There is an interesting angle in looking how the whole group is suppose to replace Dumbledore. Albus was one man army and his replacements represents one exceptional attribute he had.

Something like:
Snape - a magical ability.
Potter - a public influence.
Zabini's Mother- a political influence in behind the scenes dealings.
Tonks - a dueling badassery.

 

Switch Tonks' dueling with Snape's magical ability and I think you're on to something. Tonks was a decent dueler, but has an almost unheard of magical trait you're born with. Snape could fight off pretty much everyone except for maybe Dumbledore and Voldemort.

 

But I wanted this Tonks to be a badass dueler instead of being just good enough to be a stepping stone for Harry in his quest to become better dueler than Voldemort.

Besides, I'm not sure to what Albus' ability we could compare Tonks' ability to change her physical appearance.

 

His ability to go unseen.

He says, in PS, something along the lines of "A wizard does not always need an invisibility cloak to go unseen, Harry".

And whilst you'd see Tonks (unless she can turn herself invisible), you wouldn't know it was her. And she isn't limited by turning into other people only, like polyjuice would force.

 

Twinkling eyes.

I like the plot. I don't like the need for teenagers and Snape. Maybe a Twenty/Thirty something Harry and Fleur would be better, I think. If the idea is merge HP with some Bond badassery you need adults. That and what Pers suggested. Dumbledore being the shield under the magical world hides against Dark Lords feels too Iron Man for me "I successfully magicked world peace, etc"

 

But he is. Oh snap Grindelwald needs stopped, throw Dumbledore at it. Fuck Voldemort is shitting on us, throw Dumbledore at it. But there is a prophecy saying he can't do it. Throw Dumbledore at it anyway. Dumbledore then goes to manipulate everything successfully in order to throw Harry at it.

If there's something strange
in your neighborhood
Who ya gonna call?
Dumbledore

If there's something evil
and it don't look good
Who ya gonna call?
Dumbledore
​

 

Hmm, those are great points, actually. I just realized that I'm completely unsure as to how to deal with the recruitment... I do want it to be an English innovation (perhaps somewhere in my subconscious, something is rebelling against the notion of 'backwards' magical Britain and all).

I think that having Dumbledore choose them would be far better - he would certainly have something in mind when he knew he was dying over the course of a year...

Dumbledore had:

- unparalleled dueling ability (literally the best in the world)
- a master's grasp on Mind Magick (which would allow him to just tear information out of people's minds with no lengthy Veritaserum usage or anything of that sort)
- insane cursebreaking abilities (other than being knowledgeable enough to break the most esoteric and dangerous of dark curses, his Phoenix can ignore a large portion of existing wards already)
- alchemy (a mastery of potions far greater than the normal master's which is cross-field)
- the sharpest of minds (Albus Dumbledore is very, very good at simulating the thought of a Dark Lord or a criminal - both due to his exposure to Grindelwald and the use of his pensieve; he knows how criminals think)
- lack of prejudice (he is very, very unafraid to use all it takes for him to do his job. This also means that he keeps on top of muggle innovation and recreating it through magical means, etc)
- connections (he knows everyone, has spies everywhere, and everyone and their grandmother owes him a debt he can call)
- the gadgets, too (aside from the most basic Deluminator, which he can simply lend out to people like its a toy, he has a selection of gadgets he personally invented which have insane uses)

Meanwhile, if there was anything the ministry was truly afraid of in terms of a "Dumbledore's Army" it would be something like this. Something extralegal with all the skills of the old man and none of the benevolence. I guess I really do want them to make nice with the Ministry, but if they're some sort of vigilante group that worms their way into politics and the Ministry over time, that can work too. Snape, being Alan Rickman, can also become Alan Dulles

And seeing as the recruits are highly suspicious people who only trusted Dumbledore, this is probably a good edit.

@Celestin:

Harry Potter - Near invulnerability and insanely quick reaction times; magical potential to be the Dark Lord's equal, etc...

