One of the questions that always fascinated me is "How many Auror-level wizards can Voldemort duel simultaneously and still win?"

The answer to that question can significantly influence a story's direction, so I always decide on a specific number before I start a fic.

For example, if Voldemort is able to beat effectively infinite wizards in direct combat (unless Dumbledore is present to counteract him), then his need for allies is reduced and therefore politics is less important. Basically, once Dumbledore is dead, the only thing stopping him from just seizing power by direct and overwhelming force are any powerful defensive enchantments that he may not be able to overcome.

On the other hand, if Aurors pose a threat to Voldemort, he needs allies and therefore political elements become more important to a story. He can't just brute force a victory.

As far as canon is concerned, we don't have too much to go on.

Firstly, we have Dumbledore's escape from Hogwarts, where he quickly dispatched two Aurors and three bureaucrats without apparent effort (though one of those Aurors was secretly on his side).

Secondly, we have Dumbledore's statement to Voldemort in OotP: "The Aurors are on their way". This implies that Dumbledore believes that Aurors, in sufficient number, are a threat to Voldemort. But this is ambiguous.

Thirdly, we have Voldemort's duel with McGonagall, Kingsley and Slughorn in DH. He is definitely winning the duel but he doesn't blow them away immediately. However, those three wizards are slightly above the level of your average Auror, so if we want to put numbers on it, maybe 5 Aurors could do what they did, and maybe 7 Aurors would be enough to tip the scales. However, there's a huge caveat to this: during that duel, Harry's sacrificial protection magic is working against Voldemort. It might be that without that protection, Voldemort would have in fact blasted them away immediately.

Thoughts?

 

The reason Voldemort struggled against McGonagall, Kingsley and Slughorn was because Harry's sacrifice was protecting them. He connected with a bunch of spells that I suspect would be lethal, but they just didn't take.

 

I think that - provided that Voldemort is chasing to stay and fight instead of fleeing (which he will ideally do so as soon as he's disadvantaged), you can ideally have a certain number of aurora that can, coordinating their attack, overwhelm him. This is the point at which it becomes less about the magical prowess of a person and more about how many attacks can he defend against reasonably without getting distracted enough to give an opening.

Of course, we know he is more competent than your average aurora, but without knowing too much about the spell in specific, we can't say much about how he can manage. Taure brought up Fiendfyre in IRC as a spell which might be able to overcome the large numbers. I think we can safely assume that Aurors are taught how to protect themselves against it and perhaps even control it (it's not an unforgivable). Same thing can be said for other spells which can be used by Voldemort to his advantage (say, Imperio to curse an aurora to be on his side, repeat).

So yeah, I think there is certainly a number beyond which, provided he fights, he will lose. It can be 5 or 7 or whatever. But it would be unfair to say that because he's pound-for-pound better than anybody but Dumbledore in terms of magical ability, the numbers won't overwhelm him.

 

So.much.butt.jokes.please.stop.


Alas, in the 6th book Fred and George sell Shield hats and other such clothes to the ministry, this paints me a very bad picture. Your point of McGee, Slughorn and Big Black King keeping up with him is a valid measuring system is stupid, because while not the strongest all of them are exceptional wizards.

How many Auror could Voldemort take?

5 and a half.

 

The hats were purchased by regular ministry workers. I don't think it was ever implied that Aurora were incompetent enough to use them.

 

I think Voldemort could take on infinite number in 99% of encounters, there will always be the odd time luck and chance plays a role.

I say infinite, because in terms of numbers, even if you brought 50 Aurors to the fight, maybe 6-10 at any one time can engage. And I believe Voldemort could do some large scale shit to subdue any number of wizards at once if needed.

I think the only time Voldemort would fear them is in OotP when they may provide Dumbledore with aid, in terms of antiapparition jinxs ect allowing Dumbledore to drive him into the ground with backup.

Voldemort doesnt need allies to help him fight, he needs them logisitcally to help him rule.

 

There's a few more incidents possibly worth bearing in mind:

Moody being overcome by Pettigrew and Crouch, although again, that's an ambiguous situation. On the one hand, Moody is clearly taken by surprise - as much as someone as paranoid as him can be, of course - which obviously gives them a huge advantage. He's also a retired Auror, so potentially a little rusty. On the other hand, while Pettigrew is clearly a more talented wizard than he's usually given credit for, he's still not that impressive. It's a little harder to say anything concrete about Crouch's talents, but having spent several years in Azkaban and then under the Imperious Curse, it seems likely that he wouldn't have been in his prime.

Dawlish is taken down by Augusta Longbottom when the Ministry try to kidnap her to keep Neville in line. Again, there's mitigating circumstances, namely that by this stage he's been (repeatedly?) Confunded by the Order, so might not have been fighting to his best ability. It's also possible that he wasn't entirely willing to attack Mrs Longbottom. On the other hand, this is literally the only thing that suggests Mrs Longbottom is a witch of any notable skill, so if you add this to the fact that Dawlish is noted as a straight 'O' student and an excellent Auror, you could take this as not saying that much for the Aurors as a whole.

