I can accept ancient magic being more powerful if the efficiency is quite a bit lower. We can't make the pyramids of Egypt nowadays because we don't have the will to sacrifice hundreds of human lives to the task. Back in the age of mage-kings, the idea of modesty was seen as weakness, which is where you get such legendary figures as Andros the Invincible, whose (wandless) patronus was supposed to be the size of a giant.

 

I didn't say that there is no progress. I just said that it looks nothing like muggle progress (brooms being an outlier - the same hasn't happened with invisibility cloaks).

This doesn't really work. Not with things like the philosophers' stone or the resurrection stone.

@Republic @DrSarcasm & @Thaumologist (and I guess @aAlouda and anyone else interested) I created a thread for this since it gained traction and this doesn't seem to be the place for it (https://forums.darklordpotter.net/threads/old-magic-magical-progress-advancement.40373/)

And more relevant, adding to @thejabber27 getting a regimen of potions because of being extra short/malnourished. Also many diagnostic spells that show this.

 

Those are pet peeves or hated cliches, not the same as fanon (that is, ideas that are so pervasive in fanfiction that people seem to actually think of them as canon).

 

Marauders as a name that James and Sirius called themselves is a widely used concept in fanon that I hate with a passion. The definition of a marauder is one who raids and was used in canon to describe the type of person who would benefit from the map, not the name of a club.

 

This is actually the one fanon thing that became canon, as Rowling had Ron call them that in Half-Blood-Prince.

 

damn!

 

If by "accepted fanon" we mean things that are thought to be true of the actual books (as opposed to simply popular fanfiction tropes), then the perception of Hermione as somehow solving all the problems or being more important to the narrative and plot of the HP books than either Harry or Ron is one of the most regrettable and most annoying.

 

Fanon has an unfortunate tendency to project readers' preoccupation with Ron's feuds with Harry in GOF and DH onto Harry and Hermione, assuming they see Ron as flighty and disloyal even before the Deathly Hallows stuff happens in-story. Sometimes even before any Goblet of Fire incident either, they still see him as a spiteful and envious false friend for no in-universe reason whatsoever.

 

This is especially annoying since it's the polar opposite of Harrys character in canon. Granted that's partly because he's not a realistic depiction of a victim of child abuse. Kids who go through half of the shit Harry did don't become selfless, all forgiving Jesus stand-ins.

 

I'm not even sure this counts as ancient magic being stronger. When I imagine the concept, I think more along the lines of ancient wizards being able to do more powerful things with the same resources. Since modern wizards can still do these mass sacrifices if they wanted to, I think it just counts as a field that hasn't really been developed much.

Edit: Though I guess there's a distinction between my conceptualization of the concept and the "ancient magic being stronger" trope that is more based on lack of access or knowledge/resources of the past.

 

Even the very simplistic form from fanon would be more palatable if everyone wasn't a lord or heir.

 

I actually have a lot of mixed opinions on the whole pureblood aristocracy stuff, not just because it's often done so badly but also because Rowling's worldbuilding (as per usual) leaves a lot of frustrating gaps.

On the one hand, it's often incredibly cringey the way a lot of fanon writes it, either trying to make it rooted in a medieval fantasy structure that never feels appropriate, or some Victorian approximation borrowed from classic romance literature, neither of which map well onto Harry Potter.

But on the flipside, there's still a royal family and a House of Lords and lines to the throne that are held with some esteem within the UK today (as a predominantly ceremonial role, sure, but try broaching the conversation of abolishing the monarchy over there and see how that goes), and it's not hard to see how that framework extends into Harry Potter, not just with regards to the common racial allegory, but with a more stratified class structure as well. Indeed, one thing that surprises me is that Rowling didn't really do much to extrapolate a wizarding royal family to go along with the Muggle one, but given how much she tries to double down on the "everyman" hero with Harry and seemed to have no interest in either the glamour of titles OR challenging the system that would assign them, I guess I'm not surprised there's a gap there. Hell, what could be interesting is Voldemort framed as not just a Dark Lord, but a false lord - a title claimed by power and control rather than birthright, with the modern pureblood 'lords' (maybe having a parallel to modern royal types in the UK with property and titles) simply aligning a corrupted system to fit alongside that but never fully allowing him into polite society.

I dunno, the way I tried to write pureblood aristocracy was based on not just the uber rich kids who went to the exclusive private schools, but also the wealthy businesspeople or inherited wealth types that spawned them - less reliant on a title than shitloads of money, that never quite aligns cleanly with their personal magical power, which comes to be a nasty equalizer when they're expected to get their hands dirty (see: everything that happens to the Malfoys in Renegade Cause).

