Wouldn't be surprised if she got all of the worst duties and was habitually hazed in the office.
Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse
- Thread starter Fencer
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- Crossover Fantasy Superhero
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She'd probably get guard duty a lot. She is still a moody- trained fighter, that isn't really a resource that can be afforded to put on noncombat scut work.
Exactly this. Anything that takes more time in combat to counter than it does time in combat to set up is going to be a move that puts you closer to winning. Even if your spell takes more time to cast in the first place, if you can do it before combat then the in-combat time cost is zero, and if it costs your opponent any time to deal with, that's a win. Any wizard worth their salt would prep the battlefield if possible, drink relevant potions, and have summoned/transfigured/animated/whatever minions ready to go before combat starts.
In practice, this would mean that a wizard ambush would be even more effective than it is in conventional muggle combat ("MUGGLE KOMBAT!!!"), as you're getting nailed with however many minutes worth of prepared magical bullshit all at once, like someone getting to throw a dozen haymakers before you can swing back in a fistfight.
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Minefields, claymore mines, bunkers, sandbags, machine gun nests, trenches, presighted artillery, wires, assorted booby traps, sniper positions, withdrawal routes, secondary positions...
Same thing, really. Just a lot less gear needed.
It's kind of staggering how few mages does this, canonically. Fred, George and McGonnagall seems to be the outliers, to me. And the twins the only ones who went all in on it. Different culture. Different values. Different mindsets.
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Could be an honor type of thing.
Servant of Evil
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Most of the time, it's AKs being thrown about. Very specific Green Jets of magic being thrown about. Otherwise it's typically unspecified curses. The only exceptions are when they bust out Crucio, when Crabbe uses Fiendfyre, Bellatrix using a RED spell on Sirius and sending him though the veil in the book, Bellatrix using knives at the Malfoy Manor in book 7, Snape using his Dark Cutting Curse in the battle of 7 Harrys, and weirdly the Death Eater Dolohov, who is never depicted as using the AK in the books. Rather he used a curse on Neville and a purple fire whip on Hermione.
Then there's Voldemort, but he's his own beast so.
Where there 7 boys who lived at one point?
Book 7, when they were transporting Harry to the Tonks'. Moody died.
Servant of Evil
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To build on this, this was also the fight where George got his ear cut off by Snape, and where Hedwig died protecting Harry.
So a fact about the Dark Magic in Harry Potter while the Three Unforgivable Curses are the most well known, any and all magic designed specifically to inflict harm on others is technically dark magic including those just used for pranks. The spells themselves are divided into three grades Jinxes, Hexes and then finally Curses starting off mildly annoying and then becoming incredibly harmful and deadly. The spells themselves can go from causing you to speak nonsense to straight up making you vomit up your entrails so while AK will kill you far worse things could happen. As for other cases of Transfiguration used in battle Percy actually turned Pius Thickness into a Sea Urchin during battle to incapacitate him as he was imperiused.
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Its also notable that Pius Thickness had already been taken down earlier in that same battle, and it didn't stick. I noticed that on my first read, and was baffled why the resistance was still fighting using spells that didn't even take their enemies out of the fight for a few minutes, let alone the rest of the battle or life.
Fencer
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Did not remember that but honestly it raises a better reason to nix transfiguration during combat. I don't recal transfiguration coming with a burst of light. So how could anyone block it? If you don't put limiters on it then whoever casts first wins with transfiguration.
I imagine in such cases the transfiguration not in itself being instant but taking a few seconds to take effect and fully warp the body giving the transfigured wizard a few seconds to reverse the transformation. Of course if the Wizard has been disarmed they have no actual defense against the spell which could be quite bad. Spells last far longer than some might originally think, Lilly gave Professor Slughorn a fish which she had transfigured from a flower petal and the spell only reverted after she had died. If no one undoes the Transfiguration the victim could most likely spend years as an animal.
I'm not saying they take off the combat roster, they just keep giving her the worst jobs, and when she's in the office they prank her mercilessly
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I dunno. During peacetime I think you would be right, but during wartime? Especially a war they are losing and have to constantly be worried about subversion and infiltration? I'm not sure pranking is going to be on anyone's priority list. Rather than dirty jobs and pranks, I imagine they would keep pushing her into dangerous breaching operations where she gets the 'honor' of being the first through the door over and over. That way, either she eventually dies (removing the stain from the department) or she gets so covered in glory that people feel safe forgiving her because she became so effective at beating the enemy. I don't think pranks would enter into it.
