Fanfic / Harry Potter and the Natural 20

Harry Potter and the Natural 20 by Sir Poley is an incomplete Crossover fanfic that combines Harry Potter and Dungeons & Dragons, published on FanFiction.Net.

The premise is Milo Amastacia-Liadon, munchkin and Wizard with capital W, who hails from Myra — City of Light! City of Magic! — turning up in the world of Harry Potter through a Summoning Ritual by Lucius Malfoy. After teaming up with the three protagonists of the Potterverse, he takes on the many dangers that living at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry can bring — in his distinct and hilarious way.

The first year, the Philosopher's Stone timeline, is called Harry Potter and the Natural 20. The second year, the Chamber of Secrets timeline, is called Harry Potter and the Confirmed Critical. The third year, the Prisoner of Azkaban timeline, is called Harry Potter and the Save-Or-Die.

Took a 33-month hiatus in early third year, before a few chapters were published between December 2017 and August 2018. No new updates have been posted since then.

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Harry Potter and the Natural 20 provides examples of:

• Academy of Adventure: In Milo's own words:
  There was an evil forest. An animated tree (a disguised Treant, possibly?). A lake with mermaids. "This place is awesome," he said. The amount of XP he could get just from random encounters in the school grounds alone... it suddenly made sense to him how such a school could be an effective way to gain power. This place was clearly, really, incredibly, obviously, brilliantly dangerous.
• Accidental Pun "Sweet Entrance."
• Aerith and Bob: As of year 2, we know the names of Milo's party are Wellby, Zook and... Gerard.
• Animal Eye Spy: Casting Chain of Eyes on Mordenkainen allows Milo to look in on Dean and Seamus's Foreshadowing laden secret argument in the library.
• Anthropic Principle: The author has admitted to not being entirely sure how Milo has Wizard class levels at age 11, well below the minimum age listed in the rulebook — but the premise of the crossover requires it, so he does. Even Milo admits that the Noodle Incident explanation involving starting as a Rogue doesn't stand up to close inspection.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Hannah Abbot turns from Hufflepuff to Gryffindor and get significantly more screen time.
  • Lampshaded by Milo when he notes that PS Fiona Smithe gained more adjectives since he last saw her.
• Backstory Invader: In addition to standard D&D and HP magic - Milo can at will add details to his backstory
  "Uncle Reginald!" Milo said, moving to the next guard in line. "Why, you taught me my first cantrip! And Second Cousin Reggie! Remember all those long nights in the woods hunting, er, huntable animals? And, why, if it isn't Adopted Cousin Regan! What unspecified good times we had!" Pretty soon, they all had their weapons lowered, and were milling about in confusion.
  "What did you do?" Relkin asked in a hushed voice.
  "I remembered each and every one of them as a treasured friend or relative from my backstory," Milo said quietly. "One who would never, ever raise a hand against me or impede the cause of Justice or the furthering of Good. And who gets +2 and a reroll against magical orders against their nature."
• Badass Boast: "With one Candle, I can challenge the gods."
• Badass Family: Milo comes from one, much to his surprise (since none of them technically existed until he pointed out his backstory). His mother is a loving woman and a baker... and a retired adventurer secretly running the rebellion. His sister, Relkin, is an even more capable munchkin than him.
• Badass Normal: Fiona, and presumably the other copper as well to a lesser degree.
• Bag of Holding: Milo has a Belt of Holding, which wouldn't be out of place in the Harry Potter universe (though would be highly illegal) even if this weren't a Dungeons & Dragons Crossover fic.
• Berserk Button: Don't ever suggest Milo might not be a Wizard.
• Bizarre Human Biology: Milo, coming from a different plane, doesn't have quite the same biological functions as the people around him. To him, it's bizarre that the humans around him learn their skills gradually and not by going up in level, or that a single night's sleep doesn't cure injuries even a little.
• Blatant Burglar: Exploited Trope: Fiona Smythe's way of breaking and entering while still Bothering by the Book is to have someone send the police an anonymous tip about one such Blatant Burglar entering the home.
  "One of those anonymous tip-offs. Just goes to show you should always lock your door when you leave."
• Bluff the Imposter: Snape pulls this on Milo, when he's trying to make a potion that bubbles when made by a wizard. It actually turns violet.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • With Imperio available, this should come as no surprise. Too bad the usually genre-savvy Milo didn't expect Hannah to be this.
  • Milo used magic to read and duplicate Tom Riddle's diary. This ended up putting a copy of Voldemort into his head.
• Brick Joke: Milo observes at one point that the local wizards and witches seem to require spending several hours each day sitting around in big chairs, playing chess and talking about the weather, which he assumes it's how they replenish their spells. Later on, it turns out he's equipped each of his many hideouts with a chair and a chess set so his allies can do exactly that.
• Broken Masquerade: Not yet, but a developing subplot Milo's Plot Senses can tell is there but don't directly notice suggests there are cracks in it, at least.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Neville...
  "He was back in the hospital wing after being mauled by (and they wouldn't have believed it if there hadn't been twelve witnesses) a Flobberworm."
• Can't Catch Up: Not true in the slightest, yet Milo maintains a low-key but constant struggle to consciously avert this trope by tailoring his build to the campaign he’s found himself in, and occasionally turns contemplative about whether or not he’s succeeding.
• Celebrity Paradox: The Muggles think that Gilderoy Lockhart looks a bit like Kenneth Branagh, the actor who played Lockhart in the movies.
• Chain of Deals: Milo gets Galleons from Harry, then gives them to the goblins at Gringotts for British pounds, then gives those to Hermione to give to Muggle truckers for road salt, and then uses that road salt in his Item Crafting. See Money Multiplier below.
• Character Alignment: Milo theoretically has the ability to detect evil at will from his Rainbow Servant prestige class, though it's still unknown if people in the Potterverse even have detectable alignments.
  • As a munchkin wizard, Milo is True Neutral at the start of the story, but he develops into Neutral Good as it goes on. invoked
  • Milo relies on Protection From Evil to prevent mind control, such as Imperius. After losing his spellbook and stealing a replacement from an evil necromancer, he's forced to use Protection From Good instead. It still grants mental protection, but he's painfully aware that it's an awkward fit.
