After typing 3686 keys in the Villainy thread (measured since I use WhatPulse), and losing it all to the retarded function of the Backspace key, I wanted to discuss the opposite to the Death Eaters, the fire to the water, the white to the black, you get the point.

We have seen examples of perfected villains, more successful and realistic ones. However, the problem in the Harry Potter world of Books 6-7 is that everybody posses the tactical skill of WWI generals and the intelligence of Won-won. Not only are the villains idiotic, but the good guys are just as inept.

I am not talking about the ministry here. They are bureaucratic and infiltrated by both sides, so they can not be effective either way. The Ministry is like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for Voldemort and Harry to duke it out, and then be taken by one of them. Well apparently she enjoyed both in DH, but the slutty nature of the Ministry is not under discussion here. The Order of the Phoenix (the group, not the book) is.

Although in the books we are not shown what the Order or Death Eaters do, except when it comes to protecting and respectively trying to kill Harry, so we cannot judge them appropriately. We can, however speculate on what the Order should have done, and how it should have been organized.

I have some ideas about it, but I will let you start it up...

 

If I accept the premise that Dumbles really was just a school leader and the Wizemgot had little or no real power than by that premise the OoTP is merely a vigilante group, with members, who are not shown to be very militant.

1) Publicity. There needed to be a publicity arm of the organization. Not publicizing them, but what they stand against. They should have spent some time trying to negate the power of the prophet and the ministry's rhetoric.

2) Information/Espionage. Who? What? Why? and How? They were shown to sit on the silly prophecy for months on end, they should have been sitting on the abodes of ally's and friends as well. Sitting on Gringott's. Who does Malfoy meet with? Who do the others that Harry fingered at the end of Book five meet with? Where do they reside and meet? In book seven, Voldemort is lounging in Malfoy Manor prior to the ministry takeover, it never occurred to place surveillance on the place. He wasn't sitting under a fidelius as people have postulated. Drag his scaly ass into the light of day. Bitch-slap a reported for a camera, have Tonks morph her pretty ass into looking like Narcissa and get a picture and port-key out.

3) Strikes. Either through direct action on their own parts or through tips to believable ministry employees they should have been much more successful at rounding up death eaters and infringing on their ability to move around. Madame Bones and other high level ministry personnel should have had rapid response capabilities for when they were inevitable attacked.

4) Stop wasting resources. There was never shown a realistic reason that The Dursley's were a more adequate safe-house then Grimauld place, any other place that a Fidelius could be cast. I can't believe in the history of the magic world a house or two wasn't borrowed by a wizard with a few muggle-repelling and unplottable wards. I book seven the Fidelius is used quite often by the Weasley's, they couldn't do that for Harry's summers, freeing up who ever was on guard duty to do some actual work?

5) Investigate the graveyard Voldemort was rezzed in.

6) Talk to ministry about actively rooting out the dark forces. Are we really supposed to believe that the ministry won't make an attempt at cleaning itself of traitors?

I know a lot of these are general. But they are of the top of my head ideas that any competent group would do to oppose another group.

 

- A more shapely OotP would need much more manpower than they had, from the picture Sirius showed us there were about 30(ish) to begin with. After the first war those numbers were close to halved, and during the second war we only see a few additions to the Order. Some real recruiting had to be done, not just snatch up a few impressionable aurors, teachers, and the crooked beggar or two.

- A spy that is known to change sides frequently would have been killed in a more shapely 'verse. Therefore new spies would be needed and sacrifices would also be needed to either initiate them into the Death Eaters(or a significant amount of intimidation/influence would be needed to turn Death Eaters themselves).

- If you are going to turn vigilante don't just beat around the bush with it, get your ass on the move. Moving to kill, humiliate, incriminate, and imprison members of the opposing faction is a better idea than, as Kpayne said, sitting around at the DoM.

- Don't let your secret weapon rot in a muggle home when you could be training him to fight against Voldemort. <---

 

Judging by the members of the Order, a vigilante group, ther's not much they could effectively do.

