I'm currently reading Harry Potter and The Girl Who Lived and again I can't help but roll my eyes at the use of "battle robes". It's not as uncommon as one would think in Harry Potter fanfiction especially in independent borderline Super!Harry fics. I'd say 8/10 times it's dragon hide but every once in awhile someone makes it ballsy enough to make the robes out of basilisk hide. Supposedly when they are first introduced the robes are "highly resilient to magic" or if the writer tries hard enough they're only impervious to "minor spells". Without going through the major debate of magical power levels when Harry dons these magical battle robes he is still found leaping out of the way to avoid them. I have never encountered a fic where Harry stands still and the robes are mentioned to deflect a spell. If one were to argue that the spells thrown at him are highly dangerous and not affected by the robes than I tend to believe that there are no real use for them in the first place other than the off chance of a death eater happens to shoot a tickling charm at him or even a stunner.

If there is no use for them in actual battle than one must assume the writer put them there for fashion purposes. Seeing as how the robes are most likely scaley rather than leathery one can't help but picture how Harry would look like in these robes. Again the majority of these times these robes are very form fitting and tight on Harry. My first mental picture was someone wearing tight snake skin pants, then I imagine someone wearing these as a full body jacket. It doesn't quite paint the picture of someone looking intimadating or even close to what the matrix portrayed (which is where I assume the idea was drawn from). Now I can only get these facts from the movies which I admit or far from reliable but Dragon scales look a tad bit bigger and jagged than your average reptile scales so I can only chuckle as I picture a set of Hungarian Ridge Back scaled robes, basilisk robes again don't seem to be much better for reasons previously mentioned.

I write this to see if anyone disagrees with me and perhaps some discussion can be made on the subject. After all high quality fanfiction is what I think we desire from ourselves and others.

 

Something made of hide or types of skin can't really count as robes. Those are armors types. Too tight could hinder movements but just plating at vital spots could act as buffer to weaken incoming spells. If hit, they act as sort of bullet proof vests and absorbs or dissolve some of the power.

Protective clothing are Cannon. As explains in GoF dragon hides are extremely resistant to magic. So dragon hide armor or plating aren't out of the question. Assuming that basilisks' being magical creatures also, their skin will probably have some magic resistant properties also.

Robes on the other hand could be charmed to be protective as done in cannon by the twins. The WWW robes and hats could shield the user from a few low level curses. I could easily see further enchantments to clothing to be more protective. For example an impenetrable charm casted on a robe could help a user survive some conjured knives that's been banished to them.

 

Illution: I'm not arguing the defensive properties of Dragon hide, but the only canon reference I can think of is when they're used in herbology to protect the students from bubotuber pus. Dragons are resistant to spells so it's natural to assume that an article of clothing made from their "hide" would be resilient as well but as I mentioned the chances of a Death Eater sending a jelly legs jinx or even a stunner is small seeing as in canon it seems DE's shoot to kill. The same goes for the twins' hats, one of them lost an ear and the other died.

Lady Sorrows: The chest guard seems a bit much but I can see the bracers and leg guards working to deflect minor spells if a Death Eater were to throw one. But those aren't robes.

 

Well, the armor is canon...
But the protective plating idea was good, I could think of several uses for them.
I always thought more like what the British longbowmen used in the middle-ages... Light plating with leather, something (remotely) like this...
Edit: Harpy: Those aren't robes, yes. But you can have him use armor, and the twins used dragonhide vests...
Though the OP was talking about robes >_>

 

Are you talking about the end of book 5 when the twins were wearing dragon hide clothes? Pretty sure it was a fashion statement. And it didn't seem to do much good as I say again one of them lost an ear and the other died.

The point I'm trying to push here is why have it at all. Sure dragon hide robes/armor what have you protect against minor spells but when in a battle for your life is it going to be any use? Death Eaters don't shoot minor spells they shoot to kill with flaming whips, invisible swords, and death spells. While dragon scale plates may be cool to some people personally I don't see the attraction, from what I gather it would do little to protect someone from anything stronger than a stunner (which seems to be a lot) and would most likely impede movement with all that stiff hide.

Lady Sorrows:I pictured robes like that too. Now picture them made of snake skin and tight showing off Harry's muscles. 8/10 fanfics with battle robes I read were described like that.

Couldn't even find a picture in mens. Yes a full robe of this would look smashing.

 

LOL. Harpy has put it in perspective.

I'm no expert, but I very much doubt anyone with any sort of armor will simply stand still, more out of natural instinct than lack of faith in the armor itself. Besides, not all shots are aimed at the body, so one would still dodge a potential headshot for example.

 

I always imagined that 'battle robes' would have specific counter-curses cast on them so that if it is hit by certain spells they would have no effect. It makes sense because the only spell that protects against the majority of curses is the Protego charm, which does not seem conductive to being cast on clothing (being that it forms a shield around the caster and repels physical objects).

