Ok, let's talk about the American Wizarding community. I'm thinking that since the purebloods of Europe saw the New World, like the Muggles, as a place to dump the trash and the unwanted, that it would be comprised of mostly Squibs, half-bloods, and the likes. But what about the native populations? How about specialized magics like rune magic, ritual magic, and soul magic? Does anyone have any ideas or theories on this?

 

This topic is bad and you should feel bad. There is no canonical information on American wizardry (except a few very brief mentions in Quidditch Through The Ages) and the 'specialized magics' you mention are all completely fanon.

 

I have the wild theory that American wizards cunningly disguise themselves as unusually eccentric Americans. I also have the theory that they use highly specialised magical devices on a very regular basis. These devices, which they call wands, are used to perform minor miracles (also known as magic spells) through a process of combining enunciation of particular phrases (also known as magic words) with the correct device manipulation (known as wand movements).

I also postulate that somewhere in the region of eighteen thousand, seven hundred wizards live in the US and as a result they have several, if not dozens of large communal areas in which young wizards are instructed on the principles of how to perform magic. These would be known as magic schools, or if you are a traditionalist, a school of magic. One such school is almost certainly called the Salem Institute of Magic (or Salem Witches Institute).

 

You are wrong. JKR has stated that the wizards who went to the states did so thinking that they would be allowed more freedom over here, but found that muggles still persecuted them. This is what caused Quidditch not to be as popular because they didn't want to risk muggles seeing them fly around on brooms iirc. I believe it was mentioned in QA.

Canonically speaking, rune magic doesn't exist. I'm being lenient here because I could accept 4th year resurrection as ritual magic and the creation of the horcrux as soul magic even though they both would fall under the category of Dark Arts. You seem to be straying into crazy Canadian magic school territory here.

The truth would probably be that it is exactly like over in the UK. Except that instead of English/Irish/Scottish accents and Quidditch, you would have American accents, Quodpot, and wizards complaining about Mexicans stealing their jobs.

 

All I know on the topic is that I hate fanfic authors portraying the American wizarding world as a paradise beyond compare. Where muggles are referred to Normals or Non-Magicals. Where everyone is free to do as they want, and there is no discrimination and everyone is lovey dovey with each other. Where magic isn't restricted and isn't frowned upon the way it is in the 'backwards' European states. Thats what I hate.

If you look around the forum, I distinctly recall a thread about this a couple of years back. It might have been mixed in with one of the Wizard vs. Muggle threads, I'm not sure. Certainly it was discussed and argued constantly until, I think, they locked the thread cause every possible position had been stated about a dozen times.

 

Okay, so since there is virtually no canon to speak of in this area, I'm going to talk about fanon. Specifically, how I've treated the US in Lords of Magic.

The first thing I considered was immigration. Modern Muggle USA is shaped significantly by immigration from Europe. If the US wizarding society is to be similar to US Muggle society then it's fair to say that the same would have to be true. Now, most people migrated to the US for either economic reasons or idealistic/religious reasons. Would there have been a similar drive in wizarding society? I decided not, at least for my world.

There were a number of factors leading to no similar migration to the New World.

Firstly, it presented no significant increase in economic opportunities. Wizards have as much land as they could possibly desire, both due to their low population and ability to warp space. So if wizards wanted more land they could just have it in Europe.

Secondly, by the time the US was discovered by Europeans (I decided that the Muggles discovered the Americas before the wizards, as wizards have a significantly lower propensity to explore geographically. They're much inward looking, feeling that they have everything they want already.) the Immortality magics were well developed, which meant that the European population was extremely old and therefore more entrenched.

Thirdly, while wizarding society is extremely classist, most people (other than Muggleborns) didn't feel actively repressed. This can be attributed to a number of sources: firstly, the fact that the nobility had convinced the lower classes of the meritocratic ideal, even if it was a warped meritocratic ideal. The very existence of an entrenched nobility who guarded knowledge to preserve their power defies a meritocracy. Nevertheless, the population at large was convinced of it - not unlike the way many modern Americans remain convinced of the possibility of the "American Dream", despite all the barriers against it. Further, life in Europe was pretty good at this time for even those of the lower classes. Wealth and power were flowing into Europe, and especially Britain, following Merlin's Conquest.

Fourthly, as was mentioned above, the nobility guarded knowledge. Above all, they guarded the Immortality magics. Migrating to the New World meant leaving this centre of expertise. Unless you could cast the spells yourself (in which case you likely were either from the nobility, or on your way to becoming part of that world), moving away was almost like accepting a death sentence.

So there wasn't a massive migration to the New World. Certainly there was some migration by Muggleborns and people with a chip on their shoulder. But, importantly, this migration was not significant enough to overrun the already existing Native American magical culture.

So, given this, what does modern US magical culture look like?

The US population is split about 50/50 in terms of Native American and European ethnicity. Most of the European side isn't from European immigrants but from Muggleborns from the US Muggle culture.

