Voldemort's Children
is an ongoing Harry Potter fanfic webcomic by Eli Dupree, set in an Alternate Universe where... well...
The story starts with Hermione Granger, the Head of Auror Office, interrogating Harry Potter, who has been arrested for killing a lot of people. It quickly becomes clear that this version of Harry hasn't escaped the effects of ten years of abuse. And that's only the beginning...
The author describes Voldemort's Children as "A reimagining of the Harry Potter series from a neurodiversity and social-justice perspective", and their annotations often begin with a question about a moral or philosophical issue.
The art style is unique in never using panels; each page is a continuous flow of images and dialogue.
As a story comic with its own continuity, it should be read from the beginning.
On indefinite hiatus since July 24th 2012, though according to the author's update on 2016, they had already scripted out and sketched the remaining pages for the comic but are unsure if they'd ever finish it due to their hand problems.
This comic provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Dumbledore leaving Harry with the Dursleys may not have been the best idea. Similarly, Lucius Malfoy being friends with a Dark Lord seems to have lead to some fallout in Draco's upbringing...
- Big Bad Wannabe: Hermonie has this to say about Harry Potter:Hermonie: "The Auror Office believes that Potter is not a Dark Lord, but merely a self-aggrandizing serial killer motivated by petty revenge against those he believes have wronged him. Have we become so complacent since Voldemort's fall that this is what we imagine it must be like to live in a Dark Lord's shadow? Potter is running to hide from our Aurors even as we speak. In Voldemort's time... Aurors ran from him.
- Bizarrchitecture: Hogwarts
- Convection, Schmonvection: Harry burns Dumbledore's entire office and then doesn't seem to have any trouble standing around in the only spot that isn't on fire.
- Deconstruction: This comic explores what might've actually happened had Harry been locked in a closet for the first 11 years of his life...
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: The Aurors made sure Voldemort stayed dead when Harry was still a baby, short-circuiting the plot of all seven books.
- Hidden Eyes: Other than Voldemort and Dumbledore (see The Faceless below), other characters (especially Harry) have a similar appearance when they're doing something particularly dark or intimidating.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Subverted with Zabini, who isn't intending to survive the Fiendfyre (s)he conjures when Draco and Luna attack.
- The Faceless: Voldemort and Dumbledore have the top halves of their heads concealed in shadow whenever they appear.
- Flashback Effects: An old ministry broadcast appears in monochrome.
- Morality Kitchen Sink: Almost every stripe and shade of hero, anti-hero, bystander, anti-villain, and villain imaginable, from the (usually) morally upstanding Hermione Granger and zir assistant and close friend Tonks to the murderous yet ethically-deliberate Harry Potter to the seemingly incomprehensible Luna Lovegood and the cruel yet possibly broken Voldemort. The work excels at providing characters of a veritable rainbow of moralities.
- Nested Story: "You know you're reading an Eli Dupree comic when you enter two nested narrative frames on the same page."
- Never Learned to Read: Harry's abusive past has left him barely literate when he enters Hogwarts.
- Painting the Medium: Each character gets a distinct text style for their speech. For example, Harry's is sharp and ragged, Luna is a sort of nebular green, and Dumbledore talks in script.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Harry is (so far) implied to have gone on a killing spree as a result of prior mistreatment.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Far towards the cynical end.
- Telepathy: Harry discovers early on that he is a Legilimens. Turns out A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read.
- The Hero's Journey: Either averted (unlike canon-potter) or horribly twisted and deconstructed.
