To be fair to the “Southern/Mediterranean” section, Balkans do love to tell the Spanish, Italians, and Portuguese that they’re honorary Balkans. But it’s laughable for Serbia and Bulgaria to get lumped in there.

But for Eastern Europe to not start at one end of Slovenia or the other is silly.

#guten

Imagine what the world would be like if the con artists pulling this stuff were pushing people to build libraries and educate kids.

Oh, for sure trying to analyze magic in HP canon is a fool’s errand. I always recall in the first book McGonnagal comes out during a rain storm and uses a magic bullhorn to tell kids to stop playing quiddich. Then after that the announcers are just using what amounts to telepathy and the bullhorn never comes back.

I do agree with what you’re saying about the arcane magic part. As they say, the power of love is a curious thing. A friend of mine was always so upset with the wizarding world being “the laziest culture ever to have existed.” Which…yeah. How can the Weasleys be so poor when you just poof food into existence anyway? If it was intended as a critique of modern society, I would appreciate it more, but it’s obviously just the extrapolation of “what’s a quirky daily life thing for Harry to see?”

Sure, but ideological blindness shouldn’t equate to other parents not saving their children the same way. Lily Potter didn’t plan to use sacrificial magic, she jumped in front of a bullet. It’s rare, but it happens IRL once in a while. It seems odd that a Wizarding World under siege would not see more noble sacrifices purely as a matter of statistics. (yes, I realize this would make the books a moot point and be no fun and it’s fiction so just ignore it.)

The kind of sad part is that it means that all the parents of Hogwarts kids he DID kill - NONE of them loved their children.

Only Lilly Potter loved her kid. …OR… The true nature of Gingers was the real evil-killer. And the deaths of Fred and George were done with guns, and the Prewetts (Molly Weasley nee Prewett) were not gingers and Molly got the recessive gene.