I think it depends on how you view canon magic. If you believe that there are branches of magic that can only be learned in the forests of South America or the pyramids of Egypt then yes maybe his growth as a wizard takes longer. But I’m more of the belief that most magic that is known to the world has been printed in books that Riddle can buy or look for in the library. Magic that isn’t known to the world is either self made or hoarded and kept secret.

I kinda imagine a Professor Riddle to be a bit like Slughorn in how he cultivates connections among his students. He seeks out the best and brightest and secretly teaches them a different view of magic that Dumbledore would take issue with.

 

Harry Potter / Dishonored crossover where Harry is given the Mark of the Outsider. No real plot to it yet, still thinking of divergence points.

 

After Voldemort is defeated by the Potters, there's a period of cold conflict between the two sides even as things wind down. More and more Death Eaters and sympathisers are trying to slide back into their lives and keep their heads down. Those who want to keep fighting are less than pleased by this deescalation. They manage to get their hands on a list of muggleborn students due to attend Hogwarts, and commence a purge. Maybe it's quiet. Maybe the deaths are horrific. Maybe they plant evidence that implicates some of their less 'dedicated' Death Eater pals, like the Malfoys. Either way, Albus Dumbledore finds out and goes on the fucking war path. A few ancenstral manors are razed to the ground as Albus goes from confronting the Death Eaters implicated to hunting down the ones truly responsible. The Ministry struggles to follow in his wake as the Wizarding World is reminded why Dumbledore was the only man Voldemort ever feared.

 

Inspired by the Q1 prompt. Harry has become Death Incarnate. He arrives at a hospital late at night. He's supposed to bring a recently deceased child toward their hereafter, but monsters lurking in the shadows keep coming after them. It's not that hard for him to destroy the threat and carry the kid out. They reach the gates of heaven, they meet with the kid's older sibling there and he drops them off. Goes to have a chat with the angel in charge of the gates-- to exert what influence he can to bend the rules. Because the monsters are still there, lurking outside, waiting-- the kid belongs with them as a suicide, not in heaven.

Whether or not there is a happy ending or Harry has no choice but to let hell have them at the end, to watch as this child's relief and smile fades back into terror, I think that would be a more tragic and therefore fitting end. Harry might have become this vast and terrible being, but even he has limits, checks, that stop him from throwing away the rules.

 

Just watched Goodbye Christopher Robin, and it got me thinking about a story with a similar situation for Harry. If you haven't seen the movie it's about the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh series. In the movie A.A. Milne creates the series and the it's is a smash hit. However, instead of A.A. becoming a celebrity, his son Billy Moon becomes one of the world's first child star because Christopher Robin was based on him. A.A. Milne and his wife use their son's celebrity to cut many lucrative deals and sponsorships despite their son's obvious lack of enthusiasm for it.

Plot Idea: One day Petunia is out grocery shopping with a young Dudley and Harry. A man recognizes Harry and approaches to introduce himself and shake Harry's hand. Instead of running, Petunia asks the man why he's so excited to meet a child. He explains to Petunia that Harry is one of the most popular and celebrated wizards currently living. This activates Petunia's almonds and she starts to hatch a plan. Using the wizard she just met as a connection, Petunia and Vernon decide to exploit Harry's celebrity in the Wizarding World. As his guardians they make numerous sponsorship deals for him, book deals, interviews, autograph signings, meeting with various Ministers for Magic etc etc. Harry is introduced to the Wizarding World at a much younger age by the Dursley's because of their greed. Dumbledore is unhappy, but there's not much he can do as the Dursley's aren't breaking any laws. They are simply going against his wishes for Harry to remain anonymous.

The Dursley's become rich, and move the family into a mansion. Harry goes from rich to super wealthy, and he's even more popular in the Wizarding World because of good PR and being idolized by other kids. The Harry that goes to Hogwarts at 11 is vastly different from canon Harry. How he's different is up to the author. Does he go the route of most child stars and become a burnt out junkie? Does his desire to prove himself become so strong that the sorting hat refuses to put him on Gryffindor? Or maybe he's everything Snape accuses him to be; a big headed celebrity who is arrogant just like his father?

 

So I was idly thinking about Harry in Skyrim yesterday, and now I've moved on to Sirius. I figured he is the better character for a story of this nature-- he's older, he's already completed his Hogwarts education, he's rusty enough after languishing in Azkaban and then Grimmauld Place to need some work, but he is still a competent adult wizard overall. And better still, his animagus form is well suited to Skyrim.

I was picturing a more humorous story than a fully serious one at this juncture. Probably wakes up on the way to Helgan, subtly magicks his way out of his binds, and escapes before Alduin starts wreaking havoc. He's smart enough not to take on a dragon right now, if he even hears the carnage taking place(Sirius thought that he heard the sounds of screaming in the distance, but after the conversation in that wagon, he chalked it up to the headsman's axe, shrugged for the poor sots, and carried on his way down the road). Skim through the next several months as he adjusts to life here, so that we don't focus too long on why he wound up here and any regret he has about not being able to help Harry.

