This thread now fails Godwin's law.

 

She was hardly aiding the genocide. She, like Fudge, was merely heavily biased against Harry - someone whom they thought was a destabilizing agent. Fudge was merely trying to save his job, and his lackey was helping him.

 

The people of the wizarding world were hardly cheering Voldemort's Ministry on. They were simply helpless to do anything about it, and too self-interested to risk their lives.

To continue your analogy, while there were some in Nazi Germany who continued to risk their lives to help the Jews (equivalent to the Order of the Phoenix), the great majority of the German people went along with it. This is not to say that the average German person, or even the average German soldier, was an evil person. Sure, you had the fanatics and the true believers. But I'm fairly sure that the average German in Nazi Germany were simply normal people trying to have normal lives during extraordinary times.

You will note, however, that eventually the wizarding general populace did rise up against Voldemort's Ministry when they arrived at the Battle of Hogwarts.

Also, if the great masses of the general wizarding population did in fact agree with Voldemort's philosophy, then how is it that the great majority of the wizarding world is afraid of Voldemort and considers his return and take over a Very Bad Thing? Indeed, if the people held the beliefs you say they do, then Voldemort would be welcomed with open arms, society would be ruled already like it was in DH, and Dumbledore and Co. would be the evil terrorists.

I disagree with your assessment about Voldemort as well. The wizarding population knew that Voldemort was back, they knew that he was trying to take over the Ministry, they knew that Scrimgeour was dead. When the Ministry started rounding up Muggleborns it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots.

Finally, I disagree that Umbridge represents anything normal. She's clearly an unstable fanatic.

 

She was part of the kangaroo courts set up against muggleborns in Deathly Hallows.

I've made a parallel to real life resistance groups in another thread that pretty much throws this down. There is always something people can do, and even if they can't that doesn't mean that they should have actively helped the ministry.

I think the Order of the Phoenix would be more the equivalent of the German Communist Party. I was talking about isolated events of politically unconnected people helping Jews, which there were.

If there wasn't a great degree of anti-Semitism already present in German culture, Hitler wouldn't have managed to rise to success by playing on it. Regardless of those incidents, the German people as a whole were hostile to Jews, even if not to the degree Nazi true believers were (most probably wouldn't have supported the Death Camps, but they were by and large OK with Hitler's original public plan of deporting them. separating them into Ghettos, expropriating their possessions, etc).

Really? Who were the non-Order, non-Hogwarts residents members of the populace who did that? Mrs. Longbottom, and that's it.

I did not claim that they were in agreement with Voldemort's extermination plan, just that their attitude was stronger than the mild prejudice you described. Besides, Voldemort's goal was not just elimination muggleborns, but also to seize power for himself. There are a lot of reasons people who discriminate against muggleborns might still have opposed Voldemort, and he showed no compunctions about killing purebloods.

Then what was the point in his plan? Voldemort clearly thought the people wouldn't make the connection, otherwise he would have just invaded the ministry and made himself Minister. That he went trough the rigmarole he did in canon suggests that there was some added value to that.

Then how was she able to gain employment and build a successful career on the pre-Voldemort ministry? She was quite public with her views, what with calling centaurs half-breeds and all....

Well, Rowling based the DE ideology on Nazis, so it's fair to say that this thread is exempt. Besides, I wasn't saying Taure was a Nazi, or comparable to them.

 

That would be the hundreds of reinforcements (given the small size of the wizarding population, an uprising of hundreds is massive):

Because there's a psychological difference between suspecting that Voldemort is in charge behind the scenes and seeing Voldemort sitting on a throne in the Ministry. The second might be enough to push the people to revolt (certainly him turning up at Hogwarts was).

She was able to do so because Fudge's administration, influenced more and more by Lucius Malfoy.

Anti-semitism was a minor part of how Hitler reached power. Far more important, and sufficient on its own for him to reach power, was the international reparations and restrictions that the Treaty of Versailles placed on Germany.

 

Eh.. this discussion turned into a parseltounge discussion, yes it is a great example of family magics. But I think that family magic has a lot of potential. For example using a bloodmagic system similar to Flairgolds with only some exceptions. I don't know if it was mentioned in canon as I've read those books a few years ago and I didn't even read DH cause I just dislike cannon after book 5 so much, but there are some families intermarrying with magical creatures, maybe someone could use that. Rituals that only purebloods who intermarried with certain magical creatures say 10 - 15 - 20 generations ago which in the long run strenghtened their blood and help them infuse it with certain traits that through certain rituals were uniquely bound to their last name and family affiliation ( let's not forget the whole head of family etc thing. the family tapestries could finally have some use here! )

Methene WTF are you ?

 

Exactly, what frightens them is being governed by Voldemort, not having a sixth of their population interned or killed. That was the only thing that prompted them to revolt.

Then why wasn't Fudge himself ousted? To continue your analogy of comparing treatment of muggleborns to treatment of blacks in present day America, it would be a pretty big scandal if a member of the President's Cabinet was found calling black people 'niggers'. That it was all a-OK just furthers my point.

 

Because Fudge never said or did anything against Muggleborns, and was in fact never showed a single anti-Muggleborn feeling.