Fleur - I don't think it's a stretch for her to excel at mind magic considering she already has the whole Veela thing going for her.

Snape - The closest living human to an alchemist that exists; also, the ability to calculate with the same coldness that Dumbledore had to do for the Greater Good.

The more we throw her about, the more I like

Zabini's Mother - While Fleur might be a bit prettier than anyone who's ever lived or something, she has nothing on the poise and poison that comprises of this woman, even in canon. Maybe one day, Fleur will surpass her, but at the moment, i can't think of a single canonical character who would be better at infiltration through the whole glamorous-sex thing they have going in James Bond. Perhaps you could call her the other Bond girl in HP.

I'm also considering Tonks, and Luna Lovegood...

@Henry Persico: I don't want them to be grown up and experienced. I want a connection to the world we know well and the ability to watch them transition into the legends they'll be. If I wanted that, I'd probably write a serious of oneshots or something.

@Thyestean: I liek yer stylo.

 

I think having Bill join the group and get killed off on a mission is the way to go.

Also, since its a ragtag group constantly suspicious of each other and at each others throats, it would be pretty cool if one of them was actually Voldemort's spy, instead of a fake!spy like we have with Snape. You could even have the spy arrange for Bill to be killed off during the mission (or the spy could be Bill himself!)

Harry, Snape, Fleur, Tonks, Blaise's Mom, and Bill would be six people already. You could probably throw Krum in there if you wanted, since no spy story is complete without at least a token Russian/Eastern European.

 

By they way, you mentioned James Bond, but this setup reminds me more of Impossible Missions Force.

 

I think Rhys is right. With those seven people I believe you have a good solid group, with enough different personalities in it to make good internal conflict and a satisfying resolution when it's over come. Now we have to look at Dumbledore's support network. We can function on the assumption that while he was alive, Dumbledore was able to do all his badass troubleshooting, and keep his support network running by himself. Except for perhaps some small help from external groups for information gathering and someone to specifically keep track of all the files, a Bookkeeper I suppose. Now though, he would need to have left preparations for his work to be continued. Who would he trust enough to do that? Also, that support network would need to grow to be able to help the seven ,new recruits and insure they head to their destinations with all the information and gear they might need to accomplish their mission.

 

As to Bill, that's definitely one of the routes I'm considering heavily.

At the moment, however, I want to show the damage of failing relationships. I want Fleur to fall out of love with Bill and I want to show it as she and Harry become closer. But as I said, this is all subject to criticism and change, ALL of it (other than the most basic premises of the fic).

The more I consider Krum, the more I like him. I don't think Cracked will be adverse to writing Harry, Snape, Fleur, Krum and Zabini's mom. Now I just need the debate and hashing that our forum is famous for to work out the other two

And yes, a spy would be fantastic. But with only seven people, it becomes, so-to-speak, the shortest game of mafia ever played. With Snape as cautious as he is and the rest of them as intelligent, with Harry's gut senses and Zabini's mom (who I really don't want to have as a spy because the idea of her along in the later chapters of real spywork especially just makes me grin like an idiot), it seems as though we'd need to use someone really, really damn smart AND someone that develops properly as a spy.

I really don't want to use OCs, by the way, but I think with the way the discussion is progressing, this is a given.

Also, there's the whole Tonks thing which we should probably deal with. Yay or nay?

 

I think Snape as a triple-agent would be plausible, but yeah, it could be a stretch. Fleur as a spy would be in keeping with her Bond-girlyness (though she'd be less plausible to keep it under wraps.) Also if you really wanted to come out of left field the spy could be Harry himself, possessed by his Horcrux or something, but that's just ridiculous right?

I am pro-Tonks and anti-Luna. Tonks is a trained Auror and has an almost-unique ability which is very useful in covert action, and she already has a lot of canon character traits to draw on. I think she'll basically write herself and easily fit in as a useful and interesting part of the group.

