Haha Khortez that is where you are mistaken, fundamentalist.

 

Okay, Taure, I understood most of that... Okay, barley any of it, but if I shot of an AK at you and you shot an AK at me, they both hit in mid air, both spells are the same quality, what would happen? In a different situation, I shot an AK at you and you shot a stunner at me, same conditions as above, what would happen?

 

Not enough to say for certain, but I'll say what I think.

AK meets AK

Several possible scenarios.

1. They pass through each other, due to the rule that nothing magical can stop the AK. I'm not a fan of this one, since GOF shows that there are some magical things that can stop it.

2. The spell that is of superior casting triumphs over the spell of inferior casting.

AK verses Stunner

This one is much easier. AK is a more powerful spell than the Stunning charm, so the AK triumphs.

Alternatively, it might be the case that when spells meet in mid air they will always annihilate each other, regardless of strength.

We haven't seen enough colliding spells to know this one for sure.

 

Ah, but I don't mean control here, not power. Magic is infinite, but it also must be controlled. There is no difference from one perfectly cast protego to the next, but it is hard to cast a protego perfectly. And a perfectly cast stunner will break through a non-perfectly cast protego. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is my theory on it after looking through all the other theories, especially yours. There is no quantifiable nature, but there is a matter of skill up to a certain point.

I.E. A duel between masters like Voldemort and Dumbledore would not be based upon the power of the magic, but the skill of the caster. Dumbledore's protego will block anything but Voldemort's killing curse because they both cast everything perfectly. It is only a matter of whether they are able to cast the spell in time.

 

Indeed, but control/skill could be said to be just another word for power, when it is being used in this way.

Out of curiosity, what would you say would happen when an imperfect spell meets an imperfect shield? Does the imperfection have variables (i.e. one thing can be more imperfectly cast than other)? If so, you're back to the problem of quantification, and my larger and smaller infinities argument still applies.

Alternatively, an interesting idea would be that an imperfect shield always beats an imperfect spell, because protection is by nature greater than offense. Or you could say it's the other way round.

 

That makes as much sense as it possibly can, at least for the moment. Now for two more questions,
1. Can spells be stacked? by that, I mean can person A reinforce Person B's shield to make it stronger then it originally was?
2. Can spells be cancelled? I don't mean A stuns B and C revives B. I mean, as someone just finishes a spell, we can see the spell coming from the wand, but someone has cast a disarming spell just before the spell has finished materializing, does this spell still come out and go as it normally would, does it backfire or does it even come out?

 

No idea. No basis for deciding on this.

Snape blocking Harry's spells before Harry was finished casting them in HBP, and Voldemort's AK backfiring and killing him after the wand had left his hand in DH would seem to say yes, spells can both be canceled and come out and backfire after it leaves the wand.

The rules for governing this process are as of yet a mystery to us though.

 

You have answered my questions as best you could, so thanks.

 

Actually, back to question one there...

If I recall correctly, in DH Harry and Hermione would cast the protections around their camp together. This seems to imply that wizards can cast a spell jointly as well as on their own.

 

But it would only be quantifiable up to a point where magic is not the question. Only the skill of the caster is in question, and that is rational.

Because magic is power over reality, when you cast a spell perfectly it does what it is supposed to with no limit. A perfectly cast stunner will stun anything that can be stunned. A perfectly cast killing curse will kill anything that can be killed.

It is only the ability of the caster to perfectly twist reality that comes into question. You CAN weakly twist reality. It isn't a question of power. It is a question of how skilled you are. A badly cast stunner will only make the victim groggy. It is only a perfectly cast spell that has perfect, infinite results.

 

How To Eliminate the Muggle Threat

This is inspired by the "Wizard vs. Muggle combat - who would win?" threads, but I want to take care of the problem permanently.

Who here has read "The Stand," by Stephen King?

