I lol'd so hard irl XD

 

I don't doubt that for most wizards magic is an every-day tool. What I'm saying is, the ability to appear anywhere in the country, cause untold amounts of damage with the flick of a wand and then disappear immediately, or perhaps the ability to kill someone without the possibility of leaving a single trace of ever being there, or perhaps that the government can make entire words illegal, would fundamentally change the way you train and utilize your law enforcement.

Regardless of if the criminals of your society are only armed with a tool, it is a multi-purpose tool that ranges from a screwdriver to several hundred pounds of C4.

You intentionally pulled out those bits of magic that have obvious muggle comparisons. No muggle can appear spontaneously in the middle of Trafalgar Square and blow himself up. No muggle can blow up a street full of people and avoid capture by becoming a rat. No muggle can avoid pursuit by throwing on an invisibility cloak. These things ARE game-changers.

Although I would admit that there is a tenuous link between the abstract concepts of the Aurors and the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigations investigates things, where as the few times we see the Aurors utilized in canon, they're clearly muscle. (Coming with the Minister to arrest Dumbledore, "The aurors are on their way, Tom.", Kingsley body-guarding the Prime Minister) the one time we see them do any investigating (Sirius Black), well... they've a mole on the inside, but still they hardly do a good job of noticing.

 

While I could try to make a symbolic comparison with some of your examples (for instance, the ideal Muggle suicide bomber, who is so well camouflaged before his attack that he might as well have appeared spontaneously), there is no doubt that magic can do some things with no analogue in the Muggle world - you have my agreement there.

I'm just saying that, with the Auror example, you've got magic-wielding law enforcement officers going after magic-wielding criminals. The methods are different from Muggle law enforcement, and in some cases they're virtually incomprehensible, but at the end of the day it's still cops vs. criminals. It sounds like we were just thinking about the comparison on different levels.

Yeah, that sort of thing is why I'm not sure about the original FBI/Aurors comparison. My conjecture is this: unlike the FBI, which has separate teams that specialize in investigation, in dealing with potential combat situations, etc., Aurors are jacks of all trades, each of which might be called upon to investigate, to engage dark wizards directly, to guard high-security sites, and so forth. That there is incompetence within the Auror ranks isn't too shocking; incompetence grows like a fungus in bureaucracies. :awesome

 

And in the last sentence here, I think we run into something of the problem. Quoted from canon, Aurors were specifically described as 'Dark wizard-catchers', hunting down and rounding up their targets, but in canon, we get a much wider role. We see Aurors engage as guards, investigators, combatants, and in the Crouch-era, even open soldiers and enforcers, sometimes not even connected to Dark wizards at all. It's a very different role to the 'detective role' that seemed initially implies in GoF.

Furthermore, we also have canon evidence of 'Hit Wizards', who apparently apprehend criminals and are skilled enough to subdue powerful Death Eaters, which imply a modicum of duelling expertise, but no real specialty with the Dark Arts - I mean, if they did have that specialty, why didn't we see more of them, instead of only Aurors for most of the series? Why didn't we see Hit Wizards in the Order of the Phoenix?

I guess the distinction I always extrapolated (and yeah, I know it's an extrapolation, but it's got canon support) was that Hit Wizards were like the foot troops and general investigators of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, while the Aurors specialized in crimes or criminals dealing with the Dark Arts. Sort of like the split on 'Law & Order' between the general team and SVU.

And before Taure says anything, the Auror Office IS a part of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement - according to OOTP, the Auror Office cubicles are located within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, as Arthur crosses into it when he goes to speak to Kingsley. It's a subsection - and really, that makes sense. If anything, a divide between the DMLE and the Auror Office would raise some unsettling implications, namely how Crouch could give extra powers to the Aurors to kill if they weren't directly in his Department.

 

I was always fond of the version of aurors put forward by GreenGecko in Revolution, Resonance and Resolution. It depicts Harry going through his auror training, very realistically IMO, with enough emphasis of spell combat to be believable, but also a lot of emphasis on theory, on law, on procedures. The training requires them to read huge amounts every night in order to be prepared for their session the next day. In the end it shows Auror's as being highly skilled at combat, and being available to be called out for everything from a dragon escaping its owners, to minor incidents of magic noticeable to muggles. They also spend a huge amount of time walking the streets of various areas with higher magical populations, presumably just keeping an eye out and also making their presence visibly felt.

 

In other words... They're cops.

 

Yeah Aekiel, they're cops. However the author portrays it really well, and makes it seem like the most interesting job going, rather than just using static description to say "They're cops".

 

I would just like to comment on the whole starting levitating with feathers thing. I don't think it's because it's easier then anything else, but more on the line of more safe.

If you where teaching a class how to levitate things, would you want to have feathers flying around, or something that can potentially harm someone?

 

Because potionmaking and broomsticks are so healthy? Not much in Hogwarts are made for safety. They have a medical wing that can cure everything but death, basically.

 

I'd think the obvious answer to the feather debate is that magic is about confidence. If you are confident the spell will work, it does. Just look at Harry's patronus in 3rd year: he /knew/ it would drive away an insane number of Dementors, and thus it did. If Harry hadn't seen it happen, do you honestly think he could have pulled it off? It is possible, I suppose, but very unlikely.

Having said that, what would the average 11 year old child feel most confident attempting to levitate? A feather, or something much heavier? Even if the laws of physics don't apply (and I suspect they do not), the average kid isn't going to know that. It would work much like a sugar pill.