Augustus Rookwood raises Harry.

The premise: Rookwood kills Igor Karkaroff before his trial, ensuring that he cannot betray the death eaters, and most importantly, Rookwood himself. Rookwood then goes on to kidnap Harry, not to harm him, but to raise him as a tool of his own agenda. I’m thinking of Rookwood very much in terms of Ip82’s story, where he is not disillusioned about the Dark Lord’s brilliance, but rather supports (and deems it necessary to create/maintain) the superiority of wizards over muggles/muggleborn. Hence Harry is raised with a supreme prejudice towards muggleborns, but with the knowledge of their necessity to maintain healthy wizarding demographics, as well as the ability to keep his own opinions and emotions hidden.

While this would all inevitably lead to 3rdFaction!Harry, I think it could allow an initially dark Harry ultimately moving towards the light without becoming a pussy…basically, adopting the attitude of ‘me enemy’s enemy…’ I guess the word I’m looking for is anti-hero.

I have a lot of stray thoughts going through my head right now, and I’d appreciate some outside input before I start writing a giant plot hole. Thanks.

 

Rookwood is an excellent idea for the kidnapper. He's brilliant and tough - he was head of the Unspeakables WHILE he was Marked and working for Voldemort. He must have passed A Lot of loyalty/security tests at the same time that he was committing treason.

Do you intend for Rookwood to continue in his Minstry job while raising Harry? That would be tough; but having him disappear Right Then would be suspicious, as well.

 

Any fic that has Rookwood as a big part of the plot automatically gains my support. I do like ip82's characterization of Rookwood. He's just plain badass ("What, you thought Reducto works on humans? Idiot!" (paraphrased to hell)). We need more fics with mentor!Rookwood, and I see this as a potentially great plot for one. I do wish I had writing skills or I would attempt this and many other challenges. Sadly, I like reading stuff way more than writing. I always sucked in school at creative writing.

 

^Too true. The thought of amoral!Harry is enough to get me to check out a story. The idea sounds very interesting, but where do you want it to go? You say that he might be dark that goes light, but at what point? And what would be the cause of his slow switch.

 

This, as with most plot bunnies of this type, is the biggest problem. Realistically, any and every Death Eater would kill Harry Potter, not raise them as their own mini Dark Lord. You'll need to come up with a good reason why Rookwood would do such a thing.

For example, perhaps, since he believes that it is essential that wizards maintain their superiority to Muggles, he is not willing to kill potentially powerful wizards. Make him care - actually care - more for the continued strength of the wizarding world than any one political agenda. Make him honestly think he is doing the right thing in supporting Voldemort: making the wizarding world strong.

It's actually a very interesting idea. A moralistic and, for lack of a better word, "light" Harry who also has a firm and deep seated belief that wizards are better than Muggles, and that the most important thing is to keep this superiority intact.

A lot like a younger Dumbledore I suppose. A generally good person, very talented, who honestly thinks that wizarding supremacy is the morally right action.

 

@ Taure - I agree with your first point, and is why I think Rookwood is the only possible candidate. The Lestranges, Crouch...all would have a vendetta against Harry. However, Rookwood as an unspeakable I assume possesses a rational and level mind, as well as valuing practicality over anything else.

The Rookwood I imagine is one who sincerely believes in Wizard superiority, and saw Voldemort not as a perfect saving figure, but the one most likely to stop the deteriorating of wizarding culture. I imagine him raising Harry with this superiority in place, but also a realization that muggleborns are needed if wizards are to survive. As for rescuing Harry. Well first and foremost the sheer gall at muggles treating a wizard like the Dursleys do...Or for those that appreciate an actual reason, on a practical level the boy will inevitably be famous and if groomed properly influential. Surviving that killing curse means he's either very lucky or very powerful - hard to tell which is more important if you want to rule.

@ K the great
Harry's will never go "light". His prejudice would never go away, and even towards the end his main factor for aiding the Order would be the resurgence of a common enemy as opposed to any philosophical agreements. However, his attitude would be tempered by the ridiculous and arrogant positions held by Malfoy's ilk, as well as first hand recognition that Dumbledore, despite compromising "pureblood ideals", has nonetheless made improvements into the wizarding society. I can't see Harry being chummy with Hermione, but he would certainly realize she could potentially be a very useful ally.

That being said, at no point will Harry rebuttal with "but dad and I pay our houselves."

 

Another potential motivation for Rookwood to kidnap Harry (after a decent amount of time spent searching for him; Dumbledore hid him decently, blah blah blah) would be...Harry destroyed Voldemort's body as an infant.

