Yes, but the "myth" is that Einstein failed basic math. I don't care if it is true or not, it is an interesting concept.

I thought the mistake of Barty Crouch Jr was the obvious one if he was raising Harry as his son to make up for a past mistake.

I also had another idea...

1) After HBP Harry is recieves Dumbledores' wand as instructed in his will. Harry can use the wand to fight Voldemort instead of getting a cutsom wand. It isn't 100% compatible, but I had the idea of Fawkes showing up, Fawkes could let give Harry some Phoenix blood and he can dip the wand in the blood so it is compatible with him. (And please don't say 'Phoenixes don't bleed.' Just pretend they can willingly give blood)

2) Ms. Figg feels bad when she sees a lonely 9 year old Harry sitting in the park. So she decideds to let him in on a little secret. She tells him about magic, and shows him some items as proof.

3) Harry is raised by his grandparents on his fathers side. I always wondered how Harry would have turned out if he was raised by Grandpa and Grandma Potter. (And I don't mean time travel, this idea is that they are still alive)

 

1) Why not just Phoenix tears? And why does he have to get Dumbeldore's wand?

2) What would this lead to? Harry having more magic than average-joe?

3) Eh, this would be pointless, as he could be morphed into anything the author (i.e. Grandparents) chooses him to.

 

Well, if Harry knew about magic 2-3 years before he supposed to, he could us is for a bevy of interesting (read:dark arts, charms, transfiguration, potions, etc) and entertaining (read: hexs and jinxes for the Dursley's) things.

No shit. That's the whole damn point of fanfiction, to create a world that was not indicated in the canon text.

You say he could be morphed into anything the grandparents want him to be. How is that pointless? We could end up with a bitter and resentful Harry, pissed at his grandparents for their overprotectiveness. Or we could have a studious bookworm Harry, ready to leap into any logical or mental problem at hand. Or even still we could have a pompous and arrogant Harry, much like in LT2000's story 'Happy Red Prince'. Don't say it's pointless when just a simple plot device could change the entire outcome of a story.

 

What about a comedy where you take all the moments where someone insults Harry for something he does right, and give Harry something witty to say. Perfect example, Lucius Malfoy, right after the trial:

"Well if it isn't Patronus Potter,"

"What? Mad because your cunt of a son can't even get mist yet?"

If J.K. had written something like that, I would have laughed for minutes. I'm sure theres tons of other moments like that, but this one stuck out in my mind.

 

Cause Phoenix tears are shown in canon for healing. The idea of using Phoenix blood, something we know nothing about, seems better than tears. As for why Dumbledores' wand; because most fics have him getting a custom wand, which is very cliché, I don't think I have ever seen Harry use Dumbledores' wand. Plus wouldn't it be sorta symbolic if Harry defeats Voldemort with the wand of the man he feared the most? It is kinda saying "Dumbledore may be dead, but he's still there."

I don't know what it would lead to. That is up to the person who writes a fic using that plot device. Though he would obviously know a little more about the wizarding world when he is excepted to Hogwarts. He will be prepared for it.

Erm, um....isn't that what one of the concepts of fanfiction is? To recreate a main character how the author wants? Unless you want a Harry raised by his grandparents out to be like canon Harry.

The idea leaves the floor open to author on how they have Harry turn out. Is he going to be like James? Or maybe more subdued because of Voldemort? Will he be spoiled? Popular? Egotistical? Shy? The point is that Harry will be vastly different being raised by the Potters.

The idea has been used many times. Usually it's people like Remus, Sirius, or an OC that raise Harry. But I have never seen the idea of Harry being raised by James' parents.

 

I hope someone can tell me where to find this "Heir to Gargamel" story, because a few quick searches on ff.net turn up nothing.

 

My Anti-cliche idea is that the Dursleys put Harry up for adoption. He is adopted by a loving family that moves to the US when he's 2. He grows up in the US knowing nothing of magic. At 18 he joins the US Army (or Marines...I suppose. God). At 21 Dumbledore shows up to take Harry back to the UK and to fight Voldemort. Harry refuses. Dumbledore tries to force him and Harry puts a bullet in the old goat's head. Voldemort wins in the UK, but then the rest of the magical world bands together and puts him down like a rabid dog.

Really...I can settle for not knowing what happens with Voldy and the UK just so long as Harry a)refuses to leave his life for some idiot wizard (a.k.a. Dumbles), and b)ends Dumbles when he tries to kidnap him.

 

Why not use Phoenix sperm then? Maybe it gives the spells little wings so that the spells fly slower but they can't be blocked.

