Since the survey was brigaded last year, I don't think there's much point trying a serious survey again this year.

But surveys are fun. So in its place, here is a complete troll survey designed to stoke the maximum amount of controversy by asking important questions like "Who can Harry beat in a duel?", "What colour is Daphne's hair?" and "Is Fleur model hot or sexy hot?"

Survey: link.

Results: link.

 

Susan Bones coming out on top in the only category that really mattered.

Also, I'm a bit conflicted as to whether I think that DH Harry could take Yaxley or Dolohov in a fair fight. I'd lean towards him taking Dolohov because he's been locked up in Azkaban for 14 years iirc, and hasn't had much page time aside from cursing Hermione in OotP, but idk. I think that Yaxley, as the head of the DMLE, whether the position was earned or not, would have had to have had tenure as a senior auror, hit-wizard or Ministry Attorney, and he never went to Azkaban, so I'd imagine that he was a skilled fighter, and that Harry would have difficulty dealing with him. I'm not 100% sure though. After reading through the wiki to refresh my memory, Dolohov and Yaxley both dueled Flitwick during the battle of Hogwarts, with Yaxley coming out unscathed, and Dolohov losing. Also, Dolohov and Rowle lost to Harry, Ron and Hermione, while Yaxley was defeated by Lee Jordan and George Weasley. Soooooooo, ig that implies that Yaxley is a superior duelist, but idk if that makes him a match for Harry or not. It'd probably be a toss up, or a narrow victory for Yaxley.

Finally, I don't think that there's any mention of inherited Wizengamot seats in the book, and as the Minister of Magic seems to have a massive amount of power, I'd say that most appointments come directly from that office.

 

Great survey with truly important question.

 

But could DH Harry defeat the indomitable duelist Molly Weasley?

 

When you're boning someone's daughter, you've already beaten them on some level.

Molly to Bellatrix: "Not my daughter, you bitch!"
Molly to Harry: "Now my daughter's your bitch!"

 

Survey now closed. 209 responses total, of which just over 50% are DLPers.

Selected results:

1. Most popular pairing is Harry/Fleur (24.9%) followed by Harry/Daphne (19.1%) and Harry/fem!Harry (11%). Somewhat amusing that Harry/fem!Harry came third given there are so few fics out there with this pairing.

2. When it comes to avoiding fics, the idea of Harry banging Hermione disgusts about as many people as the idea of Harry banging his own mother - 25.4% people dislike Harry/Hermione the most, versus 25.8% who dislike Harry/Lily the most.

3. A fairly even split on Harry/Ginny vs. Harry/Hermione. Ginny takes it on a 54-46 split.

4. A total of 65.1% agree that Harry's dick is bigger than 6 inches. That makes it canon, I think.

5. Susan Bones is the clear winner of the tit race, with 60.3% thinking she has the biggest tits. The only other serious contenders were Lavender Brown (13.9%) and Hannah Abbott (9.6%). It is fascinating that the fandom has such strong consensus over which 3 female characters have the largest breasts, given that JKR does not mention breasts once.

6. Fleur is definitely "model hot", say 58.4% of the votes. But Daphne exists in a superposition of "model hot" and "sexy hot", with respondents being split 51-49.

7. Daphne has golden blonde hair, say the plurality (35.9%). Surprising given the prominence of the Elsa-esque "Ice Queen" depiction with pale blonde hair. Also curious is the 11% backing strawberry blonde, which is a rare Daphne indeed. But some form of blonde is the clear victor, with just 15.8% backing black-haired Daphne.

8. The list of characters whom Harry can beat in a duel is a bit all over the place. The highest result is Ron Weasley, with 75.6% saying Harry can beat Ron. Which means, of course, that around 25% of Respondents think Harry is unable to beat any of the listed characters in a duel. That's surprisingly high as a percentage.

9. Clipping at Ron's heals are Draco Malfoy (75.1%), Neville Longbottom (74.2%), Hermione Granger (72.2%), Dolores Umbridge (71.8%), and Peter Pettigrew (69.9%). These characters form a fairly distinct group as the lowest rated duellists. There is then quite a jump to the next lowest rated duellist, Corban Yaxley at 53.1% of Respondents saying Harry could beat him in a duel.

10. At the opposite end, there is also a fairly discrete group of elite duellists. Lord Voldemort is top, with 27.8% saying Harry could beat him in a duel (perhaps surprisingly high), followed shortly by Kingsley Shacklebolt, at 28.2% (again, surprisingly close to Voldemort). Also in this group are Severus Snape (31.1%) and Bellatrix Lestrange (36.8%).

11. Only 22% of Respondents think technology can overcome magic, whereas 28.2% of Respondents think Muggles would win in a war against wizards. The discrepancy is interesting - the 6.8% of Respondents who think that Muggles can win despite their technology being useless against magic have some explaining to do, I think.

12. A strong majority gives the correct answers to the questions on magical exhaustion and the nature of transfiguration.

13. DLP is strongly pro-slavery, with 67.5% of Respondents preferring House-Elves to remain enslaved.

14. A surprisingly high 29.2% are fine with an unregulated love potion free-for-all.

 

I made the same mistake as Ched and answered that question the wrong way round.

To make the record clear I think Harry could beat everyone except Voldemort, Bellatrix, Kingsley and Snape.

 

But how does one keep their House Elf servant loyal without being able to slip a vial of diluted, unregulated love potion into their morning pumpkin juice?

 

I don't understand why there even are diverse opinions about Harry's size.
For Merlin's sake, Ollivander used a measuring tape in Philosopher's Stone to pick a wand of matching 11 inches.

