Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter/Shadowrun)

[Doghead13]

I've seen a few sources claim that the British magical population is only 3000 individuals, with a third of those being 17 and under.

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Rowling was asked something to the effect of, out of all muggles born, how many are muggleborns. Her exact answer was 'about one in a thousand'.

Two minutes on Google shows that in 2017 there were 679,106 children born in the UK. 2017 because that's the first year I saw a stated total for, it's late and I'm not exactly full of beans tonight. Ergo, in 2017 there should have been about 679 muggleborns born in the UK by dint of JKR's 'one in a thousand'. Given what I know of UK population growth trends It follows that there should be about four and a half thousand - one and a half time your stated TOTAL population figure - Hogwarts-aged muggleborns in Britain at the time Harry went through Hogwarts.

I think your estimate may be a little on the low side. I mean really low. Ten tmes that is still lowballed sort of low.

The lowball estimates also fail to make sense in a bunch of other regards; basically, you cannot possibly support what we see in canon outside Hogwarts - the scale of government, the DMLE, Gringotts, Diagon, and most prominent of all Quidditch - with such a small population. You CANNOT support a professional sporting institution of that scale on the population of a one-pub town, it's just nuts; push it up to 30k and it still seems odd. Even if we assume Quidditch is amateur - base it on Shinty, everyone has a day job - you need over a hundred thousand people just to get enough of an audience to take it past 'pub football match', and much the same goes for what little we know of the government and infrastructure of the Wizarding World. It's like Lichenstein somehow supporting an army the size of the entire US military, the numbers just don't work.

Making it all add up is very easy: increase the population and add more schools. A hundred thou is what I'd call the lowball estimate for making Wizarding Britain work; I'm more comfortable with closer to a quarter million. You get one free Hagrid calling Hogwarts the best school of magic in the country rather than the only school of magic in the country making sense into the bargain.

 

[wichajster]

In other words, the entire coutnry is rotten to the core and so evil, massacring everyone in the government who didn't stomp this out would be a perfectly fine decision.

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That is viewpoint presented by Snape. Dumbledore is probably scared that what would replace current society would be even worse. In the same way as tzar in imperial Russia would not be described as a good or desirable ruler, but communist replacement ended with a giant piles of skulls across continents.

Note that in this case other governments were explicitly described as even worse, I guess that in some what here needs to be hidden is an official policy.

It would be interesting to have some even outside story view how well Dumbledore reforms worked. For example "200 people murder/enslaved each year, it used to be 2000 a year decade ago" would be an impressive improvement and better progress than "we start civil war, with tens of thousands dead, massive collateral damage. With even odds of fixing problem and getting conquered and enslaved by Magical Ottoman Empire. Or given Shadowrun - managed by Totally Not Evil Megacorp no 15.".

In general, given history of my country I see "Glorious revolution! Burn down world! Everything will be great after that!" with a great skepticism and I prefer gradual march forward. And here quite good reasons were presented against "massacre everyone disagreeing with me or in position of any power" solution, even despite great ongoing evil.

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I hope that it will not end with "Harry punches few enemies what solves entire problem" but with something more interesting.

Presenting viewpoint by both Snape and Dumbledore and making both clearly flawed a bit rather than pushing Obviously Blessed Solution makes me optimistic.


----

And I know what bothered me - I have no problem with dark/evil depicted, especially as it was not something unexpected in this story.

But this delivery method thing sounds like a forced drama to me. Why not avoid rape and apply mark in the different way? Sweat/blood? It is not like they are interested on what he is spending his bought time.

And it is not like depicted situation would not be fucked up as hell even with that change.

 

[Doghead13]

That is viewpoint presented by Snape. Dumbledore is probably scared that what would replace current society would be even worse. In the same way as tzar in imperial Russia would not be described as a good or desirable ruler, but communist replacement ended with a giant piles of skulls across continents.

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You, my friend, very clearly get where I was planning to be going back when this was my fic.

 

[Darman Skirata]

Eh, about how dark stuff is, isn't the Snape in this aware of this, at least partially, and has several discussions with Harry that mostly allude to Wizarding world being rotten and needing a good old mass purge?

 

[Edmond G. Bertrand]

You, my friend, very clearly get where I was planning to be going back when this was my fic.

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Given how protective Harry is of his damsels, spin me out a story of what happens if someone hurts Hermione, Abigail, or Suze. Does he through caution to the wind and level everything
that moves? Or does he find the person most responsible, while in his human form, and use them as a blunt instrument to open a locked door?

 

[Doghead13]

Given how protective Harry is of his damsels, spin me out a story of what happens if someone hurts Hermione, Abigail, or Suze. Does he through caution to the wind and level everything
that moves? Or does he find the person most responsible, while in his human form, and use them as a blunt instrument to open a locked door?

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The original reaction was... loud.

It both seriously impressed and seriously irritated Amelia Bones, who had caught the buggers red-handed and did NOT need a preternaturally strong Boy-Who-Lived capable of staving in spell-proof doors and declaring how unimpressed he was in a loud enough bass enough voice to shake the entire building rampaging through the middle of her investigation. It also left the lion's share of the DMLE deeply impressed with Hermione Granger and more or less convinced they were looking at the future Mrs Potter post her successfully getting him from 'apocalyptic rage verging on berserker state' to 'very controlled anger' with no more effort than telling him to calm down, involved Amelia getting a partial read on just what exactly Harry is and Harry flat-out demanding the culprit's head on a plate, and concluded with Amelia being informed that the dragon the Hogwarts motto advises against tickling is now very much awake and absolutely bloody furious. IIRC this was the sequence for which I originally came up with the comment about someone having 'not so much tickled a sleeping dragon, as kicked the dragon in the fundamentals'.


It's somewhere in the fragmented chapter 2 on my derelict Pit of Voles account, and I couldn't say how much if any of it Dunlezahn's going to actually use.

 

[elif]

Rowling was asked something to the effect of, out of all muggles born, how many are muggleborns. Her exact answer was 'about one in a thousand'.