• Character Level: Milo brings this to the fore, with special attention paid to the decision making process involved, and the compromises he has to make between what he wanted and what's realistically a good choice.
• Character Development: Both parodic, as below, and real in Milo's case, under Dumbledore's mentorship and encouragement.
  Milo: Yeah. Getting hauls of XP, magic items, and gold, and thus making your character more powerful, or developed. Character development.
• Character Exaggeration: A lot of the HP characters come across as somewhat exaggerated versions of their canon selves, usually for comic effect. Harry and Ron are pretty much like their early canon selves, but Hermione is even more of a bookworm and plays Ms. Exposition to a bigger degree, Neville has gone from Butt-Monkey to outright Chew Toy, Dumbledore is still the immensely powerful Big Good but is also Obfuscating Insanity to the point that it's clear he's just messing with people for the hell of it, Draco Malfoy seems to be channeling the original Edmund Blackadder and Crabbe and Goyle are if possible even stupider than in canon.
• Cheap Gold Coins: Compared to the Galleons of the wizarding world, the gold coins of Milo's world are worth significantly less.
• Chekhov's Gun: Discussed and exploited at length. See The Law of Conservation of Detail below.
  • Milo's Christmas present for Hannah.
• The Chessmaster:
  • In the more literal sense, Ron is a very talented chess player.
  • Snape
  • Lucius Malfoy.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Milo has a bad case of it — to the point he doesn't even have a reason for this. It's just who he is.
• Comically Small Bribe: Milo tries bribing a Muggle police officer with 500 pounds of salt, because he doesn't have any pounds and the Player's Handbook states that transactions can use "trade goods" when money isn't available.
• Combo Platter Powers: He doesn't have access to them all yet, but Milo will eventually have the domain powers of Air, Law, and Good, which include casting Law and Good spells at a higher caster level and turning earth creatures.
• Computer Equals Monitor: The wizards make this mistake in chapter 36.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Doubling as Moment of Awesome as the one Milo's threatening this with is Lord Voldemort.
  "And then I will find you – there's magic that will let me do it instantly – and then I will kill you. Slowly. And then I will rip out your soul and trap it in a shiny rock, which I will then hide on a moon – which moon, orbiting which planet, orbiting which star, in which galaxy, I will leave to your imagination – so you can never be brought back."
• Cool Old Lady: Holy shit Professor McGonagall. The sheer artistry of the tactics she uses against the Basilisk is amazing. A shame Milo wrecks her plan.
• Cool Sword: The Sword of Gryffindor, as in canon, sharp enough to decapitate the Basilisk in one Clean Cut.
• Cloudcuckoolander: How most of Hogwart's has learned to accept Milo as. "It's Milo" is a known explanation for his behavior, and occasional collateral damage.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: From the perspective of everyone else in the Harry Potter universe, the vast majority of what Milo says is completely insane. Much of it is also entirely correct.
• Crazy-Prepared: What Milo has in his Belt of Holding include fifty feet of silk rope, a grappling hook and... a bucket, the last of which he's kept in his Belt for three years without it being any use at all and finally served as tinder. Of course, if Milo had waited a little longer...
  • Absolutely everything Milo makes is covered with holy symbols, to protect against vampires. No vampires ever appear in the story.
• Crippling Overspecialization: These sorts of spells are referred to in-story as "use-impaired". They're certainly useful in the particular situational contexts for which they were designed, but those are so inherently rare that it's not, as a general rule, worth the effort of preparing them.
  • This is side-stepped through several ways of sacrificing power for versatility, e.g., robust spells that can ape weakened versions of the more thoroughly specialized.
• Cryptic Conversation: Milo bluffs his way through a few of these with Draco Malfoy, without ever figuring out what it was really about. To be honest, no one could have guessed what crazy plot Malfoy had in mind.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Bellatrix Lestrange versus Gerard, Wellby, Zook and Thamior the Thaumaturge ends with the former doing the stomping.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Trio is snarky as ever, now with Milo and Hannah Abbot joining in on the fun.
  "Trick us into thinking that he's tricking us into thinking he's dead by offing himself. Brilliant, that is. Well, we saw through his cunning ploy. Go team."
• Death Is Cheap: Discussed.
  "Where I come from, you can pay to have people brought back from the dead," Milo said simply. "It's really not such a big deal."
  Hermione just stared, thunderstruck.
  "That's... so..." Hermione paused to collect her thoughts. "You really are from another world, aren't you?"
• Death of Personality: Discussed — when Fiona Smythe finds out that she's been Obliviated, she considers this equivalent to murdering the person she used to be.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: The many modifications to Milo's robes.
• Dramatic Irony: Any reader who has read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone already knows that Quirrell is not what he seems, but the characters have no idea. Milo trusts him throughout first year, constantly giving him ideas and explaining things that the reader knows Quirrell definitely shouldn't be told.
• Dump Stat: Milo's was Constitution
• Dungeon Bypass: Milo’s method of ‘solving’ the flying keys test in the 3rd floor corridor.
• Dynamic Entry: Chapter 35, Dynamic Entry. Milo lives up to the chapter's name.
• Eccentric Mentor: Dumbledore serves as one to Milo - while he's as somewhat strange as he is in canon, he also not only believes Milo about his being from another world, he's also willing to take as fact (or at least work with) the idea that Milo is a PC. In the first book in particular, he asks more than one Armor-Piercing Question about Milo's motivations, forcing him to think about why he performs heroic rather than practical actions, and suggests that he tries Becoming the Mask, something which sets Milo's Character Development in motion.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played with. Even the Slytherins were shocked when Milo proposed to use (well-armoured) Muggles as meat shields.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: It’s a plot point in the first book that Milo stumbles over his inability to grasp an aversion of this. Namely:
  • Snape and Lucius are working together to get Milo off of school grounds alive so his Summoning Ritual can be reversed (even then, and unknown to Milo, Snape only does so to maintain his cover as a Death Eater, and is ultimately merely ambivalent to Milo’s fate).
  • Draco is not working for his father and has his own ridiculous plots to carry out against Milo.
