Summary:

Ok. We've seen thousands of "Harry goes to the past to save his wife, friend’s enemies and his gold fish". Let’s try a different approach.

The basic idea is that in the middle of his third year Harry figured out how Hermione was able to attend all the classes she has chosen.
In a fit of envy and desire to become a better wizard Harry steal her time turner.

With the help from Dobby Harry finds the room of requirements. But luck is not on his side as he accidentally breaks the fragile relic.

Now Harry is trapped in this room and can’t leave it. He is also "Frozen in time" or the time in room is way faster then in the real world.

The point of the fic is to show what two or three (maybe more) years can do to a teenager when all he has is a magical room. Puberty without human contact, learning how to grow up from books and trying to preserve any bits of sanity that are left.

Eventually when Harry is released he should be "slightly off". I don’t think that you should make him crazy like a bat but more like Luna.

I suppose that it would be interesting to read about Harry, that has matured reading Shakespeare and can quote English classics. At the same time this Harry should crave for what normal boys take for granted. Like for instance he should start smoking, drinking and trying to get in to any living girls pants.


Rules:
1. This fic is NOT to make a super!Harry. You should put a very strong limit on his development in the room of req. You can put him in the room without a wand so all his knowledge is just theoretical and he can’t cast 99% of spell he read about. Or you can make it so that Harry is like Hermione - good in theory and spell casting but very poor at dueling - it takes a teacher to learn that. You can’t find out how to kill and fight properly form a book and alone.
2. When you design what the Room can give Harry - please, don’t forget that it is a SCHOOL! So this room can’t give Harry super uber dark arts tomes or wicked weapons. It also can’t give him booze or tobacco or let him peek on girls. Make this room realistic and don’t overpower it - like for instance a not so great food (Feed him the same meal for years)
3. Harry should come out not as normal as he should be. That is the main point of the fic. Try to imagine what it would be like spending years in the Room and what it can do to a teenager mind.


Thanks for reading this and if you are interested in writing this or wish to leave any comment to this challenge - you are welcome

 

Can I query one thing? Normal guys take smoking for granted? Since when? In Britain its not an uncommon vice, but its certainly viewed, or at least is where I live, as an addiction, not as a good or normal thing.

And really, how is someone going to get cigarettes at Hogwarts?

 

Heh, now this sounds like an interesting idea, very original...
I'd advise against the alcoholic/smoker harry though, it's a rather dumb idea. You can't really get addicted to something you've never had.

H/Luna would be a good idea, if there is going to be a pairing. Two different types of crazy.

Please use the spellcheck next time.

 

It's an interesting idea,but....I dunno. I always got the impression that the castle was somewhat sentient - why would it let anybody get trapped in the Room of Requirement?

Change it from the void in the Room of Requirement to the void in the Vanishing Cabinet.

 

Just sounds ridiculous to me. So we have an anti-social!Harry. Doesn't really have much plot though...

 

First of all - sorry for my pathetic English. I accidentally copied the wrong part from MS word. And English is not my native tong.

About smoking and drinking. I'm not sure where do you come from, Mordecai, but I can only speculate that most teenagers at least once try to have a cigarette or have some beer while they are still underage.
It is not the point to give him an addiction. The point is to show that Harry is in a rush to get in the shortest time what normal boys his age have already experienced.

And the point is NOT to make and EMO or antisocial Harry. He should not cut himself or vomit just by looking at the food in the great hall. On the contrary - he should be happy as hell.

 

Make wherever Harry's trapped have the complete archives of The Quibbler, so he has trouble figuring out what's real and what isn't. It's also a segue in to the HLuna.

 

Have him snap like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, drawing circles on Quibblers, connecting articles together with thumbtacks and string, etc.

He just knows that the Rotfang Conspiracy is behind it all....

 

The merit I see in this lays in an novel way to time travel.

You could avoid the broken Time Turner cliche by having the Ministry issue a recall for faulty Time Turners, and just before Hermione receives the notice, Harry stumbles upon it.

 

Yeah, thats a good idea, the "oh noe, i droped it, it exploaded" cliche is definitely getting old..

You'd think that if it was that dangerous to drop a time-turner, then they would make them a bit stronger....

 

It is a good idea. But, what would the limits to the room of requirement be?

Would the room be able to give you all of the Hogwarts curriculum?
We established that it can't give dark art books, but what about the light arts, ritual magic, grey magic or advanced transfiguration, defence, potions etc.?
Would the room give animagus books?

 

NO. NO. NO. NO.

 

*snickers* Read a few to many post-OotP indie fics have we?

