Before I get any further, I am perfectly aware that the vast majority of WBWL stories absolutely suck, with far too many annoying Cliches, Bashing, and Harry Sues. That was why I said "Good" ones.

For a while, I will admit WBWL stories were actually a Guilty Pleasure of mine. I honestly don't know why, I just liked the concept. Eventually I realized just how many of them literally took the exact same, stupid formula. The Twin is inexplicably called the BWL and not Harry for some reason. The Twin is spoiled to death, while Harry is at best ignored and at worst abused. He gets angsty and vows revenge. Everyone the Author doesn't like is Bashed relentlessly, while everyone the Author likes is Sued up. The Twin can't do shit, while Harry is an Uber-Wizard. Harry kicks serious ass, the end.

This all drove me crazy, and I kicked the Guilty Pleasure. But then I started to wonder: did anyone actually take the most basic idea of Harry having a Twin everyone thinks is the BWL and make it a good Story? Well, if I could find good Azkaban-Harry Fics, I'm sure somewhere in Fanon someone wrote a good Wrong-Boy-Who-Lived story.

So, any suggestions?

 

Maybe try The Santi's one? I'm on my phone, so can'tbe effed to link it for you, but it should pop up at the top in google. It's called Harry Potter and The Boy Who Lived IIRC.

 

Here's a link to the first 12 chapters on ff.net

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5353809/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Boy-Who-Lived

The rest can be found on here. I'm still pissed off that that's abandoned.

 

How does 'WBWL' actually work, conceptually? Without it being ridiculous, I mean.

You'd have to think being struck by an AK would make the distinction pretty obvious.

I don't want to get into specifics on what the BWL actually means and it's link to the prophecy, but I can't even imagine a situation where Dumbledore fucks up that badly.

I suppose if Sirius inexplicably takes Harry away first, leaving the other child there with TR's remains?

I stress 'inexplicably'...

 

It doesn't work without immense amounts of creativity, which is why most fics using the concept suck.

That said... The Substitute by BajaB, maybe. Not exactly WBWL, but eh. Also pretty depressing.

 

Shit, is that the one where it turns out that Harry is actually a golem of sorts, made by the Potters, who are still alive in some pocket space, with the actual Harry?

 

I know you guys shat all over it when it was reccomended and it isn't a WBWL rather a twin-is-the-boy-who-lived fic but Princes of the Blacks by Silently Watches is a favourite of mine.

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It's also the only 'Harry was raped' fic that I can stand because it isn't angsty.

 

It always amusing when someone recommends TBWL, as if someone on this site hasn't read it (it's probably the most popular fic on this site, or at least in the top 3).

Anyways, I recently read https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6864381/2/Harry-Potter-and-The-Veela which falls into what you're looking for, except for the "good" part. I couldn't get very far into it, but it's pretty much written exactly how you expect a guilty pleasure to look like

 

Yeah, the Santi's story is the best out there.

Lightning-on-the-Wave...I remember trying to read it and finding it good until a point in time came where the slash just got to be too much, I couldn't ignore it anymore and I abandoned it. That said, if you can ignore it or if you don't care about it, it was decent.

 

Wordhammer's Holly Evans and the Spiral Path fits the mold, more or less (I won't spoil it if you haven't read it).

A few others that might be read:

Araceil's Beyond the Pale.

Romantic Silence's The Warlock of Slytherin.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Red.

 

Try Princess of the Blacks and its sequel Black Princess Ascendant.

It is not a WBWL story per se, but it has almost all you want. The protagonist (fem!Harry) takes the role of an OC while the OC (Harry's twin) takes the role of canon!Harry with all it entails (including magical prowess).

 

Oh dear God, not Black Princess. That was what got me out of the Guilty Pleasure in the first place. It had its good points, but I eventually couldn't stand it. The author made the fem!Harry blind, only to give her pretty much a Magic form of seeing anyway. The Dursleys are considered monsters and are punished terribly, but the child prostitution ring she spends half her life at is perfectly acceptable. The Author makes it a point to distinguish Light Magic and Dark Magic, with Dark Magic described as genuinely Dark, but the only character we are supposed to like that is genuinely Light is Luna, who is conveniently supposed to be the main love interest of the Fem!Harry. She quickly and inexplicably makes a large assortment of friends from multiple Houses (even though she just appeared in her Fourth Year) and brought Sirius, Andromeda, Tonks, and freaking Narcissa into her side easily. By the way, Narcissa turned out to be one of the Fem!Harry's frequent customers at the child prostitution ring and is described as a lesbian pedophile, and no one thinks it's a big deal because 'she only does it with muggles and people she believes are muggles'.

And that was the 'original' stuff. The Story still managed to have time for all the usual common Cliches of such a story: The Twin is declared the BWL because Reasons, the Fem!Harry is hated by her own family and later abandoned because Reasons, the Dursleys are abusive monsters, Fem!Harry inexplicably gets the ability to do cool Dark-but-not-Evil Magic, Dumbledore is a Manipulative Bastard who doesn't give a shit that he ruined the life of a child because of "The Greater Good", the Twin is essentially James before he grew up and is a useless idiot, and so on and so on.

God, I hate that Story. So no, I will not read it anytime soon. It was just too terrible.

 

Do you mean to say you won't re-read it anytime soon?

Also, thanks for that, nice to know beforehand from which fics to stay away.

 

My bad.

"Beyond the Pale", on the other hand, was actually a great read. A bit of Dumbledore-Bashing, but otherwise it managed to avoid many of the more common cliches. There is a more legitimate reason for sending Harry to the Dursleys, the family really wants to love him, the Twin is a nice person who is in no way spoiled and a powerful wizard who was actually trained all his life, and Harry isn't turned into a Mary Sue.

