Pretty sure this is a Word of God thing. As you say, canon largely has difficulty remembering there is a world outside the handful of locations comprising Wizarding Britain.
Hermione learns a thing
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
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Yeah, not interested in those ... the collective intelligence of the wizarding world is low enough, I don't need to inflict more stupid on them.
- Location
- Neptune
What for? You're just going to dismiss it anyway.
So it is a twitter post and not in the books, right.
Mp3 said what he was basing the fanfic on (and it wasn't the movies) already and definitely didn't include random internet posts like this one.
In Latest Retcon, J.K. Rowling Reveals Wizards Used to Poop on the Floor at Hogwarts
Which by the way directly contradicts this lovely statement from Dumbledore himself in Goblet of Fire.
If they just shat anywhere and vanished the mess before bathrooms were installed in the castle there's absolutely no reason at all for any amount of chamber pots to exist in Hogwarts for Dumbledore to find in the first place.
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Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
The books are canon, the film adaptations are canon where they don't contradict the books, everything else is mere official. It's like Wildbow's story-contradicting WoGs.
Eh, I'd say the films are more like an alternate timeline rather than canon when it doesn't contradict the books. Simply too much changed between the two with different goals in mind to make a coherent whole out of the two.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Pretty much this, yes. I'm using the books/movies as basic canon sources, and whatever fever dreams JKR came up with well after the fact isn't really required for my story 
I may well reject most establised fanon too, so I await the screams of rage
I may well reject most establised fanon too, so I await the screams of rage
- Location
- Upstate NY, USA
- Pronouns
- Fjf
The key competency required for employees of a large scale, long tenure organization, especially the Ministry?
Navigate and survive the bureaucracy and retain (and sometimes advance) their position. And budgets.
The average Ministry drone does not need skills in close quarters combat or magical combat to do their jobs. With the exception of the DMLE, neither do department heads or senior managers.
Assume you are a clerk for the Department of Magical Transportation. You've been promoted twice since leaving Hogwarts. Would being a highly skilled duelist advance your career? Or being able to cast a corporeal Patronus?
The Ministry was perfectly competent at what most of the senior leadership and patron/sponsor class wanted - take bribes, protect the existing power structure, facilitate businesses and pet projects.
They were incompetent at counterinsurgency.
HP wizards might be largely incompetent, but they have all the tools needed to solve that problem. It's completely believable that on anyone watching a video of say a dragon would be utterly convinced they are watching cute cat videos due to some spell.
Which could be an interesting direction to take this story. She eventually starts to discover not just the muggle repelling charms but a bunch of fidelius like charms making everyone in the world forget about various seemingly unimportant secrets. "Walter Vinter ate the last slice of pizza slice at the Match 3rd, 1957" which then repeats for several different foods and dates etc.
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And spells taught in Hogwarts as part of the basic curriculum evidently, but we've already covered this previously @RandolphCarter.
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FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
This is a bit of a problem if you want people to still know how to do it years later. Because I know I don't know how to do a lot of stuff I learned in school. And the books did show nobody that was held back or expelled over academics IIRC so in many cases people probably never learned in the first place and just got a bad grade. IMO it is telling that with Dumbledore's Army Harry had to teach a lot of people things they should already know and that was with the motivated segment of the student population.
In fairness, a lot of adults are non-proficient in skills that they shouldn't have been able to graduate high school without. What you don't maintain at all you often lose.
At the same time it's a bit hard to believe that combat charms are actually irrelevant to normal adults given how relevant they are to schoolchildren outside of the class where they're taught.
Since these people have been undergoing a guerrilla war for a large portion of their lives (the adults) I indeed find them not practicing the most basic of self defense available to them to be incompetence. If you lived in a war zone and learned how to defend yourself as part of your basic curriculum while in school I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have any trouble making time to stay in practice.
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Which might have been not that much of an issue, IF their only police wasn't just police special forces. Yes they are very skilled, partly because of the requirements for joining being so high that they hadn't added any new members since the last insurgency, but there are only so many...