  • Voldemort does not want Milo dead, merely in constant mortal peril, so that he may grow stronger and achieve the ability to raise the dead, an ability more valuable than any Philosopher’s Stone.
  • Quirrell does not want to be the Dark Lord’s slave, but cannot risk disobeying him even in conscious thought.
  • In addition, as momentarily foreshadowed in the first book and made explicit in the text of the second, Lucius adds the wrinkle that he does not truly want the Dark Lord to return, as his current methods are more efficient at achieving pureblood goals, and is only attempting to bring Voldemort back to maintain the pretense of effort in order to better control the former Death Eaters.
• Evil Laugh:
  "Nope, it was a hiccup. What would an eleven year old girl be doing laughing evilly? I hiccupped. I even covered my mouth and everything."
• Evil Teacher: This Dumbledore averts this. Snape, on the other hand...
  "Not since the days of Emeric the Evil were Headmasters involved in the business of having their students executed."
  Still, Snape waited. Outside, the Troll was very likely killing one of his students. Still, Snape waited.^note To be fair, the thing Snape was waiting for was for Quirrelmort to try to steal the Philosopher's Stone, having (correctly) deduced that the troll attack was a diversion; he not unreasonably felt keeping the Dark Lord from returning to life was more important that saving any one student.
• Evil vs. Evil: Voldemort versus Lucius for control of the the Death Eaters.
• Experience Points: The rates and methods of earning XP, as well as the various means of their expenditure, is a recurring plotpoint. Indeed, the actions of a previously unknown enemy are deduced through mathematical induction of the number of participants in a battle through the XP there earned.
• Fantastic Racism: In addition to all kinds and variations inherited from Harry Potter, Milo has trouble with this.
  I doubt he's even human. We may have accidentally created some sort of... Homunculus. An artificial human. There's no telling what it might do.
• Fighting from the Inside: To the surprise of both Milo and Dumbledore, Quirrell. At the very least, he enacts a plan to save himself from possession that he could at no point have thought of on a more than subconscious level. The ambiguity of his allegiance leaves his ultimate fate unknown.
• Gambit Pileup: Between the plots of Lucius, Quirrell, Snape and Draco, it's no surprise Milo can't fit the big picture in his Plot Chart.
• Game-Breaker: A number of in-universe examples.
  • Avada Kedavra to the D&D verse. Seriously, an instant-death spell without so much as a check? Also, Harry Potter world characters are apparently exempt from the D&D turn order rules; they can cast spells more often than once every six seconds and don't have to win Initiative to act first.
  • On the other hand, D&D magic is extremely powerful in general. From suppressing the Imperius with Protection From Evil to (in theory) duplicating Raise Dead and Resurrection with Limited Wish / Wish, Milo holds enough potential to completely change everything in the Potterverse.
  • Dementors now present a third example, as without the patronus charm, D&D characters have literally zero possible defenses against them. In addition, their mere presence seems to result in a massive XP drain effect.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • Taking an action that would normally cause one of these instead invokes Rule Zero to come along with a karmic punishment, amounting to the same thing without destroying the universe. Milo risks it and pays the price.
  • Mordenkainen is worried that something like this will happen to him should his master die, as there is no record anywhere of what happens to a Familiar once their master passes away. They turn back into a normal animal until their master returns to life.
• Genre Savvy: Milo, as a D&D Munchkin stuck in the Harry Potter world, is a curious mix of this and Wrong Genre Savvy. While he tends to spot clues and plot points long before anyone else does, and has a curious tendency to figure things out, he's usually Right for the Wrong Reasons — and sometimes he's just plain wrong.
• A God Am I: What Milo might become if he ever gets his hands on a Candle of Invocation. Also, what he sees in the Mirror of Erised.
• Golden Snitch: The Trope Namer is Discussed and in general Lampshaded.
  As Ron explained about the Golden Snitch, Milo considered it thoughtfully. From what he could tell, the Seeker's success or failure completely invalidated everything that the other players did. It was as if the sport was set up entirely to give Seekers a backdrop to compete against. "I like it!" Milo said. "It has everything. Magic, danger, and rules blatantly skewed for the PCs to shine."
• Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: Present in both Milo’s world and Harry’s, therefore present here.
• Gone Horribly Right: Upon gazing on the Mirror of Erised, Milo finds out what happens when all your dreams come true...
• Gravity Master: If he hadn't had Feather Fall, Milo would have been dead in the first chapter.
  • Milo also picks up Levitate early on, and puts it to good use.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Exactly what Milo was thinking as he escaped Malfoy Manor for the second time. Though of course this was carefully orchestrated by Snape.
• The Gunslinger: Harry, he's apparently so fast that he can reliably beat Milo's Initiative, since Milo's total bonus is +6, Harry seems to have an effective dexterity of over 18 and the equivalent of the improved initiative feat.
  • In the D&D world, Bellatrix Lestrange isn't subject to the turn order rules at all, letting her act far faster than nearly anything in the Planescape.
• The Hero Dies: Milo is slain by Tom Riddle's memory, and awakes in his afterlife plane, the Concordant Domain of the Outlands. Also doubles as a somewhat meta Heroic Sacrifice, as he has the opportunity to include his mother's sacrifice in his backstory to protect himself from Tom, but decides instead to write her in as a living, happy character
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: For all that he enjoys making full use of his hard earned magic, Milo will still get down on himself for perceived flaws compared to the native wizards, eventually vowing to do his Class proud, regardless of how underpowered he thinks he is. He's also taken to lamenting not being a Druid.
• Hollywood Law: The Witchcraft Act of 1735 didn't prohibit witchcraft, though the name may be confusing. Rather, it had outlawed accusing someone of witchcraft, or claiming to have supernatural abilities. Plus, the police caution given in 1992 is wrong. For that, see You Do Not Have to Say Anything.
• Hufflepuff House: It becomes a Running Gag that the trope namer's adherence to this trope, important to the world building, but utterly irrelevant in the plot, is exaggerated to the point of parody.
  The first years all filed into the Great Hall apprehensively as McGonagall explained about the four houses. Milo mentally filed them into: house for the PCs, house for the villains, and two NPC houses to make up the numbers.