Now I want to try some of the other ones.

 

You make a good point about the child prostitution thing, I never understood that. Why a raped child would voluntarily work in a child brothel eludes me. I mean, if you have magic, why work at all? Just steal some muggle stuff and erase the memories.

Spoiler

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that the Voodoo stuff is not evil. She kills a teenager and harvests his organs because the opportunity presents itself. Not to mention that she uses people in dawn-out rituals and ensures that the pain is felt to enhance the magnitude of the ritual.

 

You clearly don't get it; Fem!Harry doesn't see anything wrong with child prostitution because she's fucked up and was basically raised on it. You're looking at it from your point of view, not the point of view of the character.

As for light and dark magic most magic is niether. The killing curse is considered neutral as does nearly every other 'dark' spell. Instead dark magic is magic that require human sacrifice to a dark god - in Fem!Harry's case it's Baron Samedi and in Voldemort's case it's some god from HP Lovecraft's books. Fem!Harry isn't a nice person - she's not supposed to be, and as for Luna being genuinely light, where?

Inexplicably gaining friends? More like she manipulates people to gain friends; she treated her friendship with Tracey Davis like a business deal and the rest of the friends she got she basically made them spend time with her through magical compulsions. As I said, she isn't a nice person and isn't above manipulating everyone around her to get what she wants.

As for Sirius and the rest being 'on her side'. Well that might have something to do with Sirius being her fucking godfather - you know, a person that cares about her and is supposed to care for her. The rest are family members that Sirius called in for help. Makes sense that a guy who just got out of prison would go to family members who have already been parents for help raising a kid.

Yes, Narcissia is a paedophile. Nobody except Fem!Harry saw this as an acceptable thing and everyone except Fem!Harry was disgusted by it. The only thing that stopped Sirius disowning her and having her arrested was Fem!Harry (who you should remember has been raised a child prostitute) threatening Sirius. Again, Narcissa is a pureblood supremacist, do you really expect her to care about muggle children?

Anyway, the HP fanfic community is so large now it's practically impossible to write a fic that doesn't involve some clichés. Also, the whole point of the story was to ask the question "How far would you have to push Harry for him to go dark?" and having shitty things happen to her was required to make it so.

Given Silently Watches previous stuff I expect we'll see some good explanations for them, he has a habit of twisting clichés around.

Also, where did you get the idea that Fem!Harry does "cool Dark-but-not-Evil Magic"? I thought it was pretty clear that what she's doing truely is evil. Hell, she's sacrificed half-a-dozen people already and murdered Zabini.

Apparently a small percentage of rape victims become hypersexual. I suspect it has something to do with wanting to associate sex with something other than rape. She enjoys it and can make lots of money off of it - probably makes a lot of sense in the mind of an eight year old to take it up as a profession.

 

Yeah, I distinctly remember how it was used on brain-dead people to ease their passing and cattle so the meat wouldn't get fucked up. In case you don't get it, that's sarcasm.

Also, dark gods? What is this, Warhammer?

 

No you don't get it; the point is that child prostitution is pretty fucked up and the author doesn't have the talent to pull it off in a fashion that isn't just ridiculous.

 

First of all, my bad with the "Dark-but-not-evil" bit. In retrospect, I was thinking about a different Fic at the time. No, in this Fic, it's definitely Dark and Evil.

Second of all, why am I supposed to root for a character that goes around killing people for her Dark God again? Call me old-fashioned, but I think villains, not heroines, are the only ones who should preform human sacrifices for Dark Magic.

Third of all, there is definitely a Dark/Light Magic thing. Fem!Harry can't be around Fawkes and his screeching because he is described as a Light creature (which is how Dumbledore knows she went Dark). She also can't touch Luna's amulet because it is described as a Light amulet (which proves Luna is kind of Light). And I find it strangely amusing that you attempt to call the AK 'neutral' when it is a Spell literally only used for killing people.

Ah yes, she 'manipulated' her way to make friends. That's so much better. It's not like that idea was done a million times before in other stories with Slytherin-esque Harrys. Oh wait...

Sirius being on her side is one thing. And you could make a case for Andromeda and Tonks. But Narcissa? She's clearly in the Pureblood camp, married to the Malfoys, and doesn't exactly have a close relationship with that branch of her family. Why didn't Sirius bring in Bellatrix while he's being with family he shares nothing with besides a last name.

Oh, it's perfectly acceptable because it was with a child prostitute, and only with muggle child prostitutes since, in her eyes, they are beneath her. There's nothing wrong with that. And it's okay she regularly had sex with the child prostitute Fem!Harry, since she was raised to be a child prostitute and they really cared for each other. I'm sure that all pedophiliac relationships involve both sides genuinely caring for each other.

Speaking of which, why does no one think to say a word about the child prostitution ring? It's not like no one knows about it. There is no reason whatsoever for Sirius to not report to somebody about the location of a child prostitution ring. I don't know what you think of child prostitution, but it is an especially monstrous thing that the author practically idealizes. While Fem!Harry gladly and gruesomely butchers the Dursleys, she uses Magic to help the child prostitution ring hide from the cops and the asshole who runs it out of jail.

But why should HP Fanfics follow Cliches? Most of my personal favourites are the ones that manage to lampshade, deconstruct, or even just mock them. Because that's all they're good for: parody. Even the 'good' ones inevitably get used so many times by less-than-talented people that it loses whatever value it originally had.