Magic has been around for thousands of years, and because it's everywhere it interferes with muggle technology, so muggles are stuck with 1920's technology and can never go further than that.

As of 1991, there are 200 thousand wizards in the UK, 2 million wizards worldwide, and 2 billion muggles worldwide.

75% of all wizards are pureblood, 20% are Half-Blood and only 5% are muggle-borns. You become a pureblood if you are part of the 7th generation of wizards in your family, without any muggle blood in all 7 generations.

Wizards are having children as well, their population would have totally increased over thousands of years, I don't see the logic in keeping it low. I think 1 wizard for every thousand muggles is fine.

I reduced the muggle population because of low technology and also because dark wizards constantly kill them with diseases and other things, not to mention magical and dark creatures.

 

My headcanon is that the imperius curse is more versatile than it appears to be.

When Harry got imperiused in his DADA class, he was launched into a euphoric mindstate and then given commands, but naturally that can't be the only way the curse works, because we know it can be used for long term control also.

It wouldn't really be possible for someone to claim that they were imperiused into doing something long term when the curse basically drugs you completely, something I'd imagine would give it away and make it possible to detect people under the influence of the curse.

So the curse can be used in a more subtle manner, wherein the euphoria isn't overpowering and the commands given are made to appear as if they are your own thoughts.

Humans are pretty great at self delusion and rationalizing, so rather than believe that the thoughts and actions they have are outside influence, most would rather try to justify their actions as something they would do.
Especially if the person controlling is aware of this and had made sure to provide some thin justification or reasoning.

 

That's not a headcanon, that's an AU. It is explicitly contradicted by canon. It's not a bad idea as the basis for a fic though, pseudo Edwardian era Harry. You'd have to look at the question of how would muggle culture and history change if there was no technological advancement.

 

Well, it's possible advanced users can put in conditional clauses, such as 'if I see Albus Dumbledore, I will give him a drink from one of the 'special' (poisoned) barrels' and until they (e.g Rosmerta) see Dumbledore, they aren't affected at all. Even when she does see him, there might be little to no alteration to her behavior if the user is skilled and subtle enough with the spell and in the exact commands/wording.

Yeah, this headcanon might well be how more advanced Death Eaters (not a sixteen-year-old Draco Malfoy, for one) use the Imperius.

Edit: So, Malfoy's lack of competence with the Imperius might have delayed Dumbledore's demise and possibly saved the world (and nearly killed people not involved, but that's another story, haha)!

Edit2: I think I've seen this kind of thing before. In this thread, even. Hmmm...

 

Perhaps you should just come up with a new curse that manipulates the person in a more subtle manner, in my opinion, it should also be very difficult to cast because subtle magic is usually reserved for advanced wizards, Harry even said so while he was in the cave with Dumbledore, he mentioned how bangs and smells are a sign of inexpertise.

The imperius curse isn't perfect and one of the ways you can figure out that someone is being controlled is precisely by identifying how odd they are looking or behaving because the curse also removes your inhibition. So if you tell somebody to just act normal, they will take that to the letter and act too normal, over time somebody close to them might grow suspicious.

 

My understanding of the curse is that it doesn't cause your body to act independent of your will so much as try to make you do something of your own volition.
It bombards you with euphoria (hence the abnormal behaviour), and transmits a command, with the implicit threat of the euphoric feeling stopping upon disobedience.
This is akin to trying to overpower will , thewith euphoria collateral damage being the subject's inability to behave normally.

However if a more skilled caster turned down the euphoria except in small doses when commands are given, enough for the subject to retain base thinking power, it would be much subtler and more difficult to detect by the subject and anyone observing.
If the commands are made to sound like something the victim has thought of on his own, then even he might have difficulty knowing if he is under the imperius or not. For example Fudge in my mind was imperiused, but even he didn't know it, and it caused him to turn away Dumbledore and think he was his enemy.

As such it wouldn't be a case of the person being told to act normal so much as actually being normal with occasional nudges one way or the other.