• Humanoid Abomination: Madam Pomfrey is kept up in cold sweats at night contemplating the strange physiology responsible for Milo’s apparent regenerative capabilities.
  • Lucius, for his part, merely thinks of the creature as a homunculus.
  • On the flipside, Milo is wholly unsettled by the slow realization that Potterverse wizards learn gradually over time, rather than in discrete increments like literally every other living thing in his world. And while he hasn't learned of it yet, this will presumably be his reaction to learning that Lockhart gained his overwhelming backstory by stealing those of others.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: Judging by comparison to Milo's stats, Harry and Hermione seem to exceed D&D's theoretical human maximum in Dexterity and Intelligence respectively.
• I Know You Know I Know: Snape deliberately maneuvers Milo into spinning his wheels through one of these with his life on the line. He finds it hilarious (which it is).
  • Fiona explains to Travis why they have to knock at Mrs. Figg's door despite knowing she's out with a brief usage of this trope.
  Travis: She won't answer. She's not home. We saw her leave not half an hour ago.
  Fiona: I know that. And you know that. And all the nosey neighbors of Little Whinging know that. But they don't know that we know that. So we knock, first.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail:
  • Hannah doesn’t know any healing charms.
  • Milo has problems spelling Dumbledore's titles correctly.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: McGonagall after Harry told her the "truth" about his first Quidditch match.
• I Need You Stronger: Once Voldemort finds out that a) Milo directly grows in strength from mortal peril and b) he can raise the dead with sufficient strength, it becomes a priority to send a constant influx of strife towards the party.
• Insistent Terminology: Myra - City of Light! City of Magic! - is always referred to with its appellation.
• Intimidating Revenue Service: Thanks to Fiona, the Malfoy estate comes to the attention of Inland Revenue. The results have only been hinted at, but are serious.
• It Only Works Once: Milo comes up with a plan involving hiding behind shields in order to make the party completely invisible. He warns the party that it'll only work once, as he's almost certain that the gods won't allow it again.
• It Will Never Catch On: Used word for word by the Surrey Police in reference to their brand new computer running Windows 3.1.
• Jumped at the Call: Seriously, Milo did not need any reason to fight the might-or-might-not-be-dead Big Bad.
• Karma Houdini: Gilderoy Lockhart, at the end of Confirmed Critical anyway, escapes punishment for memory wiping wizards and witches and taking credit for their work. As of Chapter 10 of Save or Die he's been sacrificed as part of a Death Eater Ritual to bring Bellatrix back from D&D-land. However since this just means he will be sent to the other world, chances are he'll be running the place in a few weeks.
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: Milo is able to notice it automatically, and he damn well knows it's important. Naturally, in the Harry Potter universe this is a great power due to Foreshadowing, Chekhov's Armoury and Chekhov's Army. For instance, he's able to tell Harry's extremely important (in his mind a PC) at a glance, and when told about Voldemort he correctly deduces he's still alive.
  • In general, Milo runs on the heuristic that anything with more than two adjectives describing it is capital "I" Important, and therefore to be placed on the Plot Chart, at different points deducing both Quirrell's and the Rememberall's Importance directly from this technique.
  • A large portion of the second part of the story is essentially about how Milo's reliance on the Law can fail or cause as many troubles as it solves. Due to his interference in the story, many of the plot points of the second book are greatly altered or removed in such a way that his savvy behavior tends to backfire.
  Milo had been bored in the past—occasionally. It was a rare occurrence, and nothing particularly concerning on its own. More worryingly, however, was that at some point he'd dropped out of a timeskip. Milo's awareness of the weather confirmed it. There were only two reasons for such an occurrence: flavour and drama. Were the first option the case, the timeskip immediately would have resumed after some humorous or character-establishing moment, followed by another—say, at dinner, where the NPCs would discuss foreshadowing. But Milo was still experiencing time at a one-to-one ratio, barring this from being the case.
  Something was awry.
  • Amusingly, following this passage and continuing on into the next chapter Milo becomes increasingly distressed and paranoid that absolutely nothing (to his mind) is going wrong.
  • As in canon, Lockhart's first test is a lengthy series of petty details about himself, meant to illustrate one of his character traits: his narcissism. Milo, not catching this, takes each detail as a full-fledged character trait of its own. This worries him greatly.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: As a (formerly) player controlled character, Milo has meta-commentary ingrained into his subconscious, making allusions to the Dungeon Master via different meanings to those initials and unknowingly shouting out franchises he’s unaware of.
• Legacy Character: In Milo's world, there are only four Player Characters. The remaining population is nothing else but NPCs, be they potential quest-givers, enemies or simply backstory fodder. Whenever one PC is slain and is not revived, the mantle will then simply pass on with the new PC assuming many of the character traits that characterised their predecessor^*In other words, the Player rolls up a new character sheet.
  • The Valiant: Gerard
  They see battle, stubbornness, and blind courage in the face of certain defeat as the solution to any problem.
  • The Mimic: Zook
  They fall into the role of a being with the full spectrum of emotions and drives, and stay that way until they die. Adventures and heroic deeds are less important than simply living life in whichever way they so choose.
  • The Trickster: Wellby
  The least predictable of all. They live for their own amusement. They are the sort who will Fireball a dragon just to see what happens.
  • The Munchkin: Milo, and Relkin
  So you're saying I'm compelled by some whacked-out meta-cosmic spirit thingy to number crunch? Screw that. I do what I want.
  • plus The DM^*a.k.a. Disgruntled Mechanics, Diabolical Meddling, Destiny Manipulator, Detail Magnet, Detrimental Meddler, or Dimensional Maestro: The omnipotent being above the gods—which closely monitors the universe and guarantees The Law of Conservation of Detail to ensure that the PCs will dance to Its whims. Should the DM ever be foiled, it will swiftly take steps, up to and including rewriting Reality itself, to ensure that a repeat occurrence could never happen again.
• Level Drain: One of Milo’s greatest fears, and the indirect cause of his subsequent fear of undead.
• Limited Move Arsenal: Being rather proud of his many clever workarounds to avoid the common problems of having only so many spells he could possibly use at once, Milo is upset to discover his friends have no such limitations. He gets over it, eventually. Mostly. Kind of.