Finally, Tonks gets killed by Bellatrix (according to an archived webchat - I thought it was Dolohov). Bellatrix is clearly a more talented witch, but she's not as talented as Voldemort either. You've got a similar situation with Snape vs McGonagall - both probably better than the average Auror, but worse than Voldemort, and McGonagall forces Snape to flee.

As a purely hypothetical point, we might want to consider the idea that a lot of the truly skilled Aurors wouldn't be working for the Ministry by the time of DH due to them being kicked out/killed by the Death Eaters actually running the place.

For an actual answer, I'd probably say:

Fewer than six Aurors: Voldemort wins.
Six to eight: Realistic threat, which could go either way depending on the Aurors involved.
Eight to ten: Aurors win, unless Voldemort has some unexpected advantage.
Ten plus: if Aurors don't win, I'd call bullshit.

For all of that though, it depends on the type of story you're writing. I'd cheerfully accept the Voldemort of Wastelands of Time, for instance, beating the entire Auror department with one hand tied behind his back.

 

About the Fiendfyre, there's a countercurse that apparently Crabbe (or was it Goyle?) didn't bother learning, so, as powerful as Voldemort's spell would be, I'm fairly sure half a dozen Aurors would be able to dispell it since Fiendfyre is kind of 'mainstream'. However, all indicates that Voldemort, in his travels, learned some of the darkest magic ever created. Canon's only opportunity to actually show it was his duel against Dumbledore - which was awesome, but too short -.

Therefore, I'm pretty sure that he has a few wide-range, obscure spells, that could deal with large groups of wizards, spells that the average Auror wouldn't know how to counter, and most likely die to. It'd depend on the author's creativity. As far as canon goes, half a dozen would probably give him troube, and a few more than that could take him down.

 

I think I only got away with that (and plenty of reviews argue that I didn't, though majority are favourable) because Harry was suitably powered up in return. Indeed, it happened the other way. I'd given Harry a 1000 years and 20,000 lives to become supremely powerful. The whole backend of that fic was making Voldemort his match.

Blimey, that story's a mess the more I think on it.

As for the topic at hand - we're in the dark for a lot of this, as we never really saw Voldemort unleashed (end of OotP, sure, but not really) and taking names. Arguably he was protected by his horcruxes, so even death is only a setback. A group of Aurors, a special forces squad working in unison, I could see that working.

It's one thing I always wondered about in the books. Where was the international squad ready to deal with a powerful wizard gone rogue? If the wizarding world was meant to be a secret, then there must have been an understanding between nations that as soon as a witch or wizard gets too uppity, it's time to call in Auror Team Six to deal with the problem.

That said, we've only got the books and whispers to go on. Perhaps in the first war the Aurors were deployed--and lost.

Based on what we know, the answer could be anywhere from one to infinity. One Auror from ambush, with a quick Killing Curse, could have done him in - horcruxes aside. But given the lengths Voldemort went to protect himself and achieve immortality, it's unlikely he'd be caught so off guard.

As an aside, I read something the other day that Voldemort was around 71 when he died in the Battle of Hogwarts. Given that the average life expectancy (never mind being a wizard), is closer to 80+, his attempt to achieve immortality actually cut his life short. Interesting way of looking at it.

 

I think a huge amount depends on the circumstances of any combat. As you note, from Dumbledores escape in OOTP we can guess that Voldemort could easily deal with a handful of actually rather competent wizards without much in the way of the element of surprise (although perhaps they oddly underestimated him). If Voldemort has any capacity to dictate the terms of the engagement then he can split any arbitrarily large force into a number of small combats and pick off groups of opponents at his leisure.

If however he is defending a particular location, or is unable to flee (perhaps under the Hogwarts wards) then the situation is very different. I would feel that somewhere between 5 and 10 very competent and coordinated opponents would have a fair chance against him, even if only because it would be difficult to dodge or block 10 simultaneous killing curses.

 

To be fair, his attempt to be immortal worked just fine. It was his attempt to take over the world that backfired

 

Joe: fair point; I suppose what I was going for there was that the Voldemort of Wastelands is far and away more powerful than the canon version, whereas the Aurors are essentially the same, so whether you think it's well written or not, it would make sense within that story for him to win against even overwhelming odds.

 

There's also this badass boast Dumbledore delivers in OotP

Of course, we don't have a definitive count on the number of Aurors Fudge had with him when he rushed to the Ministry, but I'm going to go with something around ten plus. In addition if you consider that Dumbledore effortlessly subdues most of the Death Eaters at the Ministry (non-lethally, at that), I think we can reach something of a reasonable consensus. Now if you consider that Voldemort is near Dumbledore's level of skill and wouldn't have any reason to hold back in an all out-fight, I'd say it's more than reasonable to suggest he wouldn't have a lot of trouble taking down about ten Aurors at a time.