Even Umbridge never said anything against Muggleborns until Voldemort took over, and it appears to me that the way she instantly transfered her loyalty and beliefs is done to emphasise the way she is essentially a sycophant (albeit one who occasionally thinks she knows better than her leader).

Umbridge had a problem with half-breeds, not Muggleborns. Werewolves, giants... Dark creatures, basically. So not analogous to someone in the cabinet calling people niggers. More like someone in the cabinet advocating extreme gun control (someone like Lupin is potentially dangerous, if the proper precautions are not taken, just like a gun is potentially dangerous). Except in this case the guns are people too.

 

She also had a problem with centaurs, which aren't Dark creatures, IIRC.


As far as "Family Magics" are concerned, I would think it highly unlikely that the older pureblooded families don't have some sort of spell grimoire that they keep secret from others.

I'm not sure how much I like the idea of using rituals to bind certain traits/abilities to someone's bloodline. A similar thing was used to explain Parseltongue in Second Chance at Life and I didn't like it there at all.

 

Actually the snake did speak to Harry in the zoo

And at the orphanage when Riddle tells Dumbledore that he can talk to snakes, he says that they find him and tell him things.

But then again we don't know what the snakes whisper to him, so it could just be simple and mindless things.

 

So basically you want Naruto style bloodline limits?

Meh. I'm not really in favor of the idea myself. If you want Xmen!HP, just write a damn crossover. If you introduce all these unique, super powerful abilites, your story inevitably ends up drifting too far away from the source material until you have trash like Miranda Flairgold's stories.

However, I'm not opposed to minor abilities or affinities running in families, such as parseltongue, metamorphmagi, divination (Trelawney family), or even something like an innate gift for becoming an animagi or a proficiency in certain magic, such as charms and transfiguration.

Keep it simple and believable and I'm all for it.

 

I had always thought the wizarding world only had certain professions inside families with the best, and maybe only, example being Ollivander. He certainly has certain spells and such only known to him. Other then that, fighting techniques and such, would seem pretty much like Naruto. We don't know if metamorphmagus and animagus abilities can be passed down since no one in the black family seems to have that ability, on the other hand, Tonks child did inherit it, so who knows.

Like Demons In The Night said, as long as it is kept simply it will be enjoyable.

 

Only Enemies is quite possibly the best Harry/Bella Fic you'll ever read. At least in my opinion. Highly Recommended

 

^^^ This, but you're probably right, the family magic in OE mostly affected their mental state as I remember.

 

I don't recall Ollivander having any spells known only to him; can you point to any canon evidence of that? I know he had a creepily exact memory and could tell you the wood and core of a wand almost immediately, but that might be a fairly common spell for all we know. Just saying.

And yeah, Tonks did pass on the Metamorph talent, and Remus was afraid of passing on the werewolf curse as well, although luckily, that didn't happen.

I like where your thinking is going, Sesc. I know guys like Methene are gung-ho for the purebloods and stuff like that - stuff that I absolutely despise - but this could be used well IF it were used sparingly and not overpowered as has been done any number of times.

To continue your line of thinking, would say, Harry be able to command these types of Black family spells since he is Sirius' godson, particularly after Sirius becomes the head of the House of Black? That kind of thing, along with the blasting of the tapestry, etc. would lend more than lip-service to that kind of family name pride. Of course, you'd have to somehow get around the fact that Sirius himself was blasted off the family tree at sixteen, but that's its own thread or plot or whatever.

What I'm saying is that family magics could lend some real value to who is picked as godfather/godmother to a child, and also give extra value to persons of a certain blood as prisoners or hostages if they could be made to use their skill or access against that family.

I had more to contribute yesterday, but got sidetracked and now that I'm posting, I've forgotten a lot of what I had thought up...

 

Every other wizard and his dog would be attempting to create wands if the knowledge was given out freely to the public, since there's obviously a lot of money to be made from it and having spare wands at the ready would be more than useful for some people. That suggests that some spells/knowledge has been kept private by the Ollivander family (and others, such as Gregorovitch) in order to maintain their trade.

Also, a somewhat conclusive proof that this knowledge is not free for everybody is Ron's broken/handed down wand. If the knowledge had been out in the open, he or another of his family would have inevitably tried to make one to replace it.

 

Well, the knowledge to make a car is freely available, and Toyota hasn't gone bankrupt because of it.

 

Poor analogy, really.

Making cars requires a certain amount of industrialisation, labour, and machinery.

There is no analogous industry in the wizarding world. Everything wizards do is done via magic, which all wizards possess. A wizard himself is the industrial machinery and labour.

In short: to make a car you need a lot more than just the knowledge of how to do so. With anything that wizards do all you need is yourself, usually a wand, and the knowledge of how.

 

A story that fits this is Oath Breaker by Goblin Cat KC. If you can ignore slight slash and/or are not overly bothered by it this story is readable.

Not only mental state but also what branches of magic you excell in, Malfoys with duelling for example.

Or that the theoretical components to a wand is quite expensive(or atleast costs a bit). Especially given that the wand chooses the wizard, hence it does not guarantee that the first, nor the first hundred wands fits.