 

From the twisting canon thread

I'll go further and say that the ONLY purpose of the Ministry is to protect Secrecy (We have a magical hospital because muggles shouldn't see magical accidents/illnesses, we have a magical boarding school because magical children have to be kept apart until they can control their magic well enough, we have a department for sports to organize quidditsch away from muggle eyes, etc.)

Basically the wizards are supposed to take care of themselves and the Ministry is only here to keep wizards and muggles away from each other and NOT to make things fair for everyone. "Magic is might" is their motto after all. It's hard to make caring about fairness and equality a part of your culture, when magic means some of your children are witches and some of them are squibs.

Magic seems more liable to create/add to inequalities after all. No amount of prenatal care, early education or social reforms are going to stop a child of being a squib (inferred from JKR's word that kwikspell would never have worked for Filch).

 

I agree about the Ministry's original role being solely to maintain the Secrecy, but Hogwarts is separate from that, the school predates both the Statute and the Ministry by centuries after all.

Also, "Magic is Might" is the motto under Voldemort, not the rest of the time, lol. They're less obvious about it in the first six books.

 

While the Ministry was undeniably established for the purpose of keeping the Statute of Secrecy(as Hagrid even says in PS), it's clear that they have power way beyond that. Most likely because they integrated other already established organisations into the ministry at some point like the Aurors and the Wizengamot, who's powers and responsibility by themselves are already beyond just keeping the Statute.

Personaly I assume that this is still seen as an overreach by lots of wizards who are against the ministry interfering in their lifes too much.

 

Throughout the years of reading HP and fanfiction I've developed a lot of headcanons, here are some I could think of at the top of my head. Keep in mind, a lot of them deals with boring bits of magical theory.

• In the 2000s, more and more Wizarding parents are encouraging their child to take Muggle Studies as an elective. Their reasoning? As the Internet becomes a thing and as muggle surveillance becomes more prevalent, wizards need to figure out ways to resolve digital sightings of various magical things. An Obliviate is no longer useful once a piece of magic is recorded and shared to millions of people on YouTube. The Ministry is desperate to hire people with deep knowledge in muggle studies, to do various work such as creating and using spells to remove information from the internet or formulating lies and excuses to explain sightings of magical phenomena. As such, it's a career path with relatively high pay, and a relatively stable career since maintaining the Statute of Secrecy is one of the Ministry's main goals.

• I've always struggled a bit with Transfiguration. For example, if transfiguration is the complete transformation of an object, down to its molecular composition, then why does transfiguration have limitations? For example, why is alchemy needed to transfigure lead to gold - why can't we just transfigure it? Furthermore, what about Gamp's Law? Why can't we transfigure stuff into food? Here's my explanation:
  • Transfiguration deals with the transformation of an object's molecular substance. Its physical state is changed. What it does not affect, however, is its magical substance. It's easy to transfigure something whose magical substances are resonant. Perhaps there is something about the magical substance of gold which leads to it being especially difficult to conjure/transfigure to.
  • What in the world is magical substance, then? Well in my headcanon, that's essentially the study of alchemy.
  • Good food has its own magical substance, as it is created with love, skill, and passion. As such, no amount of magic could conjure such things out of thin air, or be transfigured from any ordinary object.

• Tying in to the previous point, Arithmancy is like the alchemy of math. It's the magical property of any mathematical object, whether it be numbers or shapes. For example, we know that 7 is the most powerful number. Shapes also has its own magical property. Squares represent the strong and sturdy, circles represent cycles.

• Arithmancy is used in various subjects, including spell making. Here are some examples:
  • In order to maximize the strength of the effects of a potion, the number 7 must be involved somehow in the brewing process. For example: brew for seven days, stir the cauldron seven times, add seven Newts eyes, etc.
  • When deciding the wand motion for a spell you want to create, the wand motion must match with what the spell is. This relates to the geometry of the motion, and the magical properties of those geometries.
  • Arithmancy is used when picking the incantations of a spell. Most spells are in Latin, so the wizard would have to choose several latin phrases or words which match the effects of the spell. In order to pick the most appropriate incantation, each letter of the word is represented by numbers and some Arithmancy is done to analyze the magical properties of those incantations. Incantations with the most appropriate magical property is used.