Luna on the other hand is moving in on Harry's territory of being the young kid with potential, and because she doesn't really have useful canon abilities it's going to be hard to present her as being neither useless nor cliche super!Luna. Also, she would be predisposed to defer to Harry, and the rest of the group lacks any similar "friendly" relationships to start off with (if you disinclude Bill.)

 

How about the spy being another metamorphmagus who's impersonating Tonks? As for how the group is recruited, how about it being some failsafe that Dumbledore set up in the event of his death with each person being approached in a manner that they will recognise as coming from Dumbledore?

Or, and this is an idea that I quite like, how about Alastor Moody, Dumbledore's chief of operations, recruits and commands the group. He could have access to files Dumbledore has on the people, hell he might have compiled the files and because he's so loyal to him maybe Dumbledore told him about his death so someone could support Snape's claims of innocence when the war ended. His involvement might also solve the issue of who leads the team, though I wouldn't expect his leadership to go unchallenged by Snape and Zabini's mum (does she have a name?).

Bill could be killed when the wedding gets attacked. He goes out in a blaze of glory protecting his new wife.

Thoughts?

---------- Post automerged at 08:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:30 PM ----------

Just to flesh out NotTonks' background a bit you could say that Voldemort recruited her in anticipation of his victory and the resistance that would follow. He replaced Tonks with her when Tonks was in the hospital recovering from the Department of Mysteries fight (this allowed any mistakes she made in the early days to be passed off as side-effects of the injury while Real-Tonks was interrogated for information) and from there she targeted a vulnerable member of the Order (Remus) to get more information and further insinuate herself within the group.

NotTonks is perfectly positioned to introduce fatal suspicion into any group simply by revealing that she's a traitor - who are you going to trust when the spy can look like anyone?

I'm not sure how to explain her not knowing the Secret for Headquarters or her different Patronus. Maybe for Headquarters she doesn't attend meetings because she's on duty at Hogwarts?

 

I like this idea. How about you kill two birds with one stone and have the metamorphmagus knock off Bill and take his place? Then depending on how much angst you want to throw in you have the option to have Fleur distancing herself from Bill due to him 'not being the man I fell in Love with!', or having the meta!spy taking advantage of the fact that he's got a hot part-Veela hanging off of him, or even the revenge angle from Fleur when she finds out.

I am also against Luna, and any of the other schoolkids joining in. It takes away from the fact that Harry would be the only one underage that has sufficient skills to actually qualify him to join in.

I second Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody as M. The alliteration's already there!

 

I agree that it should be a message from Dumbledore that gets the group together. With a year to die he would have had plenty of time to prepare something that would replace the type of force that he was against dark wizards.

Tonks, or another metamorphmagus disguised as Tonks, being a spy would be pretty badass too. Or if you want the Bond girl thing for Fleur have her be a spy, but one for the French government. Because why should Britain be the only ones with a magical spy force. France sent in Fleur to see what they needed to do to make their own super spy team. That'd be a cool plotline for down the road, classic French vs. Britain. Plus Fleur has to decide who to choose, her country or Harry and the team.

 

What if there was an existing organization gathering information while Dumbledore did the actual ass-kicking, but was almost completely wiped out with Dumbledore and Gawain? You could have Dumbledore in the lead (and the organization officially as a part of ICW, but completely under Dumbledore's control as it would be his brainchild), Gawain as second in command and then a larger group of people who do the legwork but don't know each other. That way you'd have a lot of potential recruits in the existing force, but each of them would be the potential mole that got everyone killed, or hiding, afraid for their lives. Or both. That would also cover nicely how Bill got killed.

Gawain would be calling in new people exactly because he doesn't know whom to trust in the existing force (and all of the people with letters would be on Dumbledore's "complete trust" list), but he is killed before they have time to do anything. That way the new group would have the ruins of something previous to build on, but no existing command structure, and operating procedures that wouldn't really be useful without Dumbledore alive. But there would be names of contacts and perhaps some material resources to draw upon.