We unfortunately don't have a good fix on your average Auror's combat skill - Moody and Kingsley and Tonks all do seem badass enough, while Dawlish seems incompetent (but there are extenuating circumstances regarding all of his defeats) - but I'd say your average is somewhere above your Lucius Malfoy, and somewhere below your Bellatrix and McGonagall and Snape and Kingsley and what have you.

In all-out brawl, without something like anti-apparation jinxes to severely hamper his mobility, I can see someone like Voldemort curbstomping ten, fifteen Aurors at a time. The level of skill and speed he seems to duel at eclipses anything we see, barring from Dumbledore himself. Madam Pomfrey seems to think the four Aurors(?) Umbridge brought wouldn't have had a chance against McGonagall if she hadn't been taken by surprise. Voldemort effortlessly fights and beats McGonagall, Kingsley and Slughorn at the same time (who are probably at the same level), while his spells are not at the right potency, so yep, I don't think it's a stretch at all to have Voldemort believably take down about fifteen Aurors at a go.

 

Part of the reason that Dumbledore stated, "The Aurors bare on their way" is because up till that point, Voldemort's resurrection hadn't been confirmed yet. In that context, I don't know how well we can quantify how much of a threat they are to Voldemort.

 

If Voldemort just stands there and tries to defend against an increasingl number of simultaneous attacks, then I suppose you'd find a number where even, being kind of superhuman and all, simply can't keep up.

But Voldemort wouldn't be standing still.

He has apparition, first thing. There isn't anything in the books as far as I can recall that apparating a large number of times in a short time isn't possible, which ties into the larger issue of magical exhaustion and dreaded cores. If Voldemort has no reason to hold back, then with apparating and flight he has practically unlimited mobility, barring anti-apparition jinxes. As long as he can physically keep fighting (assuming Voldemort still has physiological needs), with his skill and power he could hop from one enemy to another and take them out with AKs from surprising angles. And even when he tires he can just retreat.

So yeah, probably the only way you beat Voldemort is if you have comparable firepower/skill on the other side and Voldemort doesn't just leave. As we know from OotP, he's above running when the situation changes.

But of course, this is all just speculation. A writer will set whatever limits they like.

 

Are we ever given a hint of how many active Aurors there were in total? I can't imagine there being more than a handful in canon.

As for how many Voldemort can handle, it might be within his power to drive the Office (if we're talking a dozen or so) into extinction in a free-for-all circa DH. He practically invented flight by that point, so who knows what else he was capable of?

 

I think Voldemort being that powerful explains a lot. Specifically how feared he is even decades after his disappearance. It would make sense than his sheer power would've scared people more than guerilla tactics.

We don't really have a handle on how strong the average Auror is and they're more of a police force than an army anyway.

 

I think that was as more about Voldemort being outed as alive than the threat the aurors posed.

Crouch Jr. did take down Frank and Alice (with help), subdue Moody with Pettigrew and managed to fool Dumbledore and the entire Hogwarts faculty for a whole year. I think he's fairly talented.

Let's not forget that Snape probably did not want to duel McGonagall as they were on the same side, except she didn't know.

 

I think Voldemort could beat around 10 average aurors without many problems and even numbers above that wouldn't actually be able to take him down maybe only force him to retreat.

We have to take into consideration that not that many people can fight him at once without getting in the way of their teammates, he also has apparation and flight so he can wipe them out one at a time.

Dumbledore also has shown us that wizards of that skill could take out many enemys at once in OOTP where he took out 6-8 Death eaters at once in seconds which actually consisted of wizards far more powerful that your average Auror and he only tried to restrain them while Voldemort would certainly have gone for the kill.

He also has the Imperio and would always be able to snatch some of them away to fight for him besides we never actually have seen him or Dumbledore go all out, pretty sure the fight between AD and GG would have made the one between him and AD look like foreplay.

IIRC didn't Dumbledore mention in DH that the International Wizards were begging him to fight Grindelwald because they could't do shit against him, if it would be so easy to take out a wizard of Voldemorts caliber with just sending in 8 competent aurors then Grindelwald would't have to be taken out by Dumbledore in the end.

 

Like Joe said, one auror managing to hit him with AK (or even a first year spell like Petrificus Totalus...) is enough to beat him. It's the "managing to hit him" part that's difficult, although we just don't know how difficult.

Canon magic is so OP that it really should be easy (bait, trap with antiapparition, hit from behind with silent spell – or just stockpile enough erumpent fluid to blow him up on arrival), but canon shows that it isn't...

On the other hand, like everything else in HP also magical combat works on Rule of Cool. Getting beaten by a horde of mooks or a smart cheater just isn't cool, so Voldemort can beat infinite amount of Aurors if they attack him at once. But, if only a single, heroic, main character Auror stands alone against Voldemort, the odds of Voldemort's defeat go up significantly.