Line #6 Headscratchers/HarryPotterAndTheNightmaresOfFuturesPast


1	* If Occlumency is so easy to learn, ''why didn't Dumbledore use it during the war''? Or even as an extracurricular activity? Seriously, almost all the characters learn to use it to near expert level by reading books and practicing a few hours every day. Why would Americans came to help during the Second Magician War and not the other European Communities? How could it last so much time in obscurity of Muggle radars with the insane levels of Murder and collateral damage for years? Why would Snape, a capable spy, act in such an obvious evil way to the point [[spoiler: it gets him sacked]]?
2	** The characters practice a few hours a day for the better portion of two years to become experts in the field, which is not a luxury you have when you’re waging a war full time. It was mentioned in his author notes that the American peace keeping force was the group Harry ran into and there were other countries involved that Harry never met. It’s likely it was either passed off as terrorists or the people that saw what happened realized no one would believe them. Snape was antagonized by Harry who escalated their rivalry to remind him too much of his father. It’s entirely possible that Snape wouldn’t have been sacked if Draco hadn’t gone to such an extreme in getting the invisibility cloak.
3	*** About the Occlumency and the war. If I understand well the canon (which is book canon until the divergence and book 6): The First War lasted well over a Decade and it was more of an attrition war (Terrorist attacks, splinter cell combats and the like) than full out war. That would have allowed the Order and Aurors to practice more easily and with better equipment. Second, these were all grown wizards, several of them Aurors (i.e battle mage) which mean they will be more in tune with their magic and would be easily to master it having previous training and could practice day in and day out; Third, lack of time would hardly be an issue for the fight of survival (Harry and Co do it and the Second war was by far worse). It just seem... well no offense to fans but it’s so silly that Harry was the only Wizard in history who learned that Occlumency was so easy to learn and somehow still believed to be an special ability, more so when Voldemort was feared as the greatest Legilimens ever lived. And about Snape... Yes, he was nasty and mean but the Fic put him in such One-dimensional line of being evil (a recurrent feature in S'tarkan) that it became a strawmen, and a badly bad at that. You cant simply take him seriously. If going by the tip of the fingers he was supposed to be an accomplished spy for over a Decade and he act with the self control of a 2 year old with severe sociopathic disorder just because James son call him Names. It was when he called Hermione a Mudblood and threatened to brake her wand that it passed from tolerable to cartoon idiocy.
4	*** It's been a while since I've read it so forgive any mistakes I make. Wasn't the divergence the fact that Voldemort found out about the Horcruxes being destroyed faster and arrived at Hogwarts in full force to destroy it much sooner than Harry could get there? We're never told exactly what happened but the fact that Hogwarts is destroyed in what would be Harry's seventh year means that the Ministry probably didn't last much longer and the Aurors, not willing to join Voldemort, probably fell quickly afterward by infighting or Death Eaters. The canon books make it appear that since Voldemort first fell Aurors have been sub-par and haven't been trained as well, so it'd make sense that the standards wouldn't be as high as far as Occlumency if that even was a factor. For all we know they were trained in Occlumency to a standard(or master) level but still fell in battle to overwhelming odds. The reason Harry teaches it to his friends is because he wants to keep it secret and wants them to be able to keep their mind their own. Having knowledge of it doesn't mean you're invincible it just helps you in some cases. Snape on the other hand I agree. He was billed as a villain to an extreme degree and unless it turns out that he was overacting as a villain on purpose to stay a spy for Dumbledore it largely seems out of character now that we've got the whole series to look at his character. This isn't to say though that the author hasn't realized this as he has tried to defend it in his author notes.
5	*** Actually, the author states in a note that the divergence should be considered Voldemort using the Sorting Hat as another horcrux, as fracturing his soul that much had a negative effect on Voldemort's already-fragile sanity, prompting him to mount a more vicious campaign than he did in canon.
6	*** Who said that Dumbledore DIDN'T use Occlumency during the first war? If Voldemort had been able to just pick thoughts out of the Order member's minds, what use would there be for spies like Pettigrew? (Aside from the Secret Keeper thing, which seems to be a special case anyway in canon - at least during the first war.)