It would also establish the opposition as a properly dangerous group, if they were able to completely take out a secret organization in days. Canon Voldemort and the Death Eaters are a bit too amateurish to really be a proper villain in a Bond-type story. I would probably also ditch the horcrux hunt for something new, or at least change it to only one heavily guarded object that would need some serious spy-work, firepower and infiltration to get to. Voldemort would probably also need some kind of more clearly defined goal than just world-domination and immortality; maybe he's planning on enslaving all the muggles to create some perverted version of Atlantis or perhaps he is building some kind of magic-amplifying device to put everyone in the world under imperius-curse (which, by the way, might work as a back-story for a Harry Potter meets Matrix fic).

I like the idea of Zabini's mother, but she probably wouldn't be on Dumbledore's list. Why not have a smaller group than seven to come to the first secret meeting, and then have them do more recruiting themselves? Mrs. Zabini could easily be Snape's acquaintance, someone to exchange poison recipes with, maybe under pen names or something (The Black Widow...). If Harry and co. did recruiting themselves you could also work in the exclusion of Ron and Hermione as either Harry's own decision or something that the others force Harry to do.

Other potential people to include in the group could be the Weasley twins as Q-branch, and maybe Remus. A werewolf could have potentially interesting abilities to utilize, and a marauder is always a good thing to have in a spy organization. They could all be Harry's choices for new recruits.

Every Bond-type story is also heavily dependent on locations, so there should be some kind of international quest for the group. So not just boring old Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, but magical areas of New York, Shanghai, Venice, Moscow...; a magical favela in Rio de Janeiro under tyrannical rule of some drug cartel; a counterfeit expert sailing the Caribbean in his private, fidelius-protected yacht etc. This quest around the world could also serve as practice for Harry, so that he would look good in a tuxedo, know his vodka martinis and be ready to kick ass when the final assault to Voldemort's evil lair happens.

 

I'm not sold on the soundness of this idea, personally. Wouldn't the main focus of the group be to defeat Voldemort and his Horcruxes (unless Lungs actually changes them/their locations, which he stated he'd like to avoid)? Having the group go on some extraneous adventure prior to defeating Voldemort would take away some of the focus of the story imo. If there is a portion of travelling I would say that it either be focused upon for a relatively minimal amount of time or instead relegated to the period after defeating Voldemort (where the group can focus on other, less pressing tasks).

 

Nono. He's right. The whole point is to bring the sense of the international, the exotic into HP. The whole Horcrux shenanigans are, so-to-speak, the beginnings of this whole affair.

The way I think it's going to be written is around 10 or so chapters (perhaps 5000 word chapters) to each segment.

So the assembling of the original recruits and the defeat of Voldemort would be the first segment... then there will be a slight hiatus in which we'll plan out the storyline of the second segment - the first time that the team ventures outside of Britain to do something.

Obviously, none of them are Dumbledore, so it's not a question of blowing the house of sticks down, but rather of the stuff we really, really want to see - the espionage, the glamor, the sexuality, the James Bond things that's attracted three generations of viewers.

Small missions for them to dip their toes in the water might start happening almost as soon as they get Dumbledore's files and see threats they can actually deal with.

 

Yeah, I was referring to any travelling done before Voldemort got defeated, though judging from your plan it seems like you're doing it after Voldemort which I'm perfectly fine with-I was just leery of the idea of travel and Voldemort getting entangled.

10 chapters (50000 words) might be a bit of a tight fit for the first segment considering that you are having them all getting introduced to each other and Voldemort getting defeated in that one arc, though I suppose it does depend on how easily he is defeated or how much detail you are going to put into Voldemort's loss.

 

That's actually what concerns me a little bit about the entire idea, as awesome as it sounds. What is the actual goal, or endpoint of this story? Obviously Voldemort isn't it. Is your intention to go full James Bond style and write completely independent segments (as you said, ca 10 chapters each) only losely connected with each other through some relations that just carry over? Personally, I can see that becoming stale really easy really fast.