Criticisms about the Magical World (Harry Potter only)

Hey guys, So I recently got into questing and wanted to make a HP quest but for that I need Ideas, So I want help from you guys to make criticisms and observations about the wizarding world that could be improved and changed, I will parse all of your comments to make a list so that I can use it in my quest.

 

What does the goblin do with the muggle money they get from muggle parents in exchange for providing galleons?
What's the power level of wizards? Dumbledore in crimes of Grindelwald was able to cover a big portion of the city in darkness with fog. So, how would he fare against a police or military squad?
Also, during ww2 how was Wizarding London able to stay hidden from the bombing? Because if even a single bomb had dropped in Diagon Alley or Hogsmead a lot of lives would've been lost. Wizards would not be uninformed of muggle weapons if something like that had happened?
What about satellite pictures? Dragons, giants, should've been noticed by now if wizarding wards were unable to fool cameras?

 

The imperio can’t be resisted by muggles, yes? Surely at least one wanna-be dark lord was a muggle-born and knew the kind of damage firearms can do? Why didn’t they just imperio every world leader and all commanders of every army to achieve world domination? I doubt the average magical taken by surprise could resist the average soldier who came prepared.

 

Because the wizarding government, at least in England keeps aurors around the prime minister as demonstrated in book 6

 

I always wondered. I never read the books you see.

 

I atleast think they keep a close eyes on the true top dogs, like ministers, military leaders, parliament etc.

 

Maybe not the British ministry but the ICW definitely must be doing it.
Plus, they must have hundreds and hundreds of spells and wards to notify if muggles are finding about magic. like the one american ministry does in fantastic beasts. They had some kind of large clock to show what level of damage has happened and some kind of map to show in which general area people knew about magic. And that was in the 1920's by Harry's time Grindelwald and Voldemort's campaigns must have forced the higher ups to have even more strict protocols.

 

Despite magic being hereditary (Genetic per WoG) we are expected to think that it wouldn't be such a huge evolutionary advantage that it would quickly become a dominant trait in the human species. This is despite the extra toughness and accidental and life saving magic and transportation magics and ect ect. Wizards should be the most common kind of human by far!

 

I'm literally writing a story about this.

The fact that the Wizarding world fails to advance after the fifteenth century because they decided, as a society, that 'it works well enough' was enough of a reason to stop advancing technology infuriates me.

By all rights, the Wizarding World could be the most advanced society in the world. They should have colonized the entire solar system. They should have gotten to other galaxies.

For fuck's sake, they could have sent a Portkey or something to Mars and have builders, scientists and what-have-yous coming and going by the 2000's, if not much earlier.

The Wizarding World has no inquisitive minds.

 

Yeah, My theory is that even though the magic gene is super dominant it needs activation conditions like being in a magically rich area for some time etc, which is probably how muggleborn's are born.

This is also one of the things that I have thought about this my only conclusion, is that either Magic only works on earth and is not a universal constant, or there had been attempts before but they all failed due to having little information of the danger's of space, and I think the wizarding world actually entered stagnation after they set up the statute of secrecy because they lost the need for survival. One good thing that came out of the statute of secrecy would be an explosion of potion ingredients and likely potioneers as well, because ingredient-based professions and shops do well in a single concentrated market.

This is also probably the reason why Potion's such as the wolfbane are still being invented. On the other hand, wand magic is still has the same amount of risk prior and after statute so people now knowing that they have a much easier path to the money by becoming a potioneer, would obviously choose so.

It is even worse if you consider that if Wizards put a large scale effort into it they could most possibly terraform a planet. Then they would have an entire planet just for magical people.

One of the other reason that wizards have stopped growing is that it is actually children who are the most inquisitive, but as the wizarding world has no primary school, and all of them are homeschooled, they probably didn't even have time to develop the curiosity before being told it is just the way it works by exhausted parents

 

How the hell do spells work at all?
Like, the movements, and the words, how do they make sense?
Avada Kedavra, for example, is some bastardized Aramaic, but then you also have Sectumsempra, which is Latin.

