WMG / Harry Potter Wizarding History And Society

In the Wizarding World, the British Empire never ended.

Put it this way. Voldemort takes over the U.K, which is treated as taking over the entire world, which implies that Britain's international standing in the Wizarding World is much greater than its standing in the Muggle one. Secondly, Grindelwald was "never powerful here", so presumably his reign of terror did not affect the UK too badly. Also, the Muggle British Empire fell due to two main reasons: Political awakening (both in terms of nationalism amongst the colonies and liberalism amongst the British) and World War II causing economic hardship. World War Two (or its wizarding analogue, Grindelwald's insurgency) was not fought in Wizarding Britain, and political ideologies (especially with regard to human rights etc) as we understand them seem to be very different for wizards. So, as British muggles expanded across the globe, carving out their vast empire, wizards went with them, and, given the ascendancy of British muggles in the colonies, it was natural British wizards should rise to prominence. Ultimately, while the Muggles of India etc are no longer citizens of the Empire, the Wizards of these nations still are. Thus, Britain is the Wizarding World's superpower, and that is why Voldemort's takeover is treated as an act of world-conquering importance, rather than the oppression of a rainy island off Europe's coast.

• So wizarding Britain is Britannia? Makes sense. Now I want a crossover where Harry and Lelouch take down the Ministry of Magic.
• So why were all those fans at the Quidditch World Cup displaying the Irish flag? If the wizards' culture still considers Britain to be an empire that rules over the Commonwealth nations, they'd surely still consider Ireland a British possession, not an independent country.
  • Ireland was not a colony but a dominion, like Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, so it would have its own flag either way.
• What about Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Namibia, etc. - the countries that were parts of other empires and were mandated to the British Empire after World War I? And for that matter, what about other colonial empires?

The mascots and God are behind everything

Recall the Love Room? It is implied God lives there. Considering that the "forces of nature" are implied to exist as well, we have ourselves a pantheon:

- Love/God represents Spirit

- The Badger represents Earth

- The Snake represents Water

- The Eagle/Raven/whatever represents Air

- The Lion represents Fire

Thus, the Wizarding World, and the universe at large, is governed by Eldritch Abominations following the classical esoteric theme, with four beasts subservient to the light. Those lovecraftian beings passively possessed four people, guiding them to build Hogwarts.

Obviously, God Is Evil, and requires human sacrifice in order to operate, and so the beasts have been tasked to make the Wizarding World as violently elitist as possible. Sometimes, they are more proactive, and evil beasties like the Dementors are shat into existence to make everyone's lives miserable.

As their master dwells in the Department of Mysteries (though he sometimes shows up to the nearly deceased to torment them as he takes the appearances of their loved ones; his conversation with Harry was an exception because he wanted to have the whole of Voldemort to eat and rape), the beasts are spread across the world, bringing misfortunes and evil. The Lion and the Snake were in Britain during the events of the series (although they were briefly in mainland Europe, specially when Grindelwald was active); contrary to popular belief, they're not enemies, but friends with benefits, and they thought the whole wars were not only funny, but sexually arousing. Meanwhile, the Raven/Eagle is in the USA and the Badger is in the Middle East, stirring conflicts among muggles and maybe also among the local wizard populations.

Cut to 2017, and their master will probably call them into direct action.

Witches born in May will marry Muggles

So goes the folk wisdom Ron heard from his mother, and the reveal date of Helga Hufflepuff's Chocolate Frog card would indicate that she was born in May. So she married a Muggle man named Smith, and that's why Zacharias and Hephzibah have such a common surname.

Salazar Slytherin, no matter what his descendants might get up to, was not such a bad sort

The Big Evil Man always seemed less a proto-Death Eater than a Batman-type - certainly not nice, but not evil either... just eminently practical. Considering the time period during which Hogwarts was founded, not trusting Muggle-borns was nothing less than common sense. "Let's see, you're (at least nominally) devout followers of a faith that comes right out and says in the source text, 'Thou shall not suffer a witch to live'? Why sure, come on in and hone your abilities! Maybe in ten years you can come back to destroy us at the head of a Crusading army, and say that your powers came from the Lord and allowed you to discover this den of wickedness that you might purify it!"

Plus, y'know... Slytherin's symbol is a snake. Serpents say 'European-style dark/light-duality wisdom cult', which at that point in history says 'completely wiped out (with maybe a few discreet exceptions).' Logically, the man's fear and anger could have been driven by bitterness over injustice that he experienced (cue any combination of Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas, Death by Origin Story / Death By Knight Templar, Abusive Parents, Parental Abandonment, and Rape as Backstory) as opposed to the simple arrogant disdain of most Slytherins we meet throughout the series.

It doesn't excuse his actions, but it does explain them - hell, for all we know, the Basilisk might originally have been intended as a failsafe. If Muggles ever tried to storm the school, they'd be met by Sal's successor and a little surprise.

Because of the overwhelming atmosphere of Does This Remind You of Anything? from Book 4 onwards (even if it derails a bit when you try to imagine Scrimgeour as Winston Churchill), this theory can be summed up as 'Salazar Slytherin Was Nietzsche Before It Was Cool.'