Its definitely an interesting idea. However, whoever took it up would have to be a good character writer to be able to pull it off well.

 

You bet your ass (or Lily's, if Vash reads this) it would.

 

I would seriously laugh my ass off if he finds a special edition with his mother in it .

Aekiel

 

If Harry had been traumatically isolated in one room for several years, he wouldn't be dreamy, like Luna - he'd be FAR more likely to be a howling claustrophobe, with a major tendency to social anxiety.
As an upside, he could have developed a Really Interesting hobby: enchanting objects, wandless/wordless casting, music, a Talent that needs a lot of concentrated study. Actually, I think he would be able to use the time to become an animagus. A non-human mindset might be a reasonable defense against cabin fever. He could become a creature that is highly non-social.

 

Like a slug. On the claustrophobia note, I find it much more likely that he would be afraid of open spaces, and crowds, rather than enclosed ones. Humans are adaptable creatures, and if you live in a situation for a long enough time you become accustomed to it, maybe even come to prefer it.

Still, I demand more Harry/Lily's Playwizard shoot! I can definitely see an End of Evangelion Shinji-style moment just after he fapped to his mum ('I'm so fucked up' Lulz ).

 

You could use this fic as an illustration of why one doesn't attempt the animagus transformation alone. Simply have Harry fuck up when he tries it, and unable reverse the issue until he gets out. For example, having a worthless arm because the bones are halfway transformed; if it's his right, he'd be forced to develop ambidexterity just to compensate. The possibilities for what interesting screw-ups could occur if he tried the mental part are simply too (is this grammatically correct?) numerous to contemplate.

 

This could be a decent idea. If being in the room messes Harry's mind up enough, it might (might) make an interesting launchpad for a Harry/Luna story where everyone thinks they're both mental but they make perfect sense to each other.

However...

No.

Harry taking up drinking and smoking in fanfic is very nearly always 100% lame. It's right up there with stopping by Diagon Alley to get five or six different magical tattoos and piercings while he listens to Sum 41 and Blink182 on his Hogwarts-proof iPod.

Not every person feels the inexplicable need to get hammered or try smoking when they're a teen. Peer pressure wouldn't exactly be an issue for Harry, considering he has bigger fish to fry. He's never done shit just to go along with the crowd. Trapping him in a room with no company amplifies this.

If he didn't feel like trying this stuff before, getting stuck in the RoR for a few years isn't going to change his mind. Craving real food after eating years of the same meal, okay, I can buy that. He's not going to come out of the room after his time is up and suddenly say, "Holy shit, I've never tried smoking but I'm jonesing for a fag! I can only assume I'll want a few cold ones with my cigs, maybe I'll get shit-faced tonight."

Nor is he going to exit the room and think, "Well, these things are something of a rite of passage for blokes my age so, since I'm out of that damned room, I'm quite past due for trying them. Yes, I must be craving a cigarette and some beer as well. I'd best go find someplace that sells them. Maybe I can try apparating somewhere for them..."

Lame, lame, lame. There's just no call for it.

Considering his canon sex life, I doubt a few years abstaining in the RoR is going to turn him into a man-whore either. He might crave company, human contact, once he gets out but, then again, after years of being completely and utterly alone, close human contact and large crowds might disturb him. He could turn into an agoraphobic and refuse to leave the castle or enter the Great Hall.

If he was going to become claustrophobic, he'd have done it from being locked in a cramped cupboard for 9+ years, not from being locked in a room that can enlarge to fit whole classes of teenagers standing far enough apart to practicing combat spells in separate groups.

Anyway, yeah, smoking!Harry and drinking!Harry are the lose.

 

Remember that his general mood would not really be an upbeat one, or anything that would make him motivated to truly learn.

There is a vast difference between learning because there is absolutely nothing else to do, and learning due to an insatiable drive. The most Harry will gain is greater knowledge, especially on the theory side, and become sort of like a Hermione-clone (perhaps a sub-par one, since he did not gain this knowledge because he wants to). Also, as someone else said, not everything can be gained from books.

As for the animagus thing, FUCK NO! Same reason as above. Sirius and James managed to become animagi because of their desire to be with their friend in his times of need. Peter managed it because he had had the formers' help. Harry has neither the desire (He is still the same unmotivated little shit despite being in more than a couple of life-threatening situations) nor the help.

Non-verbal casting? Perhaps, though with questionable proficiency, or maybe he only gets his first success towards the end of his stay in the Room.

Wandless magic? NO, BINT, NO!

As for music, Harry has never shown an ounce of interest in it, and the possibility of Greenday!Sum41!Blink182!FAIL!Harry is just too terrifying, so no.