Yes! That is exactly the thing that would happen in TZ.

 

The Assassination of a Hogwarts Headmaster

Neville is the BWL, and the Potters rather than the Longbottom’s were tortured into insanity. Harry spends his early life in the muggle world being shoved from one group home to another, never fitting in and not even knowing his parents are alive.

When he comes to Hogwarts he’s sorted into Slytherin and falls into the wrong crowd. Following Voldemort’s return he attempts to join the Death Eaters, but given his family history he isn’t taken seriously. Voldemort however remembering the prophecy is intrigued and decides that if Harry is to become a Death Eater he must kill Dumbledore.

The story would follow Harry as he plots Dumbledore’s assassination while at the same time questioning his beliefs and willingness to actually go through with the murder. His plans are further complicated when another assassin (Draco) begins to strike, drawing unwanted attention to Hogwarts.

 

So his parents are tortured into insanity by Death Eaters and he decides..."I want to be just like the people who hurt my parents!" Not sure if that motivation works well.

 

Hm, I do like the idea of a fic about someone carefully planning an assassination, especially if its against someone as powerful and dangerous as Dumbledore. So long as its not about Draco's attempts in sixth year, because he really does suck at killing people.

 

1. Harry was raised in the muggle world not even knowing that his parents are alive, and nobody from the 'Light' side stepped up to take care of him.
2. After being Sorted to Slytherin he was probably ostracized worse that Snape by the 'Light' students, with Dumbledore and his staff doing what they do best... nothing.
As Voldemort said in The Last Straw, "He may hate us because we're 'Dark'……but he hates Dumbledore for much better reasons."

 

He'd still be joining up with the people who tortured his parents into insanity and therefore caused his shitty childhood.

 

I believe the answer to that is "It was war, if my parents cared about me they wouldn't be fighting".

I think that of all the stupid shit I have ever read in fanfiction(or anywhere really) the above takes the top spot.:facepalm

 

That seems quite hyperbolic. I don't really think it's that ridiculous of a statement at all. In fact, your reasoning seems more misguided.

 

The way I look at it he grew up never fitting in, he felt alone and ostracized in the muggle world. He got to Hogwarts and suddenly he fit in, it might’ve taken a while for the other Slytherins to trust him but once they did, he was one of them. Suddenly for the first time in his life he feels appreciated, respected, and wanted.

Meanwhile he didn’t even meet his parents until after first year. He grew up resenting their absence, feeling like they abandoned him or that they didn’t care about him. Once he does meet them he just sees shells of who they once were, more dead than alive. To him they’re not his parents, they’re distant relations that he’s heard about but never met. He understands in the abstract that they loved him, but the feeling of belonging he gets with his friends isn’t abstract it’s very real.

So when the time comes he sees all his older friends start to join the Death Eaters, and he feels like he should too, if only to protect his friends. More goes into his decision of course, such as the fact that he agrees with at least some of what Voldemort is saying, and he thinks Voldemort is going to win anyways. But the deciding factor is his desire to fight alongside the people who’ve looked out for him since he first came to Hogwarts.

Does he feel guilt about allying himself with the man who effectively killed his parents? Yes, but not as guilty as he would feel if he let his friends fight and die without being there to back them up.

Maybe the concept would work better if his parents were killed instead of tortured. And in any case a portion of the story is supposed to be about him questioning his choice anyways.

 

The concept works fine people can go far to be accepted within a group even without anyone actively trying to bring them along. And for his parents, well certainly there are people for who the blood link alone is enough for a connection but there are others who it isn't.

Thus writing a Harry that only cares about his parents insofar as other people care about what he says/does about them or one that looks for everything and everyone that can give him more about his parents and is heavily affected by all that are both sound ways.

Perhaps so, I guess the things that could be more stupid tend to be so ridiculous it doesn't even qualify as stupid any more and more along the lines of complete nonsense so it leaves that as the top. For example I certainly consider extreme bashing worse but it is not what comes to mind when I think of the most stupid things so not sure really...

That said what reasoning? The explanation comes lifted directly from fics I read and I never said a word about why I thought it stupid.

 

Wait what. "If my parents really cared about me they wouldn't be fighting a war to ensure I wouldn't be treated as a third class citizen." Fuck off mate.

 

Yeah, pretty much. Must have read it in a dozen fics by now and I have long since stopped searching at random.

 

I don't think it matters whether Harry's parents were killed or if they were tortured into insanity. The logic that "but for Voldemort and his Death Eaters I would have had parents and the chance at a good/better childhood" would be the controlling bit of Harry's psyche. Yes, Harry might have reasons to dislike muggles in the backstory you outlined, but I don't think that means jumping off the deep end and joining up with people who have done him concrete, serious harm. It would have to take extreme narrative gymnastics to make it believable that Harry would join with the Death Eaters.

About the only way I could see it working would be if Harry had no knowledge of what happened to his parents but even then that doesn't make sense (i.e. the second a responsible adult at Hogwarts like Dumbledore, McGonagall, or even Snape saw Harry going down the Death Eater path they would step in and go 'hey this is what happened; perhaps you should think differently about these things'). Basically you'd have to explain (a) why Harry doesn't know what happened to his parents and (b) why these people who were obviously close friends to his parents never told him what happened. I think you could answer A but never satisfactorily answer B without a greater divergence than just "Harry and Neville swap places."

 

Perhaps you could have Peter Pettigrew be the one to torture the Potters into insanity. Sirius Black caught and killed Peter, but not before Peter attempted to frame Sirius and the Death Eater responsible.

This would create enough confusion over whether the Potters were attacked by agents of the Order or Voldemort that Harry could have reasonable doubts about Dumbledore.

 

It's not exactly hard. I can easily see 'responsible adults' distancing themselves from Harry because they see him becoming Slytherin a disgrace to his parents' memory. As for Snape, we all remember how he treated Harry; do you honestly see Harry immediately accepting anything he said?

 

Someone has been reading too much shitty fanfiction.

 

Anyone have some good HP sci-fi plotbunnies? Crossover or otherwise.

 

Crossover with Half-Life. Let's see how the wizarding world reacts to the Combine invading Earth and enslaving all muggles in 2003.

 

I have one with the show Haven. If you haven't seen it: A couple of inter-dimensional aliens show up at a small town in Maine and give a bunch of people there all kinds of crazy powers.

Why they do this is never really explained. So my idea was centered around that. These aliens are humans from a more advanced dimension where they were experimenting with ftl travel. The experiment failed by ripping a hole in reality and the tear opening into another universe. They learned to utilize this technology and traveled from universe to universe forcefully harvesting the black goo (their mcguffin that allows them to give people the abilities. Never properly named) until they came across the HP one.

Here they came across magic rather quickly and are forced to retreat. Facing a reverse invasion into their home dimension they send out a group of scientists to various other dimensions to try and replicate the magical abilities. HP dimension finds out about the plan and dispatches people to deal with this threat. Harry and the gang are sent into the Haven dimension to catch the two most dangerous scientists.

It has to be said that I was rather drunk and watching Rick and Morty when I came up with this idea.

 

Well now that you mention it, a crossover with Rick and Morty would be the tits.

Rick and Morty go on another adventure and one thing leading to another, they land through a portal in Diagon Alley before Harry's fifth year.