Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
Even without being the main power, there being a bunch of guaranteed seats on your ruling council dedicated to hereditary positions is gonna cause some problems eventually.
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Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse
- Thread starter Fencer
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy Superhero
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
True enough, but it still is a very neat and tidy explanation of why exactly the Wizarding World is so insular and conservative which leads to the problems we see in Canon, rather than it being because the Wizards and Witches are just stupid. Harry is such an unreliable narrator, which is fair cause A, that sort of world building is typically done in classes and Harry is not exactly the most attentive student, and B he doesn't understand this entirely new culture due to being brought up in the outside world. It's canon that there are clearly lots of traditions that Harry and Hermione likely run roughshod over due to simple ignorance. House Elves being the chief example. There's an entire display in Grimmauld of decapitated House Elf heads, but to Kreacher it's seen as an honor to be displayed in such a way after dying and maybe that's entirely normal to that part of the culture. Sure to us it's horrific, but if that's intended to be a thing for honoring the House Elves for their long service to the House of Black as a display of their excellent staff/help, and it clearly went on for decades possibly even centuries, it gets a bit more muddy. Traditions are tough subjects at the best of times.
Also before others weigh in remember that Dobby isn't a normal House Elf, Hagrid explicitly states that, and every other House Elf we see in Canon doesn't act like Dobby. And Sirius was very much the non-traditional member of the Blacks, who didn't understand or conform to expectations. He saw it as barbaric, but he is only a single example and pretty much the sole one we got. We don't really receive any perspective of the possible other side of the argument from other notable families like the Longbottoms, the Bones, or the Greengrasses. I'm not advocating that it's anything but a brutal tradition, but it's not my or anyone else's place to enforce that view on others if it is actually a tradition. Showing examples that maybe it's unnecessary and/or counterproductive to it's intended goal with modern society is about as far as I could morally push such a view on others while being respectful.
Taken with that mindset Hermione's actions with S.P.E.W. are out of line with such a society and her being shunned for it was logical and inevitable. Good intentions presented in a much more forceful manner to a people like that won't achieve any actual results, and that lines up to what occurs in Canon.
Ugh really as ever Rowling's absolutely shitty world building is the ultimate reason for this lack of detail. She's a good writer, her fame and success are unarguable, but she isn't a great one like Brandon Sanderson is.
I suspect it's one of the reasons for all the fan fiction out there.
Still one of the largest sources for fanfiction writing..and probably already passed their peak in ingenuity (People are still doing the well known potions plot even when there is a counter-spell to the love potion introduced in Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them.)
That'd also be because some people haven't watched the new movies, often because they hate JK and the ideas she came out with after the books finished
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
Very true, probably why there's so many Worm ones as well.
And calling them canon to the books is iffy. I mean yes there's no reason they shouldn't be, but the opposite is also true there's no reason they should be canon either.
Also the potions plot device isn't strictly limited to love potions. Because the entire Half Blood Prince bullshit doesn't make sense due solely to a freaking love potion. Best explanation I've seen using potions as the reason for that particular debacle is that it's a jealousy potion made poorly by Ginny so Hermione's behavior is erratic in weird areas, but that Ginny realized that Hermione would know the symptoms of various love potions and would be on the lookout for those in particular rather than a jealousy potion's symptoms.
It's why I haven't watched them or read/attended Cursed Child. Rowling's various WoG's following Deathly Hallows are dubious at best and her political and social views are generally abhorrent. Like Hermione absolutely isn't Black, she's clearly stated in the books to be Caucasian, sure she could have been Black from the start, but so could Ron.
- Location
- Upstate NY, USA
- Pronouns
- Rm/Rf
Rowling has them act like landed gentry from the early 1600s. A Great House/manor on an estate somewhere, a town house in London, buckets full of money.
Which makes me wonder how much of an impact Cromwell had on wizarding society. He was slaughtering people in the 1640s/1650s and the Statute of Secrecy was passed in... (Googles quickly) 1689.
So conceivably in response.
I'm going to leave the thread before the Harry-is-time-displaced-to-1639-and-becomes-Cromwell Omake starts bubbling out and onto the keyboard.
Thing about House Elves: Dobby is able to go to Malfoy Manor in Book 7 because he's on the whitelist. Assume Malfoy senior just never took him off. Probably he didn't think it would be a problem due to Dobby never wanting to return, or he assumed Dobby would just die like elves separated from their families are known to do. As for Kreacher hunting down Mundungus, Dung is unlikely to be anywhere under strong wards, and Kreacher is a Black Elf, which means he's probably empowered by some nasty fucking rituals meant to allow him to better serve the house of Black. But even that isn't enough for him to invade places that he doesn't have a claim to being invited to, so long as the wards can actually keep him from coming in anyways.
