Unread postby unknown87 » July 27th, 2008, 7:43 pm
This one has stuck with me for a while, but I'm really bad at continuing to write once I have part of an idea on paper, and I think this one deserves to be finished.
A problem with the HP-verse; the Ministry is heavily weighted to give purebloods more authority, and Muggleborn are stuck at no higher than 'desk clerk.' Canon gives us both the implied prejudice against Muggleborn, and the absolute lack of an official familiarization with the magical world (C'mon, there's loads of stuff about the magical world and culture that isn't taught at Hogwarts, the purebloods don't talk about them because it's just 'common knowledge', and thus muggleborns never find out about them.) On top of that, given the tiny class size at Hogwarts, it seems like alot of muggleborn never even make it to the prominent schools, and many may not even get a magical education at all.
Given the absolute inability to rise in the magical world, the magical world's near total ignorance of the muggle world, and the fact that muggleborns are all at least generally familiar with the Muggle advances of the last 100 years, I can see a sort of 'helper' organization arising. A technomancers guild of sorts, that views the mainstream magical community as quaint and backward, and seek out disenfranchised muggleborns to help them build towards a better world. Call them what ever you want, the Brotherhood of Steel, Sons of Ether, Technomancers Union, but it's full of people who actively combine technological and sorcerous innovations. The possibilities for inventions are limitless. Indexed and searchable tomes in big stuffy libraries like Hogwarts, that zap the books to the counter next to the computer. A super computer literally, in the palm of your hand with shrinking and/or storage charms. Near limitless power supplies, with fusion/fission reactors that can literally fit in your pocket. And that's just thinking in terms of applying magic to current technological solutions/problems. There's reams and reams of science fiction effects that could be duplicated by application of magic. Holodeck anyone? How's space travel going to progress with ships that have infinite fuel and air supplies? How about research? Maybe muggle scientists just can't directly detect that missing matter in the universe because it's magical, and invisible to them?
Now, take an organization with this sort of attitude and tech, and think about what it can do when Voldemort takes over the Ministry. Having been suitably beaten down by the first rise, it doesn't bury it's head in the sand like the rest of the magical world at the first signs of his return. Instead you're looking at an organization that faces Voldemort's takeover with a gamut of high-tech gizmos; suits of powered armor, portal guns, machine guns with self-cooling barrels and conjured ammunition that never runs out, railguns, roboteching Macross missile swarms, Death Eater-seeking napalm, and a thousand other mundane and tech-devised ways to take down Death Eaters that are more numerous and harder to dodge than the fiddly emotion-dependent Avada Kedavra. A bit of fast moving metal might be more crude and easier to heal than the green flashlight, but it still kills you just as dead, if messier.
People are quick to bring up the "magic and technology don't mix." bit of canon. Fact is though, we see a fair bit of interaction. The Hogwarts Express is not something from the medieval era. The Flying Anglia was made sometime between '39 and '48. Wizarding Wireless just seems like a radio to me. What it seems to me is that anything electronic is what has trouble; thus no computers, digital/touch tone phones, and the like. Canon never explains why things don't work, just that that's how it is. My guess is that magic generates a fairly high level of EM radiation, and interferes with unshielded electronics, so while your bog standard laptop or cell-phone will frazzle, military spec stuff that's supposed to be EMP-proof would work fine. Even if it isn't, a lot of things can be fudged, tech-effects can be duplicated with magic - bound spirits/copied personalities instead of computer control/AI (wizard portraits, anyone?), a strength boosting enchantment on armor rather than servo assisted strength, etc.
I have a scene stuck in my head where the Death Eaters spring their ambush on the Order at the beginning of DH and have the aerial battle go horribly wrong as they get intercepted mid-flight by some jet-packing powered armor, and everything goes downhill for the black hats from there. I really want to see it, and I'm a fair writer, but I know how I operate, and if I start it, I'll write the first chapter, the itch will have been scratched, and I won't come back to it for a year, if ever. I think the idea is good and sound though, and maybe someone else can take it in direction that I didn't think of.