Soul-bonds are canon.

 

For Latin, I use the following sites:

William Whittaker's Words <=-- This gives you a translation of the word you want, as well as synonyms so that you can guage correctly which word you need. Though not from Latin, an example that still stands out in my mind is someone in a discussion about Japanese grammar kept talking about 判決 (hanketsu) "sentences" (as in what a judge hands down after your convicted of a crime) and I PMed them to let them know that they needed to use the Japanese word 文章 (bunshou) "sentences" (as in, strings of words that form a complete thought). William Whittaker's Words would help you avoid such things. Its entries also give you the part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc . . .), and for nouns, it gives the gender and declension pattern number (first declension, second, ect . . .). For verbs, it gives the conjugation pattern number, as well. I especially like that it gives normal forms and the older forms (trafero vs. transfero).

Next, I use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension for nouns, adjectives, and adverbs; or, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_conjugation for verbs.

However, I find Verbix more useful for the verbs.

Related, but just a peeve of mine is that Rowling used the first-person indicative for most of her incantations, even in places where it makes no sense to do so. Frankly, I'm of the personal opinion that all incantaions taken from Latin (or any other languge, really), sould all be in either the imperative mood (Go! Change! Float! Reveal!), or passive imperative mood (Be revealed! Be flattened! Be banished!). Example: accio, IMO, should be passive imperative: accire "be summoned!".

Of course, while I'm not peeved by it, I would certainly be impressed if someone knew that the object your summoning, if you use accio or accire, ought to go before the incantation, since the objects of transitive verbs in Latin precede their verbs rather than follow them; and, the subjects of intransitive sentences (and transitive sentences as well) come before the verb: Subject-Object-Verb or Subject-Verb.

 

Essentially, the Time Turner isn't so much a "time" machine as it is a "be in two places at the same time" machine.

However, in theory, as long as you don't know for sure what happened in the past, you can change it.

If Harry watched Sirius fall through the Veil, he could go back in time, stun Sirius outside the room, replace him with a Polyjuiced and confunded death eater, then let the death eater fall through the veil. As long as past Harry thinks he's seeing Sirius fall through the Veil, it works out.

It's based on personal perception. You can fiddle with the particulars as long as everyone thinks they're seeing what they're seeing. This way, you don't mess with Causality.

If Harry never sees any evidence that conclusively proves that it was the real Sirius who went through the Veil, before he went back in time. It also gets fucked up if, say, Hermione saw that it was the real Sirius and told Harry so, before he tried to go back. It's very much a "if I didn't see it, then it didn't happen" sort of thing.

In other words, if future!Harry goes back in time and saves Sirius in such a way that past!Harry sees he has been saved, then past!Harry has no reason to go back in time and save Sirius. However, as long as past!Harry believes he is seeing Sirius die, he will always have a reason to go back and save him. And, again, you limit yourself with your own perception; Harry can't change what he saw, because he KNOWS it happened that way. However, as long as it looks like it happened the same as before, and he doesn't know any different, he can fudge the details.


Basically, you can change the past as long as A: The Causality chain is preserved, and B: You don't know any better.

 

Warlocke: I agree that that's a possible explanation if the time-line isn't predetermined.

 

Even if it is predetermined, you just have to convince yourself that what you saw (to continue with my example) was a Polyjuiced death eater that looked like Sirius fall through the Veil, not the actual Sirius.

If such a thing is possible, and you can make it happen in such a way that it looks the same, then how do you know that's not what happened the first time?

Just like with Buckbeak: Did Buckbeak die the first time, or was it always just an angry man swinging an axe at a pumpkin? Harry and Hermione managed to save him in such a way that what their past selves saw was no different. So, which was it: Did they change the past while preserving the perception of what happened, or merely preserve what happened all along? From their point of view, it could be either.

 

Well, it might have happened the first time, but in that case you aren't actually changing what happened.

Then again, it's possible that changing time is possible and whenever you do, the entire time-stream rewrites itself to adjust, thus making it seem that you've already done what you did in order to travel back.. yeah.

 

Alright, this started out as a canon peeve but it happens a lot in fanfiction so I figure I'll put it here; deaths occurring and not being investigated.

By this I mean Quirrell's death and even Cedric's death. Though, I realise that the Ministry quieted up Cedric's death you'd think that someone would at least want to talk with Harry about Quirrell. Then there's the Chamber of Secrets and the encounter with Sirius at the end of his third year. You'd think that these things would prompt a visit from someone in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

 

EDIT: My bad—responded to an old post without realizing where I was on the thread, because I'm an idiot.