Two minutes on Google shows that in 2017 there were 679,106 children born in the UK. 2017 because that's the first year I saw a stated total for, it's late and I'm not exactly full of beans tonight. Ergo, in 2017 there should have been about 679 muggleborns born in the UK by dint of JKR's 'one in a thousand'. Given what I know of UK population growth trends It follows that there should be about four and a half thousand - one and a half time your stated TOTAL population figure - Hogwarts-aged muggleborns in Britain at the time Harry went through Hogwarts.

I think your estimate may be a little on the low side. I mean really low. Ten tmes that is still lowballed sort of low.

The lowball estimates also fail to make sense in a bunch of other regards; basically, you cannot possibly support what we see in canon outside Hogwarts - the scale of government, the DMLE, Gringotts, Diagon, and most prominent of all Quidditch - with such a small population. You CANNOT support a professional sporting institution of that scale on the population of a one-pub town, it's just nuts; push it up to 30k and it still seems odd. Even if we assume Quidditch is amateur - base it on Shinty, everyone has a day job - you need over a hundred thousand people just to get enough of an audience to take it past 'pub football match', and much the same goes for what little we know of the government and infrastructure of the Wizarding World. It's like Lichenstein somehow supporting an army the size of the entire US military, the numbers just don't work.

Making it all add up is very easy: increase the population and add more schools. A hundred thou is what I'd call the lowball estimate for making Wizarding Britain work; I'm more comfortable with closer to a quarter million. You get one free Hagrid calling Hogwarts the best school of magic in the country rather than the only school of magic in the country making sense into the bargain.

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Okay, so I tracked down the quotes that I mentioned seeing others refer to, and they're two quotes five years apart, one of which she notably caveats. I've included them here for anyone else who saw the same figures cited I saw so they can see the context (in particular for the second). I want to make it explicit that I agree with Doghead13 and others that these numbers are dumb, but magic is involved and sometimes the numbers are spectacularly dumb when magic with dodgy rules gets involved. But yeah, the numbers don't work, particularly for this story, so Enter the Dragon will do as Enter the Dragon does.

Question: How many students attend Hogwarts, and how many students per year per house?
J.K. Rowling responds: There are about a thousand students at Hogwarts.

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Source (2000)

ES: How many wizards are there?
JKR: In the world? Oh, Emerson, my maths is so bad.
ES: Is there a ratio of Muggles to wizards -
MA: Or in Hogwarts.
JKR: Well, Hogwarts. All right. Here is the thing with Hogwarts. Way before I finished "Philosopher's Stone," when I was just amassing stuff for seven years, between having the idea and publishing the book, I sat down and I created 40 kids who enter Harry's year. I'm delighted I did it, [because] it was so useful. I got 40 pretty fleshed out characters. I never have to stop and invent someone. I know who's in the year, I know who's in which house, I know what their parentage is, and I have a few personal details on all of them. So there were 40. I never consciously thought, "That's it, that' s all the people in his year," but that's kind of how it's worked out. Then I've been asked a few times how many people and because numbers are not my strong point, one part of my brain knew 40, and another part of my brain said, "Oh, about 600 sounds right." Then people started working it out and saying, "Where are the other kids sleeping?" [Laughter.] We have a little bit of a dilemma there. I mean, obviously magic is very rare. I wouldn't want to say a precise ratio. But if you assume that all of the wizarding children are being sent to Hogwarts, then that's very few wizard-to-Muggle population, isn't it? There will be the odd kid whose parents don't want them to go to Hogwarts, but 600 out of the whole of Britain is tiny.
Let's say three thousand [in Britain], actually, thinking about it, and then think of all the magical creatures, some of which appear human. So then you've got things like hags, trolls, ogres and so on, so that's really bumping up your numbers. And then you've got the world of sad people like Filch and Figg who are kind of part of the world but are hangers on. That's going to bump you up a bit as well, so it's a more sizable, total magical community that needs hiding, concealing, but don't hold me to these figures, because that's not how I think.

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Source (2005)
(Emphasis mine, take note of her not committing to her answer before and after.)

 

[Edmond G. Bertrand]

JKR is an idiot. Not only does she suck at writing love-stories and writing about the nature of love and the sacrifices that it
often engenders, but does does, in fact, suck at math.

For instance - my little town, here on the north shore of Massachusetts, has a population of 4700, +/- and the
next-door town has about 7,700 or so. Between the two towns, the high school has a population of 450. That's
almost 12,500 people producing a HS population of 450. But that means that the families of the area have to have
enough of an influx to keep that population relatively constant. We have a state growth rate of 0.7%.

I think that the 1 in 1000 number is probably spot-on for magicals, given that magic is a rare
recessive gene. That would give you a magical population in the UK of 66,400.
That would give you a magical population in the US of roughly 325,000 - a town a 1/3 of the size of Boston -
and a world-wide population of 7,500,000 - about 1/2 the size of NYC.

If you double all of these numbers, so that magic is 1 in 500, you still don't get huge populations. 125K magicals
in the UK is still a small number. Enough to have a stable, perhaps even growing, population, but
still small. A population that small would be EXTREMELY LOATHE to go to war with itself, lest it
fall below the viability threshold. Even the MOST bigoted pure-blood would see the numbers of dead
that a civil war could cost and be horrified.

 

[EternitynChaos]

JKR is an idiot. Not only does she suck at writing love-stories and writing about the nature of love and the sacrifices that it
often engenders, but does does, in fact, suck at math.

For instance - my little town, here on the north shore of Massachusetts, has a population of 4700, +/- and the
next-door town has about 7,700 or so. Between the two towns, the high school has a population of 450. That's
almost 12,500 people producing a HS population of 450. But that means that the families of the area have to have
enough of an influx to keep that population relatively constant. We have a state growth rate of 0.7%.

I think that the 1 in 1000 number is probably spot-on for magicals, given that magic is a rare
recessive gene. That would give you a magical population in the UK of 66,400.
That would give you a magical population in the US of roughly 325,000 - a town a 1/3 of the size of Boston -
and a world-wide population of 7,500,000 - about 1/2 the size of NYC.

