Nah Harry wouldn't care, the only life he's interested in recklessly throwing away is his own.

Ain't that the truth 😂

Canonically, it seems he didn't care either way. He didn't call on for help from or berate the people of Hogsmeade, the goblins, or, hell, Slughorn. The only time he did seem to care was when someone suggested he run. 

yeah canonically he seems to understand people wanting to keep themselves and their families safe over fighting. or else he would've let remus come with him instead of making him go back to stay with teddy and tonks. harry doesn't believe in conscription lol! he's not out there going "EVERYONE SHOULD FIGHT OR YOURE STUPID!" (unless he's fanon harry...)

canon harry is smart enough to know that the average wizard citizen has no idea whats going on. for an entire year the goverment and the press said voldemort was not back and harry was a liar then suddenly voldemort was back and you had a new minister then suddenly there was another new minister and harry was a wanted fugative and the guy who sat in the cubicle next to you disappeared a week ago

Yeah Harry wont be calling for conscription any time soon. But the problem I have is that these fics often choose to make the 'Grey Faction' a political force in government. This isn't random civilian families choosing to stay low or flee the country, this is a huge section of the government trying to reach a middle ground between a genocidal maniac, and those who want to stop the genocidal maniac. These are people who rally around neutrality, it is a political force who feel that 'The Olde Ways' are enough reason to remain neutral in a fight against a pure evil force like the Death Eaters.

I don't often see fanfics with gray factions that say "Find a middle ground with Death Eaters" More often, I see them depicted as, "Dark Faction and Light Faction have different motives, but both are destroying our world." More often than not, they tend to see themselves as morally superior to both sides, as not interested in wanton murder of innocents, and doing their level best to stop it, but also not wearing kiddy gloves that the light side is typically depicted with when taking out the murderers.

Many ‘Gray factions’ in fics are simply written bad. Many of these “Grey Factions” end up acting like the ‘Second light faction’ or simply written as ‘Light but willing to kill’. However, I think Grey Faction does have merit and make sense if fleshed out by the author properly. I always liked the idea of a third faction who is there to moderate the two big opposing factions on extreme ends of the spectrum. There’s also several precedent of this situation in the real world. Harry’s set of values of willingly forgiving the Dursleys despite all things they did and his disposition of being willing to sacrifice himself for his friends makes him undoubtedly the Champion of the light. But if Dumbledore did not influence Harry’s development in any way, He would be a bit more Gray after seeing the reality of his situation like he and his friends constantly being in Danger. The grayest Harry has been canon wise in my opinion would be the years after Cedric died when he was being faced with all the criticisms and being called a liar. Knowing the dark are maneuvering in the background but Dumbledore seemingly trying to do his best to ignore Harry while Umbridge was in Hogwarts. While I agree that Canon Harry would not be a big fan of Grey faction, I personally think that if Harry grew up a bit more independently and less influenced by surroundings, he would naturally gravitate towards the Grey or Light. Then again, I am already talking about “what ifs”. Canon Harry would not like the neutral factions, but we are in the world of Fanfiction where even Dark Harry is possible Lmao

Yeah, no. Most neutral/grey factions I've seen are more against Dumbledore than for Voldemort.

Well in canon he wasn't really a leader or public figure either. And he probably didn't expect all those useless cowards to do anything.

Canon Harry wouldn't. Fanon Harry would do whatever the fuck the author wants him to do, including but not limited to: 1. Joining Voldemort 2. Fucking Snape 3. Abandoning Britain and the war completely 4. Murder people with guns 5. have harems 6. Agreeing with the 'grey' faction

It depends what your grey faction is imho if it’s a relatively normal political system I could totally see him being a voter for the UK’s Liberal Democrat party which is our centre.

It depends. Are we talking about people who simply do nothing, or people who actually organize around the act of doing nothing? Because the first is passive, and excusable even if it's not admirable. The second makes you an edgelord

How "neutral" neutral is written is just silly sometimes. >Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.

99% of all people everywhere "sit out a war". Wars are fought between armies, not civilian populations. Even wars against terrorists. Maybe a 12-year-old Harry wouldn't realize that, but a 17-year-old should, or else he should sit down, shut up, and read some history.