It could be assumed, especially by someone who is intellectually brilliant and holds the fervent belief that wizards are truly better, that Harry would be even more powerful than Voldemort. It would make a lot of sense for him to groom Harry and to make sure the boy is loyal to him. I mean, he obviously has step 1 in his favor; He's rescuing Harry from abuse and forced servitude at the hands of Muggles. Sure, he may not know the situation there is actually bad for Harry's development, but I'm sure Rookwood would gain some form of respect and loyalty from Harry for just that action.

I like this premise...it has lots of potential, so long as someone with talent picks it up.


Edit: Cosmos...how would you scientifically prove something about someone's inherent magical abilities? That doesn't make much sense. This is magic, and magical study is Rookwood's strength as an unspeakable, not science. Also, Rookwood would be smart enough to note the potential for respect and influence Harry will have as the baby who destroyed the Dark Lord. It makes a lot of sense, in that regard alone, for him to 'relocate' Harry and raise him with some of his own beliefs.

Averis, I like your thoughts, but this bunny is based on the idea that Rookwood wasn't fanatical in his support of Voldemort; just fanatical in his belief that the wizarding world and culture was in a rapid decline. Check out ip82's Potter's Resistance: Breaking Ties for the Rookwood I, and a few others, are imagining.

 

In fact, didn't something like this come up in the books? I could swear I read in one of them that a lot of former Death Eaters thought Harry had killed Voldemort because he had been born with dark powers or something, and were looking to rally around him in case Riddle never showed...

 

No. Rookwood should be the wizard equivalent of a scientist. He shouldn't assume anything, especially something as ridiculous as a one year old having enough inherent power to reflect the killing curse of the most powerful dark lord alive. He would attempt to find out what caused The Dark Lord's body to be destroyed but he'd observe, test, and base his theory on evidence instead of running with the first silly thought that runs through his head.

Other then that, I like this challenge. Gives the opening foundation for what could be a very interesting story.

 

If you were a high ranking member of a group of terrorists set on world domination, and your leader lost his life to a series of events involving and centered around a newborn, I believe that you would be intrigued by this baby. You might do a series of tests to find out why, and realize that the boy has a great, and terrible, potential as a wizard thanks to Voldemort's effects.

But though you may come to grow fond of the little tyke, or feel a strange sense of obligation to raise him, the fact of the matter remains...

Why would you put all of your strength behind a one year old boy when you're already bent on world domination? Why not just pick up from where Voldemort left off--at the top of his power--and try to wrestle control of the Death Eaters. It's plausible that Rookwood could have made a interesting choice of leader; at least as plausible as his sudden desire to raise a toddler.

However, I could see: Rookwood is inexplicably intrigued to study this boy, who could defeat the Dark Lord before he could talk (ala the Mad Scientist bit) and decides to retrieve the boy and make detailed accounts of the boy's abnormalities. He comes to the conclusion, that with the right amounts of TLC (Mad Scientist) and a nod in the right direction, Harry Potter will be capable of doing everything he cannot do as a fugitive.

Harry has much of the same mannerisms and beliefs as his father, but as he ages, begins to doubt his father's influence. By the same token, he isn't pleased by Dumbledore's machinations and the Ministry's prying fingers and, once he graduates, has his own aspirations of power: A firm rule won by what appeals to the public, involving a righteous revolution that ends in blood (with him as a leader) and outmaneuvering of the Ministry.

In other words, I'm high and the plot appealed to me. Someone should write this, or something like this, because it's set up for win.

 

Ugh. Goddamit, if this story gets written, it better have a different pairing.

Never would I have thought a character mentioned maybe half a dozen times would gain so much popularity.

Since when has Voldemort and the DEs been bent on World Domination? Tom's only out for power and immortality, and the Death Eaters are in it to ensure Pureblood superiority.

We know nothing about the rest of the Wizarding World. China could be the dominant power for all we know. And I'd say a lot of other wizard nations would be pretty conservative. Durmstrang taught the Dark Arts, remember.

I can see a victorious Voldemort going to war with France or Germany or Spain down the line. Whether he succeeds or not is another matter.

 

Keeping it simple shouldn't be too hard.

Voldemort discovers there's a prophecy about him (thanks Snivellus, you douchebag) but doesn't know the whole thing. Rookwood works in the Department of Mysteries, so Voldemort tells him he wants the prophecy.

