Harry Potter Harry Potter, Harry Dresden Crossover Ideas
- Thread starter seitora
- Start date
scriviner said:
That's a crossover with an even more screwed up reconciliation of power levels. 
Fight!
In this corner, the Vampire Courts! In this corner, Deep Blood!
Fight.
In this corner, the Ordo Malleus! In this corner, the Roman Catholic Church!
Fight...
Yeah...
Actually, To Aru's main failing boils down to the author not really having a good sense of scale. So many of the folks on both sides sport so much overpowered hax that the only way some folk survive boils down to plot armor.
I can't see it getting along well with the Dresden-verse, short of someone getting to the ToAru-verse from the Nevernever and beating a hurried retreat once the crap starts flying.
I can't see it getting along well with the Dresden-verse, short of someone getting to the ToAru-verse from the Nevernever and beating a hurried retreat once the crap starts flying.
Dimension travel is definitely the way to go. That's always been a part of the Dresdenverse; it's written into the Nevernever as-is. And the HP fandom has long held the fanonical belief that the Veil just dumps you out into other dimensions and possibly times as well.
Don't try and reconcile the two together directly. It's not possible, and there are too many differences between the two worlds, both in the way they work and in the magic at work itself.
Having two separate Harrys in two separate worlds connected into a larger oververse is the way to go, here.
Dresdenverse wizards can do more with their magic than HP wizards are canonically able to. Illusions are much more complex and nuanced in DF, while they're practically nonexistant from what we can see in HP. Dresdenverse magic can make bigger explosions and has more versitility as a weapon. HPverse magic has more endurance in a long exchange, as it doesn't 'cost' magic to cast a spell, and casting costs no more stamina than you would expend waving a stick and saying words. HPverse magic also has a lot of specifically "householdy" spells and spells with practical applications. A lot of what the fairies do effortlessly and Dresden magic struggles to replicate, HPverse magic can do with a few wand twitches and some words.
Dresdenverse wizards live approximately four to five times longer than normal humans, potentially more, they retain a corresponding amount of youth (they still age, but in proportion to their overall lifespan, not at a normal rate), and they heal more thoroughly, but are otherwise normal humans. HP wizards can live much longer than a normal human, can presumably die of old age, though no upper limit has actually been established for that, and HPwizards also seem to be somewhat blatantly superhuman in certain ways, as I've elaborated on in the past, and can do so again if desired.
Dresdenverse magic can be done entirely mentally if necessary. HP magic cannot outside of fannon, barring a few disciplines like Occlumency (and even then, you train using a wand). Wands are required to work nearly any sort of magic in HP barring accidental magic and (again) a few esoteric disciplines. Foci help greatly in manipulating forces in Dresdenverse magic, but aren't actually necessary, and can be dropped entirely if the wizard has enough practice, finesse, and skill. They can also take the form of anything from a staff to a rod, wand, ring, or other totem of import, and are traditionally made by the wizard themselves, and not bought from a store.
Harry Potter magic can much more easily heal than Dresdenverse magic can. Dresdenverse magic healing is a tricky business, and requires some knowledge of human anatomy and conventional medicine to function successfully. Madame Pomphrey, who is a school nurse, can restore everything from mangled limbs to broken bones and spell accidents at rates ranging from "a few seconds" to "overnight." The most severe damage we've ever seen someone suffer physically at Hogwarts was when Harry lost his arm bones to Lockheart, and she fixed him overnight. Compare that to the lengthy stays with Listens To Wind and the other healers of the White Council that are necessary for Dresdenverse wizards, who usually have to stay hospitalized for several days, if not a week or two, to fully recover. What takes a Senior Council member a week, a school nurse can typically deal with in less than a minute. The only thing she wasn't able to deal with in the books was extensive spell damage or severe cursing, and even then, those people got kicked along to Saint Mungos and recovered in fairly short order under professional care.
On a related note, both settings have equal trouble repairing mental damage. The spiritual scarring left behind by certain monster attacks is often the worst kind of damage that can be suffered in the Dresdenverse, there is no known cure for a Reinfeld, with named Saints and Merlin himself having tried and failed, and the only known residents of the Permanent Spell Damage Ward of Saint Mungos are all people suffering from magically-inflicted mental damage (Lockheart, the Longbottoms). Also, great concern was made over Ron being attacked by the brains. The books made it fairly clear that he was in the most danger out of everyone who went to the Department of Mysteries in terms of recovery, which implies that mental damage is much more difficult to fix than physical damage in the HPverse, an implication which pans out solidly when compared with the rest of what we know about magical medical care in the HPverse.
The Harry Potter universe in general seems to have more 'thorough' magic than the Dresdenverse does. Phoenix Tears are the sort of thing one would expect to have to sell ones soul and more to a god or greater demon to acquire, and the Killing Curse "always" causes death. Disbarring direct and violent physical assaults that are conducted magically (like what Ebenezar does), there is no known spell that simply "kills" without any visible trace or damage in the Dresden universe. If a forensics team cut open somebody McCoy killed, they'd (presumably) find some sort of direct trauma to the heart, brain, or other vital organs that lead to instantaneous or near-instantaneous death. A dissection of someone killed by the Killing Curse would reveal absolutely nothing whatsoever. The victim would, to medical science, seemingly have dropped dead spontaneously for no reason whatsoever. Likewise, the magic of the Harry Potter universe can create, among other things, everburning, self-sustaining, inextinguishable fire, which would likely considered impossible or requiring a godlike feat of magic or realityhax to create in the Dresdenverse.
Death probably exists in the Harry Potter universe, though it's a debatable point. Nobody knows whether or not Death exists in the Dresdenverse, and the vast majority of everybody isn't nearly stupid enough to go looking to find out. Whether the lack of evidence is because there's nothing to find, or because Death motherfucking kills anyone that actually finds or gets close to finding it, is up for debate.
Harry Potter Transfiguration is potentially very dangerous, but anyone subjected to it retains most of their mind and intent while transformed, and gains anything they lost as soon as they are transformed back. Transforming oneself is entirely possible, though it requires practice and skillful application of Transfiguration. This can be done to acquire (presumably) any form with a wand, and a wizard is limited to one form without a wand (for unknown reasons; Animagius mechanics are decidedly unclear). The Dresdenverse, however, works on the theory that transforming into something that is not human requires fitting a human mind (square peg) into an animal body (potentially much smaller round hole), and any bits that are 'shaved' off in the process of fitting that peg in are lost for good. Transfiguring humans is thus (rightly) considered to be a horrendous crime in the Dresdenverse (it's one of the Laws), and while there are obviously ways around that (Listens To Wind), those seem to be the exceptions, and not the rules.
Monsters and supernatural creatures are much, much more powerful and dangerous in the Dresdenverse than in the HPverse. In HP, a dragon is just a big fire breathing lizard that might also be able to fly if it's species happens to have wings. Dresdenverse dragons are sentient weapons of mass destruction and wholesale slaughter. If anything like angels, demons, and Sidhe exist in Harry Potter, they keep firmly to themselves and well behind the scenes, whereas they interfere actively and sometimes almost openly in the Dresdenverse world.