Privet Drive Blood Wards doesn't stop Dobby because Dobby truly, genuinely does not mean Harry harm, and is in fact (in his own twisted way) trying to help him. He also doesn't have orders to be there from anyone bearing ill will against Harry. If you subscribe to the 'Dobby stealthily links himself to Harry' piece, then you can have him show up on Harry's command if called inside Grimmauld. Elves canonically seem to hear their names when called from a place they can go to. And we know Hogwarts has some Apparation whitelist for the Hogwarts employed Elves.
Elves just don't have the super mobility and powers fanon states they have, because there's only one real instance of an elf being actually that impressive, and that was Kreacher hunting Mundungus, and again, Kreacher is a little monster, a true titan of his kind. Mundungus is taken by surprise and isn't that great of a wizard to begin with.
It also helps if you say that House Elves have a poor staying power, and run out of stamina quickly, so they can't take on lengthy magic intensive tasks without needing to slow down and rest.
What else? The Basilisk? Pick whatever, the movies should follow the books, and the books have nothing to state about the status of the corpse post book 2. Harry never goes back down there again (which is a shame, considering all the stuff in book 4, but he would have needed to bring a broom assuming the fanon / canon 'ask for stairs' thing (Ginnymort was getting out of there without a broom SOMEHOW)) to see for himself.
Anti-tech aura? We get told that magic interferes with technology, but we never actually see this actually happen. My own headcanon is that it requires an extremely magical location of ludicrously high density to get that aura, and that there's typically only a few sites like that in any given magical zone. Hogwarts, Saint Mungo's, Diagon Alley, the Ministry of Magic. The main school, the main shopping area, and the locations of the myriad Ministries in any given magical ICW area. Hogsmead doesn't have the density of magic required to create this effect, and obviously neither does Godric's Hallow. And even then, this effect can also be contained by a very simple magic: Expansion Charms. So you can create a magical super density area in the middle of London and it simultaneously isn't detectable by technological fizzle because it's already accounted for. If there's one thing Wizards are genuinely good at, it's keeping their secrecy.
Owl bombs: By all indications that absolutely would work. There pretty much has to be owl redirection magic though, otherwise is creates plotholes like 'how does Sirius hide if you can just send an owl after him?' As such getting mail sent to purebloods is first collected in a safe mail collection room which is warded against explosions and has alarms for hexes, curses, and poisons. And then House Elves check it before bringing it to their masters. Harry has lived his entire life under very strict owl redirection wards controlled and placed by Dumbledore, but the magic has enough adaptability that Harry can receive mail from those he doesn't suspect as being against him. And you can do the whole 'Goblins have been sending you yearly reports you've never been getting' that way too. You can even excuse Albus by having him go 'oh, shit, right, I needed to adjust that now that you're not ignorant of magic anymore'.
Magic Immunity / Resistance: We see several creatures that logically are only dangerous if they carry some form of magic resistance (anything 4 X should have some resistance, anything 5 X pretty much HAS to have resistances), but we also never hear any true magic immunity among creatures. Even Dementors aren't totally immune to magic, though they seem ludicrously resistant, along their abominable false-life state. So long as you're not totally magic immune (which nothing we know of is) you'll still die to an Avada. Dementors and perhaps their 'cousins' Lethifolds are not truly alive, and so cannot be killed or even destroyed by any known method in the Wizarding World. (I think Fiendfyre should be capable of it, actually, so long as you could get it past their icey aura without losing your will and Fiendfyre rebounding on you for it.)
Muggle weapons: In the same manner that Wizarding medicine and healing can fix essentially anything that isn't outright dark magic, their most basic defenses that even third years are supposed to be able to cast would stop anything short of a rocket launcher missile. And considering how tough Wizards are to survive bludgers based off of bludger calcs, they're probably shockingly resilient to small arms and even medium arms fire anyways.
