There are plenty of dark! Harry Potter fanfic involving an all out war between muggles and wizards. Sometimes, it would involve a muggleborn siding with the muggles and attempt to kill off the wizarding population as a whole.

However, I have yet to see any justification why would the UK government and the wizarding society in UK to wage an all out war against each other in any of the fanfics so far.

I think there are several questions that needs to be addressed by the author.

Why would the UK government have a desire to commit an act of genocide against the wizarding population in the first place?

Why would the UK government risk the death of hundreds of muggles in order to kill off the wizards and witches?

Why would the wizarding community want to reveal themselves to the muggle world?

I have yet to find a fanfic where the author managed or attempted to answer all this kind of question.

 

I would think Voldemort's reign of terror would be a pretty good excuse for muggles to go to war with wizards. Whether or not they have any chance of winning such a war (and it's been debated over and over and over and over again) is something else entirely.

 

Fear of the unknown.

Retaliation (against, say, Voldemort, who they accidentally take to be synonymous with the magical world as a whole).

Freedom (the magical world dominates the Muggle one, with magical leaders treating the Muggle ones like pets - see Obliviators, and HBP where they mess around in Muggle leader's affairs to make things more convenient for themselves).

 

Reasons for the wizards:

- No longer wanting to hide from inferior muggles.
- Worst dark lord in history = half muggle. Therefore, prevention = protection
- Along the same vein, what starts out as a secret removal of muggleborns from their families spills into an all-out confrontation when (a) one muggleborns decides to tell the muggles, or (b) a muggle accidentally finds out what's going on.

 

Taure, I don't buy that last one. I know I can't convince you that I'm right, but I think I can make a case that my interpretation can stand.

I will admit that when I first read that scene, I thought Fudge was just bluffing, thinking that when John Major finds out the other country's president did call, it'd be too late to do anything about it.

But then, I realized there are two other points I missed:

a) I doubt the other country's magical government would take it lightly if British wizards started coming in and messing with the country's muggle leaders.

b) Kingsley Shacklebolt was working as Major's secretary for a while, to protect him. I think that it's a more likely and simple explanation for that line that Shacklebolt simply rescheduled the call citing some emergency, rather than positing some interference with foreign leaders.

 

So the UK government will decide to wage a war based on the words of a few muggleborn?

 

A few muggleborns with power the likes of which the world has never seen. The ability to control minds, turn invisible, be perfectly silenced, and disguise huge stadiums, castles, and entire business districts in plain sight. It's not as if they are telling crazy stories.

Not to mention the fact that the Wizengamot had legislation to allow for muggle hunting, that's enough of a security breach for the gov't to crack down. I can seen teh WW hating that, responding with violence, and then the situation escalating until a war breaks out.

The UK started a war back in 1982 over 1800 people in some podunk colony on the other side of the planet that had no strategic or economic value. Wars have been started over personal insults and other petty bullshit.

 

I'd be more likely to believe that the muggle world, with its huge population and generally high standards of education, would simply open negotiations with the Wizarding world. Remember that Hagrid (I think) said something like, "They'd try to get us to fix all their problems."

Well, I suspect that us muggles have *something* to offer - like a ride on the space shuttle? - for services rendered. True moon rocks. Access to reactors for experimental potions ingredients. Treatments and diagnostics for diseases that the Wizards have been missing. DNA testing to verify family lines. Pictures from the Hubble.

Really powerful calculating machines and highly advanced math. Theoretical physics that JKR couldn't imagine.

 

Don't be short-sighted. The premise was that wizards start kidnapping muggleborns from their homes, and the muggleborn wizards warn the muggle government for whatever reason. So yes, if there's a large sovereign (for argument's sake) nation making an organized effort to take a country's children without consent, any responsible government will try to stop them. I could easily see that leading up war after few confrontations.

 

IMO, canon-wise, there are no good justifications for a muggle-wizard conflict.

I'm not particuarly fond of the plot itself, as I just don't think it can be done well, but I think you would have to alter a lot of things to make it even semi-believable. It would take a good author to pull off, and a great author to make it captivating and worth following.

Also, I don't wish to start another wizard vs muggle 10 page discussion, but lets be real here, even if such a conflict would break out it would be one-sided as fuck. The wizards would pwn and that would be that. It's just not interesting to me.

 

The general muggle population might look upon the wizards like that: simple curios or people who are expected to solve everyone's problems.