However, the magical culture is very much dominated by the Native Americans. The European side has drifted in so slowly over the years that they got absorbed into the Native American culture rather than overriding it. Further, the Immortality magics took a long time to reach North America, and when they did the magical people there rejected them as unnatural. On the other hand, the Europeans were not so scrupulous. They took from the Native American culture everything they thought could be of value. Foremost of these was the secret of how to make Totem Poles, extremely powerful protective objects that the British Legions use to this day.

US magical culture is very tied in with spirituality, unlike European magical culture. There is no central government, nor are there magical schools in the sense that there are in Europe. Muggleborns are routinely detected and told about magic, but they don't go away to a magical school. Often, they don't even leave home. They'll simply spend time with whoever the local wizards are, learning their ways. They may choose to become fully part of that culture, or continue to live on in the Muggle culture, treating their magic like a religion or hobby. The Statute of Secrecy was not something that US magical culture particularly liked or wanted to enter into. They were essentially forced into it, after seeing the kind of punishment other magical nations had suffered at the hands of international forces for rejecting it.

US magical culture is therefore very small compared to European culture and uses a very different type of magic. They reject both wands and immortality magic. They are particularly gifted with a unique type of magic involving animals, and have powerful shape-shifting abilities that put the animagus transformation to shame. They also are good at healing magic, divination, and potions, though all of these are meant in a different sense to their European counterparts. US practitioners of magic, however, do not have powerful magic suited for combat. That's not to say they have no magic that can be used to attack people with, it's just that it's a) quite subtle and b) weak compared to wand magic.

US magical culture is rather overshadowed by a magical superpower to their south, the Mayan civilisation. This is the only civilisation to discover how to make oneself immortal before Europe, though it is not nearly so easy as the European way: the general population is not immortal as is the case for Europe, and so there is a much smaller population (though still quite large compared to canon population). However, the greatest of the Mayans can extend their life indefinitely through ritual sacrifice. These sacrifices also increase these wizards' power. There are wizards in this culture who were alive in 1500BC, and so are far older than their European counterparts. A handful of these wizards are also frighteningly powerful. Only three things prevented a Mayan conquest of Europe: the versatility and power of wand magic, the very large European magical population, and the threat of Merlin.

The Mayans also rejected European immortality magic and wands, but unlike the Native American wizards, the Mayans have their own extremely powerful magic - powerful enough that they were the only magical nation that Merlin did not risk attempting to subjugate when he created the ICW and the Statute of Secrecy. Rather, an alliance was reached - an alliance which resulted in the complete disappearance of the Mayan civilisation as they were brought into the Statute of Secrecy. This disappearance remains a mystery to modern Muggle academics.

/one TL;DR section of my LoM notes document.

 

A proper fanon intepretation of Wizarding America should be balanced, IMO. None of this "America has fixed all the problems of Wizarding Europe, LOL" nonsense. Taure's is a fine attempt along those lines. When I tried to imagine what it might look like, I came up with this:

1. Wizards of European ancestry in America have virtually no lineage prejudice. The initial immigrants from Europe were society's castoffs, e.g. Muggle-borns and those married to them, former prisoners with relatively few opportunities, etc. As such it's not surprising that they not only rejected that type of blood prejudice, but are fiercely prideful over the fact.

2. On the other hand, American wizards have far greater "magic prejudice" compared to their European counterparts, who merely consider foreign styles of magic to be a strange curiosity. The American wizards had no familiar points of reference other than their magic, so they viewed the influence of Native American magic as more of a threat to their existence than it actually was.

When they arrived in America, they were outnumbered heavily by Native American wizards, but at first they enjoyed both a tactical advantage over them (combat magic) and a strategic one (at that time, there was no unified government among the tribes of North America). Like their Muggle counterparts, expansion of European culture came at the expense of the Native tribes.

3. Unlike the Native Muggles, the Native Wizards eventually "held the line" against the immigrants. The surviving tribes unified their efforts, and improved their ability to defend themselves, and the result is that Wizarding North America is split into two. The nation of European immigrants comprises the eastern US and Canada, and the nation of Native wizards is the Western US/Canada. Central and South America would have their own wizard histories that I haven't really thought about.

4. Today, the two wizarding states are chilly rivals. There are small enclaves of the opposing culture in both nations, but these minority groups suffer constant low- to mid-level persecution, not unlike the persecution seen in some of the more religious Muggle countries against minority religions.

In other words, nothing so overt as a Dark Lord, but a steady stream of violence flare-ups, in which the minority groups are hard pressed to get a favorable response from government officials.

 

...and when things get out of hand, the tornadoes and floods start happening more frequently.

Unlike Britain, the primary entry points to magical areas are through gambling establishments. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, the Mississippi riverboats and all the Reservation casinos make able covers for some fantastical costumes and events, and also provides a convenient way to launder Galleons into dollars.