The US likely has it better, but
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The vast majority of civilians living in war zones don't learn to fight. Imagine of ancient sieges had resulted in everyone in the city learning to fight, history would have looked very different.
Learning a shield spell isn't really the same kind of demand as infantry training.
It's more like if passing a class on safe handgun handling made you bulletproof as long as you didn't forget it. Except that the class is also a required part of your elementary education.
(Also, unlike a muggle civilian, a wizard civilian in a war zone never has the dubious protection of being recognized as unarmed because a wand is always a deadly weapon.)
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But Defense Against the Dark Arts is a required class at Hogwarts and a core part of their curriculum and likely has been since the advent of Hogwarts as an educational institute.
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
Saurial or Minerva would certainly help her math her magic, but the Prime Asset (Taylor/Distance Learning) would help her Science her magic properly, and that seems to be the direction Hermione's going anyway.
And per Hermione's 'light reading' in canon book 1, Flamel is the only known maker of one. Implying that either the other alchemists the muggles knew about didn't create an actual Philosopher's Stone, or that the other alchemists were merely unknown to the authors of the book Hermione was reading.
Which may have been cursed since Tom riddle. We don't have all the details, but it was kinda known the teachers tended to only end up being able to teach one year before something happened which led to them not being able to stay another year. At minimum for the duration of the books.
Didn't stop Harry and co from learning the necessary spells or people from passing the necessary NEWTS to join the Aurors in more than one case in years ahead of his (Tonks as an example). So obviously it's more than possible.
And Harry and Co were the first to do so since about the first war. And of course, probably a combo of dumbles pulling strings to get good teachers such as mad-eye moody, in spite of him mostly being impersonated by a death eater, and other somewhat knowledgably characters, alongside most importantly, probably the existence of the DA, which functioned for two years or so?
It might be more a glut of competence, and students deciding to source their own learning than the institution. I mean, we do have that history class taught by that one ghost, and the divination that may or may not be next to useless...
Edit: Or I might be wrong on the Aurors thing, since going by the potterverse wiki, there were no new members during the whole period between the wars against the death eaters.
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Mr. Cloak
Orchestrator of Paradoxical Apocalypse
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- I
Nope! Or, at least, probably not. In the US, you can get the meter removed from a house, then buy one and reconnect it to get free power. My workplace was built on a site where the houseowner had done that and it was undiscovered for ten years.
It may be different in England, but I don't live there.
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Uh. Tonks, again?
The only thing I can see resembling your claim that nobody passed for an Auror is a quote from McGonagall that nobody had been taken for an Auror in the last three years, but that statement implies (conventionally, though not logically) that someone was taken for an Auror 4 years ago. That's a lot more recently than the first war.
Also, Harry and co of course learned their stuff before forming the DA.
... Well. never trust Wikis I guess...
As far as harry and co. Well, the teachers they had was Quirrell, whom had at least some decent skill and then got possessed by a dark lord. So while near zero self esteem cause Tom Riddle, wouldn't be suprised he was a decent teacher. Then there was Remus Lupin, a war vet with quite a bit of experience. Then there was the guy who only really knows memory erase spells, whom tried, but may have helped more by through incompetence encouraging independent study. Then there was Mad Eye Moody, one of the best Aurors in britain. While the actual teacher may have been mostly a polyjuiced death eater, he still taught very important things, such as introducing the favored Death Eater Curse Imperio, as well as how sufficient will can defeat it. And then there was the 'inquisitor', which helped more by pushing the foundation of the DA, where a few key spells like the Patronus was taught, and refining foundational skills that are at the core of any wizard fight.
The problem is, we have no clue what the quality of teachers were for the position prior to the Boy who Lived returning, and dumbles would be very aware how critical said class would be for Harry. Especially if the position was as much as a revolving door as seems to have been implied.
BarbaCoPut
Voluta indomita
- Location
- Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/His
I find this part interesting, because, as you know
Too late, but had to put this here...
Too late, but had to put this here...