Dumbledore being gay wasn't much of a surprise, and I rather appreciate that his negative half was not a Merlin-inspired new version of Nimue or Morgana.

It also, I think (and this is really odd to say), made Gellert more threatening as a rival, that he was male. It falls into classic expectations somehow, to think that a male could fall much farther down into evil, compared to a female. Basically, if JKR meant to set up a hetero pairing between them, Albus would fit better as... uhh... Blanche (or Alberta, but why confuse the Canadians).

It makes sense for the more forgiving Blanche to leave Gellert alive, but trapped in his own fortress so that he can 'really think about what he's done for a while'. it also thematically fits with the plan for Harry to succeed by understanding the Power of Sacrifice.

Yeah... Albus was bottom. Next bunny, please.

 

When you say Blanche, all I can think of is an awful Harry Potter/Golden Girls crossover. After his parents die, he's forced to move in with his last remaining relative, who just so happens to be a whorish sixty year old living with her three best friends and one of her friends' mom. Unsure whether it's any better than having to plant begonias at Privet Drive, Harry suffers through the first part of the summer, but by the end, he realizes that he's become part of the family.

Then Voldemort attacks, killing each woman one by one, and Harry's moved back to Privet Drive for his protection. A fitting end for that God awful show that my ex-girlfriend used to make me watch ritualistically.

 

I think the word you're looking for is brilliance. Both Dumbledore and Grindelwald would shape the world. If Dumbledore or Grindelwald were in a scene, the scene would be defined by them. They radiated.

Doesn't hurt they were talented, clever, curious, intelligent, strong duellists, charming, good at everything, they had a vision ...
To bad Grindelwald had an anger problem.

 

This idea has been bouncing around in my head for the last couple of hours.

What if James had managed to hold off Voldemort long enough for Lily to escape with Harry? But instead of running to Dumbledore, Lily becomes resentful for his failure to protect her family and flees England, maybe even Europe. In a matter of weeks Voldemot takes over and starts prepairations for a war on global level. Meanwhile, Harry grows up on the run, always one step ahead of Voldemot's assassins. His, now borderline psychotic and overprotective, mother is prepairing him for the day when he will have to confront the Dark Lord and fulfil the prophecy.

Basically, I imagined Lily as Sarah Connor type of character with Harry as her John. It's still a rough draft because I'm not sure what to do with Dumbledore, Snape, Muggleborns, impact of Voldemort's rule on Muggle world etc.

 

God, that kinda sounds cool. I'd love to see Hermione show up as some type of leader of resistance or something. You could use many of the Terminator series ideas with Bellatrix serving as the T-1000 and Snape serving as Harry's protector. Although I only hope you don't have Snape and Lily as a couple as I always thought that pairing as a bit gross. Anyways you could also have most muggleborns killed off, but a lucky few could be saved by Dumbledore and taken to France like Hermione and Penny Clearwater. Neutral pureblood families who didn't join Voldemort like the Greengrasses might also have been forced to flee Britian so you could always have Daphne Greengrass as a friend. Also I'd have muggles having learned of magic and treating magicials bad because of the actions of Voldemort and have them at war with Voldemort. Dumbledore I could see leading the front of resistance in Europe and trying desperately to improve muggle/wizards relations and gain them as allies and not have them attack other wizards and witches who are not associated with Voldemort.

 

Ok, I worked out some details.

First of all, this whole ''global war preparations'' thing. I think I can make an educated guess and say that Voldemort is a megalomaniac. He wouldn't just be satisfied with being a king of Wizarding Britain or whatever the same way Hitler wasn't satisfied with just Germany. I like the idea of Dumbledore abandoning UK and establishing his base of operations somewhere in Europe. I could picture him running around the world, trying to secure the unified front for the coming war. At first, everyone is panicing, but after several years of tensions things go back to relative normality. Voldemort didn't make his move so they think Britain is enough for him. Kind of like the world's reaction to USSR after the revolution. Dumbledore slowly loses his credibility and as years go by people are paying less and less attention to his warnings.

