If Dumbledore was capable of toying with Voldemort there wouldn't have been a war. Prophecy or no, he could still capture Voldemort, or debody him. And the prophecy came into play quite late in the first war - there were plenty of years where Dumbledore, if he was so capable of easily taking Voldemort down, would have done so.

On top of that, we have the evidence before our eyes: Dumbledore needed Fawkes to save him from one of Voldemort's attacks.

 

The way I see it, Dark Arts and Defence are fueled by emotions, more dependent on mind set or sheer willpower of castor as opposit to Charmes and Transfiguration, where your knowledge and creativity comes first. Your current mood is irrelevant, if you can visualize what you want, know the right wand movement, pronunciation and theory behind it all. But you can't cast Crucio if you don't really want to torture someone or a strong Patronus without happy thoughts and sense of their value. Theory is useless there.

Harry's personality, emotional depth and strong will are the reason he was that good in those areas. Good reflexes and ability to improvise don't hurt either. He's a fighter above all and it's really a shame he didn't utilized that talent.

 

This is for another thread, but I'd just like to mention that neither the Dark Arts nor DADA are a separate branch of magic from charms or transfiguration. Also, though the cruciatus curse, the killing curse, and the patronus charm require emotions, I think it can be assumed that most other curses and defensive charms don't, and some other charms that have no defensive application probably do.

Also, theory isn't useless with the Patronus charm. Hermione is great at theory, and you can assume that many Ravenclaws (Luna and Cho) are particularly adept at it as well. They picked up the Patronus charm much quicker in fifth year than Harry in third year. Part of theory is knowing that the Patronus charm requires a truly happy memory, getting an example of a memory that worked for someone else, etc.

 

I'm sure that all Dark Arts spell require strong negative emotions and/or intents behind them. Killing curse doesn't work if you really don't want to kill, successfull Imperio isn't just wand-waving and I don't think Harry thought about ponnies and rainbows when he gutted Malfoy.

And when I say Defence, I don't talk about their school subject, I talk about countermeasures for dark magic. Harry's ability to fight Imperio is based on his willpower and his AK protection is essencially fuled by emotions. Once you get a full dose of spell that runs on negative emotons/intents you need something opposite to fight the effect.

To see the true value of someone's Patronus, we need to throw them into situation that requires it and that means throwing them to dementors.

 

Honestly, Kostigan, those are assumptions developed in the fanfiction world. No magic works if you don't want it to. You need to want to kill, you need to want to summon, and you need to want to conjure rum.

The Patronus charm is unique in the need for a powerful memory that stirs truly joyous emotions. The spell doesn't work because of the emotions. The spell is the emotions. You are releasing those emotions as an avatar of happiness to protect you.

What emotion is the killing curse? Hate? I assure you, the blast of green light never becomes an avatar of the caster's hate. You do need to want to kill someone to make the spell work, but, as I said, that normal to all magic. Most people can't actually make themselves kill though, which is why Barty Jr. said the spell wouldn't work if they all tried to cast it at him.

Pertaining to the Cruciatus curse: you need a desire to hurt someone physically to use the curse, and that's often an emotional desire, but it probably doesn't have to be. It could be a cold, emotionless reason to cause pain, such as someone torturing another for information. With the cruciatus, you aren't throwing out an avatar of your desire to cause pain. You just simply have to want to hurt someone phsyically.

Emotions aren't a facet of magic in the way you are thinking. Emotions are all-pervasive though within the human psyche, and those emotions will effect your will to act. If you love someone, it will be hard to kill them, because you won't want to.

The fight with Malfoy is actually a good example of this. He did want to hurt Malfoy, and the spell worked because of that. But he wasn't channeling a specific emotion to do so, as you think the spell would require. He didn't 'throw his hate into the spell to fuel it' or any such fanon description. He did hate Malfoy, and that made him view Malfoy as an enemy. The spell was for enemies, so Harry had the right intent to cast it.

Once again, the spell wasn't an avatar of his hate. He could have cast it on a death eater he'd never met before without any hate, as long as he thought they were an enemy.

 

Okay, so no toying, but definitely not trying his best to win, either. It's clearly stated that Dumbledore was waiting for the aurors to come, and that killing Voldemort was not something Dumbledore wanted.

And my point still remains: apart from the transfigured fire and possession, Voldemort uses only the killing curse to attack, even though that fails again and again. Not very original or "awesome" in my opinion. Dumbledore uses wider variety of spells, but as said he isn't playing for keeps.

