Fanfic / Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin

And then ... Harry Potter HISSED^note [1] By Lunatico

Harry Potter was Sorted into Slytherin after a crappy childhood. His brother Jim is believed to be the BWL. Think you know this story? Think again.

Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin is a Harry Potter Deconstruction Fic (with some elements of a Decon-Recon Switch) exploring the common Wrong Boy-Who-Lived premise of many HP fanfictions. It spans multiple books and is being written by The Sinister Man.

The story makes use of many common Harry Potter fandom tropes (e.g. Harry living in the shadow of his famous brother) and deconstructs or lampshades many others.

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The work is split into four books so far:

• Book 1 - Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin (complete)
• Book 2 - Harry Potter and the Secret Enemy (complete)
• Book 3 - Harry Potter and the Death Eater Menace (complete)
• Book 4 - Harry Black and the Resurrection Game

It can be read on fanfiction.net and AO3.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

A-H

• Abusive Parents:
  • Sort of subverted with the Dursleys, as they abuse and mistreat Harry for years because they are under a Hate Plague spell;
  • James and Lily are of the neglectful kind, as they abandoned Harry with the Dursleys in the first place;
  • Edwina Pettigrew (nee Gamp), who is an Attention Whore who pretended to be sick all the time and forced her son to live in poverty. Though his father was no better, as the son of one of Grindelwald's lieutenants who plotted to have his wife suffer Death by Childbirth so he could claim the Gamp's Wizengamot seat.
  • Tiberius Nott has been actively looking for a way to ruin Theo's life, if not outright murder him, since Theo was five years old, if not before. While he does have some regard for his older son and Heir Alex, that affection is limited to the ways he can manipulate Alex to follow in his footsteps, and he doesn't care about Alex as an independent person.
  • Narcissa Black (formerly Malfoy) attempts to outright murder her son after he chooses to stay with her ex-husband during their divorce proceedings
• Adaptational Badass: This version of Lockhart is flashy but not just a pompous fraud. Probably because he's not really Lockhart but one of his would-be Memory Charm victims who instead got the better of him.
  • Meanwhile, the other main point of divergence — aside from Jim's birth — is that Peter Pettigrew is far more intelligent than in canon, closer to a mastermind than a cowardly stool-pigeon; he willingly sold out the Potters, framed Sirius when it backfired, and has been steadily working his way into a more advantageous position ever since.
  • Slytherin's Basilisk is a lot more powerful. While it lost its killing gaze, petrifying people instead, it also has a Healing Factor, its scales are resistant to magic and it's implied it has Immortality.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: Rita Skeeter is revealed to have been born male.
• Adaptational Heroism: Snape suffers from this because the author dislikes how much of an unsympathetic Jerkass canon Snape is, whose only saving grace was being played by the extremely charismatic Alan Rickman.
  • Played with in regards to Tom Riddle. Unlike canon, he seems to have initially been a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wanted to protect Muggleborns by framing the Purebloods through petrifying the Muggleborns. His plan worked until Myrtle was accidentally killed and he reacted by using Occlumency to suppress all guilt, remorse or compassion, thus resulting in his Start of Darkness. Things got worse once he split his soul...
  • Similarly, Bellatrix Lestrange is just as bad if not worse than her canon counterpart. Bellatrix Black, on the other hand...
  • Lucius Malfoy's allegiance to Voldemort was always spotty at best, and becomes nonexistent once he learns about the Horcruxes. That said, when he thinks a conspiracy is found out, he is perfectly willing to abandon his co-conspirators to their fate while spiriting himself and Draco away, although negotiations with the discoverer make this unnecessary.
  • Barty Crouch Sr. turns out to be a Reasonable Authority Figure rather than the merciless Jerkass that he was in canon.
• Adaptational Expansion: The series goes into greater details about the culture of the wizarding world and magical history.
  • Also parselmagic is a branch of magic, in which spells (particularly healing and offensive spells) are cast in parseltongue.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Marcus Flint is, while not a genius, still smart enough to be able to improve his OWLs grades through sheer will and effort, mostly because the author thought he had a cool name that was wasted in canon.
• Adaptational Name Change: Harry's real name is Hadrian Remus Potter (later Black), though he goes by Harry.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Viktor Krum was only ever portrayed as interested in women in canon; here, he is quite happily (albeit secretly) dating Alex Nott.
• Adaptational Species Change: Well, technically ethnicity change, still, Blaise Zabini was Pureblood in the books, but here he's a Muggleborn who is Happily Adopted by his Pureblooded aunt.
  • In canon, Professor Flitwick is portrayed as being part-goblin. Here, this is not the case, as he is a FULL goblin. No one realizes this due to the fact that the goblin race as a whole disguise themselves as their uglier forms when in public, and Flitwick's appearance is their natural one.
• Adaptational Wimp: Fiendfyre, which in canon can consume a room as large as the Great Hall in ten minutes, is here a lot more controllable, though no less dangerous. The problem is, said control is harder to gain in the first place because in order to cast Fiendfyre, you must have had an enemy at some point in your life that you despise so much you are willing to use absolutely any means to destroy them, even at the cost of ruining all you hold dear or the attack becoming suicidal. Anyone feeling like this is likely to unleash it in reckless fury unless they manage to control themselves and set a plan of action beforehand.
• Aerith and Bob: Iacomus Evan Potter, who goes by James "Jim" Potter Jr.
• Affably Evil: Peter Pettigrew is this when it comes to James, Remus, and Jim (not to mention his Death Eater allies). Everyone else finds him more than a little bit unsettling.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: James Potter sends a very ill-advised howler to Harry on his first day of Hogwarts where he threatens to snap his wand if he steps out of line, due to his partaking of this trope the night before when he learned that, after centuries of drastic measures to avoid it, a Potter had finally been sorted into Slytherin.
  • Chavdarov's Folly, aka how Viktor Krum became the Bulgarian team's seeker at seventeen, is an example. Chavdarov, the previous Seeker for the team, went and got drunk two days before a match and ending up riding through the streets on the back of a bear while naked and blatantly breaking the Statute of Secrecy. This led to his arrest. Of course there was a reserve seeker...who had interfered when he saw his teammate making a spectacle of himself only to have a fatal run in with the aforementioned bear. This led to the team turning to the still school-aged Krum out of sheer desperation.
• Aloof Big Brother: Harry is this to Jim for the most part, though at his nastiest, he can be a Big Brother Bully.
• Alternate Personality Punishment: The feud between Hermione and Daphne has its origins in the fact that Daphne's cruel comments caused Theo Nott to kill himself in an alternate timeline, something that Daphne is completely unaware of.
• Ambiguous Situation: The interactions between Harry and Moody at the start of fourth year are very careful to throw fuel on the fire of the idea that Moody has been replaced by Crouch Jr., like he was in canon, but at the same time leaving just enough uncertainty to make readers wonder if the author is subverting canon again.
• Amoral Attorney: Peter Pettigrew gained a Law Mastery and became the solicitor of the Potters, along with their Stewart and proxy in the Wizengamot. His reputation as a man pretending to be clean but is obviously the political fixer behind war hero James Potter who does the dirty work and keeps House Potter's hands clean hides his continued Death Eater allegiance and ultimate loyalty only to himself (except for what appears to be genuine love or at least respect for his godson Jim).
• Amputation Stops Spread: Lucius Malfoy is forced to sever his own arm to stop a lethal curse after putting on the ring Horcrux. How effective his admittedly quick actions were in actually stopping the curse remains to be seen.
• Anti-Climax: Double subverted. Harry silences Tom Riddle's shade from unleashing the basilisk and because the shade failed to get a wand, it can't Dispel Magic the Silencing Charm, thus leaving it stuck in the Chamber. Unfortunately Tom decides to possess Ron and use his wand to disarm the Potter brothers while they are arguing.
• Arranged Marriage: Tiberius Nott tries to use this strategy to marry the significantly younger Amaryllis Wilkes and take over her House's assets.
  • The marriage between Lucius and Narcissa was arranged to increase the political power of the Death Eaters.
• Armed with Canon: The author picks elements of the book series and often expands them to their Logical Extreme.
  • It is possible (though difficult) to learn Parseltongue because it's an actual language, albeit an inherently magical one, and most Parselmouths are not born with it. Salazar Slytherin used magic to make his Parseltongue hereditary so its magical powers couldn't become a Lost Technology. Ironically, Ron Weasley acquires it accidentally after his possession by Tom Riddle.
  • Aurors can't get into Hogwarts because the founders established that in order to keep the school independent from the magical government. This is the reason why Dumbledore didn't request an army of Aurors to patrol Hogwarts during the basilisk attacks as Hogwarts would see them as an hostile invaders and lash out.
  • Ron's inability to pronounce spells is the result of dyslexia, which is a trait he shares with his father.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Harry's unusual intelligence and maturity just seem to be an example of the OP Harry common in Slytherin!Harry fics *until* Chapter 69, when Luna points out that regardless of how smart he was, Harry simply never would have had the chance to develop an adult vocabulary while living with the Dursleys. "For someone who was actively prevented from getting a good primary education, you know lots of things. Do you know how you know them?" It is Harry's first clue as to the existence of Bob.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Lavender recalls all the ways Jim lost them 35 house points in under a minute.
• Ascended Meme: Chapter 161 features a hilarious take on the "DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE, HARRY!" meme. Also, in that same scene, Harry himself admits that he put his name into the Goblet of Fire because he'd been told it would be impossible for him to beat the age line. "And I took that personally," he adds, a reference to the famous Michael Jordan meme.
• Awesome by Analysis: Natural Legilimens have a preternatural deductive genius similar to the Sherlock Scan. It allows them, amongst other things, to know how to talk to someone to get what they want by looking at their body language.
• Bad Future: The Time-turner exists to prevent this, sending it's intended user in a Mental Time Travel voyage while resetting the rest of the universe as it was in the moment that is returned to, conveniently preventing any paradoxes by arranging so that the recipient is always able to return it to it's container at the exact same time they received it in their personal timeline that no longer exists. It's use has been refused by some of the intended wielders, always causing large amounts of casualties, and the only time the Unspeakables themselves refused to use it believing that it had made an error in choosing a prominent dark witch who was currently imprisoned, it caused a Butterfly of Doom that allowed Grindewald to rise to power.
  • In Death Eater Menace, Hermione comes from one such future where her friends were dead and Death Eaters ascendant. After Harry and Jim lose their souls to the dementor that Neville ended up banishing on train in the altered timeline, a series of events ends in a Death Eater lead government. Hermione was about to flee Britain when the Unspeakables arrived with the Time Turner.