Angels, demons, Sidhe, gods, and YHWH exist in the Dresdenverse. The HPverse pointedly avoided the first two and last two subjects, and the only fairies we know about are Tinkerbell/Legend of Zelda style floating lights, and are mostly used by wizards as decoration, which implies either nonintelligence (essentially being trained animals), greatly reduced intelligence (potentially incapable of speech and able to emote emotions like higher order primates and other intelligent animals), or some sort of benign functional relationship where the fairies are vain enough to enjoy being ogled at, and the wizards like the pretty lights, so the fairies come when they're called.
All serious Dresdenverse magic that isn't some sort of spontaneous evocation or illusion requires a circle of some sort or another to function. All HP magic requires a wand of some sort to function, disbarring accidental discharges and the occasional exotic discipline that proves the rule by its exception.
HP wizards seem habitually plagued by some degree of silliness or what could be considered a lack of common sense. They suffer no ill effects from using magic, nor does their magic interfere overtly with the functions of technology or anything else (except at Hogwarts, which apparently has high enough concentrations of magic for modern technology to be rendered useless for reasons that were never fully explained, but which the fandom has speculated to involve heavy electromagnetic interference). Dresdenverse wizards are apparently mentally identical to normal human beings, but suffer from some kind of lingering drawback inflicted by their magic, the precise nature of which changes over time due to the shifting metaphysics of the arcane, and which currently generates Murphyonic fields that affects any technology it comes into contact with, though the effects are inversely proportional to the age of the technology itself (older technologies like revolvers, trains, and gunpowder are almost completely immune to magical interference, complex clockworks seem to suffer moresoe, and anything that involves electronics or electricity in general is hit the hardest).
HP wizards are physiologically different from humans in ways that can be difficult to detect, but are obvious when examined over time (the suffer from diseases normal humans do not catch, do not catch many diseases that normal humans do, live for an unstated longer period of time than normal people, and are likewise at least mildly superhuman, as I mentioned before). Dresdenverse wizards, on the other hand, are functionally identical to a normal human in absolutely all ways that matter. The only difference is that they live longer and heal better, and as Butters theorized, those two differences may in fact be the same thing (deeper and more thorough healing also drastically slows aging).
I'll post more, but I have to go run a few quick errands.
Don't try and reconcile the two together directly. It's not possible, and there are too many differences between the two worlds, both in the way they work and in the magic at work itself.
Having two separate Harrys in two separate worlds connected into a larger oververse is the way to go, here.
Dresdenverse wizards can do more with their magic than HP wizards are canonically able to. Illusions are much more complex and nuanced in DF, while they're practically nonexistant from what we can see in HP. Dresdenverse magic can make bigger explosions and has more versitility as a weapon. HPverse magic has more endurance in a long exchange, as it doesn't 'cost' magic to cast a spell, and casting costs no more stamina than you would expend waving a stick and saying words. HPverse magic also has a lot of specifically "householdy" spells and spells with practical applications. A lot of what the fairies do effortlessly and Dresden magic struggles to replicate, HPverse magic can do with a few wand twitches and some words.
Dresdenverse wizards live approximately four to five times longer than normal humans, potentially more, they retain a corresponding amount of youth (they still age, but in proportion to their overall lifespan, not at a normal rate), and they heal more thoroughly, but are otherwise normal humans. HP wizards can live much longer than a normal human, can presumably die of old age, though no upper limit has actually been established for that, and HPwizards also seem to be somewhat blatantly superhuman in certain ways, as I've elaborated on in the past, and can do so again if desired.
Dresdenverse magic can be done entirely mentally if necessary. HP magic cannot outside of fannon, barring a few disciplines like Occlumency (and even then, you train using a wand). Wands are required to work nearly any sort of magic in HP barring accidental magic and (again) a few esoteric disciplines. Foci help greatly in manipulating forces in Dresdenverse magic, but aren't actually necessary, and can be dropped entirely if the wizard has enough practice, finesse, and skill. They can also take the form of anything from a staff to a rod, wand, ring, or other totem of import, and are traditionally made by the wizard themselves, and not bought from a store.
Harry Potter magic can much more easily heal than Dresdenverse magic can. Dresdenverse magic healing is a tricky business, and requires some knowledge of human anatomy and conventional medicine to function successfully. Madame Pomphrey, who is a school nurse, can restore everything from mangled limbs to broken bones and spell accidents at rates ranging from "a few seconds" to "overnight." The most severe damage we've ever seen someone suffer physically at Hogwarts was when Harry lost his arm bones to Lockheart, and she fixed him overnight. Compare that to the lengthy stays with Listens To Wind and the other healers of the White Council that are necessary for Dresdenverse wizards, who usually have to stay hospitalized for several days, if not a week or two, to fully recover. What takes a Senior Council member a week, a school nurse can typically deal with in less than a minute. The only thing she wasn't able to deal with in the books was extensive spell damage or severe cursing, and even then, those people got kicked along to Saint Mungos and recovered in fairly short order under professional care.
On a related note, both settings have equal trouble repairing mental damage. The spiritual scarring left behind by certain monster attacks is often the worst kind of damage that can be suffered in the Dresdenverse, there is no known cure for a Reinfeld, with named Saints and Merlin himself having tried and failed, and the only known residents of the Permanent Spell Damage Ward of Saint Mungos are all people suffering from magically-inflicted mental damage (Lockheart, the Longbottoms). Also, great concern was made over Ron being attacked by the brains. The books made it fairly clear that he was in the most danger out of everyone who went to the Department of Mysteries in terms of recovery, which implies that mental damage is much more difficult to fix than physical damage in the HPverse, an implication which pans out solidly when compared with the rest of what we know about magical medical care in the HPverse.
The Harry Potter universe in general seems to have more 'thorough' magic than the Dresdenverse does. Phoenix Tears are the sort of thing one would expect to have to sell ones soul and more to a god or greater demon to acquire, and the Killing Curse "always" causes death. Disbarring direct and violent physical assaults that are conducted magically (like what Ebenezar does), there is no known spell that simply "kills" without any visible trace or damage in the Dresden universe. If a forensics team cut open somebody McCoy killed, they'd (presumably) find some sort of direct trauma to the heart, brain, or other vital organs that lead to instantaneous or near-instantaneous death. A dissection of someone killed by the Killing Curse would reveal absolutely nothing whatsoever. The victim would, to medical science, seemingly have dropped dead spontaneously for no reason whatsoever. Likewise, the magic of the Harry Potter universe can create, among other things, everburning, self-sustaining, inextinguishable fire, which would likely considered impossible or requiring a godlike feat of magic or realityhax to create in the Dresdenverse.
Death probably exists in the Harry Potter universe, though it's a debatable point. Nobody knows whether or not Death exists in the Dresdenverse, and the vast majority of everybody isn't nearly stupid enough to go looking to find out. Whether the lack of evidence is because there's nothing to find, or because Death motherfucking kills anyone that actually finds or gets close to finding it, is up for debate.
Harry Potter Transfiguration is potentially very dangerous, but anyone subjected to it retains most of their mind and intent while transformed, and gains anything they lost as soon as they are transformed back. Transforming oneself is entirely possible, though it requires practice and skillful application of Transfiguration. This can be done to acquire (presumably) any form with a wand, and a wizard is limited to one form without a wand (for unknown reasons; Animagius mechanics are decidedly unclear). The Dresdenverse, however, works on the theory that transforming into something that is not human requires fitting a human mind (square peg) into an animal body (potentially much smaller round hole), and any bits that are 'shaved' off in the process of fitting that peg in are lost for good. Transfiguring humans is thus (rightly) considered to be a horrendous crime in the Dresdenverse (it's one of the Laws), and while there are obviously ways around that (Listens To Wind), those seem to be the exceptions, and not the rules.