You know some ideas haven't been seen before for many excellent reasons. First and foremost being, because the ideas are retarded (see previous paragraph).

And using "Dumbledore's wand" instead of a "custom wand" doesn't even change anything. Taking a cliché and just swapping out one small thing does not make it an original idea automatically.

Now if you bridge off from that point and come up with an entirely new and different chain of events, then you're getting somewhere.

For example, placing Harry in Ravenclaw but still giving him two best friends to make a special trio who go through the same motions of saving a Philosopher's Stone is not original. Neither is giving him an auror model fanny pack with seven rooms including a bedroom, dueling room, and library. I know it's not a trunk, but it's still painfully cliché and uninteresting on its own.

This kind of pain I can definitely sympathize with. It stems from authors wanting to write some kind of fic, but are incapable of giving the characters justification for it. Those authors will read a better author's manipulative!Dumbledore and forgiving!Harry story and then they too will write a fic with both of those aspects while neglecting to actually have any reason or logic behind their actions.

The result of reading these fics is that you long for the characters to react rationally, which in this case would be to say 'Screw you guys! I'm going home.' Or be unforgiving. Overall, it simply leaves you with a giant bucket of suck (getting lots of positive reviews just to irritate you more).

Sadly, the things you'd like to see simply wouldn't make for a story worth writing or even a very long story worth reading. I find the most satisfying thing you can do is to simply write a drabble getting straight to the point you want. It's an even better Fuck You than flaming the hell out of them, in my opinion.

I'm a bad example though because it was that same frustration that led me to writing Therapeutic Discussion (which was intended to be therapeutic to me more than Harry) and then Dimension Hopping for Beginners where I just liked killing Snape and Draco for whatever reason struck me at the time. Recently I was looking for LOTR and Buffy crossovers before I snapped a bit and wrote this drabble. And believe it or not, I was inspired and wrote a H/G drabble too. (Go on, read it. You know you're curious.)

As for the anti-cliche I'd like to see? Independent!Harry breaking free from Dumbledore's control, severing ties with Dursleys, demanding emancipation, getting to Gringotts, discovering he has a family vault and finding a letter from his folks that basically says, "Since you're reading this letter, we're dead. We hope Albus has kept his promise and he's there with you on your 21st birthday. We know the Headmaster probably wanted to give you your inheritance sooner, but we don't want you overwhelmed. Not to mention, if you'd accepted it or been emancipated sooner then all the puppies in the world would have died. We also hope Sirius has been an active part of your life, in spite of our insistence that you go live with Lily's sister and not your godfather..."

Or maybe that's just the Independent!Harry parody I keep wanting to write.

 

Bit of an inconsistency there.

My anti-clichè? Harry being raised lovingly by the Dursleys, to a spitting image of Dudley.

Or Harry really being sent to a youth correctional facility. (Attempted in the story "Magnar Military School for Misplaced Youths" which only has 1 chapter)

 

Yeah...I vomited a little at the idea of a Dudley!Harry. Would make a good horror fic though.

As to the idea of the youth correctional facility...I've seen one or two of these that sucked horribly. They were St. Brutes' fics and almost always ended up as badass!waco!Harry. They were horrible. However, I do think there's a lot of non-cliche ground that could be covered there.

The only problem I'd see is that using a military school most authors will then fall into the cliche of unthinkingSoldier!harry. He'll be a good little soldier that never asks questions or thinks twice about the insanely bad orders he's given. He'll be Dumbledore's perfect little Golden Boy and then when Voldemort's dead he'll wonder what to do with his life that now has no purpose.

Oh wait....that story was already written. /gag

You get my point though I hope.

 

Not a bad idea. I wonder to what lengths Harry would have to go to get Fawkes sperm. Damn...bestiality.

 

Anyone else that can see him turning Steve Irwin like. During the Tri Wizard thing he runs up to the dragon and shouts "Ain't she a beuaty".

Mah, no problem if you use the cliche Harry has a Pheonix animagus form.
Would it still be considered beastiality that way?

 

Erm, if you're talking Fawkes sperm then it might not be bestiality anymore. Instead it'd be Harry, the gay phoenix. (can't... fight... pun... impulse...) Actually not just gay, but flaming.

 

That's all I have to say about that.

 

Mute!Harry. You have blind!Harry and Deaf!Harry, but i've never seen him as a mute. It'd give him a reason to study ahead, and he'd quickly master Non-verbal magic. And, he'd kick ass in a duel when he learns ahead. He'd learn non-verbal only spells before anyone else, giving him a massive boost.

