Hermionie getting sorting into Ravenclaw might make a teensie difference.

But whenever that happens, Harry seems to inexplicably go there as well.

 

I'd like to see a PoD where Harry pays a attention to the Hat's talk of potential greatness during his sorting and though he still going into Gryffindor he sets out to prove to himself that he can be a great wizard.

As much as I like the idea though I can see it being used as the set up for another shitty super Harry/geek Harry fic.

 

I dont think Ill ever get round to properly writing it so-

Dumbledore dying pre- HP schooling

 

Holy shit. Why hasn't anyone done this before?!

I mean, wow, talk about a strong AU.

 

Dumbledore interprets the prophecy differently. He assumes Riddle died 81 and Harry will be his successor. So he puts him at the Dursley like before but nobody in the magic world knows that he's still alive, Sirius is obliviated and put into Azkaban like in canon. The wards around Surrey won't allow Harry to leave the area. He won't get a letter when he's 11 either so that he will never be trained officially.

Harry experimenting with his strange abilities, finding out that the Arabelle Figg is more than she appears. He might notice that he can't escape the area. All this could rise his paranoia level.

You could shake it up with Sirius getting his memories back after seeing Wormtail in the paper and Riddle returning and sending DEs to break the wards to get him.

 

If Dumbledore assumed that Harry was going to be the next coming of Voldemort, the LAST thing he would do would treat him like crap and stick him with the Dursley's. The entire reason that Tom fell was that he was unloved and never knew it; putting Harry in a stable and loving environment would be the best way of keeping Voldemort 2.0 from rising. In addition, Dumbledore sees Tom Riddle as his second greatest failure. He would keep a close and personal eye on Harry to avoid another mistake like the first.

 

Wisely spoken doctor. Despite what some people think, Dumbledore isn't the Satan as shown in many poorly-written fics.

 

lol.

Please, what Dumbledore did to Harry in canon was basically to purposely throw him into the exact same situation Voldemort was in, then sit back and keep his fingers crossed that Harry would, somehow, turn out differently.

You know what they say about doing the same thing and expecting different results...

It's like Dumbledore thought, "I'd really prefer to think that this whole Tom Riddle becoming Voldemort thing was in no way my fault, so I'll just stick this other kid in the same situation and see what happens. If he turns out the same, then Tom was my fault (aaaand so was this one - oops, my bad), but if Harry turns out okay, then I figure I'm off the hook for the Riddle disaster, because he would have been bad no matter what I did. Fingers crossed..." :|

In canon, he may not have assumed Harry would be the next dark lord, but he sure as hell rolled the dice when he went out of his way to give Harry a head start in that direction. That speaks directly to Dumbledore's arrogance and/or blind faith, and it was little more than luck that prevented him from having yet another disaster on his hands.

 

If you look at the first and maybe the 2nd year Dumbledore used Harry as a throw away weapon. There was zero life expectancy for Harry meeting with Quirrel/Voldemort or the Basilisk. Both survived by pure chance, luck or fate.

In the 4th he was openly used as bait. I'm still wondering how Dumbledore would have thought to control the whole situation. Unless of course he already knew the whole plot which I consider as the only logical conclusion. Then he marked Harry for death in GOF too.

P.S. Another point of divergence could be the end of 3rd year. If you look back at it Harry was attacked 3 times by Dementors while nobody else was attacked. I wouldn't call that a coincidence. Another Harry might have realized that somebody tried to murder him through these creatures. What happened in OOTP had already happened before but nobody to my knowledge had looked at it that way.

 

My memory is a little hazy but I don't think anyone was actually behind the third year dementor attacks.

 

How do we know?

 

Because that omniscient wizard dude with the beard would have told us. You know, like how he explains everything else that happens throughout the series.

 

I don't think this version of Slytherin!Harry was done before:

When Harry is indeed sorted to the snake house, Ron assumes that he was wrong about Slytherins, since the Boy-Who-Lived cannot possibly be bad. This affects Ron, who is sorted after Harry and we have a first Weasley in Slytherin.

 

Ron is fairly ambitious... and we did have the beginnings of a Slytherin!Ron fic somewhere on DLP.

 

Living with Snape and his snakes would condition both boys to be on their toes at all times. They'd have to cover each other's backs 24/7, and that would make them much closer friends. Ginny would choose to be a Slytherin, too, with a brother and her crush there to motivate her. On the other hand, Hermione would be killed at that first Halloween.

Hagrid would drop them both, and the Twins would make Ron miserable. Percy would probably just turn a blind eye to any abuse.

Molly would throw a *fit*, and come in person to try to force him to change Houses.

It's possible that both boys would disappear for that first summer after Year one, since Ron wouldn't go back to the Burrow (since he'd KNOW what kind of treatment he'd have to endure there). They'd write Ginny, though.

Edited to add: The Weasleys might try to have Ron transferred to Beauxbaton after First Year.

 

@Banner

Nice try. But, of course, none of this is true.

 

Methinks that peoples' fanon is mixing with canon.

 

Why? Probably her social problems would be unchanged but it seems unlikely that someone else would cause reaction like this at the same time.

 

Harry getting hit by a car, or have something damage his ability to walk or function as normal when he's younger, it'd be interesting because he couldn't physically get into the cupboard, or do anything that the Dursleys make him do on a regular basis. I mean Vernon doesn't strike me as the kind of man to abuse a disabled child. So it would lead to an improved quality of home life, because of the after doctor check ups and the inability to do menial work.

But on the other hand it would change his view of the world entirely. It would also be easily fixed by any competent wizard healer, but if it was inflicted young enough Vernon and co may have already become used to treating Harry in a much less harsh manner than in the books.

 

First male in an all girl school. Sounds like an interesting concept I'm sure I've read before