  • His workarounds so far include shadow conjurations, replacing prepared spells for others he's mastered, and similarly replacing them with any of the broad range of Divination spells.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: In effect between Potter!Wizards and D&D!Wizards. The advantages held by Potter!Wizards, namely being able to ignore turn order, are available straight from learning magic. On the other hand, as Milo increases in level he will access Epic magic far beyond anything anyone at Hogwarts can learn
• Literal Genie: Lucius Malfoy later reflects that the ritual that summoned Milo specifically targeted Mordenkainen, a "great Archmage, the enigmatic Ninth of Eight", by name. What he got instead was a freakish boy... and his Familiar.
• Lonely at the Top: Milo realizes this would be his likely fate if he continued acting like a munchkin. When you only interact with others for the sake of their assistance (like he does at the start of the story), once the best assistance can only be provided by copies of yourself, there’s little reason to have anyone of real importance in your life. See Gone Horribly Right above.
• Loophole Abuse: Milo’s bread and butter. So far he’s gone nearly a week without sleep, mentioned he’s effectively immune to alcohol, and created a system of writing that only he and his Familiar can understand.
  Milo: When you people are taught to count, we're taught to abuse poorly thought-out rules.
  • Hermione shows an off-hand adeptness at this that leaves Milo speechless, completely revolutionizing Milo's brand of Divination twice over in seconds, without even stopping to think first.
  Hermione: Sometimes it just takes an outsider's perspective.
  • Earlier, when Hannah got separated from the group during detention, Hermione points out that her robes are an object he can detect, even if he can't detect her directly.
• Love Interest: Milo is completely oblivious that Hannah is his.
• Made of Iron: Due to Milo’s hit point-based physiology he is far more resistant to injury than the local witches and wizards, despite him being a low level Squishy Wizard by D&D standards.
• Magic Knight: In addition to being Made of Iron, Milo's actually a much better fighter than the local wizards, who don't get better at hitting people unless they actually study it.
• Magic Mirror: The Mirror of Erised, which shows the viewer their greatest desire.
• Magic Prerequisite: Milo mistakes giving your friends gifts on Christmas for one of these.
• Magitek: Three words: Craft Wondrous Item.
• Master of Illusion: Not in an absolute sense, since he only uses a fairly low-level spell for the effect, but Milo puts the ability to make soundless, scentless, touchless visual projections to great use.
• Medieval Stasis: Milo is horrified to realize that magic is preventing his world from progressing past Standard Fantasy Setting-level technology. The rules of magical item crafting are not scalable to mass production, since each item demands a heavy price from an individual crafter, so it isn't possible for a magical society to really industrialise.
• Medium Awareness: An innate ability of natives to Milo's home reality.
  • Although, they don't consider it a medium, it's just their reality. Like saying they have sky awareness, really.
• Memory Gambit: Fiona Smythe has one set up to get around the Memory Charms the wizarding authorities keep putting on her after the incident at the Dursley's. Somehow they never think to check her Walkman for instructions. Which makes sense.
• Metaphorgotten: Lampshaded.
  A frightening image came to Milo's mind of a thin, pale spider sitting in a large, dark room, surrounded by thousands of silken spider webs, from each of which dangled a major Ministry official like puppets. Milo realized he was badly mixing his metaphors, but, under the circumstances, had other things to worry about.
• Miles Gloriosus: Gilderoy Lockhart. Very careful to keep up his "legendary hero" cover, but never gets involved if there is real danger on hand because all of his so-called accomplishments are those of other wizards and witches, whom he mind-wiped with a memory charm in order to take credit for their accomplishments.
• Min-Maxing: Milo is a little ashamed of himself for not taking full advantage of this, having a Charisma score higher than his Constitution and taking a sub-optimal feat for convenience.
  Milo to Hermione: Dumping Charisma is a sign of great wisdom and foresight.
  • Ironically, that "sub-optimal" feat leaves him minmaxed for the campaign he's actually in instead of the one he thought he'd be in, as without it his magic wouldn't have been sustainable for a week.
• Money Multiplier: Using a currency he gets for free (but intends to pay back), Milo shenanigans his way into a way of crafting for something like 1/18000 the proper cost. He's left almost drooling.
  • And if the Ministry of Magic buys his "no-Imperius-no-ifs-no-buts" amulets at anywhere near their normal price, he should be able to pay back pretty much instantly, and then become way richer than anyone in the story could find an use for.
• Muggles Do It Better: Milo was flabbergasted to know people could make big chunking carriages of steel (i.e.: trains) move. And move at a speed he's never known in his world full of magic.
  • Later on he does the math and has a Heroic Blue Screen of Death moment when he realizes magic is keeping his world in Medieval Stasis.
  • Further, it comes down to a matter of scale. The semi-phenomenal, nearly-cosmic powers of magic simply can’t contend with the power of a lot of Muggles working really damn hard all together all at once. It’s like comparing a pressurized water mining tool to all the collective raindrops of a flood.
• Mundane Solution: When they get to the potions test in the 3rd floor corridor, at the same time Hermione solves the riddle, Ron simply points out all the bottles except the smallest one are covered with dust, therefore the smallest one was previously used.
• Mundane Utility: Hannah’s Christmas present is not only absurdly adorable, but can clean suits of armor for her.
• Munchkin: Milo not only is one (along with most other members of his home reality), but tries to instill the mindset in his friends. Only Harry is showing any signs of this taking, and even then it's only in pursuit of the ability to protect others, not an end in of itself.
  • Voldemort himself, when you think about it. Entirely concerned with his own power, he specializes in One-Hit Kill magic without (at first) any known counter, and chooses to make multiple redundant phylacteries simply because it isn't impossible to do so.
• Mysterious Past: Played with. Milo can't remember his backstory ever since he got into Harry's world.
  • However, with sufficient Character Development (the real kind), he can gradually remember bits he couldn't before.
