A woman damaged by violent men saved by a most unviolent man?
Quite likely; it's certainly plausible enough. Eh, in Shack's case I consider him the same as a crooked cop and have 'bout the same concern, that he get what he earned, for him as for them.
I suspect wizard shields can, maybe, stop one bullet, which was enough when firearms were first developed. These days, though, that's totally insufficient, though I doubt any wizrd who relies on his shields that way is going to survive to tell others that a problem exists.
35-40 able bodies can still cause major havoc, esp. with the transport and security that Harry can provide. It would be nice to have more, but I -really- doubt he'll get more 'til such time as the Resistance extracts its head and decides that it really should make peace with him since they've got a common enemy. I do love his analogy as the the responsibility of muggles for Riddle; I'm still willing to argue that the -primary- responsibility for how Riddle turned out rests with Albus Dumbledore and I hope he's paying, somewhere, for his sins.
Author's response
And of course shields only work if they are deployed...
I've had a plot bunny about the Death Eaters being decimated by a squib with Sniper training hopping around my pointy little head for a while now... Imagine the terror inspired in those racist little minds when death can reach out and touch them at any time...
I'm not going to spill too much of the ending, but let it suffice to say that the plot device that saves this world comes from the normal humans rather than Homo Magus... Well the plot device and Harry.
DUmbledore's responsiblility for Riddle is certainly a case that could be made, but what could he have done REALLY to prevent him? This goes back to the old time travel story of going back to 1909 and killing Adolph Hitler. Of couse in 1909 at the age of 20 he may have been an evil bastard, but he hadn't yet done anything to deserve being killed... And if you were going to kill him for what he might do (remember you changed the conditions by observing it) you would also be obligated to kill a good portion of the young men in Germany and Austria for what they were going to do... And what does this make you?