Crabbe is not smart, but apparently able of casting Fiendfyre, although we have no explicit other examples of it being cast, so we don't know whether he cast it well or not, I suppose. Still, as a curse capable of destroying Horcruxes, it's probably intermediate magic at least, so the fact that he can do anything with it speaks volumes, I think.

 

That seems to be a specific feature of the Fiendfyre spell: easy as pie to unleash, extremely difficult to control.

 

If there is an order of magnitude difference in ability to use magic, the society should be very hierarchical, with power and wealth concentrated in the hands of the magically powerful few. There would be some social mechanism of transferring political power between generations, if ability doesn't breed true. Some kind of (magically relevant) IQ score would be the most important thing about a wizard, rather than how many muggle grandparents he had. Canon society is a parody of muggle society: the aristocracy is degenerate: they are not any better than the proles. Wizengamot and ministry officials are not powerful wizards. No, the world is not coherent.

 

Your argument applies equally to the real world. It's not just wizards who behave illogically, lol. We don't live in anything near a meritocracy.

 

Elon Musk made billions of dollars out of thin air and is in the process of revolutionizing two big industries. But if his smarts allowed him to violate physics, he would be on Mars by now, and the world would look nothing like the way it is. Magic is too powerful for a world with magic to be so similar to the real world. The reason is only Doylist: it was written this way for humor.

I think our society is a meritocracy. Not by virtue, but by a measure of value. Our society is hierarchical based on what gives people power in our society: money and the ability to make more money. If you are smart enough to game the system and make a killing defrauding stupid institutional investors, you rise in the world. Evil will always triumth because good is dumb. But although the difference between the lives of the poor and the lives of billionaires is vast, if billionares could violate physics it would be even greater. Wizarding society is not hierarchical based on ability to perform complex magic. Poor wizards are not enough of an underclass. IRL, a grandson of a billionaire who lost all his inheritance ceases to be part of IRL oligarchy. A grandson of a great wizard who did not inherit great magical ability would cease to be part of the aristocracy. But supposedly, Crabbe and Goyle are superior to Harry Potter. In a world where magic works, talented half bloods would kill anyone spouting this nonsense.

"The other side has magic too" is a weak excuse. Why? Because they can't resist you if they're dead, and there is no reason to try to kill them in hand to hand combat. If magic can do anything, the first powerful evil wizard would just rule the world. That's it. He wouldn't need an army of henchmen either. He would just need a safe place to sleep (so multiple escape routes and an alarm system that can't be disabled without alerting him on someone trying to sneak in while he's sleeping). Then he would kill any wizards powerful enough to be a problem, and rule the rest. Sniper rifles across the length of Diagon Alley would work well. Improvised explosive devices on the walk from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade would work well. A muggle plane falling on someone's house would work well. There are infinite number of ways to kill anyone without giving them any time to react, if you can violate physics at will.

Magic is like ICBMs, only a single man can build and deploy them. The first evil person to develop such effective weapons would rule the world, because he would not give any enemy enough time to develop effective ABM or MAD-standoff. The reason Hitler didn't win, and the reason some thief didn't just remove all the gold from Fort Knox, is (in the end) physics. The moment you remove that restriction, smart evil people will win by seemingly wishing hard enough. The social and political situation we see in canon would never exist.

 

Except for every magical offense, there exists a defence. And with the exception of the Killing Curse, the defences are generally superior. Take, for example, the start of Deathly Hallows. Harry escapes into the Tonks' house. Voldemort knows where he is - he was right behind Harry when he entered. But he can't touch him (from that, we can assume that the Killing Curse, while it can go through any magical defence, can't be used to actually destroy any magical defence, otherwise Voldemort could break into any place he liked with one spell).

And on top of that, you have a highly trained and elite force of wizards who are trained in finding and capturing Dark wizards. Voldemort is the exception, not the rule. Most Dark wizards are within the Aurors' ability to bring in.

Muggle attacks have been discussed at length; I'm not going to discuss them here lest this turn into yet another wizard vs. Muggle thread.

There is, however, quite a strong reason for needing to kill people face to face: magic has a rather limited range, so far as we can tell. There are very few spells that can cross great distances. Those feats of magic which do seem to affect large areas seem to be regulated by the Ministry and are rather mysterious - we have no idea how things like a Taboo work. Maybe it's not a spell at all, but rather managed through some device or series of devices. The same applies for the Trace.

However, you are, partly, correct. The moment Voldemort's magical equal was out of the picture, he was able to take the Ministry with ease. If there is a wizard of Voldemort's calibre around with no equal to oppose them, the only thing limiting them is themselves (such as Dumbledore's decision to not seek greater power or to fully exercise the power he had, out of moral concerns).

Edit for your edit:

It's like you didn't read anything I wrote <_<

Okay, here's the thing: why do we have an economy? Because different people have different things, and want things other than what they can make for themselves, or else want to get other people to do stuff for them.

