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To be slightly fair Draco I think just does the whole Victorian thing of like a brooding genteel pauper of a failing noble line locked away in an ancient sinister mansion. Under him the Malfoys are completely retired and living entirely off the private wealth and stolen lucre of Malfoys past and dotting around making a hobby out of properly categorizing and archiving all the dark artifacts and accursed alchemical tomes that are lying around.

So still completely unpunished for all their many crimes, but also not actively making anything worse either. Lucius can barely talk to him anymore, so Draco's like not even making campaign contributions to Cornelius Fudge III or anything of the great Malfoy traditions.
 
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Acolyte said:
That's how wars work. You give amnesty to people so you can have peace instead of another insurgency.
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Thing is, the whole Voldemort episode wasn't really a war. There was no conscription, no mass armies, nothing of the sort.

A lot of this is Rowling decision to have the conflict focus on one big evil guy and nothing else, but outside of Voldemort and his immediate most loyal followers, there doesn't appear to exist a Voldemort supporting faction.

So, it's not discussing amnesty for the average soldier of the whermacht, it's discussing amnesty for the leadership of the SS. Because outside of that, there don't appear to exist any followers of Voldemort. The battles involved like a hundred people each or so.
 
I mean if you think about the size of Wizarding Britain and the upper limit to how many of magical peeps can live in the secret villages and hidden quarters, some few dozens and hundreds of duelists and hit-wizards striking here and there in assassinations and terror plots and street fights would I think be plenty of political violence for like the magic Troubles or the magic Years of Lead.
 
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Nyvis said:
How many actually saw it though? If you weren't born to non magical parents and kept your head down during the one year of occupation at Hogwarts, you probably put it out of your mind as something defeated and gone. And you weren't too likely to follow politics at the time, most of them are a bit young for that.
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I was thinking specifically of the 'muggleborns'. A whole generation of them. I apologize for being unclear.
 
RoboRenee said:
I was thinking specifically of the 'muggleborns'. A whole generation of them. I apologize for being unclear.
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A serious chunk of them are probably just dead, honestly?

The Death Eaters had the ministry, and thus the trace. Unless they had made solid connections to adult wizards, it's likely most of them got caught and killed.

That or just disappeared into the muggle world if they had families to fall back on who could help deal with the large gap in their schooling. And honestly considering how little changed, why would they come back and fight for that world again?
 
RoboRenee said:
I was thinking specifically of the 'muggleborns'. A whole generation of them. I apologize for being unclear.
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Especially since they have access to Muggle history about this, and it damn well doesn't take long to realize how fucked they are if they hang around.

Nyvis said:
A serious chunk of them are probably just dead, honestly?

The Death Eaters had the ministry, and thus the trace. Unless they had made solid connections to adult wizards, it's likely most of them got caught and killed.
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Christ, that just makes it worse.

10ebbor10 said:
Thing is, the whole Voldemort episode wasn't really a war. There was no conscription, no mass armies, nothing of the sort.

A lot of this is Rowling decision to have the conflict focus on one big evil guy and nothing else, but outside of Voldemort and his immediate most loyal followers, there doesn't appear to exist a Voldemort supporting faction.

So, it's not discussing amnesty for the average soldier of the whermacht, it's discussing amnesty for the leadership of the SS. Because outside of that, there don't appear to exist any followers of Voldemort. The battles involved like a hundred people each or so.
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And this is after the 2nd time they tried this shit. I damn well doubt anyone's preaching forgiveness this time around.
 
Nyvis said:
And honestly considering how little changed, why would they come back and fight for that world again?
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Because the genocidal lot aren't the live and let live sort. They can either leave to a different country (with its own equally terrible or worse magic government by all accounts) and hope that place doesn't follow suit with its own genocide, stay outside the magical world and hope that the barely resisted nightmarish murder cult doesn't go for round 3, or take matters into their own hands. I don't think all of them would take door number three, no, but that enough of them would to result in a revolution seems inevitable to me.
 
RoboRenee said:
Because the genocidal lot aren't the live and let live sort. They can either leave to a different country (with its own equally terrible or worse magic government by all accounts) and hope that place doesn't follow suit with its own genocide, stay outside the magical world and hope that the barely resisted nightmarish murder cult doesn't go for round 3, or take matters into their own hands. I don't think all of them would take door number three, no, but that enough of them would to result in a revolution seems inevitable to me.
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The most overt genocidal Death Eaters probably got bagged after Voldemort fell. The remaining ones probably fell back on propping up the system of discrimination that existed before just like they did after his first fall. Which is definitely bad, but not very likely to care much about non magical born kids who stick to that world.

