That's quite a prediction, is your name Santi or are you on the beta team by chance?

If not quit making predictions and cluttering up space.

 

Because every other post is oh-so-worthwhile? His prediction is a fairly valid one, compared to many of those here, and predictions/discussion of the story is the purpose of this thread. You're taking up more room and generally being more obnoxious by bitching at him for daring to state his opinion then he ever did by posting it.

I get that tons of idiots are showing up and wrecking it. But the dude started his post by saying 'I think', didn't come off as demanding or thinking that his was the only possible way. At least, that's not how I read it. Seriously, chill out.

Now then: Yeah, Harry will believe his brother. I'm more curious about how Harry will react to everyone else disbelieving him, or if Nathan will even deny it in this universe.

 

Discalimer: Not speaking as a member of the beta team.

The canon protagonist was greatly disadvantaged by not having a single credible adult on his side. His parents were dead, his godfather a wanted mass murderer, his father's friend a werewolf, his head of house powerless and his mentor dropped the ball because he refused to use force against death eaters and corrupt ministry officials, because decorum was more important to him than human lives.

Nathan doesn't have this problem. When he says "Pettigrew killed Cedric and Voldemort got a new body!" and Fudge doesn't believe him, James Potter in his capacity as an Auror collects testimony under Veritaserum and uses a DMLE Pensieve to show everyone what Nathan saw. If Nathan is entered into the tournament and swears he didn't do it, James Potter demands Dumbledore find the culprit or James will publish an editorial in the Prophet saying Hogwarts is unsafe and he will pull his second son from the school and suggests every wizard who loves his children does the same. Etc, etc.

The Troll, Quirrelmort and Basilisk incidents should have had parental reaction as well, I think. I don't remember, but what did the Potters have to say to Nathan about flying a car to Hogwarts and being seen? With his father an Auror? That's like a cop's kid being caught joyriding a stolen vehicle. The one incident for which we have seen the parental reaction, when Nathan was in mortal danger under Dumbledore's vaunted protection in third year, Dumbledore cleverly guilt tripped James and Sirius about the map to avoid answering about why his castle is so unsafe for children. But all the petrifications in second year were near-deaths: it wasn't by Dumbledore's actions that nobody died but by luck (or at least that was his story). James' kid had to fight a Basilisk because Dumbledore couldn't be bothered. Was James so enamored with how awesome that is that he forgot to tear Dumbledore a new one? Why did James let Malfoy off the hook for planned, executed and barely averted mass murder?

Anyway, a lot of the canon plot relies on the fact that Hermione is the only "parental" voice in Harry's life. With live, capable parents who Santi says are in good standing with the wizarding population, Nathan can't have all that dumb shit going on in his life. (1)

The rationale I read about Dumbledore not cleaning house in the ministry and Wizengamot when the Death Eaters bought their way out of jail and later when Malfoy tried to kill all muggleborns in the school is not that he couldn't but because he wanted to avoid civil war at all cost(2). Either because human life is precious, or because British Wizading bloodlines will not survive another culling after two wars, or some other inane reason. But in OoTP everyone can see his plan didn't work, Voldemort's takeover was inevitable, civil war was inevitable and it was either die or fight. He chose to die rather than fight and the death toll was immense. In the end, Dumbledore turned out to be the great enabler of Voldemort.

But acting at the right time (either after the fall of Voldemort using public support or before his Resurrection when Malfoy bought the Minister and the folly of appeasement started to become evident), a major clean up could have been done bloodlessly(3): everyone questioned, all bank vaults audited, bad guys imprisoned, their children re-educated. Dumbledore basically did everything wrong, in order to enable the FUBAR situation in the last three books. Well, that's the Watsonian (in-story) analysis: the character who could have averted disaster didn't so he is to blame. The Doylist analysis (knowing that it's a story) is that JKR needed to have the world be a complete mess in order for her protagonist to save it.

She had magic and she did not balance its effects through role playing: she had super-powered medicine to allow her characters multiple normally crippling injuries, but she did not super power the justice system or law enforcement. Think what a fascist secret police can do with magic (in the name of enforcing the Statute of Secrecy, all apparition and portkey use is logged. All wands are tracked. Evidence of magic use without a corresponding log in an ICW file is punishable by ten years in a jail in Antarctica). Or just an honest prosecutor or judge. But that would have ruined her story.

