Because we don't know anything about the physics of JKR's universe, we can't guess about the tactics. We know nothing about whether the advantage resides greatly on the side of the defender or the attacker or about non humint intelligence sources (e.g. scrying and communication interception and crypto), making and taking prepared fortified positions, mining under fortifications (ward breaking), transportation limiting wards and area effect spells (area denial, e.g. portable swamps), effectiveness of invisibility and camouflage (and fidelius and notice-me-not charms, etc), maneuver (portkeys, apparition, phoenix, etc.), rapidity and effectiveness of fire at distance (seems wands are worse than derringers), suppression fire (appears to not exist), cover and overwatch (from brooms, for example), personal armor and its effect on mobility, etc, etc. All these tactics have costs in money, latency, man-hours, etc. but because there are no reliable quantities of anything in the canon...

All aspects of D&D style games and military reenactment and sandbox analysis are impossible because JKR just doesn't think this way: she only has feelings, not facts. That's why all analysis of what someone could have done is kinda pointless. I just assume all characters hold the idiot ball all the time and every piece of magic is a deus ex machina that is unused because otherwise there wouldn't be a story, and go on. I just find it personally unsatisfying and hard to do.

 

Regarding the discussion on what Dumbledore could or should have done after the first war against Voldemort had ended: even if he had the ability to make a greater impact, it is doubtful that he would have used it.

As far as I know, it is more or less implied in canon that Dumbledore is very reluctant to use the full extent of his (political) power. He already tried once to reform the wizarding world for the better, together with Grindelwald, and it wasn't such a smashing success. Power is addictive, and Dumbledore shrinks away from using his, knowing that years ago he lacked either the morality or the wisdom to handle the greater responsibility that comes with greater power.

We can guess, but we cannot really know if Dumbledore should have acted more decisively, provided that he could. Maybe the fact that he doubted himself shows that he could have grabbed more power without being corrupted, yet it is also possible that the wizarding world would have ended up under the banner of Dictator and Light Lord Dumbledore

 

Wolf, most of those Death Eathers that evaded prison never claimed they didn't commit those crimes. They were let off, because they claimed to be under the Imperius and no one could prove they weren't. How do you think it would look if Dumbledore suddenly started to hunt down those victims of You-Know-Who? And how could he prove they weren't under the Imperius? Sure, he might use Legilimency. And then what? Oh, look, the guy that hunted down Malfoy, because he believes he's a Death Eather, just accused him of being a Death Eather. Well that's a surprise. And how very convenient that he can't actually prove what he saw in Malfoy's mind.

Then there's also the fact, that Dumbledore didn't even know all the Death Eathers. He confessed to not being sure of Barty Crouch Jr.'s guilt. Or hell, Peter Pettigrew. So what about McNair? Or the Carrows? Maybe he didn't know about them either. Karkarov never pointed them out and Snape didn't know about Pettigrew. So there clearly was some secrecy among the ranks.

 

Veritserum. Nuff said.

 

That doesn't always work. There's canon proof for that too. Dumbledore says so in HBP when they talk about Slughorn.

 

Veritaserum has very clear limitations.

JKR has said it can be fooled with Occlumency or through having the antidote (in the case of Slughorn, he probably had both). Further, it clearly can only force a person to say what they know. It doesn't force objective truth out of people, only their subjective knowledge (if it did force objective truth out of people, you could dose up some random person and ask them the secrets of the universe). As such, self-obliviation, confundus charms and other similar magic (whatever Hermione used on her parents) would be able to fool Veritaserum.

 

Dumbledore may not have hunted down every Deatheater and all of the spies/supporters that Voldemort had in the Ministry because it would make people lose faith in the government.
The ID were also kept secret in the 1st war.
Years of war with no hope of it ending and when it does you find out that the government was full of the people you were fighting/ the people who were killing your family.
Malfoy and the others that were caught were given a trial. A trial that wouldn’t have been fair. People who were directly affected by the war were standing judge. The same Ministry that threw people in prison just to make it look like they were doing something or without evidence.

Granted this is trying to rationalize J.K.

 

This. My country went through a multiple-decade civil war, complete with ethnic cleansing and other generally disgusting things. We've got people suspected of ordering said ethnic cleanses and political parties whose former militias were involved in them in Parliament and politics today. People just want to forgot this sort of shit ever happened and try and move on.

 

Can we please discuss the story instead?

If the task remains the same, what cool magic does Harry know that can help?

