Obliviation?

I am curious about the Karkaroff/Harry relationship, or dynamic if relationship seems a bit ginger beer. On one hand he bans magic in the halls to protect Harry and on the other sends him to quite a vicious detention. Slightly paradoxical. Also if the story is fairly cannonical what will he be doing when Voldemort returns. It would be a bit too clichéd to send both Harry and Nathan to the graveyard so I wonder what Karkaroffs role in that would be.

Judging by Harry's education progression he will be nearly NEWT level by the end of fourth year, if cannoncial, Voldemort doesn't do too much until the Ministry, will Harry and Karkaroff just hide out at Durmstrung for a while? Carve out a little empire until the Potter Family et al come running?

It could also be a bit Jon Snow (Game of Thrones) wanting to run and help his family.

 

Or he could just flee like a bitch as he did in the books.

Great to see an update Santi. Something was offsetting in a bad way about the detention scene. It just doesn't mesh with the story so far. Cant figure out what it was but not your best work. That said - I like how you are using it as a building block. The rest of the update was better then the first scene.

 

No Karkaroff doesn't really like Harry, it's stated Dumbledore is threatening him so he wants to try to get Harry to leave the school of his own accord.

 

What? He may not like him, but he would never make him leave the school. Not now when Harry is basically Durmstrang's Golden Boy and the finest example of its educational superiority to Hogwarts. I predict Karkaroff will do anything to rub this fact in Albus' face when they will meet at the Triwizard Tournament.

 

I had assumed that Harry seeing himself in detention was the latest painful memory in the chain he'd been watching. I suppose that him using Ivan's happiness as a link to his mind makes sense though.

Legilimency seems to be evolving past what I thought of it though. I thought that passive Legilimency was the wandless sort that scanned base emotions and needed eye contact while the active kind created the connection through the spell and thus didn't require eye contact. It seems that you can dig pretty deeply into someone's mind without the spell though.

 

There's one phrase that I feels that perfectly describes where Harry's mental state is right now...

It's not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you.

While some of his paranoia is justified (considering that the Potters are still, technically, in hiding to this day), there has been little signs that his paranoia has been taken to the extreme; such as the his reaction to learning that Calypso was digging into the Potters past, him getting into a fight with Nathan about him not wanting to learn to protect himself, drawing his wand on Dobby upon learning that the house-elf 'popped' into the Potter household without anyone telling him the secret, his perseverance in learning Occlumency, and so on. Each instance is justifiable by the situation(s) Harry finds himself in...but they are also are showing that he has a paranoid streak in him (again, somewhat justifiable). However, with the violation that happened to him in detention pushed him over the edge.

While he's not drifting into "CONSTANT VIGILANCE" territory; his paranoia coupled with his revenge fantasies against Hogwarts (which by themselves are harmless) plus the upcoming revelations and confrontations with his family we know that Harry is heading full-steam towards, I can see him slipping into a different mental state...

Do unto others BEFORE they can do unto you.

And with Harry's skills, intelligence, and desire to protect himself (and Calypso; because we know she's going to be targeted by his families anger and distrust, which will only drive Harry closer to her) things are going to go downhill pretty fast.

On a different note, there was only one thing that I saw wrong with the detention scene; the fact that Harry was still clothed. I think it would be more potent if, after Ivan immobilized him he cast a spell to strip Harry of his shirt and robes. Not only would the act itself serve to enforce Harry's helplessness to both him and the reader, it would also hurt more and help to push Harry off balance even further.

 

^This, I think, is spot on.

He got himself a nasty surprise with the legilimence attack and when trying to prevent it he got crushed ruthlessly and effortlessly. He was clearly shown that while he has learned the skill occlumency he has it is far from mastered.

That he now practice it almost constantly in any given situation explains why he now comes off as a somewhat colder, distant and changed person.

It proves credence to the theory, that while this isn't the turning point for Harry, the situation clearly scars him emotionally. He now sees emotions as more of a weakness than he did before.

No, just no. As great as this would be.
It was clearly written that the first and last thing Harry saw from the caretaker's mind was images of himself. And if he indeed saw something else, but was obliviated, he obviously wouldn't remember it.

 

^^I wouldn't consider any of that list extreme with the exception of learning mind magic.

 

And on another different note, I'm looking forward to the Quidditch World Cup for the simple fact that Harry is probably going to bump into the Death Eaters playing Toss-A-Muggle. I look forward to him applying "Do unto others before they can do unto you" to the plate faces. This would be quite the rude awakening to his family I think...

 

I dunno I think people are overplaying how big of an attitude change Harry has actually had. I mean what really is different. He got uber serious about improving his occlumency. That is pretty much obvious why. The only way he can actually do that is by utilizing it on every emotion, good and bad, constantly.