• Some potions will only work if you are the one who brewed them.

• Some potions have effects which are permanent and irreversible.

• After the second Wizarding War, McGonagall hired Bill Weasley and other cursebreakers to destroy the curse put on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. They managed to succeed after several months of trying.

• Divination is a set of methods which provide ways of "looking into the future." Divination won't actually tell you directly about what happens in the future (unless you're a gifted seer), rather, it provides you with unspecific bits of information about the future. It is then up to the wizard to deduce what those information actually mean. For example, seeing stuff in tea leaves won't actually be useful to predict any certain event. But combine that with other methods, such as dream interpretation, astrology, cartomancy, one can then make specific inferences and deductions based on these results.
  • This explains why wizards such as McGonagall and Hermione regard it as imprecise magic. The magic doesn't actually tell you anything concrete. Rather, it gives you abstract bits of information and it is up for the wizard to deduce what it means.

• Let's assume that, in magical britain, there are 14 national quidditch teams. (Some men only, some women only, some mixed.) Let's assume each team will have 15-20 active players, considering extras (In a match, only seven will play). Therefore, given the relatively low population of wizards, being a Quidditch player is actually a normal and achievable career path. It's not like being a basketball player, where you have to be a genetic freak to stand out. Playing Quidditch is as regular as a career path as working in the ministry, even though it is considered more fun and prestigious.

 

I've never really understood why so many people think the advent of the 21st century suddenly means that the Statute will be harder to maintain.

Aerial photos of London are nothing new, they've been taken since the late 1800s. In the 1900s, satellite photos also became a thing. Beyond just photos from above, there was a giant attack in canon and a bridge attack in canon which targeted muggles. This occurred in 1995. Despite the size of a giant, the Prime Minister had no idea that there was a giant. Indeed, the Prime Minister was skeptical of the idea of a giant. Security cameras and digital cameras were very common then. It's clear that despite the already significant prevalence of photography, wizards were more than capable of maintaining the statute, through the rapid technological innovations of the 1900s. Just because there are more cameras, and the photos can be shared more easily, doesn't mean that it'll be easier to break the statute when the multitude of photos presumably being shared with government agencies couldn't find a giant. The relative ignorance of the wizarding population about muggles works for wizards; wizards who need to be competent at fitting in get training and so fairly well like Kingsley.

I'd say spells like the Confundment charm, given that they work on magical objects with a magical nature, would work wonders on the internet and smart phones, given the mundane nature of technology.

As to my headcanon, I've always been partial to the idea that Aberforth was the one who cast the spell that killed Ariana. I think there's some nice irony in that.

 

because many, if not most people have a very mechanical view of the magic. Shield is like a shield, only made of magic - it can break, is limited in size, etc. accio is like pulling things to you, so of course, 30-40kg tops. Obliviate, anti muggle wards and other things only work on singular person, so of course, once it’s on camera, you have to obliviate every person that saw it.

there was a fic where leaky cauldron had a set of candles or whatever that glowed red on green based on whether cameras around were pointed at leaky cauldron, and you had to wait for each being green before you could leave the leaky, as to not suddenly appear from nowhere (compared to more magical “yeah, this person was always here, not interesting” way of doing muggle repelling. Or just straight up recording both sudden appearance and magical disinterest or whatever)

 

Not really. The number of security cameras really skyrocketed only after 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, and digital cameras were such a niche product back then that you can't see them in any statistics.