If you double all of these numbers, so that magic is 1 in 500, you still don't get huge populations. 125K magicals
in the UK is still a small number. Enough to have a stable, perhaps even growing, population, but
still small. A population that small would be EXTREMELY LOATHE to go to war with itself, lest it
fall below the viability threshold. Even the MOST bigoted pure-blood would see the numbers of dead
that a civil war could cost and be horrified.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, definitely not with killing curses flying, maybe they would be willing to fight a war of conquest as it where with spells that capture and turn the enemy to your side, but at that numbers wiping out massive percentages of your population is stupid if you want anything left to rule

 

[The Unicorn]

Again, it's a knotty sort of situation. When law enforcement actually manages to catch one of the bastards dead to rights, they're toast, but it's a hell of job trying to do so.

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I misread " pulling her out without dealing with the magical component would kill them both anyway." as there being some magical trigger that would kill them both, as opposed to having the criminals be able to chase him down and kill them to cover things up.

I've seen a few sources claim that the British magical population is only 3000 individuals, with a third of those being 17 and under

Click to shrink...

You need a population of over 30000to be able to support the sort of society we see in canon, and the changes in the setting with this story only push the numbers up. As to percentage of the population under 17 - when people can expect to have productive lives of over 150 years, the percentage of children in the population is going to be minuscule.

People trying to poke holes in why this setting is so dark reminds me of people trying to poke holes in "The Cold Equations". In both cases you have a very well written setup which objectively leads to a very unpleasant conclusion people don't like. The problem is the setting was deliberately crafted to produce that conclusion and the only way around it is to ignore part of the setting.

"(What the hell kind of setup allows for someone suspected of being under compulsion to testify that they're fit to testify, anyways?

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Any system that follows the presumption of innocence principle. You need to prove X is not fit, meaning that until you provide that proof X enjoys all the rights and privileges they normally do (barring some exceptions regarding immediate risk of life and reasonable suspicion) and can testify.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Yeah, definitely not with killing curses flying, maybe they would be willing to fight a war of conquest as it where with spells that capture and turn the enemy to your side, but at that numbers wiping out massive percentages of your population is stupid if you want anything left to rule

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However, Voldy in canon only wants one thing: Power. Well that and immortality but he is very power hungry. Anyone that goes against him is to be tortured and/or killed. Period.

 

[Gaming Geek]

Yep.

She doesn't understand numbers. At all. Don't even look at the economy she described either...

OTOH there's a good reason for why there were so few muggleborn in Hogwarts. ....they're registered from the moment they first do accidental magic... and hey look, fresh supplies that have no idea they're targets.

 

[Starfox5]

The problem with the "a revolution would make things worse" is that this situation practically can't get any worse. It's pretty much as fucked-up as a Confederated States of Slavery surviving today. And, as I said, having no one doing anything about it doesn't sound like Shadowrun. Where are the violent "terrorists" killing off slavers? Where are the media campaigns? The underground railroads? The Curse-Breakers dealing with those slaving spells? The decent rich people? Shadowrun isn't "One big Dragon saves everyone because everyone else is useless." Dumbledore making progress means there have to be others. More radical ones.

Hell, canon Hermione would be founding such groups left and right as a child. Give her a litle more experience - in canon she became Minister at a very young age - and she should be doing so efficiently and effectively, especially if she gets Dragon Hoard support. And then there are the goblins, which have likely the military advantage. Add Dumbledore who knows where everyone's bodies are buried after decades of both politics and teaching every kid, and this shouldn't be some Dragon show, but a dragon joining an already ongoing effort.

 

[Angelina]

I've seen fanfics that put the number of British magicals as low as 70 - 90K and as high as 1.8m, with the majority being hidden on islands off the coast of Scotland & Wales and some off the coast of Ireland. I've seen writers speculate that there are 20K in the "village" of Hogsmeade and a further 10 - 15K in and around London.

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I couldn't imagine there being more than ~10,000 wizards in the British Isles. 4-8 students per dorm at Hogwarts, 8 dorms per year, 200 year mean life expectancy => 10K wizards.

What I've read felt like a small town. When the cops (aurors) show up, it's always the same handful of faces. The mayor ("Minister for Magic") has that combination of personal charm and incompetence that wouldn't be elected if there were anyone else running for the position. There's only one newspaper. There's only one bank. There's only one bookshop. There's only one wandmaker. There's only one medical facility and it's combined research, treatment and long term care. Inasmuch as there are a handful of places that wizards live together (widely distributed suburbs), only a handful of families are at each location. The 26 Noble and Ancient Houses represent the 1% (and 3-6 living members of the surviving houses would be roughly 100 people, 1% of 10,000).

Where that gets weird is they have textbooks. Written by a lot of different people. (And only Lockhart of the professors at Hogwarts teaches from his own book.) There are only two English language wizard schools (of the 11 canonical schools in the world), so each textbook has a print run of ~50 copies a year. Less for the electives in the later years. That's vanity printing levels and should cost upwards of a hundred galleons a copy unless they can cut a corner somewhere (an army of dictaquills and something that turns pages in unison?).

And why is this setup using humans to start with? Make a literal meat puppet and gussy it up with magic, or polyjuice a pig or something and program that to be a doll in the dollhouse. Sure, still moral arguments to be made, but less missing persons that'll raise a fuss.

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I just assumed it's cheaper. You have to provide food but she can cook for herself and you don't have to muck out her stall. Polyjuice is expensive. Costly components and a month of prep for a few hours of non-pigdom. (Though given polyjuice exists, I have to assume that there is also a provider of services that lets you customize your experience if you provide the material. Want a night with Rita Skeeter? Amelia Bones? One of the Harpies? Victor Krum? Dumbledore?)

These are the descendants of the wizards that magicked house elves into servitude and made them like it.

Two minutes on Google shows that in 2017 there were 679,106 children born in the UK. 2017 because that's the first year I saw a stated total for, it's late and I'm not exactly full of beans tonight. Ergo, in 2017 there should have been about 679 muggleborns born in the UK by dint of JKR's 'one in a thousand'.

Click to shrink...

Muggleborn wizards being purely random doesn't reflect that wizards mostly have wizard children? If 1 in 1000 children born amongst the muggle population is a wizard then shouldn't 1 in 1000 children born to wizards be a wizard? [and the other 999 be squibs]. If it has a genetic component, then 1 in 4 wizard-born children being squibs would be reflected with a 1 in 4 chance of a child in a family where both of the parents are related to a squib.