• Probably he was some sort of Anti-Hero and just like Severus Snape: willing to sacrifice allies to pull off a bigger defeating scheme against the enemy.
• Y'know, I'd buy this. It makes a lot of sense. For instance, Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor were supposed to be best friends before they had a falling-out and Slytherin left the school — it wouldn't make much sense if Slytherin was "the evil founder". In fact, in this light their falling-out seems like a clash between progressive and reactionary where both sides have valid points: Gryffindor argues "These children are witches and wizards and deserve to be trained just as much as pure-bloods", and Slytherin argues "These children have been raised by Muggles and are a potential fifth column, and can't be trusted". Of course, a thousand years later when magic has been fully hidden from the Muggle world and wizards are no longer persecuted, Slytherin's viewpoint is no longer applicable and all you have left is prejudice.
• Plus, I bet Slytherin set up the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets as a secret weapon, fully expecting that within 20 or 40 years or so the school would be stormed by some kind of Muggle army, and Salazar or his kids would then get to tell all the other Founders that "I told you so." Right away, like, within a few years of the school's establishment, rather than centuries and centuries later and for completely different ends. It's a little on the paranoid side, maybe, but also pretty sensible given the times they lived in. If he had lived during Harry Potter's era (or the ones preceding it somewhat) and seen that Muggles were no longer a threat to wizards, he probably would have realized that all the anti-Muggle or Muggle-born prejudice had become a big, obsolete waste of time.
  • And see the WMG 'The basilisk in the Chamber of Secret is not there to kill Muggle-borns.', which points out that the basilisk might just be there to kill Muggles, not Muggle-born. Muggles are not supposed to be at Hogwarts at all, and if they are, something has gone horrible wrong with security.
• Besides, Slytherin doesn't leave in a blaze of glory, knocking off the muggleborns. He just leaves. Which seems... reasonable. He was best mates with Gryffindor, who I'm sure, would have something to say if his mate was a murderer.
• I agree with all above. The Anti-Muggle movement Slytherin started was probably just a 'there's more of them than there are of us and they want us dead.' reaction. As proven by history, people justifiably freak out when people want you dead for something that's biological and you can't control. It's about 700 years LATER that the Statute of Secrecy comes out after the witch trials start; perhaps proving Slytherin had a VALID point for the first time and revived his movement. It's around that time that the anti-muggle movement went from 'they want to kill us all' to a 'we're better off without them' movement. By Riddle's time the social/political philosophy has transformed into 'we're BETTER than them' as expected of a culture that's been practicing isolationism for roughly 300 years. The Slytherin house probably did not become the home of 'dark/evil' wizards until Gindrelwald and Voldemort started recruiting. I mean I bet his house was heralded at some times in history as the house where all the 'good' wizards end up and the Griffyndor house was looked at as a mix of the well-meaning idiots that will get us all killed and the dark lords who are bold enough to be braze about it.
• Salazar might also have grown up in an essential muggle warzone. During the century of the founders, eastern England(where the majority of the fens are) was not only suffering from Viking raids, but at one point was even conquered. Wizards would likely need all their smarts to survive in such a hostile environments, and desire to rise above it. Salazar's formative years might very well have been in a surrounding were muggles did little but kill eachother. Quite understandable why he wouldn't want to arm such a crowd with magic. And this works in regards to Gryffindor too, as Godric was from the western region(which might not have been peaceful, but surely moreso than the areas were there were fights against vikings). Godric grew up around muggles that showed pleasant sides, while Salazar only saw the dark sides.

Durmstrang is located in Russia.

It's in "the north". The only reason it remained (at least with its original name) through WWII was the adult Grindelwald's direct influence. Krum got in because his family was rich enough to send him there instead of a lesser school closer to home or a government-funded school like Hogwarts, and partly because he showed wicked promise as a Seeker even when he was ten (he was on the Bulgarian national team when he was underage! It's not much of a stretch), and they're sort of the Slughorn of wizarding schools (not necessarily in a bad way, though).

• I have always sort of assumed that Durmstrang was in Bulgaria, since Viktor Krum went there and he's Bulgarian. But there is nothing that says you can't go to school in another country than the one you were born in (IIRC, Lucius Malfoy wanted to send Draco to Durmstrand even though they're British), so it could just as well be in Russia, I guess.
  • Nope, not in Bulgaria as told by Rowling. It's located in the "far north" and many of the students who go there are from Eastern and Northern Europe.
• Seamus Finnigan is from the Republic of Ireland and attends Hogwarts, so wizarding schools don't seem to restrict entrants based on nationality. Durmstrang being in "the North" rules out Bulgaria though, which is quite considerably south (borders with Greece and Turkey!): the only Slavic country north of Hogwarts's Scottish home would be Russia. Add the year-round fur coats and the fact that the only other named students have Russian names and there's a strong case.
• The name "Durmstrang" doesn't sound Russian (or Slavonic, for that matter) at all to me. Looks more like a German (or Germanic) name. It could be located in Scandinavia or Greenland (former part of Denmark).
• Rowling has said it's located in the Far North which indicates more of Scandinavia. She pretty much said it was either Norway or Sweden where the school is located.

