a common pitfall for quotes/aphorisms. Their short length is an incentive for conciseness, but it can also become an end in itself. Hence leading us to tradeoff meaning for superficial features like symmetry, rhyme, etc.