Monsters and supernatural creatures are much, much more powerful and dangerous in the Dresdenverse than in the HPverse. In HP, a dragon is just a big fire breathing lizard that might also be able to fly if it's species happens to have wings. Dresdenverse dragons are sentient weapons of mass destruction and wholesale slaughter. If anything like angels, demons, and Sidhe exist in Harry Potter, they keep firmly to themselves and well behind the scenes, whereas they interfere actively and sometimes almost openly in the Dresdenverse world.
Angels, demons, Sidhe, gods, and YHWH exist in the Dresdenverse. The HPverse pointedly avoided the first two and last two subjects, and the only fairies we know about are Tinkerbell/Legend of Zelda style floating lights, and are mostly used by wizards as decoration, which implies either nonintelligence (essentially being trained animals), greatly reduced intelligence (potentially incapable of speech and able to emote emotions like higher order primates and other intelligent animals), or some sort of benign functional relationship where the fairies are vain enough to enjoy being ogled at, and the wizards like the pretty lights, so the fairies come when they're called.
All serious Dresdenverse magic that isn't some sort of spontaneous evocation or illusion requires a circle of some sort or another to function. All HP magic requires a wand of some sort to function, disbarring accidental discharges and the occasional exotic discipline that proves the rule by its exception.
HP wizards seem habitually plagued by some degree of silliness or what could be considered a lack of common sense. They suffer no ill effects from using magic, nor does their magic interfere overtly with the functions of technology or anything else (except at Hogwarts, which apparently has high enough concentrations of magic for modern technology to be rendered useless for reasons that were never fully explained, but which the fandom has speculated to involve heavy electromagnetic interference). Dresdenverse wizards are apparently mentally identical to normal human beings, but suffer from some kind of lingering drawback inflicted by their magic, the precise nature of which changes over time due to the shifting metaphysics of the arcane, and which currently generates Murphyonic fields that affects any technology it comes into contact with, though the effects are inversely proportional to the age of the technology itself (older technologies like revolvers, trains, and gunpowder are almost completely immune to magical interference, complex clockworks seem to suffer moresoe, and anything that involves electronics or electricity in general is hit the hardest).
HP wizards are physiologically different from humans in ways that can be difficult to detect, but are obvious when examined over time (the suffer from diseases normal humans do not catch, do not catch many diseases that normal humans do, live for an unstated longer period of time than normal people, and are likewise at least mildly superhuman, as I mentioned before). Dresdenverse wizards, on the other hand, are functionally identical to a normal human in absolutely all ways that matter. The only difference is that they live longer and heal better, and as Butters theorized, those two differences may in fact be the same thing (deeper and more thorough healing also drastically slows aging).
I'll post more, but I have to go run a few quick errands.
So the one advantage Dresden wizards have is they are written in a more adult plot, and thus some are aware how much modern weaponry can fuck things up?
Wait, HP wizards cast beams of light that can be dodged for the most part. Significantly less effective against the superhuman creatures of Dresdenverse. Their spells are slow enough that dodging is plausible for a regular person, soem something more than human should have a proportionately easier time avoiding them. Not much against AoE, but again, the majority of HP spells seem to be point and shoot.
Wait, HP wizards cast beams of light that can be dodged for the most part. Significantly less effective against the superhuman creatures of Dresdenverse. Their spells are slow enough that dodging is plausible for a regular person, soem something more than human should have a proportionately easier time avoiding them. Not much against AoE, but again, the majority of HP spells seem to be point and shoot.
I just find it funny every time I see a HP crossover discussion either the wizards are seriously nerfed or people try to argue every single failure in the books was just an exception and that apparently Dumbledore and Voldemort are below average wizards.
Anyway in short it depends on how you write it, in case you make it an adult fanfiction then DF wins simply because HP is a children's book(which failed horribly in an attempt to retroactively make it above that) while DF is an adult's one. If you argue HP up so to fit an adult scenario then it(HP) wins because it as a children's story has no concern in actual limits. If you are actually a halfway decent human being then you write a story and neither wins because it makes no fucking sense for one to win a story.
@Lord Raine
Off course you don't, where exactly in the books do you recall a duel-style situation? Can't think of any in the first 3, in the fourth the closest would be the one-sided fight in the graveyard. Book five, has a bunch of people running around and then a clusterfuck. Well I suppose Voldemort and Dumbledore's fight there counts as a duel... Now in the sixth book... We are told the Order fights Death Eaters but considering that all of their good fighters were in the tower for a while not sure if you can call that a duel.
Anyway in short it depends on how you write it, in case you make it an adult fanfiction then DF wins simply because HP is a children's book(which failed horribly in an attempt to retroactively make it above that) while DF is an adult's one. If you argue HP up so to fit an adult scenario then it(HP) wins because it as a children's story has no concern in actual limits. If you are actually a halfway decent human being then you write a story and neither wins because it makes no fucking sense for one to win a story.
@Lord Raine
Off course you don't, where exactly in the books do you recall a duel-style situation? Can't think of any in the first 3, in the fourth the closest would be the one-sided fight in the graveyard. Book five, has a bunch of people running around and then a clusterfuck. Well I suppose Voldemort and Dumbledore's fight there counts as a duel... Now in the sixth book... We are told the Order fights Death Eaters but considering that all of their good fighters were in the tower for a while not sure if you can call that a duel.
I agree with you about almost everything, but there's a few things I want to point out (though I could simply be misremembering stuff).
I'm not sure I agree with this. While DF might hold the theoretical advantage in versatility, in any situation where time matters, they're limited to Evocation, which is a much, much more limited branch of magic then HP stuff. DF wizards might be able to do some stuff with Thaumaturgy that HP wizards can't, but a lot of that is time consuming and dependent on the wizard in question--and the reverse is true, as well, because there are some things DF wizards just can't do in any reasonable way.
While true, doing that in the DF is actually pretty hard. If nothing else, you usually need words or a prepared device to cast a spell--otherwise, you get stuff like Harry messing his brain up in FM. The Gatekeeper managed with just a gesture and presumably other badasses like the SC can, too, but they're outliers.
Even that much is probably overestimating DF Healing. Remember how in GP, Harry remarked on how extremely difficult it was to work magic directly on human flesh? Sealing both sides of a small cut was pretty remarkable--and Harry's hand took years to heal for a reason.
I could be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure that you're a bit wrong about the Animagus vs. Transfiguration--it was stated somewhere that while Human Transfiguration is more varied then Animagi transformation, in that it allows one to transform into pretty much anything, at the same time, the object of transfiguration will then possess the intelligence of the creature they become (unlike Animagi, who retain all their mental faculties in animal form). If this is an animal of lower intelligence (which is more likely than not) then one will, by extension, be entirely dependent on someone else to untransfigure them, which could potentially cause someone to be stuck in that form forever--which is why it is not recommended to cast this type of transfiguration on oneself.
I believe that was stated in the Quidditch book (as a bat example), and somewhere else.
(And, of course, you can still do partial transfigurations and switching and such, as long as you don't fuck with your brain. Mantis Shrimp eyes, fuck yeah.)