They have some people, who could ward houses (Bill, Dumbledore, perhaps Moody). Than create some kind of neighbour watch or something remotely simillar, I don't know...

Now, espionage... that's a must. The Order could use Tonks, Moody or even Sirius in his animagus form (before his death) to spy on known/suspected Deatheaters, collect evidence and than give an anonymous tip to the aurors (Kingsley's division for example) or to Rita, who'd gladly destroy someone's reputation for good article...

Now, if Dumbledore was a ruthless leader he could order some Deatheater assassinations, but that's unlikely.

So we've got collecting information, protecting muggleborns, espionage and eventualy opposing Deatheaters on the battlefield... I guess that's all.

 

The Order has perhaps been depleted of manpower since the First war ended, since I imagine their members were high profile targets for the Death Eaters, but that is no excuse for their sorry performance in the second war.

First, the order of priority is recruitment and additional training for their operatives. Dumbledore's near god persona in the magical world can be used as a rallying point. "Dumbledore needs you to serve as a barrier against evil"

Second, better organisation is required. Perhaps a division of the Order into Combat Operatives and Shadow Operatives. The Combat Operatives, led by Retired Auror Alastor Moody should serve as a rapid response team, as kpayne has mentioned. Moody can also serve as a trainer. The Shadow operatives could be led by Dumbledore directly, with him also retaining overall command. They should be people in power that can influence the Ministry, the press, public opinion etc, acting as counterbalance to Death Eater agents. Dumbledore's morals have no problem with this propaganda and subversion war so it fits perfectly.

Stick Harry Potter in 12 Grimmauld Place over the summer, bring Wonwon and Hermione to keep him company, Fleur Delacour to entertain and educate him and have Moody, Kingsley and Tonks drop by to train the three.

Point three

Stop reacting to whatever happens. Voldemort has just killed 30 children, let's go and help their families. Follow known Death Eaters, catch them in the act, capture them and stick them in an Order prison. Azkaban is unreliable.

 

Right, so here's what I think.

1) Snape is unreliable. Let's assume that Voldemort has some brains in his newly regenerated head, and makes Snape swear an Unbreakable Oath that makes him absolutely loyal to the Dark Lord. Snape breaks it and dies.

2) Now we need new spies. Tonks is perfect; after all, she's Bella's niece and a Black.

3) Mundungus. He's useful for his contacts on the black market, but for Christ's sake that's it. He shouldn't know the location of the Order HQ, the Prophecy, anything.

4) Harry. Sticking him at Privet Drive is pointless and a waste of resources. His blood protection is useless now that Voldemort has it running in his veins. Put him at Grimmauld Place and train him. (And no Fleur, Methene. She's too busy going down on Bill to "entertain" Harry.)

5) Recruitment. Anyone that has passed their OWLs, or is of age can join. Fuck Molly, it's a war. The Order needs everyone it can get. The recruitment drive should start ASAP, literally hours after Voldemort's return.

6) Have someone destroy the Prophecy in the DoM. Common sense ftw.

7) There should be more than just Grimmauld Place. There should be Order safehouses, caches of weapons and supplies all over Britain.

8 ) Like Methene just said: the Order is too reactionary. Let the Ministry deal with the cleanup, the Order is just too small to do it. Priority should be getting the DEs.

 

Rape their minds, get their memories, sell their organs to muggles and dispose of the bodies. Do the same to their families. Win-win situation. You get money (from organs selling) and you get rid of dangerous people and their families.

IMO the Order was never mente to achieve its full potential. There are couple of problems:

First of all - members. The only useful ones in acquireing any potential allies/new members/information where Kingsley, Tonks (Ministry) and Bill (The Gringotts). Also maybe Arthur Weasley.

Secondly - Snape. Dumbledore should plant an vial with some toxic shit inside his brain to secure his 100% loyalty. Snape betrays Dumbledore - toxic shit eats his brain. Screw the redemption-for-everyone. Use brutal force, bribery and blackmail.