In addition to dark magic, Durmstrang is an academy of Modern Dance.

• This explains their beautifully choreographed introduction in the GoF movie. It's in Eastern Europe, well known for producing fantastic ballet dancers. And the total control of one's body developed by a dancer would probably to wonders for a person's wandwork.
  • I think you've gotten that mixed up with Beauxbatons, which is in France. Durmstrang comes out and does some stuff with staff. I've always wondered what Hogwarts would do. A perfectly-choreographed pantomime of a student being put in mortal danger due to whatever dark secret's lurking around the place that year?
    • Maybe Hogwarts is just the ghetto school.
• Or maybe they teach magical martial arts. Kind of odd for a school most likely located somewhere in Russia, I know, but perhaps someone from a border town near China brought it over?
  • The Harry Potter universe is the future of the Avatar: The Last Airbender world, and Harry is the most recent incarnation of the Avatar.

The American School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has been somehow sealed away by the Men in Black, SCP Foundation or some other equivalent

This explains why no American wizards/witches turn up in the course of the stories; they can't escape from the containment.

• Two American witches are seen at the Quidditch World Cup in GoF. It's blink-and-you-miss-it, but they do appear.
• There are no Kenyan wizards/witches in the books either; doesn't mean they don't exist.

Fewer magical children than usual were born in 1980.

Word of God states that there are approximately a thousand students attending Hogwarts at any given time. If all years has about as many students as Harry's does (namely eight Gryffindors, nine Slytherins, ten Ravenclaws, seven Hufflepuffs and three students whose houses are unknown), that would only make give or take 260 students all together.However, Harry was born in 1980, when the First Wizarding War peaked and Voldemort was more powerful than ever. Maybe the number of children born into magical families decreased drastically during those last few years of the war, because wizards who under different circumstances would have wanted children chose not to have any. They were, after all, practically living in terror by then, and the future of the wizarding world was uncertain at best.

• Word of God also has admitted that math is not her best subject, and later said that only about 600 students are at Hogwarts in any year.
  • Which still doesn't add up. A total of 600 students would make about 21 students per House and year. Even I, who can freely admit that math is not my thing, figured that out without any problems.
• But according to Half-Blood Prince, Hogwarts had only one DADA teacher when Tom Riddle was a student. If one teacher per subject was all Hogwarts needed, the student population in the 1940s must've been just as low as it was in the 1990s. And in the games Hogwarts Legacy and Hogwarts Mystery, the student populations in the 1890s and 1980s both appear to be just as low as it was in the 1990s.

There are a disproportionately high number of Muggleborns and Squibs in Ukraine

One word: Chernobyl.

• Mind....blown...
  • Like Chernobyl.
• And, by extension, Belarus. Heck, the whole area might be lacking in wizards.
• No. Basically the entire area where radiation went significantly above normal background was evacuated after the meltdown. There just isn't enough radiation past a 50-mile circle to make a difference.

The Salem Witches' Institute organized the pressings and witch dunkings in and around the original Salem.

What better way to cast suspicion off of yourself than to get people riled up about someone with your group's name but a different description, and take care of the Muggles with Muskets coalition once and for all?

The Salem Witches' Institute was the magical equivalent of a battered womens' shelter.

To allow recovery from physical and emotional abuse while working to prevent stalking from being an issue, as well as recovery from such things as love potion detox.

The Salem Witches' Institute is an American all-witches school with campuses in both Massachusetts and Oregon.

Wizards and Witches are descended from Fae.

This explains where their magic comes from. They appear as full human because the Fae blood has been diluted for centuries. They can have special abilities, such as metamorphmagi and animagi, because a few individuals have inherited more Fae blood as a genetic throwback to their ancestors. This explains why not everyone can become animagi. This also explains the wizarding world's rather skewed morals. The Fair Folk are known to be rather amoral.

• So muggle-born wizards are changelings?

Wizarding England was in a severe cultural depression during the First Wizarding War. It stayed that way through Harry's time because Voldemort and the Death Eaters did a really good job of shutting the artists up.

Building on what JK said, there's no way that Wizarding England can be a mismanaged cesspool all the time or they wouldn't have had museums, a Snidget Reserve, a clearly-thriving sports industry, and a Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts. I expect that in any other time, Fudge would have been considered mediocre but bearable instead of Lawful Stupid and corrupt.

In many historical wars the first thing to be attacked was, in fact, the losing side's art. Literature, music, records, fashion/architecture, sometimes even sacred sites—you name it, the winners will either control it or destroy it. Why? Because among other things, art encourages independence. The Death Eaters would have killed everyone who didn't agree with them or wasn't scared shitless of them, which meant killing the artists who were protesting them (and their families), which meant that the surviving artists had to stop because they wanted to stay safe. The Death Eaters must have done such a good job of beating all the artists into submission that by the time Harry came around, the people who should have been the first to help his cause had become the most cripplingly terrified of Voldemort.