  • And, like everything else, Milo thinks he might be able to exploit this; if his past isn't defined until he "remembers" it, it can turn out to be whatever ends up being most useful.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Supremely Evil Fell Lord Thamior the Thaumaturge.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Milo using Scholar's Touch on the diary of Tom Riddle accidentally copied his soul to his mind. This lead to nearly the entire plot of the second part of the story, with Riddle manipulating everything subtly from his head.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Quirrell, very much so and mostly (semi-)intentionally:
  • He beats the chess board by pretending to play Ron at chess and instead relaying the Castle's moves to Ron. This teaches Ron the chess board's algorithm, making the chess game he plays for real significantly less dangerous than canon.
  • When taking Harry to see the Mirror of Erised as in canon, he sabotages Harry by making him believe he needs the stone to save Milo, thereby failing the test that no-one who wanted to use the stone could retrieve it from the mirror.
  • When Milo gets abducted by Death Eaters, he immediately goes to tell Dumbledore that he was taken by *vampires,* thereby confirming that he's not actually on Dumbledore's side.
  • Finally, he puts on an Amulet of Protection from Evil, driving Voldemort away from him.
• No-Sell: Summoned undead are immune to all three Unforgivable Curses; they can't be controlled by anyone except the caster, don't feel pain, and instant death doesn't affect what's already dead.
• Noodle Incident: The "explanation" for Milo having Wizard class levels at age 11 when that's well below the minimum starting age is apparently an amazing feat of munchkinry involving starting as a Rogue and retraining. This answers almost nothing, particularly since Milo is also below the minimum starting age for Rogues.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Back home, Milo's nothing special in the grand scheme of things. Here, his potential is equivalent or greater to a legendary artifact that drives the entire first book's plot. Bellatrix, who gets sent to his world is "merely" fairly powerful in the Potterverse. In Milo's world, her abilities to break the turn order rules and cast spells without a daily limit are enough to let her do just about whatever the hell she wants.
• Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: The inability of Potterverse magic to detect Milo’s magic (and vice versa) is used and abused extensively. And not just by the heroes.
• Not Quite Human: Status of Milo is unclear, but at the least his brand of magic is wholly distinct from everyone else's. Thanks to his Resting Recovery abilities, Madame Pomfrey views him as a borderline Humanoid Abomination.
• Not Rare Over There: In Milo's home world, salt is a trade good with a fixed and unchanging price of five gold pieces per pound. In the Potterverse, salt is plentiful and cheap — but it doesn't matter how much Milo pays for it; when he's using it to craft magic items, it's worth five gold pieces per pound.
• Not the Intended Use: Milo heavily abuses this in relation to his spells, since the original intention of how to use them doesn't always fit their written descriptions (that is, how they can actually be used).
  • This comes back to bite him hard in chapter 52, when it is revealed that Milo accidentally moved Tom Riddle's soul into his mind when he used Scholar's Touch on his journal. Milo initially protests how unlikely it is, and how such a function wasn't intended in his spell's use, before realizing that he was in a way going against his principles.
• Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: Hufflepuff House. Great people, great people. Uhm...
• Obfuscating Insanity: Dumbledore, to an even bigger degree than in canon. He frequently pretends to misunderstand obvious things and goes off on the most absurd tangents at inapptropriate times, but it's clear that he's just doing it to mess with people. When action is called for, he's the most competent and efficient character in the story.
• Omake: A very short one at the end of chapter 25 between this story and The Wheel of Time, and a moderately short one between chapter 26 and 27 between this story and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
• Off with His Head!: How the Basilisk is ultimately killed by Hermione.
• Once an Episode: After only one confirmed example, Milo and co. worked out that the Defense Professor is both new and Important every year.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Milo and McGonagall after his Polyjuice Potioned Doppelgänger cast the Hurling Hex on Harry. Milo thinks they're talking about Draco.
• One Size Fits All: Exploited by Milo to ensure his friends never have to replace or refit the cool new magic robe equivalents of steel plate armor that he gives them.
  • Earlier the opposite idea, that an overly large item can fit more than one person at once, is dismissed out of hand by Milo because of his familiarity with All Sizes Fit Only One.
• Only Sane Man: Constantly happens to Hermione and others.
  Fudge sighed and muttered something under his breath. Milo wasn't sure, but he thought he caught the words 'surrounded by nutters' somewhere in there.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Professor McGonagall awards Milo points for breaking the rules, you know something is up.
• Paranoia Gambit: Snape pulls one on Milo in chapter 7, entirely for his own amusement. To wit: Milo is recovering from an acromantula bite, so Snape gives him the antidote in an Obviously Evil flask — and uses Legilimency on him so that he knows Milo's plan to figure out whether the potion is safe and can immediately make up a reason why it wouldn't work.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password to the police computer is "PaSsWoRd".
  • Milo also amusingly goes through a number of possible passwords to get a broom to fly. The first one he tries? Swordfish.
• Parody Episode: The Omake file.
• Pie in the Face: House elves stopped making cream pies two hundred and thirty five years ago to try and discourage Peeves from doing exactly this.
• Poor Communication Kills: In the second year, it turns out nobody told Milo magic is supposed to be kept secret from Muggles, as they assumed he already knew. This has a lot of consequences.
• The Prophecy
  "There's always a Prophecy, Hermione," Milo rolled his eyes. "Everyone knows that."
• The Power of Love: Mocked by Milo (of course).
  "Love," Milo said flatly. "You-Know-Who was brought down by the Power of Love. Maybe instead of learning magic, we should be putting flowers in our hair and frolicking in the forest like those pointy-eared pansies and singing around campfires. Voldy would be powerless to resist our Flower Power."
  • Also:
  "Ha! I'd love to have seen the expression on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's face when a throwaway, poorly thought-out rule from an obscure splatbook that he never even bothered to read blew up in his face."
• Player Character: Similar to how he tries to guide young Harry, Dumbledore does his best to have Milo realize that while he was once merely a PC he is now also his own player.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Lucius does not want the Dark Lord returned for the simple reason that it is more expedient to achieve pureblood dominance and Mudblood destruction via manipulation of the Ministry’s systemic corruption than more overt and aggressive means.
• Prestige Class: In later chapters Milo enters The Rainbow Servant class, which allows someone to detect evil at will, grow wings, gain access to several unrelated powers, and ultimately gain access to all cleric spells. He doesn't really show off these abilities, though.