Any society is dependant on a certain number of people to run it - and a high-tech Space Age society needs a HUGE population base. If *I* was trying to solve the Muggle Threat (being a muggleborn,) and I was REALLY ruthless, I would force all the Wizarding Enclaves worldwide into quarantine and release a supervirus. Do it during the School year, so that muggleborn children can be kept from exposure. Obviously, Make Sure that you have a cure or vaccine that coincidentally only works on magical people.

Get hold of some of the Germ Warfare weapons that all the UN signatories say they don't have, clone or duplicate one massively, and release it in major cities worldwide. Wait a few months, and then repeat with another bug. Or the same one. Take a 7billion population down to ... say a few hundred million, or even lower.

Wait a few years (maybe a decade or two) and then come out of the shadows. Move slowly and carefully. NEVER let anyone know it was a war, not a natural outbreak. Keep the atrocities to an absolute minimum - and limit communications as much as possible without it looking deliberate. Try to shield squib lines. Use men who have been Kissed as sperm donors, and arrange to impregnate squib women, perhaps making them think they got pregnant during a drunken one-night-stand. Use compulsions to motivate the unwed mothers to be good parents.

Set Really Attractive benefits for large magical families:

A young couple's first few years of marriage is expected to be saving money and moving up to a secure income. Then they start to have children.

third child) Discount tuition at magical secondary school for all the kids (this would motivate parents to have their first three children close together, to get maximum benefit)
fourth child) major tax reduction
fifth child) a house elf ('cause mom's swamped with kids)
sixth child) discounted vocational training (now that the oldest child is near graduation from Hogwarts) this would reward having children early and together.
[I can't think of any other rewards - I'd love suggestions for more children]

I see a regular progression: ideally, a child every three-four years, all the way through menopause.

Mandate classes in ethics, logic, and critical thinking to start At Least in the students' OWL year to help encourage social responsibility. Get someone to start up a newspaper that is in direct competition with The Prophet. Start an all-news radio station. Start two. General education and awareness would severely hamper Dark Lords and their attendant civil wars. I suspect that they have done Major culling to the magical gene pool.

Plan for the long term - centuries. Spread magic through the entire species until magic is the norm.

 

I wonder if this can apply to spells like normal combat shield spells?

 

Ah, good explanation. It's a good theory.

 

I think that's what all the other threads are trying to do as well. The problem comes when people disagree on things, which they do regularly.

You raise some interesting ideas, but this could very easily have been a part of the greater Wizards vs. Muggle thread.

One thing I will say is that:

Doesn't sound like a satisfying solution to me.

I mean, it's effectively saying this:

There is a Wizard vs. Muggle conflict.

How can the wizards win?

By giving all the Muggles magic!

Now everyone's a wizard, and there aren't any Muggles left!

Doesn't seem like they've actually won. In fact, they've lost their advantage...

Also, wizarding ability to create a superbug is debatable. I would say that they would only really have the ability to make a magical superbug, and magical diseases do not seem to effect the Muggles. To engineer a normal disease I think they'd have to do it the normal way, which means learning all about Muggle science - a rather large task. Though I suppose they could just steal some anthrax and duplicate it.

 

I did figure that us magic users would just use an established bioweapon. Originally, I was going to suggest we seal off all the Wizarding enclaves - but I was pretty sure THAT wouldn't work.
I think that if we plan for Generations of time, then we could manipulate the non-magical really efficiently. The problem has always been that the Wizards don't seem able to make a plan and stick to it.
Set up a SMALL group to do the wetwork, and arrange for it to look like they did it to themselves.

 

...we?

You know that we don't actually have magic, right?

 

* looks down her nose at Taure *
Well, Of Course, I meant "we." DLP'ers will Always be at the top of the heap. We ARE the in-crowd.

 

This is definitely a different twist on the whole debate.

I disagree with this because if everyone has magic and is being integrated into wizarding society haven't they actually won? I mean because if everyone is a member of wizarding society than there is no muggle society left which means that the magic users would have won.