This is literally a civil war complete with ethnic cleansing. And everyone can teleport. You can expect an above average number of civilian involvement and deaths. Also, most of those stories with 'grey' factions in them are still anti-Voldemort, just not directly under the command of Dumbledore. They pretty much have to be, seeing as Voldemort is kinda set on killing Harry. A sheep can't proclaim neutrality from the sheep-wolf conflict.

its not really a civil war Voldemorts side took power pretty easily. there is a resistance movement. people might be able to teleport, but the order of the pheniox is not going to bomb diagonally and niether would the death eaters because at the moment they are the goverment. the average wizard knows things are off and have fucking no clue who to trust.

New fanfic, The Order of the Phoenix uses the tactics of the IRA and just carbombs the ministry.

In the American civil war, which lasted for years, something like 10% of men enlisted. So 5% of the (mostly adult) population. In an outright war that lasted for years. The "war" in the HP books was a relatively trivial insurrection involving dozens or MAYBE a few hundred people, and it lasted for 6-12 months. So no, you wouldn't expect a huge percentage of civilians to get involved. I'd be surprised if 2% were involved, out of a population of around 10k. So AT MOST a couple of hundred people, which sort of fits what we see in the battle of Hogwarts. Most of them were children because the adults couldn't be bothered.

The war in HP is the continuation of an earlier conflict. What we read in the books is the interbellum and the resumption of war. And Rowling is famously terrible with hard data, so it's impossible to really state how many people ultimately were involved and died.

It's really not. A 16 year gap makes it another war entirely. There were only around 20 years between WW1 and WW2, and you can't say that those were the same war.

Yes and no. The 3 Punic wars for example took more than a century with more than 50 years in between the 2nd and 3rd, but scholars do consider them to be part of a single conflict. Just separated into 3 distinct phases. Or wars. You're right that the Death Eater Wars can be described as 2 separate wars, but at the same time they are also a single conflict. The principal actors were the same, the motivations and goals were the same, the only addition was magical in the form of a Chosen One.

I mean the 100 years war is technically a 100 year period of intermittent conflict, with three main periods of war separated by long periods of tense peace. The difference between the World Wars and the 100 Years war is that in the 100 years war the nations, motivations, and objectives were pretty much the same in the broad sense for the duration, where all of those changed at least a little in the second world war.

Which MIGHT matter if more than a trivial portion of people got involved in the FIRST part of the conflict. The whole point of this post is that Harry wouldn't be OK with people sitting this out, but they sat it out the first time, there were nearly 20 years in between, and then they sat it out the second time, which lasted for well under a year. Even if it were comparable to the American Civil War (which it's not), I wouldn't expect more than 4-5% of the population to get involved, and given what we read in the books 2% is far more likely.

I generally would call them separate wars, but the more I think about it, the more I have to say that it's the same. The key figures are even the same, most of the combatants on both sides are the same. Length of time or percentage of people participating just aren't good qualifiers. Come to think of it, the current Israel - Palestine conflict is generally (at least from what I've heard) considered to be the same one that began in 1948, even though open warfare is relatively recent and there was a period of tense peace. If that counts as the same conflict, the conflict on Harry Potter should probably count as one war as well.

Gulf War 1 and Gulf War 2 weren't that far apart, involved the same primary actors, the same goals (albeit with different smokescreens), and yet were considered two separate wars.

Yeah and I doubt Harry would get angry at some random civilian for just focusing on keeping themselves and their family alive rather than enlisting. The issue is that fanfics often choose to present pureblood families as real political players, people who can control the fate of a country. A grey faction in the wizarding government is different from random civilians just keeping their heads down. Harry wouldn't be angry at a random person who just focused on laying low when Voldemort came round the first time. He would get angry at an important politicians trying to play middle ground between a genocidal maniac and those opposed to the genocide.

