This.

Also, Harry's generation was saddled with less-than-competent teachers, particularly in Defense and Potions. I'd also think Prof. Kettleburn may have been a superior Creatures instructor, Trelwaney's predecessor may have had some game and who knows- Albus may have actually spent time teaching during that era.

Of all Dumbledore's mistakes, his worst was in assuming Harry's purity would be enough to win the day. Every one of those 'Fate steps in' stories fails to accommodate just how much overtime Fate was already doing for Harry.

 

How is that mistake when ultimately he was right?

Also I'm not sure about this talking that previous generation had "a brewing war to drive them towards success". I just don't get that vibe from James and co. when reading about their times at Hogwarts. Then again when reading about Harry's adventures from sixth year at Hogwarts, one could think that there are no DEs out there killing people every other week.

 

Fair point- Harry did survive the confrontation. Just the same, Albus made it seem like a strategy when it was really a faith-based gamble. Ownership of the Elder wand ended up with Harry on a fluke. Even with all Voldemort's Horcruxes broken, that became the one thing that brought him down.

As for the Marauders, they were less pressured by the war than challenged by their own arrogance. I'd also consider the idea that Snape's competence drove them to excel in rivalry. Maybe Harry would have been a better, smarter wizard if Draco wasn't such a dolt.

 

It's tough trying to compare the previous generation of wizards to Harry and his fellow students. For the most part we only hear about the best of those old wizards, and their most impressive accomplishments.

The only actual examples of their school-age prowess are the Marauders' Animagus transformations, and Snape's (Lily's?) potions ability. Well, Snape went on to become a potions master, so it's obvious that he's more of an exception. As it happens Harry doesn't know any people who love that subject. But it wouldn't be a huge stretch to conjecture that there could be someone he doesn't know attending Hogwarts with him who has roughly the same potential with the subject. The Animagus thing is impressive, of course, but we have no idea how hard it actually is. Harry and his friends never even made an attempt to learn that skill.

Finally, it does no good to compare the adult versions of those wizards to Harry, Hermione, and Ron after six years of education. Just because organized classes end after seven years doesn't mean that good wizards stop learning after seven years.

 

Although all the information we got from their time was heavily biased. Snape's memories are the only true source of information we got on their school days.

 

I'd add the map that apparently can't be fooled by any magical means to that list as well. I believed someone (Dumbledore?) mentioned that Snape knew more curses and hexes than most 7th years when he showed up to Hogwarts.

I never said they stopped learning, but I'd compare it to post doctoral studies if we went the way JKR meant for magical education to go. I don't think she explained it very well in the books, but that is what I gathered that she wanted a Hogwarts education to be from interviews she has done. The school aspect of magic supposedly ends after NEWT levels anything beyond that is research.

As for comparisons, Hermione is supposedly the smartest witch of her generation, and she hasn't exactly done anything of note. Didn't invent spells, modify potions, cast any spells that Harry and Ron couldn't cast, etc. Hell, the only thing she seems to have done was learn most spells a bit faster than most. Harry was supposed to be so good at Defense Against the Dark Arts that during his 5th year, 7th years were willing to learn from him. Yet, we see him use the same four or five spells over and over again.

It is mostly a failing of JKR's writing that caused this. She clearly wanted a 7 year Hogwarts education to be the end of all magical schooling, but she failed to bother putting the required amount of magical knowledge in the characters we see most often. Instead, she makes them seem like they know way less than what they should. Personally, I think it was because she was too uninspired to come up with decent spells.

 

The thing is that Harry does do better than most his age, if not better than most wizards in dueling.
The people that beat him in a fight are all very skilled, and most wizards that he faces he beats(The DoM fight, confrontations with Death Eaters when he, Hermione, and Ron flee from the wedding...).
There's a reason that George and Fred make a ton of money selling shield hats.

 

The map is another good example - I had the feeling that I forgot something when listing the accomplishments of those students, but I couldn't remember what it was.

The breadth of curses that Snape knew is not as impressive, IMO. That seems to be more of a...well, almost a hobby, really. He wasn't born knowing those curses; he had to look them up somewhere (or so I believe, because IMO he wasn't inventing curses before he got to Hogwarts). It almost sounds like something Hermione would have done, if she had an interest in cursing people, and access to the needed books or whatnot.

Agreed. To clarify, what I meant to say is that a decent wizard who does sophisticated magical work in his career or hobbies will naturally increase in skill as time goes by. This sort of thing wouldn't be apparent, because the story stops before we get to see the main characters as 20-something adults, but IMO it's a natural consequence of continuing to work with magic. I'm of the opinion that the Harry Potter of "19 Years Later," with his additional Auror experience, is much better at dueling than the 17-year-old one was.

True enough. But it's not just the older generations that crush Hermione in that area. Fred and George also show a lot more creativity with creating unique magical objects and potions (we have no evidence for spells, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they invented some interesting ones). Hermione simply isn't that creative. Her intelligence is along practical lines; if she were a Muggle she'd most likely be a doctor or lawyer, instead of a theoretical science researcher or artist.

 

It's not a question of magical competence or the willingness to use your power to kill your enemies. In my eyes, the dark sentiment you describe is a general aspect of modern day escapism. You can't have an attractive hero who is just a conformist goody two shoes- that's not only boring as hell, it doesn't allow for our subliminal antisocial urges to be satisfied. The attraction of anti- heroes or outright evil villains is evident in modern day literature and cinema, from Hannibal Lecter to Dexter and from Kane to Daenerys Targaryen.

