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Dec. 10th, 2018 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opensummerthemisofpumpkinpie asked: Hi there! Bypassing the meet cute so we can talk seriously about "how do you fix harry potter world"!!! I'm so glad you asked b/c while I understand plot-wise why certain things are written the way they are (HP is basically a mystery novel series and I love it) common sense wise it isn't always the best.. Massively Problematic Not-Fav Dumbledore anyone? Anyway! I'm not sure if you were looking for a strictly in canon fix but my personal fix that I've been working on forever is timetravel!! [1/2]
[2/2] Hi again!So! My best friend helped me develop a world where HP, HG, NL, & DM all go back in time after a worse outcome of the war to do things better!Basically just a gratuitous build up of the DA, making their own society in the RoR, being badass warriors and spies!Of course everyone gets a, mostly, happy ending.I’m not sure if that’s what you meant about fixing the HP world but I always find it easier to blow things up and start over when canon gets too ugly! I’d love to hear your ideas!
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So as much as I love time travel (and holy crap I would love to read that fic b/c I’ve definitely played with gratuitous DA but then we’ve got Harry and a private army and a will to change the world and we call those people terrorists until they win. Also the fact that somebody with developed higher reasoning skills could avoid half the plots and finish the unavoidable ones that much more quickly.) my problem is where do you go back to? Fourth year and save Cedric Diggory? Third and preventing Pettigrew from escaping? Second and saving Ginny? If you can do that then why not go back to 1981 stop Voldemort from every reaching the Potters? Maybe 1976 when Voldemort is on the rise and then Harry would have time a build an army and some trust and stop canon from ever happening. The marauders generation might actually stand a chance.
If you can go back to 1976 why not 1938 and spend seven years extra years in Hogwarts installing a moral system in Tom Riddle and directing him towards politics? Because Tom Riddle the impoverished brilliant student would still have a will to bend the world, and really he and Hermione could have a lot in common. But what if Tom Riddle is a symptom? You could argue that- Grindelwald laid the groundwork and it was only because of him that Voldemort stood a chance. Two Great Wars in two generations would put anybody off war. Besides Grindelwald is where Dumbledore got his start and you can take Tom Riddle out of the orphanage but Dumbledore will make him go back. And he’ll always hate Dumbledore because of that. (And I can’t really see any canon character with the stomach to strangle an infant in his crib in 1926. Maybe Hermione.)
So then you’re to 1899 and trying to stop the tragedy of Ariana Dumbledore and if you manage that Dumbledore goes off with Grindelwald because he’s in love and young and stupid and the world ends. For the Greater Good.
And if you’re going back to stop Grindelwald why not further back? Don’t tell me that between Hermione’s brain and Ron’s grounding in the Wizarding world they could pick a point and say this is where is all went wrong. Where did the wizarding world cease making progress? When wand legislation was introduced or the goblin rebellions maybe? Could we argue that Salazar Slytherin is where it all went wrong? If that’s the case why choose time travel as your solution? If you’re going that far back you’d be blowing up everything you knew.
This a group that has awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time hanging over their heads. A group that has the object lesson of Hermione cracking up from third year and surely one of them, Luna maybe or Neville, knows the story of Eloise Mintumble who caused 25 people to cease to exist when she got trapped four hundred years in the past for four days.
So as much as I love time travel, I don’t think it’s the answer.
I’m thinking (and writing) post-canon- the 19 unsatisfying years where nothing changes. Fuck that.
This is a generation raised on war, children who fought in the final battle against Voldemort because Hogwarts is their home, who spent years of their education terrified because of Greasy Gits and Basilisks and Dementors and Death Eaters and Tournaments where their heroes ended up dead.Theirs are the stories that matter in this war. Their parents generation was subsumed by theirs the day adults toasted Harry Potter the Boy-Who-Lived. They can’t take it back now.
Start the day after Riddle dies. The golden trio stands on a bridge and Harry sheds his destiny. It’s not that easy.
They huddle into the Burrow, share beds and mourn their losses. Harry’s not the type to wake up screaming which means he’s the only one in the house who isn’t. Waking up screaming that is.
They get four days before the vultures descend. Somebody leaks the Chosen One is staying in the Burrow and they wake up to a mob of well wishers and reporters, pressing down on the wards.
Hogwarts is a ruin after the last battle and Harry goes home. That summer they count their scars. They rebuild hogwarts.
Nothing’s changing out in the real world but Harry’s not living there right now. The students who fought, the students who survived- they exhaust themselves turning hogwarts into a home again. They sleeps in huddles on the floors of their common rooms, get drunk by the lake, excorise the ghosts of umbitch, snape and the carrows. Hogwarts stands at the end of the summer stronger than ever.
This starts the day Tom Riddle died. Harry shakes Draco Malfoys hand and prevents the arrest of Narcissa Malfoy.
Harry buried Dobby with his hands but Hermione is the one who teaches him the value of symbols.
They go shopping sometime that summer. Harry buys clothes that fit all muggle. Every picture of them that summer has them in muggle clothes. Hermione stops wearing long sleeves. The scar on her arm stands out white against the tan she’s getting.
Maybe Harry goes back to school, maybe he doesn’t. It matters but not as much as you’d think.
If the ministry is changing why is a pure blood in charge?
Kingsley Shacklebolt is a good man, adaptable, experience with muggles, but we don’t know him, not the way we know Harry’s generation.
If the ministry is changing what did they do with the collaborators?
Every last ministry worker did something distasteful is this war. How do you handle a government that’s corrupt inside out. How do you change when the powers still in the same place.