• Powers via Possession: Not voluntary on the possessed’s part, but nevertheless at least one instance is shown granting the technical skill to cast spells that would otherwise be impossible for that person.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: As he is now in a society of wizards displaying powers far in excess of what he feels should be possible, Milo can be forgiven for assuming that this trope is in effect (how else would the man in charge stay in charge?). However, it doesn't change the humor in seeing him refer to Minister Fudge by increasingly opulent titles as his terror at possibly offending (what he thinks is) one of the most powerful beings in the hemisphere rises.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: A lot of the fic's humor is based on this. Readers familiar with D&D jokes and references are as likely to be entertained as those who aren't, as a result.
• Resting Recovery: Milo's health works on D&D rules, which is quite disturbing to Madam Pomfrey.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Hannah’s Christmas present is literally the cutest form of her favorite animal that her mind can conceive.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Milo’s home reality. To the point that he has trouble understanding he’s no longer in one.
  • Though in all fairness to him, he does still personally follow RPG rules, and has no way of knowing what rules others follow except through observation, which is colored by his personal bias. Refer to his deduction that Hogwarts students must spend (eight minus their intelligence bonus) hours sitting in armchairs and talking about the weather.
  • Adorably, he then gives placing an armchair for his friends in his boltholes the same priority as stocking them with supplies and weaponry.
• Rules Lawyer: Milo is this, in a way tbat actually works on reality itself, because of the way his native reality works.
• Running Gag:
  • "Hufflepuff — Not that that's anything to be ashamed of." and "Everyone knows that".
  • Myra - City of Light! City of Magic!
  • Also Milo saying he shouldn't have dumped Constitution at Character Creation.
  • Also the fact that "irregardless" is grammatically incorrect.
  • Aberforth thinking that people are talking about him when someone mentions Dumbledore, only to get disappointed when they clarify that they were talking about the other Dumbledore.
• Schrödinger's Gun: One reason Milo prefers to leave parts of his backstory undefined is that it lets him pull this when necessary. Such as in Chapter 53, in which he considers "remembering" that his mother made the same kind of Heroic Sacrifice that Harry's did, but ultimately decides against it.
• Screw the Rules, They're Not Real!: Milo lives by this trope. His magic is "more about the wording of the spell than the meaning" and the greatest compliment he knows is "that's so broken".
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Early in book 2, Milo deduces (based on the Law of Conservation of Detail) that Harry is in imminent danger, and launches a technically-successful but otherwise disastrous mission to rescue him from the Dursleys. When Hermione hears about this, she suggests that Milo's rescue was the imminent danger. Trying to figure out how that could possibly work gives Milo a headache.
• Shout-Out: The author subscribes to the idea that, since the people of Milo’s world don’t really have pop-culture, they make pop-culture references without control or knowledge why.
  • "Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles..."
  [T]he Fiction Crisis of 1990, when one of them somehow figured out about Hogwarts. [...] Maybe they should give Pratchett another visit, just to be certain...
  • The above joke was removed once it was realized it might be taken as a swipe at Pratchett's Alzheimer's (which it wasn't).
  • Apparently, Dumbledore did not become Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards by collecting bottle caps.
  • When Mordy learns to speak with Milo, the first two words out of his mouth are "Hey! Listen!"
  • Milo makes a reference the time Elan from The Order of the Stick thought that going without clothing made you invisible, and he also seems to make a reference to the time Roy fought a Half-Ogre.
  • Harry's Obstructive Bureaucrat nemesis quotes a rule written by Harry's Obstructive Bureaucrat nemesis. (See Sophisticated as Hell)
  • Hermione decapitating the Basilisk with the Sword of Gryffindor is clear reference to Jabberwocky, complete with a "Snickersnack!".
  • While the two Muggle police officers are on stake out pretending to be bird watching, Travis mentions he's part of the BBC (British Birdwatching Community). Fiona quips that next he'll tell her he's the voice of the Daleks, and asks him to put in a good word for her with Tom Baker next time he sees him.
  • During their first Divination class, Hannah tells Milo that the symbol of chaos is a wheel with eight arrows pointing out.
• Shown Their Work: The description of the sound of the flashbang grenade at the beginning of chapter 53 reads like hyperbole. It isn't. An M84 stun grenade is capable of producing a sound with a peak volume between 170 and 180 decibels. A jet airplane engine produces sounds between 164 and 166 decibels, and the then-record-setting "loudest ever" concert performed by The Who referred to in the description was measured at 126 decibels at a distance 32 meters from the speakers. (In order to produce a sound that loud at that distance, the volume at the surface of the speakers themselves would have to have been 150 dB, but nobody could have been that close.) Decibels measure sound amplitude on a logarithmic scale, not a linear one: in order to go up by 10 decibels, you need to increase the sound pressure by a factor of ten. A flashbang grenade that produced a peak volume of 170 decibels would, for that one instant, be about two to four times as loud as a jet airplane engine and twenty-five thousand times as loud as the rock concert.
  • For comparison, the loudest sound it is possible to make is 194 decibels. Past this, the sound waves become shock waves, pushing the air in front of them instead of moving through it.
• Skewed Priorities: Milo's to everyone. And everyone's to Milo.
• Something Only They Would Say

  Hermione: Hold up. How do we know you're really you this time? For all we know, you're another doppelganger."
  Milo: Another doppelganger? I didn't realize you had those here as well. And I won't be able to cast True Seeing for, like, five levels!
  Hermione: Okay, nevermind.

  • A humorous example: chapter 18 ends with Hannah declaring that Milo's Everlasting Rations now taste "just like Christmas dinner" (as he just cast Prestidigitation to flavor them). Chapter 19 opens with him deciding that this means she can't possibly still be possessed, because a Dark Wizard would never say something that Glurgey.
• Summon Everyman Hero: Milo would be direly insulted to be referred to as an everyman, but he snugly fits the trope of a typical person of one world becoming extremely valuable in another.
• Summoning Ritual: How Milo got here.
• Summon Magic: Hippogriphs and undead trolls seems to be Milo’s favorites. Celestial fire beetles also make an appearance.