Half of Hogwarts' teachers were spies, which is why there are so few of them in Harry's time.

This ties in with the previous WMG and what everyone else has been implying about Hogwarts' bare-bones curriculum—that they lost half the teachers in the first war. They can't have been solely coincidental deaths (there are way too many conveniently empty classrooms), so it must have been because those teachers were the Order's/Dumbledore's spies. That they were all the artistic ones (drawing/sculpting/painting, music, language, etc) makes sense because artists are smart, observational, creative, and extremely likely to protest what they know is wrong. The art teacher would have been a huge help with infiltration plans. The music and language teachers would have been the ones who actually went in for the job, and possibly helped with other things. Unfortunately when they lost a lot of teachers to Death Eaters, Dumbledore couldn't find replacements for them because all the other candidates had been killed off, mind-raped, or terrified at the thought of the first two. Hence Hogwarts had to go on a skeleton-crew, which was remedied a few years after Voldemort's final defeat.

Wizardkind doesn't recognize national borders as the muggles do.

There is an offhand reference to either the Transylvanian Quidditch team, or the local Minister of Magic in Goblet of Fire, and in Order of the Phoenix, Neville mentions the plant he got was from Assyria. Transylvania is a region of Romania, and Assyria is the historical name for what is mostly Iraq these days. Wizards are so far removed of the muggle culture that they in areas, disregard these petty wars and national thoughts (but not entirely, as the Quiddich championships proved). That's why Durmstrang is vaguely Ruritanian. Hermiones book about European wizarding schools would suggest there might be more than just the three, but there can't be all that many.

• Not to mention that Wizarding Britain and Ireland seem to be unified. Seamus, who's Irish, goes to a British school and is never indicated to be foreign; plus, in the fourth book the characters all support the Irish Quidditch team but treat it as a home team, and no Northern Irish Quidditch team is ever mentioned.
  • Couldn't that just mean that there's only one Wizarding school in the British Isles? It seems that England consists of England, Wales and Scotland, but Ireland is independent. They support Ireland, but there's no mention of Wales or Scotland. Or I might be wrong, and Ireland does have a wizard school, but Hogwarts is held in higher regard. Seamus is the only Irish student ever mentioned.
  • If one goes by the film portrayals, Cho Chang and McGonagall are both Scots. The latter probably makes more sense, given the name. As for the Quidditch teams, England's team was mentioned in passing. A lot of times, when there are a wide selection of teams from which to choose in a general area, casual fans will gravitate toward the most successful team. The implication in the mention of England's national team was that they weren't all that good.
    • BTW, also, Word of God states that the school itself is located in Scotland as opposed to "England" proper.
  • Quidditch Through The Ages does include a Northern Irish team among its roster of UK league teams.

Area 51 is the location of the American wizarding school (which still doesn't play Quidditch).

I mean, what would be a better place?

• And there's also a small annex of the American equivalent of the British Department of Magical Transportation where they test brooms and flying carpets, which aren't banned in America. This is mainly why the airspace is restricted.
• I am so glad I'm not the only person who has thought of that! I also imagine the American magical government would have to be the Department of Magic, rather than "Ministry", of course.
• Everyone uses Floo powder to get to school and home, every day. American public schools usually aren't live-in. I also suspect American Wizards blend with muggles better than their English counterparts.

Wizards are brain damaged.

It isn't clear how much wine the students drink, but they do give the 11-year old students wine. Their thought processes are impaired because they suffered brain damage from getting drunk on a regular basis as children.

• What the —? When did this happen?!
• Except that Europe isn't as crazy about the whole "Underage children must never drink or be near any alcoholic substance ever!!!" thing. I don't remember anything about them drinking, but even supposing that they did, that's probably more of a cultural thing.
• The Potterverse seems to mostly use pewter cauldrons; perhaps people who grow up in the wizarding world are exposed to significant amounts of lead or other neurotoxic chemicals at especially sensitive ages.

The 1993 Daily Prophet Grand Prize Galleon Draw was rigged as part of a Batman Gambit

Although it seems minor, it was actually the inciting incident for the series' central Story Arc of Voldemort's return (and thus his eventual downfall). In Azkaban, Sirius read an issue of the Prophet featuring a photo of the prize-winning Weasley family, including Scabbers/Wormtail with his iconic missing toe. Realizing that The Rat was living in proximity to Harry, Sirius was inspired to escape. This in turn inspired Womtail to "escape" and seek Voldemort.

The mastermind behind this could have been any one of the characters who, however briefly, benefited from the ensuing events: a villain or a good guy. However, a Death Eater perpetrator seems likelier because s/he would have to know that Peter Pettigrew was both a rat Animagus and the traitor, and among the good guys, only Sirius himself did (so far as we know). Alternatively, perhaps the Galleon Draw is determined by a semi-sentient object like the Goblet of Fire or the Sorting Hat, and it chose to initiate this particular chain of events for its own inscrutable reasons.

