Title: Building Bridges
Author: Melethril
Rating: T
Genre: General
DLP Category: The Alternates (possibly)
Pairing: No pairing yet
Status: WIP
Summary: Everybody knows his name: the Boy Who Lived. However, five hundred years ago, everybody knew the earth was flat, too.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6427995/1/Building_Bridges

For people who wanted Good!Harry in Fanfic Discussion thread. He is practically a saint here. He actually reminds me a bit of Luke Skywalker. He helps fellow children in orphanages with magic but he does not rely on it when he could use mundane methods. He believes in nonviolence and he tries to peacefully resolve any conflicts. He is friendly with non-human creatures (Goblins). He doubts himself and does not believe that he is powerful etc.

Solid writing, good update rate, AU, WBWL, DD is one of author´s favourite characters so probably BenevolentGrandfather!Dumbledore, high probability of Redeemed!Snape (when looking at author´s other fics), many OC in first chapters, Healer!Harry.

 

Hmm. Looking at your description, wouldn't this fit better in "Almost recommended"?

I'll check it out though.

 

There are a number of issues with this story. The first is the main deviation point of this AU. It's yet another Harry is the BWL, but the public believes it's someone else. This is a plot idea that has been tried a million times and almost always fails. It's a huge warning sign. On the other hand the author has avoided the usual abused/neglected b his parents/relatives Harry, which is a nice touch. We'll see how this goes.


However the supposed BWL is ridiculous. The author, not content with the other canon option of Neville, feels the need to invent a twin name Lacius and make him the BWL? Why? There is no need for this.


The story goes onto immediately surround Harry with a boatload of OC's and then give them ridiculous nicknames. Just no. Even if the OC's are peripheral, the whole cute nickname meme is incredibly irritating.


Throughout the story there are issues with awkward phrasing and spelling. It's not that frequent but appear enough to be an annoyance.


It appears like it's going to indulge in forever frustrating Harry the Goblin friend nonsense. A random goblin befriends Harry for no apparent reason. Harry is "practically goblin-kin" because he behaves in a respectful manner. The Goblin chief takes a personal interest in him and goes shopping with him. I mean really? Come on.


Harry is depicted as a fairly uneducated kid without much practice with writing, yet his letter to Hogwarts shows excellent grammar, good spelling, a large vocabulary, and a style that is frankly unrealistic.


Two other little things also irritated me. are that Harry's accidental magic is apparently strong enough to save him from a gas explosion. That stretches credulity. Also Harry chants nonsense rhymes that apparently focus his healing magic. I have no problems with him being able to focus his magic, it's just the idea that he needs retarded poetry to help him bugs me.

Also the story has taken 8 chapters to cover about 3 days and get through the Diagon Alley shopping trip. Way too slow.


On the upside, I thought Dumbledore's characterization was done extremely well so far. I loved the scene in Ollivanders and the short discussion of wandlore. The story is written fairly well and the updates are of decent length.


Not library worthy but it think it fits in the Recycle Bin. 2.75/5

 

I'm liking it so far , the story is a much needed break from all the darker themes out there.
But , the fuzziness of this story can be pretty annoying at times.
3/5

 

Uh... when people asked for good!Harry I don't think they were asking for complete-emo-pussy!Harry. I certainly wasn't.

Being good doesn't require you to suddenly become a massive pacifist and roll over and take it like a bitch. It is possible to be both a good guy and strong.

I really hate this characterisation of Harry.

The orphanage is also ridiculous. This is 1980s Britain, not Victorian era. Far too many OCs as well. It was like just being handed a character sheet rather than being part of a story.

 

Isn´t that definition of Dumbledore´s "Light Side" in canon ?

IMO, there is no possible way how Harry could be "good" (in canon universe) and very different from his portrayal here at the same time because canon has its own strict rules of "morality" and if Harry tried to do something not in accordance with DD and Wizarding World´s opinion then he would be "Dark Wizard".