And secondly, he has a bit more aggresion during his duels. The dueling scene has more impact but I honestly think that is because we haven't actually seen that much of Harry duelling recently. Would he have used a bone splintering curse before, I imagine yes. The change is actually rather subtle, I just think rosier could have been a little clearer on it. From his description Harry used to treat dueling as an excercise in defeating another person's magic.

-They send a curse, I can defeat that by shielding it. I could stare it down and deflect it, or I could time myself and dodge it.
-There is an opening, I can use a curse, or maybe a charm, or maybe even some transfiguration.

Dueling was more a display of magic and an academic pursuit. It's only a slight shift from thinking defeat the magic, to thinking defeat the person. We've seen him developing and using pretty heavy duty spell chains before, only now he is being more serious about making sure they connect.

 

Thats exactly the point. On their own, each of those things is not a problem, no one would raise and eyebrow at them. But all put together, it does show a general trend of paranoia. A tendency to react in the paranoid fashion where other options are still available.

Personally I really like the twist in Harry's character. Excellently introduced, and just perfectly timed. His character was starting to feel just a wee bit stagnant, but this change has freshened the entire fic up. Good work!

 

I think the change in dueling ties together with how he acted during that spell creation class. He's more paranoid now. The best way to make sure you don't get cursed in a duel is to end it before they attack.

I doubt Harry will be allowed to fight DEs at the TriWizard cup. He'll be told to run with the other kids.


I just think that they were reasonable reactions that most people would make. The mind magic exception was learned for the sake of his friendship not to protect his mind.

 

One of future events that we should keep in mind is Viktor's next match. As the match takes place in June, Viktor has invited Kira, Harry and Calypso.

In this perspective, and seeing that their parents are still little aware of the life of her son in Durmstrang, the match would be the best chance of Lily and James (primarily James, because he is a fan of Quidditch) that they know your child's friends. Given that the Potters are a very wealthy family, would not be difficult to get a ticket for that game, being with your child and meet his best friends. And so, he might learn that Calypso is a family member Rosier.

However, I don't think Harry's wish is important to scrub his position to his former colleagues of Ravenclaw house. Normally, anyone who had been rejected by a group to which he belonged and that person has subsequently succeeded professionally, is reunited with the group, the first thing you do is rub their success to the members of that group that had previously rejected.

 

Not really

The Potters are living better than most families but they don't have that kind of wealth that Malfoy's and Black's were throwing around.

 

Not to break away from the usual random conjecturing in this thread, but I'm confused about something.

What's the deal with canon divergence regarding the Quidditch World Cup? From what I understood in this story, the world cup finals play out throughout the year, for some reason, and less importantly the opponents aren't the same (not that this matters). Just slightly curious - it's clearly implied in canon that the World Cup takes place during the summer, rather like the football (soccer) World Cup... is this just different for the purpose of Viktor's characterisation, to allow him to become more famous?

 

The Santi has changed some things about the Quidditch World Cup, but among them wouldn't find the dates of the matches in the rounds of eighth final, quarterfinals and semifinals. I think that is because we must keep in mind that Quidditch matches haven't a fixed duration. According to JKR's books, there have been games that have lasted a few minutes, and others that have lasted weeks. So I guess the Quidditch World Cup should be more like the Davis Cup than the FIFA World Cup.

Therefore I am very reasonable that the semifinals will be held in June at a neutral venue, such as Paris (Bulgaria would face the winner of the Sweden-Japan).

 

If I read it correctly, then Harry's new emotional state isn't so much the lack of painful older memories but the perceived weakness that he showed in being unable to protect himself from being made a victim. Add to that Ivan inserting his own view/memory of harry being weak and broken and tying that to memories harry's own memories of the abuse and pain in his life and I think I understand Harry's new focus on getting stronger.

My only hope based on this chapter is that while Harry goes dark he does not cast Calipso away.

Keep up the good work!

 

Spell her name right :facepalm.

 

Among them would find that these place taking Harry at Dursley in summer.

 

I'm surprised no one else has commented on this (as far as I can see), but I think Karkaroff ordering Harry to receive lashes is out of character for him. After all, remember, he is afraid of Dumbledore, and there's so many ways Dumbledore can find out. Their agreement was to keep Harry SAFE, which also means not being subjected to Durmstrang's punishments. So why is Karkaroff suddenly doing so? There are lots of other ways he can make Harry regret what he did without going back on his word to Dumbledore, whom he is AFRAID of. If you just wanted to get Harry tortured, there were lots of other ways to do it that seem more realistic. But then, this is just my opinion.

Here's something I've been wanting to ask since the beginning of this fic. Since you, Santi, are an avid Ron-hater (like me! ~), I must ask: can you give us any hints, any at all, if Ron is going to die, preferably in a gruesome, horrible death befitting of the red-haired idiot?

Ok, that is everything. I eagerly await the next chapter. Update soon, Santi, man!

May the Force be with you all.