Is there a magical language or something?

There's also Gamp's Law of whatever which states you can't do certain things with magic, such as create good food. Note the "good" there. It isn't weird enough that food isn't an option, but you can apparently conjure up sauces, so apparently there exists some sort of upper nutritional value or something which judges which food is possible to conjure.

Again, why is that a thing?

Basically, about everything concerning the fact that Harry Potter magic is a soft magic system, which is pretty great narratively, but horrible for anything concerning proper planning.


So really, I'd say put spellcraft on that list, with how weirdly inconsistent it is, and how little exploration and concrete information there seems to be. I mean, come on, are you telling me noone before Snape created a "I cut things" spell? And that's like their one evolutionary advantage!

 

Heh, I've also been thinking about writing a science fantasy version of Harry Potter where magitech is the norm and "muggles" are very rare cripples. I could up the scale of everything and make the wizarding world seem like a fun, intergalactic place to live.

It helps that I don't know of any time distance mattered for apparation or portkeys in the books or movies.

 

I think I vaguely recall someone drawing comparisons on how Hogwarts is sorta similar to the American Indian boarding schools? In that it's centered around assimilating them into Wizarding culture as the expense of their "muggle" culture.

Hermione is a pretty good example, I think? She goes from spending her summers and holidays with her parents but that starts getting cut down as she chooses to stay at Hogwarts instead.

 

They didn't stop advancing technologically for gods sake. Hell, they are still hundreds if not thousands of years ahead of us, modern times. They use magic and when they see a nifty muggle innovation they enhance it, make it much better and include it to their society.

Complaining about why they don't bother advancing muggle stuff is like complaining why we didn't continue researching vacuum tubes after we found transistors. It's mostly obsolete.

To be honest, that's just normal human behavior exaggerated by the fact that they literally don't need it.
Like, what are they going to do with a Mars base or colony? Space Elevators? Hell, why should they even colonize the Solor System 1000s of years in the future let alone now?

They already got infinite space, infinite material, entropy defying magic. Plus their population is also small for some reason.

They got literally zero reason to explore space other than curiosity and most don't bother because just the magic they have and the Earth they inhabit is mysterious enough.

1) Most likely because you still need some skill and work in making magical stuff even if you can literally get anything mundane without any cost. And seeing as most humans let alone Wizards are lazy there are definitely demand for it.

2) Currently? They sit, entertain themselves, fight among each other and when needed control the world.

3) There are no such a thing as Wards in canon. There are protective spells and even a Hogwarts student can put them easily.* And if they can protect against it, probably, depending on the payload. But the biggest problem is actually finding it and then somehow hitting it and doing all that before all Wizards just go away with Floo or teleportation or their space defying cars or brooms etc. Also add the fact that their major centers reside in major cities which you wouln't want to bomb.

4)I assume a combination of magic BS and the fact that they can easily get people into all the relevant places that will modify the data. It's very likely Office of Misinformation deals with that kind of stuff.

5)In my opinion? Because Rowling wanted a setting familiar to the reader and didn't want to bother with coming up with the changes. Like how Dresden Files somehow has a modern world setting even when by all accounts modern world as we know it shouldn't exists.

6)They aren't rare. New spells, potions and such are invented every decade. Hell, Time Turners and True Time Turners are only decades old and modern times respectively and they literally blow everything out of water other than maybe Felix Felicis aka Liquid Luck (which is also only invented in 16th century, not anything ancient or legendary)

*Hermione casually put up Protego Totalum, Salvio Hexia, Repello Muggletum, the Muffliato Charm, Cave Inimicum, and the Disillusionment Charm which, in a matter of seconds, rendered an area silent, invisible, repelled muggles, set up an alarm, warded against hexes, and shielded it.

Spoiler: Go to 1:30

 

Avoid the rest of us.