 

The fact is, Wizards live in a reservation. Another fact is, Wizards could take over the Muggle government without any issues using the Imperius curse. If they were let to.

This brings me to the conclusion that there are some outside forces that thwart the Wizarding ambitions and play for the Muggles' team.

Vatican is the easy bet.
Another idea is the power of religion that can render the anti-magical jihad to be actually successful.

 

I voted this way simply based on numbers. The Wizarding population is all over the place, but consistently low compared to the muggle population, so the loss of any single wizard is a much greater loss than any single muggle, and the muggles only have to get lucky once to take out a wizard of Dumbledore or Voldemort's calibre.

 

All you need is a half dozen wizards or witches that can cast the disillusionment charm/have an invisibility cloak and the Imperius curse and you've got the, nearly, totality of the muggle population centers gone. A Dumbledore/Voldemort talent could do the same and much more

 

The problem with a war between wizards and muggles is that realistically such war would never be a clear cut fight. There would be significant number of wizards fighting on the muggle side, and muggles on the wizarding side. All depending on the cause and justification of said war.

It's kind of like asking who would win a war between Russia and Ukraine. Assuming a "fair" fight between the two there's no question who has the upper hand, but wars don't tend to be fair, as seen during the last months...

 

Not really how statistics work, unless those 25% all voted no for everyone else. For instance, if someone voted for Draco but not for Ron, that could leave the number who think Harry can't beat anyone lower, potentially as low as 0%.

 

Cavemen with spears and zerg strats.

 

Rarity drives up the value?

To tell the truth, my brain went out to lunch the second I saw Hannah Abbott's name.
She bores me.
She bores me more than characters with literally no development beyond having a name, because I can at least make up anything I want about them.
Besides, why poach from Neville for such a meager reward?

I'm not sure I even registered Lily's appearance on the list, once I spotted the excitement vacuum that is Abbott. The most interesting thing about her was the opportunity to vote against her.

Susan bores me almost as much as Hannah, yet I still have always had this assumption about her measurements. On the other hand, I've always pictured Lavender as slender with more or less average measurements.

I don't think about Hannah long enough to speculate about her chest.
I'll assume she has one and that a heart beats within it... though, but for her involvement with Neville, I wouldn't be shocked to find out she doesn't.

Neville ending up with an undead wife, when he's so associated with plant life and nature, would be an amusing juxtaposition, though.

It does make one wonder. At a guess, I'd say the suggestion was planted in people's minds in some influential ('influential' being distinct from 'good' or 'popular'... maybe 'formative' would be a better term) early fan fics, and the idea simply spread like a meme, with people who never read those stories still having been influenced by the discussions or fics of those who had.

I'm still not quite sure what the distinction is, but I have an inkling.

Well, I always pictured Tracey's hair as being a lighter blonde than Daphne's, so the latter's hair can't be too pale.

Degenerate weirdos...

Which is odd because, when someone bothers to portray her in a visual medium, she almost always seems to end up with black hair.

Honestly, I think black-haired Daphne was mostly a thing A: Before Daphne was much of a phenomenon in fan fic, so the hair color hadn't been solidified by mindless herd-followi- er, common consensus, and B: Because most of her prominent early appearances in fan fic were as a replacement for girl!Blaise. Once people realized Blaise was male, they replaced "her" with blank-slate Daphne and so, since a lot of people thought Blaise was a raven-haired Italian, some early examples of Daphne sported black hair.

Objection! Ron isn't a healer, he is clearly a 2nd string DPS character.

The guy who was slumming it with Radio Free Roscoe? Hmm.

I feel like, as long as you are a halfway decent fighter and aren't cowed by her madness, all you have to do is bide your time until she fucks up and does something barmy, then hang her up by her own guts. I mean, come on... Mollywobbles.

Oh shit, they've started discussing it... there goes the neighborhood.

Sheer numbers, if I had to guess.

I would argue that there are multiple definitions of what constitutes 'magical exhaustion' in the fan community.

Going by the survey question, the answer is clearly NO. Who runs out of magic? That's not a thing. That's like a Jedi, outside of an RPG, running out of Force.

If one supposes that HP wizards act as a conduit for the magic that goes into their spells, as opposed to simply using their wand to direct the magic around them into spells as though they were an orchestra conductor, then there is a possibility that the act of serving as a conduit for vast amounts of magic could eventually become too fatiguing to continue (with some possibly having more of a tolerance for this labor than others). One could be said to have become 'magically exhausted' when they can no longer continue channeling magic like this. Depending on how one looks at it, this could be seen as a specific (and distinctly magic-related) condition or, less charitably, as just another form of physical exhaustion and thus not worthy of a specific qualifier.

If one subscribed to the notion of such exhaustion, it might naturally follow that there is a risk of either temporarily or permanently injuring oneself if a wizard tried to push themselves to continue casting after they've already become too worn out to safely persist.

Spoiler

I wouldn't take it to the extent of burning out one's ability to use magic or literally burning up from the inside out, as can happen in Wheel of Time, though.

I voted for freeing them but, even as I did so, imagined a third option.

"Freeing," where house elves are concerned, seems to imply "dismissing," if we just go by what we've seen in the books; and that seemed a terrifying outcome to the elves. A third poll option that hinted at a law demanding you make an offer of "You're free to go but welcome to stay." rather than "The law says you gotta go, so here's a pair of me crusty old jocks, and now you're homeless, sucker! Good luck!" might have skewed the results in a more... liberty-minded direction.

Very strange, if I do say so myself.