Non magical born are already a minority, the war decimated their numbers, and quite a few probably just want to keep their distances. That's enough for a small insurgency, but not a society changing revolution unless they make ties with people who have been in the magical world for longer but still have grievances.
 
RoboRenee said:
Because the genocidal lot aren't the live and let live sort.
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After the war the Malfoys are.

10ebbor10 said:
Canonically they vanish in a puff of epilogue, never to be mentioned again.
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They just won and took over. There was no longer a need for a secret order with headquarters and such. They simply became some form of "old boys network" running the show.

Shackelbolt was a member of the order himself. Him arresting his comrades in arms seems very far fetched.
 
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Scroller said:
They just won and took over. There was no longer a need for a secret order with headquarters and such. They simply became some form of "old boys network" running the show.

Shackelbolt was a member of the order himself. Him arresting his comrades in arms seems very far fetched.
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Rowling's version of the story is that after Voldemort is defeated, everyone happily works together to get rid of the anti-mudblood discrimination in the ministry of magic. The ministry, previously an incompetent tool of evil, is fixed up by our heroes with little to no systematic change, it just works better and proper now.

But the question then is, how could it be that this "anti-mudblood discrimination" lasted so long, when apparently all the high level politicians in the government were always against it?
After all, Shackelbolt was a high ranking member of the Aurors before Voldemort even showed up, and so were many other figures. The political demographics of the wizarding community didn't change that much after the war, in fact that largest change is an anti-mudblood change because all the mudbloods got murdered.

The story posits the more cynical interpretation that the pre-war discrimination was there, because the general wizarding community supported it. Shackelbolt and Dumbledore and everyone else have tolerated the existing abuse for so long (despite it being well within their power to change it) because they fundamentally like the status quo.

So, when Voldemort shows up to upset the status quo, they think he's going a step too far, and they join Dumbledore's Army to stop him.
But once the status quo is restored, it's "mission accomplished, job done". The continuing existence of Dumbledore's army, in this instance concieved of as a revolutionary organisation with a goal beyond just the immediate defeat of Voldemort, is now a threat to the status quo, and hence dealt with accordingly.
 
the order of the phoenix is a social democrat party of the early 20th century bent, and has become sated and content with the status quo. Following their successful defeat of the forces of reaction, they were willing to leave the situation unquestioned, whilst the DA - a new and more radical faction - wanted to press on and address the core issues in their society.

At which point, inevitably, the Order joined forces with the reactionaries to throttle the nascent revolutionary movement in the crib, reducing it to a shell operating out of an apartment.

some members of the order presumably threw their lot in with the DA, but Shacklebolt and Harry evidently weren't among them.
 
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Radicalized DA
  • Informational
    • Okay the point of this story is that the author is dead but:

    It seems conceivable to me that, in a year of hiding inside a Hogwarts run by sadistic wizard nazis and watching friends disappear, the members of Dumbledore's Army quietly radicalized. They realized that Voldemort was just the most visible symptom of a deeper sickness and that the solution had to go further. They were doing their best to survive with the stories that Harry Potter was out there striking blows against the enemy and the time would come soon that he would be weak, and in the mean time they trained, hide, and talked endlessly about what was wrong with the world and why.

    These were kids who didn't have the backing of the dad's old crew, who didn't have allies in the establishment, who didn't have money or titles or a grand destiny. They didn't have reason to idolize the ineffectual wizard cops who tortured people run through a sham justice system. Their only allies were the marginalized magical peoples of Britain, which made them very aware of how relevant all those boring stories from History of Magic were. And they contained among their numbers hiding muggleborn students who smuggled them words and political ideas.

    Then Harry Potter comes back, Voldemort was defeated, and when they turned to him expecting a revolutionary hero, or at least his approval for the immense legitimacy it would provide, he wasn't up for it. And the post-war government came down hard.

    To be on the nose about it, I imagine a lot of the deputies helping the aurors round up Dumbledore's Army were working as snatchers not long before.
     
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    • open_sketch said:
    Okay the point of this story is that the author is dead but:

    It seems conceivable to me that, in a year of hiding inside a Hogwarts run by sadistic wizard nazis and watching friends disappear, the members of Dumbledore's Army quietly radicalized. They realized that Voldemort was just the most visible symptom of a deeper sickness and that the solution had to go further. They were doing their best to survive with the stories that Harry Potter was out there striking blows against the enemy and the time would come soon that he would be weak, and in the mean time they trained, hide, and talked endlessly about what was wrong with the world and why.

