I'll think I'll avoid the katanas easily, I'd rather not turn Harry into a Samurai.

And as I quite literally joined DLP last night, WbA?

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And why in Jesus' name didn't I fucking think of that?

To be honest Sesc I didn't expect to wind up defending James' being there in this thread heh.

 

WbA is the Work by Author section of the forums. It is where people post their stories to get them torn into tiny little shreds by the rest of DLP so that they know where they need to improve.

 

Sweetness.

 

I didn't mean to come across like I was saying the thread was pointless, so if I did I apologize, it sounded like he already had a good bit written, so the WbA would be a good place to go.

 

Can you imagine?
Karkaroff: Dammit Viktor! Pick those daisies!!


As for tasks, you could go with having the champions duel. That's a straightforward, yet lazy option. Um, the secret diary of Fleur Delacour had some ideas for when they actually choose their champion candidates. I think they had a task like making a certain potion that required ingrediants from this freaky bird's nest and a giant underground obstacle course filled with obstacles based on the four elements XD

 

I think I'd like to see a monthly writing competition themed around the triwizard tournament in the future. Would be nice to see what others come up with.

 

I had an idea for a story where Harry refuses to go to the Yule Ball which makes the Goblet give him the same penalties as refusing to participate. Realising this they decide to add more tasks to the tournament to have one every month. I have about 15,000 words written with most of the rest planned out but I know that I'm never going to get around to finishing it.

The extra tasks including the existing ones were officially retconned by the organisers to have a theme- Bravery, Endurance, Planning, Skill, Ingenuity/Knowledge, and Power. So I had:

• Bravery: The dragons.
• Endurance: Snape suggests a potions and endurance based task since he knows Harry is terrible at potions and is hugely undernourished- they have to climb a huge tower with several stages, each getting harder. The difficulty here is that they can't use their wands- they can only bring items they've brewed or made themselves during the week before. In my plot Harry fails horribly here for various reasons- he's just not physically capable, he doesn't know enough, and he drops his bag of potions.
• Planning: the Lake, slightly extended. They can call it Planning since they know all the champions already have the egg.
• Ingenuity: Each champion has a series of locked doors they have to get through. Each can be unlocked in a different way or they can break through them- the first can be opened with Alohamora, a later with blood, while one is timed to open after the sun has died (billions of years) but can be affected by a local time field. Breaking through is difficult since the doors are tough and have defences- bits of one that get broken off transfigure into monsters to fight the champions, while another sprays acid. There are other difficulties, like one door emits an aura like a Dementor's which saps the strength and will.
• Skill: Duels between them.
• Power: A test of power- each champion holds up a basic shield while officials cast more and more powerful spells at them until the shield breaks. Then, each of them has several layers of dragon hide hanging up with an egg behind them. They have a minute or two to cast spells through the multiple layers of dragon hide and destroy the egg.
• And then the Maze.

 

A big problem I see with that is Snape's idea. In theory, it sounds like a good plan. But not only is Snape not an official of the tournament, but people just don't like him. The other teachers at Hogwarts put up with him, and going by the fact nobody called Barty Jr on his hatred, Moody disliking Snape isn't too out there.

The idea itself is good, but I doubt it would work if Snape was the one to suggest it. Have Snape tell Karkaroff (they do talk, as overheard by Harry) that Harry's crap at potions, and so Karkaroff puts it forward as Durmstrang's new task. Dumbledore puts forward the ingenuety, because that makes more sense for his character than the Power one; and Maxine puts forward Power because it doesn't involve any direct conflict, or something.

Also, give the tournament an overlying theme. It is great that you've had the organisers say "let's give each task a theme", but that doesn't actually mean anything. Have someone suggest that because champion is another word for hero, the tasks should be based on Heroic Virtues or something.

 

Lol Harry seems to do a lot of incredible things for an umalnourished child XD

I actually don't get what you mean though. Do they add these things after the Yule Ball or before? And I agree with Thaumologist, the theme needs to be announced from the beginning.

 

He's not. He was just small for his age until his sixth year.

 

It is not like they have starved him. Hell, with more balanced diet and regular exercise he got, he was probably more healthy than "Dudley"

 

I'm working on a fic at the moment and I was wondering if having a horcruxe-less Harry (story begins with the diary and scar horcruxe getting destroyed in the Chamber) gives me 'room' to change the tournament? If I do I'll definitely add at least one more task so there is at least 4, if not 5, so there is one per entry and the maze in the end. I want to keep the story canon-based with the only changes stemming from the fact that Harry doesn't have the horcruxe, and the information Dumbledore gives him (he will definitely know of the prophecy). Just wondering if I could change the tourney and blame it on Dumbledore, you know, making it harder or easier because he wants to test Harry or something Dumbledore-ish.

But OT, JBern had some good ideas; duels between the competitors, a broom race, an obstacle course... I was leaning towards retrieving something from the Forbidden Forest. Rematch with Aragog anyone?

 

I have a hard time justifying Wizards and Witches making a task where wand use is forbidden. It seems... counter to everything magical. To me, anyway.

Look at it this way: Wands are a huge deal to wizards. They even control which races can have them! It's one of the worst punishments to have yours confiscated and snapped. They basically consider you finished, a nonentity, once you're relieved of your wand. If they don't consider you to even BE a wizard anymore, why would they make a task where not having a wand somehow factors in to you proving you're the BEST wizard (even if you used it in the preparation)?

That's just the way I see it.

