Relative Power Levels

The following represent estimates by researchers of the power levels of key figures in this historical chronicle.¹

Relative power of different characters in each class of power.

Specific notes

Abbott

Hannah

Hannah is a fairly average Hogwarts' student, her strong gift from the Powers will not make her particularly stand out in any single branch of magic studied there. She has the scores to get into NEWT level classes, but it probably will not be easy for her once there.

Note These scores correspond with someone who, in the cannon universe, has a panic attack going into her OWL exams. She, unlike the more central characters, truly had to work really hard to get through those and into NEWT classes.

Bones

Susan

Susan represents a slightly stronger average student. Her scores are slightly shifted towards offence and defense, as befitting someone who comes from a family that Riddle felt the need to attack personally. However, with an average of 6.77, she does not have the history-making scores that characters like Dumbledore or Harry do.

Delacour

Fleur

As you can see, Fluer is fairly strong, so it was no surprise that the Goblet chose her. Several of her scores are qualified in that her ability to use them is limited by her veela nature. Unfortunately for her, the Goblet was not designed to consider that.

Dumbledore

Albus

The canonical books talk about Dumbledore as the most powerful wizard known, the only one Riddle fears, and yet Dumbledore cannot defeat Riddle. Why is this? Here I provide a possible explanation that is not simply lack of will to do so. The devil is in the details. Riddle is exceptionally strong in both offensive and defensive magic (Archangels and Angels), Dumbledore is only above average offensively, but is superlative in transmutation, and the manipulation of physics and chemistry, he is also hard to beat at binding the will and augmenting nature. Unfortunately, Riddle actually equals or exceeds Dumbledore in the wand arts except in transmutation and temporary augmentation (Virtues). Neither of these makes for an easy combat victory, and Riddle's strong offensive magic means that it essentially becomes a stand-off between the two. Dumbledore's great intelligence lets him use transmutation and out-of-the-box thinking to make up for a lack of directly offensive capability.

Dursley

Dudley

Dudley is a male child from a human father and a squibbish nephil mother. He stood a good chance of being born pure human. He has a minuscule ability to perceive that magic exists, and essentially one totally uncontrolled ability from the Seraphim: Dudley is incredibly sensitive to the use of legilimency, he is practically an antenna for it. Since Harry is nearly always using legilimency (to detect people around him if nothing else), Dudley is constantly reminded of Harry's presence magically. Since being reminded of Harry breaks the spell, Dudley is effectively a bubble in which Harry is detectable. This bubble extends to anyone that Dudley is paying attention to. Dudley (unfortunately for Harry) rarely pays any attention to teachers.

Note Unfortunately, I need Dudley to do a fair amount of "Harry Hunting." He falls in that that 4% chance of a partial inheritance from just his mother.

Evans

Lily

Lily inherited the sum total of her parents, plus an unexpected something extra.

Granger

Hermione

Hermione has very classic scores for the child of two squibs in the Seraphim, Thrones, and Principalities categories. Her scores in the Cherubim, Archangels, and Angels categories suggest her parents may not in fact be squibs however. With these scores, my guess is that they are themselves the children of squibs, but did not get the required scores to get noticed by the magical world. The key thing about Hermione though is the Dominions, Virtues, and Powers categories. These three scores all suggest that Hermione benefited from that 1% base rate of something bizarre happening.

Potter

Euphemia

We have no canonical background information on Euphemia except for the fact that she was either a pure-blood or a half-blood. Thus, I have moulded her to fit what I envision James to be. She is an incredibly eclectic mix of highs and lows, in terms of ability.

Fleamont

Fleamont was an incredible duellist and a good potioneer.

Harry

Harry is, as you can see, slightly above an average of his parents except in a couple of key categories where he straight up inherited the more powerful ability. As the child of two exceptionally powerful parents, even a partial inheritance can still result in someone really really powerful. These represent Harry's numbers at birth.

James

James really should not have existed at all. He was born, per cannon, after his parents were already old. In some places he he inherited the average of both parents, in others he inherited the sum total of both parents, and in a few places he has the stronger power.

Prewett

Molly

Molly was born with a higher score for Thrones. Her own behaviour cost her ability. I suspect that Molly learned this from her own mother, and thus that while her score was higher at birth, it was not much higher, because she inherited a disability due to her (maternal) ancestor's misbehaviour along the same lines (love potions). If not for that abnormally low score, her average would be one of the highest in the family.

Prince

Eileen

We have next to no canonical information about Eileen Prince. We know that she was either unable or unwilling to protect her sun from the muggle Tobias Snape. I am assuming unable. With that in mind, I have given her a range of abilities that left her week in the wand-based subjects, particularly where it comes to the types of magic that would allow her to protect her son most effectively. She was probably good but not brilliant at Potions.

Riddle

Tom

Riddle, as the male child of a near Squib, did not have great odds of being a powerful wizard. That he is means that he was that 1% chance. These also represent numbers from at birth. Giving numbers from 1981 or later would, I think, be too much of a spoiler.

Snape

Severus

Snape is a potions prodigy. He does his potions entirely instinctively, and as such has no understanding of why other people do not find them just as easy. Snape is not just picking his ingredients precisely right, and augmenting them exactly as needed, he is even manipulating chemistry at an instinctual unconscious level so that his cauldrons and fires are exactly what the potion needs. Snape has never needed an explanation of how to cut an ingredient, how to stir a potion, why one stirs one way versus another way, or any of the other myriad details of potion making. He does not understand why anyone else might need these tedious lectures - they are self explanatory to anyone with half a brain. The only reason why Lily outshines him in Slughorn's class is because:

1. he is essentially lazy. The class comes easily to him, so he frequently tries just hard enough to show up everyone present except Lily (he does not care if she beats him)
2. he is distracted by James and Sirius
   • partly by what they are doing to him
   • partly by what he is trying to do to them
3. he is distracted by Lily whereas she feels only friendship for him and so is not distracted by him.