7	*** One problem with Snape's characterization is that the story was started before Death Hallows was released; meaning that at the time Snape seemed to be an evil villain masquerading as a nasty teacher who, if pushed, would act a lot worse than in cannon. Obviously this is proven incorrect by Deathly Hallows, but we can't really fault the author for that. Taking Deathly Hallows into account, many of Snape's actions can be justified as either 1. Rage and bitterness misdirected against Harry, and fueled by Harry's hatred of Snape along with his much more confident and confrontational attitude or 2. Snape, realizing that things weren't working out at Hogwarts and desperately wanting to get away from the son of James and Lilly, setting up a plan with Dumbledore to seem to be a stereotypical villain and enemy of Harry Potter so that he could implant himself directly into the heart of the enemy. Obviously neither of those fits perfectly even when they're put together, and the second one is completely speculative, but they're simple in universe explanations regarding the issue of Snape's characterization.
8	** As far as Snape acting the way he does, even in canon, he is extremely immature (I mean, holding a schoolboy grudge into your thirties, and then taking that grudge out on an eleven-year-old who has never done anything to you?). Harry, meanwhile, being a PeggySue, is considerably more mature than in canon (and probably more mature than Snape). The ease at which a mature person, especially TheChessmaster, can goad an immature person into making a fool of himself (to put it mildly) is actually TruthInTelevision.
9	*** Still not good enough - someone with Snape's level of capability should know better than to goaded so easily. He's much too cartoonishly evil for it to be believable.
10	*** There is another way to see this: I imagine that the divergence from canon happened much earlier. After Lily's death, Snape consented to watch over Harry in her name, but rather than remaining loyal to Lily's memory as in canon, he grew increasingly angry and embittered until he was basically hateful enough that he was ready to turn back to Voldemort's side. This explains why he is so much darker, and angrier towards Harry, and uses the word 'mudblood' so freely.
11	*** An explanation is that Snape underestimates Harry and doesn't take him seriously until it is too late. As a spy, with Voldemort, Snape knows full well that he is in the presence of a psychopathic, suspicious, intelligent, and powerful wizard, who can put him to a horrific death at the slightest provocation, and acts accordingly. However, Harry is (seemingly) just a child, who is under Snape's authority, and whom Snape can treat as he pleases. After all, what can Harry do? If he loses his temper or retaliates with a childish prank, that would just give Snape justification to punish him. Additionally, Snape takes it for granted that Dumbledore has his back no matter what he does (short of actually harming a student). Therefore, Snape is not fully on guard the way he would be with Voldemort, and is completely unprepared for Harry to respond to him, not as a fractious child, but on an adult level, and in a way that puts Dumbledore in a position where he can no longer protect Snape. Snape's attitude is compounded by his willful blindness, which is already present in canon. In canon, Snape refuses to see that Harry does not share the arrogant, bullying tendencies of young James. Here, Snape's willful blindness is much more damaging to himself, seeing another James Potter where, in fact, he is faced with a genuine threat. Snape's failure to take Harry seriously as a threat and his willful blindness contribute to Harry's ability to manipulate him to his cost.
12	*** And never forget that Severus Snape is by and far ''not'' a nice character, not even remotely close to it, despite what his legions of fangirls say. He is just a cruel and evil man whose interests are temporarily aligned with our own, and only because of an obsession for a dead woman who has been gone for more than a decade that he can't let go. This is something even JK Rowling herself has come out and confirmed, and to lambast him as cartoonishly evil in this fanfic when in canon he has been shown to be just as immature, petty, and even wildly lash out at others seems like you're needlessly picking on this fanfic because Snape is your favorite character. Whether or not you think he is living up to the image of Snape one has built up in their mind is a matter of personal taste. The only truly OutOfCharacterMoment this troper can think of is his casual use of a [[FantasticSlur racial slur]], which is something that the author should edit if he wishes to remain faithful to what we learned in Deathly Hallows (which he himself has admitted he wants to do).