Back to Santi's story: If James and Lily Potter aren't nobodies, they should affect some outcomes by not allowing the shit to happen to their kid or at least reacting parentally when it does (and I don't mean like Molly does).

1 - For example: James and Sirius had those walkie-talkie mirrors. Why doesn't Nathan have one for his parents, like today's kids with cellphones? All the plots that rely on the nonexistence of cellphones suddenly become obsolete. Of course, JKR is stupid or lazy, but what about Santi?
It's like the "missing the train" plot: wizarding children with no way to contact their parents (already a stretch) would walk from King's Cross to the Leaky Cauldron, floo to Hogsmeade, have fun there and wait for the train on the platform, tell their friends not to mention not seeing them on the train and hope no-one would know. Or walk to Hogwarts from Hogsmeade and tell Dumbledore about the sealed entrance to Platform 9¾. Or floo to the Burrow.
This is evidence that when writing the first two books, JKR didn't plan anything about the world, for why would wizards, who have a floo in every home, can apparate and use portkeys, use a slow, expensive (there is a ticket, hiding that thing from muggles can't be free) muggle(!) contraption that was invented almost in living memory (you realize Marchbanks saw the Great Northern Railway and King's Cross Station being built) to transport their future to and from school? And why would English children go to a Scottish school? That couldn't have been traditional before the 1822 visit of King George IV to Scotland. And why would wizarding Scots speak English anyway? That is also a recent development.

2 - Because of course Dumbledore could. He can wtfpwn any wizard except Voldemort. He can use Legilimency and Veritaserum to find out who is corrupt and he as head of the Wizengamot and Amelia Bones as chief law enforcement officer in the country have all the power they need to arrest, interrogate, prosecute and imprison anyone.

3 - In canon, the only person who tried to get Malfoy was Arthur Weasley with his ineffective raid. Does that demonstrate how Malfoy got away with everything all the time? Because "good is dumb"?

 

Yeah, only James isn't an Auror, Veritaserum isn't foolproof and I don't think there's ever been any mention of DMLE Pensieves or the use of (possibly forged) memories in court. Also James loves Hogwarts and respects Dumbledore way too much to force such a collision.

And who says there wasn't some sort of parental reaction and the Potters didn't speak with Dumbledore? These are also the same people though, that decided to become Animagi to run around with their Werewolf friend. They seem to take a little danger for granted in that school.

 

Disagree entirely about Dumbledore. It's entirely fanon that the Order is an organisation that refuses to kill people. By all accounts, killing people is in fact their MO. In DH Lupin tries to tell Harry as much.

You're making a lot of conclusions about what the Order does and doesn't do on the basis of pretty much no information. The only Order mission we know about is the guarding of the prophesy. We don't know what else they were doing.

 

To be fair, in any school where the most popular sport was zooming around on a twig a few hundred feet above the ground while being battered by large (iron?) balls and having other players actively trying to knock you off your broom, I'd consider fifty foot snakes with petrification vision par for the course, too.

 

I didn't mention the Order at all. I didn't suggest the order assassinate any Death Eaters. Some of them fight for keeps (Moody did kill some DE in the first war, IIRC) but some don't. I don't remember canon mention of a single DE KIA by Order forces. But that doesn't matter. What I said Dumbledore should have done was force the law: find a way to properly interrogate the DEs captured after Voldemort's disappearance. Voldemort's organization didn't enforce proper compartmentalization: the DEs knew each other's names. They didn't disguise their voices. They called each other by name in front of enemies. No way all of them are perfect Occlumences. What is the canon evidence (not JKR interview) for Veritaserum not being perfect? If memories can be forged, how about extracting a memory of the event in question from every single person who was there (including DEs) and watching them all? Will all DEs manage to forge an identical recollection of events?

These are all excuses to explain away JKR's shoddy work. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Role play it and you will see the canon world doesn't make sense. Adding even more "facts" that are outside the canon POV to explain what we do see just makes the house of cards fall harder.