Rookwood finds the right sphere (after all, Snape, and thus Tom, knew the day it was given, who gave it and to whom it was given) but knows he can't retrieve it because he's not the subject of the prophecy. The best he can do is confirm that the prophecy Snape overheard was, in fact, a real one because the orb he found had Trelawney and Dumbledore's initials on it, along with the note 'Dark Lord and (?)'. *

He tells this to Voldemort and is punished 'for his failure', as per usual. Knowing that the prophecy is real, but not much else, Voldemort decides to attack the Potters and kill their son. He fails and gets disincorporated.

Rookwood still believes in pureblood superiority.

Voldemort was the voice for their cause mostly because he was the only game in town. Rookwood is smart and he's a realist. He realized long ago that Voldemort was never as much for pureblood supremacy as much as he was for Voldemort supremacy.

Life under Tom's rule would have meant demeaning servitude and a never-ending series of punishments for supposed failure. Just look at the way he bullied Lucius and helped himself to the Malfoy family coffers.

Yes, Voldemort was a (terrible but) great wizard and, to a certain extent, he served the purposes of the pro-pureblood crowd, but he had grown beyond their control. Though the man's death is viewed by many of their ilk as a step back, Rookwood sees it as a step forward, in the long run. While he knows that Voldemort was extremely powerful and the heir of Slytherin, he also knows full well that Voldemort was just the orphaned, bastard, halfblood son of an inbred witch and a potion-addled muggle.

Now, amazingly, he's gone and it was an infant that defeated him. Knowing that the answers must be contained in the half of the prophecy he hasn't heard is driving Rookwood crazy. Like any scientist (even a magical one), he is very curious and this puzzle being dangled before him is too tantalizing to resist.

Rookwood knows there's only one way to hear the whole prophecy (beyond the suicidal option of trying to pull it from Dumbledore's head) and that's to use Harry to do it.

[You can decide how he gets past the wards, maybe he bribes Vernon to bring the boy to him. The fact is though, that he doesn't want to harm Harry, he just wants to use him to get the prophecy, so the wards might let him walk right in and right back out with Harry.]

Rookwood kidnaps Harry from his neglectful relatives (who would have gladly given him up of their own free will, if they didn't fear Albus). He smuggles the infant into the hall of prophecy and uses the boy to pick up the orb (ultimately, it would be as simple as letting the baby reach for the 'shiny ball' and letting him knock it off the shelf). After hearing the contents, he formulates a plan and the first step is silencing Karkaroff and that nutter, Barty Crouch...

The purebloods will need a new voice, a new figurehead- one equally as powerful as Voldemort but one that can also be contained, not a psychopathic megalomaniac like Riddle who was ultimately only in it for himself.

Conveniently enough, Harry is irrefutably stated in the prophecy as being the Dark Lord's equal and he must be, because he defeated the man. Besides, with two magical parents and a shot at being wizard-raised instead of muggle-raised like Riddle, he's closer to being a real pureblood than Voldemort ever was!

Rookwood decides to raise Harry to be the ideal pureblood. He teaches him their ways, customs, laws and magic... lots of magic. By the time Harry resurfaces, he's a gleaming example of wizard superiority in full bloom. He's also an incomparably dangerous weapon that is currently in the hands of one of the smartest death eaters ever.

The icing on the cake is that before Rookwood kidnapped him, word had already gotten out that Harry had defeated Voldemort. Harry, his perfect pupil, will be able to preach the pureblood doctrine from the comfortable position of 'darling hero of the Wizarding World' and they have Dumbledore and Voldemort to thank for it. There would never be a more insidiously perfect setup.

If the PR angle works out well enough, they might not even have to resort to force until they've practically won the war. He figures if Harry ever does end up having to be the next Dark Lord, instead of just a figurehead, he has the training and power to do so (and by Merlin, he's been taught not to Cruciate the fuck out of his followers like Voldemort, the bastard!).

Rookwood might have the brains to take over for the Dark Lord, sure, but Harry has infinitely more brawn and Augustus Rookwood always preferred to be the power behind the throne. Part of having the brains meant knowing that it was the power on the throne that would take the heat if the plan were to fail.