• Better yet, it was rigged for the simple reason that everyone wanted the Weasley to win after what happened to Ginny the previous year. This makes Lucius giving Riddle's diary to Ginny the inciting event for the whole series.

Being chosen as a Triwizard champion by the Goblet of Fire forms an Unbreakable Vow

Dumbledore mentions that the Triwizard Tournament was discontinued when the death toll became too high to ignore, which could be from younger students dying (through breaking the Unbreakable Vow) when they try to chicken out if they only signed up for the Tournament because of Eternal Glory!!1! and found themselves way over their heads. The age limit was imposed not only because of the advanced level of magic, but to prevent younger, egotistical students from being locked into such a dangerous tournament, attempting to back out, and die.

• That would surely be illegal, unless the information had been lost after the Tournament being discontinued for so long.

Those times where they make note of a wizard being a Fish out of Water are the exception, not the rule, and they get reprimanded for it later.

Because if all wizards were so ignorant of Muggle culture, they would be living in an Un Masqued World by now. There are very few places you could live that are all wizard (school grounds, Hogsmeade, maybe a few apartments above the shops in Diagon Alley), so using Muggle infrastructure without drawing attention to yourself is really a basic skill that they need to keep up the Masquerade. At least one point a wizard mentioning that he didn't know muggle men wore trousers, which implies he has never been on streets inhabited by muggles which, by the way, are most of them.

Wizards are Immune to Bullets.

• Obviously a gun could beat a wand in direct combat, as guns fire much faster than spells, so there is the obvious question of why wizards don't use them. I think that for some reason, bullets do not work in the wizarding world or against wizards.
  • [[Jossed]]. J.K. said that if it came down to a wizard and a muggle with a gun, you'd have a dead wizard.
    • Okay, can someone provide a source for that Word of God? I keep seeing it everywhere, but no one ever gives a citation for it. Is it just another rumor/misquote?
    • Probably. Also see Hagrid's outraged response to the suggestion that the Potters might have died in a car crash — which would also happen too quickly for casting spells. There clearly is some kind of automatic protection to at least some forms of mundane damage.

Armando Dippet's lack of awareness of the times in the Muggle World led to problems for the wizarding world later.

Dippet may have been, like many wizards, something of an isolationist. Brought up in the wizard world and dealing with wizard world issues, the problem of a muggle World War being right on Britain's doorstep might not have occurred to him. Harry Potter proved that one could spend his early childhood in an environment that was not very nurturing and recover from it if good family figures (in his cases, people like Sirius and the Weasleys) were put around him. There may have been several teenagers brought up in similar environments - wizards raised by muggles that may or may not have been killed during World War Two. Naturally, most of these children would end up in British muggle orphanages, exposing them further to the horrors of the war, but also cutting them off from nurturing contact from other, older wizards. And it's possible that it was this group of children that became the original Death Eaters. Word of God says that Voldemort was brought into the world in a one-sided act of passion (his father was under the effects of a Love Potion, which, despite its name, only causes strong infatuation - as mentioned by Slughorn in HBP) and raised in an environment where people felt obligated to take care of him...and that he would have turned differently if brought up in a loving environment. It seems strange that there were no families that would want to take in a seemingly bright, talented, and upstanding young man like Tom Riddle - or that there was nowhere in wizarding Britain where orphaned young wizards could live during the summer holidays. Dippet's and the Ministry's failure to make provision for these children, especially during WW2, might have had a hand in creating the monster that was Voldemort (and by extension, the Death Eaters.)

• The fanfic trilogy I'm working on about Minerva McGonagall schooldays and early post-Hogwarts life works on this very premise — that the magical world ignored WWII at their peril, and were almost completely unprepared for its effects. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's thought this!

'Ambition' is a nice of saying 'wizard supremicist'

Ambition can make people evil, but it shouldn't turn them into a mudblood hating Nazi-wizard. We know that Salazar Slytherin disliked muggle borns and had the ideal of Voldemort long before Voldemort was even born. Now, the teachers didn't want to come out and say this is the house for future wizard-Nazis, so they came up with the most politically correct term for people who want to wipe out all the mudbloods, enslave the muggles and glorify the purebloods - ambitious.

• Alternatively, Slytherin's original qualities (ambition, drive, natural leadership) were flanderized into this, either by the passage of time, or maybe even by J.K. herself.
  • Jossed in Pottermore. In Pottermore we find out that there are dark wizards from every Hogwarts house.
• Every house can have dark witches and wizards in them, Slytherin just SEEMS more so because Slytherin sorts for ambition, so you get dark w/w with ambition which would make them stick out more as they try to accomplish more.

All the best wand-makers are some form of immortal.

Gregorovitch really is Father Christmas (which sadly implies that Santa is dead, or at least the Eurpoean version is), and Ollivander has been operating his own shop since 390-whatever BC. In fact, Ollivander in the first movie looks oddly like the Second or (sometimes) Eighth Doctor... The reason it seemed like just yesterday that Lily (and James?) got her (their?)wand(s) could have been that for him, it literally was yesterday, because he works long hours and skips all of the time that a customer is not being seen (and that he is not being asked to do something else, like officiate for the Triwizard Tournament).