In the meantime, Voldemort is prepairing for the war in secrecy. But, in the future conflict, even with all the power of Wizarding Britain behind him and all the dark creatures, dark wizards and fifth column he'll sway to his side, he'll still be vastly outnumbered. So, he doesn't need soldiers, he needs fanatics. Hogwarts becomes some sort of training camp/brainwashing facility. At the certain age kids are being separated from their parents and sent to Hogwarts to be raised by their Death Eater instructors. Creation of Voldemortjugend begins. Purebloods and Halfbloods are alowed to keep their names and memories, but Muggleborns are striped from their personality and turned into numbers, cannon fodders for the coming war.

Now, I think Daphne would be a good choice for the roll of Cameron. She's one of the best pupils of the new Hogwats. Cold, inteligent, calculated, always in control, remorseless and mindlessly loyal she's the perfect candidate for the infiltrator and assassin. They send her after Harry/Dumbledore, she fails, they manage to capture and reform her.

Muggle situation comes next in mind. Voldemort knows that if he tries attacking countries one at the time, the others will gang up on him and he'll be crushed. He needs a new approach. Everybody knows that Voldemort despises Muggles but not many recal that Tom Jr. grew up in a muggle orphanage in London during the Blitz. He remembers that Muggles are good when it comes to destruction. It's easy enough to Imperio British Prime minister and key military figures. And when the time is right he'll launch the nukes, targeting not just muggle cities but also places like Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, wizarding settlements, wizarding government headquarters etc. Two flies with one swat. Attacked muggles retaliate against UK and her closest allies. BAM! We have our J-Day! Let the invasion begin.

It would be an easy thing for Voldemort to move wizarding settlements into remote and not populated areas like Wales and Highlands or even underground, if he knew what was coming in advance.

With Snape I think things could go both ways. He could've helped Lily leave Britain and go with her. Although I don't think Albus reveald the identity of the guy who told prophecy to the Voldemort, I doubt him and Lily would ever develpe a romantic relationship. Lily would just be too hung up on James and too focused on her son. Snape would've become Harry's miserable ''Uncle Severus''. Or Snape could've stayed in Britain, become Dumbledore's spy among Hogwarts staff and occasionally provide inside help to the Order iin saving a few children from Voldemorts clutches. Harry, on the other hand, could get a full legion of step-dads and ''mommy's friends''.

God, it took hours to type this all down.

 

I doubt that Voldemort would use nukes, as in situation like this other magical societies also would use their access to Muggles and retaliate. MAD is relevant also here.

It depends on handling of magic but attack with ICBM should be not so hard to stop.

 

You forget, most wizards are pretty ignorant when it comes to Muggles. They don't know almost anything about them and don't have any contacts. On government level they have sporadic Minister of Magic/ Prime minister meetings as we see in canon. ICBM takes less then half an hour to travel from one end of the world to another. There would just not be enough time for wizards to even find out what's going on let alone do something about it. Surprise attack and immediate response by muggle authorities is the key here.

Also this,

He could do that years in advence for any reason.

 

To have world that makes some sense IMHO it is necessary to assume that somebody (ICW? Unspeakables? Obliviators?) is keeping with what is happening at Muggle world. I really liked worldbuilding in this thread.

 

Well, maybe you're right. There are some strong indication that Grindelwald was somehow involved with the Nazies. So, perhapse after that they developed some sort of system that informs them if some major crisis occurs in the Muggle world. But even if the ICW finds out about the attack in the same moment as the NATO joint command, they could only do demage controle, not stop the whole thing. Especially not in Europe.

 

Time-Turn 5 hours into past, move into observer flight path of rocket, release bludgers charmed to attack ICBM.

Or Time-Turn 5 hours into past, replace nuclear warheads with fake ones, launched rockets will harmlessly fall.

Or just activate magic that ICW placed on nukes.

Depends on how magic works: maybe Accio ICBMs by Dumbledore would solve problem.

