Nuhuh's Note:

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The problem with Dresden in the HP world is that thaumatology, and to a lesser extent soul fire, are the only advantages he has. He's pretty much fucked in any major battle.

 

Dresden also has a mentality advantage, to be blunt. He's ready, willing and able to use purely mundane means of accomplishing his goals, and those can be a decided advantage against HP magicals, if only because HP wizards have no idea how to counter them.

And that doesn't take into account Dresden-magic circles or other practices. You would have to define how the magic systems interact, but assuming Dresden circles retain their "boundary against magic" properties, he's got an impenetrable shield he can put up in a moments notice. Especially if he draws the circle mentally.

 

Lots of problems with this.

First of all, Dresd's mentality means, uh, absolutely nothing in this case. Putting aside, for a moment, the gun control laws of the UK, since it'd take a savvy wizard to just sic the police on him...so what? He has, what, a gun? No, wait, this is the end of Changes, so I think he lost that. As such, he's gonna get a new one. In the UK.

And if he does...so what? I know we all like to make fun of the stupidity of HP wizards and how they what guns are and they know what they do. They even know how to improve them via enchantments. Harry has shit all advantage on that front.

Honestly, he has pretty much nothing else on the muggle side of things. I mean, he has his gun and he knows how to drive. Wizards have magically improved guns and cars that can fly across countries and turn invisible.

Second of all, Harry can't create magic stopping circles in his mind. He can create summoning circles, but that's because Summoning is a spell and the circles and candles and shit are all just stuff to make things easier for himself. Blocking magic requires and actual physical circle.

Which wouldn't do anything to an HP wizard. Why? Because DF circles aren't magical in any esy. It's a property of DF Magic that says it's stopped by circles. HP Wizards, on the other hand, use Teleporting from one circle to another as part of a test o get a license as common as a drivers license would be for muggles.

But more to the point, even if Harry could get a gun and a car low tech enough to work for him in the UK and even if his circles happened to work...so what?

I mean, even low tech guns can be dangerous and being hit by a car is always bad, even a low tech car. And a magic blocking circle is always nice. But the guns and car are useless, as I said above and if he, or the body and will of any mortal (such as each and every HP wizard) crosses the cirlce, it'll break. So his 'impenetrable shield' is actually hilarious penetrable.

Are this supposed to make up for the fact that his opponents can teleport, caste instant death curses, etc.? I mean, the Apparate and AK combination should kill him just fine, especially since HP wizards aren't affected by Thresholds and Harry's never cast anything remotely resembling an Anti-Teleportation Ward.

 

It's less having the gun so much as the willingness to use it, if you get the distinction. Dresden does not shy away from Muggle things, which HP wizards do with a frightening consistency. He can have a massive advantage in a fight because the HP wizards simply won't understand, expect or be able to properly react to a lot of the things he can do, via both magical or mundane means.

The most relevant example is if he whips out a pistol and shoots them, Indiana Jones style. The vast majority of HP wizards won't have time to fully pronounce "Protego!" or react in any meaningful way before they're dead. They don't even have a death curse for Dresden to worry about.

It's fully possible that HP wizards will adjust to his tactics (and it only makes logical sense that they would), but they have shown an adherence to tradition and sheer cultural inertia will likely keep them from doing so in anything close to a reasonable timeframe.

He says several times through the series that he can use a mental image of a circle, but chooses not to because it's a huge amount of effort for minimal results.

In the HP verse, such a circle is basically the ultimate shield, so I can't see him not investing the time and effort to using it at a moment's notice.

Possible, I'd say that's more up to the discretion of the author though, as I can see it going either way. The DF circle's "circle-ness" isn't the important part, it's the act of will magically closing off the interior from the exterior. That's why DF circles don't need to be drawn with a compass every time.

It's not inconceivable for the effort of will needed to "close the circle" simply hasn't been discovered in the HP-verse.

I never said he'd be well off. I said that he wasn't quite as powerless as you seem to think.

Personally, I'm fairly confident a well-trained combat wizard from the HP verse would wipe the floor with him, but if the books are any indication, there's maybe a dozen of those in the entire British Wizarding World.

Dresden's standard approach to combat wouldn't be spectacular in the HP verse, but he could almost certainly at least pose a threat of some sort.

As for the "crossing the circle" thing, you're right, but they would have to actually cross it. The vast majority of fights in HP are more-or-less static, where the combatants stand across from each other and fling magic back and forth. It's actually quite rare for there to be any physical objects flung around, and if he keeps his circle as small as it can be, he stands a decent chance in a fight.

And that doesn't take into account that breaking a DF circle requires an act of will, which is why Fae and the other non-humans can't do it. If a human doesn't know a circle is even there, can they will it to break? I mean, I can't see Dresden telling his opponents the weaknesses of his nigh-omnipotent magical shield, and if he draws it purely in his mind, how can they know to will it open?

