cynthia1960 pointed out

[conuly]

that the odds of the wizarding world remaining secret diminishes with every passing year. Not that we ever got a solid answer as to why the Statute of Secrecy (Hagrid's explanation of people wanting magic solutions is either facile or outright inane) besides the fact that otherwise the books would have to be different.

At any rate, the real question isn't "how are they managing to stay secret" or even "how long can they realistically keep this up" but "what's gonna happen when the secret comes out". Because secrets do, eventually, tend to come out - and something like this, with as many moving pieces as it's got to have? It's going to come out. Somehow I think that the non-magic population is going to find this easier to adapt to than the ostentatiously ignorant of muggles purebloods.

Comments

[nodrog]

Possessed of memory charms and time manipulation, they can play Whack-a-Mole very effectively.  Those who see what they mustn't, get Men in Black-style memory-flashed.

But I can imagine that wearing thin.  Gerard Klein's 1971 novel The Day Before Tomorrow had a government that used time travel to forestall rebellion - but the result, the absence of any revolt ever, became ever more improbable as time went on, requiring more and more interventions fighting the tide, until the fabric of Time itself started to rip…

[conuly]

Whack-a-Mole sooner or later gives you one too many Moles to Whack.

[cynthia1960]

Constant rounds of whack-a-mole keep a lot of wizards fully employed at the various worldwide magical entities focused on keeping Muggles ignorant.

But all for naught, somebody, somewhere is going to figure it out. I think that's why I enjoy Diane Duane's Young Wizards books better than I do HP. Magic/wizardry/use of the Speech is part of the universe, and there is a commitment to delaying the effects of entropy for the good of all beings, not just wizards. Rowling's wizardry is basically selfish as all get out.

[conuly]

It doesn't have to be, but it's used that way.

[dewline]

This is my own thinking on the "secret identity" trope of superhero-genre stories.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. At this point the genre is saturated enough that I would like better arguments for secrecy.

[moon_custafer]

One of the things I liked about the cinematic MCU is that Tony Stark, at the end of the first Iron Man concluded trying to keep that particular secret was pointless. I think the only hero in that universe who isn’t out at all is Peter Parker, and it’s understandable in his case.

[dewline]

Ummm...have you seen the first two MCU Spider-Man movies?

[moon_custafer]

No— I take it Peter’s gone public too, then?

[dewline]

In Homecoming? No.

But the MCU does seem to have a rule: no secret IDs can survive more than one movie.

[dogstar]

If you like fanfic, you might enjoy "Peter and the Jailbirds" on AO3. Post CA:CW, heed warnings, but .. yeah.

[conuly]

Which, by the way, if the motive is to keep baddies from harming your loved ones, and yet baddies keep coincidentally going after your loved ones anyway, you might as well at least loop those loved ones in.

[rhoda_rants]

The finale of the Fantastic Beasts movie ALONE makes the entire Statute of Secrecy fall apart. I know, there was the thing with the rain, but come on. That affected only Muggles, and ALL of the Muggles who were there? I think not. Even assuming it worked, eventually someone's gonna be like, "Hang on, why does everyone who was in this place between these hours have a very specific chunk of time missing from their memories?"

[conuly]

Books only for me, I'm afraid.

[rhoda_rants]

Ah--understandable.

However, there was still the Quidditch World Cup, and the thing with the bridge, and however many people were on the street when Pettigrew did The Thing. There's gotta be an investigation network of Muggles who have noticed various weird things over the centuries.

See, now I'm getting fanfic vibes.

---

[conuly]

The Quidditch World Cup pisses me off so much because, as I said upthread, a little bit of forethought could've had the campground owner and his family safely on vacation during the entire event! Sure, nobody could've imagined that the Death Eaters would stage a drunken gettogether, but "regular" oblivation is damaging too! One or two carefully targetted spells to send these people safely away would've been safer.

[rhoda_rants]

Seriously. And it does surprise me a bit that they don't have a permanent space large enough to host events like that anyway. I know there was some kind of explanation given as to why, since it's an international event, but still!

---

[conuly]

Because they hardly ever get together in such large numbers blah blah blah. Like, okay? Find some really isolated space, not in freaking England which is pretty jampacked, and designate that as your "when we need a large space" place.

[conuly]

Ah, not upthread, on the previous post.

