Hello everyone,

I've just finished rereading nuhuh's "In the Clockface, Weighted and Weary", where it features a Harry that stops the incident that caused Ariana's condition, meeting the rest of the Dumbledore family. Unfortunately there's only 3 chapters, but I was left thinking that there could be an interesting plot there.

Following this I tried to search for other similar stories, but to my surprise there were none I found worth mentioning. Do you think ther is a reason this kind of plot is overlooked? Is it due to the problem of creating plausible time travel fics, too little information from the books, or something else?

Thank you for you attention,
Jordi

 

I suspect the lack of stories is because people just don't think about her as a character much. Her existence was only mentioned in what, the very last book? And then just as a sidenote of history.

If you think hard about it, she was the cause of a great deal of change and conflict in Albus Dumbledore's life - she was why their father was sent to Azkaban, she killed their mother. And then was killed herself in the crossfire between Albus and Grindelwald. If these never happened, it's hard to imagine all the ways in which Dumbledore's actions and character would change, and what would change as a result. But it would be significant.

So yes - she's actually a very pivotal point for Dumbledore, and that makes her a good target for a time-travel story. But that plot line is always going to be overlooked because she's a very minor sidenote to the life of Harry Potter himself.

 

Tbh, i think it's because having the main character travel this far back in time would require world-building and thus –effort–.
We're talking both in terms of imagination as well as research here. Make sure you don't reference wrong fashion/technology, as well as invent a whole set of new OC.
There is also a thread on this forum currently along the lines of How much AU is too much? and i think this kind of story runs the danger of falling into that category.

 

Those are some very good points, thank you.
A good story should indeed need an increased effort in world building to get an authentic look, and it does seem off putting, altough the importance of her role to the development of Dumbledore's character and consequent plot should grant her more than a few tens of stories. We've seen that characters with almost zero passages in the books can get a large number of fics, for example Daphne Greengrass.
I guess I was hoping I had misused the search functions, and that there were actualy many more fics like this, just hidden from me.

Jordi

 

I have been thinking about writing a young Dumbledore era story involving Ariana, but yeah, the amount of worldbuilding and research and everything is pretty freaking daunting.

 

Buy a Taure.

 

This chapter of Stories of the Lone Traveler is about Harry the Traveler saving Ariana and helping out Dumbledore family.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5751435/56/Stories-of-the-Lone-Traveler

 

There was this terrible shit of a fic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3678697/1

It's sort of a reverse with Ariana travelling into Harry's time, but it's similar enough.

 

Funny enough...I tried reading that story a couple days ago. Freakin' terrible.