As for DF Transfiguration, transfiguring yourself is fine--it's no less dangerous, of course, and requires a huge understanding of the animal body, but as long as you aren't hurting anyone else, the Council doesn't care if you gamble with your life.
To be fair, HP wizards have some of the most ridiculous hiding magic I've seen this side of D&D; they don't really need to worry about such things.
Your fanon is showing Zero. HP spells have never, at any point, been shown to be slow. Hell, just as an example of their speed, check DH when Harry and the wizards were fleeing on brooms and motorbikes--which move from somewhere between 70mph and 150mph. The Death Eaters were behind them, hundreds of yards away, the good guys were moving in three dimensions at high speeds, and spells...were flashing between them in instants.
They were hitting their targets just fine, even when wizards were pointing directly at a moving target (good luck hitting a quickly moving target with a gun if you aim where they currently are, rather then where they're going to be), and even when the Death Eaters were significantly behind a target trying to avoid. Even assuming the Good Guys were moving at the minimum speed for a broom--70mph--being able to fire a spell from dozens to hundreds of yards away at a target moving at least the same speed and having it hit before said target could react or move even slightly out of the way...we're talking huge, huge speeds. I cbf to do the exact math, but we're talking supersonic, at least.
I remember people missing with spells (like most bullets miss), but I don't recall any dodging. Maybe at the end of HBP? But there was probability manipulation involved then, and even in that case I don't actually recall any dodging.
I'm not sure I agree with this. While DF might hold the theoretical advantage in versatility, in any situation where time matters, they're limited to Evocation, which is a much, much more limited branch of magic then HP stuff. DF wizards might be able to do some stuff with Thaumaturgy that HP wizards can't, but a lot of that is time consuming and dependent on the wizard in question--and the reverse is true, as well, because there are some things DF wizards just can't do in any reasonable way.
While true, doing that in the DF is actually pretty hard. If nothing else, you usually need words or a prepared device to cast a spell--otherwise, you get stuff like Harry messing his brain up in FM. The Gatekeeper managed with just a gesture and presumably other badasses like the SC can, too, but they're outliers.
Even that much is probably overestimating DF Healing. Remember how in GP, Harry remarked on how extremely difficult it was to work magic directly on human flesh? Sealing both sides of a small cut was pretty remarkable--and Harry's hand took years to heal for a reason.
I could be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure that you're a bit wrong about the Animagus vs. Transfiguration--it was stated somewhere that while Human Transfiguration is more varied then Animagi transformation, in that it allows one to transform into pretty much anything, at the same time, the object of transfiguration will then possess the intelligence of the creature they become (unlike Animagi, who retain all their mental faculties in animal form). If this is an animal of lower intelligence (which is more likely than not) then one will, by extension, be entirely dependent on someone else to untransfigure them, which could potentially cause someone to be stuck in that form forever--which is why it is not recommended to cast this type of transfiguration on oneself.
I believe that was stated in the Quidditch book (as a bat example), and somewhere else.
(And, of course, you can still do partial transfigurations and switching and such, as long as you don't fuck with your brain. Mantis Shrimp eyes, fuck yeah.)
As for DF Transfiguration, transfiguring yourself is fine--it's no less dangerous, of course, and requires a huge understanding of the animal body, but as long as you aren't hurting anyone else, the Council doesn't care if you gamble with your life.
To be fair, HP wizards have some of the most ridiculous hiding magic I've seen this side of D&D; they don't really need to worry about such things.
Your fanon is showing Zero. HP spells have never, at any point, been shown to be slow. Hell, just as an example of their speed, check DH when Harry and the wizards were fleeing on brooms and motorbikes--which move from somewhere between 70mph and 150mph. The Death Eaters were behind them, hundreds of yards away, the good guys were moving in three dimensions at high speeds, and spells...were flashing between them in instants.
They were hitting their targets just fine, even when wizards were pointing directly at a moving target (good luck hitting a quickly moving target with a gun if you aim where they currently are, rather then where they're going to be), and even when the Death Eaters were significantly behind a target trying to avoid. Even assuming the Good Guys were moving at the minimum speed for a broom--70mph--being able to fire a spell from dozens to hundreds of yards away at a target moving at least the same speed and having it hit before said target could react or move even slightly out of the way...we're talking huge, huge speeds. I cbf to do the exact math, but we're talking supersonic, at least.
I remember people missing with spells (like most bullets miss), but I don't recall any dodging. Maybe at the end of HBP? But there was probability manipulation involved then, and even in that case I don't actually recall any dodging.
Hum... You are right in that they should be fast given the situation but they can't be that fast. There are far too many mentions of the spells and such that put it in the area where a normal human being can clearly see it coming. 340m/s mean in that 10ms it would cross 3,4 meters which means within 3,4 meters a person wouldn't be capable of actually seeing the spell which is clearly not true.
I could write a long dissertation on what exactly affects the vision and where it falls within what is proved but even if spells should be fast I would find it pretty hard to argue anything above even 34m/s in a realistic scenario which is somewhat low for those circumstances but considering they are rather scarce and changing it would create a lot more problems than solving I would say the author either not thought or assumed we would think that magic does work under the same assumption of the speed of the spell being relative to whoever cast it at that point and not anything else. Hard to say since while magic does have some of the natural laws the same it doesn't necessarily have all of each law the same so arguing physics is useless beyond this point.
Or I suppose you can simply look at it another way, if something like the killing curse truly was that fast then a lot more people would die due to it. 170m in 0,5 seconds, I can see someone like Voldemort or Dumbledore managing to deal with that but no one else. Especially considering there is nothing in canon that suggests anything like a mage sense so having one sent at your back and it is a death sentence even for those.
I could write a long dissertation on what exactly affects the vision and where it falls within what is proved but even if spells should be fast I would find it pretty hard to argue anything above even 34m/s in a realistic scenario which is somewhat low for those circumstances but considering they are rather scarce and changing it would create a lot more problems than solving I would say the author either not thought or assumed we would think that magic does work under the same assumption of the speed of the spell being relative to whoever cast it at that point and not anything else. Hard to say since while magic does have some of the natural laws the same it doesn't necessarily have all of each law the same so arguing physics is useless beyond this point.
Or I suppose you can simply look at it another way, if something like the killing curse truly was that fast then a lot more people would die due to it. 170m in 0,5 seconds, I can see someone like Voldemort or Dumbledore managing to deal with that but no one else. Especially considering there is nothing in canon that suggests anything like a mage sense so having one sent at your back and it is a death sentence even for those.
Didn't Fawkes protect Dumbledore from an AK in OotP by flying in front of it? Wouldn't that imply that there's definitely some time to dodge? Also, are there any instances of someone casting Protego after a spell is fired, because that would also mean there is enough time to do that?
btw: do we have any idea if the HP silencing charm makes some kind of cone of silence or that it just stops the targets vocal chords from working?
btw: do we have any idea if the HP silencing charm makes some kind of cone of silence or that it just stops the targets vocal chords from working?
Keep in mind that Fawke's is massively, massively superhuman--able to fly something like a hundred miles an hour while carrying upwards of twenty times its bodyweight, even before you take into account the whole teleport thing. Not that he took that shot to protect DD from it, because DD couldn't dodge it.
As for protego, no--everytime I recall (and I just word searched OotP, besides) it was cast before the other spell was finished.