He'd probably hear word about the exploits of the Dragonborn, but I'd rather that be mostly background noise ("Did you here about that dragon resurrected at Kyne's Grove? Slain as quick as it could shout." Sirius nodded and sipped from his mug) than anything that would hold his interest at the moment. The problem here is that I just don't have an overarching goal for him. I was thinking that he might draw the attention of some of the daedric gods, and that might open the road to him returning home. Or not, and they're just stringing him along.

Kind of pulled this together haphazardly in the last ten minutes but eh. I think it has some potential.

 

On mobile so no easier way to list this.

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/Ss3thnI

 

Post-books story.

A group of wealthy and influential wizards and witches from all over the world create a competition among themselves to see which one of them can acquire the highest amount of money in a week.

They travel around the world, buy and sell property, rare magical artifacts and magical creatures, etc.

Among the competitors from Britain are Draco Malfoy (who seeks to restore the family reputation), Harry Potter (who finds the whole thing an exciting new adventure, and an excuse to run away from Ginny) and Neville Longbottom (who decides to finally make a name for himself).

The title is of course "Monopoly."

 

An interesting prompt. I love how you slip the completely unnecessary Ginny bashing in.

 

DLP still has this one thing the same from 2008. Hating Ginny.

 

"After all this time?"

"Always."

 

One of the more highly rated fics in the library in recent years is a canon compliant post-epilogue Harry/Ginny fic told from the perspective of a muggle woman. To say that DLP is the same as the days when we held kill off competitions as a form of counter culture to mugglenet/SIYE/Portkey is dumb.

 

Harry is running from Ginny because she's insatiable in the sack and he's in the money making competition because he's running out of funds for Skele-Gro to fix his pelvis.

 

An idea I had after Infinity War that came back to me after watching Endgame:

For millennia, the Soul Stone was thought lost, until the Children of Thanos follow its call to a world far away, in a different reality. Here, three wizards forged it into tools of unmatched power: A wand, a cloak and a stone. The hunt for the Soul Stone begins, and Harry Potter is in the middle of it.

So there are a lot of MoD stories out there, and while they usually have a ton of issues, the Hollows are still pretty fun. This would follow Harry being thrown into the Marvel Universe, but it happens later than in most crossovers. Here, he's hunted by Thanos, has to protect the Hollows and figure out what the hell's going on. I chose the Soul Stone because that one kind of makes the most sense, power-wise (at least for the resurrection stone).

 

Persona/Harry Potter Fusion

Combines Persona 3 and 5 so obvious spoilers

Death/Nyx is sealed after the events of Persona 3 and with it a barrier between life and death itself is created and suddenly no one is able to die, nor can new life be generated.

Fast forward 5/6 years later and Harry arrives in Japan with the Deathly Hallows serving as relics of Death/Nyx amidst the events of Persona 5. While the Phantom Thieves are trying to change hearts, Harry wants to use Mementos as a way to bring back the concept of Death and Life.

It plays with some of the ideas of Mementos, and Persona 3's ending while allowing me to play around with some ideas I had. The part about the Deathly Hallows I'm meh about, another part was just thinking of him being a curious body, arriving in Tokyo looking for a solution because Voldemort still lives, and the P3 events have put a hold on the outcome of the prophecy. So Harry wants to bring back death to end Voldemort's crusade.

It was flitting about in my head and wanted to get it onto a page/web before I forgot about it.

 

Been mulling over a little plot bunny. Sort of a Harry Potter/Terminator cross, but only with the premise of Terminator.

The idea I keep coming back to is Harry is the savior of the wizarding world and the Second War has been raging on well into Harry's mid-twenties. Hogwarts is in ashes, the Ministry is long gone, Muggle Britain is burning, if not Europe as a whole.

In the ashes, Harry defeats Voldemort at extreme cost. Voldemort's remaining Death Eaters, acting under his orders, send back in time a fully-aware Horcrux, like the manifestation that came out of the diary, to Godric's Hollow Halloween Night/or to some point in James and Lily's courtship, to stop Harry ever being born. Harry becomes aware of this, and much like John Connor sent back Kyle Reece to save his mother in Terminator, Harry sends back an old and grizzled ally... maybe Neville... to ensure that the horcrux doesn't terminate Harry.

Early in the evening on Halloween night, 1981, a battle-scarred and utterly war-ruined Neville knocks on the door of James and Lily Potter in Godric's Hollow. He stinks of ash and burnt time. 'James, Lily... come with me if you want to live.'

It's got more than a few issues here in the development stage, such as Harry being Voldemort's downfall with or without surviving the killing curse, but I think I could make it work.

 

I like it, and would definitely give it a read. It's a new take on the (quite battered) bunny that Harry goes back in time from a very destructive war in the future, so you have to be careful to not fall into that territory. Think we've all read that story a hundred times at this point.

What would be the long-term goal of the fic? Is it going to be Neville versus the horcrux adventure, or a larger battle that involves the order etc? I think it could be nice to keep it small, like the terminator movies where it's mainly the terminators throwing down while the supporting cast acts shocked.

 

Obviously Harry has to send his son James to the past, who bangs his grandma.

 

I suspect it has been done before, but I was thinking about a story where magic is a bit like the Force in that you have the light side and the dark. Using the dark corrupts just like the dark side of the Force does. You can fall if you don't keep your emotions in check etc. Force precognitions would be cool but it might be a bit too much like Star Wars.

 

Every shitty fic has dark magic tainting the soul.