 

Wizarding World is designed as a Nostalgia Society but real

Just like how we have rose tinted glasses about how great it was when we were young, where we are ignorant about how things work. Anything at that time is like magic because we had that wonder about this new tele or the wild wild west of early netscape.

We don't know how it works but it was amazing .

 

They are superior in their applications of magic that I won't argue with, but they are significantly behind on finding why the magic works, or heck even something like finding DNA. It is like they stopped searching for where the magic comes from or even why it chooses them. As for why they didn't go galactic I am not satisfied with your answer, Do you mean to say that they like to live under the threat of witch-hunting rather than find a new planet completely ruled by wizards?

About making magical versions of muggle inventions, then why is it that they haven't come around to television, phones and computers and work to include the information era? Why is that their newspapers are still black and white?

Also, I don't think they are improving drastically, all they did was create magical versions of non-magical stuff which by definition would work better because it works by magic. But being advanced and being able to do advanced stuff is pretty different. I may know that if I mix bleach with acid I may accidentally kill myself with mustard gas but that doesn't mean I know what happens to make the mustard gas.

One of my pet peeves of the wizarding world is the use of quills. It may be a simple thing, a non-issue generally, but it shows the problems in society itself. There may be an important reason why the wizarding population still uses quills, like it may be because it imprints the magical signature of the person using it etc. But my problem comes here, even though they know the problems associated with quill's like ink smudges, uneven writing etc, and they know better alternative like fountain pens they still use quills. Don't even mention that iron or steel is not a good conductor of magic, there are ways around that and we even know that goblin silver is not the magically conductive metal.

 

Threat of witch hunts are exaggerated. They are the first ones to cross continents, invent teleportation, matter transfiguration, time travel and all other BS. The fact that they couldn't/didn't find the origin of magic or how it works is irrelevant.

This planet is already ruled by wizards and it's been like for thousands of years. Hell, it may be the only reason why muggles even exists. There are plenty of magical predators and races that would have caused the extinction of muggles without Wizards.

You do realize that all Harry Potter works bar the Cursed Child happens before 2000s yes? Our computers are a joke, our phones are even more hilarious. Televisions are also unnecessary because they not only had moving pictures in their newspapers, they had artificial intelligence just for their entertainment. I am not just talking about portraits.

I wasn't joking when I say they improved them massively. Forget the fact that that Ministry of Magic employs cars charmed to be invisible, fly, change their dimensions to fit into tight spots and enlarge their insides to fit more people.

I am talking about the fact that Knight Bus. The fucking thing is one of the most impressive things that Harry Potter movies managed to bring it into the cinema. Fucker has acceleration, maneuverability and magic BS in it that puts modern race cars to shame that I don't get how people say that Wizards don't get muggle tech.

I mean, most likely reason is probably the fact that most people outside of students don't use Quills by hand. Not only there are spells that write things for you, there are Quills that write for you.

Just the wiki gives you many types of Quill.

 

I would like to remind everyone that we see the wizarding world through the eyes of a not all that inquisitive, or you know, bright individual. As such, we are in the dark on how large sections of wizarding society functions. I.e. How the government, legal system and military functions. The intricacies of how magic functions (Harry had a class on this, we just didn't get to see it). Magical innovations and inventions. Large sections of history and society.

Also, if you take the Cursed Child as canon (I don't), then in a few decades after all the time turners were destroyed, a single individual not only made on from scratch but upgraded it to prevent any paradox issues, thereby blowing any idea they don't improve massively out of the water.

 

I personally hate Time Turners, I consider them one the worst things in HP.

 

time travel has to be handled incredibly carefully in any setting that has it

Or be pointed out as a chaotic and infuriating thing which can potentially fuck everything up

 

Is the Wizarding World using the gold standard? Who or what backs the value of their money when Gringotts is a joke?

Lot's of classes for spells and things of a magical nature like divination and defense against the dark arts, but what about philosophy, sociology, history, MATH?