• Bag of Holding: Hermione's beaded purse shows up early, but it's probably outclassed by Lily's "Battle Purse."
• Bait-and-Switch: In chapter 32, it seems that Snape has been entranced by Harry's green eyes, but it was in fact Neville's because his father Frank once saved him from the Marauders.
  • When Ginny is sorted into Slytherin, there's an owl carrying a howler next morning at breakfast. However the howler is for Ron as Molly berates him for stealing his father's Flying Car.
  • Draco tells his father of the advances made by Muggles in the economy and suggest they have better ideas than wizards. Then Lucius draws his wand ... make some privacy charms, and answers why the wizard economy is different, proud of his son for the question.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: There is a scene where Snape has to use legilimency on Bellatrix in order to locate the Horcrux Voldemort gave her only to find that her mind has psychic traps and defenses of a highly deadly variety courtesy of Augustus Rookwood. This trope results.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Shakespeare had a play called Love's Labours Won, a romantic comedy about star-crossed lovers attending Hogwarts together, which was erased from the memory of the Muggle world when the Statute of Secrecy was enacted.
• Beneath the Mask: Jim Potter despises a lot of the excessive attention he gets from the public and fans, and even Harry is surprised by how good he is at masking his emotions when confronted with unwarrated attention.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Theo Nott is by far the nicest and most mild mannered of the Slytherins in Harry circle. This does not mean that he cannot be a dangerous and ruthless enemy when push comes to shove and his friends' lives are on the line, as his father learned a little bit too late.
• Beware the Silly Ones: The Toymaker is the textbook example of this as, despite his affable personality, he is basically the Wizard version of The Joker and his "toys" will kill you or drive you mad before you know what hit you. There is a reason that the only characters more feared than him are Voldemort himself, and possibly Augustus Rookwood, even though he has been dead for over a decade.
  • Fred and George also show that they are nothing to sneeze at either when their Canary Creams work their magic on a group of attacking Death Eaters only to wear off when the Death Eaters are fifty feet in the air.
• Beyond the Impossible: All Occlumency experts, even the Unspeakables, believe that only 7 different mindstreams are possible, and the greatest masters who tried to pass this managed to maintain it for a few minutes before dying of brain aneurysms. Rookwood has 49, although it's speculated that this is only possible due to the arithmantic value of the number 7 which is considered the strongest and 7 times 7 is 49 and because Rookwood is an insanely hardworking genius, and that having between 8 and 48 and 50 or above is still impossible.
• Big Brother Bully: Harry can be this at his nastiest but mostly he's just an Aloof Big Brother. Played straight and deconstructed with the Weasley twins who don't think their actions are that bad until they realize how traumatized Ron is because of their cruel pranks.
• Big Brother Instinct: Unlike their father, Alex Nott is nothing but loving and protective towards Theo. Unfortunately, his attempt to threaten their father into not harming Theo backfires; their father exploits their love for each other to make Alex swear an Unbreakable Vow to serve Voldemort if he returns in exchange for a vow not to harm Theo, then tricks Theo into falsely confessing to theft to protect his brother so he can disown him anyways via Sanctumen Ultimo.
  • Goyle towards his family's ward, Amy Wilkes, who is the daughter of a Sadistic Wicked Toymaker.
  • When Ginny is sorted into Slytherin, George, Fred, and Percy are all very supportive of her. George even hugs her first thing on the morning after the Sorting.
• Big Fancy House: Potter Manor. Also, Malfoy Manor, which has stables with winged horses and an "ophidiarium."
• Big Little Man: Harry and his friends return to the Chamber of Secrets at the start of fourth year to check up on whether or not the reincarnated Basilisk has hatched yet. It has and it begins to make suitably epic and threatening pronouncements in parseltongue from offscreen...at which point it enters the characters view and turns out to be all of three feet long.
• Black Dude Dies First: Downplayed Trope. Kingsley Shacklebolt is the first canon good guy to die permanently, however it doesn't stand out as much as several OCs were Killed Off for Real before him and several canon characters had their deaths reversed by time travel
• Black Speech: Parseltongue is treated this way by most of Wizarding Britain, despite it being actually beneficial at times, mainly due to the fact that Voldemort used it as a magical Weapon of Mass Destruction during his first reign of terror. It doesn't help that, according to Gupta, parseltongue results in a potent fear response in those who hear it but can't understand:
• Blood Knight: After murdering Kingsley with his bare hands, Peter finds using Avada Kedavra disappointingly mundane.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Peter genuinely thinks that making Remus kill while transformed and thus embracing "The Beast" is doing him a huge favor.
• Boring, but Practical: The Slytherin Path is to look for the solution with the least resistance, the greatest advantage and the best results.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: Artemus Podmore, one of Harry's solicitors, is described as having a progressive working class attitude while having a full Lord Bonneville attire.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Ron Weasley and to a much less apocalyptic extent Jim Potter go through this in year two due to unwittingly interacting with cursed books.
  • Rookwood has used his knowledge of the mind arts to do this to Bellatrix in order to turn them into the fanatical Death Eater they became known for and he also did SOMETHING to Umbridge that does not bode well.
• Brick Joke: In Chapter 65, Snape tells Harry that he wants to be there to see James's face when he learns about Lily's secret (and notorious) wizarding ancestry. Harry jokingly responds that, time permitting, he'll send Snape an engraved invitation. Sixty-six chapters later, guess what Harry hand delivers to Snape the night before a pivotal Wizengamot session.
• Broken Bird: Harry.
• Burn the Witch!: According to the author, in this fic the witch trails were fabricated after the fact because wizards got tired of being dragged into muggles' political and military fights.
  • Dolores Umbridge's mother tried to drown her when she was eight because thought magic was the result of Demonic Possession. It resulted in her Fantastic Racism for muggles and it's worse because it wasn't even her real mother.
• The Bus Came Back: The new and improved version of Draco Malfoy makes his grand return when fourth year rolls around after having spent his third year enrolled at Durmstrang following his parents' bitter divorce.
  • The same could be said for Mad-Eye Moody who reappears at the start of fourth year after having been on a mysterious mission to Albania since about half way through the previous year's events.
• Butterfly of Doom: Lily surviving Voldemort's attack on Godric's Hollow triggers this. Notably, she retains her hostility toward Snape in spite of all the sacrifices he has made for her and that she's responsible for one of her children being horribly abused and neglected.
  • Draco's letter to his mother after Harry forces him into an Unbreakable Vow also counts as this directly triggers Narcissa to have her deranged house elf Mogli try to assassinate Harry which in turn indirectly leads to Lily Potter killing Vernon Dursley and Narcissa eventually leaving her family to go rally the remaining Death Eaters.
• Calling the Older Brothers Out: Ron does this to Fred and George when they decide to threaten him about being mean to Ginny after she's sorted into Slytherin, only for him to call them out on their cruel pranks, and that makes Fred, always the most ruthless of the two, realize how much of a Big Brother Bully he has been.
• Car Fu: Theo manages to destroy one of the stone gargoyles that his father is using to try and kill him by summoning the Knight Bus on top of it.
• Cast from Hit Points: Casting the Samsara healing spell in Parseltongue works this way. So far Ron Weasley has done this on no less than three occasions to save the lives of his friends and family and each time has come dangerously close to killing him.
• The Chosen One: We already know by Word of God that Harry is the true Boy-Who-Lived. What we learn later is that Harry is most definitely the target of another prophecy, one foretelling the herald of an apocalypse!
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The Slytherins who were complicit in framing George Weasley for the Deadly Prank in year two which almost caused their own Quidditch team to freeze to death would probably have been able to get away with it without serious repercussions if they hadn't instantly fallen prey to this trope the second they were accused.
• Closet Geek: Blaise Zabini fits this perfectly as he tries to hide the fact that his upbringing made him far more familiar with muggle culture than the other Slytherins might expect seeing as he will make sly references to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and can't help but geek out when he finds out that there is, in fact, a spell to create a lightsaber.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: In the author's notes, he reveals who he would like to see play the characters.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: No strangers to psychological torture, the Azcabal decide to treat Rookwood to an infinite loop of Tiny Tim. Specifically, Tiptoe Through the Tulips. For months. It takes the world's greatest mind mage weeks to recover from that, and it's implied that he never fully does.
• Cool Old Lady: Augusta Longbottom. In addition to being an exceptionally talented witch capable of taking on men half her age in a duel, Augusta also handles a crossbow! It also turns out that her stuffed vulture hat is used to ward off any unworthy suitors. During her brief appearance as Regulus's metamorphmagus trainer, Cassiopeia Black has shades of this, though she often hides her true elderly form (and sometimes her gender) with other more youthful and virile ones.
• Cosmic Horror Reveal: Done gradually, but largely centered around the contents of the Anathema Codex, a listing of known wild magics which are impossible to control and considered even more forbidden than the Unforgivable Curses. Those proven to have cast an Unforgivable on a person are thrown into Azkaban for life, but anyone even suspected of being able to cast wild magic is thrown through the Veil of Death without trial.
  • Most clearly shown in Chapter 70, when Harry and friends use a Pensieve to view Luna's memories of how her mother died. They learn that Pandora used a Codex spell to hide all knowledge of Luna's Heliopathy from the entire world. In doing so, she summoned a mysterious eldritch power that killed her in the process and which frightened the observers so much that they fled the memory. It then tried *to follow them out of the memory into the real world!* And while it was prevented from doing so, it destroyed the Pensieve (which had been described as nearly indestructible earlier in the chapter).
• Cosmic Horror Story: There is some strong elements, from a Mind Screw house elf Wizard Duel taking place in a pocket dimension to mentions of sleeping Old Gods and lakes made of human blood, that this fic has added as some seriously Darker and Edgier elements to the Potterverse.
• Cosmic Retcon: Wizards and witches established The Masquerade through a spell that erased all evidences of the existence of magic, which edited or outright erased memories and historical documents, and even affected religious texts and literature. For instance, here Shakespeare had a play called Love's Labours Won, a romantic comedy about star-crossed lovers attending Hogwarts together.
  • The naga were erased from existence due to all nagas obtaining magical powers and In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves, though humans still remembered elements of them, particularly Parseltongue.
• Creepy Child: The Carrow Twins are this taken up to eleven seeing as they are explicitly styled after the twins in The Shining, they are grown from pods rather than being born, and are heavily implied to at least sometimes dine on human flesh.