EDIT: Or make better use of Snape. Gut him, stick some potent bomb inside his guts, enchant it with magic and send him to a metting. Then push the button and observe the fireworks.

 

Now that is just Weasley village propaganda. Fleur Delacour has no desire to become the next baby pumper for the clan. Instead she yearns for a glamorous life, alongside Potter, one that does not involve cooking, giving birth to 93809283292 children and all the associated problems with children and child birth.

Methene-spreading the truth about Harry/Fleur since GoF

 

The thing that gets me about the Order is the halfcocked "free Harry with 7 duplicates with a high probability of a few people getting killed" plan in DH. I get the feeling JKR wrote this scene just for the sake of writing a 'cool' action scene and to show off how badass Voldemort is with his new DBZ flying skillz. I mean really, JKR made it so that Apparation is untraceable in DH. Why not have 2 or 3 Order members go to #4 and apparate with Harry to Grimmauld place? Or even a portkey? Has common sense gone out the window?

This was just one of the many things wrong with DH.

 

PREPARE, damnit, Dumbledore!!!

1 Rita Skeeter - We've already had the discussion about how Rita was nothing more than an gossip columnist until Dumbledore died. Assuming (as someone suggested) that the reason she didn't really unleash her viciousness until after Snape killed Dumbledore is that AD had some sort of handle on her, then he should have made arrangements for that handle (or muzzle) to be passed on to someone who would gag the bitch. Otherwise, the Order should have made a point of being on friendly terms with her. Or have spies at the Prophet and in the publishing industry. Skeeter did A LOT of damage to morale with that mud-slinging novel about Dumbledore and by continually libeling Harry.

2. AD should have set up caches of weapons, ID, money, and LOTS of safe houses all over the country (Moody would have insisted.) He should have had exits to locations overseas arranged. Every member of the Order should have had an emergency escape route.

3. He should have had protections built into Hogwarts that would have precluded the entry of anyone with the Mark. Does anyone want to think about what was probably happening to defenseless female students after the DE took over? Apparently, the old man was SOO enamored of Snape, and wanted to give Draco SOO many chances, that he deliberately left that bar open. There should have been defenses (i.e., the animated armor) that would automatically detect and attack anyone using Dark magick.

4. Harry and his friends should have been MUCH better trained. AD said he wanted Harry "to have a childhood," but he completely ignored some MAJOR aspects of childhood, like (for instance) food. Harry will be plagued with long term problems caused by years of malnourishment. Why was Harry never taught to think tactically, let alone strategically?

5. Dumbledore never put much effort into uniting the School. In fact, he seems to have gone out of his way to encourage interhouse hostility. Snape is just an example of how COMPLETELY the Headmaster ignored divisive attitudes. As I remember it, none of the Sly students tried to resist Voldemort at all - even when the rest of the school rallied to defend it.

5. The Order should have murdered all the DE who showed up at the Graveyard. They had YEARS to get the job done. In fact, Moody, Snape, and Albus should have been arranging "accidents" for the Inner Circle starting right after Halloween '81.

6. What the hell possessed the Order with that half-assed "escape" from Privet Drive? Why didn't they spend DAYS apparating into and out of the property, then take Harry side-along? Why was Hedwig not sent earlier, or left behind to follow once the heat was off?

7. Why didn't the Order use the Voldemort Name curse to set up some ambushes? It wouldn't have taken many of those to convince the DE that blindly leaping on someone for saying the word might not be a good idea.

8. The Order should have made mirrored sunglasses fashionable. I wonder how many legilimens were out there, quietly gathering information for Voldemort?

9. When I think of how much time Harry, Hermione, and Ron spent wandering around in the woods after the war started, I get mad all over again. Dumbledore knew about the Horcruxes - why didn't he make arrangements for their distruction?

10. Timeturners.
Timeturners.
Timeturners.
If Dumbledore had ACTED like he really believed that Voldemort would rise again, then he would have used his position to get At Least a few time turners. He had over a decade to steal or "misappropriate" time turners, or strong-arm someone into making them for him. I wrote a drabble once, about how Harry could use a time-turner to mine a DE meeting. Even if Voldemort survived, it could have killed a lot of his followers.