What happened in canon is as if the group that did the 1993 WTC bombing was arrested and then law enforcement found out they are closely related to members of cabinet and then they were let go, and the media knew about it. With the amount of guns in civilian hands in the USA, there would be civil war.

Think of all the people like Molly who lost family in the war and knew who killed them and the perpetrators are not in jail. Nazis had to change their names and hide in South America. DEs stroll in Diagon Alley where Molly's children shop. You think the light side wouldn't do something? No way. Not in real life.

 

What did you think happened at the end of the first war? We know that there were trials. We know that many Death Eaters were convicted.

Some of them got off the hook. Either through lack of evidence or bribery or quality legal aid.

If you wanted Dumbledore to do everything legally, that's the end of the line. The court found them innocent. It's entirely believable that they wouldn't be able to convict every single person.

You'd be a fool if you thought such things didn't happen in the real world. Two names from recent history: OJ Simpson. Michael Jackson.

 

Once corruption comes into play, you can throw justice out of the window~

 

Yes, of course. But... MAGIC! Dumbledore, not being a dummy, had an obligation to ensure Voldemort's powerful supporters were destroyed. I think he had the legal means. But ten years later, Malfoy was on the Board of Governors and the Minister's best friend! Dumbledore completely failed.

I said that JKR made some things in her world more powerful than IRL (healing) but some other things she didn't: the justice system. I think magic enables much more efficient and just law enforcement, unless the powers that be prevent the full use of magic because they want to remain above the law. When that happens, IRL, the aggrieved party turn to extra-legal means. The war didn't end with a draw and a cessation of hostilities. Dumbledore won. The DEs were arrested. They bribed their interrogators and their jury from inside jail? Or their family and close friends were in power? Wasn't the public angry about the DEs' crimes? Why didn't Dumbledore have the political power to force more justice? I think Dumbledore definitely had the power to affect change, by threatening the Wizengamot jury to investigate them for corruption, if he had to. He lacked the will. But some people, less powerful than Dumbledore but not powerless, had to have the will. No one was willing to kill DEs and go to prison knowing they made the world safer for their children? No one was willing to provide false alibi for people doing God's work? That is what I think doesn't make sense.

The people they had in jail were the four who tortured the Longbottoms and Sirius Black who wasn't even interrogated. What about the rest? You think Bella couldn't name the other DEs and whom they killed? I'm sure they bragged about it.

Yes, that is when citizens take up arms. It wasn't an incident, a murder. Not a single Rodney King beaten by Police but many people killed by sitting members of Parliament or their family members whom they protect. It was a whole civil war. Lots of deaths. If we look at the missing grandparents, the death toll was like a world war. It didn't end with a peace accord and an amnesty to all combatants: DEs are criminals. Murder has no statute of limitations. All people in the Wizarding World have lethal weapons. But they don't act like it. IRL societies where a lot of people are armed don't behave like JKR's world.

JKR's society is neither like modern British democracy nor like the feudal society of the time of the war of the roses where the aristocracy really ruled the country and peasants' lives cost very little.

 

Yes, in some places they do and in other they don't. In my lovely country the situation is worse as in Greece, everyone and their grandmother knows the political elite is corrupt, the justice system works only for those that don't have cash and connections, the economical situation is bad and yet there isn't a hint of civil unrest. You ask why? Simple, my nation lacks a backbone. If master doesn't say hop, servant won't move an inch. And the magical world has Dumbledore, who is saying everything but hop, so in a community so hung up on idols and leaders to follow, obviously they do nothing~

 

Firstly, there were more than 4 Death Eaters in Azkaban. 10 of them escaped in OotP. Barty Crouch Jr. escaped long before that. That means (not including Sirius Black) that there were at least 11 Death Eaters in Azkaban.

On top of those 11 Death Eaters you have at least one Death Eater - Rosier - killed at the end of the war.

Then you have Snape, who was let off because he was a spy, and Karkaroff, who cut a deal.

That's 14 Death Eaters accounted for. I'd put that at around half of all Death Eaters.

I think you overstate the likelihood of people to take the law into their own hands, armed or not. I can't recall the last news story I read about a person/family taking revenge on someone found innocent of a crime.