• Crusading Widow: The Wagga Wagga werewolf pack discover to their cost exactly how dangerous examples of this trope can be when they brutally kill the wife and child of the Australian auror Lazarus White (who is, unbeknownst to them, actually Regulus Black in disguise) only to have the grieving father unleash fiendfire on them and wipe them off the face of the Earth.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In 1979 Dumbledore uses a deck of heavily enchanted standard Muggle playing cards to attack Voldemort. The assault from what's effectively 52 whirling buzzsaws of doom quickly degrades the dark wizard's Protego and forces him to flee in panic.
  • All the times a werewolf tries to intimidate Pettigrew they end up receiving one.
  • Harry easily destroy Peter Pettigrew in the Shrieking Shack.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Finding out that his parents are alive and that he has a twin brother who they love was this for Harry.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Once Harry puts 7 thought paths towards the singular purpose of learning accio wand, it turns out that one becomes the only wandless, wordless spell he can ever use. Other Occlumens have experimented with that many paths, but the only one who's managed to do more than that and survive is Rookwood. Who, it turns out, uses it to recover from a Fate Worse than Death and become one of the main antagonists.
  • The Parseltongue Samsara spell could also be considered this as it is a healing spell that is Cast from Hit Points.
• Darker and Edgier: The fic is this when compared to canon, albeit not to the same extent that many other fanfics are. The villains are a bit more vicious, there are character deaths starting much earlier in the narrative, there is the occasional innuendo or Sexy Discretion Shot, and the characters are not above dropping a Precision F-Strike for dramatic or comedic effect when the situation calls for it. In other words, while canon started out in PG territory and slowly drifted towards PG-13, this fic starts off firmly in the PG-13 rating and pretty much stays there (with some of the violence possibly pushing into a mild R).
• Deadly Game: Just like in canon the Triwizard Tournament is set up to turn into one of these. The twist is that the tournament actually has been set up to be much safer and basically be the wizarding equivalent of an academic decathalon. Unfortunately the Goblet of Fire has unknowingly been tampered with by Peter Pettigrew in order to turn out far more dangerous tasks so as to fulfill the elaborate requirements for a ritual to resurrect Voldemort. The only characters who are shown to have any serious worries about the safety of the participants in the tournament so far are Dumbledore and, weirdly enough, Ron Weasley.
• Deadly Prank: The Weasley twins are framed for what is initially assumed to be one of these in second year by their possessed brother and a few of the crueler Slytherins when the Slytherin Quidditch team is almost locked outside the castle in a blizzard naked overnight.
• Death by Adaptation:Kingsley Shacklebolt dies before his character is even introduced in canon.
  • Uncle Vernon dies of what is initially believed to be a heart attack part way through second year, when he survived the series in canon.
  • Tiberius Nott also dies well before his character makes his first brief appearance in canon (it is not stated as to whether he survives the series or not in the books)
• Death by Cameo: Xander Majid, who dies to one of Erasmus Wilkes' trains near the start of book 2, is a stand-in for the reader 'headphone harry'.
• Death Dealer: Dumbledore, of all people, uses a deck of standard Muggle playing cards to attack Voldemort in 1979, albeit one which has been heavily enchanted. The assault from what's effectively 52 whirling buzzsaws of doom quickly degrades the dark wizard's Protego and forces him to flee in panic.
• Death of Personality: There's a Memory Charm that can allow a wizard to do this and Lockhart seemingly does this to himself after fleeing Hogwarts. In fact, Death of Personality is the official term used in Australia, where the Charm is used in lieu of actual executions.
• Decon-Recon Switch: The Sinister Man has stated that one of his goals with the fic is to take the more ridiculous tropes in the various Fan Fics, as well as in canon, and actually make them work.
• Deconstruction Fic: Of all the cliché Harry Potter fanfic tropes.
  • A specific example is that when Harry learns of his "Muggle problem" he says he simply thought that the Dursleys paid off anyone who suspected them of abuse. He is told on no uncertain terms that a middle manager at a drill company and a housewife would not have an entire local government in their pockets.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In Chapter 133, Sirius declares an Oath of Enmity against the Potters without thinking about how his adopted heir would feel about having his mind influenced that way.
  • When Fred and George protest about having to make peace as a condition to be allowed to attend the Quidditch World Cup, Percy says they should've thought about that before ruining the party their mother "had slaved to prepare for" them.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Scabior, Durwood Gibbon, and Rufus Scrimgeour all die during third and fourth year quite differently and long before their canonical deaths (and introductions for that matter) during the events of sixth and seventh year.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Narcissa decides that Draco deciding to live with his father after his parents divorce is apparently sufficient justification to try and derail the Hogwarts Express and kill every single student onboard. Even Peter Pettigrew, as Ax-Crazy as he is, flips out at her for going too far when he discovers what she tried to do.
• Distracted by the Sexy: The pureblood boys are very interested in the one-piece bathing suit of Sue Li.
  • Much to Harry's frustration this becomes a Running Gag during the start of fourth year when he grumbles that he will have to use his Occlumency more than usual to keep the Gryffindor boys' newfound obsession with Lavender Brown's developing figure from distracting him in class and even the normally unflappable Blaise Zabini finds himself tongue-tied whenever he is in the presence of Cormac Mc Laggan.
• The Dreaded: Voldemort is this, just like canon, and Harry quickly figures out why this is the case when he gets to watch a few highly disturbing memories of Voldemort in his prime.
  • Rookwood is also this when it comes to all things Mind Magic, at least as far as Snape is concerned, and the rampage when he escapes from the Ministry certainly backs this up.
• Dream Spying: By the time fourth year rolls around Harry and Jim are NOT subject to this trope due to Harry's progress in Occlumency and Jim becoming an animagus, so the dreams of Voldemort's schemes are currently not keeping them up at night. The same cannot be said for Ron Weasley on the other hand who ALSO has a magical connection to Voldemort, only without the Potter twins magical protection/immunity.
• Driven to Suicide: Ron tries to throw himself off the Astronomy Tower after he remembers what he has done while possessed by Riddle's diary. However, Jim realizes what he's trying to do and saves him just in time.
  • In the alternate timeline Hermionie comes from, this is Theo's fate.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The fact that Harry's dialogue was a bit overly formal for an eleven year old and that he was disturbingly sociopathic at times (i.e. threatening to arrange a fatal accident for Draco) during his first year is actually given an explanation by the plot as The Sinister Man's writing style improved and the better written and less cliche Harry took over. Specifically, first year Harry had not yet learned occlumency and therefore was under the influence of the malevolent force known only as "Bob".
• Entertainingly Wrong: Harry misreads certain clues and assumes that Remus is a vampire.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Vernon is adamant that Petunia and Dudley had nothing to do with trying to murder Harry and is perfectly willing to die if they are spared. Then it turns out that Vernon and the other Dursleys weren't actually evil but had been somehow cursed to act the way they did
  • Peter clearly has some feelings for his godson Jim
• Even Evil Has Standards: Whatever Mulciber did to Mary McDonald disgusted Pettigrew to the point of dropping an anonymous tip to the Aurors, leading to his arrest.
  • Lord Andrew Parkinson is an unrepentant Pureblood supremacist, but when Pansy ends up owing a life debt to Hermione, he is insistent on resolving the matter in good faith when even Hermione was content to simply ignore it.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Daphne has a crush on Ginny
• Everyone Has Standards: Lucius Malfoy never really bought into Voldemort's ideals, and used his influence with the Dark Lord to shield those he cared about, but at the end of the day was still a Death Eater, albeit a reluctant one. The revelation that Voldemort made multiple Horcruxes is enough to bring him to an active anti-Voldemort stance.
  • The Unspeakables as a whole, and Saul Croaker in particular are as a rule generally a rather amoral lot, but even they are appalled when Rookwood inflicts Snape witch chronic wolf-fear
  • Rita Skeeter and Peter Pettigrew, for all of their sleaziness and psychopathic tendencies respectively, are shocked and appalled at Tiberius Nott's plan to marry and impregnate a twelve year old girl in order to seize her inheritance. Admittedly, in Pettigrew's case he is fully planning to murder said twelve year old girl himself and use her corpse for a dark ritual in order to seize the aforementioned inheritance, but at least he doesn't cross the line into forced child marriage.
• Evil Gloating: Peter Pettigrew does this to James, Remus and Harry (who are all tied up) in the climax of Death Eater Menace. Harry is offended by this cliche...right up until he realizes that Peter is just stalling for time.
• Evil Mentor: Rookwood to Peter. Eventually evolves into a fullblown Villainous Friendship, as both are thrilled to reconnect with each other while murdering their way out of the Ministry
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Tiberius Nott falls victim to this when he is stripped of his magic right in front of a vicious Hellhound that is trained to kill squibs and muggles on sight. Cue the Scream Discretion Shot.
  • In Chapter 96, Blaise jokingly quotes the Shakespeare line in question in response to Neville's bear Patronus chasing the Dementor off the Hogwarts Ezpress.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: The two big mysteries during Harry Potter and the Secret Enemy (Where is Riddle's Diary? Why is Lockhart suddenly competent?) are entirely solvable if you are paying careful attention. Admittedly the clues for the Diary's whereabouts were mistake by some readers for character bashing and the solution to Lockhart's eccentricities is a pretty clear case of The Dog Was the Mastermind, albeit one that was subtly foreshadowed.
• False Confession: When George is framed for a prank that nearly kills several Slytherins, Fred confesses to protect his brother. The staff aren't fooled but are forced to suspend him until Lockhart confesses months later in an uncharacteristically unhinged rant to the Aurors trying arrest him. Also falsely, it turns out. The true perpetrator was a Voldemort-possessed Ron, but Lockhart, actually a disguised Regulus Black who was mind controlling Lockhart's real body, which was under the Draught of Living Death in a Swiss hospital as a fake persistent vegetative state patient while Black was teaching under Lockhart's name in Hogwarts, made his own False Confession to protect the students he'd become fond of, as well as to provide a convenient patsy to some other crimes in another False Confesion along with a legitimate if unwilling confession to crimes Lockhart actually committed prior to his incapacitation by Regulus, before making real!Lockhart lobotomize himself with the Tabula Rasa curse.
• False Reassurance: A flashback in Chapter 120 shows Peter Pettigrew reassuring his mother he wouldn't poison her. He then used a pillow to suffocate her and says poisons can be traced.