This chart (number of cameras produced per year) shows that yes, cameras should definitely pose a much bigger challenge to the statute of secrecy in the 21st century than they did in 1990's. Especially as an average smartphone is carried everywhere all the time, while the analog cameras of the 90's were mostly collecting dust in a shelf. And note, that chart ends at 2015...

https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/9398648371/huge_chart.jpeg

 

It is certainly reasonable to think that they'd have more trouble wiping all possible records if every single person who saw magic happen recorded it on their phone, and half of them shared it instantly via instagram, facebook, snapchat, or tik tok.

That is, of course, unless they have a simple spell that just wipes all recorded records of magic that originated at a certain point or place. That would be in keeping with HP magic - you don't need to know where the record is, and it doesn't matter the exact format of it, all that matters if that you know what it is a record of.

However, the flip side of it that is that its going to rapidly become a popular conspiracy theory - videos of magic disappearing without trace, and without the original posters remembering the video existed at all. The more it happens, the bigger the theory will get, and the harder to contain.

 

I'd argue that as technology advances, the easier hiding magic becomes for wizards, since footage apperently showing magic becomes much easier too fake.

Like I am not going to take a video someone took on their phone of somebody apparating any more seriously than I take footage of Bigfoot seriously. And that isn't even taken into account that Muggles in Harry Potter dismiss magic because of their own nature.

 

The first camera in London was installed in 1960. By the 1980s - 1990s there was already a ton of them in London. It's not really new.

 

Sure there were a lot of cameras in London already in the 1990's. Some sources say that the number reached one thousand in 1996. Now the question is how long will it take for London to reach one million cctv cameras.

 

I agree that the magnitude of the problem is greatly increased in the 21st century. We have two possible solutions:

A) As muggle surveillance technology increases; wizards have to keep up with the times in becoming better at keeping their secret.

B) Muggle surveillance technology is irrelevant to the effectiveness of the statue of secrecy. Wizards and witches don’t have to worry about this.

The advantage of B is that it seems more in keeping with the thematic elements in canon. While it’s always possible that the ministry has kept up with the internet and extensively involved themselves in that domain; we get the sense that this isn’t really so. Consider that it’s not just the ministry; ordinary wizards and witches would have to behave quite differently in public if surveillance technology were so alarming and exposing.

So how could a solution along the lines of B be eliminated? There are a few options; a mass fidelius charm that implements magic as a secret for example. That would be neat, but it’s unfortunately not compatible with canon. Wizards wouldn’t have to bother with hiding their magic use in muggle areas if that was the case.

Alternatively, there could be implemented some kind of mass confundus charm on the muggle populace. This is perfectly compatible with evidence from the books, where it is noticed that muggles, unreasonably, go out of their way to explain away magic. It’s not just that they don’t reach for magic as an explanation, that would be understandable, but also that they refuse to accept that there had been any unusual occurrences going on at all.

For example, there’s the quote with Arthur about the shrinking keys, the existence of the uncloaked Knight Bus etc... This doesn’t seem in keeping with actual human behavior; I don’t think most people would just dismiss a sighting of a supersonic bus or dragon without a care in the world. Yet we are led to believe that this is how muggles actually behave.

A mass confundus charm relating to sightings of magic would explain all this away. We could continue believing that muggles are just normal people (i.e. Harry Potter is meant to exist in the real world), and that the statute of secrecy could plausibly be upheld. With such a charm in place, no one would have to worry about modern technology exposing magic, because it doesn’t matter how many cameras you have if you can’t understand magic when you see it.

Furthermore, it makes sense why people can’t use magic in muggle areas, because muggles would be able to see magical phenomena; they just wouldn’t be able to explain it correctly. So it’s still a bad idea to cause mayhem and unnecessarily expose muggles to magic.

Relating this to the witch hunts of the past; such a charm wouldn’t actually prevent muggles from targeting exposed wizards and witches. They’d just be confused as to the real reason magic occurs (e.g. thinking that they were demons).

This would explain why most wizards don’t even bother to learn about muggle technology; much less worry about it. This type of spell, which has a wide area effect, is also perfectly in keeping with the books (e.g. consider the taboo). That’s my personal headcanon.

Edit: I see that RandyRanderson has made a similar point.