Or, if magicals have their space program - than they are able to deal with it easily (thanks to Time-Turners they may be certain where targets will appear).

 

I don't think that's how time-turners work. If something happened then it happened, your involvement will just make it happen the same way it already happened. That's the only way things can happen without creating a different timeline and HP time trevel doesn't work that way. Remember PoA and Harry's patronus? And if that's the case why not just use time turner everytime Voldemort kills someone?

Accio ICBM would be a bad idea, even if you're Dumbledore. And I'm not sure it would even work. You can try to Accio Moon or a comet and it probably wouldn't work (too masive, too fast). Same goes for ICBM.

Pre-aranged magic on nukes could work.

Wizard space program? I really can't imagine that.

 

And that is why Time-Turners are used on detection of ICBM launches, not once somebody noticed that something weird happened with more important settlements (yes, it requires somebody in magical government aware about nukes and monitoring situation).

It depends on how magic scales - is Dumbledore as powerful as Harry during Triwizard? Ten times more powerful? Thousand?

With Arthur making flying car as his hobby - space travel is probably something that may be done by determined individuals (it is even possible than enchanted objects like brooms/car/bludgers may leave atmosphere and be used as spacecraft). It is possible that single wizard with a phoenix is better at launching stuff into space that our entire civilization (depends on maximum distance of teleportation via phoenix, what may be carried and how often phoenix may use this ability).

 

You can do far more than that with Potterverse magic.

There is a spell which cancels light, by that reason there must be a spell which can cancel nuclear radiation.

You could create a protective charm that stops nuclear explosions. Because why not?

You could transfigure nukes into fish. Because magic.

Really guys, compared to what damage you can do with creative magic, nukes are nothing.

 

Nukes are quite impressive, canon is not even mentioning any magic able to easily destroy entire London. Fiendfyre is not even close to this. Most of magic, especially battle magic is also operating on close distance, it is possible to dodge most curses.

But still, Imperius is so absurdly overpowered that it is funny. Note that somebody able to efficiently resist it (like Harry) is described as rarity. And it is interesting how efficient are curses, like this one on DADA position.

 

I think it's pretty established that wizards are aware of pretty much everything going on in Muggle government - to the extent that in HBP they knew when the (strongly implied US) President was about to call the Prime Minister and could arrange for him to choose to call at a different time.

Arguably the wizards already rule the Muggles, given that they can arbitrarily change decisions at the highest levels of Muggle government.

With that in mind - and ignoring the debate on who would win in a wizard-Muggle war (something debated to death on this site, though I suppose a lot of the newer members wouldn't have seen it) - even getting the two societies into a state of war is very difficult. The decision to strike, if it came from the Muggles, couldn't come from any Muggle political institution. And I'm not sure if there are other Muggle institutions (military, secret services) aware of the wizarding world. And if there are, we don't know if the wizards monitor them like they do politicians.

 

True, but I don't really think these guys think that way. They're still basically stuck up in 1890s. I mean, their knowledge, when it comes to universe, is still limited to our solar system and I'm not even sure if Astronomy has any real purpose. Besides fortunetelling that is.

Yeah, you can do all that if you know what's coming and you think fast enough. If not, then you'll be pulverized in the next few seconds/minutes.

All in all, the real problem here is that we discuss about things that JKR never thought about and on the whole differant level. Same as talking about religion or politics in HP, it's really pointless without some base in canon.

 

Yeah.... no.

We discussed this quite recently. Here.

Relevant part:

 

And there are muggleborns (depends on how many people are interested in astronomy and how efficient is cultural assimilation).

I also have no trouble to imagine twins working for few months on project that would allow them to celebrate their next birthday on the Moon. Just because it would shock everybody.

 

Well, you have the think about the motivation for such a project. Wizards seem to be rather inwards focused/isolationist. What motivation would they have for wanting to go to the Moon, or Mars?

I mean, even us Muggles with all our love of exploration and the mystery of space can't be bothered to give NASA anything more than a pittance anymore.