Sinister Timing: By accident or on purpose, there's a lot that happens to get Harry landed with the Dursleys. First, Voledmort and Wormtail show up. Voldemort presumably forces Wormtail to come with him so that if Wormtail is lying to him he doesn't get an opportunity to run, because finding a common brown rat would be troublesome even for the Dark Lord. Voldemort attacks the Potters and gets disintegrated on the rebounding Avada, and blows a hole in the roof in the process, but his robes and wand are left intact. Wormtail investigates, snatches the wand, and flees. Seemingly within 10 minutes Snape shows up to cradle Lily's body, cry, and feel bad for himself. Snape then leaves as Sirius enters the scene, audible from a distance due to his motorbike. Sirius retrieves Harry and either runs into Hagrid literally as he comes out the front door or he sits on the porch with Harry and has a mental breakdown. Hagrid manages to get Harry away from Sirius due to being insistently sent by Dumbledore, who has strong reason to suspect something's up with Sirius. Especially if you go by the 'Lily doesn't trust Dumebldore' fanon idea where she gets Dumbledore to cast Fidelus for her them using Sirius as secret keeper, and then as soon as Dumbledore leaves she takes down the Fidelius and having just seen it cast makes a new one using Peter without telling Dumbledore about the swap, which would leave Dumbledore understandably convinced the Fidelius was centered on Sirius. The timing window here is tight, but Dumbledore already has everything figured out for putting Harry with the Dursleys. It does end up looking sinister, though I choose to believe Dumebldore had simply already figured out an itemized list of what he'd do for Harry / Neville should X Y and or Z occur, so that he was prepared for any scenario. Being properly paranoid isn't sinister, just kind of creepy.
Pouch: It's not moleskin. It's mokeskin.
Dumbledore not being sinister: There's a very convincing fanon theory floating around that the entire thing with first year was Dumbledore trying to trap Voldemort's shade in the Mirror of Erised, and that Harry actually screwed up this plan by going to try and keep Voldemort from getting the stone. Obviously Dumbledore never brings this up because he doesn't want to tell the dumb 11 year old well meaning child he screwed up everything by trying to help.
As for Quirrel being such a shit wizard? He's not, in fact he's pretty good, which is how he's able to do nonverbal magic so easily for stuff like throwing up walls of fire and Incarcerous.
Voldemort isn't aware at that point in time exactly what protections are on Harry, so he has Quirrel cast no spells directly on Harry he'd care if they were supercharged and reflected like his Avada was. And then choke the kid out, because if it's not magic, it's probably a loophole in the protection. Until it ends up being a 'whoops, that didn't work' issue.
Privet Drive Blood Wards doesn't stop Dobby because Dobby truly, genuinely does not mean Harry harm, and is in fact (in his own twisted way) trying to help him. He also doesn't have orders to be there from anyone bearing ill will against Harry. If you subscribe to the 'Dobby stealthily links himself to Harry' piece, then you can have him show up on Harry's command if called inside Grimmauld. Elves canonically seem to hear their names when called from a place they can go to. And we know Hogwarts has some Apparation whitelist for the Hogwarts employed Elves.
Elves just don't have the super mobility and powers fanon states they have, because there's only one real instance of an elf being actually that impressive, and that was Kreacher hunting Mundungus, and again, Kreacher is a little monster, a true titan of his kind. Mundungus is taken by surprise and isn't that great of a wizard to begin with.
It also helps if you say that House Elves have a poor staying power, and run out of stamina quickly, so they can't take on lengthy magic intensive tasks without needing to slow down and rest.
What else? The Basilisk? Pick whatever, the movies should follow the books, and the books have nothing to state about the status of the corpse post book 2. Harry never goes back down there again (which is a shame, considering all the stuff in book 4, but he would have needed to bring a broom assuming the fanon / canon 'ask for stairs' thing (Ginnymort was getting out of there without a broom SOMEHOW)) to see for himself.
Anti-tech aura? We get told that magic interferes with technology, but we never actually see this actually happen. My own headcanon is that it requires an extremely magical location of ludicrously high density to get that aura, and that there's typically only a few sites like that in any given magical zone. Hogwarts, Saint Mungo's, Diagon Alley, the Ministry of Magic. The main school, the main shopping area, and the locations of the myriad Ministries in any given magical ICW area. Hogsmead doesn't have the density of magic required to create this effect, and obviously neither does Godric's Hallow. And even then, this effect can also be contained by a very simple magic: Expansion Charms. So you can create a magical super density area in the middle of London and it simultaneously isn't detectable by technological fizzle because it's already accounted for. If there's one thing Wizards are genuinely good at, it's keeping their secrecy.