Is this true of the wizarding world? Yes. Different people have talents with different things. X can make brooks. Y can brew potions. Z has access to a lot of magical plants, and guards that access. People want access to the things they cannot make for themselves, or else want access to things they can make for themselves, but didn't think to, or they want a superior version, or they're just too lazy to make it.

So it makes sense for the wizarding world to have an economy too.

On the subject of Mars: why would wizards want to go to Mars? What is there on Mars that they desire?

This is wrong on so many levels.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: most people are not Machiavellian. In fact, very very few are. Even murderers tend to have some kind of moral code: you hear all the time about, for example, paedophiles being attacked in prison by murderers. It's a very rare individual who acts with no moral code whatsoever, and these people tend to be either insane or sociopathic. In both cases these people possess character traits that prevent them from achieving the kind of success you speak of. Sociopaths, for example, lack discipline and self-control, and the ability to follow through on plans. They common media representation of the scheming sociopath is mistaken. They're very impulsive people.

And so not everyone who has power is going to immediately try to take over the world.

Secondly, the massive over simplification of real life society. Firstly, money doesn't decide everything. If it did, we'd live in a world where the tax rate on billionaires was zero, where they were immune to prosecution, and so on. We don't. The world is fucking complex. All those complexities would exist in a magical society too. The power of the mob, the power of public opinion, the power of money, military power, and so on. A group of wizards is more powerful than one wizard, all other things being equal (again, Voldemort is an exception). That fact alone logically leads to there being a similar society to the real world: if you need to cooperate to gain advantage, all the social factors we're familiar with come into play.

Thirdly, a bad characterisation of magical society. It is a lot more fluid that you suggest. Take the Black family: at one time, influential. Then one generation made bad decisions, and the family is extinct. the Malfoy family: once rich, the definition of upper class aristocracy. Lucius was caught redhanded, and his family went into disgrace. Or in the opposite direction: Albus Dumbledore, born to a poor family, father went to prison. Was talented, rose to the top. Same with Voldemort. Orphan, had nothing. Came to rule the nation - albeit briefly. A more mundane example, as Voldemort and Dumbledore are exceptional. Severus Snape: a half blood, apparently from a poor background. Talented, rose to a position of great authority. So the world is exactly as you'd expect: those with power rise to the top. Those without fall. Within the limits discussed above: while magical power is important, because social factors come into play it's not the be all or end all.

 

I don't buy the range limit as a reason for going hand-to-hand. This is lack of imagination. There are simply many ways to attack someone that are so fast acting that no defense can be used in time. The shock wave from high-brisance explosives like hexogen travels much faster than anything can react. Only holding a shield all the time around you would protect you from it. Releasing polonium-210 and letting the victim inhale it is very effective, and the only defense is a very good air filter that one holds constantly. You can take over plane, kill the crew, point it at someone's house, and apparate away before impact. Would their wards protect them? How about a mine with a tactical 1k-ton nuke? I say there are infinite number of ways.

I don't use muggle weapons to bring in the wizards vs. muggle thing, but simply because we don't have terminology for the wizarding equivalent. I just mean any attack that cannot be stopped unless you prepared for it in advance.

If there are good protections from everything, and the only way to attack strong wizards is in hand to hand duels, there should be a reason. I see only a Doylist reason. Tactics say the attacker always has an advantage because of the principle of concentration of force (the defender has to think of everything, but the attacker can find and use only a single weak spot). That is why the best defense is an offense. There's a WWII saying that the best anti-aircraft defense is an armor raid on the enemy's airfields. That is why in law enforcement, crimes are not prevented but deterred by action at a later date. But of course, with magic, you don't have to leave evidence to be punished later.

 

If you can wave your hand and say there are magical equivalents of those methods of attack, I can wave a hand and say there are magical defences equally well.

 

IRL, offense is always stronger than defense, by a lot. The only reason we're alive and have private property etc. is because of deterrence and the state's monopoly on violence. What provides this in Wizarding Britain? Harry is in constant danger at Hogwarts, but Draco is safe there. If Draco was a hostage, then I would understand why any muggleborns are still alive. But with Lucius being free to do whatever, there should not be any muggleborns left.

Look, you can invent a world with magic that is somehow coherent. But it would not be HP canon. We don't see anything in HP canon that would function to shape it the way economics and tactics derived from physics have shaped the real world.

 

IRL, magic doesn't exist.

If Lucius killed a Muggleborn, the Aurors would catch him and put him in Azkaban. Just like the moment Voldemort fell, all his Death Eaters were rounded up in a matter of days.

JESUS CHRIST STOP EDITING.

I've yet to see a canon compliant argument for why canon is incoherent. All you have is incredulity. You keep saying X would happen, Y would happen, but you don't say why, and you don't consider the possible reasons why not.

 

Lucius committed to killing all the muggleborn students and didn't even get a slap on the wrist. I see that as the quality of law enforcement and justice system that exists in HP canon, because there are many more example of both utterly failing.

Sorry for editing.