Personally, I like !DarkHarry if he is done "right", meaning he is shown as a character driven by the cruelty of his world, reacting to the Dursleys, Dumbledores manipulations and the threat of Voldemort. It's no fun for me if !EvilHarry just goes on a killing spree without any background information as of why he is unhinged in that way. Plausibility is key to "good" anti- heroes.

 

I thought it was obvious?

Think of a stereotypical 'good-guy'/hero, and then a stereotypical 'bad-guy'/anti-hero.

Of a series that has the main character as a hero, of the two above which would be more entertaining to read in fanfiction?

"Do not worry, he can be redeemed."

Or.

"CRUCIO!" Bwuahah!" (Watches brains leak out from Voldemort's snake-like nose).

 

Harry's reasoning in all the old-style manipulative Dumbledore indy!Harry stories always amused me.

"Unlike, you, Dumbledore, I do what needs to be done!"

Which obviously is his criticism of Dumbledore - doing what had to be done (i.e. sacrificing Harry).

I also prefer a "good guy" Harry, You can find lots of them by going back in time to the early post-OotP fics.

Unfortunately they also tend to be rather fluffy and of an H/G bent.

 

Judging from all these posts about mercy, redemption, non-lethality and such, I think my definition of "good guy" Harry is "skilled, intelligent and practical Independent Harry with relatively pure motivations who knows that negotiation and violence have their appropriate place and is perfectly capable of putting scum down with little remorse if he has to."

 

See, I for one don't consider Judge Dredd to be a good guy in that sense of the word.
If your Harry uses more violence and acts worse than the police (should) do, then he is already in grey territory.

 

By that last part, I mostly meant that if he kills someone, he'll be secure in that decision and won't be angsting over it endlessly.

And could you clarify as to how the police factor into this at all? >_>

 

Isn't Judge Dread more of an anti-hero than a proper hero/villain, though?

 

It might be more accurate to call Judge Dredd an epic hero, in the sense that he's admired more for the feats he accomplishes than how he inspires hope and whatnot in the populace. Compare him to Rorschach, Captain America, Cuchulain, and King Arthur; you'll see what I mean.

However, I do think that a Light!Harry story would be interesting if it was well handled. The big problem is that canon-wise there is little to no evidence of specific 'light magic' like there is dark magic. To my knowledge the closest phenomena are Lily's sacrifice and the Patronus Charm. However, there simply isn't any evidence of magic that you have to be good, pure, chaste, humble, etc., etc., to use. Luckily for Harry, if there was, he would practically ideal to use it, since he's got the whole 'saving people thing' going on.

I might also take the tack that the Light is just as dehumanizing as the Dark, one requires that you be more than human, the other requires that you be less. Harry Potter fanfiction seems to always have a very cynical tone toward the world as a whole, and this concept would be right smack along side it. Now that I think about it, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a plot with morally gray territory and a Light!Harry, which I would definitely be interested in.

 

I agree with the notion that canon!harry is only a martyr/good guy because he's such a fucked-in-the-head, abused little orphan with zero self worth/self esteem.

For a truly good/light!harry, have him sent to an orphanage or the "mean streets of manchester", or whatever - and becoming a devout, church-going altar-boy or something.

Has anyone written a Jehova's Witness!Harry before?


It could be anything...
Mellow Stoner/Hippy!Harry, Zen/Buddhist!Harry, Frontal-lobotomy!Harry, Harikrishna!Harry... lol Harrykrishna! ...etc

But personally, within the canon and fanon i've read - I don't see how it's possible without falling into cliche or super!harry.

On a psychological note - the religious!harry theme is plausible, if in being Riddle's Equal - they are both afraid of dying or being killed by the other, and the difference between them is, how they deal with it.

 

... I just had an awesome (in my opinion) idea.

The story starts off with the typical (and usually terrible) Harry runs away/is abandoned/whatever, and ends up on 'the mean streets of manchester.'

The author takes time to show Harry, and the reader, how uncaring and cruel the world is. He sees truly damaged men and woman living on the streets and wasting their lives.

Then, instead of turning cynical and hating the world, like many of us would do, he does something about it.

Small things at first. Choosing not to steal, finding odd jobs or returning cans or something for cash to survive. Then it escalates, and soon he's actively helping other homeless youths. A few people simply use him and don't see his help for what it is, but it doesn't stop him from trying again.

Eventually he's protecting prostitutes from their violent pimps, his 'saving people thing' not letting him stand idly by (decent scenes for some accidental magic).

Harry survives long enough to receive his Hogwarts letter and he's off to school (his multiple experiences with accidental magic leave him open to the possibility of magic), but his need to fix the problems around him stays.


Whoa, the more I think about this idea, the more I like it. I may have to smooth out the rough edges of this idea and give a crack at writing it.

Edit:

Ah fuck, now I'm making Harry a combination of Dresden and Michael in my mind. Now I have to write this.

 

Yeah, I'm already making changes in my mind. The beginning is most likely going to be reworked, but the general idea would be that Harry actively starts to try to fix what he sees wrong with the world at a young age.

Still toying around with the idea, as I don't simply want it to be a canon redo with an extra stubborn and more caring Harry. May post it in the Plot Bunny thread when I'm more satisfied with it and get some feedback.

Or, knowing me, I may just drop it and go play Minecraft. :facepalm