notyourexrotic:

everambling:

petrichorlore: thewritersramblings: I don’t think they were unaware or that it was a matter of strength of magic or lack of magic (I mean the whole point me and petrichorlore were making was that their magic was stronger due to a connection with ancient languages/the oldest languages in the world; therefore they didn’t have need of a wand) Maybe there’s also intricate politics tied up in the magical world mirroring the muggle world: the magical folks can’t really interfere/don’t want to interfere with the affairs of the West—and there wasn’t any indication that Voldy had plans to conquer the world/or that he had forces outside of England (unless there was in the text but I’m forgetting now since it’s been a while). So like basically a ‘not our problem’ type of thing. Or maybe they would’ve intervened if Voldy threatened international security (kind of like how everyone jumped into WWI after certain countries were invaded/people killed). So I think if after Voldy was successful in taking over the UK he would’ve expanded outwards, and THEN the international magical community would have banded together to stop him? Yeah I feel like if it had been an international problem there would have been an international battle. In the real world, you can’t actually invade another country to help unless they ask for it without a huge amount of risk (according to my World Issues teacher). I have this idea of a Wizarding UN and that with Voldemort it could have been a situation like Syria. It could have been that giving help might have caused other wizarding countries to fight whoever helped (in very broad and generalistic terms: China and Russia and Iran helping Syria vs Everyone Else), for political reasons. Then you have the problem of choosing who to back (I don’t think pureblood supremacy is only a British Wizarding problem), and whether or not to fight civilian resistance groups, or the Snatchers. I don’t think anyone would want another World War like with Grindlewald, and tbh, the simpler solution would have been to let the Brits deal with it, and I guess aid refugees? Of course, lovespiper is making an interesting point (while I kinda ran on a tangent). Other wizarding communities could very well be hidden from each other or ignorant of each other. But I think that would be the smaller communities, only because it doesn’t make sense trade-wise (I remember in The Philosopher’s Stone there was talk of flying carpets not being banned in certain countries or something? And also, how would you explain Bill’s work in Egypt?) As for the superiority some wixen might feel over those who use wands, I bet anything in the world that that’s the case sometimes, just like with the pureblood thing. departmentsofmysteries had a really interesting ficlet thing about wands potentially originally being a thing forced on people in detention camps to limit their magic use, which I thought was interesting. The wand origins idea was a collab headcanon by thepostmodernpottercompendium and essayofthoughts, which they were kind enough to let me riff on for departmentsofmysteries. The idea of a wixen UN/global alliances and relations is REALLY fascinating. I always equated the International Confederation of Wizards to the UN. And I wondered, couldn’t they have at least imposed sanctions on Voldemort’s Britain, or something? I think part of the answer might be that the magical community is quite small. Hogwarts is usually estimated to have housed about 300-400 students AT MOST? Granted, there may have been a family here and there who decided not to send their kids to school, but even at a wildly overblown estimate of 100 home-schooled magic kids, that’s 500. Double it to account for the under-elevens. 1000. Then there are their families, and the single/childless/etc. 10K? 20K? The entire British wixen population is barely the size of a small town. Even if other major players in the International Confederation have ten times that many (America, Russia, China…) the magical population, globally, is MINUSCULE. Setting aside the issues that raises w/r/t sustainable population… It also means they are likely v. much spread out, with small pockets isolated in semi-magical communities like Godric’s Hollow, or Hogsmeade. And not as likely to have a highly organized form of government. Britain’s electoral system is shady at best (the Minister is said to be “appointed,” likely by the Wizengamot, but who appoints the Wizengamot? WHO?) and America is comparatively “new world” by wixen standards, I should think. It might be a total mess over there. Or maybe they’re locked in a race with Russia to land the first magical being on Mars… Maybe they don’t have peacemaking troops to spare because there are, like, 200 wizards in all of Hong Kong and they’ve got their own shit to deal with, thank you very much. Maybe, with such limited numbers, the sacred 28 families have connections all over the globe and there are just as many Malfoys/Notts/Mulcibers stirring up trouble in New York as London. Maybe some of them thought Voldemort had the right idea. Tangentially, can we envision what sort of contingencies the Int. Confederation would have re: Mutually Assured Destruction? These people can come up with HORCRUXES, they probably have some pretty twisted tricks up their sleeves.

International wizarding relations are MY JAM, and always have been, and I wished JKR had expanded on this more.

