They wouldn't, but a man in armor carrying a sword is someone the muggles understand and respect. A man in a friar's robe carrying no visible armament is more readily ignored.

Since Godric was already carrying a sword, better to have a really good one- because sometimes you have to kill a basilisk to get any respect.

 

Unless you buy into the notion that magical society has been completely stagnant or even regressive for the last thousand years, their magical abilities would be far more limited as well.

 

I'm fine with Godric carrying the sword, but why the fuck, when facing muggles, would he not...I don't know...set someone on fire? Or cause a big massive fucking light show? Or something that would be second nature to someone using magic most of his life.

Yeah Saot, maybe they didn't have the same spells as HP uses. But I doubt they were restricted to turns rocks different colours and polishing dishes.

And you both seem to be forgetting how superstitious muggles were a thousand years or more ago. They see someone waving a wand around and setting shit on fire, they're going to run the fuck away. Especially if the man's in, as you call it, a Friar's robe. Connection to God, miracles, God's wrath, etc etc etc. These are people who were quite ready and willing to believe a priest could lay on hands and heal. Equally will believe that he could call down God's might against his enemies. And lets not even get into the whole 'you have to do what a priest tells you, or you go to hell' thing that the Church had going on.

And where the hell do you get the idea that a wizards robe is like a friar's cassock?

 

The cassock was just a comparison- plain robes versus period-appropriate finery. My point was that Godric could do some much simpler rescuing captured muggleborns by showing up looking like a rich lord rather than setting a village aflame. Anyway, this is all a terrible tangent due to Shipwreck continuing a pointless argument started three weeks ago by Xandrel, so I'm fine saying 'I mentioned friar's robes because I thought it was funny to pull something equally irrelevant out of the ether'.

Cheers!

 

The two of these following so close together, taken with your use of "Gryff and Slyth" (really?) as well as actually typing qunt and then dropping the word sort 5 times (okay, 4 and 1 misuse) in less than two paragraphs, gets your post my vote for the gayest post I've seen here in some time.

Okay, so that was a long way to go to make a joke at your expense but come on - "sort after"? Sort sort sortsortosrtsosrtosrtosrtrsto SOUGHT

Why do people keep saying this? I mean of course there are new spells and other kinds of magic; we see the proof of that in Snape's book, Voldemort's ritual, Hagrid's mad animal husbandry skills, the Wolfsbane potion, and apparently in D'dore's Deluminator and as far back as his school exams. And that's just a few off the top of my head.

Just look at the damned castle they go to school in. Maybe the staircases didn't always move, and maybe the on-demand extra-dimensional hidey-hole wasn't always on the seventh floor, but for over a thousand years there's been an animated, talking, mind-reading hat - imbued with the traits of the school's founders, mind you - sifting thru the minds of every kid that shows up. Every year, over and over, still going strong after more than a millennium. You think maybe those folks knew what they were doing and just maybe they already knew some powerful magic?

Not to mention that one of those old-timers crafted a secret room (and left a kill-you-with-its-eyes pet in there) that while searched for by none other than D'dore himself was never found (by someone unfriendly to its creator) until luck and a Parselmouth-by-proxy happened upon it.

And I wonder how long the Ministry and St. Mungo's have been right in the middle of London? One wouldn't think that a wise choice unless the wizarding folk were quite, quite sure they'd been able to hide themselves and their activities exceedingly well. It simply wouldn't do to have a group of British schoolchildren out on a field trip wander into a Wizengamot trial and be eaten by the Dementors, or to have the St. Mungo's equivalent of the ICU vaporized by a V2 rocket.

... why are you using the past tense?

 

I reckon its because people are idiots, and keep relating magic to technology in their own minds, and in the opinions they spew forth. Magic /= Technology. Magic = Completely Not Technology. It would develop differently, act differently, affect society differently. People need to start remembering that.

 

You hang out with some cool folk Xiph

 

I try not to think too hard about the past in Harry Potter, because a lot of it makes no goddamn sense. And Pottermore, apparently, is not helping.

I'm just going to put it down to wizards being wacky, and move on.

 

Hi Portus, thanks for taking the time to analyse my post and give some feedback on where I failed. I guess I too should have taken the time to spell out Gryffindor and Slytherin properly. I only have myself to blame there too, and likewise with the homonym mix-ups, I make them all the time but that's no excuse and I will endeavour in the future to not repeat the same mistake.

As for 'qant', well that's a bit of colloquialism I use and have used from my time in other places, I'm sure you have a few colloquialism you use yourself. Such as attributing gayness to anything you find idiotic or stupid. Unless you are of course saying I am homosexual, in which case I'm flattered you think so (I know many a great person who's gay) however I'm perfectly straight however should that change, you'll be the first I contact.