Though 1 in 1000 is high. That means if you don't personally know a wizard, then you know multiple people who know wizards and you probably went to school with one. That weird kid at your elementary school who kept having accidents and claiming he didn't do it? Wizard.

I think your estimate may be a little on the low side. I mean really low. Ten tmes that is still lowballed sort of low.

Click to shrink...

Or to put it the other way, 1 in 10,000 makes more sense than 1 in 1,000.

The lowball estimates also fail to make sense in a bunch of other regards; basically, you cannot possibly support what we see in canon outside Hogwarts - the scale of government, the DMLE, Gringotts, Diagon, and most prominent of all Quidditch - with such a small population. You CANNOT support a professional sporting institution of that scale on the population of a one-pub town, it's just nuts; push it up to 30k and it still seems odd. Even if we assume Quidditch is amateur - base it on Shinty, everyone has a day job - you need over a hundred thousand people just to get enough of an audience to take it past 'pub football match', and much the same goes for what little we know of the government and infrastructure of the Wizarding World. It's like Lichenstein somehow supporting an army the size of the entire US military, the numbers just don't work.

Click to shrink...

I grew up in a town with ~10K people that still had 6 professional football teams and three football fields. The players got a share of the gate, which was only a few dollars. Not enough to support a family (or even the player if they didn't have other work). Still paid. Still technically professional. Quidditch is the only wizarding sport. They don't have cinemas or computers or any other kind of recreation on a Saturday afternoon. It's quidditch or chess or reading a book.

I'd expect 20-50% of the entire population of Britain to be attending each match just because they have nothing better to do on the weekend, and the travel expense is only a handful of floo powder.

Does Hogwarts have the only quidditch field in the UK? In the seven books of HP, there are only ~30 intra-school/inter-house quidditch matches, and most hopeful players can expect to only play six or so games in their Hogwarts career. I assumed there were 8 or so teams in the "professional" league, (I think there are only 3-4 named in print? the Chudley Cannons, the Holyhead Harpies, ...). 8 teams would be a season of ~100 games which could run for the full year because they're wizards, they don't need to worry about the weather. That's two matches a weekend, and each team plays once a fortnight. Having more than one stadium in the UK would seem excessive?


I've always read JKR as not having the foggiest idea what a galleon is worth. She wanted her wizards to use gold coins with fanciful names, so she gave them gold coins with fanciful names. How many galleons/sickles/knuts for a loaf of bread? a gallon of milk? How many bakers are there in the wizarding world? How many millers? How many wheat farmers? Where do they buy food? If they buy food from the muggles, what do they trade? Is it legal to obliviate a muggle if that means you don't have to pay the clerk at the corner store?

Do wizards pay taxes? If so, do they pay in galleons or pounds? who collects them and why didn't any of the characters in the book complain about the inland revenue? Should Peter Pettigrew have gone down for tax evasion? If not, how do any of the public servants (including the professors at Hogwarts) get paid? Are galleons an international currency? How do the goblins avoid the problems that hit Greece when they took on the Euro?

Where are the wizard miners? weavers? real estate agents? lawyers? accountants? tax collectors? why isn't there a wizarding public library?

How much does a dragon eat? How many acres of pasturage do you need to support a single dragon? What's their hunting range? What constitutes a stable breeding population? Are there any left in the "wild"? Are Hungarian Horntail and the other "types" of dragons mentioned in the books distinct species (ie not capable of interbreeding and must be considered separately as to whether they are "endangered") or are they breeds like dogs?

Ditto hippogryphs. Ditto acromantulas. Ditto basilisks. Ditto whatever species Fluffy was.

Fundamentally, JKR was writing a "school" story and people and events outside of the school are not relevant to the story. So if you think that mountain in the background is pretty and want a closer look, be prepared to bump your nose into the matte painting.

 

[Skjadir]

I couldn't imagine there being more than ~10,000 wizards in the British Isles. 4-8 students per dorm at Hogwarts, 8 dorms per year, 200 year mean life expectancy => 10K wizards.

What I've read felt like a small town. When the cops (aurors) show up, it's always the same handful of faces. The mayor ("Minister for Magic") has that combination of personal charm and incompetence that wouldn't be elected if there were anyone else running for the position. There's only one newspaper. There's only one bank. There's only one bookshop. There's only one wandmaker. There's only one medical facility and it's combined research, treatment and long term care. Inasmuch as there are a handful of places that wizards live together (widely distributed suburbs), only a handful of families are at each location. The 26 Noble and Ancient Houses represent the 1% (and 3-6 living members of the surviving houses would be roughly 100 people, 1% of 10,000).

Where that gets weird is they have textbooks. Written by a lot of different people. (And only Lockhart of the professors at Hogwarts teaches from his own book.) There are only two English language wizard schools (of the 11 canonical schools in the world), so each textbook has a print run of ~50 copies a year. Less for the electives in the later years. That's vanity printing levels and should cost upwards of a hundred galleons a copy unless they can cut a corner somewhere (an army of dictaquills and something that turns pages in unison?).




I just assumed it's cheaper. You have to provide food but she can cook for herself and you don't have to muck out her stall. Polyjuice is expensive. Costly components and a month of prep for a few hours of non-pigdom. (Though given polyjuice exists, I have to assume that there is also a provider of services that lets you customize your experience if you provide the material. Want a night with Rita Skeeter? Amelia Bones? One of the Harpies? Victor Krum? Dumbledore?)

These are the descendants of the wizards that magicked house elves into servitude and made them like it.




Muggleborn wizards being purely random doesn't reflect that wizards mostly have wizard children? If 1 in 1000 children born amongst the muggle population is a wizard then shouldn't 1 in 1000 children born to wizards be a wizard? [and the other 999 be squibs]. If it has a genetic component, then 1 in 4 wizard-born children being squibs would be reflected with a 1 in 4 chance of a child in a family where both of the parents are related to a squib.

Though 1 in 1000 is high. That means if you don't personally know a wizard, then you know multiple people who know wizards and you probably went to school with one. That weird kid at your elementary school who kept having accidents and claiming he didn't do it? Wizard.




Or to put it the other way, 1 in 10,000 makes more sense than 1 in 1,000.