I agree, this is incredulity, not proof. I am not smart enough to prove. When reading about crazy stuff in history books, I experience incredulity and then I can research to death why it happened this way. What those people knew and believed, how much something cost, etc. With HP, I can't get any more info, so my incredulity turns into not liking the book.

I think you can write books about magic much better than JKR can, because it seems to me she didn't even think for a moment about any of this.

 

Murderers walk free all the time in real life (particularly those with money and/or influence). You can't blame JK for making things realistic.

 

I think we're both extrapolating from the scarceness of occlumency books, but you're giving JKR the benefit of the doubt and I'm not. You assume the best and retcon the goofs, and say that weird stuff happens IRL too. Sure. But unlike a fictional story in which the Nazis won WWII or WWIII broke out in 1962, which doesn't require much suspension of disbelief on my part, a world where the second law of thermodynamics doesn't exist and yet looks like a parody of IRL UK requires much more suspension of disbelief. It takes a certain frame of mind to enjoy. If I could read the whole thing without fridge logic kicking in, I would still like HP a lot. But now I can't. It's like seeing the sprite for clouds and bushes in Mario Brothers.

 

There is a spell that seems to have no counter: Imperio. The only defense ever shown is the willpower to resist it. Also, there seems to be no tell tale signs of someone under its effects as the claim of being under its influence allowed so many Death Eaters to duck justice. No one would be immune to losing to it; even if you can resist it, if any of you're closest friends can't, you're dead. As such, even the smartest characters in the series are consistently holding the idiot ball. If Voldemort was as intelligent as you seem to suggest, he would have won easily.

Also you seem to have missed the point on Sectumsempra. Regardless of how much theory Harry might know, there was no information another than the word "Sectumsempra" and one line: "For Enemies". Rowling makes it really clear that Harry has no clue what the spell actually does.

Quotes from HBP:

"[Harry] had just found an incantation (Sectumsempra!) scrawled in a margin above the intriguing words 'For Enemies,' and was itching to try it out, but thought it best not to in front of Hermione."

"[Harry] had still not found out what [Sectumsempra] did, mainly because he did not want to test it around Hermione, but he was considering trying it on McLaggen next time he came up behind him unawares."

Both passages make it clear that Harry has no idea what the spell does as he needs to try out the magic word to find out. So, JKR is saying that the three things needed for the spell to be cast are a wizard/witch, a wand, and an incantation. No theory needed, no real clue what the magic words do, just wave your wand and "Presto".

 

Yes, Imperio is bad. That is why you get life imprisonment in Azkaban for casting it.

 

I think that actually you missed my point

I'm not saying that you actively think of equations or flow charts of explanations while casting. The casting is just as you say: the words and the wand. But nonetheless, what you know and understand affects the outcome of the spell.

Harry understands the Dark Arts. Thus, when he uses a Dark Arts curse, it works. If he didn't understand the Dark Arts, then the curse wouldn't work, even if he said the words and waved the wand in exactly the same way.

As for the Imperius: I don't think wizards are as defenceless as you say. There are a couple of references of wizards being found out to be under the Imperius.

But it is exactly as you say. Voldemort won easily by the exact method you described: they put the Imperius on one person (Thicknesse) - which was depicted as no easy feat - and from there used that access to get the others.

 

Unless you're a teacher... or using it on goblins.

I think Sanderson made a good point in the original article- that there's a sliding scale of 'vague' used for magic in Fantasy. Wolf550 seems to prefer the harder rules, which is perfectly valid. What's more, trying to peg Harry Potter on that scale is frustrating, as the series acts like a harder-rule system in the way that magic is included in building and resolving the yearly mystery, but JKR wasn't the best mystery writer. Her boundaries were too vague in a few key areas.

Do you think the fanfiction interest would be less if she had included better logic/explanations for the magic she used? She didn't walk into this with no notion of maintaining consistency, but she wasn't a gamer or an experienced mystery writer, so her rules seemed good enough for her purposes- abiding by the rule of Charmingly British.

 

HP is, like you say, quite unique.

I think Sanderson was pretty spot on with the reason why: in-universe, it has hard rules. The characters understand magic and have lots of knowledge about it. It isn't mystical, but matter of fact.

The reader, however, doesn't get access to these rules, so you have a soft-rules look into a hard-rules world.

 

@Doctor Whooves: No, you don't go to Azkaban because there is no functional justice system or you're too good to be caught. Which are both true in canon. There is no hypothetical, you can't say "but sociopaths are rare" or "sociopaths are impulsive" or "the aurors would deal with it". We have canon. Voldemort exists in canon. In canon, without divine intervention, Voldemort did win. Not almost. Completely.

@Taure: So it's like a mystery which the reader can't solve because some critical clues were not actually told to the reader. You can't predict who will win in any conflict because you don't know enough about how their world works. Very frustrating.

 

Can't speak for everyone, but I think the appreciation for Harry Potter and the inspiration for fanfiction of it comes more from the characters and maybe the settings (Hogwarts, namely) than from the magic system, or lack thereof.