The Harry Potter Fanfiction Thread

Definitely like the idea. I've always been partial to the literary agent hypothesis, complete with fictional documents; it makes it seem that much more real. Logical next step is to expand the view of the war from beyond the limited POV the books themselves offer us. (I personally want to see the international perspective, but that might be too much to handle.)

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

In other news, the amount of laziness that goes into Neville is the Boy Who Lived fics is astounding.

Seriously.

Neville is usually just Canon!Harry with a different name. If you want to have Harry in your story, then simply have Harry in your story. If you want to write a story where Neville is the boy who lived, then write a story where NEVILLE is the boy who lived, and not Harry with a name change.

Seriously, nine times out of ten, you see the Golden trio forming the exact same way it did on canon (which is impossible because the butterfly effect would nuke the possibility of it forming, Neville would be friendly to Hermione because he's goddamn Neville Longbottom and that's how he rolls), Neville does the exact same things Harry did in the exact same order he did them...

Admittedly, the ones that do have a difference, often have bashing to replace it. Seriously, what is there to bash about Neville Longbottom? The only bad traits he had were that he was kind of a coward at the start and that he was kind of dumb too, but by the time he becomes prominent, he's anything but either of those two. So what's there to hate about him? He's the friendliest guy you'll see in the books.

Still, the laziness that goes into Neville as BWL fics is just annoying, mostly because it's an interesting concept. What would Harry be like if he wasn't the Boy Who Lived? Except it's usually not about that. Harry's very often just a skin that a self insert is wearing. And Neville is basically Harry with another name.

Well, if you want something done, I guess you oughta do it yourself...

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Do I sense something in that last setence of yours?

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

Laziness. Tons and tons of it.

If I wrote one, it'd be the 'Harry Potter thinks the world'd be better off without him, so let's show him that it wouldn't be', and then showing how different everything would be if Harry wasn't there.

More importantly, I'd focus on how much worse off Hermione, Ron and even Neville himself would be. Hermione never made friends and was eventually killed by Voldemort to show that the brightest muggleborn is a bug to be squashed to him, Ron never managed to lift his self esteem and never managed to get out of his siblings' shadow, and the bitterness and resentment led him to do the one thing none of his brothers had done just so he could say he had done something for himself, so he tries to become a vigilante and gets killed for his efforts, and Neville crashes under the pressure of living up to the Boy Who Lived legend, because Augusta Longbottom doesn't let Dumbledore ease it by making him live outside the Wizarding World. Quirrel is stopped by the Mirror of Erised, but Ginny is killed and Voldemort is resurrected in the second year, restarting the war earlier, leading to a crushing victory for the dark. Voldemort promptly tries to conquer over the rest of the world, launching another magical world war, which in turn creates another muggle World War when the sides start imperio'ing their muggle counterparts.

Nukes Fall, Everyone Dies.

edited 23rd Aug '14 2:07:50 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Why would anybody be Imperioing muggles into starting WWIII? Assuming the rest of the wizarding world has roughly the same attitudes as Britain, one side will think they're useless and the other will think they're useless and fun to kill. It might be useful to call on the resources of muggles, but in the real world a plan for pigeon-guided missiles was vetoed despite the fact that it would probably have worked because pigeon-guided missiles sound like a stupid idea.

They ran out of wizards to fight each other, saw the muggles and went "Oh, hey, these doods can work as meatshields to absorb curses for us", and it just snowballed from there.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

...huh. you know, weirdly, I think Neville the Boy Who Lived might have more self-esteem? because he'd already done something. he wouldn't have to prove that he had magic.

...now if he started secretly worrying that he was a squib, that'd be something different...

ophelia, you're breaking my heart

Unlikely at best.

Neville would most likely be affected adversely by being the Boy Who Lived. Because instead of living up to his mortal Father, now he has to live up to the Fictional Legend of the Boy Who Lived.

When he starts failing to live up to the Boy Who Lived, Neville's self confidence and self esteem will plummet.

edited 23rd Aug '14 4:48:21 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Maybe he'd start worrying that whatever happened the night Voldemort tried to kill him irreparably damaged his magic? I mean, nobody except Dumbledore really understood what the hell was even up with that. Lot of room for a kid to fit catastrophe in.

If Harry wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived, then given his general disposition towards rules I wonder if he'd become something of a Marauder. Not just an expy of young James, that's boring, but picking up some of his traits. Say, if Voldemort doesn't kill the Potters, then Pettigrew isn't going to get found out.

The scenario I posted above is based on that thing with the guardian angel that everybody's parodied at least once, so Harry'd have been killed by Voldemort along with his parents (though I could also pretty easily make it so that Lily and James survived instead, since their being absolutely miserable would serve as a further punch for Harry, which is pretty much the purpose of such a thing).

It's probable that if the Potters aren't attacked by Voldemort, they'd be attacked by Crouch and the Lestranges...