 

First strike. You know who they are via Snape. Kill them.

Won't work. Paradoxes. If they were dead, you wouldn't have to go back in the first place to kill them.

 

The way I wrote it, Snape left the meeting soon after being summoned (pretended that he was sick, I think,) and went straight to Harry. They had been waiting for the perfect situation. Harry went back in time some eight hours, and buried muggle explosives all over the site. Then he carefully returned the spot back to looking untouched. Harry flew away on his broom for several miles, then Apparated a different safe house than the one he had been using.

He used a timer for detonation, and stayed in seclusion for a full day, to avoid paradox.


Mostly, I envision using the Time Turners for information gathering, and to minimize losses from attacks. If the building burns completely to the ground, then there's no paradox if someone removes a few irreplaceable artifacts and replaces them with duplicates. What if you went back in time a few hours, and changed the data in some files that you KNOW will be stolen?

 

The problem is only three people can touch it: Dumbledore, Voldemort, and Harry. Dumbledore or Harry going down there would alert the Ministry. You can be sure that Fudge would try to get Harry under his own thumb if he knew the contents of the prophesy. So the only way for them to get in would be to break in (something Dumbledore is probably reluctant to do). The prophesy was really a trap for Voldemort. Dumbledore had to know that only one of the three of them could get it. It wasn't until Rookwood was freed from Azkaban that Voldemort found out how to get it. The Order members were not guarding the prophesy, they were waiting for Voldemort to get it himself. The ending of OotP was the scenario they wanted: Voldemort forced to reveal himself in front of Fudge and other officials. Harry just screwed the plan up by falling for Voldemort's trap.

 

Prophecy. No s in there. =|

 

You don't have to touch a prophecy in order to destroy. Harry and company got rid of a few hundred without any problems.

That's a bullshit plan, and you know it.

 

1. Dumbledore's spine. at the end of GoF, he sounded really badass, summon the order and shit. Little would we know that harry would be forgotten about again and cut off AGAIN from the wizarding world. If the Prophesy was so damn important to the fate of the wizarding world, and it referred to harry, it would stand to reason to actively protect the kid and educate him through life experience. Up till then, Harry maybe had a month in the real wizard world, and the rest at Hogwarts.

My point is that there were resources, like Arthur Weasley(how the ministry works), Sirius Black(pureblood society) and so on, that could teach Harry, maybe not spells or whatever, but just how the world actually worked, not what Ron sees (which doesn't count because of Molly) or what Hermione has read (not everything in a book is true).

Of course everyone who isn't writing fanfic would find this half boring, but personally it would be an easy way for Rowling to provide more information to harry and the reader that would help the reader understand the world and help harry with his adventures.

Am I getting at something here?

 

Ya, it probably is. I was more thinking out loud than anything else. I'm sure JKR didn't think it through that thoroughly, but this thread got me thinking and that was the only thing to me that fit.

Dumbledore has to know the procedures for prophecy handling. The Death Eaters can't just destroy the Orb, Voldemort would want to hear it himself. He has no idea of what the other half contains so he doesn't need Malfoy or the others to hear it first and discover some way to kill him (because that's what he would do in their situation). So he has to hear the original copy first hand.

From what we saw, the Order stands parts of the guard duty alone (Arthur was alone when he was attacked by Nagini). That means they are a "trip-wire" guard; they are there merely to let others know in case of an attack in force and possibly to slow down the attackers. The real question is: where were the Order guards on duty the night Harry and Co. went to the DoM?

As far as the greater question of the Order's (lack) of competency, in hind sight it is obvious that Dumbledore had no intention of fighting the Death Eaters head on. For all his talk about believing that they should drop Divination altogether, he has bet everything on the prophecy and his interpretation: that Harry must sacrifice himself in order to defeat Voldemort. Training him would be counter-productive to his plan.