 

In fanon perhaps. Canon on the other hand is a different ballgame. No one in their right mind would call Alastor Moody a bitch. Also we see exactly one pitched battle in canon. And guess what? The 'light side' kills people. In the beginning of DH, Lupin tells Harry to stun people, even when it would result in them falling to their death. Hardly pussy emo bitch behavior.

The only other real fight in canon, the Department of Mysteries, is in no way a representative battle. It was primarily a rescue mission and the Order isn't gonna sling around deadly magic with children in there.

Not throwing around AK's and putting people in prison rather than executing them hardly makes one a bitch.

 

Alastor Moody ? Wasn´t he defeated by Wormtail and Barty Crouch Jr. (hardly a superior duellist after Azkaban and continuous mind control) ? Wasn´t he the one who sent most people into Azkaban because he did not like to use Unforgivables (possibly influenced by DD) ? Wasn´t he the one who went with that ridiculous plan in DH that ended with his death ? Wasn´t he the one who was injured in DoM (like entire Order) despite his "not a bitch" status ?

So how many people did Lupin stun in that battle ? Do we know if DE had casualties (when entire Order was casting Stupefy, surely there were some) ?

 

A.) You do realize its possible to get taken by surprise right? And anyway, Wormtail is not the brainless incompetent people make him out to be. He at least has the ability to become an Animagus, which canon makes out to be fairly rare. He also helps create a pretty damn complex map. And he manages to fool Sirius (who duels Bella pretty well till he gets cocky) and blow up a street and 13 people with one curse. Not to mention he fools his best friends, the whole Order and Albus fucking Dumbledore as a spy. So yeah the Pettigrew as one step up from a squib meme is tired and played out.

B.) They're called the Unforgivables for a reason. Presumably because they fuck with your mind and soul more than the other curses that exist. Pretty good reason not to use them. And again, sending people to prison rather than killing does not a pussy make.

C.) Regardless of why the plan was used or not, he was killed by Voldemort in DH. Next argument please.

D.) As for the DoM like I said before, they're fighting Inner Circle Death Eaters like Bellatrix (read: Badasses) while trying to protect and shield some kids. No shit they got hurt. (Also its really irrelevant but I don't remember Moody getting hurt. Could easily be wrong, its been a while since I read OOTP.)

E.) We have no idea whether there we DE casualties or not because the story isn't told from their point of view. The point is that clearly the 'Light Side' doesn't have a moral objection to actions that might result DE death. That's entirely a fanon theme.

 

1.) They are fighting DE who spent 14 years in Azkaban (not all of them but most) and are already weary after running battle with children. And until DD came, Order was losing spectacularly. Moody was injured by silenced Dolohov I think.

2.) Unforgivables are Unforgivables because of their legal standing, not because of some mysterious soulrotting effect of them.

3.) I always thought that Peter hit a gas line with curse. Entire reason why Peter survived as a spy in order is because of 1) DD´s manipulations or 2) everyone´s stupidity (they suspected one of Marauders but they could not be bothered to look at their arms or give them truth serum or use Legilimency etc.), not because of Peter´s ingenuity.

Animagi are really rare according to Ministry but suddenly there are 3 of them in the same year ? It is possible that everyone who has even the slightest aptitude could become one (with enormous help from more talented of course).

If Order really doesn't have a moral objection to actions that might result in DE death, then why only confirmed kill of them is Bellatrix after 3 years of war ?

 

Possibly its the only confirmed death because oh I don't know the series follows the exploits of a bunch of schoolkids and not battles between adults?

And what manipulations are you talking about? Or do you subscribe to the school of thought where Dumbledore is the evil puppet-chessmaster cackling about TEH GREATER GOODZ?

 

You just described some of the most overused crappy indie!Harry fics plots.

2- You sure? Where does it say <i> why </i> they are unforgivable. All I remember is Fake-Moody telling a bunch of kids that using them bought you a one way ticket to Azkaban.