Owl bombs: By all indications that absolutely would work. There pretty much has to be owl redirection magic though, otherwise is creates plotholes like 'how does Sirius hide if you can just send an owl after him?' As such getting mail sent to purebloods is first collected in a safe mail collection room which is warded against explosions and has alarms for hexes, curses, and poisons. And then House Elves check it before bringing it to their masters. Harry has lived his entire life under very strict owl redirection wards controlled and placed by Dumbledore, but the magic has enough adaptability that Harry can receive mail from those he doesn't suspect as being against him. And you can do the whole 'Goblins have been sending you yearly reports you've never been getting' that way too. You can even excuse Albus by having him go 'oh, shit, right, I needed to adjust that now that you're not ignorant of magic anymore'.
Magic Immunity / Resistance: We see several creatures that logically are only dangerous if they carry some form of magic resistance (anything 4 X should have some resistance, anything 5 X pretty much HAS to have resistances), but we also never hear any true magic immunity among creatures. Even Dementors aren't totally immune to magic, though they seem ludicrously resistant, along their abominable false-life state. So long as you're not totally magic immune (which nothing we know of is) you'll still die to an Avada. Dementors and perhaps their 'cousins' Lethifolds are not truly alive, and so cannot be killed or even destroyed by any known method in the Wizarding World. (I think Fiendfyre should be capable of it, actually, so long as you could get it past their icey aura without losing your will and Fiendfyre rebounding on you for it.)
Muggle weapons: In the same manner that Wizarding medicine and healing can fix essentially anything that isn't outright dark magic, their most basic defenses that even third years are supposed to be able to cast would stop anything short of a rocket launcher missile. And considering how tough Wizards are to survive bludgers based off of bludger calcs, they're probably shockingly resilient to small arms and even medium arms fire anyways.
Sinister Timing: By accident or on purpose, there's a lot that happens to get Harry landed with the Dursleys. First, Voledmort and Wormtail show up. Voldemort presumably forces Wormtail to come with him so that if Wormtail is lying to him he doesn't get an opportunity to run, because finding a common brown rat would be troublesome even for the Dark Lord. Voldemort attacks the Potters and gets disintegrated on the rebounding Avada, and blows a hole in the roof in the process, but his robes and wand are left intact. Wormtail investigates, snatches the wand, and flees. Seemingly within 10 minutes Snape shows up to cradle Lily's body, cry, and feel bad for himself. Snape then leaves as Sirius enters the scene, audible from a distance due to his motorbike. Sirius retrieves Harry and either runs into Hagrid literally as he comes out the front door or he sits on the porch with Harry and has a mental breakdown. Hagrid manages to get Harry away from Sirius due to being insistently sent by Dumbledore, who has strong reason to suspect something's up with Sirius. Especially if you go by the 'Lily doesn't trust Dumebldore' fanon idea where she gets Dumbledore to cast Fidelus for her them using Sirius as secret keeper, and then as soon as Dumbledore leaves she takes down the Fidelius and having just seen it cast makes a new one using Peter without telling Dumbledore about the swap, which would leave Dumbledore understandably convinced the Fidelius was centered on Sirius. The timing window here is tight, but Dumbledore already has everything figured out for putting Harry with the Dursleys. It does end up looking sinister, though I choose to believe Dumebldore had simply already figured out an itemized list of what he'd do for Harry / Neville should X Y and or Z occur, so that he was prepared for any scenario. Being properly paranoid isn't sinister, just kind of creepy.
Pouch: It's not moleskin. It's mokeskin.
Dumbledore not being sinister: There's a very convincing fanon theory floating around that the entire thing with first year was Dumbledore trying to trap Voldemort's shade in the Mirror of Erised, and that Harry actually screwed up this plan by going to try and keep Voldemort from getting the stone. Obviously Dumbledore never brings this up because he doesn't want to tell the dumb 11 year old well meaning child he screwed up everything by trying to help.
As for Quirrel being such a shit wizard? He's not, in fact he's pretty good, which is how he's able to do nonverbal magic so easily for stuff like throwing up walls of fire and Incarcerous.
Voldemort isn't aware at that point in time exactly what protections are on Harry, so he has Quirrel cast no spells directly on Harry he'd care if they were supercharged and reflected like his Avada was. And then choke the kid out, because if it's not magic, it's probably a loophole in the protection. Until it ends up being a 'whoops, that didn't work' issue.
I like most of your points, except for the following:
However, being British, Harry and the gang don't have the cultural fondness for firearms that some other nations do, so they could legitimately just not think of it. And even if they did, it's not exactly going to be easy for them to get ahold of modern weaponry, much less the training to use it.