• Fantastic Racism: Played with in regards to werewolves. While initially just people suffering from a curse once a month, there is documented evidence that they all gradually lose their humanity and become true, sadistic monsters who are cannibalistic and are incapable of holding any moral values other than obeying the pack alpha and self preservation or selfish gain and obeying the descendants of the original inventor of the lycantrophy curse. Remus Lupin is simply an unexplained exception who has retained his humanity, but the existence of an exception raises the question of if it's truly universal. This is because Remus is a natural animagus, ironically a wolf animagus, and animgai are immune to the lycantrophy curse in both the lost original spell form and the infection form caused by surviving transformed werewolf bites. Once he is psychically helped to embrace the inner spirit animal his lycantrophy stops working as long as he remains transformed to his animagus form, though Harry theorizes he might be fully recovered, he is unwilling to test it without safety measures.
• Faux Affably Evil: Intentionally subverted by Peter Pettigrew when it comes to the general public (to James, Remus, and Jim, along with his Death Eater allies, he is Affably Evil). As Harry himself put it: “He makes a point of trying to act charming and likeable and deliberately failing....And because he fails to be charming and likeable, people think they see through him and find Lord Potter’s ruthless fixer behind the false image. And they never guess that the ruthless fixer is just another false image to hide the back-stabbing Death Eater that represents his true self.”
• Fluffy the Terrible: Basil the Basilisk (even if he is only three feet long). A somewhat justified trope seeing as apparently snakes' names are determined based on the personality of the first parseltongue speaker they imprint on and Harry is a well known Deadpan Snarker.
• Fun with Acronyms: In this fic, the "hit" from "hit wizard" is an acronym for "Hazardous Incident Team".
• Funny Foreigner: Subverted with Viktor Krum who initially appears to have a comedy foreign accent. But Harry quickly realizes that Viktor is highly intelligent, fluent in several other languages, and *understands* English fluently. His garbled syntax is entirely the result of a defect in the potion he took to learn English before coming to Britain for the Quidditch World Cup.
• Grande Dame: Dorea Black-Potter, Harry and Jim's late grandmother, was a grande dame of Wizarding society and edging towards Cool Old Lady status herself, before her untimely death. A semi-retired St. Mungo's Healer with a penchant for experimental Potions, Dorea was both a daughter of the House of Black and Lady Potter. Her status was such that, even though she took Sirius in after she ran away, she was not blasted off the family tree by her niece Walburga.
• Generation Xerox: The Harry-Hermione-Jim (non-romantic) triangle is an inverted version of the Snape-Lily-James relationship, except that Harry is popular and wealthy, Hermione is hostile to Jim rather than Harry, and Jim himself is nearly Hated by All to the point his Head of House will not protect him.
• Genre Blindness:
  • Why, yes, James, treat the son you thought was a squib as a stain upon your family's name when he gets sorted into Slytherin while clearly favoring your other son, only to switch gears when the favored son has called a muggleborn a ‘mudblood’ and can speak Parseltongue — the two things that even the Slytherin son doesn’t do — and try to butter up the oldest boy, while a prophecy clearly states that whoever ends up as the Last Potter will be the Prince of Slytherin who will start the apocalypse. I’m sure THAT will go swimmingly when the time comes!
  • Despite being smarter then canon, this Harry is no less blind: he did not realize the son of a presumed Black Widow Countess and the son of a psychopathic dark wizard might already have Occulumency shields and experience, nor did he realize by himself that he should summon a snake and have it act as a way to speak with the silent Hydra. (Theo had to suggest it.)
• Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: During the second year, someone steals the Slytherin Quidditch team's clothes while they're showering after practice, and they have to go Streaking through the castle in nothing but skimpy Modesty Towels while the rest of the student body laughs.
• Got Volunteered: Wizards and witches with unique gifts (such as Metamorphmagus) are required to work for the Ministry.
• Handicapped Badass: Ron has dyslexia and is still working on the badass part.
• Happily Adopted: Harry is adopted by Sirius.
• Hard on Soft Science: Binns is the History of Magic professor because allowing wizards and witches to learn how interconnected muggles and wizards were before The Masquerade is a threat to the status quo. It's also possibly the Start of Darkness for Umbridge who was studying a Mastery of Magical History until she learned why he's the teacher and gave up.
• Hate Plague: Used strongly throughout the series.
  • After being fed a potion that removes traces of Laser-Guided Amnesia and having their memories of Peter being the Secret-Keeper erased, Peter casts a Confounding Charm on James (but not Lily) that causes him to hate Sirius.
  • The Oath of Enmity forces members of two families to magically have an instinctive dislike and mistrust for each other. It's revealed that there has been an Oath of Enmity between the Malfoy and Weasley families for generations, but it is possible for people affected to work together and even get along in spite of the curse.
  • The Sanctumen Ultimo works like the Oath of Enmity on a larger scale: a family member can be disowned for treason, and the rest of the family as well as all families with reciprocal oaths will magically hate that person. Unlike the Oath of Enmity, only a highly trained Occlumens can resist the Ultimate Sanction's compulsion. Poor Theo No-Name discovers this first-hand. Then exaggerated when a magically-compelled mob starts hunting for him to burn him alive.
  • Similarly, Harry is the subject of an unknown curse that causes Muggles to instinctively view him with fear and suspicion. The magic is unknown to the degree that Snape, who effectively has Mastery level knowledge of Dark Arts, has never even heard of such a thing.
• Hellfire: Fiendfyre. In fact, when Lockhart/Regulus uses it, the narration makes it look like it's Summon Magic directly from Hell.
• Helping Hands: After the Life-or-Limb Decision mentioned below, Harry is more than a little bit unsettled to discover than the severed limb in question has developed a mind of its own due to the influence of Voldemort's Horcrux and is trying to escape. Luckily, Harry manages to douse the Horcrux in Basilisk venom before it get can get away.
• Hero Killer: Peter Pettigrew and Augustus Rookwood can be considered this after the events of third year when their escape from the Ministry leads to the deaths of Scrimgeur and Kingsley among many other unnamed characters.
• Hidden Elf Village: The series gives a greater emphasis on the cultural differences between the wizarding world and the muggle one, which were often ignored in the books.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Harry is incredibly exasperated about the fact that his peers have seemingly turned into examples of this trope quite suddenly once fourth year rolls around.
• How We Got Here: The first prologue opens in June 1995, after Voldemort's return in the graveyard of Little Hangleton, with Harry, a Slytherin, on bad terms with his blood family but having Happily Adopted Sirius and Theo as his Family of Choice. Events of the past four years are alluded to, such as a brief period during which Harry and Jim were like actual brothers and the school's poor treatment of Theo "No-Name", but nothing is spelled out. Then, after the second prologue shows how Peter framed Sirius, the story properly starts just before Harry's first year at Hogwarts.
• Humiliation Conga: In the space of forty-eight hours, James Potter learns his closest friend (Peter) is a Death Eater who's been playing him for over a decade, is effectively blackmailed into emancipating Harry and paying him 11 million Galleons, learns that Harry (and Lily and Jim) are all descended from the notorious House Wilkes, endures Sirius punching him before swearing an Oath of Enmity against him, learns that Peter had also been *embezzling* from him which means that he can't afford to pay Harry the millions he'd just sworn a magical oath to pay, is forced to reveal his illegal animagus form in front of the Aurors under his command, and is fired from his position as Chief Auror. Later, the hits just keep coming, when he is forced to lease Potter Manor and the Invisibility Cloak to Harry to avoid dying from his magical oath, has to move into 4 Privet Drive with his family, and eventually humbly accepts a new Ministry job as Arthur Weasley's junior assistant. Word of God says this will mark the beginning of a redemption arc for James because "losing everything also means losing the burdens he shouldered as a result of having everything."
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Tiberius Nott invokes this during the Quidditch World Cup Death Eater attack when he takes his magical crossbow and his hellhounds and sets out to hunt Harry and his friends through the woods during the chaos.

I-Y

• Idiot Ball: In the second prologue, Dumbledore carries it nicely. He simply assumes that Jim is the prophecy child because he has a scar, even though Harry also has a scar. It's even more egregious in that Dumbledore doesn't even try to use magic to diagnose the nature of the children's scars, he simply assumes that Jim's is magical while Harry's isn't. Of course, there would be no plot otherwise. Possibly subverted: As of Chapter 114, every character who has noticed Harry's scar at all has dismissed it as unimportant... except for Professor Babbling, who recognized its occult significance thanks to her Occlumency skills only to immediately be attacked by a mysterious and unseen magical force that frightened her so much she Obliviated herself of the knowledge!
  • James has a bad case of this when it comes to signing any paper put in front of him without fully reading it (something only made slightly less foolish by the fact that the two people taking advantage of this oversight are his best friend and son).
  • Jim firmly takes hold of this when he sneaks into the Harry's Wizengamot office (although this is suggested to be partially due to some traits of his animagus form bleeding through). To his credit, he realizes this was a mistake after a few very unnerving minutes of conversation with the portrait of Erasmus Wilkes and skedaddles.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: At one point, Harry bluntly asks Lucius Malfoy whether he had had been responsible for several somewhat ostentatious attempts on Harry's life over the past year. Offended, Lucius (who says he is "not a fan of the Grand Guignol") states that if he'd wanted Harry dead, he'd have just used the Imperius Curse on Harry's uncle Vernon and ordered him to murder Harry in his sleep before burning the house down in a way that would make it look like an accident. Harry, a Slytherin, finds this answer acceptable.
• I Have No Son!: Inverted, as Harry disowns his family and is adopted by Sirius.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: The names for Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley are absolutely intentional as there's a Horizon Alley in Sidney and Uncondition Alley in Toronto. Hermione even describes the wizarding world as a subculture based on bad puns.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Harry notes that he knows it was Derrick and Bole who assaulted Jim during year 2, and states that Jim looked into a Pensieve to review his memory of the event. Derrick immediately invokes this trope by declaring that they put a bag over Jim's head so that he couldn't see. Bole gives him a Dope Slap, and Harry and Flint perform a simultaneous Face Palm.
• Inheritance Murder: This is Peter Pettigrew's plan for how to seize the Wilkes inheritance (Tiberius Nott had a far more unsettling plan) and he has hinted that this was an option that he was considering in order to ensure that Jim became the Potter heir as well.
• Insult Backfire: The term "Death Eaters" was coined by the Daily Prophet against Voldemort's Knights of Walpurgis before Voldemort co-opted it.
• Internal Reveal: In chapter 43, Harry finds out about the prophecy after James puts him under the Ultimate Sanction.
• Intoxication Ensues: Harry plans to make Sirius and Snape overcome their differences by disarming them and leaving them Locked in a Room together with a large bottle of Fire Whiskey and nothing to do but get drunk. As it turns out, they mostly resolve their issues while still relatively sober...and then decide to get drunk together anyway.