I grew up in a town with ~10K people that still had 6 professional football teams and three football fields. The players got a share of the gate, which was only a few dollars. Not enough to support a family (or even the player if they didn't have other work). Still paid. Still technically professional. Quidditch is the only wizarding sport. They don't have cinemas or computers or any other kind of recreation on a Saturday afternoon. It's quidditch or chess or reading a book.

I'd expect 20-50% of the entire population of Britain to be attending each match just because they have nothing better to do on the weekend, and the travel expense is only a handful of floo powder.

Does Hogwarts have the only quidditch field in the UK? In the seven books of HP, there are only ~30 intra-school/inter-house quidditch matches, and most hopeful players can expect to only play six or so games in their Hogwarts career. I assumed there were 8 or so teams in the "professional" league, (I think there are only 3-4 named in print? the Chudley Cannons, the Holyhead Harpies, ...). 8 teams would be a season of ~100 games which could run for the full year because they're wizards, they don't need to worry about the weather. That's two matches a weekend, and each team plays once a fortnight. Having more than one stadium in the UK would seem excessive?


I've always read JKR as not having the foggiest idea what a galleon is worth. She wanted her wizards to use gold coins with fanciful names, so she gave them gold coins with fanciful names. How many galleons/sickles/knuts for a loaf of bread? a gallon of milk? How many bakers are there in the wizarding world? How many millers? How many wheat farmers? Where do they buy food? If they buy food from the muggles, what do they trade? Is it legal to obliviate a muggle if that means you don't have to pay the clerk at the corner store?

Do wizards pay taxes? If so, do they pay in galleons or pounds? who collects them and why didn't any of the characters in the book complain about the inland revenue? Should Peter Pettigrew have gone down for tax evasion? If not, how do any of the public servants (including the professors at Hogwarts) get paid? Are galleons an international currency? How do the goblins avoid the problems that hit Greece when they took on the Euro?

Where are the wizard miners? weavers? real estate agents? lawyers? accountants? tax collectors? why isn't there a wizarding public library?

How much does a dragon eat? How many acres of pasturage do you need to support a single dragon? What's their hunting range? What constitutes a stable breeding population? Are there any left in the "wild"? Are Hungarian Horntail and the other "types" of dragons mentioned in the books distinct species (ie not capable of interbreeding and must be considered separately as to whether they are "endangered") or are they breeds like dogs?

Ditto hippogryphs. Ditto acromantulas. Ditto basilisks. Ditto whatever species Fluffy was.

Fundamentally, JKR was writing a "school" story and people and events outside of the school are not relevant to the story. So if you think that mountain in the background is pretty and want a closer look, be prepared to bump your nose into the matte painting.

Click to shrink...

Add to that just with the spells shown in canon the wizards could quite easily support themself.
People try to use RL numbers at times without factoring in that a wizard can do with just abit of magic/enchanting live on their on very comfortable.

They don´t need to do any jobs like farmer/miller etc. as they can use some very basic spells to completly automated these. I am not sure how much they even need to work and how easily someone could just go to some field (space extension charms are nuts here, same with just being able to create tools out of dirt and then enchant them to do all the work) in the middle of nowhere and then live their own their own.

What that doesn´t change is the bad stuff happening which for the for the most part just seems to be greed, no morals and because people are very good at looking the otherway when it allows them to be lazy.

 

[wichajster]

JKR is an idiot. Not only does she suck at writing love-stories and writing about the nature of love and the sacrifices that it
often engenders, but does does, in fact, suck at math.

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Rowling has never focused on worlbuilding but it does not mean that she is an idiot. Note that 3000 number is produced on spot, managed to not include it is canon and was preceded with disclaimer that it is likely to be not fitting anything.

Misinterpreting estimations, preceded by disclaimers about unlikely inaccuracy just discourages people from saying anything specific.

There is plenty to complain about, I would not waste that on the math problem. She was well aware about it and managed to almost completely hide it in books.

The problem with the "a revolution would make things worse" is that this situation practically can't get any worse.

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Situation is rarely unable to get worse. For example they are still better than some ongoing situations present in our world, situation is improving but they have potential to quickly get much worse and compete for "worst large-scale government in recorded history".

Revolution may fail and end with say Malfoy or Umbridge as ruler of magical UK. It would certainly fail to fix anything.

So far, given what we know from Snape and Dumbledore it seems that slavery exists, is an ongoing problem but getting reduced and now illegal and needs to be hidden.

Claiming that situation may not get worse is not fitting described facts. Even what was described in canon in book 7 was worse (ongoing large scale murder of Muggle population, ongoing genocide (Muggleborns), preparing for large scale genocide as matter of official policy (Muggles).

And for real fun of "yes, things may get worse" - see Noth Korea, Pol Pot, Nazi Germany etc.

 

[Starfox5]

If slaves are needed for the wizard economy, genocide is out since that would run counter to the bigots' interests.

 

[wichajster]

If slaves are needed for the wizard economy, genocide is out since that would run counter to the bigots' interests.

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Well, enslaving everyone rather than part (small part?) is still in. And would be worse than a current situation.

 

[Skjadir]

Situation is rarely unable to get worse. For example they are still better than some ongoing situations present in our world, situation is improving but they have potential to quickly get much worse and compete for "worst large-scale government in recorded history".

Revolution may fail and end with say Malfoy or Umbridge as ruler of magical UK. It would certainly fail to fix anything.

So far, given what we know from Snape and Dumbledore it seems that slavery exists, is an ongoing problem but getting reduced and now illegal and needs to be hidden.

Claiming that situation may not get worse is not fitting described facts. Even what was described in canon in book 7 was worse (ongoing large scale murder of Muggle population, ongoing genocide (Muggleborns), preparing for large scale genocide as matter of official policy (Muggles).

And for real fun of "yes, things may get worse" - see Noth Korea, Pol Pot, Nazi Germany etc.

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Yeah things could be worse, alot worse.

Just thinking about low population + need for disposable magical minions + slavery result in some really horrifing shit if you have no morals or don´t see non pure bloods as anything other then animals.
What is shown is dark, but things could be alot darker and alot worse and it would still be in line what we have done rl without magic to help out.