Note that spells are not bullets. A great many of them generate light, which is what people actually see--in DH, Hedwig died and the Harry realized there'd been a green light, because the spells just hit that fast.
Keep in mind, first off, that what usually saves people from spells is what saves people from bullets--the user missed. For every time that any one has ever blocked something with Protego, a bunch of people have been saved by simple, human error. The DoM? People missing. The chase after Harry? People missed.
People have a somewhat wrapped view of guns and moving targets, but in real life, in actual combat, people will miss most of the time--the large majority of times, in fact. In combat, stuff like precision marksmanship is basically impossible unless you're in a good, hidden position and this applies the same way to wands.
You're argument about the AK fails for several reasons--people don't block the AK (well, okay, DD did, but he was a baws). People don't dodge the AK. It has hit a sprinting fox in the middle of the night, it has hit people flying at 150mph, etc. The vast majority of times someone has shot the AK at someone and they survived it, it was because the caster missed.
As for how wizards can see the light of spells well enough to, well, note their existence? I'll chalk that up to the superhuman feats wizards often display, whether as a result of being intentionally written that way or dramatic/comedic effect translating into superhuman feats.
Alternatively, JK could simple, like most sane individuals, not have calculated the distance covered over time of all her spells and just had them as 'fast.'
As for protego, no--everytime I recall (and I just word searched OotP, besides) it was cast before the other spell was finished.
Note that spells are not bullets. A great many of them generate light, which is what people actually see--in DH, Hedwig died and the Harry realized there'd been a green light, because the spells just hit that fast.
Keep in mind, first off, that what usually saves people from spells is what saves people from bullets--the user missed. For every time that any one has ever blocked something with Protego, a bunch of people have been saved by simple, human error. The DoM? People missing. The chase after Harry? People missed.
People have a somewhat wrapped view of guns and moving targets, but in real life, in actual combat, people will miss most of the time--the large majority of times, in fact. In combat, stuff like precision marksmanship is basically impossible unless you're in a good, hidden position and this applies the same way to wands.
You're argument about the AK fails for several reasons--people don't block the AK (well, okay, DD did, but he was a baws). People don't dodge the AK. It has hit a sprinting fox in the middle of the night, it has hit people flying at 150mph, etc. The vast majority of times someone has shot the AK at someone and they survived it, it was because the caster missed.
As for how wizards can see the light of spells well enough to, well, note their existence? I'll chalk that up to the superhuman feats wizards often display, whether as a result of being intentionally written that way or dramatic/comedic effect translating into superhuman feats.
Alternatively, JK could simple, like most sane individuals, not have calculated the distance covered over time of all her spells and just had them as 'fast.'
So your argument boils down to JK not really thinking through most things in her story(entirely true) and/or that wizards are incompetent... Well I can get behind that, you posted more than enough proof to make me agree. I mean now that you brought it up how do you miss something that you just have to point for it to travel that fast and in a straight line? Especially considering wizards are superhuman so while I can have SoD against people missing where they are pointing at(far easier than guns are) I can't have SoD against superhumans doing that...
Yeah that certainly convinced me... However I did think you were arguing in favor of HP wizards so my fault I got confused and replied to a mistaken understanding.
Yeah that certainly convinced me... However I did think you were arguing in favor of HP wizards so my fault I got confused and replied to a mistaken understanding.
I refer you once more to guns and bullets.
To give a more helpful answer--there are a bunch of factors that come into play when discussing marksmenship, and while spells may neatly avoid several (they may not be pulled down by gravity, for example, and they probably aren't effected by wind), many still persist--the fact that the way muscles work renders the it impossible to hold truly still, the fact that judging distance with ones eyes defaults to inaccurate at best, the fact that, how you hold the wand, how long it takes you to cast, how minor errors in the position of a gun/wand snowball into massive ffective differences; I could go on and on and on.
That's not really how that works and being sarcastic about it doesn't exactly help your argument. In the same way that a bullet isn't effected at all by the physical capabilities of it's wielder, a spell in flight isn't going to become more accurate due to the strength of it's caster.
The only thing relevant here is the ability of the caster to offset the many factors that cause inaccuracy--and if that's what you're referring too, then there are many, many feats of superhuman accuracy in the HP series.
I don't have an actual list compiled on the subject, but I believe Raine does, so you can ask him for it. Otherwise, I'll look things up when I have time.
I'm not even sure what you're talking about here...
To give a more helpful answer--there are a bunch of factors that come into play when discussing marksmenship, and while spells may neatly avoid several (they may not be pulled down by gravity, for example, and they probably aren't effected by wind), many still persist--the fact that the way muscles work renders the it impossible to hold truly still, the fact that judging distance with ones eyes defaults to inaccurate at best, the fact that, how you hold the wand, how long it takes you to cast, how minor errors in the position of a gun/wand snowball into massive ffective differences; I could go on and on and on.
That's not really how that works and being sarcastic about it doesn't exactly help your argument. In the same way that a bullet isn't effected at all by the physical capabilities of it's wielder, a spell in flight isn't going to become more accurate due to the strength of it's caster.
The only thing relevant here is the ability of the caster to offset the many factors that cause inaccuracy--and if that's what you're referring too, then there are many, many feats of superhuman accuracy in the HP series.
I don't have an actual list compiled on the subject, but I believe Raine does, so you can ask him for it. Otherwise, I'll look things up when I have time.
I'm not even sure what you're talking about here...
The problem with that is that a wand means you are pointing to something, you don't need to know about distance or have any knowledge at all. All you need is to get it pointed to the right place, get a hundred thousand people pointing to something a hundred meters away and I can pretty much guarantee all of them will get it right. It is hard no to do so, a gun when compared to a wand has hundred more problems that make it difficult. The only thing that makes it hard for a wand is the movements and plenty of spells don't require them and/or people don't need them anymore.
Err... Being superhuman means only that a person is stronger in a physical way? Well I guess I have to stop here and think about my replies later on because that makes no sense to me. Indeed physical strength is one the superpowers HP wizards are not shown to have. The ones I can think of are being tougher overall and faster healing.
Lastly I meant that your initial arguments were pretty good in showing that HP wizards do have several advantages and that others weren't really advantages for DF wizards while the latter seem to say that the only reason wizards fights last so long is because wizards can't hit the spells not because of skill or spells that block/counter at all which while does have a weight of truth isn't as prevalent in DF wizards so you essentially said that in that aspect DF > HP.
That all said I am not entirely certain I am understanding you correctly(or I am writing out my thoughts incorrectly) because you seem to jump around a lot.
Err... Being superhuman means only that a person is stronger in a physical way? Well I guess I have to stop here and think about my replies later on because that makes no sense to me. Indeed physical strength is one the superpowers HP wizards are not shown to have. The ones I can think of are being tougher overall and faster healing.
Lastly I meant that your initial arguments were pretty good in showing that HP wizards do have several advantages and that others weren't really advantages for DF wizards while the latter seem to say that the only reason wizards fights last so long is because wizards can't hit the spells not because of skill or spells that block/counter at all which while does have a weight of truth isn't as prevalent in DF wizards so you essentially said that in that aspect DF > HP.
That all said I am not entirely certain I am understanding you correctly(or I am writing out my thoughts incorrectly) because you seem to jump around a lot.
Note that I said some. Not all, not most. Some.