• Irony: As Lucius Malfoy notes, it's Ironic that Wilbur Crabbe died in Azkaban as a Death Eater since "he really was a victim of the Imperius Curse".
• I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: Snape, despite having quite a lot of knowledge of dark magic, is baffled by the Hate Plague under which Harry suffers, in part because it only affects non-magicals. The Ultimate Sanction is the closest he can find to that curse.
• The Jeeves: Blaise makes Dobby watch Jeeves and Wooster because all the abuse he faced with the Malfoys, particularly at Narcissa's hands, made him a nervous wreck. He adopts the mannerisms of this trope, including Servile Snarker, and starts wearing a black three-piece suit, although he's still barefoot.
• Jekyll & Hyde: Bellatrix has no less than three different personalities battling for dominance inside her head due to the experiments of Augustus Rookwood. Miss Demeanour is a calm, cool, and collected killer while Bellatrix Lestrange has gone Laughing Mad due to her time in Azkaban. Finally there is Bellatrix Black who is actually quite mild mannered and is downright appalled at what her other personalities have been doing. The use of the Tabula Rasa spell seems to have solved the issue for now, but there are hints that Rookwood may have done something similar to Barty Crouch Jr. and Dolores Umbridge.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Tom Riddle does this after Myrtle is accidentally killed and he uses his occlumency to remove his ability to feel any compassion or remorse causing him to fully turn into Lord Voldemort.
  • Harry comes dangerously close to making the same mistake after Podmore's wife is killed, but he stops at the last possible moment. He comes even closer to crossing the point of no return after James puts him under the Ultimate Sanction, but once again he stops at the last possible second and realizes that he is about to make a mistake.
  • Something similar happens to Peter Pettigrew who has his trust in James shaken on the same day that he finds out that he is descended from a war criminal and that his mother has been lying to him and manipulating him for years. By the end of the day he has committed his first murder and started his path to becoming one of the most dangerous of Voldemort's Death Eaters.
• Kicked Upstairs: Rufus Scrimegour only accepted the promotions he was offered within the Ministry because nobody else available was qualified. That he wouldn't seek them otherwise is the reason he isn't considered ambitious enough to be a Prince of Slytherin.
• Killed Off for Real: Iris (the Tonks' house elf) dies in the Hogsmeade attack. Kingsley Shacklebolt, Rufus Scrimgeour, Aurors Proudfoot and Robards, Mr. and Mrs. Edgecombe, and quite a few minor DMLE officials are killed when Pettigrew and Rookwoodbreak out of the Ministry
  • Marcus, Remus, and Regulus all die in an alternate timeline that Harry erases through time travel. Even earlier, Harry, Jim, Theo, and multiple others die in a timeline Hermione destroys through time travel
• Killer Teddy Bear: Erasmus Wilkes has twelve foot tall and heavily armed versions of these in his secret workshop
• Lack of Empathy: The true requirement behind why horcruxes are so rare - to be able to make one at all means having and continuously maintaining the mindset that you are the only person in the world whose life has any value. Making more than one is considered proof of total insanity, and even Voldemort was only able to accomplish it by accidentally reversing his Occulmancy shields to burn out that emotional potential.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Tiberius Nott has his pet Hellhounds (who specialize in hunting muggles and squibs) try to chase down Harry and the gang. It should come as no surprise that things do not go well for him when Theo manages to trick him into breaking an Unbreakable Vow, thereby rendering him a squib, right in front of one of the aforementioned monsters.
• Latin Lover: Salazar Slytherin was a Spanish wizard who outlived all three of his wives and had sixteen legitimate children and an undetermined number of bastards.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Jim has a tendency to act this way when confronted with dangerous situations, much to Harry and Ron's frustration.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Just like Dumbledore in canon, Lucius Malfoy is unable to resist the siren call of the Resurrection Stone and, despite putting up a Hell of a fight, ends up putting the cursed ring on his finger triggering the withering curse. Unlike Dumbledore in canon, Lucius very quickly decides that it is far better to live missing an arm than not to live at all and the arm is promptly severed.
• Locked in a Room: Harry interrupts a violent duel between Sirius and Snape by disarming them and leaving them locked up together. He then has Dobby deliver a bottle of Firewhiskey.
• Loophole Abuse: When Lucius and Narcissa divorced, she took a huge percentage of his fortune. Fortunately for him, her rights over it only extend to what he keeps in the Wizarding World and she can't claim anything he keeps in the Muggle one.
  • Harry swears an Unbreakable Vow not to reveal the second prophecy from "this moment forward", which frees him from the Vow until that moment comes again once he goes a few days back in time.
  • One of the more vile pranks in the second book has the entire Slytherin Quidditch team tromping through the snow, nude, in early winter and nearly locked out of Hogwarts proper, where there's a good chance of them freezing to death, warming charms or no. The seeming perpetrator is then suspended for the rest of the year, mostly because nobody can actually pin the crime on him, and because most of the staffers immediately see through the lie, but their hands are tied.
  • Normally the Hogwarts wards prevent any significant Auror presence at the school. This becomes an issue at the end of second year when the entire staff is petrified by the Basilisk. Lucius Malfoy manages to get around the wards' restrictions by using his position on the Board of Governors to declare an impromptu career fair and thereby get a group of Aurors and Unspeakables into the school in a way the wards will accept to help deal with the crisis.
• Lovecraft Lite: This trope comes up whenever there is a scene set at the Selwyn's base of operations at the appropriately named Abbey of Nightmares.
• Love Makes You Evil: Dumbledore, of all people, seems to believe this to be the case (at least when it comes to himself and only when it comes to romantic love) and he has performed psychic surgery to prevent himself from feeling romantic love. Admittedly, the great love affair of his life (and more importantly, the ensuing breakup and rebound relationship) ended up being partially responsible for the wizarding equivalent of World War II.
• Magic Knight: Jim has received training in martial arts which he demonstrated when fighting Quirrelmort in the Mirror Chamber. Downplayed in that his martial arts training only started two years before Hogwarts and his magical skills are not honed to their full potential.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Harry's response in Chapter 152 to Sirius's concerns about Harry having been subjected to the Cruciatus by Tiberius Nott earlier that evening. "Look, I didn't die or anything. I didn't even go into a coma this time. So I really don't see what the big deal is."
• Make It Look Like an Accident: This is revealed to be what is actually going on with all of the dangerous attempts by Neville's Uncle Algie to "force the magic out of" his nephew. The fact that Neville's accidental magic actually does keep on saving him is a source of unending frustration for Uncle Algie.
• Mama Bear: Lily. "I mean that Lord Potter may be concerned with the fate of the wizarding world, but Lily Evans-Potter is concerned with the fate of her two boys, and the rest of the wizarding world can go to hell." She then gets revenge on the Dursleys for having abused Harry. However, she has made big mistakes in regards to Harry that have most likely permanently soured their relationship.
• Manchurian Agent: This is Rookwood's specialty as he notably turns Bellatrix and Barty Crouch Jr. into examples of these. Of ocurse Barty's case is complicated by the fact that we don't yet know whether the "good" or the "evil" personality is actually the real one. It is also hinted that he has started the process yet again with Umbridge as his next victim.
• The Men in Black: The Unspeakables from the Department of Mysteries are the textbook definition of this. They deal with threats that the rest of the Wizarding World doesn't even know exist, but they WILL make sure you vanish or die under mysterious circumstances if they believe you know too much.
• Mental Time Travel: This is how the Time-turner does its work with the aid of the Unspeakables and a few other important people who happen to be in the know in order to prevent various apocalypses.
• Misery Builds Character: In chapter 70, at the worst of the Basilisk fiasco when the entire Hogwarts student population, his fans and even his father turned against him, Jim wonders if Harry's horrid childhood made him stronger compared to Jim's sheltered life of privilege and comfort.
• Modesty Towel: During second year someone steals the Slytherin Quidditch team's clothes while they're showering after practice, and they have to run through the castle in nothing but skimpy wet towels while the rest of the student body laughs.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Harry was assumed to be a squib and thus was sent to live with the Dursleys in the muggle world.
• Murder by Inaction: Theo Nott technically does the self-defense version of this when he leaves his father without his magic and defenseless in front of an angry Hellhound.
• Mythology Gag: The author loves to make fun of a lot of Harry Potter plot points that are there for Rule of Cool, which are often engaged in by Jim, while Harry takes the sensible but often boring actions.
  • Harry chooses to ignore the Schmuck Bait that is the mystery of the Philosopher's Stone and warns Neville and Hermione to stay away from Jim's adventures. It's All for Nothing however when Quirrelmort compells Hermione, Neville, Ron and Jim to go to the Mirror Chamber to serve as bait for Harry.
  • When King Cross' magical barrier is blocked, Jim and Ron take the Flying Car to Hogwarts while Harry and Ginny travel to the Leaky Cauldron by the Knight Bus in order to Floo to Hogsmeade. The other characters make a Lampshade Hanging about how nuts Jim's actions were as they endangered The Masquerade.
  • Jim and Harry's wands share the same core — a phoenix feather — which resulted in the Brother Wand Effect manifesting dramatically during the Dueling Club. The incident also resulted in Jim being outed as a Parselmouth instead of Harry.
  • When trying to infiltrate Lockhart's office, who they suspected to be the Heir, Theo asks Harry if they're going to have wacky adventures at the end of every school year and if it wouldn't be better to let the school close.
  • In the second prologue, Pettigrew briefly considers hiding as a rat with some Pureblood family before dismissing the idea as ridiculous
  • In a flashback to an 11-year-old James Potter on his way to Hogwarts for the first time, he ways "We'll take the lot!" to the Trolley Lady and buys out all the candy, just like Harry did in canon with Ron. But in this case, unlike Harry's spontaneous act of kindness, it's because James is a spoiled rich kid flashing his money to impress his new friends. Later, during his Sorting, the Hat yells out Gryffindor before even touching his head, just like it did in canon when sorting Draco into Slytherin.
  • Sirius once again escapes the Hogwarts grounds on the back of Buckbeak, and Pettigrew loses a finger although Harry's time-travelling undoes this two chapters later, only for the finger to be lost AGAIN later on as part of a dark ritual to resurrect Voldemort.
  • Just like in canon Gibbon is the first Death Eater to die (albeit in highly different circumstances) and his death is not particularly dignified (In canon he fell victim to Unfriendly Fire, while here he was decapitated by Lucius Malfoy's Fire Whip while menacing some of the younger characters). Just like in canon, we don't even learn his name until after his demise.