 

I'm not that certain that gold has value given the fact we've seen gold duplicated onscreen, so it might be just one of those imaginary societal constructs with the gold being there to look pretty.

Also, there were a lot of subjects that we didn't see, because again, Harry wasn't all the inquisitive or bright. We know for a fact that Magic Theory was taught to first years, as well as Hogwarts having subjects like art and music, so I just filed it under 'It exists, but Harry didn't know or care about it."

Also, Hogwarts did have history classes. Multiple depending on how you count it.

 

The Wizarding World was pretty much so far ahead of the rest of the world that the issues lurking at its heart have only really started to become problems in the last hundred to hundred and fifty years. If you took someone from the 1850's, about eleven years of age, and put them into the Wizarding World of Harry's time, just the Wizarding World, even with all the pureblood bigotry, the other issues related to things, they would look at it as a place of wonder and amazement.

The Wizarding World has mass public transit and has had it for hundreds of years. The Wizarding World has incredible healthcare, even by today's standards. It has good information storage, good educational resources. It also has longer generational cycles that don't align with non magical world well, as a standard Wizard is probably going to be fit and active well into their eighties at the least.

The other factor is that the Magical World is probably dealing with stagnating population due to them having more rights between sexes, with males and females able to hold jobs and careers which probably has lead to lower birth rates. They have had no equivalent of a Baby Boom after WWII or had it so long ago their population spiked up dramatically a long while ago. This would be due to increased standards of healthcare making children actually survive more to adulthood then the non magical standard.

A tension that is not helped by the probable increase in non magicals entering society, as out population exploded massively only in the last two hundred or so years, which is probably why the pureblood reactionaries started to show up in the first place.

 

That’s literally the second half of Negima!, too. The magical community colonized Mars like a thousand years ago and now only a few magical enclaves live on the ‘Old World’.

A battle harem manga staring a 9 yr old did it better than Rowling.

 

I just always assumed they had those classes, but Rowlings didn't write about it since it wasn't relative to the story. After all, she never mentioned the teachers of Divination, Runes, Arithmicy, or the old CoMC teacher Kettleborn until book 3. Did they just materialize? No, they were there but not important to the story. She only shows a couple of classes a week. I highly doubt they are in class for only 12 hours each week, so it's probably filled with normal classes.

For that matter, if they don't have normal classes, how did the Weasley's and other purebloods learn to read and write?

The second option is the one I went with in my story, and if you look at it in the books, that was what was implied (just ignore tCC, that was crap ).

 

Well, that depends on your view.

If you remember, the wizarding populations actually pretty small and probably well dispersed. If you have maybe only one or two wizarding families in a village with people terrified of you consorting with evil spirits, then them forming an angry mob is probably not good for you. In the 90s configuration, that small and dispersed population can actually be an advantage, as the Wizards have the infrastructure and the institutions to address their fears of exposure.

If you were a wizard who lived before they established a Ministry of Magic to go out and brainwash people--then you either had to be really good at illusion and brainwashing or you were SOL if you were uncovered. If you had a rogue wizard running around causing problems, then you had to rely upon a local hero or power wizard to handle the situation--you couldn't just send an owl to the MoM and wait for them to send an Auror squad to take him out.

Once you combine institutions and infrastructure with those potent magical abilities that probably only a minority of their population has (even if it a large minority), then you're in a fantastic position.

But most of those aren't actually useful for military purposes. Most forms of cross-continental transportation either requires a portkey (which will work for anyone who touches it--regardless of intent or magical ability) that require their own security and brooms/flying carpets. That's it. Recall that Voldemort had to fly part of the way from Germany to the UK before apparating to the Malfoy's estate.

It really wasn't. The Potter World was pretty much doing its best to stay out of the affairs of muggles. They generally considered them below their notice to involve themselves with. If anything, they considered them more of a nuisance than anything. Hagrid was pretty clear about how the Wizarding world felt about Muggles; they just don't want to be bothered.