I’m looking up the international response to the Bangladesh Liberation War to see if I can make some sort of comparison. What stuck out to me was that very few countries got involved, even the UN barely made a dent, and when other countries did get involved it wasn’t because they had any strong feelings about Bangladesh but because they wanted to fight against their actual enemies. US supported Pakistan because they thought that if India (who supported Bangladesh) took over Pakistan they’d be spreading Soviet communism. The Soviets supported Bangladesh mostly to get at United States and China (who was also an ally to Pakistan and was one of the last countries to recognise Bangladesh as an independent country). Bangladesh’s own issues weren’t really of any particular importance to anybody; they were just convenient props for other countries’ own issues.

In HP canon flying carpets are banned in the UK, but are pretty common in South Asia and the Middle East. In one of the books there’s a mention of a businessman named Ali Bashir who gets really frustrated over this ban. In my Shafiq 28 verse the Bideshis are super frustrated about this ban, seeing it as a form of imperialism and racism (and this is probably one of the few things they’d be allied with the Maghribis/Pakistanis about).

I don’t know that they’d send people over to war unless specifically asked (as mentioned earlier). I see the international magical world as being a lot more segregated than the international muggle world - there’s obviously some sort of European alliance (Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, Hogwarts) but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of cooperation or understanding - especially when it leads to stupid stuff like banning flying carpets because they look too much like Muggle things while allowing flying brooms and Portkeys and Floo networks. And hey, have we seen the Brits be particularly interested in all the other countries when those countries are in conflict? Or are they all “not my problem”?

What could be possible is the other countries sending over aid after the war. Looking at this list of international response to Hurricane Katrina I see pretty amazing things like Bangladesh (which is much poorer than most of the world) giving $1 million.

This is also making me think of the response to the First Wizarding War, which we know has some parallels to WW2 (and it’s implied that the Nazi reign and Grindelwald’s rule were linked). It seemed that the international (really European) response to the Holocaust was mostly in housing Jewish refugees - I could see the Muggleborns escaping to nearby countries to protect themselves from the Snatchers (that would be a great fic idea actually: all these Muggleborn refugees from the UK now living outside the UK, maybe even outside the magical world, interacting with current-day refugees from the Eastern world who are being treated like shit, maybe some of them buy into that nonsense while some others become pro-refugee activists simply because they know what it was like even if others don’t think so because hey you’re British what do you know about being a refugee).

While the Holocaust is going on, there was also a lot happening in Asia - locals fighting off Japanese and British rule, various liberation wars, so on and so forth. And each region is focused on their own thing, just because there’s just so much going on. We don’t really hear of anyone like the Patils or the Changs in Marauders or OotP-era storytelling - maybe because the ancestors of Cho and Parvati and Padma were too busy dealing with stuff back where they came from or fled those countries to settle in England for safety and deliberately did not want to get involved with another fuckin’ war, or they could do what a lot of the Bengali shipmen did in the US around the 20s and 30s and organise people there to fight against British rule. All these smaller pockets that may not have anything directly to do with Lord Voldemort but were still part and parcel of the wars.

Hell there likely was some fallout from Lord Voldemort’s actions on the rest of the world even in Harry’s years - remember all the chaos that broke out during the International Quidditch World Cup? It’s likely that some of the casualties were foreigners - think of the pressure they might have put on the British MoM for not taking care of their people (I think Pottermore actually does have some info from JKR about the international wizarding world really not being happy with the UK MoM). Kind of like how China is pretty pissed off with Malaysia now because they still don’t know where MH370 is.

But how much would Harry be aware of this sort of thing? He’s never seem particularly interested in the wizarding world outside the UK; even Beauxbatons and Durmstrang get barely a mention. Yes he now has international in-laws (Fleur, and to some extent Bill and Charlie) but does he enquire deeply into their work? Not really. The person in the core cast who gets the most international exposure and curiosity in the entire series is Ron - he’s well-versed in international Quidditch and was excited about going to Egypt. We haven’t seen Harry or even Hermione venture overseas.

OK, enough digression. I don’t really agree that magic would be stronger or weaker with a wand, without a wand, with root languages, without root languages, yadda yadda. It’d likely be different, but not really anything you can measure on an appreciable scale. But I do think the perception of magical quality does play a lot into international magical relations, and I’m not sure there is a lot of magical collaboration even with the International Council of Wizards (I’m assuming Supreme Mugwump is like the UN Secretary General?). But it’s well established in canon that the British Ministry of Magic is hella corrupt and broken anyway - so possibly after the war, now that there’s some other Government, international relations are much more established.