13	*** In the books, it's very explicit that he abandoned his only friend to toss in his lot with a bunch of pureblood bigots. And didn't he call Lily a Mudblood too in that flashback that Harry saw in Book Five? Him using a racial slur casually isn't THAT out of character for Snape.
14	*** The books also establish that he never forgave himself for that. And James Potter comes off almost as badly as Severus Snape -- "Prongs" ''always'' detested him. So between the jock and the creep, one can be inclined to say with Lewis Carroll's Alice, "I don't like ''either'' of them very much".
15	*** And yet that didn't stop him from transplanting his issues with the boy's father on the son of the woman he loved for no good reason other than that Harry resembled James. Even as students, James still came across as the better man for the mere fact that he was willing to befriend a disowned social pariah, go through the effort of becoming an illegal animagus to help another friend that became a werewolf, and in spite of being a pureblood, he didn't much care for familial status, seeing as he married a muggleborn, while Snape tossed in his lot with racist bigots and then schemed to have James and baby Harry killed for a ComfortingTheWidow gambit. And James actually got his act straight while Severus got worse. And considering that Snape was an asshole to everyone outside of Slytherin house and Lily Evans (for as long as that lasted), he gave James plenty of reasons to detest him. And trying to label James as being as bad as Severus doesn't work. The only black mark James has is that he was a bully, while the only redeemable quality Snape has is that he loved Lily. If he didn't have that much, people might not really care what James did to him because of being very nearly an acceptable target because of being a magical British neo-nazi. He wasn't a horrible man because James Potter was mean to him, he chose to be a horrible person to fit in with the wrong crowd at school, and possibly earned the enmity of the Marauders because of how rotten he was.
16	* The masquerade... Dozens of buildings razed, hundreds (may even thousands) dead, inexplicable terrorist attacks that no group take credit for years, long line of unresolved murders and quite likely far, far worse, oh and the Ministry is completely destroyed meaning that no one was there to put a wool over the incidents. I mean Muggle stupidity can only go so far; hell not even Jim Butcher would managed to get away with this and he go beyond the Impossible to justify the Masquerade.
17	** The problem here is what are the Muggles supposed to think is happening? Yes, there's a lot of mysterious killing going on, but unless they know about magic they'll continue to look for a reasonable explanation. Terrorists or psychopaths killing for fun with advanced technology would probably seem much more reasonable than a magical civil war going on under their noses.
18	*** I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Irish got a bit of a bad press.
19	*** To the modern Western muggle, wizards could just as well be interpreted as SufficientlyAdvancedAliens.
20	*** Given that the cause is unknown, and the police and military powerless to stop it, it is very much possible that riots and civil disorder were rampant amongst the Muggles. I suspect that before the masquerade would be broken in a case like this, a Muggle civil war would break out on its own.
21	*** It is very likely and even somewhat implied that the relief force that was sent over from America had the dual assignment of not only containing Voldemort and his Death Eaters as well as preventing them from expanding to the United States but also to keep the situation with the Muggles under control so that they wouldn't begin guessing the truth, perhaps by Obliviating looters and otherwise doing their best to restore order to a destabilized country, which probably explains why they had such a difficult time fighting the Death Eaters even though they most likely had superior numbers.
22	** It was stated that the British government had collapsed to such a point that Harry could have become ''King''. At a guess, the Statute of Secrecy was broken forever and Harry returned back in time before it became evident.
23	* In Year One, Harry walks in on Quirrell ''fighting'' with Fluffy, instead of just using music to get past him, as in canon. Why is this? Quirrell traded the dragon egg for the information about Fluffy; since Hagrid still got the dragon egg in this timeline, Quirrell should have had the information he needed to get past the 3-headed dog. Why the improbable change?
24	** I believe you need to reread [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2636963/7/Harry-Potter-and-the-Nightmares-of-Futures-Past chapter 7]]. In it Quirrell is reaching for the trapdoor as the harp's song ends and Harry sends a stinging hex at Fluffy. Thus waking Fluffy up and causing the confrontation.