    These were kids who didn't have the backing of the dad's old crew, who didn't have allies in the establishment, who didn't have money or titles or a grand destiny. They didn't have reason to idolize the ineffectual wizard cops who tortured people run through a sham justice system. Their only allies were the marginalized magical peoples of Britain, which made them very aware of how relevant all those boring stories from History of Magic were. And they contained among their numbers hiding muggleborn students who smuggled them words and political ideas.

    Then Harry Potter comes back, Voldemort was defeated, and when they turned to him expecting a revolutionary hero, or at least his approval for the immense legitimacy it would provide, he wasn't up for it. And the post-war government came down hard.

    To be on the nose about it, I imagine a lot of the deputies helping the aurors round up Dumbledore's Army were working as snatchers not long before.
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    My kingdom for an 'oh no' emoji.
     
    Crabbe and Goyle: Head Wizards of the Inquisitor Squad Auror Junior Cadets and Dark Arts Defense League
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    Rowling's version of the story is that after Voldemort is defeated, everyone happily works together to get rid of the anti-mudblood discrimination in the ministry of magic. The ministry, previously an incompetent tool of evil, is fixed up by our heroes with little to no systematic change, it just works better and proper now.

    But the question then is, how could it be that this "anti-mudblood discrimination" lasted so long, when apparently all the high level politicians in the government were always against it?
    After all, Shackelbolt was a high ranking member of the Aurors before Voldemort even showed up, and so were many other figures. The political demographics of the wizarding community didn't change that much after the war, in fact that largest change is an anti-mudblood change because all the mudbloods got murdered.

    The story posits the more cynical interpretation that the pre-war discrimination was there, because the general wizarding community supported it. Shackelbolt and Dumbledore and everyone else have tolerated the existing abuse for so long (despite it being well within their power to change it) because they fundamentally like the status quo.

    So, when Voldemort shows up to upset the status quo, they think he's going a step too far, and they join Dumbledore's Army to stop him.
    But once the status quo is restored, it's "mission accomplished, job done". The continuing existence of Dumbledore's army, in this instance concieved of as a revolutionary organisation with a goal beyond just the immediate defeat of Voldemort, is now a threat to the status quo, and hence dealt with accordingly.
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    We can observe the same effect in British history:
    After World War I, they had to give a lot more credence to political self-determination due to the war - a notion the British Empire certainly didn't care much about, and they'd have been much happier with the status quo. But there had just been a war also very much about whether people could politicall self-determine, and so it was a bit hard to get back to that. They still did whatever they could to do so, of course. Same with the USA - who stood in for that ideal, but also declared South America to be their sphere of influence (a concept which kinda started WW I).

    And then after World War II again, of course. It's pretty well known nowadays that Britain (and of course the USA) was atrociously racist, anti-semitic, and so on. A lot of soldiers who fought in WW II were radicalised against those notions of course - but then the people invested into the status quo did their best to uphold it. Black and colonial soldiers didn't get any of the benefits that white ones got, queer soldiers got fired as soon as the war was over, and so on.


    Bad explanation cut short, this seems quite parallel to here?
    Obviously it's different within the same nation, and if anyone can think of civil war equivalents to compare it to go ahead please, but it does seem a possible (not guaranteed!) outcome for something like this to happen, where the centrists just hold their ideas and values and only fight against the right-wing extremists because they threaten stability or to take their power, not because of ideals.
     
    open_sketch said:
    Waving a wand is still labour!
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    I mean they seem to be able to replicate food, clean, and do rudimentary healthcare and more! Wouldn't that generate a massive surplus of productivity for magic users such that they can afford to spend most of their time doing whatever they want? With magic being able to stand in for a global supply chain, are individual wizards not capable of existing in something akin to autarky?
    Wouldn't that massively distort the economic calculus?
     
    CyberEnby said:
    I mean they seem to be able to replicate food, clean, and do rudimentary healthcare and more! Wouldn't that generate a massive surplus of productivity for magic users such that they can afford to spend most of their time doing whatever they want? With magic being able to stand in for a global supply chain, are individual wizards not capable of existing in something akin to autarky?
    Wouldn't that massively distort the economic calculus?
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    "No, because you can't make food from nothing."
    "But can't you make animals from nothing? And plants? And water? Whole living creatures? You can make wheat, leaves, tomato plants, and pigs, but not a BLT?"
    "No! You can't make food, okay!"
     
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    I thought it was you could replicate an original piece of food, but only so many times before it degraded, and you can't copy the copies.
     
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