The problem with this is that, the way that the Wizarding World is written, there's no way that they would have gone into hiding without some kind of danger that requires them to do so. So for the Statute of Secrecy to be a thing and wizards to not be ruling the whole world, Muggles had to be a viable threat to wizards. Which would directly contradict your thesis.
However, being British, Harry and the gang don't have the cultural fondness for firearms that some other nations do, so they could legitimately just not think of it. And even if they did, it's not exactly going to be easy for them to get ahold of modern weaponry, much less the training to use it.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
While I agree, I also think that useful (not necessarily perfect) defences against muggle weaponry could have only been invented after the Statute of Secrecy went into effect, possibly long after (long enough to be just becoming widespread when Grindlewald started trying to take over), with Secrecy still being kept out of cultural inertia.
Guns, wizard brute rating, tactics, enchantments.
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
On guns, again, the witch hunts would have been taking place in the days of muzzle loaders. Yes I'd agree if you can get a shield charm between the magical and the gun, they can tank a single shot with only a bit more difficulty than the average spell. In the days of muzzle loaders this buys you all the time needed to then fire back multiple times before the gun can be reloaded. Flash forward to the modern era of firearms. Unload a full auto assault rifle into a shield charm and as far as I'm concerned only those on the level of Dumbledore or Voldemort could stand up to a thirty round mag without their shield breaking. Especially if it's a large caliber round.
Now if you are the shooter you're not going to want to fight like that anyway because anyone else on the field could take the chance to kill you while you stand there waisting ammo.
If Taylor somehow got a mini gun as far as I'm concerned any wizzard dumb enough to stand their ground and shield would be dead.
On "Wizards do bounce," yes I would grant that witches and wizards are slightly tougher than baseline humans. However, they are also just more cavalier about physical safety because they have magic healing and physical damage is so much simpler for them to fix. Bludgers break bones And Belatrix tortured people with knives. I'll grant them a Brute one or two, no more than that. Anyone trying to tell me bullets can't kill them is going to be pointed at the exit because I'm not buying it.
On personal protection against projectiles. This is a more plausible argument. We know the twins could enchant articles of clothing to be resistant to spells up to a certain point. We never see them in action and we have no idea what kind of longevity they may or may not have and more critically in my mind we don't know if they fail under massed fire. I would bet they do even if the massed fore isn't something beyond their ability to block.
So how does that translate to projectiles? First point the twins are geniuses and managed to get supposedly full body coverage with just a hat. But they are geniuses and I'm not giving most enchanters that much credit. So first rule of most enchanted clothing for me is that it protects what it covers. And only what it covers. Second rule is they can only stop so much force. And I most definitely mean force. Wizards used to coexist with muggles way back when so you better believe at some point they shared a battlefield and had to worry about arrows. Arrows hit with anything in the range of 25 to 65 ft lbs of force. a 9mm hits with 409 ft lbs of force at the muzzle. Now lets go ahead and assume our theoretical anti projectile enchantment was being improved on at least up until the statue of secrecy went into effect then likely became less and less popular or prevalent as the statue seemed to work. I would give such a charm good odds against a small caliber handguns and should it fail I would say they bullet would lose a significant amount of force. I'd also say it would totally fail against repeated small caliber fire, larger caliber weapons, and shotguns. That's for enchanting cloth or maybe leather. If they can get their hands on Bullet resistant vest and then use those same enchantments it would not strengthen the enchantments but it would up their odds of survival after the enchantment fails. They will not do this because it would mean using muggle things. They might try something more old school and wear mediaeval style breastplates to… well, lesser results, but not terrible ones. Applying unbreakable charms to armor is an idea. I'm leery of it because despite running across that charm a lot in fanon I don't really remember it seeing any, and especially not any intelligent use, in canon. That leaves me guessing that it has a limited energy pool and can be worn down with repeated damage. Or that it just doesn't hold long term. Still potentially life saving for short fights so long as no one aims for the head.
Of course all of this is just gun defense. This all has to be balanced against weight and mobility if fighting other wizards who won't be using bullets. It won't do anything to stop Taylor from swarming them or make them more resistant to spell fire. And if you you really want to make projectile protection fail? Shrink a boulder, launch it, then cancel the shrinking charm. There are no perfect defenses and once the DE's know what's in play they are going to have to make their own decisions on what they think gives them the best odds of survival. And lets be honest most are going to blame the first few dying to bullets on the idiot being incompetent enough to be killed by a muggle weapon, or Taylor being a coward who attacked from behind instead of standing her ground and dueling.