Actually, our computers were not a joke. They're pretty advanced pieces of machinery. The fact that they were equal, superior, or inferior to Wizard equivalents doesn't really address the disinterest that the Wizards had. Because the Wizarding world forged its own institutions at an earlier pace and having done so, were far better off than the average person. Most chores could be done with a flick of a wand and communication through familiars and notes was good enough. And when you spend a few centuries looking at a telephone as a sad imitation of say, using a chimney and a spell to communicate, that becomes embedded in your culture.

Especially when said technology is often not very effective around strong concentrations of magic.

Yes, but how much effort and skilled is required to perform these enchantments? It's not that they can't be done, it's the fact that they aren't common. Look at the absurdity of how it was a scandal to enchant a car to fly or be invisible. Despite the fact that everyone and their retarded cousin uses broomsticks. The only groups that seem to have common use of enchanted cars are Ministry agencies. Mister Weasley did his as a hobby.

It could be as complicated as requiring you disassemble half the car to enchant its various parts before re-assembling it. That would require a degree of curiosity and skill with muggle technology that most wizards simply do not have outside of muggle born, who are probably mostly bored with technology when they can perform magic with a wand.

Again, it's probably cultural.

The author has not been shy about her political standing. She's a liberal and she viewed a lot of the old families as being racist elitists--sort of a mix between the KKK and nobles. It's very probable that the core of the political strength in the MoM was long-standing Wizarding families. You can look at some of those in high positions such as Umbridge or Malfoy. All old families who had long magical histories, were well connected, and very wealthy. As the old families diminished due to inbreeding and a growing UK population, their power would be diluted and their natural reaction would be to clutch back as much as possible. Voldemort was an egomaniac who had persuaded a large number of "conservative" wizards that they needed to protect their families from past slights from muggles.

That's not an endorsement of the political ideas that she espoused, but she had some points to make throughout her work.

Of course, that's why the last two movies were complete shit. Where as the author was able to identify the political splits and the history of the UK, regardless of how you feel about it, she understood the landscape. She does not understand the American landscape. For example, trying to link religious belief and racism was horribly inaccurate. And it being located in New York City is even more painful. The analogy of her original stories (muggles = minorities / old wizarding families = racist elitists) did not translate well to America's political landscape.

It was the religious beliefs of the Puritans that drove them into conflict with the Deep South. The last HP movies only work if you assume a modern split in the political alignment, where the deeply religious are Deep Southern/Appalachian people who are also highly xenophobic and oppressive. The problem is that the USA has several different dominate cultures that run halfway through the country in bands (stopping at the Far West). It's not one coherent nation nor is it divided among state lines.

EDIT -- Just realized this may seem political.

THIS IS JUST A NOTICE OF THE HISTORICAL, POLITICAL LANDSCAPE OF HISTORY. NOT A POLITICAL DISCUSSION.

 

...most of them isn't useful for military purposes? Any one of them would have all the military forces in the world sell their first born children and their wives. No logictical problems, no supply lines, no need to care about enemy positions, instant retreat and all other things I can't bother to write about.

I am talking about the magical problems bothering the mundane. Things like the time where a Giant attack was disguised as a hurricane etc. They clearly prevent and if they can not, cover them. Otherwise we would have Dementors and such creatures feasting on defenseless populaces.

I could see it. When everything in the Wizarding world is better than computers we have before 2000s people don't bother looking for computers.

In fact that's the exact thing J.K said;

Yea? It's a niche field. That's probably one of the reason why there is an economy in the Wizarding World. People are lazy and look for services that can do that kind of stuff. Though how hard it is debatable as we don't ever see how things like flying cars and such created. It could be as simple as waving a Flying charm or like you said individually charming each and every bolt. But still, my point about Wizards knowing about muggle technology and the fact that they have equivalent if not more advanced technology, be it magical or not.

I can't really reply to this because...well I have outsider perspective to UK or US.

 

The scandal about the enchanted car was because Arthur Weasley was the head of the department in charge of making sure people don’t enchant muggle items.