Note While Snape does love potions, his true love is the Dark Arts. There is a reason why, in the cannon universe, Harry will find all sorts of self-crafted spells in the margins of Snape's potions text book. Snape was not focused on potions in Potions class, he was busy crafting his own spells, many of which were dark in nature. The true potions afficianado would have been fully focused on his/her work, not on something else.

Weasley

Bill

If you look, Bill has pretty much the ceiling score of his brothers in most categories, except virtues. He needs someone else to brew potions for him 9 times out of 10 (hence Fleur is the healer in the family). Bill is not taking advantage of any real 1%s, he is simply getting nearly the best of two powerful parents.

Charlie

Reading the magic in magical creatures is key to Charlie's work. He is fortunate that he does not need to transfigure much, and reasonably (though not stellar) scores in locality magic means that he can help with the protections at the reserve.

Fred

I think Fred is slightly more perceptive than Ron. Fred and George understand how magic works, though they do not realise they do so. Fred is able to figure out potions but it takes a fair amount of trial and error to get the application of his magic right as he creates them for the first time. He does not have Ron's gift for locality based effects.

George

George is average at reading people (for a nephil). Slightly better at transmutation, he is not quite as good at potions (as compared to Fred).

Percy

Percy studied so hard because he, unlike Ron, is determined not to under perform. The characters do not know about these power levels, so Percy does not know that he simply isn't as capable as his older brothers.

Ginny

Ginny's brothers fear her temper for good reason. Ginny seventh child, and the first girl in generations. There is an implication that the Weasley family may have been cursed as part of a plot to isolate them by preventing them from making alliances by marriage. If so, it stands to reason that as the curse wears away, the child that breaks the curse might absorb some of the residual energy and become correspondingly more powerful. However, due to the maternal influence and despite her paternal influence, she is merely minimally acceptable in the Thrones category, making her somewhat vulnerable to mental magics.

Ronald

Ron is an under-performer, he has the ability, but not the drive. That being said, Ron is under-powered as compared to his brothers. If he knew that, his inferiority complex would be even worse than it is. Of particular note, like his siblings, note the influence of Molly's low score from the Thrones.

Note Interestingly, even though I was not trying, he and Hermione came out with identical averages. Of particular note with Ron, I do not see him as particularly perceptive about people (low Seraphim). When, in the canon universe, Ron, Harry and Hermione are on the run in book seven, Ron learns the spells to hide their campsite easily because that is a type of magic that does in fact come naturally to him.

Author's Notes on Implications

If you compare Snape, James, and Lily, you will see that Snape and James are almost precisely equal, except for their exact skill set, and that Lily is actually slightly under-powered compared to both of them. This matches what Ollivander says of James' and Lily's wands, that James' has a little more power, and yet makes Lily powerful enough to be scary.

The other thing I have done is that the average of Riddle and Harry's abilities are both an 8, so that while they have different specific abilities, they are in a sense equally strong nephilim. You will see that really Harry is a much more balanced wizard, he has neither the highs nor the lows that Riddle has (though neither is an especially strong Cherubim). The one place that Harry shines that Riddle does not is the Principalities - population effects. This is probably counter-intuitive. Riddle works by intimidation, and while you can intimidate populations, that is not actually what he does. Instead he creates atrocities, and allows his actions to act on the populace. Remember that the population effects from the Principalities are tied to locations, thus Harry is unconsciously enhancing his environment with magics that affect the people around him. However, he will not find out that is happening until he has travelled far enough to see what it looks like when people are not affected by this magic.

If you stack rank Riddle against Lily and James, the there are really four things that make Riddle so scary.

1. With an inheritance of 9 from the Seraphim, few people can defend against his legilimency, particularly when he employs it in mid duel.
2. With his maximised inheritance from the Thrones, nearly no-one can resist his Imperius Curse. In point of fact, Riddle is unconsciously bending other nephil to his will merely by being in their presence.
3. Few wizards (or witches) are as strong at both attack and defence (this is effectively two things, hence I said four total).

If you compare him to Harry, and in light of the above, I am going to get complaints that I am either being inconsistent if I let Harry resist Riddle's Imperius Curse, or that I'm ignoring cannon where Harry does just that. There are three possibilities, and I will probably actually go some combination of them:

1. If you put the Goblet of Fire grave yard situation in this universe, then you would not just have Harry resisting Riddle, because Harry also has Lily's protection augmenting his capabilities. Riddle never fully understood that protection, and taking Harry's blood does not fully bypass it.
2. Lily's protection aside, you need to decide what theory of horcruxes you are using, and what affect that theory has on Riddle's powers after the destruction of the diary. For this work, I think that both the audience and the characters are in the dark about that answer, but suffice to say that one way or another, you cannot suffer the destruction of a horcrux you have created without suffering.
3. In the books, Harry learns to resist the Imperius Curse, the fake Moody uses it several times on him before he can resist it easily. Even then, it takes Harry noticeable effort to resist Riddle's when they meet in the graveyard. This suggests that Harry's ability is less than Riddle's, but that Harry's is sufficiently strong that with training he can learn to stand up to Riddle. This last suggests that anyone with a score of 8 in the Thrones can be taught to resist Riddle's Imperius Curse. That puts James, Dumbledore, and Snape at a level where they need not fear Riddle overwhelming them in the mind arts.