##In a nutshell, Rookwood is a true believer. He sees in Harry, after he has the full prophecy, a near perfect chance to put pureblood rule in the bag. He has a chance to gain complete control of their former leader's Equal and shape him however he pleases. The other options are to leave said Equal in Dumbledore's hands, take his chances in the power struggle with the other remaining DEs and end up fighting the brat somewhere down the road. With the boy, however, they have the power and a public relations goldmine. The kid's a hero! Everyone will listen to what he has to say, as long as he's trained to say it the right way... And on the off chance that Riddle comes back, Harry's been trained by an Unspeakable and is popular enough to have both purebloods and the general populous at his back. THAT is why he would raise and train Harry... and if it all falls apart in the end, it's Harry holding the bag, not Rookwood.##


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*Note: In OoTP, the orb had the two sets of initials and the note 'Dark Lord and (?)Harry Potter'. Presumably, the label originally had the question mark and Harry's name was written in after he destroyed Voldemort, making it clear who the child in the prophecy was.

If, somehow, Harry's name was on the prophecy's label before Voldemort's defeat, Rookwood could have told this to the Dark Lord, even without knowing the contents of the prophecy.

This would then be the real reason why he chose to attack Harry instead of Neville. Meaning Dumbledore was wrong when he said it was because Harry was a halfblood like Tom.

If they are both halfbloods, it must be a pretty broad term. Snape and Voldemort are halfbloods. Both had a witch mother and a completely muggle father.

Harry's parents, on the other hand, are both magical (his mother being a muggleborn witch and his father a pureblood), so his parentage really isn't the same at all. If anything, it would be more accurate to call Harry, and others like him, fullbloods.

Before Harry was orphaned, he had two magical parents that loved and cared for him and it would have continued to be like that, had they been left alone. Nothing at all like Tom, whose similarities to Harry, Dumbledore was always going on about. Snape and Tom, on the other hand, both had muggle fathers and witch mothers and both had miserable childhoods. Snape hated his abusive muggle father and Tom hated his muggle father who abandoned him and his mother (though, to be fair, Tom Senior was the victim there, having been drugged and essentially raped).

tl/dr

 

I'm going to start writing this story tonight, and see where it goes. Warlocke, if you don't mind, I'd like to steal your 'baby Harry gets the prophecy for Rookwood, as it makes sense both in terms of what the unspeakable would do, and also as to why he'd keep Harry alive. Also, having both Dumbledore and Voldemort to thank for this ideal situation is wonderful.

@ Doctor: Any romance or love interest in this story will be, at most, minimal.

 

That's why I posted it, so I don't mind at all.

Good luck.



An addendum to what I wrote above: Rookwood, being who he is, appreciates a mystery/challenge as much as the next guy but Voldemort's search for immortality has never sat well with him, feeling that it distracted from the more important goals of preserving (pureblood) wizarding culture. He has no illusions that Tom would have shared this knowledge once he possessed it. It could even be that Rookwood knew enough about the horcruxes to be aware that Tom had some and that he had made no move to share.

As all good purebloods know, real immortality lies with one's line, one's children and passing their traditions to the new generations, not artificially making one man into an undying freak.

If Rookwood plays his cards right, he can even siphon the money and resources for training Harry off of the DOM's budget. If it's one of those situations where even the Minister doesn't know what projects they're working on, it wouldn't be hard to sneak in extra expenses or spread them out over other department's expenses a piece at a time.

As head of the department, he could even state that he's working on a new secret project and then simply give himself carte blanche with the department's budget to complete it. That project of course, is Harry.

 

@The Doctor: I was more or less being sarcastic about the whole thing, but he does want to rid the world of Muggles (according to his propaganda) and take over, so it's not too much of a stretch to say "world domination".

@Warlocke: That is a more or less flawless idea for a story. I can't see much wrong with it, honestly. Good job.

@vlad: Glad to hear you are writing this--Don't fuck it up!

No pressure though.

 

I seem to remember that Rookwood was married - and she was as dangerous as he. Or is this fanon?

It seems that anyone who is focused on blood purity/supremacy would make multiple children (at least three or four) a VERY high priority. In fact, the Real supremacists would look down on the Malfoys for their policy of concentrating all the family wealth and power into only one heir. Interestingly enough, Rookwood would probably have tried to use his influence with Voldemort to limit attacks on "light" pureblood families - like the Weasleys - especially since there are other targets.

Any choices that don't include lots of magical children would be strongly discouraged. Homosexuality is just one point.

 

He doesn't necessarily have to believe in Pureblood supremacy: just wizard supremacy. I think it better that way personally, because if you're depicting him as a clever and rational person then he will obviously be able to see that the Pureblood ideology is false, whereas there are arguments for wizarding supremacy.

 

This is the same question I asked over in the Riddle-as-Headmaster thread:
What's the Ministry policy on wizards with creature heritage (veela, giant etc.)? Or on a student from a squibxsquib crossing?