 

We've all seen those fics where when a person comes into his/her inheritance they let off a burst of power, normally involving Harry having to be holed up in some mega!ultra!warded!area because his is so large and powerful.

Well, what about the opposite, when a person comes into their inheritance they lose their magic. You could explain this by saying that the magic channels have to adapt to the influx of power and so all control over magic has to be turned off so that they can reform themselves into bigger more stable channels.

You could also have the length of time it takes them to adapt being an indicator of the person's power.

Maybe a normal witch or wizard would only lose their magic for maybe 2 hours.

You could have Dumbledore as an example of a much more powerful wizard taking 7 or 8 hours.

You could start a whole plot from this, as Harry comes into his inheritance, he loses his magic for so long that the order etc. cannot accept him to be that powerful and start believing the killing curse or his connection with Voldemort had some damaging effect on him thus rendering him a squib when his inheritance finally came about.

Just an idea.

 

I'll just reply to a few from this last page:

And why the fuck does he have to go to the US? Britain has the acknowledged most superior special forces unit in the world. Our Armies are involved in most of the piece keeping operations around the world, despite the fact that our whole bloody country is smaller than most of your individual states. That suggests to me, that our armies might at the very least be equal to yours, if not a tad better.

And if he were to stay in Britain, it could work out that he joins the army at 16, which you can do, and gets into the SAS age 19 or so, and then he has 2 years experience in the SAS, an SAS just done with The Troubles, full of combat veterns and special forces experts, when Dumbledore locates him at age 21. Methinks that would be a bit of a better set up...

Corwalch has a fic where Harry is mute. He doesn't follow the route you suggested though, instead he has Dumbledore give Harry an amulet that vocalises thoughts directed at it or something...Its not a bad fic altogether.

Classic, just classic. You could even go a bit further, and say that perhaps after a couple of days of no magic, Harry goes into a comma, because a wizards body is dependant on its magic for survival, and the order takes this as proof that he is now a squib. When he does wake, when his magic returns a day or so later perhaps, the Order could just refuse to attend him, and would continually ignore him. Could lead to either an evil!Harry fic, where Harry gets hacked off with the Order and decides to help Voldemort, or an indi!Harry where he escapes St Mungo's or the safehouse he's in or whatever, and goes on the run, fighting a guerilla battle against the Death Eaters.

And for my contribution:

The Hogwarts House elfs misinterpret a through away comment from a distracted Dumbledore with disastrous results! He perhaps orders them to search all the students belongings for contraband alcohol, and when they ask what they're to do with it he, having already turned his thoughts to the more pressing matter of Voldemort having just assaulted St Mungo's or something like that, comments "I don't care, drink it or something!" without thinking. Thus leading to Drunk!House Elfs.

You could even do a small series of one-shots. The alcohol one, perhaps a drugs one, maybe one after Dumbledore's death and McGonagall orders them to get rid of Snape's private potions stash, things like that.

 

Acknowledged by whom? You?

This suggests to me that you should seriously STFU about how great your fucking nation is.
Just one simple fact:
United States Active Troops: 1,426,713
United Kingdom Active Troops: 187,970

Equal my ass.

 

Did I say equal numbers? I implied equal skills, abilities. Of course the numbers aren't equal, that would be literally impossible.

And as to acknowledged by whom? The majority of the military experts in the world.

 

Currently being done in Cadet Potter. Something like 6 or 7 chapters out already.

Vernon decided to have the unnaturalness beat out of him and sent him to a military academy. When they left him, Duddly caused a series of events that sent the Dursley family head on into an oncoming lorry. End of the Dursley's, and their assets paid for his education at the military academy. Not a particularly outstanding fic... but it points something out. That if you want to maintain suspension of disbelief, there's no way that officials at a correctional institute would not clue in that Harry's not a troublemaker.

That said, how about a Harry that actually IS in need of a stay at saint brutus's. A real east ender type who has been getting into trouble since he was 7 or 8. Maybe have him beating on Dudley.

"Oi, Dudders... Betcha thought you were a right smart one running ta yer mum like that, tellin 'er I was messin wit ya... got me a right whipping. *smirk* well... I got som'fing for ya too, Duds." *swings a sock with a big piece of soap in it and hits Duddly upside the head, dropping him like a sack of sand.*"Aww, did that hurt? Good, remember that...Otherwise, next time maybe you'll be playing on those climbing bars and fall, eh? Might break yer arm clean through and everyfing... next time."

A real hooligan.