As for whether Dumbledore should have taken the law into his own hands... it would have completely destroyed his credibility. If, at the end of the war, accused Death Eaters found innocent started getting systematically assassinated it would be pretty obvious what was going on. There might not have been enough evidence to convict Dumbledore, but you can be sure he would have lost a lot of political capital. It might have even led to another war - only this time it would be Dumbledore vs. the Ministry.

It's questionable whether the rest of the Order would have been willing to follow Dumbledore into a second civil war of his own making, right on the heels of Voldemort's war.

I also think you overestimate Dumbledore's ability as well. Certainly in a fight he could defeat any of the Death Eaters. But to fight them he first has to find them, then get through whatever defences they have. If he couldn't do this to Death Eaters when the war was in full-swing, I doubt he could do it after.

Recall DH, if you will. A week is spent putting protections on the Tonks' house. That week of protections was enough to prevent Voldemort himself from gaining access. Most Death Eaters have likely a lot more protections on their houses than what can be built in a week. It's doubtful that Dumbledore can easily locate them and "storm the keep".

 

If it was just some unimportant, random kid in the background who had "blood protection", then would Voldemort have gone to all that trouble just to neutralise it? Or was it Harry's status as Voldemort's prophesied enemy which drove him to such lengths to counter the magical defence? It appears that canon-Harry, being the enemy mentioned in prophecy, is important to Voldemort.

Sorry for posing them as questions, it's just that I don't have GoF on hand and haven't read it in quite a long time. I'm not sure that I'm on solid ground here and won't argue it any further without a source to consult.

edit: The more I think about it, the more I'm willing to concede that you have a point. Voldemort might not be fussy about which enemy he uses to resurrect himself with in this fic.

 

So why didn't Dumbledore manage to imprison more than half the DEs? Snape and Karkaroff he let go for a reason. The others who weren't in Azkaban are on his head. That, I think, is a great failure of his and should have lost him a lot of credibility. Depending on culture, a strong leader that "gets things done" by leaning on law enforcement and the courts is more respected than one who doesn't want to hurt people's feelings by saying their darling son/husband/cousin is a murderer. He didn't have to kill, just capture and interrogate by extra legal means (if he was blocked from using all available means legally). Search property and bank vaults without a warrant. "Wiretap" floo without a warrant. Backdate warrants. Try them in secret military court. IRL governments do this all the time. You say that to Dumbledore, being a paragon of virtue was more important than saving lives. Either because of his morals or because of the political situation. I say that's unwise and perhaps criminal.

After the mass breakout from Azkaban, with the population in panic crying out for a savior, was the perfect time to declare a national emergency, martial law and no quarter (because apparently imprisoning DEs doesn't help). He had the support just then: the Minister was sacked, etc.

 

I think there's some miscommunication going on here. Was there some part of the books in which Dumbledore was made Minister of Magic/Dictator that I'm unaware of?

 

At the end of the war, Dumbledore was like a God. He was the chief candidate for Minister. He could do whatever he wanted.

After Fudge was ousted because it was proved that he lied about everything and Dumbledore was right about everything, Dumbledore once again had the support needed to act.

At all times, except briefly during the Malfoy/Fudge smear campaign, Dumbledore had more popular support than the sitting Minister.

 

Right. Because in those Pensieve memories we saw, it was Dumbledore who was leading the proceedings.

 

The war-time Minister Bagnold wasn't described as a pushover. Crouch was a hardliner. Whoever replaced Crouch had to have been anti-DE minded as well. The people in power at the end of the war, with Dumbledore as one of them, failed, despite overwhelming public support. Ten years later, the public appears to want to collectively forget it ever happened, but right then, with the graves fresh? No way.

 

He might not be as fussy about it but he still might want to prove that he is stronger than some kid that was able to defeat him. So Voldemort might still kidnap Nathan after resurrecting with someone else.
Plus he would want the prophesy out of the way as quick as possible.

 

Just wanted to say that Dumbledore could smack down DEs in their fortified manors anytime. He had Fawkes, Deluminator (as quasi homing device) and House Elves at least (if their "ward" evading abilities are canon of course).

And Dumbledore established a vigilante organization and willingly became a criminal in OotP so he was not all gung-ho about adhering to laws. It wouldn´t be that out of character for him to continue in not entirely lawful actions against "innocent" Death Eaters after war.