 

I imagine battle robes as being used mainly for competitive dueling and nothing else.

 

I always thought of "Battle Robes" as some form of armor rather than a tunic. The problem with most authors, though, is that the majority of them introduce the robes but rarely use them in the story, making them unimportant and more of a "fashion" article.

If you think about it, using it as armor would make sense, since we know that there are some spells that cannot be cancelled or stopped with "protego", but can only be blocked by intercepting them with a solid object (for example the AVada Kedavra). It would make sense to have them as a form of protection against those spells if they were in the form of a solid suit of armor, or a set of breast-plate, shoulder plate, greaves (...) over a regular robe.

Magic doesn't require spider-man's agility to cast or even evade, so it would make sense.

One thing that annoys me, though, is the looks of the armor. Why is it that almost everyone always pictures some form of LotR "Orlando Bloom-ish" robes or medieval clothing? I'm sure that fashion tastes advance, even in the Wizarding World.

I imagine it more in a "Steam-punk" fashion, blending modern elements with 19th century fashion and a pinch of fantasy added.

 

Agreed - a uniform for the sport, and an easy way to tell the red fighter from the blue one.

Anyway, certain armor might actually be useful. If your clothes get hit by an AK, you die (Presumably. Unless Voldemort is a crack shot and just racks up head shots.) So there might be some sort of distance threshold that seperates 'you' from 'object that's so close your fucked anyway'. If a bit of extra thick padding or magical spell resistance makes the difference, then there's an incentive to wear it. More likely though... well, odds are a whenever Harry buys the battle robes that show of teh hawt bod it's not long after that he's in some store in the middle of Knockturn, buying Salazar's old trunk.

 

Never really thought about them.

But in stories that have them... it's usually just so the author can write more about Harry shopping around in the alley. They've read so many stories with Harry dodging spells, that they completely forget he's wearing magic-resistant gear.

Personally, I think such things as 'battle robes' should be extremely archaic, articles of clothing meant only for one who is going into battle. Something pre-middle ages, King Arthur's time I think. That's why auror's robes aren't made from the stuff - it's akin to dressing up police officers in full plate or chain (ridiculous).

 

Police officers wear bullet-proof vests nowadays. It makes sense to wear something for protection; not all spells can be dodged.

No one's talking about medieval armor.

 

It actually makes more sense to dodge than to take the hit. It is more likely than not that the robes do not grant full immunity to whatever spells thrown its way, but rather protects its users from most of the impact/effects.

Its the same way Bellatrix's Summoning Spell nearly caused Harry to lose grip of the Prophecy in OOTP, despite the Shield Charm he had casted. Or how he still felt the blunt impact of the purple flame spell Dolohov used on him, despite him being shielded and the Death Eater rendered mute.

Why take chances when you can simply dodge. If you fail to avoid the spell, then you can pray your armor absorbs most of the spell's aftereffects.

Police wearing body armor always try to take cover and avoid being shot anyway, even if their adversaries are using low-calibre arms.

 

I'm not saying that they should stay put and take it, I'm just saying that noone in the HP universe is (or should be) Neo in The Matrix, thus, they can't (as in they don't have the ability to) dodge everything you throw at them. If you look at it that way, it makes sense to wear some sort of protection, just as the police does, even if it is just for the remote possibility that they could be hit with a nasty curse.

 

I've thought about this problem a fair amount and I'm guilty of having written a story with, well not battle robes, but dragon skin armor for Harry. This kind of thing is hard to introduce plausibly into a story without breaking or unbalancing stuff.

Two immediate problems one runs into are: If it's such cool stuff, why isn't everyone and their little sister wearing them? And if it's too bulky or unwieldy, you look like a dweeb and probably hamper your combat more by hurting your ability to dodge than you help it by improved resiliency.

I went with armor that was form-fitting and rather lightweight, wearable under Wizard robes (which tend to be loose), but extremely difficult to make; only one set can be crafted from the hide of a large, adult dragon, something which cures the commonality problem. It's not impermeable (powerful curses can still penetrate it, as can Charmed weaponry), but it does offer good protection against blunt force trauma, piercing attacks, and some spells.

If you're not careful with how you handle it, though, you just get Ironman!Harry, which is pretty boring.

 

Actually that's not true. Protego can take more forms than the 'round, slightly azure bubble' shield that I think you're imagining. In fact, it doesn't even have to be visible. Case in point, the Shield Hats the twins produced. They had a Protego spell placed on them that did not activate until it needed to.

 

The short answer? It's expensive.

I don't think wizards/witches necessarily care about bulk. (1) they're ass-backwards when it comes to advances in clothing (nothing has proven otherwise) so they probably don't know they look dweeby. And (2) they can apparate, so...who cares how bulky/cumbersome their gear is?

Case-in-point: the Weasley's shield hats. I'll bet they looked like this:

instead of something like this:

(The blue semi-balaclava thing)
EDIT: Fuck, they changed mah picture. Changed it back.