Maybe if there were less focus on potions and more on simply making items with magic, then it would make more sense. After all, that would more fully encompass various areas of magic, and indicate the winner is the more well-rounded witch or wizard. And it would require a wand at some point...

I could actually see Harry having an edge here (with a little muggle-inspired ingenuity), if he could find all the spells he needed, making himself a veritable Batman Utility Belt of spelled objects to help him ascend the tower, completely surprising Snape and his opponents in the process.

I guess a wand-free, potions-heavy task to prove you're a better wizard just makes little sense to me. *shrug*

Moving right along, Harry managed to outmaneuver a basilisk and make a swim to the bottom of a deep lake with that "hugely undernourished" body... which eats at Hogwarts roughly ten months of the year (and had done so for over three school years by the time this task would take place).

I imagine Harry has no more or less disadvantage in a climb than Krum, who is pointed out in canon as being duck-footed and less coordinated on the ground than he is on a broom.

As for Harry's potions knowledge... let us not forget (because many do) that Harry IS good at potions.

He just stinks at dealing with Snape and the Slytherins sabotaging him at every turn and in various ways in a classroom environment where he can't retaliate. Without his grudge-bearing professor and Draco's cronies hassling him, Harry got an E on his O.W.L. tests. That's not just a passing grade, it's the next to highest grade.

And, yes, that's before he laid hands on Snape's old potions book. With an environment conducive to learning and a sufficiently enlightening text (be it up-to-date or sufficiently altered by an innovative student), Harry turns out to be very good at potions.

However, it's a fair cop that, as a fourth year student, he likely wouldn't know as much as the seventh year students he's competing against.

Still, he's not as hard up in a task like this as you would make out that he is.

I also have to say that Snape doing all of this just to fuck Harry over, and having it come off perfectly for the potions bastard, would be really irritating to read. Having Harry win or very nearly win Snape's killer task, and having the teacher be pissed off about it, would be much more satisfying... and then you can let Harry fail at a different task.

Either that, or there would have to be some extremely satisfying retribution for Snape by the end of the story, whether Harry delivers it himself, or it happens indirectly.

If nothing else, just be sure to closely examine whatever clichés you employ or fanon-perceived so-called 'facts' about characters you build your story on. Some of the notions people have about canon are downright mystifying...

 

People keep commenting on Harry being undernourished, and while people may not agree with it, it is true.

"Go - cupboard - stay - no meals," - that was Vernon by the way.

"The Dursleys had never exactly starved Harry but he'd never been allowed to eat as much as he liked. Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if It made him sick."

So, he wasn't starved, technically, but he wasn't allowed to eat as much as he wanted... May not be starved, but it sounds like being hungry to me, and in turn, malnourished.But wait, theres more!

"Dobby might have saved Harry from horrible happenings at Hogwarts, but the way things were going, he'd probably starve to death anyway.The cat-flap rattled and Aunt Petunias hand appeared, pushing a bowl of canned soup into the room. Harry, whose insides were aching with hunger, jumped off his bed and seized it."


Sounds like he starving to me, what do you guys think? But wait, theres even more!


"Harry was least surprised by this, because be had suffered periods of near starvation at the Dursleys."

So, in Philosopher's Stone, Harry is sent to bed without a meal, and upon seeing a feast, pretty much says the Dursleys never allowed him to have his fill. In Chamber of Secrets he is starved while being locked in a room all day (better then a cupboard under the stairs though, right guys?) Now in Deathly Hallows, he admits to going hungry several times while living with the Dursleys ("Periods of near starvation")

Now, starvation isn't the only thing that makes one malnourished I would think, but locking them inside all day (dark cupboard or room) has to have an effect, as does making one do all the chores. Look at it like this; is Dudley malnourished? I would think not, so Harry, you could say, is the opposite. Dudley is overweight - Harry is under, Dudley is a lazy shit - Harry is not, etc.

I dislike pointless bashing, but the Dursleys are not nice people, and I for one will not exit a story because someone decides the play the 'Dursleys are assholes who starve Harry' card, seeing as if anyone deserves bashing, its them. Also, there is no denying that Harry was abused (no pictures - as if he didn't exists, being called a freak with deadbeat drunks for parents, cupboard, bars on window, etc.) and that is not healthy for a child either.

 

Doing chores doesn't make one malnourished. In fact, that would probably have made him slightly healthier, since he is actively doing something. Dudley didn't do anything and ate unhealthily. Hence why he's fat.

Also the abuse was emotional and psychological. Not physical. That wouldn't have an effect on his growth. Just the way he thinks and acts.

And I do agree that he was undernourished, but it was never something that held Harry back. Probably because of the whole Harry Hunting thing and the chores. It gave him practice.

Anyway, back on track. For the Endurance thing, since Warlocke makes a good point about the wands and all that, you could do some sort of contest where they each perform a spell to try and impress the judges. The bigger and flashier the spell or performance or whatever, the more points they'd get. Like, just for example, the judges would ask them to perform some spell that requires a lot of power. Whoever could do the spell the best would get the most points.

 

Did you mean "nine parts out of ten" or "nine to ten months per year"? Because by my count he spends five sixths of the year at Hogwarts. If he was malnourished before Hogwarts, that can have an effect on his health for the rest of his life, no matter the availability of food later. But, I don't think he was malnourished in canon. Except maybe after the first year of school. The Durleys were nasty, not abusive. There is a difference.

 

How to tell that someone is American: they equate the occasional sensation of hunger with extreme malnutrition.

(Seriously. Being send to bed without dinner is a pretty traditional punishment.)