Guns are not the 'magic bullet' for the DE problem and I don't really intend for them to spread beyond Taylor and maybe a holdout weapon for Harry.
Now if you are the shooter you're not going to want to fight like that anyway because anyone else on the field could take the chance to kill you while you stand there waisting ammo.
If Taylor somehow got a mini gun as far as I'm concerned any wizzard dumb enough to stand their ground and shield would be dead.
On "Wizards do bounce," yes I would grant that witches and wizards are slightly tougher than baseline humans. However, they are also just more cavalier about physical safety because they have magic healing and physical damage is so much simpler for them to fix. Bludgers break bones And Belatrix tortured people with knives. I'll grant them a Brute one or two, no more than that. Anyone trying to tell me bullets can't kill them is going to be pointed at the exit because I'm not buying it.
On personal protection against projectiles. This is a more plausible argument. We know the twins could enchant articles of clothing to be resistant to spells up to a certain point. We never see them in action and we have no idea what kind of longevity they may or may not have and more critically in my mind we don't know if they fail under massed fire. I would bet they do even if the massed fore isn't something beyond their ability to block.
So how does that translate to projectiles? First point the twins are geniuses and managed to get supposedly full body coverage with just a hat. But they are geniuses and I'm not giving most enchanters that much credit. So first rule of most enchanted clothing for me is that it protects what it covers. And only what it covers. Second rule is they can only stop so much force. And I most definitely mean force. Wizards used to coexist with muggles way back when so you better believe at some point they shared a battlefield and had to worry about arrows. Arrows hit with anything in the range of 25 to 65 ft lbs of force. a 9mm hits with 409 ft lbs of force at the muzzle. Now lets go ahead and assume our theoretical anti projectile enchantment was being improved on at least up until the statue of secrecy went into effect then likely became less and less popular or prevalent as the statue seemed to work. I would give such a charm good odds against a small caliber handguns and should it fail I would say they bullet would lose a significant amount of force. I'd also say it would totally fail against repeated small caliber fire, larger caliber weapons, and shotguns. That's for enchanting cloth or maybe leather. If they can get their hands on Bullet resistant vest and then use those same enchantments it would not strengthen the enchantments but it would up their odds of survival after the enchantment fails. They will not do this because it would mean using muggle things. They might try something more old school and wear mediaeval style breastplates to… well, lesser results, but not terrible ones. Applying unbreakable charms to armor is an idea. I'm leery of it because despite running across that charm a lot in fanon I don't really remember it seeing any, and especially not any intelligent use, in canon. That leaves me guessing that it has a limited energy pool and can be worn down with repeated damage. Or that it just doesn't hold long term. Still potentially life saving for short fights so long as no one aims for the head.
Of course all of this is just gun defense. This all has to be balanced against weight and mobility if fighting other wizards who won't be using bullets. It won't do anything to stop Taylor from swarming them or make them more resistant to spell fire. And if you you really want to make projectile protection fail? Shrink a boulder, launch it, then cancel the shrinking charm. There are no perfect defenses and once the DE's know what's in play they are going to have to make their own decisions on what they think gives them the best odds of survival. And lets be honest most are going to blame the first few dying to bullets on the idiot being incompetent enough to be killed by a muggle weapon, or Taylor being a coward who attacked from behind instead of standing her ground and dueling.
Guns are not the 'magic bullet' for the DE problem and I don't really intend for them to spread beyond Taylor and maybe a holdout weapon for Harry.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
I mean, you're welcome to decide that, but there is no indication in canon that a Shield Charm cannot withstand an infinite number of bullets.
Keep in mind that Potterverse magic is magical, it does not obey normal rules of physics in the slightest, especially not anything regarding energy and mass conservation. We never see a Shield Charm broken by physical force, and a 'strong' Shield Charm supposedly not only blocked the charge of an armored knight with lance, but sent said knight flying backwards along with his horse. (Which fell on him and "squashed him flat in his armor.") And a charging knight on a horse has substantially more kinetic energy than anything short of a gun like a GAU-8.
That said, Fred and George realized that most adult wizards, even those employed by the Ministry, could not actually produce a functional Shield Charm, as the spell is relatively complicated and not something that the average civilian is ever likely to need to use. So even if Shield Charms are functionally immune to man-portable weapons, the majority of magicals can't actually cast one in the first place.
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Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
You arm yourself, handle the enemy, waist the ammo, then leg it on foot?