 

[wichajster]

he underground railroads? The Curse-Breakers dealing with those slaving spells? The decent rich people?

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It has not appeared so far, but I remember from old version snippets about

- usage of Harry's railroad company for secret transport of rescued slaves (I thought that it appeared also in the new version but I was unable to find it)

- police action lead by Bones that managed to catch one group of slavers red handed

- Weasleys being poor because their money was nearly entirely spend on something counter-slavery (funding help to Muggleborns that reduced enslavement risk - something about Hogwarts being costly but giving much greater change of better life)

- Harry funding the same ASAP as he become aware about the problem

I like especially two last ones - rare cases of good use of money and wealth in HP fanfics.

 

[Starfox5]

Where is the media campaign to discredit and ostracise all those who profit from slavery? That would certainly be a very effective way to push reforms and defang the profiteers. And unless all wizards are scumbags, it would work. We know it worked and works in our world - such movements did a lot for the abolishment of slavery in the 19th century. The private detective shouldn't be so helpless - he should get a Skeeter type a tip, and ruin the brothel owner's life with a number of articles.

I just don't think the entire world is waiting for Harry to save it. That sounds far too contrived. There should be tons of people, foremost among them Dumbledore, leading the fight already. There shouldn't be a "og, we can't prove it, so let's not even try", there should be real fear of such slavers of being exposed, and perhaps even lynched no matter the law.

Edit: There should be muggleborn groups banding together to protect each other - and recruiting every student they can. Unions, officially - but training to fight, and killing examples of slavers. It just feels as if everyone but Harry is some helpless victim. McGinagall goes on about patrons and protectors, instead of forming a "Gryffindor Alumni Association" trained to wreck shit if one of their members disappears or "voluntarily enslaves herself".

Just let the damn wizards do something, instead of waiting for Big Dragon and the Goblins to save them.

 

[Skjadir]

Where is the media campaign to discredit and ostracise all those who profit from slavery? That would certainly be a very effective way to push reforms and defang the profiteers. And unless all wizards are scumbags, it would work. We know it worked and works in our world - such movements did a lot for the abolishment of slavery in the 19th century. The private detective shouldn't be so helpless - he should get a Skeeter type a tip, and ruin the brothel owner's life with a number of articles.

I just don't think the entire world is waiting for Harry to save it. That sounds far too contrived. There should be tons of people, foremost among them Dumbledore, leading the fight already. There shouldn't be a "og, we can't prove it, so let's not even try", there should be real fear of such slavers of being exposed, and perhaps even lynched no matter the law.

Edit: There should be muggleborn groups banding together to protect each other - and recruiting every student they can. Unions, officially - but training to fight, and killing examples of slavers. It just feels as if everyone but Harry is some helpless victim. McGinagall goes on about patrons and protectors, instead of forming a "Gryffindor Alumni Association" trained to wreck shit if one of their members disappears or "voluntarily enslaves herself".

Just let the damn wizards do something, instead of waiting for Big Dragon and the Goblins to save them.

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Because the other side isn´t stupid and can fight back hard and has alot of funds for just that (see how the death eater come back in canon).
If you don´t have morals and the ability to mind fuck people to your side issus like this become really ugly.

There is sadly no just kill them option without turning the wizarding world into one gigantic graveyard which also has come up in the story itself.


There is also the point that victimes after just a very short amount of time will defend the people that just mind fucked* them by useing laws made to protect them.

*which is also really hard to prove

Alot of the issus likely won´t be solved by harry dircetly, but by other people and he helps out abit with things like funds or a way to hide/protect the freed slaves.

For the protection groups, if they are known these groups where likely taken apart very publicly by the death eaters and low key after that (that these groups start to show up as things get ugly is also canon).

For the media well there is only one** newspaper and that is run by the goverment and the part that controls said newpaper seems to be the one that the slavers side.

**two if you think of lovegoods as a second one which i don´t

 

[wichajster]

Where is the media campaign to discredit and ostracise all those who profit from slavery? That would certainly be a very effective way to push reforms and defang the profiteers. And unless all wizards are scumbags, it would work. We know it worked and works in our world - such movements did a lot for the abolishment of slavery in the 19th century. The private detective shouldn't be so helpless - he should get a Skeeter type a tip, and ruin the brothel owner's life with a number of articles.

I just don't think the entire world is waiting for Harry to save it. That sounds far too contrived. There should be tons of people, foremost among them Dumbledore, leading the fight already. There shouldn't be a "og, we can't prove it, so let's not even try", there should be real fear of such slavers of being exposed, and perhaps even lynched no matter the law.

Edit: There should be muggleborn groups banding together to protect each other - and recruiting every student they can. Unions, officially - but training to fight, and killing examples of slavers. It just feels as if everyone but Harry is some helpless victim. McGinagall goes on about patrons and protectors, instead of forming a "Gryffindor Alumni Association" trained to wreck shit if one of their members disappears or "voluntarily enslaves herself".

Just let the damn wizards do something, instead of waiting for Big Dragon and the Goblins to save them.

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Yeah, I agree. For now I am assuming that things like this happen offscreen and will appear sooner or later.

Though note that they are at stage where "Hunting Muggles for fun" becoming illegal and not cool is a relatively recent event.

idea how to build a better wizarding society in the aftermath. It's not like he has any examples to lift ideas from --- they're all as bad or worse.

Every existing wizarding society in this setting has some major flaws, and Dumbledore has no idea how to build a wizarding society from scratch that will avoid them --- hence his current method of slow internal reform (from back in 1.9.6). He's already managed some progress. Slavery is illegal (as of 1963); non-magical people are legally classified as people (as of 1920) making rape, murder, and enslavement (as of 1963) of non-magicals technically illegal, though it often goes unreported in many circles; and hunting non-human sapients for sport is currently out of fashion and considered to be in poor taste.

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[Starfox5]

One potential problem with the setting, though, is that if you can use mental domination spells to keep muggleborns enslaved and under control without the DMLE being able to prove it, you can do so with anyone and everyone. No one is safe from getting enslaved - not even the pureblood heiress or heir, unless they've got bodyguards around the clock. Certainly, any poorer purebloods and half-bloods are at risk. "But, but, Dumbledore" won't help Ginny if Malfoy has her enslaved before Dumbledore can step in because if Dumbledore can't intimidate a brothel-owning slaver to keep from kidnapping muggleborns, he certainly can't do that to anyone with much more power and influence. So, how are the Weasleys kept from being enslaved, and why can't muggleborns use the same method?