Anyway, if nothing happens, then yeah, Voldemort keeps a spy on the Order by way of Pettigrew, which also means that Snape is very likely to be found out as a double agent and killed.

edited 23rd Aug '14 4:53:03 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

The legend of the Boy Who Lived is based on Harry's disappearance from the Wizarding World. Neville is not going to disappear into Little Whinging. The legend of the Boy Who Lived is going to mean something very different that Neville will not have trouble living up to as Harry did. It would be informed by the fact that numerous people would have actually met, and eventually spoken to, Neville.

edited 23rd Aug '14 4:53:47 PM by Night

Nous restons ici.

Don't be silly, Night. The legend will be built up regardless. Even if a few people know that he is a human being with flaws and weaknesses like everyone else, the grand majority's opinion would still be that Neville should be some sort of magical super hero.

Which he won't be.

edited 23rd Aug '14 4:55:02 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

A few people is all it takes, man. The Wizarding World isn't very big, and once you get Bathilda Bagshot and whoever's acting as Skeeter at the time, you're golden.

Nous restons ici.

It's not very big. It's also very likely to follow whatever the Daily Prophet prints. And the Daily Prophet will either paint Neville as an Uber Hero or paint him as pathetic as Hamster Poop. That will form the grand majority of the wizarding world's population's opinion, both in and outside Britain.

Even then, when people see him, even if he presents himself as a perfectly normal guy, people are likely to misinterpret it as him being simply humble (because of course the Boy Who Lived is humble) or him being condescending.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

But to get at them, Crouch and the Lestranges are going to need Pettigrew to spill for them, and Pettigrew isn't going to risk a perfectly good cover for a side that's just lost.

Pfft, like they'd be unable to intimidate him into spilling.

Seriously, Peter would shit himself if he just saw Bellatrix coming at him with a smile on her face.

edited 23rd Aug '14 5:10:33 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

I'd give him good odds on escaping. He was able to get away from Sirius in canon, and Padfoot's no slouch.

Doesn't making Neville TBWL sorta ruin what made him fun in the first place?

I mean, it's interesting as an experiment, but...

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

It'd be interesting to see a fic where Voldemort, unsure of who to pick, attempted to kill them both. He ohkos himself against Harry as usual, but the Lestrages torturing Neville's family would have been one of his last orders that they carried out after his death. And when he returns he targets them both equally, eventually meaning that neither of them can escape the prophecy and making them something akin to Bash Brothers by the end.

In any case, after rereading it I think Fabula Post Bellum might my favorite "Albus Potter" fic (as a general term, since it's not just about Albus). While it was one of my favorites already, on second glance I really started to pick up how the author characterized the various characters, and while it suffers from some of the things I dislike, it also plays with them in various ways too. The dual plots are really neat (with one plot being the Myth Arc and another plot normal-ish lives on the edge of the Myth Arc), as is the general theme that people can seem one way in one context and another way in another - with jerks showing hidden depths and friends turning nasty in some situations, simply because that's who they as characters would react then: it's pretty neat and sometimes very subtle. In general, the fic's got a lot of little qualities that add up to make it very enjoyable.

Plus it's not on hiatus. But I suppose I'm gushing.

edited 23rd Aug '14 8:55:33 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

@Rem

Not really. Neville is still Neville. The Boy Who Lived title doesn't confer any special powers or anything of the sort, and the only thing the Horcrux gives is the ability to use Parseltongue and get plot advancing visions.

Either that, or Harry is just so passive and lazy that you never see his super special awesome Boy Who Lived powers amounting to anything.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

I don't mean power-wise.

The reason I suspect (I don't know of a way to confirm this or prove this wrong, so take it with an entire bucket of salt) he's so popular with the fandom is that he really isn't anybody special. No prophecy, no spectacular powers other than the standard, no fame or glory. The fate of his parents is a constant source of sorrow for him (Harry, at least, can comfort himself with the knowledge that they're demonstrably in a better place, and even if that weren't the case, he can gain closure). He started off a bit dumb, a bit chubby, and quite a bit incompetent. He was a nobody.

That's what made his transformation so satisfying, I think. Making it his fate to become a Nagini slaying hero detracts from the appeal, I think.

edited 23rd Aug '14 10:14:26 PM by Rem

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

IANCE, YOU BRILLIANT FUCKER.

The thing is, it wasn't Harry's fate to become a horcux-smashing hero either. The prophecy said he'd be Voldemort kryptonite and they'd hate each other, but it didn't say he'd be any good at it. Harry could have been killed by the basilisk or a dementor or by falling off a hippogrif and it wouldn't have invalidated the prophecy. Hell, Quirrel could have bashed him on the head with the Mirror of Erised and that would have been fulfillment of the prophecy.

Which is the kind of thing that could be brought up in a Neville-Who-Lived fic.

I bet he did. He was going to swing by the Longbottoms' to kill their kid, but first the halfblood....

It wouldn't change Neville.

The prophecy simply means that he can kill Voldemort. Not that he will.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

It would change our perception of him.

We always knew that Harry would end up the hero. Hell, some of us were even disappointed at how little he had to work for it (I actually found it fitting, given Volde's figurehead status, but I've heard the, "Blind luck," criticism quite a bit). Neville, on the other hand, was a surprise.

edited 23rd Aug '14 11:58:48 PM by Rem

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.