• Summon to Hand: The Elven Rapier of Warning is specially crafted with this ability just because it seems like Milo’s in the sort of campaign where the DM (Diabolical Meddler) pulls the you have been deprived of your weapons stunt regularly.
• There Are No Adults: Justified in Milo's eyes because in his experience NPCs are implicitly useless.
  "I don't understand," Milo confessed. Asking adults for help was not something he, as an adventurer, had ever considered doing before.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The test for Milo being a wizard is perfectly safe, and the Ministry has no hostile intentions.
  "Unless, of course, you aren't human, and are some form of hitherto-undiscovered magical creature, in which case you'll be staked, beheaded, buried upside-down in sanctified concrete for a year and a day; then dug up, salted, shot with thirteen silver bullets, cremated, and Disapparated into the sun."
• Title Drop: In downplayed, subtle ways. A 'natural twenty' is an attack that is guaranteed to hit, and a possible Critical Hit. Two of these notably happen throughout the first part: First, when Milo throws a dagger at a possessed Hannah, nearly killing her. The second is similarly when Milo throws a dagger at Quirrel in that part's climax, but it fails due to Voldemort taking over and simply stopping it with his magic.
  • As indicated in Fridge Brilliance, Book 2's title ("Harry Potter and the Confirmed Critical") also has a subtle Title Drop when Hermione kills the Basilisk with a Vorpal sword - which beheads a creature when getting a natural 20 in an attack and confirming the critical hit.
• To Be a Master: Milo is something of a deconstruction, showing the ultimately empty life devoting oneself to mastery alone leads to. Much of his Character Development is aimed towards giving him something, anything else, to desire out of life besides being a great Wizard.
• Trapped in Another World: Milo (and Bellatrix, who took his place). Although Milo’s changing attitude and our glimpse into the witch’s glee may suggest neither really feel all that trapped.
• Trapped in Villainy: Milo quickly deduces that invoking this trope is the real reason for the Dark Mark — by preventing Death Eaters from re-integrating into normal society, Voldemort has forced them to remain loyal to him.
• True Meaning of Christmas: Harry has to put his foot down to stop Milo from going on an adventure for this as soon as the possibility is presented to him and insists they all just have a normal Christmas together. Unfortunately, due to factors beyond his control, Milo winds up being forced to do it anyways with Hannah.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Almost word for word.
  Supremely Evil Fell Lord Thamior the Thaumaturge (try putting that on a business card).
• Twin Switch: Fred and George try the varient of having one twin pretend to be the other to provide an alibi. Milo either doesn't care that the name he uses is being corrected, or isn't fooled for an instant and dismisses the correction out of hand. It isn't clear which.
• Uncle Pennybags: Harry is slowly becoming this, even more so than in canon, thanks to Milo's reliance on Harry's inheritance to fund his spell research, Item Crafting, and spell foci.
  "Well, it takes an hour," Milo said, "and it's not guaranteed to work. Also, I need a big expensive mirror."
  "How expensive?" Harry asked.
  "A thousand gold pieces—or, via salt, thirty-seven galleons, seven sickles, and eighteen knuts."
  Harry made a dismissive noise and shrugged. "I thought this was supposed to be a problem."
  Milo grinned.
• Unreveal: Whenever Milo pulls off a feat of Munchkinry that his author couldn't match, his methods are rather obtusely, obviously, and humorously left offscreen. This includes how Milo passed his Transfiguration first year with full marks and no talent, and how he managed to get a certain feat so early.
• Vancian Magic: Milo has off and on again feelings of inadequacies brought on by everyone else’s ability to completely bypass the hard limitations of his relationship with this trope, especially the fact he can "run out" of magic.
  • Milo is nearly expelled when an enemy arranges to exploit this and make it appear as if he has no magic at all.
• What Measure Is a Non-Unique?: Milo's world view is divided entirely in PC's and NPC's, at first.
  • In chapter 53, Milo wonders about the morality of retconning his backstory to include tragic events. Nothing in his backstory actually exists until he defines it, so if he adds a tragedy to his backstory, it's as though he caused it himself.
• Weird Currency: The idea of using anything but precious metals or barter goods is incomprehensible to Ron and Milo until they realize that, without any form of magic, Muggles have (relatively) no way of counterfeiting.
  Ron: Whoa. That's mindblowing. They can use anything as money, then. I should write my dad about this.
• The Wonka: Dumbledore, who seems to have been hit with some mild Character Exaggeration compared to canon, is an Obfuscating Insanity variant.
• The Worf Effect: Milo defeats (often handily) multiple powerful wizards and monsters on numerous occasions. However, at the beginning of the second book, some Muggle police officers manage to best him. Considering that the British police don't readily carry firearms, they weren't particularly powerful or dangerous compared to other enemies Milo has faced.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: For Milo, salt is as valuable per pound as silver. For Neville, it’s a condiment.
• Wrong Context Magic: Possibly the central most important plotpoint is that Milo’s magic and everyone else’s magic are simply mutually impossible.
  • Rituals are also this to normal-Potterverse magic. They seem to spontaneously develop on their own instead of being created by wizards like normal spells, and Lucius Malfoy even believes that they are alive and desire to be used.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Hermione refuses to believe they're in a story, while Milo maintains he is in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Discussed. Fiona strongly advocates for this method for dealing with death eaters, given the capabilities of wizards relative to muggle police.
  Hannigan: You've been reading up on their abilities. How would you take him?
  Fiona: A high-powered rifle from three streets away.
  Hannigan: Perhaps I should have specified: In this hypothetical scenario, do remember you're a copper.
  Fiona: Then I'd shoot him and take the fall for it after.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe:
  When something really, really, really wyrd happens, and hear ye me I do mean REALLY wyrd, and lo, it hath never happened before, and neither sir nor gentle lady knoweth what to do, let the goddamned Department of Mysteries handle it, y'hear? And forsooth, maketh sure there are at least a half-dozen Aurors around, if ye know what be good for ye.
  —1634 Statute on Inexplicable Phenomena of a Magical Nature, Section Thirty-Two-Point-One-Four-One-Alpha
• You Have to Burn the Web: While magical webs do indeed burn, Milo discovers to his chagrin that real webs are not flammable.

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