25	*** Ah, thanks. Read too fast, must have missed that sentence! It all makes sense now.
26	* In Chapter 27, Ron admits to Harry's friends having searched his trunk while he was unconscious... so WHY is it that they never find the gun and never, EVER question him about it? Hermione, you'd think, would totally freak out at first and mention it in some way, even after learning the truth about Harry's secret.
27	* Harry technically never gives a satisfactory explanation to those not in on TheMasquerade for why he knew where the Chamber of Secrets was in the second timeline beyond having some "weird dreams," so... how is it they don't find out the truth right then and there? You'd think Professor Dumbledore, especially, with how suspicious he's growing of Harry and how staggeringly intelligent he is, would have figured it out, with the ''best'' scenario being that he suspects Harry of being the Heir of Slytherin and at worst discovering Harry's secret.
28	** Not sure of how Dumbledore would suspect Harry of being the Heir of Slytherin - Harry has not made his Parseltongue ability known, he has been in a deep coma for a long time and what took Ginny to the Chamber clearly happened while Harry was still in his coma. Coming up with Harry's secret of mental mind travel would be very difficult to reach, as the Dumbledore portrait thought that Harry's plan was absurdly complicated and pretty much unlikely to succeed, an opinion past Dumbledore is likely to share, especially if the article that Harry found has yet to be published. As Hermione tells Harry after the Boggart debacle (where Lupin sees Harry's Boggart is dead Ginny but thinks it is dead Lily), Dumbledore will consider more likelier avenues on how Harry found the truth out - perhaps that the scar warned him.
29	* In Chapter 39, [[spoiler: after Ron kills a Dementor with the Sword of Gryffindor]] Harry tells Ron "But what you did... protecting Hermione... killing that thing. Killing it, Ron! No one's ever done that before. I've never even heard of someone wounding one before..." Did Harry forget that he himself used the Burrow's wards to destroy a whole herd of them back in Chapter 31?
30	** That was using the wards and the environment against them while Harry remained at a distance; [[spoiler:Ron faced a Dementor in close quarters and killed it practically bare-handedly]].
31	* Why wasn't Draco disqualified from the first Triwizard Task for bringing in extra equipment? They definitely weren't allowed anything except their wands. It would be one thing if he'd summoned it from elsewhere, as Harry did with his broom in canon, but the way Harry's friends describe his actions makes it pretty clear that he already had the vial with him.
32	** Snape could probably make an argument that he teaches his students to be ready for anything and act as though Durmstrang students keep such things on their person on a semi-regular basis.
33	* Why wasn't there an inquiry after Harry stole the Glock? Mr Weasley was very aware of its presence, calling it one of their more interesting finds and being able to recite its history and nature immediately upon seeing it, and he even planned to possibly take another look at it the next day before it was to be destroyed. Yet after Harry snatches it while his back is turned, no one seems to notice that it's missing.
34	** Considering Mr Weasley's habit of tinkering and his belief that the gun doesn't work, he may have simply assumed he lost track of it.
35	* Harry made sure to clear his wand after memory-wiping the men chasing Sirius and soaking them with wine. But wouldn't the Ministry have detected the use of those spells in Ottery Saint Catchpole (which is not an exclusively Wizarding village, so magic would stand out)? They might not be able to identify the caster, but canon suggests they could identify the location and the spell, which is enough to be pretty suspicious.
36	** I believe he cast most of the spells behind the Burrow's wards, which would make tracking difficult.
37	* Since this fic was written before Deathly Hallows was released, it could be forgiven for not getting details right, but since the author has stated that he intends to incorporate the new canon, and given what we know, how was Sirius able to steal the Hufflepuff cup from Gringotts, given that it is described as one of the most defensible sites in the entire Wizarding world, and that you'd have to be mad to steal from it?
38	** I personally assumed that Voldemort moved that horcrux around after he came back; considering that entrusting a horcrux solely with the Malfoys led to one being destroyed, I can see him deciding that it would be 'safer' to move one around between hiding places rather than leave it in one place.

Context Headscratchers / HarryPotterAndTheNightmaresOfFuturesPast