• So wandmakers are Time Lords? I can agree to this.

An expression of electrical technology that is as or more powerful (and/or as or more simplistic) as a given work of magic, yet simplistic enough to survive from startup to the point where it surpasses the magic, is in fact able to cause magic to malfunction in the same way that magic causes technology to malfunction, and thus the industrial and technological revolutions have affected wizarding society.

As we have so far seen, the likelihood of technology malfunctioning in the presence of magic has a direct correlation between the power and complexity of the magic and technology (respectively) and the probability of both a malfunction in general and how catastrophic said malfunction will be. My guess is that the inverse applies: If extremely powerful technology is "practiced" around sufficiently complex magic, that probability that said magic will fail tends toward 1. Magic, warping reality at a level similar to the absurdity experiments used to describe the hypothetically stupid effects of quantum physics at a macroscopic level, is automatically much, much stronger than any technology available today, but also amazingly more complex in its spells' inner workings.
For example, if a wizard had attempted to turn a teapot into a wheelbarrow while the protagonists of the Ocean's Eleven remake set off the EMP bomb nearby, the transfiguration would have failed catastrophically and resulted in, say, a large, lopsided stone washbasin with a spout. However, if someone in the vicinity had attempted a simple candle-lighting charm moments later (during the blackout), using the typical amount of effort for such a spell, the candle would have flared up and taken their eyebrows with it.
Thus, technology has not only sent wizards into hiding because it allows muggles to better observe the world around them, but it has also become more difficult for wizards in muggle communities to practice magic. This is not to say that wizards in muggle communities are less adept at practicing magic; on the contrary, they would likely tend to develop stronger baseline magical ability, such as can be seen with Hermione Granger (one of the most powerful witches of her generation) and Harry Potter (a very, very promising wizard who neglects his ability and rarely bothers with practicing finesse in his work), who both spent most of their first seventeen years in modern muggle communities.
An additional and significant example of technology affecting wizarding society, and the primary drive behind this guess, is that the most complicated spells have died out because of technology. As spells fall higher on the scale of power, the ratio of power to complexity reaches a point of diminishing returns, and thus they are more easily toppled by technology even though they are more powerful. Creating a basilisk, for example, would now only be possible in certain parts of Africa or the oceans (and other places where satellite coverage is less dense or nonexistent and ground-level technology is lacking), and even then only by being very careful in making sure every step went right, more careful than Salazar Slytherin would have had to have been. If the wizarding community had developed less complex versions of these powerful, complex spells, such as those which might have been discovered or developed by Voldemort, they might have still been able to complete such spells of staggeringly mighty result even to this day. As it is, they just collectively decided that the true means of recreating the effects of these spells had been lost, or that something prevented these old spells from being learned from books without knowledge of the theory behind them (being-transmitted knowledge, in the case of the Interdict of Merlin).
To sum up: Technology interferes with magic if the magic is weaker or much more complex. This resulted in wizards being stronger, but the spells they can still cast being weaker.

The Ministry of Magic is a horribly run government

This is partially canon, with it being know that the Ministry of Magic is horribly corrupt, but it is worse then what was explored in the books. We already know that the Malfoys basically own the ministry, along with a handful of powerful pureblood families, likely what remains of an old nobility system. We also know that the ministry was putting up a face of inter species equality, but in effect is incredibly... would it be racism or speciesism? against other sentient beings. The only position that appears to be a matter of any kind of vote (with how much the vote counts seams to be somewhere between "minimal" and none), thus unpopular and very bad people have been able to hold all sorts of power, such as Umbirge. What would seam like very important parts such as random tampering of Muggles objects (just think of how badly that could go?) is both horribly understaffed, but also run by a man who tampers with muggles things himself, that have lead directly to at least one serious breach of wizarding secrecy. They also have few to none good international relations, unable to get any assistance against Voldermort period, with no signs of embassies or departments related to international affairs.

Rebellions have been a constant problem (at least twice over QUIDDITCH), yet they let the economy by the ones who have rebelled most, Goblins. The ministry has been overthrown by a group of less then 50 dark wizards using mind control curses. Their appears to be no form of either soft or hard constitution, nor any form of government oversight, which allows them to make one of the two newspapers run what ever they want, able to call full scale tribunals on the cases of underage magic, and make horribly laws that allow the termination of a large percent of the magical population on clearly false information.

General Winter is the codename of a line of Russian Wizards that make use of weather control against invaders

Isn't it a bit strange that both Napoleon and Hitler got the worst possible weather for their invasions?

• They didn't get "the worst possible weather." They got Russian weather. Their mistake was trying to campaign too long and (in Hitler's case) invading Russia too late. If Hitler and Napoleon had stopped, dug in and consolidated lines of supply, they would have had intact campaign forces for the summer of campaigning. They didn't bother, and got stomped.

The wizarding community allied with the Dementors in Roman times.

It fit with the Roman view of punishment. It would also explain how medieval Muggles confused the innate, neutral abilities of the wizarding community with the dealings with evil spirits that people traditionally referred to as witches had.