• Naked People Are Funny: During second year someone steals the Slytherin Quidditch team's clothes while they're showering after practice, and they have to run through the castle in nothing but skimpy wet towels while the rest of the student body laughs. Subverted in that the supposed prank was actually an assassination attempt against Harry engineered by Tom Riddle. The Slytherins were meant to be trapped outside the school, naked and wet, during a blizzard, and Jim was intended to be the scapegoat when "a Gryffindor prank gone wrong" resulted in Harry's death.
  • This trope is played straight later on when Ron and eventually even Jim can't help but find it funny that Jim's early attempts to become an Animagus tend to result in him waking up naked halfway down the street with no memory of how he got there.
• Never Mess with Granny: Despite being an elderly grandmother, Augusta is a formidable and feared witch. She gives James a vicious tongue-lashing over his supposed 'friendship' with her incapacitated son and, when an impressed Neville expresses his amazement, she claims that she would have 'hexed his bits off' if she hadn't gone so soft in her old age.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Dumbledore deactivated the wards of Hogwarts that sense and repeal dark objects to allow the Mirror of Erised to enter the castle. Even after the wards are reactivated they are so weakened that dark objects can still enter the castle, such as the Diary of Tom Riddle.
• The Nicknamer: Sirius Black was the one that came up with the Marauder's nicknames and Snape being called Snivellus although it was James who gave Lily the nickname of hellflower.
• No, Except Yes: Snape hates when people compare potion brewing to cooking even though he admits it's an accurate comparison by saying that any idiot can make toast but one needs practice for a beef wellington.
• Noodle Incident: Neville's summer adventures which involve vaguely alluded to incidents involving Amazon cults trying to sacrifice him and Nundu attacks.
• Not His Sled: The author does this to great effect on several occasions for dramatic effect, and the examples are especially notable as the differences from canon are fairly small before the "point of canon departure" on Halloween Night, 1981.
  • Tom Riddle's Diary is behind the events of second year, just like in canon, bit it becomes pretty clear early on that the person opening the Chamber of Secrets is NOT Ginny this time around.
  • The fact that Regulus Black is alive and well when he was very much dead in canon also qualifies as this.
  • Dolores Umbridge is portrayed as being a very sweet and likable person (albeit one with a slight anti-muggle prejudice due to an abusive upbringing) and she is nowhere near the sadist that she is in canon. To be fair, it is suggested that this might change now that she has had a brief, but unfortunate, run in with Augustus Rookwood.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Remember how pathetic Peter Pettigrew was in canon? Yeah, this is not that Peter. This version of Peter is a Magnificent Bastard who spent over a decade living the high life as a well respected Lawyer with no suspicions of his true loyalties, managed to frame Sirius while James and Lily WERE STILL ALIVE, has been an active participant in (if not the mastermind behind) three of the worst terrorist attacks on Magical Britain since the fall of Voldemort, and will strangle you with his bare hands and feed you to his horde of rats if you cross him.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Fleur Delacour has to pretend to be an average student, not being allowed to join the Quidditch team, having average grade and not show off in Wizard Duel championships in order to not draw attention to the fact she's a Teen Superspy.
• Oblivious to Love: Ginny didn't realize that Daphne has a crush on her untill Harry told her.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Snape gives points to Gryffindor after Hermione shouts at Jim because he was acting like a jerkass in Potions class. Two years later, he gives Fred Weasley points in Potions Class after Fred (who had been a notorious slacker and goof-off) produces a perfectly executed potion. Snape briefly wonders if the whole world had gone mad. The entire class is shocked into stupefied silence upon seeing that one of the Weasley Terrors actually gained House Points for once, and it was from Snape of all people.
• Odd Friendship: Ginny Weasley, the spitfire daughter of a long line of Muggle-lovers and Gryffindors, and Amy Wilkes, the quiet orphaned daughter of unrepentant and infamous Death Eaters, who was then raised by the Goyle family.
  • Gryffindor Golden Boy Jim Potter becomes rather close with Slytherin outcast Theo No-Name even after being imperioed to be deeply suspicious of Theo's best friend Harry.
  • Nobody knows why Pureblood Daphne Greengrass and Muggle single-mother-raised Half-Blood Tracey Davis are such close friends.
  • From an outsider's perspective, Marcus Flint's friendship with Harry, Theo, Blaise, and (to a lesser extent) Neville is absolutely baffling.
• One-Letter Name: Mr X.
• Original Character: Jim Potter (Harry's twin brother), as well as many minor characters. Although in his case he is, in the author's words: Basically canon-Harry if he'd had two loving parents and had grown up with the privileges and responsibilities of being the Boy-Who-Lived as well as being terribly spoiled by his father and godfather (who isn't who you think it is). While he may not acquit himself well either in this chapter or the first few chapters of Year One, he is not the gibbering idiot who normally plays the role of WBWL and will undergo significant character development starting with the end of Year 1.
• Our Elves Are Different: The house elves are somehow bound to serve in wizarding households so long as wizards and witches have lived in that place for a long time (thus the Weasleys can't get a house elf as the Burrow is too recent). They seem to have mysterious and undefined Reality Warper powers capable of such feats as creating an entire pocket dimension for a house elf version of a Wizard Duel. Wizards seem to have no idea how powerful their servants truly are.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: It turns out that most ghosts either dissipate over time or turn insane and remain tethered to the material world by feeding on the fear of mortals. The magic of the Hogwarts castle allows ghosts inside its walls to remain sane and last for centuries. Three guesses on what type Vernon is. In fairness, as far as he is concerned, Lily murdered him in cold blood while he was legitimately protecting his wife and son.
• Painting the Medium: All spellcasting is written in Caps-lock and bolded.
• Parents as People: It is fairly clear that James and Lily Potter are decent people who, despite their notable flaws, are genuinely trying to do the right thing. By the end of third year in particular they are both determined to do right by Harry somehow even though he wants nothing to do with either of them at the moment. It just seems that they are cursed to always inadvertently do the worst thing possible when it comes to Harry and James in particular has a habit of making very very rash (if understandable) decisions when confronted with evidence that one of his sons might be the Wizarding Antichrist.
  • This is also the case with Arthur and Molly Weasley, who are good people with the best of intentions, who have to face the fact that Arthur waiting a little too long to tell his children about a prophecy regarding their family combined with Molly's slightly overbearing attitude in such a way that it convinced Ron that his family didn't love him and left him susceptible to the manipulations of Tom Riddle's diary and drove him to attempt suicide. They both take immediate actions to correct these mistakes once they realize what they have done and what nearly happened as a result.
• Pass the Popcorn: After Harry provides Snape with an engraved invitation to the Wizengamot meeting — long story — then during the proceedings, the Potions teacher (now Regent Prince) pulls out a bag of popcorn to enjoy the sheer chaos, to Lily's consternation.
• Pet the Dog: Subverted in a flashback: James is so stunned to hear Snape attempting to do something nice for Lily that he's tempted to tell her about it despite the fact that it might lead to her forgiving him...then realizes he won't remember the conversation to be able to tell her.
  • Midway through their second year, Harry and Jim can't stand each other, but Harry sets this aside long enough to talk Jim down from the ledge when it seems Jim might be contemplating suicide.
  • Jim himself gains sympathy for Harry after Uncle Vernon's funeral and is determined to make things right with him until he is tricked into believing that Harry stole the Invisibility Cloak
• Playing Both Sides: By the end of book three, it becomes clear that not only has Voldemort been fighting both for purebloods and muggleborns under a series of false identities, but that he largely started the conflict as it exists in modern Britain by assisting the most extreme factions of a previously stable political order.
• Police Are Useless: It turns out that the Founders sought to make Hogwarts independent from the magical government and thus having Aurors patrolling Hogwarts would trigger a Malevolent Architecture feature that would cause the castle to lash out at them. The only way for Aurors to enter Hogwarts is if there's dire need, which happens when Dumbledore is petrified.
  • The Hit Wizards are generally competent beat cops, but are woefully unprepared for searching Pettigrew's apartment.
• The Poorly Chosen One: Jim is wildly (and wrongly) believed to be the Boy-Who-Lived, the one who vanquished Voldemort.
  • Played with in that this doesn't make Jim The Load. For starters, like Harry, he has some sort of connection with Voldemort that causes headches when he's near, and he has martial arts training. In the summer before the Second Year he spent most of his time training in the Manor's gym.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Harry fits this to some extent as he has been known to do things like whistle the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly after putting down his rivals.
• Posthumous Character: Erasmus "The Toymaker" Wilkes manages to be this due to his lethal toys showing up from time to time and a few conversations with a magical portrait. Somehow he still manages to be The Dreaded despite having been dead for over a decade.
• Post-Scarcity Economy: Played with. Artie describes the wizarding world as a post-scarcity society. With the exception of shelter^note although this is a dubious claim considering the existence of magical tents and the Burrow, a building literally only held up by magic and food, wizards have lots of Utility Magic including apparatition, using transfiguration to create mundane objects or charms to repair broken objects or knit clothes. Money is only relevant for magical items which are scarce.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • The relationship between Jim and Harry could have been drastically improved if they had been honest about what they saw in the Mirror of Erised.
  • Mrs. Figg never told James about the abuse Harry suffered from the Dursleys because, based on her own experience as a squib from a pureblood house, she assumed James wouldn't care for as long as believed Harry to be a squib as well.
  • The fact that Harry chose to keep his "Muggle Problem" a secret from his parents led to Lily killing Vernon in revenge as she did not know about the Hate Plague.
  • Jim keeping his ability to speak parseltongue secret from Ron has disastrous consequences as it drives a wedge between the two friends and allows Tom Riddle's diary to further isolate Ron and gain control over him seeing as Ron's friendship with Jim had been somewhat mitigating it up to that point.
• Power Levels: Wizards measure the strength of magical cores using a variety of tests such as the Lubinsky-Chang and the Belby-Cadwallader tests. Wizards with stronger cores can cast more spells before tiring or cast more physically demanding spells, and are able to do a lot more wandless spells than someone with a weaker core.
• Power Parasite: Dumbledore and the Potters believed that Jim defeated Voldemort by draining Harry's magic.
• Power Perversion Potential: Matilda MacMillian takes this route with Lazarus White (who's actually Regulus Black), a Metamorphmagus, by asking him to transform into Mel Gibson.
  • Regulus' great-aunt and metamorphmagus trainer Cassiopeia Black decides to join some of her relatives in France, spending the rest of his days as a seemingly eligible, young and virile bachelor. To his credit, Regulus does spend a bit of time in self-reflection before deciding that he's definitely not going that way.