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Going to need a lore check on the whole bouncing an armored knight thing man because we never even see a shield charm used against a physical attack in canon. So to me that's sounding like Rowling throwing lore at the wall after the fact. And honestly I think that's the kind of lore I'd disregard anyway unless it was a specialized shield meant for physical attacks, and not just the most generic shield in the series. And even then the idea that blocking that much force isn't energy intensive would… irk me I guess.
What I mean is don't stand out in the open like the terminator just shooting and shooting while also being a big stationary target.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
I think your body of puns needs a good workout. And even that's a stretch.
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Gah, I've been shot in the funny bone! Forgive me ham! Forgive me for forgetting the cheese!!!!!!!!
Nah. Not planning to buy it. I'm just not interested.
Basic shield charms being able to stand up to modern guns just as easily as older style guns is more difficult to believe than, I don't know, any Transfiguration spell ever?
Well, okay, you're the guy writing the story. But canon basically disagrees with you. Hard. Th energy behind the bullet doesn't matter to HP 'It's basically conceptual based' magic, what matters is that the shield spell line basically laugh at physical attacks and only start having trouble when its magical attacks.
As for the Shield Spell
The Shield Charm[3] (Protego)[1] was a charm that protected the caster with an invisible shield that reflected spells and blocked physical entities.[3] There were also multiple variations of the Shield Charm.
The Shield Charm's origins were unknown, but was in use by the 15th century.[8]
The most famous use of the charm took place in 1484, in the town of Poppleton, where the tyrannical Earl of Paunchley held a jousting match. He insisted that all the nobles for miles around must come to cheer him on at the tournament and "no excuse would be acceptable" for missing the event. But young Edmund Gaddlegate fell out of a tree that day and broke his leg, and his mother put him to bed. The Earl wouldn't hear of anyone staying home, so he dragged Edmund and his mother to the castle, and said the mother had to watch while her child was tied to a horse and forced to compete in the jousting.[8]
The other knights left the tournament "in disgust" at the idea of jousting with a small injured boy, so the Earl vowed that he himself would attack Edmund. But a witch in the crowd named Hannah Cockleford had other ideas.[8] Fed up with the evil Earl, she cast an extremely strong Shield Charm between Edmund and the Earl, who was "squashed flat in his armour" when the Shield Charm knocked him backwards and his horse landed on him. The Earl of Paunchley did not die, but when he came-to he was under the impression that he was a donkey named Hairy Cyril.[8]
Now, Protego is basically the second biggest brother (Protego Maxima) of the general shield line, so you could argue lesser shield spells would have issues, but nothing we've ever seen from canon suggests firearms are an actual serious threat to a well trained adult wizard for anything but the wizard's own incompetence. And Protego according to the movies and games can be cast in several different ways, such as 'Shield', 'Wall in front of me', and 'Bubble shield'. The Shield format seems to be the beginner form, but the wall is also canon because Hermione casts it like that in the tent during Ron and Harry's argument in the 7th book. The only version of it we don't see in the books is the Bubble Shied format.
Other varieties of the Shield Charm included as followed:
Well, okay, you're the guy writing the story. But canon basically disagrees with you. Hard. Th energy behind the bullet doesn't matter to HP 'It's basically conceptual based' magic, what matters is that the shield spell line basically laugh at physical attacks and only start having trouble when its magical attacks.
The joke was about your spelling of wasting.
As for the Shield Spell
The Shield Charm[3] (Protego)[1] was a charm that protected the caster with an invisible shield that reflected spells and blocked physical entities.[3] There were also multiple variations of the Shield Charm.
The Shield Charm's origins were unknown, but was in use by the 15th century.[8]
The most famous use of the charm took place in 1484, in the town of Poppleton, where the tyrannical Earl of Paunchley held a jousting match. He insisted that all the nobles for miles around must come to cheer him on at the tournament and "no excuse would be acceptable" for missing the event. But young Edmund Gaddlegate fell out of a tree that day and broke his leg, and his mother put him to bed. The Earl wouldn't hear of anyone staying home, so he dragged Edmund and his mother to the castle, and said the mother had to watch while her child was tied to a horse and forced to compete in the jousting.[8]
The other knights left the tournament "in disgust" at the idea of jousting with a small injured boy, so the Earl vowed that he himself would attack Edmund. But a witch in the crowd named Hannah Cockleford had other ideas.[8] Fed up with the evil Earl, she cast an extremely strong Shield Charm between Edmund and the Earl, who was "squashed flat in his armour" when the Shield Charm knocked him backwards and his horse landed on him. The Earl of Paunchley did not die, but when he came-to he was under the impression that he was a donkey named Hairy Cyril.[8]
Now, Protego is basically the second biggest brother (Protego Maxima) of the general shield line, so you could argue lesser shield spells would have issues, but nothing we've ever seen from canon suggests firearms are an actual serious threat to a well trained adult wizard for anything but the wizard's own incompetence. And Protego according to the movies and games can be cast in several different ways, such as 'Shield', 'Wall in front of me', and 'Bubble shield'. The Shield format seems to be the beginner form, but the wall is also canon because Hermione casts it like that in the tent during Ron and Harry's argument in the 7th book. The only version of it we don't see in the books is the Bubble Shied format.
