People keep touching on the whole Dark Lord/ Hero thing but nobody is looking at it really directly.

Everything that Eliezir says here is very good and correct but in imaginary worlds with magic, there is a lot more personal power: not just for the Chosen One but for anybody able to rise to the challenge.

Note that the teachers of Hogwarts are not ONLY very knowledgeable, advanced professors who appear to do some original research; they also include a romantic hero, a mighty and very morally ambiguous antihero, and several other VERY HIGH POWERED characters that do not have to depend on others.

One might want to consider Girl Genius, as while very much not mundane it includes people who achieve this sort of personal power through technologcal means. It's set in a war-torn Europe with a LOT of techlevel variation, and 'sparks'; mad scientists (engineers, really) who can enter a state of hyper-focus in which they can design and build combat robots and ludicrously powerful laser guns in a matter of hours, but tend to do so in a bizzare, completely irrational fashion. In this world, most people of any power (which means lots of European nobles) are mad scientists.

In our world, the diligent can become an engineer and even as an individual can build devices that amaze and awe the common folk; I have done this myself. The gifted can be much better at this; and the gifted and lucky can rise to the top of the field. One sees people such as university professors; nobel prize winners

In romantic magical worlds, the professor who invents the next generation of robots and teaches me to be the next generation of roboticists would be deciding whether to burn the world to the ground or save it from those who would, and all by his own power.