It's easy to imagine how a wizard walking down a street could get mobbed by people demanding quick fixes to their problems and should he/she decline, the situation could easily go out of hand. The muggles might easily get angry and rough the wizard up. If it happens to one or two wizards, the general wizarding population might ignore it, but as it starts to become more and more common, wizards will retaliate.

There are two major causes for war: territory/resources and social differences. If two muggle countries can go to war over social differences, is it that hard to imagine muggles going to war with wizards over the huge cultural differences between the two societies?

A further point to consider is that muggle armies/terrorrist groups will very likely try and abduct a few wizards to see if they could reproduce their magic for destructive purposes. Considering the abysmal opinion most wizards have of the muggle population, this would without fail lead to war.

 

And that naturally leads to the question: do wizards have a moral responsibility to help the Muggles out, even if it inconveniences them. If, say, the wizards could easily cure cancer, I don't see how that can be morally justified by the claim "But then they'd want us to be curing them all the time!"

That said, in real life all of us could be "doing good" e.g. work for charities, etc. in time we decide to use for other things.

 

Wizards are lazy. They usually don't walk the streets to get places. They apparate, floo, and occasionally fly places. Also, wizards tend to avoid places that are densely inhabited by muggles.

Even if they were walking down a street, there's these nifty things called notice-me-not charms and muggle repelling wards, which would allow them to walk through dense muggle areas, robes and all, unmolested.

It's hard to imagine a wizard getting mobbed by muggles when with a simple spell they can become invisible (at least to the muggle eye) or apparate away before things get out of hand.

Dumb hypothetical is dumb.

 

Oh snap.

What do you guys think the other wizarding nation will think about this?

That those motherfucking british faggots have leaked the greatest secret in the history of mankind out to the whole world/

???

It would be a clusterfuck beyond any fanfic author's ability to write. Though people will try.
And fail.

 

Except in this case, they are now starting a war on UK itself.

But a full scale war? Not to mention something as big as this could drag other wizarding government into this as well as their muggle counterpart like what Kang has mentioned.

Even if the Muggle government decides to act, I find it more likely that they are going to send in some rescue team as opposed to deploying the entire British army to fight with the wizards.

Wars are expensive. You don't declare wars left and right just to save the lives of a few muggleborns.

Even then, the scale of destruction and harm done to the muggles and muggleborn won't be big enough to warrant public support for a full scale war.

If the wizards managed to kill off a few thousand muggles in one go, then maybe the public outcry will be high enough to demand a large scale war. A few hundred deaths spread out in the course of an entire year?

Most people won't even notice those deaths, nor would they ask for a massive mobilization of the UK army.

So why didn't the modern UK government go to war with almost every nation in the world that has a different culture? Why didn't they seek to rebuild the British empire?

Sure, wars can be started due to cultural difference and resources. However, to say that these are the only factors that comes into play is an extremly simplistic view in my opinion.

 

Which would honestly make it that much worse. You have a group on individuals with incredible personal power, many of whom have an expressed dislike of the national government. Can you think of anything more damaging to national security? The government would be scrambling to rein them in somehow. Wars are started for national interest, and the greatest of those is security. Frankly, there's no reason not to reciprocate once they've been attacked.

 

Isn't those group a minority to begin with? If the wizards decides to wage a full scale war on the muggles, undoubtedly the UK government will respond in kind.

Even then, how the muggle government will respond depends on the scale of the attack.

However, what I am talking about is why would the muggle government be the one to initiate the war? If the wizards are not the aggressor, why would the muggles want to declare war?

Initiating a war is different from defending yourself against the aggressor.

That usually what happen in most fanfics, where the muggle government decides to wage a war just because some muggleborn was complaining to the muggle authorities, and not because the wizards are waging an open war against muggles.

 

Well in that case... let's just agree such fics are crap, and about as plausible as Harry and Draco being paired up on a school 'project' that ends up with Harry fighting his internal dialogue before chowing down on Draco's dick.

There is no logical reason for this to happen. Technology (magic) is on the wizards' side - unless they are going out of there way to be seen, they won't be seen. If they are, they can make muggles forget. And even if they don't do that, no politician is going to be able to convince a country to go to war because a band of mythological creatures are living peacefully in hiding.

 

I honestly can't remember well, but I think I might have read a fic in which Voldemort - or one of his Death Eaters - puts the Muggle Prime Minister under the Imperius Curse and takes control of the Muggles that way and make them attack the wizards that oppose him or whatever, thus mixing the Death Eater's ability to do magic with the Muggles' advantage in numbers.

Wouldn't that work?

 

I think we are starting to go off-topic by turning this into another who will win the war debate.