But while I'm at it, those very visits from Magical Law Enforcement are actually sometimes a pet peeve of mine. I mean, I fully realize that Quirrell's death should prompt an investigation, but too much of that—when it's not really in canon at all—leaves me feeling like I'm reading a police procedural with wands in it.

There's something in the canon tone that owes a lot to, say, Agatha Christie—if you prod too much with procedure and regulation at the convoluted scheming and the unnecessarily difficult mystery, there's nothing left.

 

I think my biggest pet peeves are author notes. You know, the kind where they just prattle on incessantly about shit nobody really cares about. Or where they talk about the deep, "philosophical" meaning to their Hagrid/Vernon smut. Or where they tell you about how you need to read their story to shitty music like Paramore or Evenessence. Or where they tell you exactly how the story will go. Or where they conduct polls on the pairings.

Sometimes, I really wish I could light people on fire through the internet.

 

Don't type that on ffn: you'd have all the slash-lovers screaming Vader-style - one of their favourite cliches is Malfoy becoming Harry's butt-buddy, a few years down the line after the accepts his friendship on the Hogwarts Express.

 

This is exactly what I was saying, and is one of two reasons (the other being the WTF?? of Scabbers being Peter) that PoA is probably my favorite of the HP books.

Not the whole timeline, but that particular segment of time does all happen simultaneously. A GREAT example of this (and the difficulty of writing it) is showcased in VotN's Concentric Wavelengths.

No. Sorry, but no. Nothing is pre-determined, and the prophecy (shitty deus ex machina that it is) was never pre-determining anything; it merely set the stage or, if you prefer, was the catalyst and a hint of things that *might* come about.

Shit. I never thought of the curse as "confronted with your worst fears" - that's awesome and beautiful. Cheers.

What he said; the best things are the unexplained and therefore still wondrous things in canon, such as the DADA curse, the Taboo, the little things like Harry's prescience and of course, the huge and convoluted twisting of whole and mangled souls that connects Harry and Voldemort.

It's that kind of thing that I enjoy far more than the shitty "duels" I've read in far too many fics where, say, super!Harry and manipulative!Dumbledore face off by doing nothing more than yelling stupid faux-Latin made-up spells and waiting for the other guy to fire back. It's as if the author's done nothing more than watch a few Westerns before deciding that's how people ought to fight even when they have MAGIC.

EXACTLY.

And then you go and put too fine a point on it with a Rube Goldberg-esque example...

And then repeat!

You fucker!!

 

Wut?

I had a bunch to say about Time-Turners, but this kind of jarred me a little

 

Harry and Voldemort share a deep and special bond.

 

Fics where Harry is raised differently (use your imagination) but still retains his canon personality and canon friends.

Similar to the above, where fics that feature a differently sorted Harry who still becomes friends with Ron and Hermione (often using the same plot device as the book).

Why are authors so scared to change things around and do a little creative world building? I cannot fucking stand it when a fics chapters mirror canon's exactly except for minor little changes.

When I read fanfiction, I like to read stuff that's different and original, with a new take on Rowling's world. I know such fics are like a needle in the haystack on ff.net, so I usually end up clicking out of 9/10 fics that I start. Aside from DLP, the state of HP fanfiction is terrible.

Look at the first page of ff.net and I guarantee you half the fics are "let's read the HP books" shit or "Harry has a twin brother who is the BWL and got sent to the Dursley's/Orphanage/etc. and comes back and pwns everyone!" Twin who lived fics are fucking horrible; I can only think of 2 or 3 decent one's of the top of my head. The Santi's being the best of course.

 

Knight you traitor!

 

Oh,

Statement retracted

*heavily*

 

Harry/Voldebabe OTP4EVA :awesome

 

Voldebabe and Voldemort are separate entities!

 

Truth, right here.

It's too much hard work for people to think up anything different.

A change, an example here being Harry's House, would cause him to have different friends, forcing authors to give these characters their own personalities (and not a straight 'lift' from Ron/Hermione), as well as giving him different relationships with characters that had links to him/his Family before the Sorting , such as Tonks, Sirius, Minerva, etc.

Too much work for the basic ffn writer; especially ones who get off on angst-wank, or who want to focus on esoteric ideas so out there, they don't really fit in with the genre of the fic'/universe.

 

Slytherin Harry being friends with Hermione is pretty unlikely imo.