  • Harry goes out of his way to subvert this when he realizes the implications of being a Natural Legilimens to the point that he is currently uncomfortable with pursuing any kind of romantic relationship because he is worried that he will be manipulating his partner without even realizing it.
• Properly Paranoid: With everyone seemingly having some kind of agenda or plan (Wheels within wheels, to quote a character), it’d be suicidal if you weren’t at least somewhat paranoid of others. Alastor Moody, as per usual, is the resident master of this.
• Prophetic Names: (In-Universe) There is an obscure form of Divination called Nomenography which can be used to help parents choose names for their children that actively influences their destinies. Sirius Black found it easier to achieve the Animagus form of a big black dog because his last name was Black and his first name referred to the Dog Star. Similarly, Remus Lupin's parents gave him his unusual name on a nomenographer's advice and later blamed themselves because they feared his name (which is basically "Wolfy Mc Wolferson") somehow doomed him to becoming a werewolf. In reality, his name symbolized the fact that he was a latent natural Animagus with a wolf-form, and when he finally learns to turn into a wolf, it effectively cures his lycanthropy.
• The Prophecy: As in canon, there is the Trelawney Prophecy that foretells of the death of the Big Bad at the hands of the Boy-Who-Lived. What we learn later is that Sybill Trelawney's Prophecy is actually the Second Trelawney Prophecy. The first one was told by her ancestor Cassandra Trelawney in 1780 to Lord Nathaniel Potter and the family has been guided by it for 10 generations. Going by the final part of the First Prophecy — And you shall know by these portents that the Time of the Dark God approaches / and the Destruction of our World is close at hand: / When the Two who should be as One are set against each other in reckless hate, / and the Last Potter rises as the Prince of Slytherin. — everyone better brace for an imminent apocalypse.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The title of Prince of Slytherin is gender-neutral, as there have been a lot of female Princes in the past.
• Put on a Bus: Draco Malfoy is sent to Durmstrang after the events of second year and is absent from the events of third year due to the author not having anything interesting to do with him that year.
  • Mad-Eye Moody also vanishes for a mysterious mission half way through the events of third year.
• Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: The spell Imago Dei is capable of granting any wish the caster wants and re-ordering reality in ways even most spells can't, though it's a case of Power at a Price and the spell might declare the intended sacrifice insufficient. Because of its power it's considered The Dreaded and knowing about it results in immediate execution.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Dumbledore certainly does his best to be this.
  • McGonagall has decided to stop overlooking the Gryffindors' misdeeds like she has done in the past.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Jim is the Red to Harry’s Blue.
• Reset Button: This occurs twice with the aid of the Time-turner. The first time Hermione relives her third year in order to prevent the deaths of most of the main cast and a seemingly inevitable Dementor/Voldemort apocalypse. The second time this happens is when Harry travels back a few days in order to save the lives of Marcus, Remus, and Regulus and also prevent Neville's disownment, Peter's escape, and James putting Harry under the Ultimate Sanction.
• Retroactive Precognition: Hermione is repeatedly mistaken for being a seer during the course of third year due to this trope.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Harry and Hermione both retain the memories of the alternate timelines that their respective time travels averted (albeit each of them remembers a separate alternate timeline). The fact that they can both remember events in these timelines while no one else can proves to be important as Hermione has developed a deep loathing for Daphne Greengrass based on events that occurred in the alternate timeline and Harry is able to summon both a Patronus and Fiendfire based on memories that only he can remember happening.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Regulus went on one of these after his wife and infant son were killed by werewolves. Things progressed to the point that the memory of his family's murders allows him to be one of the few characters so far who is capable of mastering Fiendfire.
• Running Gag: Every one of Regulus Black's metamorphmagus forms seems to be an actor from The Pink Panther. Snape, a halfblood who lived in Muggle Britain for a number of years, eventually gets completely fed up with it.
  Augusta Longbottom: Who the devil are you?
  Severus Snape: If I'm not mistaken, it's Herbert Lom! For Merlin's sake, Regulus, is that the only film you've ever seen?!
• Secret Identity: Rita Skeeter (of all people!). Also, Harry's Occlumency tutor Mr. X is eventually revealed to be Severus Snape, while Regulus Black, who has a fondness for Pink Panther films, passed himself off for many months as an Asian squib named Cato.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
  • Like in canon, Voldemort chose to attack the Potters' cottage to eliminate the one who will defeat him only to be destroyed by a Potter.
  • You’d think if you found out about a Prophecy that foretold the rise of a dark god by, possibly, the hands of one of your sons, you would do your best to ensure the conditions are not met, right? Well, turns out James is not smart enough to do that.
  • A later, much better-thought-out attempt to avert the above prophecy goes even worse. Harry, upon learning that the end of the world will be heralded by the “last Potter” rising as the Prince of Slytherin, immediately takes sensible steps to both lose the Potter name and withdraw himself from consideration as a potential Prince of Slytherin. Unfortunately, while he succeeds getting voluntarily disowned on his own terms, his willingness to sacrifice his own ambitions when it's important is the final factor that gets him immediately named Prince of Slytherin—before the disownment can take place.
• Self-Made Orphan: Peter Pettigrew is revealed to be this, just like Tom Riddle before him.
• Serial Killer: Goyle expresses his concerns to Harry and Amy that Crabbe may have tendencies in this direction seeing as he has already been known to harm small animals and Goyle worries it is only a matter of time before he starts on people.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The Time-turner is a closely kept secret of the Department of Mysteries, which even they do not fully understand, that is used for this purpose.
• Shoot the Hostage: Bellatrix/Delphini's approach, caused by the residual influence of Miss Demeanour.
• Shout-Out: Saul Croaker considers Ludo Bagman "the sort of man who might accidentally sell the whole of Britain to the French in exchange for a bag of magic beans and a sickly cow".
  • At one point, Neville mentions that if Harry ever uses his Legilimency to get Neville to do something he shouldn't, Augusta will beat him to death with a paper napkin.
  • As part of preparations for the Quidditch World Cup, Sirius hires Hermione's father as his driver as part of the disguise of pretending him to be a squib. He demands that Sirius pay for the gas in muggle money.
  Sirius Black: Not a problem, Dan. Not a problem at all. I mean, it's just from London to Dartmoor and back. How much could it cost? A thousand pounds at most, right?
  Dan Granger: (smiling): Yeah, I reckon that should about cover it
  • From Chapter 53 of The Death Eater Menace:
  Hermione blinked in confusion. "So after all that drama about Pettigrew's army of intelligent werewolves, it was just that easy for the Headmaster to solve the problem?"
  "Super easy!" Harry snapped. "Barely an inconvenience!"
  • Bellatrix using the alias of Delphini and the possible Start of Darkness on the part of Cedric Diggory are acknowledged homages to rather infamous Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
  • There are frequent references to the Alexandra Quick series whenever the plot necessitates a reference or two to the American wizarding community.
  • Zacharias Smith's habit of referring to Justin as "J-Finch" is a pretty clear reference to Puffs the Play.
  • The Gryffindor students giving Cedric the epithets of "King Puff" and "Sky Badger" are references to My Life as a Background Slytherin.
  • Ginny, at one point, expressed her firm conviction that if Fred and George ever became Animagi they would almost certainly be emperor penguins.
  • The Anathema Codex is full of these as it includes references to things such as The Rune of Singular Hate, The Lament Configuration, The Six-Fingered Hand, The Nightmare Child and The Hounds of Tindalos among others. The book's own name sounds very similar to the Codex Anathema, too.
  • To the SCP Foundation in Chapter 101. The Department of Mysteries' Chime #43 is monitoring a curious location that strongly resembles SCP-354. (It is in Britain and not Canada, however.)
  • A subtle shout-out to Return of the Jedi in Chapter 155. After learning of the existence of a Charm that can cause a wand to manifest a column of solid blue light capable of functioning as a melee dueling weapon, Blaise Zabini crashes into the Innovators Club and shouts "I DEMAND THAT YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME A LIGHTSABER!" Then, after a beat, he says more calmly "That is all" before slinking out, a reference to Crix Madine's famous line.
  • In Chapter 157, Lily talks about suing Rita Skitter for slander and Rita explains the difference between slander and libel like J. Jonah Jameson did in Spider-Man.
  • The French equivalent to the Department of Mysteries is called Le Bureau De L'Inconnu, referring to the Inconnu, one of the vampire conspiracies in Vampire: The Masquerade
• Sibling Rivalry: Jim and Harry are constantly at each other's throats. When they're on good terms, it's borderline friendly; when they're not, it can edge close to Cain and Abel territory.
  • Somewhat exacerbated by a cursed book given to Jim.
  • Padma and Parvati Patil do not miss any chance to counter the other, mainly due to Parvati's marriage contract with the rich Pasha heir Sanjeev.
  • As a result of improved grades and an act of conspicuous heroism, George Weasley is made prefect going into his Fifth Year. Fred feels so betrayed by this development that it drives between the Twins, who grow increasingly hostile towards one another as the year progresses.
• Significant Anagram:
  • Upon being told that Theo's grandfather was killed by someone named "Rian O'Grady", Harry says the name is an anagram of "Dorian Gray", a character created by Tom Riddle's favorite muggle author.
  • Lucius Malfoy shows contempt for his ex-wife Narcissa's pseudonym "Ariana McFlossy". He himself has three fake identities in case he must flee Britain and none of them is an anagram.
• Slave to PR: The reason why the Potters allow the publication of the Jim Potter children's books is to influence the public in the wizarding world, to ensure that Jim remains beloved by all instead of becoming the target of hate or jealousy. Of course, as we know, public opinion is easily swayed in the wizarding world.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Draco Malfoy, at least until he meets the even richer muggleborn, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Harry manages to defang him with an Unbreakable Oath.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: A major source of humour in the series. While Harry, Blaise and the other Slytherins seem to have the vast majority of the good lines, in part because the metaphorical camera's on them, nearly everybody gets in a few zings from time to time, even the seemingly stoic McGonagall. (Though she seems to save it for her peers.)
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Somewhat deconstructed. They do exist in both the muggle and wizarding worlds and are usually quite effective. Because Harry is under the effects of a Curse that triggers a Hate Plague amongst muggles, all the abuse at the hands of the Dursleys is never reported while the wizarding world is controlled by aristocrats, and as such, Child Services do not seek to prosecute wealthy families for child abuse (like Tiberius Nott's treatment of Theo).