 

Are you implying wizards don't know how to counter muggle means? Son, pure bloods who know next to nothing about muggle technology go rampaging through muggle towns without one muggle killing or even injuring one of them. There is a reason why muggleborns aren't bringing guns to a wand fight. Why do all of the irl muggles never bother considering this? Don't you think one muggleborn would have tried to use a gun in the time before Harry Potter came along? Maybe, you'd like to imply that Vernon Dursley was the first muggle to ever think of pulling a gun on a wizard while you are at it? Nope, it's always herp derp wizards are backwards herp derp.

As for your they wouldn't be able to cast in time logic. They don't need to cast anything. You remember that shield hat that was created by a joke shop that is run by two people who never took school seriously or even finished? Also, if the wizard can cast silently, it would drastically reduce the time of casting, and even if he managed to get one shot off, you can bet everyone else will have shields up after that. That one shot would probably need to be an near instant kill given how quickly HP magic can repair non magical related damage.

 

Magical parity is sort of a null point, as you could write the interaction/fusion of the two magics to make either party stronger or weaker as you please. I think Dresden would be very scary to HP wizards simply because he is a killer. We don't see a single soldier in the HPverse, and even the Aurors are as much police as fighters. Dresden considers himself an investigator, but he approaches combat with careful thought, preparation and a complete lack of inhibition that I think would terrify HP wizards.

 

Son, pureblood wizards never went 'rampaging' through muggle towns. We have no idea if a muggleborn ever tried bringing a gun to a wand fight and tbh, it's only in the last half century or so that guns got to the point where they could be useful against magic in a firefight. If JKR had written HP aimed at adults, it's entirely possible that we would've had Hermione whip a .44 out of her bottomless handbag and cap sum bitch.

Regarding the shield hats, it's doubtful that they'd stop a bullet. I don't get the impression that wearing a magical hat is going to stop a bullet to the gut either.

That said, a gun is not a wtfpwn button, but you meet a Death Eater in a dark alley, ten bucks says you can bring up your pistol, aim and squeeze the trigger a few times before the other guy can bring his wand up, aim, go through the wand movements and maybe say an incantation.

I'm also pretty sure that Dresden has come up against gun toting baddies a few times with his internal monologue remarking that as fast as a bullet was, the speed of thought (and thus magic) was faster.

To me, Dresden magic has a couple of seconds advantage on Potter magic due to its manner of use, ie Dresden exercises his will and visualises a shield wheras Potter has to wave his wand and perhaps say an incantation.

There are points for both opinions. Bringing a gun to a wand fight isn't going to make you unbeatable, but it isn't a waste of time either.

 

Magic is not a kind of gun. It's not a matter of who can "pull the trigger" first. What makes you think that, after the first wizard gets shot, wizards won't come to the fight already protected against bullets?

(In Lords of Magic, all Aurors wear a standard-issue ring enchanted with an imperturbable charm, a shield charm and a flame-freezing charm, which makes them pretty much immune to mundane threats. Given the shield hats we saw, I don't think there's any reason to think that such items could not be made in canon.)

 

1. I think that mental circles wouldn´t work exactly like those drawn and there is no instance in the book where such a thing is said. And even if it would work as a shield there is the problem that HP magic works on a whole different magic than the magic in the Dresden files. What happens for instance if you levitate something above him and let it fall, or of you banish something at him, would it be stopped by the barrier or not?

2. First isn´t getting a gun in the UK/Europe (especially without mind magic) as easy as it is in America especially as Dresden knows nobody in England(and a such has no knowledge of a possible black-market etc.) Second Harry isn´t good with a gun, he can shoot with it but he is by no means a professional. More than 15 meter and the chances are slim that he hits his target. And he is alot more coldblooded than the average wizard in HP. There are psychical differences between holding a wand (a tool which you can use for many things) and a gun ( only good for killing). That means that is much easier to curse/hex somebody than it is to shoot somebody. (When you look at studies about the Iraq war you will see that the most shots are in the wild because it a such psychological stress to shoot at somebody and most people close their eyes the last second etc.)

3. In the end I think that Harry Dresden hasn´t much of a chance against a medium-high level Harry potter wizard. The only advantage that he has is that he is by all means a war veteran where in the Potter Universe there are no such people that we know of. But that is because the one is a book for children while the other for a mature audience so I am quite sure that a good writer would change a few things in HP to make it more realistic to mature readers.

 

It's not clear if a shield of the kind Dresden uses would even have any effect on HP spells. I mean, Dresden's shield isn't a generic catch-all shield like in HP. It's designed to stop very specific types of energy. Kinectic and heat, primarily. It might stop a banishing spell, if you tweaked the nature of banishing spells to be more like a "force push" than a spell that activates upon contact, but I don't see it stopping something like a stunner or entrail expelling curse. These are the kinds of spells we just haven't seen in Dresden, at least in evocation. They're not types of force or energy. They're more like a packet of instructions (upon hit, target is made unconscious).