[conuly]

Also also, I'll read that fanfic if you write it, because you're right - there have to be muggles who have figured this out on their own. And if the wizarding world doesn't know about them (like it knows about the parents and siblings and spouses of muggleborn children, and about squibs) then it's not watching them, even cursorily. Who knows what they're getting up to? Who knows what sort of research they're doing or are planning on?

[rhoda_rants]

Oh! Speaking of Muggleborn children! There's no way kids can keep a secret that huge, not collectively, not forever. That big where George (or was it Fred?) was flirting with a Muggle girl by doing card tricks--he can't be the only guy who's thought of that, ever. Like, how would mixed-blood families even exist if they weren't consistently failing at the secrecy thing over the generations? Someone out there knows who isn't on the "inside," as it were.

And heh, I have to finish this End Game fix-it/Doctor Who crossover first, but the bunnies are a'nibbling.

---

[conuly]

Wasn't it Seamus who was laughing at the Welcome Feast that his mother didn't tell his father until after the marriage? I guess his dad made his peace with it*, but that's not really a cute and funny anecdote, even if your parents tell it as one.

* or invested in some carefully targeted mind control, which we know they can do, but let's not go there.

[redbird]

The hardcore "magic is impossible, therefore you are either lying or mistaken" people--the ones whose answer to "what evidence would make you change your mind, or become less certain about the nonexistence of magic?" is "none, because I'd know it was fraudulent"--would continue to believe that magic is a fraud. And maybe be sad, or condescending, about their friends who were "OK, magic exists, better brick up the fireplace" or going to a wizard for a healing potion for the flu.

But that sort of materialist has spent centuries shaking their heads, or shrugging, at people who want to know *but what god *do* you believe in, then?" or insisting that if we just prayed sincerely enough, our chronic diseases would be cured. Either "OK, maybe instantaneous communication *is* possible, the physics department must be having kittens/a field day" or "there's a sucker born every second" wouldn't upset my entire worldview, the way coming out in the open and finding that a lot of muggles are thinking things like "floo powder sounds better than Heathrow any day, but have you considered the advantages of electric lighting?" likely would.

[conuly]

Electric lighting, phone calls instead of lying on the floor with your head in the floo, computers....

[nodrog]

Those barmy old wives giving foxglove tea to people with real heart conditions, or putting cobwebs on bleeding wounds - don’t they know that’s all rubbish?

(If you’ve never read those stories, you ought - they’re very well done.)

[cactuswatcher]

I think it all revolves around the origin of HP as a story for young adolescents that many of us older folks happen to enjoy. If you buy in as a kid at face value or as an adult in that it's a story for kids, logic and good common adult sense, don't really have to play a part even as Harry ages. Which I think makes the HP series work.

But as someone else commented, we have Fantastic Beasts which is a different kettle of fish. It's basically a story for and about adults, that younger people might buy into. Things that work swimmingly in HP, begin to look really bad in the FB series.

Take the selection of champions in Goblet of Fire: an eleven year old can see it's unfair. But it's set in a school and we all know in schools things happen that for all the world seem arbitrary, illogical and sometimes downright stupid. We accept it and move on.

In movie two of the FB series, we find that wizards can cheat on the "obliviating" of Muggles if they wish. That makes sense to adults. It's too hard to get everyone to follow all the rules all the time. But that means the secrecy of the magical world probably has so many holes in it, that the Statue would be essentially useless. Then you begin to think, well if someone actually came close to destroying Paris, as in the movie, could the Magical authorities be sure they changed the memory of every last Muggle who witnessed some of the event? Wizards have proven as fallible and fool-able as the rest of us, so no, secrecy couldn't work for long. I think if anything the FB series just destroys the magic we liked in the HP series.

ETA: If we stop buying in to it all as being okay within its own limits, it turns to nonsense. So what happens in a nonsense world when the secret gets out? Who cares?

[conuly]

I care, that's who!

[ayebydan]

Agreed on your first paragraph. I don't think JK ever thought kids older than Harry would become would ever read the series or look at it deeply. Though, I'd rather we just debated some flaws than she tried to fix them because wow her attempts are bad. Someone take twitter off her lol

[silveradept]

Something that might help, maybe, would be knowing what percentage of the total population is magical, because if it's sufficiently small, the idea that magic exists might get out, but it might be seen as fringe conspiracy, instead of as something that has to be reckoned with on a cultural level.