The Statute of Secrecy was due to the Enlightenment

The fact that Wizards are hiding because 'muggles would expect us to solve all their problems' was explicitly stated at one point, despite the fact that various other people seem to think it had to do with witch burnings, although it's also pointed out that this is mostly wrong. So let's supposed the first is true. The Statute of Secrecy was first created in 1689 and signed into law in 1692. Let's check what happened in 1689 to see if we can pinpoint it.

Isaac Newton was elected to English Parliament in 1689.

So he then spent his entire time there demanding that Wizards work for the Crown, specifically demonstrate how magic worked, so that everyone eventually could have magic. Until he could get everyone magic, he proposed some sort of draft for wizards where they had to work for the government. This eventually reached the point that the Wizards had to Obliviate the entire English government (Which resulted in history remembering Isaac Newton as doing exactly nothing in Parliament, as every single thing he did was connected to magic.), and forming their own government and a sort of 'treaty' with the Muggles three years later.

• Several of the published "text" books (such as Quidditch Through the Ages) noted that wizards had been keeping themselves to themselves since at very least the Middle Ages, with the witch burning (which, I admit, didn't really work) and Muggle's hatred of them. Also, remember it was the INTERNATIONAL Statute of Secrecy, signed into law by all the magical governments of the world.
• 'Wizards were keeping to themselves' actually helps the theory. If the two worlds have reached a sort of agreement where they each kept to themselves, the Enlightenment was exactly the thing to blow the peace wide open, as scientists not only stop fearing wizards, but kept making demands of them.
• And the 'international' part is rather hard to explain no matter what. It makes no sense for the entire magical world to have felt persecuted either (Wizards in India were persecuted? Wizards in China? Native American wizards? How did the history books miss those witch burnings?), which is the other explanation. The best explanation is that the date of 1689/1692 is when England started secrecy and other countries agreed later. Probably Europe first, and then forced onto colonies, and finally the entire world. This would also explain why the ICW, who is in charge of enforcing it, is based in England.

The Department of Mysteries isn't just studying the weird things of magic, it is containing it

The few objects we see in the department are notable in two ways. First is that they are poorly understood, second is that they are dangerous. Brains that can do horrible things to people, time machines, a portal to the dead, and a room filled with the power of love. Leave these things for the general public is only begging for trouble, and worse if these things get loose to an unprepared one. They are not just studying the gate of death, they are making sure nothing comes out.

So yeah, basically the SCP Foundation.

Durmstrang is actually Scholomance

Magic school with reputation "dark arts" classes? Check. Located in Eastern Europe near a lake -hence the boat-? Check. So we found Durmstrang's location, guys, it's actually in Romania. And if Bram Stoker's Dracula is canon in Potterverse, Count Drac could have been a headmaster in the past.

The British Army turned the tide in Voldemort's first insurrection. This allowed for British economic recovery in the following years

According to the Harry Potter Wiki, Voldemort was winning hands down until most Giant tribes were wiped out and the survivors ran away. By coincidence, the height of Voldemort's power in his first insurrection is said to be around 1979/1980, and Margaret Thatcher (known as Iron Lady for a reason) became Prime Minister in 1979, and the economic crisis stopped worsening in 1980.Knowing that giants are extremely resistant to magic but seem to be normal (for their size) in resisting more conventional attacks, it could be that Margaret Thatcher reacted to the news of Voldemort's insurrection and the Giants' attacks by deploying the British Army to shell Giant camps into oblivion, neutralizing Voldemort's heavier hitters.

The magical world isn't "ignored by stupid muggles".. there's a blanket muggle-repelling charm on it cast so long ago, wizards have forgotten about it.

Muggles don't notice wizard things because of the charm. Muggle parents of wizarding children, over the years, will find themselves forgetting their children do magic. Not that they have children, but just the whole magic thing. Eventually the muggleborn just stops doing magic in front of their parents, because they're tired of explaining every time. Halfblood's parents remember because they are still connected to the world and see the magic every day, but the longer you're away from it the more it drifts out of mind. So in short, muggles aren't stupid or ignorant, they just are being slowly repelled.

Pure-blood families steal from muggles to get their wealth

It's not much of a stretch to suggest that prejudiced pure-bloods would use their magic to easily steal vast amounts of wealth from muggles. James' family could also have become rich in this way, but perhaps his commitment to good came out of atonement for his ancestors' transgressions. This also explains why the Weasleys are so poor, as they would object to such thievery.

Maybe the setting never was all that shiny to begin with

• The earlier films (namely the first two) were vibrant and colorful, while the visual look in later films was more faded and subdued. However, maybe this was more than the result of directorial shifts in the series. Maybe Hogwarts and the entire wizarding world always looked that way, but in the eyes of a young and optimistic eleven year-old boy, everything appeared to be more full of life and color. This can all be viewed as a symbolic or literal representation.
  • Maybe the setting is neither as shiny and colorful as it's depicted in the first film, nor as dark and bleak as it appeared in the last. And maybe that's the whole lesson.