True mastery of magic is somewhere else entirely than fighting. A good Voldemort in my opinion is someone who is ruthless and cunning enough that there's not even a change for the heroes to engage in a fight with him, not someone who can out-duel anyone. Voldemort knows how to make horcruxes, inferi, cursed objects subtle enough to fool Dumbledore and is able to device a ritual for his own resurrection. He doesn't need to be the ultimate unbeatable duelist to be the most feared Dark Lord in living memory. That kind of plebeian effort would be beneath him, and frankly just stupid.

There is a reason why the trusted lieutenants of evil masterminds tend to be the most difficult opponents for heroes...

 

I do not agree. You lead by example.

 

When an author writes, doesn't matter if it's original or fanfiction, they will often project into the protagonist what they want to see. All those other characters don't really matter then as they aren't central to the story, but they want to write and read about a hero they either want to be or dream of. I wouldn't spend too much time writing a protagonist I'm merely "meh" about either.

Canon Harry is ok, but idk, uninspiring. Especially the more I grow up. Other than luck and the occasional freakish power lurking beneath, he's a weak hero in personality and will. IOW, if stuff never happened to him, he'd be boring as hell because he'd never make anything happen on his own.

 

Going through that list from the HP wiki really reminded me that the only people who we seen in canon dueling with anything other than curses and jinxes are Voldemort and Dumbledore. They use Transfiguration. I think Mcgonagall uses transfiguration when she duels Snake, and she animates the suits of armor, but that's it.
Everyone else uses basically what Harry uses, plus the purple curse Dolohov uses in the DoM and the Unforgivables.

 

I wonder if Harry would even win against a 17 year old Riddle

 

Riddle had at least one Horcrux at that time. I highly doubt someone like Harry would be difficult to kill.

 

No, he wouldn't. Riddle would wipe the floor with Harry. And he already has a horcrux to safeguard his immortality by then.

 

Noooo. Riddle may be a fucking prodigy. But He doesn't have any experience in a life or death duel at the age of 17. imo Harry could have defeated Riddle if both of them were 17 years old

 

Riddle grew up and survived as a freak kid in a orphanage in the 40ties, where knife fighting was common from 7-8 year olds, kids by the age of 11-12 became hardened criminals, took protection money from adults, and gang of them would certainly try to beat up Riddle with some metal pipes or something in some dark alley. From the ages of 14 they already had firearms. Girls from the ages of 7 were thieves, from 12 prostitutes. Commission from 1948 discovered that 2/3 of teenagers in orphanages became criminals. There was even restriction that 2-3 couldn't live in the same room together, because they often beat and raped each other. If the young kid wouldn't serve the older, they would tie him to the tree with the fishing line, and he was kicked in the kidneys, his fingers and ears would be burned with the cigarette lighter - and it was common. They even sometimes killed policeman!
And among them Tom: a freak kid who read books with no friends, then was invited to some fancy boarding school for a year, and come back each summer back. You wouldn't think that the older gang of guys would not try to put this handsome, genius, haughty freak Tom Riddle in his place? The fact that he was not knifed in the back or got brass knuckles in the nose and beaten half to death with the metal chains after the Hogwarts each year was impressive as hell.
So to say that at 17 Riddle never was in some life threatening situation is laughable in my opinion. He would already had an excellent killer instinct by this age - the mere fact that he had survived attests to that.

 

I would try to find it, but it was discussion on the russian fanfic about Tom Riddle in the russian forum and the author and some others provided such details - I didn't know about it either.

 

I can imagine conditions being quite poor in 40s/50s orphanages, particularly in London, however I don't imagine they were quite that horrific. After a quick google, I've found this, a brief account of a 40s orphanage from an orphan (it should be noted that the orphanage was in Essex, I believe, and the boy was older than Tom when he entered the orphanage). Also, this forum has a fairly good embedded video talking about life in an orphanage.

On the other side, there's this newspaper article that talks about cruelty in a chain of religious orphanages, but still nothing to the extent of Palver's comment. In fact, in this case, former 'inmates' were considering legal action.

Now, that was just a quick search, and although I imagine the reality might have been a bit harsher I can't see anything quite like that. I did see reference to more extreme cruelty in countries like Russia and Australia, but never in England.

 

Another article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...nage-cold-showers-sadistic-beatings-home.html

 

Yes, I concede there may be some harsher ones. I still don't know about those figures you cited, though.