Dresden, at least, has a rather horrifying revelation when Kincaid tells him how he would kill him. Given that he is a Warden and they are fighting against enemies who for the most part, have no issues with technology, it isn't a stretch to see him explaining the dangers of the modern firearms to his fellow Wardens. How much they listen depends on how old they are, and their experience with firearms, but I'm sure a number of them would listen.
Again, my knowledge is both faded and skewed by the movies. I could have sworn I read there was some dodging of spells at some point, or at least having enough time to cast a counterspell. Likewise, the effects of the movies has speed delay so we can see what's happening.
Plus, fanfiction has a habit of influencing all of us, since there's so much more of it than the original product.
Dresden, at least, has a rather horrifying revelation when Kincaid tells him how he would kill him. Given that he is a Warden and they are fighting against enemies who for the most part, have no issues with technology, it isn't a stretch to see him explaining the dangers of the modern firearms to his fellow Wardens. How much they listen depends on how old they are, and their experience with firearms, but I'm sure a number of them would listen.
Again, my knowledge is both faded and skewed by the movies. I could have sworn I read there was some dodging of spells at some point, or at least having enough time to cast a counterspell. Likewise, the effects of the movies has speed delay so we can see what's happening.
Plus, fanfiction has a habit of influencing all of us, since there's so much more of it than the original product.
I wanted to note, just for the record, that this is visibly untrue. We've seen spontaneous illusions before, and illusionary magic is described as being different from Evocation.
I agree and disagree. Evocation may be more limited in a technical sense, but for all practical purposes, Evocation covers nearly all known types of offensive and defensive magic in Harry Potter, and goes well beyond it as well in both power and, in certain areas, versatility.
Evocation cannot Disillude someone or wash the dishes, but it can cause earthquakes, summon all manner of elemental effects, create barriers of earth or ice, throw people through walls with raw telekinetic force, and fire burning flecks of power that can melt through stone and bore holes through wood at machine-gun speed. Luccio alone used it to create what can only accurately be called a military-tier weaponized laser, which was capable of easily shearing a human body in half instantly.
That depends entirely on the spell. Tracking someone if you have a bit off of them is both the work of a few seconds and easy enough that someone with essencially no magical training or known talent (Thomas) can manage it.
I agree. The only thing stopping Harry Potter wizards from doing every day to themselves what Lea did to Harry in the backseat of the limo is a lack of personal vanity. There is no solid proof of it, but I'm quite convinced that a number of them do.
You lack the ability to dissuade me from believing that other people shop at the same stores where Dumbledore gets his neon polka-dotted robes in Christmas colors, complete with marching nutcracker soldiers hutting along in rows on the hems.
Not only does someone actually make that, but they make it with such ease that it can be marketed wholesale to a broad consumer base.
True. But while it is "merely" hard to do in DF, it is utterly impossible to do in Harry Potter, and that's the point I'm trying to make.
DF practictioners of magic could get away with not using wands and staffs and other foci if they wanted too. HP wizards have no choice but to use wands. There is no other alternative, in spite of the fandoms insistance otherwise.
Again, difficult and with consequences is not the same as "completely impossible."
Harry was able to cast a spell like that in an emergency situation. A HP wizard in a similar situation would not have had even that option.
They're outliers, but not in the way you think. The control and finesse necessary to do things like that comes naturally over time. They can do it because they are old, not because they do a thousand magical pushups every morning before breakfast.
I'd love to get into more of this, but I have to be somewhere right now. I'll address the rest of it later.
I agree and disagree. Evocation may be more limited in a technical sense, but for all practical purposes, Evocation covers nearly all known types of offensive and defensive magic in Harry Potter, and goes well beyond it as well in both power and, in certain areas, versatility.
Evocation cannot Disillude someone or wash the dishes, but it can cause earthquakes, summon all manner of elemental effects, create barriers of earth or ice, throw people through walls with raw telekinetic force, and fire burning flecks of power that can melt through stone and bore holes through wood at machine-gun speed. Luccio alone used it to create what can only accurately be called a military-tier weaponized laser, which was capable of easily shearing a human body in half instantly.
That depends entirely on the spell. Tracking someone if you have a bit off of them is both the work of a few seconds and easy enough that someone with essencially no magical training or known talent (Thomas) can manage it.
I agree. The only thing stopping Harry Potter wizards from doing every day to themselves what Lea did to Harry in the backseat of the limo is a lack of personal vanity. There is no solid proof of it, but I'm quite convinced that a number of them do.
You lack the ability to dissuade me from believing that other people shop at the same stores where Dumbledore gets his neon polka-dotted robes in Christmas colors, complete with marching nutcracker soldiers hutting along in rows on the hems.
Not only does someone actually make that, but they make it with such ease that it can be marketed wholesale to a broad consumer base.
True. But while it is "merely" hard to do in DF, it is utterly impossible to do in Harry Potter, and that's the point I'm trying to make.
DF practictioners of magic could get away with not using wands and staffs and other foci if they wanted too. HP wizards have no choice but to use wands. There is no other alternative, in spite of the fandoms insistance otherwise.
Again, difficult and with consequences is not the same as "completely impossible."
Harry was able to cast a spell like that in an emergency situation. A HP wizard in a similar situation would not have had even that option.
They're outliers, but not in the way you think. The control and finesse necessary to do things like that comes naturally over time. They can do it because they are old, not because they do a thousand magical pushups every morning before breakfast.
I'd love to get into more of this, but I have to be somewhere right now. I'll address the rest of it later.
It's been quite awhile since I read the scene but I also vaguely remember Dumbledore animating the statues to autonomously block spells. Not only does that make him ridiculously scary given a moment of free time since he can apparently instantly program complex behaviors including a certain amount of ability to recognize concepts, but it also implies that the statues could move fast enough to block spells.
I'm inclined to put it down to "JK never really thought the details through as hard as the fandom wants" (and in this case I don't blame her, that is really an insane amount of thought put into spell calculation). I'd be most likely to put HP spells at "fast, but dodgeable if you're really good" because for the most part they move at the speed of let's-make-this-fight-scene-exciting.
I'm inclined to put it down to "JK never really thought the details through as hard as the fandom wants" (and in this case I don't blame her, that is really an insane amount of thought put into spell calculation). I'd be most likely to put HP spells at "fast, but dodgeable if you're really good" because for the most part they move at the speed of let's-make-this-fight-scene-exciting.
We can't really make that judgement call, though, because at the very absolute least, wizards definitely have superhuman reflexes if they can play games like Quidditch and Creaothceann. So wizards dodging wizard spells is a tainted test sample by definition. We'd need to know how well someone like Dudley or Petunia could dodge a spell before we could start extrapolating from that how fast spells are actually flying.
I just generalize it in my head as being variably equivalent to a fastball thrown by a professional league baseball pitcher (fast enough to hit someone riding on a broom/that has superhuman reflexes, slow enough to still be doge-able), and leave it at that.
I just generalize it in my head as being variably equivalent to a fastball thrown by a professional league baseball pitcher (fast enough to hit someone riding on a broom/that has superhuman reflexes, slow enough to still be doge-able), and leave it at that.
I wanted to cover the rest of this, since I have the time now.
Sealing both sides of a small cut, if I recall correctly, is "White Council material," or in other words, places someone who can do it by default in the upper-tier of magical practitioners. It's not incredibly difficult, but by no means is it easy, either.