One interesting way to take that, if you wanted a kind of magical parity, would be that Dresden wizards would experience those spells like Dresden experiences the force of will of the Lords of the Outer Night. He can resist them with great force of will. Only if he succumbs would the spell effect occur.

 

That's entirely possible. I just believe that a gun wouldn't be as completely useless as Rakkety Tam suggests.

There's also the consideration of how well the spells protect against bullets. Do they stop them cold each time and every time? Does the calibre or the range make a difference? Are they worn down with each shot? I guess it's something that is up to each author that brings guns into a fic as an equaliser.

Personally, I think we're thinking too small with guns. Harry should have gotten his hands on a bazooka first chance he got.

I like this idea. The more powerful and skilled the wizard, the more potent their will, and the larger threat they would be to Dresden--would work very well in evening the playing field.

Or maybe it wouldn't, because Dresden is one of the most stubborn bastard's we know.

 

There are two ways to go about this:

1. Say that magic does not just resist the laws of nature, but completely subverts them. When a wizard stops a tennis ball mid-air, he isn't resisting it with an equal and opposite force but rather simply making it stop by magic and completely ignoring the laws of gravity, momentum, etc. This is my preference. Under this idea of magic, there's no real question whether a wizard can stop a hundred bullets: it's no more a subversion of the laws of nature to arrest a hundred objects than it is to arrest one. However, not all like this.

So let's consider option two:

2. The idea that a wizard has a store of energy that behaves roughly according to the laws of physics as we know them. In particular, that an equal and opposite force is required to stop something. Interestingly, we can put numbers to this.

Energy of a bullet:

Let's say we are talking about a 5.56mm round. The projectile has a mass of around 4g (0.004kg). It has a speed of around 1000 metres per second.

K.E. = 1/2mv^2

= 1/2*0.004*1000^2

= 2000 J

Energy of a wizard:

This is a bit harder, as we've never seen a wizard run out of energy, so we can't put an upper limit on it. But we can put a few minimums on it, and thereby perhaps solve the question of if a wizard has sufficient energy to stop a bullet. Assuming, of course, that a wizard's magic acts in ways similar to the energy with which we Muggles are familiar. As I say above, I don't like this idea. But some do, and it's an interesting exercise nonetheless.

An excellent way to guesstimate the kind of energies wizards have available to them is conjuration.

The spell “Avis” conjures a number of birds and many characters are capable of it, including wizards who are not yet fully trained.

Let's say that the spell makes 3 birds of 0.5KG. Just because this is a conservative estimate. So it conjures 1.5KG of matter.

Einstein was good enough to give us a way to relate mass to energy:

E = mc^2

E = 1.5*(3 x 10^8)^2

E = 135,000,000,000,000,000 J

Goodness. It looks like that one silly little charm involves rather more energy than a bullet. But how many bullets, I wonder?

67,500,000,000,000 bullets, that's how many.

And that's our conservative estimate. Let's go for upper range.

In CoS Dumbledore conjures sleeping bags for the whole school. Let's say that's 280 sleeping bags. A sleeping bag is around 1KG. I think you can see where this is going:

E = mc^2

E = 280*(3x10^8)^2

E = 25,200,000,000,000,000,000 J

That's even more bullets! I don't think I need to calculate how many. However...

A one megaton bomb releases 4.18 x 10^15 J.

The above figure, in standard form, is 2.52 x 10^19 J.

Which means that Dumbledore's sleeping bag conjuring spell unleashed the same amount of energy as a 6028 megaton bomb.

For comparison, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated by man was the Tsar Bomba, which was 50 megatons. The fireball was seen 1000 kilometres from ground zero, the mushroom cloud was 7 times the height of Mt. Everest. A village 55 kilometres away from ground zero was completely annihilated. The explosion could cause third degree burns 100km away from ground zero, and windows were broken by the shockwave 900 km away.

Now times that by 12 and you have the energy unleashed by Dumbledore in a single casual wave of his wand, from which he showed no fatigue.

...somehow, I think he could stop a few bullets.

 

Don't pull that if JKR wrote HP for adults shit. There are people getting tortured and killed in the books. The fact of the matter is that the books were written as they were, and JKR has stated that she wrote the magical world with the idea that they were superior to muggles in every way. "I mean, it's indecent the amount of time I spend thinking up wizarding ways to subvert arrogant Muggles." I'm not saying this as if it is canon as it comes from an interview, but this combined with the lack of any muggle in the books being able to do anything to a wizard tends to back up her statement.