• Soul Jar: Horcruxes, which have to be magical objects as otherwise it won't stick. Also the spellcaster will gain the powers of the object after they're turned into a horcrux and those powers will be permanent if the horcrux is destroyed.
• Spanner in the Works: Harry (initially inadvertently) serves as this for the various schemes that Peter Pettigrew has been concocting for the Potter family seeing as he was believed to be squib and of not significance for ten years. When he not only shows up to claim his place as the heir, but also shows himself to have a clever and ruthless streak big enough to get him sorted into Slytherin, Peter's plans start to fail rather spectacularly.
• Spiders Are Scary: Diary!Tom Riddle repeatedly tortures Ron Weasley into obedience by exploiting his severe arachnophobia.
• The Spook: The Unspeakables are this as a requirement of their job. Even the department heads don't know who their fellow department heads actually are.
• Spy Catsuit: Fleur Delacour's spy suit has some elements of this though its mostly black sportswear with enchanted boots, leather gloves and magical goggles.
• Suppressed History: It is heavily implied that this is why Binns is the History of Magic teacher despite being incompetent. Namely, that there are certain details of the history of the Wizarding World (such as how interconnected the wizards were with muggles before the Statute of Secrecy) that certain forces within the Ministry of Magic would prefer were forgotten.
• Swarm of Rats: Peter uses one to facilitate his and Rookwood's escape from Ministry custody. Each one *multiplies* when struck by a spell.
• Take a Third Option: Sirius' health isn't stable enough for him to take an international portkey, floo, or Apparate to France to watch Harry's dueling tournament, and his Wizarding healers have no idea what flying in an airplane would do to him. Sirius realizes one of his apprentices is a Muggleborn and knows how to drive, and simply has Lattimer drive him to Paris.
• Teen Superspy: Surprisingly enough Fleur Delacour, though it's somewhat Played for Drama as she has to pretend to be an average student in order to not draw attention.
• Take That!: One of the fandom clichés is to allow Harry to learn of the Prophecy so he can prepare and train to defeat Voldemort. In the fic Jim learning about the Prophecy instills in him deep psychological problems like paranoia, depression and an obsessive interest in anything from Taekwondo to Black Magic that would allow him to defeat Voldemort.
  • Boggarts are some of the nastiest creatures and the author dislikes the way Remus forced all his students to Face Your Fears in front of everyone, as some students could have humiliating fears and Kids Are Cruel. Thus Lockhart decided to have private sessions with each student where they face a Boggart, and it's successful until Jim Potter releases the Boggart in front of the entire class and Chaos Ensues.
• This Parchment Will Self-Destruct: A common enough trick when it comes to clandestine goings-on, or really anything at all. Everyone from Blaise Zabini to Rita Skeeter to Albus Dumbledore tends to use quieter methods than self-immolation, like disappearing ink or the parchment simply disintegrating, but the document going up in flames happens more than once.
• Time Police: The time-turner prevents its users from causing time paradoxes while allowing them to rewrite history.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Anathema Codex is a list of destructive spells and rituals based around harnessing The Wild that are so dangerous that the Unspeakables will murder you if they suspect you know about it
• Traintop Battle: Mogli, Narcissa Malfoy's evil house elf, is assigned to derail the Hogwarts express and kill everyone onboard. Dobby...objects...and this trope ensues.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Harry and other Slytherins act ridiculously mature even though they are pre-pubescent kids. Of course the author admits he can't write 11-year-olds. The Slytherin's from pureblood families are trained from birth for high society behavior though as demonstrated by Astoria Greengrass this doesn't always take, while traumatized kids becoming Slytherin like Harry are where it gets actually bad. It's a bit more troubling that Harry's intelligence allows him to "know" things that he can't remember learning, from advanced vocabulary words to random quotes from Oscar Wilde whom Tom Riddle happens to be a big fan of. What clinches it for Harry as far as Regulus, Snape and Lucius are concerned however is Harry being able to get in the correct mindset to cast Fiendfyre.
• Trust Password: The phrase "tempus fugit" seems to be one of these for certain members of the Wizarding World who are "in the know", such as Dumbledore and the Unspeakables. It basically translates to saying "I, or someone I have recently been in contact with, am from the future and you need to follow this particular set of directions exactly if we want to prevent a catastrophe".
• Upper-Class Twit: Sirius Black suffers from this along with being a Jerkass, especially towards Peter. His condescension towards Peter and his Impoverished Patrician family slowly turns him away from the Marauders and towards the Death Eaters.
• Villainous Incest: A lot of the more toxic purebloods could be said to fall prey to this, but the previous generation of Blacks took this a step beyond when Walburga started hatching plans to force Sirius to conceive a child with Regulus in order to create the second coming of Merlin.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Peter Pettigrew is this until the end of third year seeing as he has a well respected job as James Potter's lawyer.
• Vorpal Pillow: Edwina Pettigrew is on the receiving end of one of these at the hands of the son she had spent years manipulating.
• Walking Spoiler: It is almost impossible to talk about what role Gilderoy Lockhart and Ron Weasley play in the events of second year seeing as various plot twists are revealed that cast their earlier actions in an entirely new light.
  • On a similar note, the fact that Regulus Black is in the story at all could be said to be an example of this.
  • Bellatrix Lestrange is also this after the midway point of third year reveals that they were not fully responsible for their more psychotic actions.
• Was Once a Man: The Wham Line from one of the Dementors in third year ("My brother called me Fabian") certainly seems to suggest that this is the case.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Harry initially decides to study hard at Hogwarts for this trope. It doesn't last.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: James Potter will do absolutely anything to prevent the first Trelawney prophecy from happening, no matter how much he has to hurt his own family to do so. Doesn't help that his impulsiveness means his "solutions" are rarely well thought out.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 34 reveals that James wanted to raise Harry and Jim together even if Harry was a squib but Lily refused, because of their belief that Harry was a squib due to Jim draining his magic and her fear that he may do so again, this time accidentally killing Harry.
  • Chapter 42 of Death Eater Menace Harry kills Remus Lupin;
  • Chapter 43 of Death Eater Menace James kicks Harry out of the family through the Ultimate Sanction, Harry finds out about the prophecy and Hermione reveals she has a time-turner;
• Wham Line:
  • From the first (1780) Trelawney Prophecy, revealed at the very end of Year One:
    Trewlawney: And you shall know by these portents that the Time of the Dark God approaches and the Destruction of our World is close at hand: When the Two who should be as One are set against each other in reckless hate, and the Last Potter rises as the Prince of Slytherin.
  • The last line of chapter 78 not only reveals the true identity of the fake Gilderoy Lockhart but also that his strange actions over the past year have really been laying the groundwork for freeing Sirius Black from Azkaban.
    Lockhart: Please, Harry, we're all friends here. Call me Regulus.
  • Anthony Goldstein seems to be just be a normal Jewish wizard right? Well, he has this to say about his grandparents while opposing the Sanctumen Ultimo:
    Anthony: Wonderful couple, my Grandpa and Nana Goldstein. Do you know they've been together for fifty years now? They met on a train in 1943, and they've stayed together ever since.
    Pansy: (Bored) Yes, yes, It sounds very romantic.
    Anthony: Oh no, Miss Parkinson. No, no, no! It wasn't the least bit romantic. You see, the train in question was on its way to Dachau.
  • In-Universe, under the influence of Dementors, Jim finally remembers hearing the night Voldemort attacked the Potters.
    Lily: No! Take me! Not Harry! NOT HARRY!
  • Chapter 33 of Death Eater Manace, after Jim says the three words James never wanted to hear:
    James: IMPERIO!
  • James Potter has had enough and pulls out the big gun:
    James: I, Iacomus Charlus Potter, do hereby invoke the Sanctumen Ultimo and declare you Outcast... Hadrian Remus NO-NAME!
  • Harry's secret lineage is revealed
    Harry: Through Rose Carmichael and the six generations of Carmichael's who preceded her, I am the oldest male wizarding descendant of Hyacinth Carmichael... nee Wilkes!
  • Fred and George inform Harry of the top secret thirty seventh Rune which just so happens to look like the letter "V" and closely resemble the scar on Jim's forehead.
    Harry: So what is this mystery rune?
    George: It's called Vohldo, Harry. And it just means...Wild.
• Wicked Toymaker: Erasmus "The Toymaker" Wilkes has this as his whole modus operandi and specializes in creating magical toys that seem like harmless trains, jack-in-the-boxes, or rubber ducks but are actually quite lethal. The Wizarding World fear him only behind Voldemort himself and possibly Augustus Rookwood despite Wilkes being a Posthumous Character.
• Wild Hair: Unlike in canon, Harry was able to tame his hair into a stylish cut, while his brother doesn't bother to use hair products.
• Wild Magic: A dangerous branch — if not a fundamental principle — of magic that's slightly alive, capable of making Deal with the Devil and granting Reality Warper powers to its practioners. It's feared and hated by the wizarding world and knowledge about it is proscribed and punishable by death.
• Wimp Fight: Snape and Sirius's fistfight is described as "more of a slap fight" and "less than a minute of ineffectual efforts to hurt one another," since not only do neither of them have any skill at fighting except with their wands, which have been taken away, they are both recovering from serious physical traumas at the time. They end up stopping mostly because they're both just tiring themselves out to no real effect, so they might as well put the fight on hold until they get their wands back.
• Would Hurt a Child: The villains generally are more than willing to do grievous harm to children due to the nature of the plot, but special mention goes to Tiberius Nott and Peter Pettigrew's respective plans to use the twelve year old Amy Wilkes to seize control of her family's inheritance. Nott plans to marry and impregnate Amy in order to use her child to control the inheritance. Pettigrew merely plans on killing her outright and using the leftover pieces in a Dark Ritual to claim the inheritance.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: No, James, treating your abandoned son like he’s always been your favored son is not going to endear you to Harry. Especially since this behavior only comes when Jim is revealed to be a Parselmouth.
• A Year and a Day: There are a number of magical contracts which use this as their minimum term, though whether that came about due to The Fair Folk or vice versa is unclear. More specifically, after an oath of hatred is declared, it cannot be dissolved until this timeframe has elapsed.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Lavender Brown's (late) reaction to learning that Ron and Jim decided to take a Flying Car to Hogwarts after failing to pass through the 9 3/4 Platform's barrier.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The Mirror of Erised has the power to absorb souls. This is because its original purpose was to free victims of Demonic Possession by creating a Schmuck Bait which would entice the spirits to enter the mirror. However over the centuries the countless evil spirits have corrupted the Mirror and caused it to hunger for the souls of the living.

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