In my defense, Servant of Evil said "7 Harrys" not "book 7".
Proof in red:
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
They had several people polyjuiced as him as decoys. So it really was the battle of multiple Harry's.
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Also, since this is Taylor 'I can make butterflies into a weapon' Hebert, seemingly harmless spells should also be something she weaponizes. Stuff like levitation (to create cover, raise up dust clouds that people choke on, or even be used on people to send them spinning) and the like. Taylor excels above all else at taking what she has and making it useful to a degree most would not expect possible. Once she hits her stride with magic, she'll likely do so here as well.
And yeah, it may not be a Silver Bullet to solve their problems, but anything that makes the odds of victory a little better is something to at least test out in a controlled environment.
And yeah, it may not be a Silver Bullet to solve their problems, but anything that makes the odds of victory a little better is something to at least test out in a controlled environment.
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Ah, war spells. I suspect the humble lumos, which we already know can be modified, could be made into a flashbang (the bang might take something else) or a graser. I don't know what lumos solaris maximus would do, but I'm test-firing by sticking my wand through a peep-hole in a blast shield.
Cutting water jets seem doable, if too much effort for a duel. If not for the books' target demographic I would consider it strange that trying to turn the ground under your enemy's feet into a hazard (spikes, fire, liquify, briefly liquify) wasn't a common tactic. Particle beams. Poisonous gasses are just horrifying.
Did you know the difference between nitrogen gas, hydrogen cyanide, and carbon monoxide is the location of one proton? Warning, gas diffuses and the wind blows.
Spells can be on a time delay and have trigger conditions. Sure, that may be the domain of runes and/or arithmancy (about which we know nothing), but consider the Hogwarts house points tracker. Any time someone authorized to do so verbally gives or deducts points, regardless of sentence structure or if the house is named, the tracker in the great hall physically adds or removes gems and changes the displayed number as appropriate. If that's not proof of magical programming, I don't know what is. Scripts and triggers are incredibly powerful.
Good God I would have so much fun with that. And I don't feel comfortable admitting how many of the military applications I can think of would be war crimes.
Cutting water jets seem doable, if too much effort for a duel. If not for the books' target demographic I would consider it strange that trying to turn the ground under your enemy's feet into a hazard (spikes, fire, liquify, briefly liquify) wasn't a common tactic. Particle beams. Poisonous gasses are just horrifying.
Did you know the difference between nitrogen gas, hydrogen cyanide, and carbon monoxide is the location of one proton? Warning, gas diffuses and the wind blows.
Spells can be on a time delay and have trigger conditions. Sure, that may be the domain of runes and/or arithmancy (about which we know nothing), but consider the Hogwarts house points tracker. Any time someone authorized to do so verbally gives or deducts points, regardless of sentence structure or if the house is named, the tracker in the great hall physically adds or removes gems and changes the displayed number as appropriate. If that's not proof of magical programming, I don't know what is. Scripts and triggers are incredibly powerful.
Good God I would have so much fun with that. And I don't feel comfortable admitting how many of the military applications I can think of would be war crimes.
It's not just spells which can be abused but potions too, back before the Statue of Secrecy a wizard known as Samuel Plunkett punished a village for the disrespect they showed him by poisoning their well with Shrinking Solution. The potion caused the entire village to shrink to the size of nice and he pretended to be a giant to terrorize the populace. Gregory the Smarmy meanwhile created a potion that allowed him to bewitch King Richard causing him to be seen as a close friend and advisor allowing him to grow rich and powerful. There is a lot of hidden details in Harry Potter that really make it clear the Statue of Secrecy has done a great benefit to Mugglekind as they are no able to live lives largely free of magic. Taylor will most likely become incredibly paranoid the more and more she learns about what the people around her are capable of doing.
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Unless I missed something, Taylor doesn't actually have the ability to use a wand here. So she could certainly train Harry and co to use their spells in such a manner, but she herself could not. Of course given what she was able to do with both the Undersiders and Chicago Wards, I think she'll manage to be perfectly terrifying as a wandless general instead of a wand wielding duelist.
I don't think they have tried. Taylor has simply gone with the assumption that she can't do magic because her world didn't have any.
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There isn't a scream reaction and the bones expired eighty days ago, so take my strained laughter instead.