 

I don't think a wizarding royal family would have fit in, thematically speaking. JKR consistency uses analogies for social groups and conflicts in the Muggle world, e.g. Muggleborns for Jews, werewolves for HIV sufferers. A direct transplant of the same social group as the Muggle world with the same social conflict would not have fit the general worldbuilding theme.

So what you would need is an analogy for the class structure of the Muggle world rather than a direct use of the Muggle system. And I think in the Malfoys, the Blacks, etc. we already have that - regardless of their lack of formal titles, they remain an effective vehicle for commentary on real life snobs.

...aren't you Canadian?

 

Normally I'm the one who prefers thematic consistency over worldbuilding consistency, but this is one of those cases where I actually think both could have sufficed, namely that for as much as the old money snobs of the Malfoys and Blacks held up, there isn't that uniquely British characteristic of the class structure: systemic immobility combined with popularity.

Think about it: the Malfoys are the rich, snobbish assholes who think they're better than everyone (and still wound up with a redemption arc, but different conversation), but Rowling isn't using them THAT much to make a comment on class or wealth so much as blood purity and bigotry, pushed to a further extreme with the Blacks. What becomes interesting is that we have no real insight into how either family got their money, or indeed what money Voldemort wound up amassing during his wars (I'm assuming the Death Eaters and armies wind up getting paid somehow) - it's presumably inherited, but is the fortune just sustainable forever? More to the point, at least in universe the Malfoys seem more tolerated than outright liked - Draco and Lucius have spheres of influence that definitely start imploding by HBP, but in the points they interact with the broader populace, it's more that they have money and that gets them in the rooms where it happens.

Now that's a convenient framing for bigotry, but I think Rowling could have packed more teeth into it by making the purebloods a thematic parallel with modern royals in the UK - not just financially protected in their station, but socially as well, where their bigotry isn't merely tolerated but excused. For as much as Rowling does a decent job showing how bigotry can propagate in a system, the fact that she leans so hard on Slytherin caricatures of evil racism rather than showing how it festers in existing power structures - ones that a well-meaning population might even buy into - kind of shows the limit of how deep her commentary is willing to go.

And either way, it'd certainly be more compelling that how a lot of fanon frames wizarding nobility.

Yes, and we haven't been formally a part of the Empire since 1982 when the last Trudeau split away from the British Parliament. Outside of my anglophile grandmother, the royals have even less standing over here outside of an expensive curiosity who shows up on coinage as historical symbolism. If they went away, the majority would not care.

 

Lordships don't port over well because A, we know wizards have some sort of democracy, and B, their main function viz-a-viz collecting taxes and raising armies both seem to be centralized to the bureaucracy. There's no equivalent to Wizarding peasants either, unless you go out of you're way to create some, so historical titles carried over don't make sense either.

The best approximate then would probably be a sort of Old Money vibe. Especially since the society itself is relatively small, where everyone seems to know who someone like Malfoy is from the first book on. So some random kid who comes out of nowhere and inherits the vaults of a respected family thought to be extinguished, would carry weight even without formal titles.

Especially if there's some aspect where knowledge is hoarded and passed down in such families. So a particular family might be the sole maker of golems in Britain, and them suddenly being killed off might end their secrets with them. Another reason why an inheritor to a supposedly extinguished family might gain attention, outside of formal titles or wizengamot votes.

 

I would add C: the only person with a title is Voldemort, who was only a self-proclaimed lord. Everyone else answers to Mister or Madame, including prominent individuals from old and respected families like Lucius Malfoy and Amelia Bones and Barty Crouch Sr. If actual noble titles were used in the wizarding world we'd have heard at least one such person addressed as such.

 

It's also worth noting that at least some wizards used to be nobles in the past. Most obviously we know of wizarding knights such as Sic Cadogan or Sir Nicolas, but also the Bloody Baron and Helena Ravenclaw and likely her mother as well.
Nearly Headless Nick also adresses the many ghosts gathered at his death day as “My late lamented lords, ladies, and gentlemen"

Rowling also revealed on the wizardingworld article about the Malfoy Family that they were originally granted land by William the Conqueror for magically aiding in his invasion, having long been part of the nobility since then and adding to their land by annexing others, also generally moving in high circles with the first Lucius Malfoy even having courted Queen Elizabeth I.
Though after the statute they have been denying their past association with muggles, and we know that even today Lucius Malfoy just goes by Mister Malfoy, rather than lord Malfoy.

So while I think that quite a few pureblood family technically have aristocratic titles, nowadays actually using them would associate yourself with muggles in a way that seems silly at best and quite shameful at worst.

 

On the other hand, if the title "Lord" doesn't have any relevance (or worse still, is shamefully associated with muggles), why would Voldemort choose to use that title?