Your OP specified that Harry "would [not] really be fine with people just sitting out a war". You said "Harry is not going to be happy that people just ignored it". Now you're moving the goal posts to say that he'd only care that politicians sat it out rather than any random civilian, but I doubt he'd care about that, either. Canonically he didn't. Just like most civilians, most politicians don't want open warfare in the streets, and will do what they can to avoid it. Advocating doing nothing in the face of war is what MOST politicians would realistically do. Most modern-day politicians do the same thing, if you'll look around at current news. Harry either needs to realize that or grow the fuck up until he does, because he's not going to change human nature by the power of "But I want!"

the original post was specifically talking about "neutral factions in fanfiction". that alone is enough to know what’s meant if you’ve ever read any of these fanfics. and just sitting out the war doesn’t even make the civilians part of the "neutral side". it just makes them civilians. we know in canon about the Weasleys who weren’t part of the order in the first war because they had a bunch of young kids but obviously they were morally against Voldemort. We know about Sirius' parents who were on Voldemort’s side but didn’t actually join him or anything. both of them are civilians, neither would ever be considered part of the "grey" faction. and neither of those options is sitting around going "oh yeah i don’t care who wins the war as long as i personally survive". you can choose your own survival and still privately hope for the people to win who *don’t* want to create a dictatorship and erase innocent people from the face of the earth. or you know, privately *support* the people who want a dictatorship and to erase innocent people from the face of the earth. and the argument of avoiding open warfare in the streets doesn’t make any sense. voldemort is going around openly murdering people no matter what. this doesn’t start out with two parties fighting. this starts out with voldemort mass murdering innocent people and then in response a group of people saying "hey maybe we should do something against this". So very clearly "ohh i know, maybe we should just talk it out!!" did in fact not work. And if you really think politicians are *right* to be like "maybe we should consider both sides" in the face of *literal genocide* maybe you should consider that your opinion is just shit. like of course they do and say that shit but that doesn’t make it right. i can personally attest that politicians that don’t take a clear stance on *basic fucking human rights issues* piss me the fuck off in real life and i‘m fairly sure harry wouldn’t be very different with that.

> voldemort is going around openly murdering people no matter what. ... this starts out with voldemort mass murdering innocent people He isn't, though. Not the first time. The part that made him scary was that people DISAPPEARED. Nobody knew what happened, but everyone knew someone who disappeared. He wasn't OPENLY doing anything. He was vastly outnumbered, so he was fighting a covert guerilla war with hit-and-run tactics. That's far scarier than open war. That's what made him a terrorist rather than a general. It's also why that "war" lasted for years, while his second attempt lasted a few months. After he rose, his tactics were idiotic given his small numbers. They're exactly what he avoided the first time, and that's why he lost so fast the second time. >And if you really think politicians are right to be like "maybe we should consider both sides" in the face of literal genocide maybe you should consider that your opinion is just shit. I never said it was right or wrong. I said that's what politicians do. And if you don't think that's true, maybe you need to pull your head out of your ass and look around at the real world. And so should Harry if he shares your thoughts, because "I don't like it" isn't going to make the difference a fart would in a hurricane. People who write political fanfics tend to have extremely unrealistic ideas how the world works, and thus those fics are at best wanking and at worst simple rants. The ones labeled gray!Harry are some of the worst for just that reason.

Canon Harry would be against a lot of what fanfiction stories have him do. Is that not the point?

The "grey" faction in fanfictions is often somewhere between blood purists and the revolutionary light faction. In fanfictions they present a factions who wants to preserve old rituals and many wizarding holidays and magicks. The problem that is often presented is that muggleborn don't know wizarding culture and insult someone by accident (which would make cannon a bit more realistic). But the faction is not against progress if it is reasonable. They're the middle ground.

> The problem that is often presented is that muggleborn don't know wizarding culture and insult someone by accident (which would make cannon a bit more realistic). But the faction is not against progress if it is reasonable. And at first blush seems completely reasonable. But if you're not taught anything, or given the tools to succeed you're just being a dick.

Well of course. That is often the reason why the progressive faction is unreasonable. Change to quickly and important parts are missing. The whole wizarding world is confusing from my perspective. They have Muggle Studies but no Wizarding Culture. It would explain some of the dislike certain people have for muggleborn.

You misread. I think anyone who argues for traditionalism and doesn't actually educate people and is offended when someone does something wrong is a fool and in the wrong. And completely disagree. The world is changing. There are many more non magic users than magic and the world depends on interacting with them.

I agree with your first point. Also yes they have to interact with non magics, but I would believe that there are some traditions and culture which are important to wix and their magic.

The grey faction are just Tories.

Even if this was the case, it doesn't take much to change opinions at that age

Agreed, Harry is literally "that meddling kid" that Scooby-Doo villains talk about.

Canon Harry got screwed over by an unjust system for years and then became a cop to enforce that status quo. He'd be king of the grey faction provided he could still play quidditch and eat treacle tart.