[conuly]

We will never get a percentage.

[silveradept]

No, we won't, despite the obsession with pure lineages that might, say, have someone develop a gene test for magic. (And have it turn out like it did in the beginning of Methods of Rationality, probably.)

[conuly]

If this ever happened IRL you know it's only a matter of time before somebody gets the genes identified.

[silveradept]

Absolutely. Especially in a post genome map society, there would be a lot of immediate research into seeing if the magic gene can be turned on and off, and serious ethical yelling about whether it's good to do so or not, and basically, Harry Potter turns into X-Men. And Potter is Magneto. (Granger as Xavier, maybe?)

[conuly]

What I'm interested in is this: Magic appears to violate all rules of physics. Could we incorporate magic into a unified theory of physics, and, if so, could we figure out how to replicate the effects of spells using technology?

That'd certainly upset a lot of people who are very intense about being superior to muggles.

[silveradept]

I think it would be doable, although I suspect quite a bit of supercomputer time would be put to the task. Because once magic exists, then the scientific laws of the universe have to be amended to account for it, to the point where the domain of magic is eventually subsumed into "really forking awesome science" and everyone can do it, even if they don't have the genetic disposition to it.

[dogstar]

I mean, maybe, but you could just make it super, super, super complex genetically- like, DCM or hip dysplasia in dogs- most people have some magic markers, differetn markers interact in different ways meaning how many makers = muggle vs wizard= and you'd have a problem that a supercomputer couldn't tease apart- yet, anyway. You'd get it eventually with a sufficently large sample size, but I suspect in the process you'd end up proving that it's a continuum, not a binary state.

[conuly]

Which concurs with what Neville said in book 1 about potentially not being magic enough for Hogwarts, which I consider absolute 100% canon because the later not-in-books retcon of Hogwarts maintaining a list is just silly.

[author_by_night]

I actually have a fanfic plot bunny that deals with this very question. I don't have the time to write it, but the answer is... basically, chaos. Muggles are resentful, Muggleborns are resentful, and very bad people on both sides of the magic-not magic spectrum take advantage of the confusion. Which is pretty much how I think it would go down.

I also think that families of Muggleborns would demand answers. I noticed in DH that while Hermione sent her parents into hiding with new identities, no mention was made of other family members. She presumably has other family members, though. Not everyone in the books comes from families of orphans and only children.However, it's likely that the Grangers and other families of Muggleborn children basically had to close themselves off to protect the secret. So that would cause a lot of conflict.

And of course I think wizards with pureblood superiority complexes would have their own concerns. They'd be protective of their identities.

[conuly]

1. If you ever do write it, I'll read it.

2. Families of Muggleborns are bound to demand a lot of answers, since it seems the school doesn't tell them shit and I doubt any of their kids are more inclined to enlighten them about what really goes on there. Can you imagine the Creeveys letting both their kids continue to attend Hogwarts if they had known about the events of book 2? Or the Grangers, for that matter?

3. Question for you - do you think Hermione explained things to her parents and asked them first, or do you think she just did it without asking permission? I'm inclined to the latter, and I think anybody would be pissed afterwards when they found out! That's not very ethical behavior.

4. And of course I think wizards with pureblood superiority complexes would have their own concerns. They'd be protective of their identities.

It'd be hilarious.

[ayebydan]

Jumping in to say I know you said books only for you but the scene in the film where Hermione erases their memories is her just sneaking up on them as they watch TV and doing it. I totally see it happening that way. Hermione seems very grown-up when you read the kid as someone her age but looking back she's a full of herself overconfident little twerp really and I fully see the whole plan backfiring on her when she goes to fetch her parents some 18 months later.

[conuly]

Hermione has, like many bright kids, a bad case of thinking she knows best. But strangely, for somebody so smart, I don't think she ever consciously picked up on the hidden curriculum embedded in Hogwarts. I think she just swallowed it down and asked for more, probably because it fed right into her secret beliefs - she's the best one to know best.

[schneefink]

I read at least one, possibly more fics where wizards and witches Obliviate muggles and destroy their paper records but completely forget about the electronic copies, and so the muggles (cops, in this case) realize that their memories are being regularly wiped and leave themselves notes...

[conuly]

"Got wiped again. They're efficient, but dumber than a box of rocks."