Though note that they are at stage where "Hunting Muggles for fun" becoming illegal and not cool is a relatively recent event.

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Then they are also at the stage where "kill them all off, the world is better off without such scum and we can build a better society easily by simply imitating muggles in Britain" is still a moral and rational choice. That's not a good place to be. I think there needs to be more positive stuff. Stuff that shows slow reform is a viable option, both practically and morally.

 

[Hunting time]

One potential problem with the setting, though, is that if you can use mental domination spells to keep muggleborns enslaved and under control without the DMLE being able to prove it, you can do so with anyone and everyone. No one is safe from getting enslaved - not even the pureblood heiress or heir, unless they've got bodyguards around the clock. Certainly, any poorer purebloods and half-bloods are at risk. "But, but, Dumbledore" won't help Ginny if Malfoy has her enslaved before Dumbledore can step in because if Dumbledore can't intimidate a brothel-owning slaver to keep from kidnapping muggleborns, he certainly can't do that to anyone with much more power and influence. So, how are the Weasleys kept from being enslaved, and why can't muggleborns use the same method?



Then they are also at the stage where "kill them all off, the world is better off without such scum and we can build a better society easily by simply imitating muggles in Britain" is still a moral and rational choice. That's not a good place to be. I think there needs to be more positive stuff. Stuff that shows slow reform is a viable option, both practically and morally.

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well Arthur is a department head at the Ministry, your only daughter turns up missing that is going to be an all hands on deck moment for the others in the ministry too. The Goblins even tell us that they had to mow down the building across from Gringotts and ti still hasn't been repaired and shoot up the Ministry the last they felt their rights were infringed on. Guns are practically illegal in present day Britain so muggles and the muggleborn only have magic to rely on. The other side does too.

Seriously, try to imagine being in Victorian England where you are the foreigner who just arrived there. There aren't any guns you can get legally most likely, nobody uses swords anymore and the Lazar wand you might have started being trained to use everyone else has also and are likely better with it than you. Very few people are going to stick their lives on the line for other people at this point. WW1 and WW2 were not that long ago to them and the Blood War practically happened yesterday. Most of the people that fight against this stuff have been killed in 3 successive wars. Dumbledore has been around for all 3 and we know he isn't the oldest around since Marchbanks tested him on his OWLS and NEWTS. If i was going to be angry with someone for this situation it would be Flamel but then again he grew up in the 1300s? Late Middle Ages, Hundred Years War, the Black Death to him the Victorian Age might seem radically progressive and it probably is from what we are told of the rest of the planet.

 

[Doghead13]

Muggleborn wizards being purely random doesn't reflect that wizards mostly have wizard children? If 1 in 1000 children born amongst the muggle population is a wizard then shouldn't 1 in 1000 children born to wizards be a wizard? [and the other 999 be squibs]. If it has a genetic component, then 1 in 4 wizard-born children being squibs would be reflected with a 1 in 4 chance of a child in a family where both of the parents are related to a squib.

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Except that we already know that the majority of children - much more than 3 in 4 - born to magical families will in turn be magical, children with one muggle parent included.

I'd intended to use the Shadowrun model for this fic; basically a genetic trait that will pass down reliably, but does not express without the foetus being exposed to a certain threshold level of magic very early during pregnancy. To get a muggleborn, take a parent with this trait and have them conceive a child in a location with an elevated level of ambient magic; to get a squib take a pair of magical parents and have them conceive a child in a location with a very low level of ambient magic. This nicely explains the rarity of both; there just aren't that many magical hot-spots outside those caused by the presence of for example the wards found at a typical Wizarding home. This is why the jumps in muggleborn birth rates each time a node lets go as noted by Dumbledore - as the global background magic goes up, so does the number of places with a high enough level of ambient magic for a magical child to be conceived there.

In a related note I had originally intended to have Hermione's parents turn out to have been living in a village in Wiltshire called Avebury (name not a coincidence, it's INSIDE the stone circle of the same name) at the time that her mother was pregnant with her, and for Avebury itself to turn out to have produced a statistically very high number of muggleborns over the years for reasons that should be patently obvious.

This is one of the many aspects that should in my opinion always be tailored to the fic and not the other way round. The fact that there's not a fixed canon answer (at least, not in the books; I don't take much notice of the expanded universe stuff, it's a mess) opens up a mass of possibilities for fanfic that go away the moment someone goes 'it has to work this specific way'.

I grew up in a town with ~10K people that still had 6 professional football teams and three football fields. The players got a share of the gate, which was only a few dollars. Not enough to support a family (or even the player if they didn't have other work). Still paid. Still technically professional. Quidditch is the only wizarding sport. They don't have cinemas or computers or any other kind of recreation on a Saturday afternoon. It's quidditch or chess or reading a book.

I'd expect 20-50% of the entire population of Britain to be attending each match just because they have nothing better to do on the weekend, and the travel expense is only a handful of floo powder.

Does Hogwarts have the only quidditch field in the UK? In the seven books of HP, there are only ~30 intra-school/inter-house quidditch matches, and most hopeful players can expect to only play six or so games in their Hogwarts career. I assumed there were 8 or so teams in the "professional" league, (I think there are only 3-4 named in print? the Chudley Cannons, the Holyhead Harpies, ...). 8 teams would be a season of ~100 games which could run for the full year because they're wizards, they don't need to worry about the weather. That's two matches a weekend, and each team plays once a fortnight. Having more than one stadium in the UK would seem excessive?

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Your town also had the major outside existence of the sport making it popular in the first place - to see what a sport supported by a population of approx 10k without any external support building up popularity looks like, look up the Kirkwall Ba Game. And no, what you're describing is not professional level - the definition of professional sports is that the sport is the player's full-time job, which as you've seen a population of about 10k just cannot support. Thus the question quickly becomes whether or not quidditch players have day jobs.