There are various death eater attacks on muggles, and it is hinted at that there were attacks on them in the first war as well. I'm also willing to bet that there have been other groups that have gone after muggles as well. Yet, no reports of them being dead or injured.

Given the fact that muggleborns and half bloods would have known about guns before now, you would think that had someone used it, and it had been effective you would see widespread use in canon. You don't. In fact, you don't see any use whatsoever, and guns have been around for a significant enough amount of time in canon that it had to have been tried. Probably several times.

Why wouldn't they stop a bullet? Is a bullet magical because that's the only thing I've seen in canon that can go through a magical shield? Actually, those shield hats stop most minor spells as well. That's just the protection offered from a hat with some spells on it. This doesn't count any potential protection that could be added to other articles of clothing. It doesn't need to be cast so it has a distinct in speed over guns and Dresden magic.

People are going to write what they are going to write, but the reality is that if they were really effective at all you would see them in canon other than when Vernon attempts to threaten Hagrid with one. There is no use to debate the matter. If people want to use them in fanfiction they can, but in doing so they change HP canon imo.

 

Taure...Jesus Christ. I'm majoring in Writing, not Rocket Science . In any case, I don't believe that magic is something you can relate to the standard laws of physics. Under that assumption however, it seems magic can indeed stop a bullet. The magic still has to be in place for that to work though.

Despite the torturing and killing, HP is still a series written for an audience that includes children. We aren't exactly shown an excess of examples of muggles standing up against wizards in instances of life or death combat.

I agree that wizards have the advantage; I disagree with the idea that muggles are helpless against them.

We do hear about the attacks, but that's about it. I can't recall any instance where we've followed an average Death Eater through a raid on a muggle town, so who's to say that a father working late or up for a midnight snack didn't come across a robed figure somehow breaking into his house and whack them across the face with a crowbar?

JK was writing a story about magic, not about people using mundane weapons to fight magic. I do doubt anyone in JKR's universe used a gun, but I also doubt it would be as ineffective as you believe.

Vernon bought the gun because it was his only recourse against a wizard--also the only time we saw a knowledgeable muggle attempt to go against a wizard. If his wife and son were actually in peril, rather than just his nephew in danger of going to Hogwarts, he would have acted before Hagrid could have twisted the rifle into a pretzel--of course, he probably would have had the gun summoned from his hands before he could use it if he was facing someone with those intentions.

Finally, the shield hats--do we know if they stop more than just minor spells, or physical force as well? The Ministry brought 500 of them because their people apparently couldn't cast a proper shield spell. If they can't cast that, how are they going to enchant clothing to stop a bullet?

If a mage is going to enchant their clothing against harm, odds are they'll be focused on other spells before muggle weapons. I'd expect Mad Eye to have a defence against bullets, but, well, there you go.

tl;dr: Don't be so quick to dismiss a gun. It's entirely possible the wizard you're trying to kill will turn it into a rottweiler, but it's also possible you'll put three rounds into them before they can finish turning to face you.


As an aside, I think we've gotten rather off-topic.

 

TheWiseTomato and I had already taken this to PM's so as to not derail the thread any further, and to prevent this from happening. I see no good coming from a thread on magical theory.

Edit: Didn't see Nuhuh's Note

 

The way I see it, the problem is that HP magic is magic and Dresden magic is physics (with a grain of salt). If you want to write a crossover fic with these two, and if you're not going to do it half-assedly, you need to come to some sort of compromise between them.

For example, you could state that HP magic is less powerful but quicker and more flexible. Dresden magic, on the other hand, takes time and patience and many years of honing one's craft. Evocation is the closest Dresden magic comes to HP magic, but even that particular branch has its limits as it involvs moving around energy and exerting your will over it, whereas HP magic just is.

I think you can definitely make it work both ways; H. Dresden in the HP world or viceversa.

The former features a Dresden who is quick and smart, powerful and dangerous, but his lack of insight into the Magical world poses a disadvantage. Although HP wizards have him beat in terms of battle capability, he's one sneaky mother fucker and his repertoire includes thaumaturgy, circles, summoning, etc.

Similarly, HP in the Dresdenverse could be badass in terms of what he can do (transfiguration, semi-permanent charms -- never really considered the durability). But he would be stranded in a world with very different rules, both magical and legal. He could very well fuck up his first hour by reading someone's mind and getting convicted by the WC. He'd apparate the fuck out of there, true, but one slip and he's unconscious, bound and headbutting a sword.

TL;DR: If you are flexible enough in your adaptation of each world's magic (and if you're not a canon maniac), it's fairly easy to fit your character into the other verse. Just point it out to your readers and claim artistic license.


Note: Intelectual masturbation by comparing two inherently different magic systems is pointless and the results predictable: Taure's patience and hardcore stubborness will outlive us all.