I've been thinking of the mechanics of superhero stories and HP. In particular, the role of the Dumbledore type wizard.

Take Superman. He's not the fastest - the Flash is faster. He's not the strongest. He doesn't have the most sensitive senses. But what he does have is a high level of ability in a broad range of powers, whereas most super powered people just have one. Superman is #1 in nothing, but #2 in everything.

And it seems to me this could be a way to characterise Dumbledore and Voldemort with respect to the Order and the Death Eaters respectively. You would characterise the Order and the Death Eaters as being groups composed of specialists, each possessing a high level of skill in a particular area. Meanwhile, Dumbledore and Voldemort would be like Superman. In each area of special skill, the Order member who specialises in that area would be more capable than Dumbledore. But Dumbledore is capable in all their skills.

This keeps Dumbledore and Voldemort awesome, but also gives a meaningful role to their organisations beyond being cannon fodder before the big guns arrive.

In some ways, this mechanic already exists in canon with Snape and Potions. Dumbledore defers to Snape in that subject area - he goes to Snape for help with his cursed hand in HBP.

The difficult thing is the execution, however. It's difficult to conceive of the specialisms in question beyond "Potions", "Charms" etc. which I feel are too broad as specialisms for this purpose.

So if you were taking this approach, what specialisms would you give to which Order Members/Death Eaters?

 

Mad eye: knowing how to get in the mind set of dark wizards. Also he's a trainer, being good at combat and being able to teach a number of people to a standard level are different. Not to mention the fact that Dumbledore wouldn't be free most of the time. He can probably be the de facto combat teacher for the order.

Tonks: Espionage. Dumbledore can change himself, become invisible, etc, but he might struggle in pretending to be someone else or gaining someone's confidence while pretending to be someone else. Tonks has a pretty big advantage here so it makes sense she'd try to make the most of it.

Mundumgus fletcher is canonically used for his black market connections and ability to hear criminal gossip.

Can't really think of anything else. But I doubt each and every order member is specialized in this way. At least some number exist solely to have someone available to do things while someone better suited is busy. They have Fred and George who eventually might develop business contacts and experience, not to mention more general inventiveness,but when they join are barely adults.

 

Charms you would break down to loads of subsets. Fire charms, movement charms, protection charms etc. Could be well over a dozen, maybe dozens of sub catagories.

And Dumbledore being really good at all of them, is an obvious advantage over being the best as one.

Transfiguration is harder. But I could see a few people being better at maybe details inanimate, or animal etc. But transfiguration was his wheel house.

For the order. Moody is good at tracking and tracing. He’ll maybe Dumbledore was picking his brain on the Horcrux hunt.

Kingsley was a bodyguard, so I imagine he is like good at running passive detection spells. Hard to sneak up on him.

Obliviator is an obvious one.

Some sort of broom making, like combining charms. Stacking charms if you will. I always hate fanfic where they cast a shrinking charm on a broom. It always stuck me as something that wouldn’t work. Placing multiple charms on an object gets progressively harder.

Something to do with Floo and transport spells.

 

In the graveyard in GoF, LV asks Lucius if he is ready to resume his position as Head of Muggle Torture.

This implies that there is some value in torturing muggles to the organization beyond simple sadism. If it was simply being a sadistic prick, you wouldn't put elegant and put together Lucius Malfoy in charge. You'd hand that job over to Bellatrix or Rodolphus.

My impression from this is that Lucius is the magical equivalent of Hans Landa. A sadist for sure, but in the role of a detective. Torturing muggles for information about muggleborns and squibs for example.

 

I think you have misunderstood the text. The exact quote is: "Lucius, my slippery friend --- I am told that you have not renounced the old ways, though you present a respectable face. You are still ready to take the lead in a spot of Muggle-torture, I believe?"

Voldemort is not referencing any position, but saying that if there's some casual muggle-torture to be had, Lucius would be first in line.

 

Oh ffs. Whoops. Thanks for pointing that out!

 

I think much of the effectiveness of an approach like this comes from starting with a real-world role that gets used a lot, or enough to have its own department at least, and then thinking of how they would do it with magic, like how real life organizations, from terror groups to regular armies, have interpreters, a magical interpreter would just be dealing with a different set of problems and have a different set of tools to approach them.
McGonagal, Lupin, and Snape are all teachers, and I would think that they could be giving some of the younger members advanced courses on some of the more difficult matters either over the summer or in some circumstance where they could no longer attend school. At the same time, each one of them would have a different role based on the subjects they teach, which is really just a reflection of what they do best, at least I would hope; I know over and over the books say that Snape's primary interest is in the dark arts. To accomplish these extra-curricular lessons, they would take some shortcuts by assuming the students would actually do the work without needing to be disciplined, and answer questions by a protean charmed book.