And while Harry's hand took years to heal, it was also not under any magical coercion while doing so. That was Harry's natural healing process. Beyond the pain-dulling stones and the initial (presumably magical) ointment treatment to 'help,' his hand was not healed magically.
While self-transfiguration is not experimented with canonically, Krum partially transfigured parts of his body into that of a shark, most significantly his entire head, and yet he still retained higher reasoning capacity and human-tier intelligence. If we assume it's transforming the head that 'would' cause a drop in intelligence, then it seems as though base self-transfiguration does not do this.
False. Animagi are inflicted with the mentality of their animal forms. It was stated to be as much in Quidditch Through the Ages, and this is noted as being a large part of the reason for why more witches and wizards choose not to become Animagi. The example given, in the context of a discussion on the history of magicals and their various attemps and experiments with flight, states (in a non-quoted approximation) that "the problem arises that the result of the transformation cannot be controlled. One might envy those among us blessed by luck to have a form with wings, but it is just as likely that ones form will be a dung beetle as an osprey. Furthermore, while it might be exceedingly useful to, for instance, be able to turn into a bat or a bird, the problem arises when the bat or bird you turn into is unable to remember what it was doing or where it was going, and merely flies around eating bugs, which is not only counterproductive to travel, but tends to result in the witch or wizard in question stranded up a tree and feeling rather ill."
The book then goes on to say that, because of this, animagus transformations for the purposes of flight are not considered practical or feasible as a method of attaining flight. Thus the invention of magical flight devices like brooms and flying carpets, and the ongoing attempts to create some sort of "flight spell" that would simply allow the user to fly by casting it on themselves (which was, after at least two thousand years of uncountable failed attempts, finally accomplished by Voldemort in Deathly Hallows).
Also, this is not a quotation. If you want one, just ask, and I can provide it. That's just a general approximation of what was said. I could get the exact wording if you wanted it.
This fact is further backed up in canon. The reason Sirius was able to keep from going mad in Azkaban is partially because the thought "I'm innocent" is not a happy one, but also because transforming into a dog dulled the affect that the Dementors had on him. According to him, the Dementors didn't find this suspicious, because they don't see. They only sense the minds of those around them, and all they sensed was "the lesser presence" of the dog form, which was, to them, no different than a normal human that was going mad. So to the Dementors, they merely felt Sirius slipping in and out of insanity. They can't differentiate between the mind of an animal, and the mind of a severely mentally damaged or insane person. If an Animagius kept their mind intact, it wouldn't let you 'hide' from Dementors like Sirius did.
So self-Transfiguration is both infinitely more diverse than an Animagus transformation, and also more useful in the sense that you (apparently) keep your mind fully intact.
The only reason I could say for someone to want to become an Animagus is because you can turn back and forth without needing a wand. Also, if Krum had self-transfigured himself completely into a shark, he would have presumably needed someone else to un-transfigure him, because he couldn't have held or used a wand. So unless you self-transfigure yourself into some sort of monkey or ape, you're pretty limited in how far you can take it and still get yourself back out. You'd need to retain functional hands and arms, at the very least, so it could be argued that an Animagus is better in the sense that you can go "full" animal and turn back on your own.
This is all just speculation on my part, though, but I do believe that it makes a fair amount of sense.
Nobody ever said that, ever, in the Dresden Files.
The Laws of Magic are Inviolate. The only reason they wouldn't kill you for transfiguring yourself is because you've already done a really good job of killing yourself all on your own.
Yeah, they do. You're giving the Council waaay more credit than they deserve for being reasonable.
You guys are giving the Dresdenwizards more credit than they deserve for being aware of modern technology as well. I'm sure they know what a lot of the words mean, but barring the extremely young (by their standards) members, none of them give a shit about sniper rifles or remote-detonated plastic explosives.
It's arrogance, pure and simple. The wizards aren't even the only ones who do it. Lord Raith didn't believe barbed wire, security cameras, or closed circuit television monitoring was even worth putting in. He favored the protection offered by "intense personal arrogance" to anything remotely practical, and part of the reason Harry is so concerned about Lara being in power is precisely because she is aware of and uses those things. She's not of the old-world mentality that Lord Raith or the White Council are from. She's on the same level that Harry and Marcone are, and Harry finds that extremely concerning.
Also, I'll eat my shoe if I've ever seen or even HEARD of a D&D spell that does what the Fidelius does. It literally hides the reality and existence of a location inside someone's heart, magically.
D&D magic can create an entire demiplane pocket world that's under the control of the person who cast it, but even those can be broken into or found with the correct magic or abilities. The Fidelius could hide Asmodeus's keep from Asmodeus, while he was inside of it, and unless he could catch the bastard that did it and torture the location out of them, there's nothing he could do about it. I've seen Epic spells that aren't that broken. The Fidelius is fucking ridiculous.
This isn't my argument, but I just wanted to drop in that wizards dodge bludgers and catch snitches while flying on a broomstick. Unless it's the Magical Special Olympics or in someone's backyard, there's nothing in a Quidditch match that's moving less than forty miles an hour, at the very slowest. A more reasonable estimate would put things in the fifty-to-seventy bracket. And that's for an average speed match taking place at Hogwarts, not a professional league match on a global scale. The Firebolt alone boasts the ability to accelerate from a standstill to one hundred and fifty miles per hour in ten seconds flat, and 150 mph isn't even it's top speed.
Wizards are blatantly, blatantly superhuman if you're paying attention to the details of some of the things they do. Don't assume that they'd loose just because things in the Dresdenverse are fast. I'm not sure that anything less than a White Court Vampire burning at full sparkle could do the sort of Matrix dodge fuck you to HP magic that you're implying that everything and it's mother could do. And even then, I get the feeling it would be Neo on the rooftop in the first movie, and not Neo in full "there is no spoon" mode.
A wizard would only have to nick their target with a bone breaker or entail-expulsion curse to cripple or kill any vampire that isn't a Black Court.
Not even some. Only the very youngest members of the White Council take technology even remotely as seriously as it should be taken, and the only reason they're even members is because the Council took so much damage that they had to elevate a bunch of apprentices to full Wizard status, just so they could draft them into the Wardens. If it wasn't for that, the number of people who are actually on the White Council and also take modern technology seriously could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, and that's including Harry in the count.
That's less because he's ignorant of modern technology, and more because he never considered it. Like how most people don't really consider how easy it is to get all of their personal information, what with them flashing it around all the time, and would probably be horrified to have it explained to them how easy it would be for pretty much anybody from their waiter last night to the local librarian to steal their identity or acquire all of their personal information.
There's a difference between "I never really thought about that, but shit, that could work," and "those silly normals are so attached to their blunderbusses and black powder. Swords are much more elegant and efficient."
I do. The majority of the incidents are sports-related, but it's made clear in a number of other ventures, such as being bitten by the Basilisk or hit over the head by a giant stone chess piece, that while the HP wizards may not possess (overtly) superstrength, they do have superhuman durability, reflexes, and agility.
It's never actually outright stated to be true, but there's so much evidence for it that, when taken all together, it's a fairly indisputable fact. Everything from Quidditch not being an elaborate form of suicide, to Hagrid's contemptuous rebuttal of "as if a car crash could have killed Lily and James," all points towards this being the case.
Sealing both sides of a small cut, if I recall correctly, is "White Council material," or in other words, places someone who can do it by default in the upper-tier of magical practitioners. It's not incredibly difficult, but by no means is it easy, either.