3- You seem to be in a hurry to ship people off to prison for using any unforgivable, but seems okay with breaching into their minds or removing their ability to keep things to themselves? Seems a bit idiotic to me. Besides, <i> DD</i> is not the evil oracle that could see the future and decide to fuck everyone up and let them die, just to kill Voldemort. Only one we can really see him manipulating is Harry, who was just as willing. And I'm talking about post half blood prince here, since we have no proof that he "risked Harry's life with dozen challeges to make him ready to kill himself to defeat Riddle.

4-Ever heard of Hopkins voluteering to teach 14years old quantum physichs? Only to see if they had any skillz in it? Yea, no one will waste their time searching for someone who they can teach the mysteries of life. You either man the fuck up and show them you got it, which usualy won't get you more than a "gratz, now stop wasting my time", or man the fuck up and go study yourself.

5- 3 years of war? what? since when? Voldemort overtrew the ministry without too much effort, and before then, all the order did was gather info. Sirius says so in book 5. Where the hell did you find any war going on?

The closer we got to it was book 7, and it was more of a resistence of people interested in not getting killed than a battlefield of bloodthristy soldier.

Tl;dr: Read as many fanfiction as you wish, God know I do, but don't forget it's a freaking children's book. JK was not about to start killing half the word just to feed DLP appetite.

 

I was going to try and argue against your points, but if you truly believe this, there is no point in me trying to dissuade you from your fantasies. Dumbledore manipulated every Order member (with people like Mad-Eye Moody) to not believe that a Death Eater, who was spying on them, was on their side, for reasons unknown, makes less than no sense. The only thing worse is saying that everyone in the Order is stupider than a recent Hogwarts graduate.

Peter hit a gas line. THat may not seem impressive, but he was obviously inconspiciously aiming his wand at an underground pipe that he may or may not have even known to be there, and he had to silently cast the spell so that it looked like Sirius did it. And then, he somehow survived the explosion that killed 13 people, and in the chaos it caused, he sliced off one of his own fingers and escaped before anyone could see him. That's better than almost any scene in an action movie I've seen in a long time; and if you say that that's cowardly and stupid, I don't know what to tell you.

Back to your first problem:

Where, exactly, are the 'strict rules of morality' stated in canon? Or even inferred? The closest I can think of are either Ministry laws, when it's obvious that the corruption overrode the damn place, and Dumbledore's own standards, to which he does not hold others to.

The Wizarding World has been shown to be fickle, through how the most widely available newspaper can change opinion of Harry at large on the reporter's whims. Their opinion cannot be used as a meterstick, because it can be stupidly easy to, canon-compliantly, change anything from right to wrong and vise-versa.

Dumbledore believes in redemption. Maybe you've read too many Azkaban!Harry fics, but he doesn't easily throw other's second chances away because of one bad thing. Harry could probably get a tattoo of a shanked hooker on his chest, and I bet Dumbledore would do more than raise his eyebrows and ask him about it, amusedly.

Lastly, Unforgivables are unusable by the Order because they're illegal. It's like fighting anarchists with RPGs and rifles; if you break your own laws, you aren't setting a good example for how a government/military should be run.

 

Hoshiakari: ignoring all of the various rebuttals that can (and have) been offered againt your arguements, you still face the problem that, even if your arguments are correct, they do not prove what you want them to. All your arguments attempt to perusade us of the Order's ineffectiveness, which has nothing to do with their attitude (towards killing, etc.).

Your arguments are also wonderfully contradictory. You manage to rebuke the Order for not being vicious enough in the same breath as complaining about the ruthless tactics Dumbledore enacted in order to win.

More specifically:

The "gas line" explanation of Wormtail's curse is explicitely said to be the lie the Ministry distributed to the Muggles.

Unforgiveables don't need to have some kind of element of magical corruption in order to be unforgivable. The acts of enslavement, torture and murder are already immoral enough to carry these tags without any kind of physical/mental effects on the caster. I do have to wonder at your mental state if you think it's okay to rob a person of their will, so long as it doesn't affect you, the thief.