Wards, aqua eructo, illusions, transfiguration.
IN the maze, his dueling experience will come to the forefront dealing with monsters and obstacles.
DO we actually think HArry will challenge the dragon or trick it.

THe egg, if he uses the language charm to listern to it over and over, would he learn mermish.

 

I'm going to have to side with wolf. You can't make accurate comparisons to the real world when you have magical means of extracting information.

Taure: self-obliviation has to be both possible to detect and easy to remove. Malfoy senior clearly either didn't utilize it or removed it after the fact. If it's easy to detect and remove, then in a situation like a criminal trial, it should be done. There's nothing in canon indication a confundus charm can't be lifted either.

Occlumency is harder (though I think that JKR pulled that out of her ass), but the number of people who even know about it is negligible. Bellatrix is the only DE with a solid grasp on it (that we know of), and she's probably only decent. Given a little bit of time with the interrogation team, her barriers would break down and then you could apply veritaserum.

I think JKR's depiction of the magical world is what you get when you use magic exclusively as a plot device and don't think about the consequences of what you're inventing.

So yes, there is a canon antidote to veritaserum. Are you telling me it's impossible to detect and lasts forever in the body?

If you think hard enough, there's a way around all these self-imposed limitations. The fact that canon doesn't do it isn't an indicator that it couldn't be done or, god forbid, shouldn't be done.

 

I think it kinda is, honestly. Veritaserum isn't the only magical plot-device that JKR fucked up with.

The Goblet of Fire - "Hey, I didn't put my name in!"
"Don't matter, sonny, compete or else!"

Exceptions to Gamp's law, implicitly contradicted earlier in the series multiple times.

etc.

 

They didn't say that you must compete. They said it was in the rule book that you had to compete not that it was some binding magical contract. That's fanon bro. Gamp's law wasn't ever contradicted iirc. I don't have access to my books so I can't verify any of this, but I'm pretty sure you can create food out of nothing it just won't be good food i.e. you can eat it but it won't keep you alive/give you energy. If someone has the books I'm sure they can verify it for you.

Now, how about getting back on topic? You have other threads for discussing JKR's magic. If you want to discuss magic trying discussing Santi's magic theory. Trying to find a use for Harry's magical discovery would be nice as I don't think anyone has come up with a reason for why everyone would be so excited about his discovery.

 

Regarding the Goblet, T3t's point still stands (to an extent). Also, I'm pretty sure Molly conjures sauce from the tip of her wand.

I reckon it's because it disproves laws of Transfiguration that had been in place since their conception in Ancient Greece.

 

Considering that Voldemort had difficulty in breaking through Berka Jorkin and she wound up as a vegetable, I'd have to say it's both difficult to detect and remove safely.

I like how you go from saying she's probably decent at best (with no factual basis of her skill) and then use that statement to claim that she's break down after only a little time under interrogation, making a complete assumption that that Legilimency is far better known than Occlumency and that there would be an interrogator with the unknown level of skill needed available to break her.

Because if you're seriously suggesting normal torture/interrogation tactics are going to break the woman who braved Azkaban and the Dementors for over a decade and didn't turn into a vegetable, then I may just laugh.

 

I still think the idea that anyone could have just put any other name in the Goblet is stupid. It would make much more sense if Crouch's Confundus Charm was needed to make that possible as well. Either way, his charm rigged the Goblet, making it faulty evidence. Saying Rowling fucked up based on faulty evidence fails from the start.

You can't conjure food. Period. You can, however, summon it. Dumbledore summoned a bottle from the kitchens or something straight into the Great Hall. Molly has been cooking and using charms on food for years. It really isn't much of a stretch for her to be able to summon it if she knows where it is and made it herself in the first place.

 

So.. the reason Harry competed is because he wanted to affirm Snape's accusations of him being a gloryseeking retard, not because he was magically bullied into it?

I already knew he was pretty damn stupid, but that stupid? Wow.

 

If it's fanon, it's the most logical fanon I've ever read. Why else would Dumbledore force him to compete? It sure as hell makes more sense than the Manipulative!Dumbledore retardedness.

 

IIRC, canon only ever says that "the rules say" anyone whose name comes out of the Goblet has to compete.

I always thought it was kind of odd that Harry never asked why they didn't just say, "Fuck the rules." Especially since Dumbledore clearly added new rules regarding age restrictions.

Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of GoF handy, so I'm basing this off of half a decade old memories.