hey... I know people haven't really liked the plot bunnies/challenges I've posted so far, but I had a thought and decided I would post it and see if anyone wanted to run with it....

I was thinking post-OotP, but I suppose post-GoF could work too.... in any case, after that school year ends, neville has a talk with his gran, and they decide to tell harry that even though he doesn't wear his ring, and with that claimed his titles and position, etc. that the longbottoms are still sworn to him... (ie. the longbottoms were liegemen to the potters).... this of course would start harry asking questions, have the usual go to gringotts, blah blah thing.... but I wasn't thinking super-harry.... at least not really.... he would need to learn to use the political power he COULD have with his position.... he would need to accept his celebrity and use it to his advantage, etc.....

My thinking was that all of the OLDer families would have one or two liege families from the less old families.... Potter's, Bones's, Black's, etc. would have been older and had other magical families not really as servants, but as liegemen, people under their command..... if it was post-OotP then Harry might be able to claim the Black family ring, and have another family like the greengrasses or something under him as well.....

I was also hoping that because of/during his learning about all this, he would become more distant from ron, if not both ron and hermione.....

Anyway, it's just an idea, go ahead and run with it if you want...

 

Hmm, well there are a few problems I see here.

Problem Number one: "Using Political Power" - boring, clichéd, and done to death. Exactly what could Harry really do with this so-called political power that will really help anything? What makes the plot idea unique?

Problem Number two: "Ring" - uh, what? What ring are you talking about? Okay, so a common fanon idea is the family "ring", but that seems like an awfully flimsy excuse for Neville to do anything. Why didn't he say something sooner? Why didn't his grandmother?

Problem Number three: "Go to Gringotts Thing" - well, that kinda says it all. Do we really need yet another "Mr. Potter's Wild Gringott's Ride"? It was interesting back in the day, but now it's a tired retread.

Problem Number four: Background - okay, so the liege idea is a somewhat interesting one. HOWEVER, who are these "liegemen" for the older families? Who serves the Bones? Who serves the Blacks? And why haven't we seen anything like that yet?

Now before I continue, I will acknowledge that a good, solid AU could address some of these problems. But that would require changing things from Harry Potter #1 - not just a continuation thing.

Unless you want to throw the old "conspiracy" hat into the ring. A bit worn, perhaps, but POSSIBLY interesting.

Moving on.

Problem Number five: "Learning Leads to Leaving" - aside from the lovely alliteration, I fail to see how "learning" about Neville's servitude of serfdom would cause distancing from his closest friends.

Yes, I realize it's "Just An Idea" - but even Just An Ideas need a little Juice, a little SOMETHING to light a fire under potential authors.

Here's one potential way I'd rewrite your idea:

Harry Potter has been ignorant of many common areas of knowledge in the Wizarding World, but a new problem has arisen that no one has expected. The ancient practice of servitude, binding one family to another, has long been a barely-mentioned part of Magical Society, always there, but never mentioned. When Neville mistakenly brings up his position of fiefdom to the Potters to an ignorant Harry, the wheels of change begin to turn. Soon, an uproar in the Wizarding community - Harry Potter has been talking about what NO ONE talks about.

Now other families want to get in on exploiting this ancient practice, but who owns who? A convoluted web of deceit and murder leads Harry to search for answers, and rescue his friends from lifelong slavery. But will his skewed view of the world help him - or sentence his friends to an early grave?

HARRY POTTER AND THE ANCIENT SERVANT

Anyway, that's just my possible take on things.

-J

 

An interesting idea, it would have to be really well done as Jeram has said to avoid many clichéd ideas... The real problem I have with this however, is that your Hierarchical system of Wizarding Aristocracy seems awfully familiar to the one I created for my story Witchcraft...

 

First, where can I find Witchcraft?? I haven't read any stories with this idea, that's why I posted it in the first place.

Second, I didn't want to flesh out the idea, I just wanted to offer it so someone else could do that.... I like the summary you gave, it sounds fine and would make a cool story..... as for the ring, yes, there is the family ring in many stories, but I was thinking that harry should have been offered the chance to wear it when he first went to gringotts, but since he never asked, the goblins didn't say shit... he's just some human, what do they care?..... he didn't know to ask because of his ignorance, but that isn't a conspiracy, just dumbles idiocy.....
the split with ron/herm wouldn't be because of the learning, it would be because he was spending much more time with neville, because hermione is against the whole serfdom thing and goes all holier than thou, because of rons jealousy, etc....

The way I look at things, a plot bunny is just a small idea that someone else can pick up and run with..... it isn't just a plot bunny if the person posting it fleshes it out, if they do that, then it is THEIR story, just ghostwritten by someone else..... I know most here don't seem to see things that way, since anytime I've posted a bunny I've been told to flesh it out more, but that's how I see it....

 

Witchcraft can be found in the Library here under the AU section, there is also a link to it in my profile.

If the whole point of this thread was to create a Challenge, then perhaps you should have posted it as such in the Challenge section.

 

it will involve too many cliches i think.

 

No, it wasn't a challenge, just an idea that someone can use if they want to.

 

i.e. a challenge.

Phailed. The idea IS somewhat intriguing though, since I haven't had the opportunity to read Witchcraft, and therefore haven't seen it used yet.

 

I've seen the rings, seen the political power being used, seen the family vassals, and seen Gringotts.

Which doesn't make it neccesarily a bad idea to found a fic off of that, but it really doesn't need to be put down as a challenge. The people who could pull off something like that and make it interesting at this point are the ones who've been around and read every-freakin'-thing there ever was related to HP anyway.

 

Would this happen to be the same 'WitchCraft' that you ABANDON WITH NO WARNING back in December of '05?

I should probably apologize for yelling, but i'm not going to. If there is one thing about fandom that burns my ass, it's authors that don't even have the courtesy to tell their readers when a story is abandon.

Manatheron,
Lord of the Review
High keeper of the Sarcastic remark
All around good guy.

(And yes that is supposed to be a slight mockery of all the titles you used for the coven of Stonehedge.)

Incidentally, if anyone is wondering I'd say the story is about a 4/5 for sheer inventiveness, and can be found HERE. I should drop it to a 2/5 for being abandon with no warning though.

 

Witchcraft is a great fic, aside from a little grammar that needs to be fixed here and there.... I hadn't read it before, but I HOPE you continue it.