[HPforGrownups] Re: Balance of Power in the Wizarding World

[MadameSSnape at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 107537

In a message dated 7/24/2004 12:04:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
yswahl at stis.net writes:
A War doesnt make sense unless there is a balance of power to 
start. Otherwise one side would have vanquished the other a
long time ago....
=============
Sherrie here:

Wars almost never make sense in my book - but history is replete with 
instances of one country/city-state/bloc/faction beginning a war without regard to 
the size/strength of its neighbor.  I'll give you one very good example - the 
American Civil War.  The Federals (Union) had more manpower, better 
transportation, better communication, more industrial capability, more materiel (and in 
the end, the shrewder Kentuckian at the top), but that didn't stop the 
Confederates from firing on Fort Sumter, or attacking at Bull Run.  The Confederacy, in 
any objective view, never had a snowball's chance in July of winning - but 
they slugged it out for four long years, through 620,000+ deaths and gods alone 
know how many irreparably damaged bodies and souls.

The flip side, of course, is the American Revolution - when the Colonials, 
with little cohesion, a tiny army with no training to speak of, no real 
manufacturing, and no finances, whupped the British - THE superpower in the world at 
that time - hard enough and often enough to make it too expensive for the Crown 
to keep pouring its resources into what was a losing proposition.

Win one, lose one... <G>

BTW, I'm curious as to where you get your documentation for the following 
statement:

<With the death of Sirius, I feel that there was a shift of power
to the dark wizards which would be very dramatic if DD were to
fall. Sirius was by all accounts a very powerful wizard for the
Order, second only to Dumbledore. >

I don't see Sirius being that powerful within the Order.  (I make no 
judgments on the level of his PERSONAL power, as we barely get to see him use it.)  In 
fact, I see him as something of a ward of the Order - certainly not as 
Dumbledore's capo di tutti capi...  To me, his role was somewhat analogous to that 
of Mary Surratt in the plot to kidnap/assassinate Lincoln - he "owned the nest 
where the egg was hatched" (Grimmauld Place), but played only a peripheral 
role in the activities of the "bird".

FWIW,
Sherrie
"Unless history lives in our present, it has no future." 
PRESERVE OUR CIVIL WAR BATTLEFIELDS!


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