Wizards do not live longer than muggles.

Some can live a very long time, but most probably live about 50 or 60 years. Maybe even less. They think they live longer than muggles because they haven't been paying attention to current events in the muggle world for the past 1000 years or so and think that the average muggle's life is like it was in 998 or so.The evidence for this claim:

• Grandparents are rarely mentioned. Even with the recent wizarding wars, you wouldn't expect that much loss of the cohort.
• There is no evidence of anything like a wizarding college, much less graduate school existing. You graduate Hogwarts and go to work. At 17.
• People tend to marry right out of high school. Again, at 17. And divorce is apparently rare.
• Ron's great aunt at Bill and Fleur's wedding brags about being 100 and something. If wizards really live longer than muggles, say, 30 years longer (i.e. about 110 years on average), then that would be like bragging about being 70. Seventy year olds don't brag about their age, 90+ year olds do. So 100+ must be an extraordinary age for a wizard. Bragging also makes more sense if longevity implies not just "I had good genes and the sense not to smoke" but "I can make an immortality potion the right way."
• McGonagall is described as "old". If she was born in the 1930s, then she'd be in her 50s or 60s during the 1990s when the book is set. Again, not consistent with a longer life expectancy, though one might allow some for the viewpoint (i.e. the viewpoint characters are 11-17.)
  • She's not really described as 'old' past the first book, when she's 58 (her birth year is stated as 1935) and comes off as very uptight when Harry (who, keep in mind, is barely 11 at the time) is just getting to know her. So she'd obviously come off likely as much older than she really was. And, to be fair, nearing 60 is probably pretty old to a little kid.
• This might also partially account for the apparent slow rate of progress in the wizarding world: not enough people have the time to really develop their understanding of magic and how to manipulate it more effectively so new spells, etc, are rare.
• Although this may have less to do with there not being any old people and more to do with the fact that Rowling, for all her literary gifts, wasn't all that great at keeping her numbers sensible. One of the things you see with the films was an attempt to correct that by depicting some of the adult wizards as closer to the age JKR would have had them at the beginning if given a chance to do it over. Harry's parents' generation are in their mid-late 30s in the books and probably depicted as in their mid-40s or so in the films. McGonagall, according to a description JKR once gave, was supposed to be a 'sprightly seventy-year-old' around the time of the book series, so she, too, is aged accordingly in the films. God only knows how old Flitwick is, especially with goblin genetics. His depiction in the first couple of films implies that he was ancient, and then subsequent films seem to backtrack a bit - although if goblins' aging genetics are anything similar to those of giants (where Hagrid is in his sixties by the time the series starts and, even in the series, looks about twenty years younger), Flitwick could indeed be older than he looks. As for the grandparents or lack thereof, most major characters' grandparents are either explicitly dead or minor enough as not to warrant a mention. For all we know, for example, at least one of Arthur's or Molly's parents (who would likely be in their 70s) could have been at the wedding and simply not been recognized by or introduced to Harry. There seem to be enough old people in the books to indicate that wizards that survive war or illness live at least as long as Muggles. They certainly seem to stay active longer than muggles at the same age. In fact, so few wizards in the series are mentioned explicitly as having died of old age that it almost makes you wonder why the hell a young adult Voldemort was so afraid of death in the first place...

Not ALL Muggle-borns go to Hogwarts/the wizarding world

Similar to how Jedi locate force sensitives in Star Wars. The parents are the ones who decide whether their child will become a Jedi, and in many cases they decide against it.In the Harry Potter universe, their parents can simply refuse to let their children attend a wizarding school.

• They certainly could forbid it - heck, Hogwarts attendance in general is only made compulsory in Book 7, which indicates that all parents of young wizards in Britain, whether muggle or wizard themselves, had the option not to let their children attend Hogwarts. The only problem with that is that magic power doesn't suddenly disappear just because a kid's not allowed to attend Hogwarts. In most cases with wizards that aren't raised in the wizard community (Harry's an example, obviously), magic power will show itself in times of crisis or emotional distress without being called upon by the user. In the case of Muggle-borns, if left unchecked, this is bound to cause some Statute of Secrecy/Reasonable-Restriction-whatsits issues. Also, it's implied in the books that the Hogwarts staffers that deliver these announcements will take measures to soften the Muggle caretaker(s)' stance on the issue. ^note Dumbledore, for example, got the orphanage matron really drunk in the process of explaining the situation, and Hagrid simply scared the hell out of the Dursleys so much that they didn't dare try to keep resisting him.

The Restriction of Underage Wizardy is an attempt to avert Schmuck Bait laws in the face of the Masquerade.

It is shown that the Ministry neither knows nor cares if underage wizards and witches practice magic in a magic household or other such situation; but any underage wizard that uses magic in a non-wizatrding area is immediately busted. It is likely that the Ministry phrased this law as they did so that underage wizards can intentionally disobey in ways that don't break the secrecy thing and keep the muggle unawareness thing as a "more important law that shouldn't be broken" (as well as make it look like they aren't being unfair to muggle-borns).

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