Voldemort was simply the worst of the worst. The obvious blight. The wizarding world is rotten all the way through- otherwise the problem wouldn’t exist.
So write me the war torn, scarred children who stood up and said enough. Write me the creation of a society. Write me the civil war. Write me the revolution.
This is a tragedy. The revolution will not be civilized.
[2/2] Hi again!So! My best friend helped me develop a world where HP, HG, NL, & DM all go back in time after a worse outcome of the war to do things better!Basically just a gratuitous build up of the DA, making their own society in the RoR, being badass warriors and spies!Of course everyone gets a, mostly, happy ending.I’m not sure if that’s what you meant about fixing the HP world but I always find it easier to blow things up and start over when canon gets too ugly! I’d love to hear your ideas!
+
So as much as I love time travel (and holy crap I would love to read that fic b/c I’ve definitely played with gratuitous DA but then we’ve got Harry and a private army and a will to change the world and we call those people terrorists until they win. Also the fact that somebody with developed higher reasoning skills could avoid half the plots and finish the unavoidable ones that much more quickly.) my problem is where do you go back to? Fourth year and save Cedric Diggory? Third and preventing Pettigrew from escaping? Second and saving Ginny? If you can do that then why not go back to 1981 stop Voldemort from every reaching the Potters? Maybe 1976 when Voldemort is on the rise and then Harry would have time a build an army and some trust and stop canon from ever happening. The marauders generation might actually stand a chance.
If you can go back to 1976 why not 1938 and spend seven years extra years in Hogwarts installing a moral system in Tom Riddle and directing him towards politics? Because Tom Riddle the impoverished brilliant student would still have a will to bend the world, and really he and Hermione could have a lot in common. But what if Tom Riddle is a symptom? You could argue that- Grindelwald laid the groundwork and it was only because of him that Voldemort stood a chance. Two Great Wars in two generations would put anybody off war. Besides Grindelwald is where Dumbledore got his start and you can take Tom Riddle out of the orphanage but Dumbledore will make him go back. And he’ll always hate Dumbledore because of that. (And I can’t really see any canon character with the stomach to strangle an infant in his crib in 1926. Maybe Hermione.)
So then you’re to 1899 and trying to stop the tragedy of Ariana Dumbledore and if you manage that Dumbledore goes off with Grindelwald because he’s in love and young and stupid and the world ends. For the Greater Good.
And if you’re going back to stop Grindelwald why not further back? Don’t tell me that between Hermione’s brain and Ron’s grounding in the Wizarding world they could pick a point and say this is where is all went wrong. Where did the wizarding world cease making progress? When wand legislation was introduced or the goblin rebellions maybe? Could we argue that Salazar Slytherin is where it all went wrong? If that’s the case why choose time travel as your solution? If you’re going that far back you’d be blowing up everything you knew.
This a group that has awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time hanging over their heads. A group that has the object lesson of Hermione cracking up from third year and surely one of them, Luna maybe or Neville, knows the story of Eloise Mintumble who caused 25 people to cease to exist when she got trapped four hundred years in the past for four days.
So as much as I love time travel, I don’t think it’s the answer.
I’m thinking (and writing) post-canon- the 19 unsatisfying years where nothing changes. Fuck that.
This is a generation raised on war, children who fought in the final battle against Voldemort because Hogwarts is their home, who spent years of their education terrified because of Greasy Gits and Basilisks and Dementors and Death Eaters and Tournaments where their heroes ended up dead.Theirs are the stories that matter in this war. Their parents generation was subsumed by theirs the day adults toasted Harry Potter the Boy-Who-Lived. They can’t take it back now.
Start the day after Riddle dies. The golden trio stands on a bridge and Harry sheds his destiny. It’s not that easy.
They huddle into the Burrow, share beds and mourn their losses. Harry’s not the type to wake up screaming which means he’s the only one in the house who isn’t. Waking up screaming that is.
They get four days before the vultures descend. Somebody leaks the Chosen One is staying in the Burrow and they wake up to a mob of well wishers and reporters, pressing down on the wards.
Hogwarts is a ruin after the last battle and Harry goes home. That summer they count their scars. They rebuild hogwarts.
Nothing’s changing out in the real world but Harry’s not living there right now. The students who fought, the students who survived- they exhaust themselves turning hogwarts into a home again. They sleeps in huddles on the floors of their common rooms, get drunk by the lake, excorise the ghosts of umbitch, snape and the carrows. Hogwarts stands at the end of the summer stronger than ever.
This starts the day Tom Riddle died. Harry shakes Draco Malfoys hand and prevents the arrest of Narcissa Malfoy.
Harry buried Dobby with his hands but Hermione is the one who teaches him the value of symbols.
They go shopping sometime that summer. Harry buys clothes that fit all muggle. Every picture of them that summer has them in muggle clothes. Hermione stops wearing long sleeves. The scar on her arm stands out white against the tan she’s getting.
Maybe Harry goes back to school, maybe he doesn’t. It matters but not as much as you’d think.
If the ministry is changing why is a pure blood in charge?
Kingsley Shacklebolt is a good man, adaptable, experience with muggles, but we don’t know him, not the way we know Harry’s generation.
If the ministry is changing what did they do with the collaborators?
Every last ministry worker did something distasteful is this war. How do you handle a government that’s corrupt inside out. How do you change when the powers still in the same place.
Voldemort was simply the worst of the worst. The obvious blight. The wizarding world is rotten all the way through- otherwise the problem wouldn’t exist.
So write me the war torn, scarred children who stood up and said enough. Write me the creation of a society. Write me the civil war. Write me the revolution.
This is a tragedy. The revolution will not be civilized.