And while Harry's hand took years to heal, it was also not under any magical coercion while doing so. That was Harry's natural healing process. Beyond the pain-dulling stones and the initial (presumably magical) ointment treatment to 'help,' his hand was not healed magically.
While self-transfiguration is not experimented with canonically, Krum partially transfigured parts of his body into that of a shark, most significantly his entire head, and yet he still retained higher reasoning capacity and human-tier intelligence. If we assume it's transforming the head that 'would' cause a drop in intelligence, then it seems as though base self-transfiguration does not do this.
False. Animagi are inflicted with the mentality of their animal forms. It was stated to be as much in Quidditch Through the Ages, and this is noted as being a large part of the reason for why more witches and wizards choose not to become Animagi. The example given, in the context of a discussion on the history of magicals and their various attemps and experiments with flight, states (in a non-quoted approximation) that "the problem arises that the result of the transformation cannot be controlled. One might envy those among us blessed by luck to have a form with wings, but it is just as likely that ones form will be a dung beetle as an osprey. Furthermore, while it might be exceedingly useful to, for instance, be able to turn into a bat or a bird, the problem arises when the bat or bird you turn into is unable to remember what it was doing or where it was going, and merely flies around eating bugs, which is not only counterproductive to travel, but tends to result in the witch or wizard in question stranded up a tree and feeling rather ill."
The book then goes on to say that, because of this, animagus transformations for the purposes of flight are not considered practical or feasible as a method of attaining flight. Thus the invention of magical flight devices like brooms and flying carpets, and the ongoing attempts to create some sort of "flight spell" that would simply allow the user to fly by casting it on themselves (which was, after at least two thousand years of uncountable failed attempts, finally accomplished by Voldemort in Deathly Hallows).
Also, this is not a quotation. If you want one, just ask, and I can provide it. That's just a general approximation of what was said. I could get the exact wording if you wanted it.
This fact is further backed up in canon. The reason Sirius was able to keep from going mad in Azkaban is partially because the thought "I'm innocent" is not a happy one, but also because transforming into a dog dulled the affect that the Dementors had on him. According to him, the Dementors didn't find this suspicious, because they don't see. They only sense the minds of those around them, and all they sensed was "the lesser presence" of the dog form, which was, to them, no different than a normal human that was going mad. So to the Dementors, they merely felt Sirius slipping in and out of insanity. They can't differentiate between the mind of an animal, and the mind of a severely mentally damaged or insane person. If an Animagius kept their mind intact, it wouldn't let you 'hide' from Dementors like Sirius did.
So self-Transfiguration is both infinitely more diverse than an Animagus transformation, and also more useful in the sense that you (apparently) keep your mind fully intact.
The only reason I could say for someone to want to become an Animagus is because you can turn back and forth without needing a wand. Also, if Krum had self-transfigured himself completely into a shark, he would have presumably needed someone else to un-transfigure him, because he couldn't have held or used a wand. So unless you self-transfigure yourself into some sort of monkey or ape, you're pretty limited in how far you can take it and still get yourself back out. You'd need to retain functional hands and arms, at the very least, so it could be argued that an Animagus is better in the sense that you can go "full" animal and turn back on your own.
This is all just speculation on my part, though, but I do believe that it makes a fair amount of sense.
Nobody ever said that, ever, in the Dresden Files.
The Laws of Magic are Inviolate. The only reason they wouldn't kill you for transfiguring yourself is because you've already done a really good job of killing yourself all on your own.
Yeah, they do. You're giving the Council waaay more credit than they deserve for being reasonable.
You guys are giving the Dresdenwizards more credit than they deserve for being aware of modern technology as well. I'm sure they know what a lot of the words mean, but barring the extremely young (by their standards) members, none of them give a shit about sniper rifles or remote-detonated plastic explosives.
It's arrogance, pure and simple. The wizards aren't even the only ones who do it. Lord Raith didn't believe barbed wire, security cameras, or closed circuit television monitoring was even worth putting in. He favored the protection offered by "intense personal arrogance" to anything remotely practical, and part of the reason Harry is so concerned about Lara being in power is precisely because she is aware of and uses those things. She's not of the old-world mentality that Lord Raith or the White Council are from. She's on the same level that Harry and Marcone are, and Harry finds that extremely concerning.
Also, I'll eat my shoe if I've ever seen or even HEARD of a D&D spell that does what the Fidelius does. It literally hides the reality and existence of a location inside someone's heart, magically.
D&D magic can create an entire demiplane pocket world that's under the control of the person who cast it, but even those can be broken into or found with the correct magic or abilities. The Fidelius could hide Asmodeus's keep from Asmodeus, while he was inside of it, and unless he could catch the bastard that did it and torture the location out of them, there's nothing he could do about it. I've seen Epic spells that aren't that broken. The Fidelius is fucking ridiculous.
This isn't my argument, but I just wanted to drop in that wizards dodge bludgers and catch snitches while flying on a broomstick. Unless it's the Magical Special Olympics or in someone's backyard, there's nothing in a Quidditch match that's moving less than forty miles an hour, at the very slowest. A more reasonable estimate would put things in the fifty-to-seventy bracket. And that's for an average speed match taking place at Hogwarts, not a professional league match on a global scale. The Firebolt alone boasts the ability to accelerate from a standstill to one hundred and fifty miles per hour in ten seconds flat, and 150 mph isn't even it's top speed.
Wizards are blatantly, blatantly superhuman if you're paying attention to the details of some of the things they do. Don't assume that they'd loose just because things in the Dresdenverse are fast. I'm not sure that anything less than a White Court Vampire burning at full sparkle could do the sort of Matrix dodge fuck you to HP magic that you're implying that everything and it's mother could do. And even then, I get the feeling it would be Neo on the rooftop in the first movie, and not Neo in full "there is no spoon" mode.
A wizard would only have to nick their target with a bone breaker or entail-expulsion curse to cripple or kill any vampire that isn't a Black Court.
Not even some. Only the very youngest members of the White Council take technology even remotely as seriously as it should be taken, and the only reason they're even members is because the Council took so much damage that they had to elevate a bunch of apprentices to full Wizard status, just so they could draft them into the Wardens. If it wasn't for that, the number of people who are actually on the White Council and also take modern technology seriously could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, and that's including Harry in the count.
That's less because he's ignorant of modern technology, and more because he never considered it. Like how most people don't really consider how easy it is to get all of their personal information, what with them flashing it around all the time, and would probably be horrified to have it explained to them how easy it would be for pretty much anybody from their waiter last night to the local librarian to steal their identity or acquire all of their personal information.
There's a difference between "I never really thought about that, but shit, that could work," and "those silly normals are so attached to their blunderbusses and black powder. Swords are much more elegant and efficient."
I do. The majority of the incidents are sports-related, but it's made clear in a number of other ventures, such as being bitten by the Basilisk or hit over the head by a giant stone chess piece, that while the HP wizards may not possess (overtly) superstrength, they do have superhuman durability, reflexes, and agility.
It's never actually outright stated to be true, but there's so much evidence for it that, when taken all together, it's a fairly indisputable fact. Everything from Quidditch not being an elaborate form of suicide, to Hagrid's contemptuous rebuttal of "as if a car crash could have killed Lily and James," all points towards this being the case.