Other varieties of the Shield Charm included as followed:
Darn. It does give a good layout of Hogwarts and the surrounding valley.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Source on the knight bouncing is Wonderbook: Book of Spells, so up to you whether you consider that acceptable canon or not.
Additionally, in the books the Shield Charm is stated to 'deflect minor curses' and that's it. However, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 9, Harry uses a Shield Charm that is powerful enough to send Snape flying backwards and into a table. Which, yes, isn't quite on the same level as bouncing a charging knight, but Harry is a teenager and it was still powerful enough to throw a grown man off his feet.
So even if you restrict yourself to purely the main books and nothing else, a properly cast Shield Charm by a teenage Harry Potter is still more than capable of outputting substantial amounts of kinetic force.
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Miho Chan
One with too many ideas
- Location
- Hummelstown
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ah yes, ye old "Canon say so so this author's fanfic is bad" the argument. Fencer has stated that in his version of Harry Potter guns will break shields. Ergo, guns break shields. End of story. You cannot have things both ways guys. If you're here to read a fanfic, read the damn fanfic without nitpicking about the lore.
Didn't most of DA successfully learned shielding charm? I think the hats are meant to solve a different problem. Most of the adults in wizarding Britain don't have their wand out unless they know they need it and even then shielding charm is useful only after you cast it. Which means that ambushed wizard is defenceless for the first couple of attacks/spells.
I think that the hat is more of a one-off automated defence to protect you from ambushes and give time to react.
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MaimakteriAnn
(Verified Sleepy)
- Location
- Enormous And Round Terran Homeworld
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Dr
Gotta object to the idea that magic in HP is particularly magical. I would have said it is particularly mechanistic and not magical. There is no magical thinking required to follow magic in HP. point wand, recieve bacon.
No one ever tortures a dog to death with it's head wrapped in their enemy's clothing, because obviously if you torture it enough it will rise as a ghost and be angry, but it will think your enemy did it because of the smell of their clothes. There's no sqibs who used to be wizards until a powerful spell needed somewhere to hide and scared all the other spells out of them.
That's fine, HP probably wouldn't be better if jolene kolene rowlene thought like Kinoko Nasu, but let's not pretend it isn't the case.
No one ever tortures a dog to death with it's head wrapped in their enemy's clothing, because obviously if you torture it enough it will rise as a ghost and be angry, but it will think your enemy did it because of the smell of their clothes. There's no sqibs who used to be wizards until a powerful spell needed somewhere to hide and scared all the other spells out of them.
That's fine, HP probably wouldn't be better if jolene kolene rowlene thought like Kinoko Nasu, but let's not pretend it isn't the case.
Tactical Tunic
Glorious Burgerman of Eagleland
- Location
- Holy Terra
So that's a no on enchanted bullets or an enchanted sub machine gun with enhanced muzzle velocity, zero recoil, truly silenced, and infinite ammo?
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Yep.
Note that when I say the spell is relatively complicated I don't mean that most adult wizards couldn't learn how to do a Shield Charm, just that most didn't.
Because, again, it's not something that the average civilian is ever likely to need to use. Why would you waste time learning how to use a spell that is only useful in combat if you never expect to get into combat? Most people are capable of learning basic martial arts and\or self defence, but most people also do not bother to do so. The same is true of magical people; most of them are entirely capable of learning self-defence spells like Protego, and most of them also simply do not bother to do so because they (mostly correctly) have no expectation of ever needing it.
e:
Canonically, 'enchantments' do not actually exist in the Potterverse. The canon equivalent is charms, and a charmed object is 'bewitched', not enchanted.
Someone could certainly charm a gun with all those functions; a gemino charm would do infinite ammo for example, but no magical would ever bother to do so because guns just aren't something that magicals see as a legitimate weapon.
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