What is wrong with the other bolded bits? My use of 'hidden room' instead of 'secret chamber'? Was Dumbledore not wrong for getting into Grindewald's whole "for the greater good" mantra?

What else did they do when they saw someone they thought was magical? Lynch and burn.

If it was a one on one fight with no one around I don't doubt that a wizard would get out his wand be done with the Muggle easily. In large group situations where they can easily be mobbed before apparating, then it's more than plausible for them to run in to a fight/situation with a sword. Also, why presume they'd be forgoing magic entirely? Gryffindor's sword was no plain bit of steel and you'd be an idiot of a wizard if you didn't have wand on you anyway.

In those times it was common for people to have swords, ergo Gryffindor having one and using it.

 

Mobbed before...instantaneously disappearing?

 

As the recent Pottermore update said, it isn't about a sword being more practical against Muggles. It isn't. It was considered "unsporting" to use a wand against a sword, probably in the same way that it would be "unsporting" to use a handgun (or stungun, even) against a guy attacking you with his fists in an ordinary streetfight. Of course, Rowling confirms that some wizards used their wands anyway, but Godric Gryffindor would probably not be one of those.

At first it seems odd that any wizards would care about fighting fair with Muggles. But there's a difference between Founders-era wizards and modern ones: unlike modern wizards, the old ones didn't actually have their own, separate civilization. This isn't stated explicitly, but it very likely follows from the fact that there was no Statute of Secrecy, and that wizards "mingled freely with Muggles." There's other Pottermore evidence of this too; another blurb from Rowling talks about how old wizards were known to use horses and horse-drawn vehicles. Despite their magical differences, many wizards of the time couldn't have avoided picking up parts (or nearly all) of Muggle culture, because they largely weren't sequestered away in hidden enclaves.

Ask a modern wizard to describe the country they live in, and they'll describe Wizarding Britain, a society of a few thousand wizards. Ask a Founders' era wizard the same question, and they'll describe England (or Scotland, etc.). Not just the wizarding parts, but all of it.

A modern wizard will always try to use a wand against an attacking Muggle, in the same way that a human will try to use human weaponry to fend off an attacking wild animal. But when wizards lived openly with Muggles, most of them probably wouldn't be able to view Muggles with that same type of detachment, because they didn't see themselves as being completely detached.

 

If people were holding onto you when you apparated then wouldn't that just mean you bring that problem with you wherever you go?

 

Only if they were holding tightly enough not to splinch, which is doubtful as we know that a tight grip needs to be maintained for the duration. And also, if by some miracle they didn't splinch, they would need to not be completely disorientated by the experience.

And before that, why would the wizard not disapparate before they grabbed him?

 

It should never get to that stage in the first place. This idea that numbers could overwhelm a wizard reveals a narrow view of magic, thinking of a wand as a kind of slow gun. It's not.

In the event of a large number of Muggles trying to lynch a wizard, the wizard would have to be utterly stupid to try to attack them directly, one by one.

Repello Muggletum.

A wizard is only going to get lynched if they get caught without their wand.

 

And this really isn't news, either. It's not a Pottermore thing. It was implied to be this long before Pottermore ever existed. Before the Statute of Secrecy, there was no such thing as "Wizarding Britain," or "Wizarding Anycountry." Wizards lived with and nearby normal people. There was no such thing as enforced secrecy. Unless you want to believe that the wizards sat around with their fingers in their ears going "LALALA," it naturally follows that they would share cultures. If you asked a wizard of the Dark Ages about "wizarding culture," he'd probably look at you funny and ask if you've drunk any odd smelling beer lately.

 

I thought the sword was primarily for magical creatures that are resistant to magic, we see Hagrid eat a bunch of stunners with no effect, presumably the Killing curse would just bounce off a full giant in a similar fashion. Same goes with basilisks, manticores etc. I doubt they would be considered so dangerous if they could be taken out by a quick Killing Curse. We aren't specifically told if the sword had absorbed the powers of creatures besides the basilisk, but presumably it has, maybe it even required a lot of leveling up before it was able to kill the basilisk instead of just pissing it off, who knows.

I think Pottermore was more or less a failed experiment. JKR mentioned she created it to give back to the fans, so it's probably not a revenue thing (especially since she donates so much to charity now, I think she's happy with her billion). Which is really sad because the Potterverse could have made a fucking awesome MMO that could rival World of Warcraft in its popularity.

 

The Killing Curse is impossible to block and works on everyone (except the protagonist) .