Thread split from Under-appreciated aspects of Harry Potter. -Yak

I think the magical world outside Great Britain is the most under-appreciated aspect of the Harry Potterverse. There are glimpses into other magical cultures, for example the other schools in Europe, America, Brazil, and elsewhere as well as from characters that have jobs like Bill working as a curse breaker in Egypt or Charley at the Romanian dragon preserve but Rowling only offers some vague details (understandably as too much detail would only serve to distract from the main plot and would require a hell of a lot more books).

It would be really interesting to have stories from other countries and this could also be extended to the magical history of the world. Rowling seems to have had a really dull experience in history class that influenced how it is portrayed in the books but for someone like me who genuinely enjoys history it would be really interesting. There is the obvious example of World War 2 where I would say Grindelwald’s is pretty heavily implied to be involved with Nazi Germany but this could basically be used in any major historical event. Historical event/person + magical influence = Harry Potter historical fiction.

Since magic is so ridiculously powerful and the wizarding community is shown to have at least some influence over muggle governments even post ISWS it seems like a simple step to say that in the HPverse magic has shaped muggle history as well. Some that jump out to me would be similar to a Merlin-King Arthur type relationship where someone like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan is paired up with some magical mentor and their path to greatness is retold along with their historical antagonists’ also having magical power/influence. My final selling point would be that you could add in magical creatures so obviously put dragons n’ shit in the Punic Wars.

Anyway I just want to put these ideas into the heads of as many fanfic writers as I can to feed my addiction.

 

The problem with this, like you mentioned, is that Rowling seems to be utterly unfamiliar with the history of places that are not Britain (and maybe France). In fact, the more she reveals about the wider wizarding world on Pottermore and Twitter, the more irritated I become. (Castelobruxo? Mahoutokoro? Fucking Ouagadou(gou)? And wtf is with one school serving over a billion people? Seriously, Rowling?)

Then there's a lot that's either full retard or apologism if you take the view that wizards shaped Muggle history. Which is why I don't like the Grindelwald-WW2 connection; beyond putting the utterly mundane blame for the clusterfuck Nazi Germany turned out to be on magic, it means the majority of wizarding Britain just lounged around and let tens of millions of people die when they could have helped (as opposed to not involving themselves in a conflict of tens of thousands at worst). Dumbledore in particular. Like shit, you watched the entire Holocaust happen and you still didn't get off your ass because something something guilt something something teenage crush?

Same thing applies to pretty much every war ever, and shit like the slave trades, and genocides, and batshit insane dictators. Sure the average magical being is probably ignorant of Muggle affairs, but I can't buy that Muggleborn witches and wizards would just shrug and do nothing about events that are affecting their families.

And then there's my issues with the Statute of Secrecy, which was quite clearly written with an Abrahamic, Western society in mind.

 

Well shit, I really didn’t think about it like that. Ya, maybe not a good idea to shift blame for a war that happened less than a hundred years ago that killed millions upon millions of people for some of the most disgusting reasons humanity has ever conceived of. That being said I will now defend my original position like an idiot with all manner of justifications and post hoc rationalizations.

In the WW2 example (which I think is pretty much canon unless I am totally misreading things) the wizarding world could have been similar to the allies in that they were not (fully) aware of what was going on until near the end of the war and explore wizarding espionage/counter-espionage with a final horrifying reveal. Not sure if there is any evidence that wizarding Britain “lounged around” during Grindelwald’s rise to power except for maybe a lack of war stories from anyone except Dumbledore but I could be wrong. In regards to Dumbledore, if he was aware of what was happening I fully agree with you but like I said above if Grindelwald was able to mask his actions and add in the fact Dumbledore probably wouldn’t really want to know it could be argued that he avoided conflict with his “teenage crush” until the extent of his atrocities were revealed. It is also worth pointing out that Dumbledore bowed out pretty early in their joint venture and not because of some moral epiphany of where things were headed with Grindelwald but rather because his sister was killed. Also this would be a great example of how otherwise intelligent people can support questionable but seductive ideals that are quickly twisted into terrifyingly bloody ideologies.

I think it would be at least more acceptable the farther away (older) the event is, for example wearing a Viking costume to a Halloween party is totally acceptable but wearing an SS uniform is decidedly (and understandably) not. I am not trying to set up an equivalence between Vikings and Nazis but just illustrate the farther something is away from us like the Vikings the more willing people are to hand wave atrocities (like seriously there was a Viking who was only notable for not wanting to kill children while raiding).

In regards to magic users ignoring the atrocities of history I would ask why couldn’t they be a party to said atrocities, sharing the motivations of the muggles involved and just adding a magical element to the retelling? This would address at least some of your concerns that complex real-world issues would be replaced with simple magic dun it explanations. Harry Potter was of course originally for children and grew up along with its audience so it makes sense that the magic users are generally portrayed as either all good or all evil but there is still a lot of room for grey.

Ya, I agree about the Statute of Secrecy. I guess it could be argued that if wizarding Europe was much more powerful in the 17th century than other wizarding communities they could have imposed their will around the world in order to, as they see it, protect muggles from themselves. It would have to be handled in a very careful way though in order to not come across as “Noble, wise Europeans educating poor, backward everywhere else” but instead be portrayed as similar to colonial Europe influencing the rest of the world. This also gets around completely ignoring the possibility of other cultures being able to co-exist with magic users. So ya, another minefield. I mainly brought it up because pre-Statute magic users wouldn’t be segregated entirely into their own communities and could instead be distributed amongst muggle factions.

I guess in summary some guidelines for exploring this arena would be don’t use anything too recent, maintain the whys of history and only explore the hows, and stick to cultures you actually have a good understanding of. I see why you say this is a right off but you probably underestimate my appetite for large scale magical combat.