As it might be obvious upon reflection, the impact of Hurricane Katrina was actually a cleanup effort following an outbreak of near total clan war, predicated by rival houngans in New Orleans. Given the timing, it may have been an effort to punish the twit who taught Riddle how to make better Horcruxes than a diary with ambitions of self-determination.

 

George Bush the Dark Wizard. Seriously?

(Clearly, Karl Rove was the Dark Magician).

 

I can't see Dubya taking the revelation that there's a secret society of wizards very well.

 

GWB is as much a muppet as Reagan was. If the Americans are good at anything, it's making the dead into something useful. That and brainwashing muggles through media.

Ever read those online community disclaimers? Between the lines is a Confundus saying 'Magic ain't real.' They started as part of radio adverts and have evolved with the technology. The Misinformation Infiltration Bureau tries out new iterations of the enchantments during the Superbowl. The ICW doesn't balk, as they've found it much easier to enforce the Statutes of Secrecy ever since Baywatch was distributed globally.

 

Well, in the backstory of my fanfiction, the history of the Wizarding United States is dominated by conflict between the North and the South, dating back to before the Civil War. In essence, it replaces the blood prejudice, although the divide between the two started because of blood prejudice. The country is isolationist and often considered unimportant to the Wizarding World at large.

It's a bit of a different take, and I feel that it works. I feel the Civil War would be a rather important event in magical American history due to the relatively small number of wizards, and since it seems (to me, at least) that the Wizarding World isn't as quick to adapt as the Muggle World, the Civil War would have a more profound impact on modern America.

 

You all make very good points. What about giants, though, for example, Paul Bunyan? And what about exotic magics like voodo and stuff?

 

Meh, just because the vast majority of fic writers who have tackled this subject failed miserably is no reason not to discuss it.

Also not a reason to avoid discussion. On the other hand, if you don't wish to discuss it, and others do, there's an easy way to satisfy your goal...

Now, if you'd dissed him for having a DBZ avatar, that I could get behind.



I briefly touched on the US wizarding community in twp or three things I wrote. Nothing terribly in depth.

Almost universal, among all of them, was that the US could only barely be considered ONE magical community. It was actually made up of multiple British MoM sized governments, and not all of them had the same laws. I do recall that, rather than there being a law against doing ANY underage magic, there was a standardized list of spells children could cast, depending on how much schooling they'd had, though with the younger kids there was the caveat that there must be adult supervision.

It has the largest concentration of magical people, due to a number of factors, mainly that a large number of European magicals bailed out during Grindelwald's foray into world domination. Some because they died, some because they got the hell out of Dodge. Russia was probably hit the hardest.

And China does their best to make sure underage wizards don't become adult ones.

 

What's wrong with my avatar?

 

LOL. :awesome

You'll have to excuse me, I have a deep and abiding prejudice against anything even vaguely DBZ related. Except, perhaps, one thing.

Edit: Make that two things.

 

I would suggest reading the Alexandra Quick series (available on ff.net) for a pretty damn decent take on an American magical world might seem like. His world is quite far from perfect; in fact, it's essentially a military dictatorship, with the government tightening its grasp on power more and more as the story goes on. He does a very good job of introducing numerous cultures coexisting under the umbrella of a pseudo-nobility, with a lot of the egalitarian activism you see in modern US that has little real effect on the way the society is run.

 

I always imagined that the Dresden-verse version of Magic was the American wizard's society since it's big, flashy and comes from emotions as well as only being practiced by a few. I realize that this is not the proper way to think about it for two reasons. One: there is indeed a Salem's Institute in HP and two: Dresden-verse magic invariably originated in Europe/Asia/Africa but I imagine that the wizards of HP had no real incentive to move to the new land. They can have whatever they want with the wave of a wand whereas the Dresden Wizards can't exactly do that therefore the incentive is much greater. This combined with ignoring or (more often in my case) forgetting about the Salem Institute and Quodpot.

 

What would that one thing be?

 

It's fertile ground for being spoofed and sporked. Follow the links on Warlocke's periods. . .

Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh... you'd think that under a Communist rule the Chinese wizards would've escaped to Taiwan, but Formosa is an entirely magic-less land. Excellent for manufacturing, though.

The Chinese wizards operate at the behest of their Celestial Bureaucracy, as does the mundane government. The dynasties (and current Party rule) have always acted as if the wizards were living by their by-your-leave, but every time the muggles get uppity, the Yangtze and Huang Ho flood, and the wizards are there to remind them who is who's bitch. Actual training of wizards is still handled through a mix of individual apprenticeships and temples of varying value and reliability. ("I wish to learn kung fu." "Sorry, wrong temple. Check down the road... muckblood.")

Hong Kong still operates independently of the CB, as the British Gringott's clan still has their hooks solidly stuck there. Ask Su Li- she'll tell you.

Cho Chang? She comes from Lanarkshire or some such. Doesn't speak a lick of Chinese; Mandarin or Cantonese. Maybe that's why she has TWO LAST NAMES (personal peeve, sorry).