And, we already know Hogwarts doesn't have the only quidditch field: the stretch of time Hogwarts is closed for in the summer simply isn't remotely close to long enough to fit an approx 100-game sports tournament, particularly with the lack of a fixed duration for games we already know Quidditch has, and given how Quidditch-crazy many of the student characters are they would be attending tournament games at every chance they got, possibly even bunking off class to watch from the higher parts of the castle - and the Triwizard closing down Quidditch at Hogwarts for a year really wouldn't have flown.

At the end of the day I would call the population size of the Wizarding World just another of those aspects that should be made to fit the fic. I tend to use populations in the 100k-quarter million range in my stuff due to it enabling the sort of plots I like to play with, without raising serious questions about why the hell the Statute of Secrecy the way the real highball estimates to my mind do.

(Incidentally, the high-end range of that pegs the muggleborn population of roughly 57,440 as of 1981 based on 'one in a thousand' and the total UK pop at that time as a bit over a fifth of the overall magical population, which feels about right to me though again, it should always be tailored to the fic.)

I guess what I'm saying is if you want to write a fic with a magical population as small as what you're proposing, that's cool, go for it, it's every bit as canon compliant as anything I've ever written though to be fair that's not saying all that much about my stuff, but it really would not work in a fic like this. The plot - both as I'd had it and as Dunkelzahn is writing it - wouldn't work with it - and that right there is the single most important factor in any worldbuilding decision ever.

 

[Starfox5]

well Arthur is a department head at the Ministry, your only daughter turns up missing that is going to be an all hands on deck moment for the others in the ministry too. The Goblins even tell us that they had to mow down the building across from Gringotts and ti still hasn't been repaired and shoot up the Ministry the last they felt their rights were infringed on. Guns are practically illegal in present day Britain so muggles and the muggleborn only have magic to rely on. The other side does too.

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But if Arthur's daughter is safe because he's a department head, why can't Dumbledore - the single most powerful wizard in England - grant the same protection to anyone he chooses? If you can go "all hands on deck" for one witch, you can do so for anyone else if someone powerful enough says so. And if Dumbledore can't do it, Arthur can't protect his girl either.

You need another reason for purebloods not getting abducted and mind-controlled left and right than "well, they've got powerful protection".

 

[larslolxz]

But if Arthur's daughter is safe because he's a department head, why can't Dumbledore - the single most powerful wizard in England - grant the same protection to anyone he chooses? If you can go "all hands on deck" for one witch, you can do so for anyone else if someone powerful enough says so. And if Dumbledore can't do it, Arthur can't protect his girl either.

You need another reason for purebloods not getting abducted and mind-controlled left and right than "well, they've got powerful protection".

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Because, to use an analogy, the purebloods are the white people and the muggleborns are the black people. And no matter how poor, the Weasleys are purebloods. The pureblood thing isn't an excuse - for the most part, all those racist purebloods really believe the muggleborns are inferior rhetoric. Muggleborns get enslaved? Yeah, put them in their place! Purebloods get enslaved? That's like enslaving white people in the Confederacy. It just wouldn't fly. Half their own guys would go - no, what the fuck, you can't do that. That's fucking evil. The parts of the government supporting them would go 'hmmm, you got accused? OF WHAT!? Well, time for a PR coup! Malfoys save purebloods from slavery sound good?' The minority who don't care about anything but money just wouldn't be willing to make enemies with the majority of their support network when they already have a whole bunch of acceptable targets.

Also, there's a difference between a guy's daughter and 'everyone of a social class because one powerful guy says so'

 

[Starfox5]

Because, to use an analogy, the purebloods are the white people and the muggleborns are the black people. And no matter how poor, the Weasleys are purebloods. The pureblood thing isn't an excuse - for the most part, all those racist purebloods really believe the muggleborns are inferior rhetoric. Muggleborns get enslaved? Yeah, put them in their place! Purebloods get enslaved? That's like enslaving white people in the Confederacy. It just wouldn't fly. Half their own guys would go - no, what the fuck, you can't do that. That's fucking evil. The parts of the government supporting them would go 'hmmm, you got accused? OF WHAT!? Well, time for a PR coup! Malfoys save purebloods from slavery sound good?' The minority who don't care about anything but money just wouldn't be willing to make enemies with the majority of their support network when they already have a whole bunch of acceptable targets.

Also, there's a difference between a guy's daughter and 'everyone of a social class because one powerful guy says so'

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The idea that the scumbags would go "oh, no, we won't touch purebloods" doesn't work since Death Eaters were routinely killing "blood traitors" like Ginny's uncles. The thing is, as was stated, since you can't prove someone was mind-controlled, slaves can't get freed by calling the DMLE. But that means, you can't prove Ginny didn't run away from home and decided to marry Crabbe or Goyle. She wouldn't be obviously enslaved, but married to a proper pureblood? That's a-ok, isn't it? And a talented poor pureblood wizard working hard for a rich pureblood, that's also only sensible, isn't it?

Once you state that you cannot free a kidnapped victim because you can't prove she is mind-controlled, you can't just claim "it's not a problem for everyone". Not with people like Malfoy in power.

 

[Doghead13]

The idea that the scumbags would go "oh, no, we won't touch purebloods" doesn't work since Death Eaters were routinely killing "blood traitors" like Ginny's uncles. The thing is, as was stated, since you can't prove someone was mind-controlled, slaves can't get freed by calling the DMLE. But that means, you can't prove Ginny didn't run away from home and decided to marry Crabbe or Goyle. She wouldn't be obviously enslaved, but married to a proper pureblood? That's a-ok, isn't it? And a talented poor pureblood wizard working hard for a rich pureblood, that's also only sensible, isn't it?

Once you state that you cannot free a kidnapped victim because you can't prove she is mind-controlled, you can't just claim "it's not a problem for everyone". Not with people like Malfoy in power.

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I don't recall ever writing that it didn't happen, nor do I recall reading anything Dunkelzhn's written saying it didn't happen.

On the other hand I clearly recall writing a subplot centred on Hermione talking about just how far clans are legally allowed to go if anyone starts something like that. I seem to remember it involved the term 'expeditionary force' and that Dunkelzahn used the scenes in question virtually unchanged.

In a lot of ways, it's based on Anglo-Saxon Britain.