On Animagi: there is a very simple explanation for why it is both hard (and therefore rare) and yet 3 in one year: the amount of utility the skill gives is tiny in proportion to the amount of work needed to acquire it. Unless you have a very specific reason to need the specific benefits of being an animagi (such as needing to look after a werewolf, or spy on people) there's no reason to bother. It's no miracle that three people became animagi in one year once you remember that they all did it for the same reason.

The whole redemption!Dumbledore angle: were you not paying attention to DH? Do you not remember the part where we learnt that Dumbledore was a hard as nails bad-ass motherfucker, who detested and callously used Snape, never trusted Quirrell, and in general never cared about redemption at all? All he cared about was his own plans. (And I say that as a good thing. He's a leader in a time of war. Leaders can't get attached to their soldiers. They must use all and any means to achieve victory).

 

This. There comes a point when you just have to leave people to their beliefs. Luckily for Hoshiakari there are literally thousands of Indy Harry fics that cater to this belief system.

 

Although I slept through all of this and it's rather late to say it, I'd still like to raise a point about the Unforgivables.

During the Department of Mysteries, Bellatrix taunted Harry after he failed to use the Cruciatus on her. I believe the quote is thus:

""You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain ... to enjoy it ... righteous anger won't hurt me for long ..."

This always implied, to me at least, that using the other Unforgivables required similar emotions. To use the Killing Curse properly, you wanted, needed the opponent dead, to stand over their body and show that you're superior. As for the Imperius, you wanted to enslave the victim and take pleasure in what you would make them do.

Take these three together and you're not a healthy human being. The most common users of Unforgivables are also the most damaged - Voldemort and Bellatrix. I'd think that's as conclusive as canon gets on a lot of matters. In this case, using Unforgivables damages you.

 

@Taure:

it's been a while since I've read DH, wherabouts did it reveal that He-Of-Many-Names detested Snape and used him without any regard for him at all?

 

Well I'm not Taure but I think I can explain for you the reason he says that. It never outright says that he detested Snape and used him without any regard but its clearly shown through the memories Snape gives Harry.

When Snape comes crawling to Dumbledore after leaking the prophecy, he calls him (paraphrasing) a pathetic, utterly selfish coward. Sure implies contempt.

As for using him without any regard, he forces Snape to swear an oath to protect Harry. He forces Snape to undergo torture and risk death so that he can have a spy in Voldemorts ranks. He forces Snape to kill him and be branded a murderer, regardless of any damage it could do to Snape. And then as the kicker, he tells Snape that he has to send Harry, the boy he was forced to swear an oath to protect, off to die in order to conquer Voldemort. He makes Snape destroy the last earthly remnant of the woman he loved.

I'd say that whole series of events makes it pretty clear he didn't give a damn about Snape.

 

Regardless of Snape-hating or not, Taure is completely right about Dumbledore being a balls to the wall badass.

I wish more fics focused on the side of him that defeated the magical Hitler and still had time to mark essays at Hogwarts instead of the 'I fucking love manipulating people and being a douchebag' that is such an easy excuse for Indy!Harry.

 

I'd agree that the most common users of the Unforgivables are the most damaged, however, I've always thought it was more of a correlative factor than a causative one. Voldemort and Bellatrix are unstable and hateful and so can summon the emotions necessary for the curses, easily and often.

I know that canon states explicitly that murder is abominable and soul destroying etc. but I don't think that its ever said that the AK is the only curse that splits the soul. I took it as any which way of intentional murder was heinous (read: soul splitting). Also, Harry uses the Imperius curse fairly often in the last book. He describes it as a sort of cool shivering up his arm, but he doesn't describe any overwhelming desire to control being needed therefore I'm not entirely sure all the curses require the same level of determination.

OT: I found the story average at best. I agree with Taure that being good doesn't necessarily mean being a door mat, also the number of OCs is pretty jarring. Too many too fast. 3/5