Recall also in OotP, after Molly finds the bogart Remus tries to comfort her, saying that they are better prepared, etc. I wonder how much of that was to soothe Molly's nerves and how much Remus actually believed? They didn't fare too well at the DoM; Dumbledore and Voldemort were the only ones to prove how good they are with a wand.

 

First of all, I doubt most Order Members would have the balls to do some of the more serious work in combatting an insurgency of any form. If they don't want to get their hands bloody, then get someone else to do it. This brings me to my first point.

1.) Buy mercenaries, grab the Auror corps by the balls, call for unofficial foriegn aid. Most of the Order of the Phoenix aren't cut out for killing ruthlessly. Get someone who can.

2.) You're a vigilante organization, you're already illegal. Don't be afraid to do what you have to do.

3.) Get the DEs to know that the kid gloves are off, make a message out of Death Eater. Kill one, then crucify him, defile his body, his house, and his family. Tear apart his estates and salt it so that it can never bear fruit again. Burn his family name till it becomes a curse. Let everyone know that DE's are getting not one drop of mercy. Demoralize them in your own way.

4.) Controll the flow of information, and use it. Propaganda of any sort is especially damaging in this kind of war. Like others have said, there is evidence that Rita Skeeter was leashed by Dumbeldore. Why don't they use her and her contacts to blitz the Death Eaters in terms of public image? Why let others paint your cause in a negative light?

5.) Start making "connections" with the authorities like the Death Eaters did. Make the Ministry sympathetic to your cause. Number four can come in handy here.

6.) Most of the Death Eaters are pathetic thugs, unused to being hunted. Most of them will fold with even a hint of pressure against them. So attack them. It doesn't need to be a massive assault, just the mysterious dissapearance of a lone lower level Death Eater every couple weeks.

7.) Get the Goblins on your side, or as close to "your side" as is possible. The Goblins controll the money. He who controlls the money, controlls the war. Most of the big problems with the whole conflict were related to massive Pureblood fortunes. Do something about it. Get the Goblins to turn a blind eye to Order sympathetic "robberies". Get them to make withdrawing DE money as difficult as possible. Get them to trace DE slush funds.

 

I agree with a lot of these points.

1. Kid gloves should have come off, at least with Moody around. I mean, c'mon, you're a Dark Wizard hunter. You've got all the proof you need. You're a vigilante, working for a vigilante group. Fuck the law, take'em down now and save the trouble.

2. Get rid of Fudge. For fuck sakes, just take over the Ministry Albus, and get off your ass. You've got the support. Screw the Daily Prophet. It's better to have Marshall Law then people performing a coup on the Ministry years later.

3. Invisibility cloak. Harry isn't doin' much with it during the summer, so freakin' USE IT FOR SOMETHING other then padding for a dilapidated trunk that sits in Harry's first bedroom.

4. Pump money into Fred and George's shit, and make some damned weapons. I say this for after Order of the Phoenix. They've proven themselves with their stuff. PsyOps would be a perfect match for these guys.

5. Make nice with the centaurs. That's mounted cavalry just in case, and they could probably do some decent damage. Same with the Acromantulas. I refer to one of the stories, "White Knight, Grey Queen," by Jeaconis, and have the big spiders have some fun with the death eaters and giants. That forest is full of stuff that could cause a death eater to have a bad day. It's a resource, use it.

6. Use your students. Make research projects, and give them to the 'puffs and the Ravenclaws and Hermione. Tell them to get to work on finding information in that big ol' library, because you probably missed something Albus, even if you are nigh-omniscent (or think you are).

Looking through all this, I recall an icon I saw on an LJ once. It was Harry Potter movie images, and the infamous "Rocks Fall, everyone dies." My point? JK really just kinda fell apart after OotP, and perhaps even after Goblet. I know it's a children's series, and she had a certain plot, but what the hell with Book 6 and 7. (Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.)

But we ask for rationality in an irrational world. Still, it's always fun to war game stuff like this.