Haha. Too true.

I try to make myself useful when I'm not accidentally necro-posting.

 

Hell, you can make it as simple as him casting magic post-HBP. Dumbledore doesn't help him, as he's dead, and the Order doesn't have the power to help, either.

Scrimgeour tries to force him into aiding the Ministry, or will send him to Azkaban, so Harry apparates out and takes off.

If you're writing post-GoF, then its just as easy: The Dementor gets Dudley, and sucks out his soul. When the Ministry comes to check on Harry (knowing that he used his wand to cast the Patronus), they find a soulless Dudley. Of course, Fudge would immediatey deny the presence of Dementors away from Azkaban, and dismiss Harry's story as being bogus. They try to take Harry in for using the dark arts on Dudley and destroying his soul, and Harry panics. His accidental magic apparates him away.

Post-OotP: Harry walks to the park, and falls asleep in the shade. While he's sleeping, Dudley and his friends get a little too rowdy, and accidentally kill Mark Evans while trying to steal his money. They smear some of the blood on Harry's hands and clothes, hide the body, and wait for Harry to leave. When Harry wakes up and leaves, they pretend like they found the body because their football got lost in the bushes, and call the cops, saying they saw Harry walk out of the park with a red stain on his shirt. Cops come to arrest Harry, and they think he's psychotic when he refuses to let go of his wand, so they let him keep the 'stick' of wood with him. In jail, Harry realizes that no-one's helping him...he accidentally apparates away.

If you want some conspiracy angle for the last one, just have him accidentally apparate out of jail and right into the middle of an Order meeting, just as Dumbledore says "So, it is agreed. We will not rescue Harry, he has become too dangerous." Then take it wherever you want, and have Dumbledore alert the authorities to the fact that HP is free, so Aurors are on the lookout for him.

Oh...and make it Harry/Tonks please, it'd be cool for him to have an 'inside man', if you will, in the hunt for Harry Potter. ^_^ Good luck writing it.

 

If you look at it from a psychological point of view then you don't need anything to happen, JKR wrote cannon Harry as if he grew up in a perfect house hold with the way he acts, which is wrong.

Bowlby, who was considered an expert in child psychology, found out that more than 80% of juvenile thieves never formed a secure attachment, and Harry would have formed a secure attachment, but then suffered from deprivation.

A secure attachment is where the child prefers being in the company of one person more than the others, most probably Lily. Later on he would have formed attachments with James, Sirius, Remus and Peter to the point where any of them could look after him.

Now Rutter (1981) concluded that children become juvenile thieves when they suffer deprivation, which is where the people they formed attachments with leave them, but only if the situation before was distressing. Now in Philosophers Stone it mentions Harry having dreams of a green light from the killing curse. Hearing your parents die would count as distressing, so Harry would suffer from deprivation.

He could be pulled out of this by Sirius, Remus or Peter, yet none of them visit or get to keep him, he is shunted away to the Dursley’s, who clearly act like they don't want him. This should have lead to Harry being an avoidant insecure attachment, where he tries to avoid adults and to a lesser extent fellow children.

Now as cannon Harry behaves nothing like that you can conclude JKR knows nothing about psychology. However if you wanted to make Harry a criminal who suffered little or no remorse for his actions, as he would do going on psychology, he would be a psychopath.

To make this applicable in post GoF then it is simple, he has formed attachments with his friends, who don't write to him a lot in cannon, and no one else talks to him, it can take as little a two weeks for Harry to accept his friends didn't want him realistically and then it is simple he decides to take matters into his own hands. Stealing what he needs like copies of the Prophet or breaking and entering, which at post GoF Fudge would love to charge Harry with something.

For post OoTP you could say he remade his attachment with Sirius, and the loss of him made Harry revert to a more realistic psychological state, avoiding adults and to a lesser extent his peers, at which point it is entirely possible that Dumbledore would, acting completely normally as a concerned headmaster, not a manipulative one, make Harry see the Wizarding version of a psychologist. No doubt said psychologist could be in the employment of the ministry and Fudge seeing a chance to get some leverage over Dumbledore to endorse his stay in office and declares Harry a danger to his own health and locks him away. Then Harry breaks out, becomes a criminal everyone thinks is inane and work for there.

Post HBP would be a little harder to manage as he really only loses the Headmaster, who's main point is a caring sometimes friendly relative, but his death would be undeniably stressful for Harry with the search for the Horcrux and then finding out it's a fake and then the betrayal of Snape. To make it work you could have Scrimgeour find a report left by Fudge detailing his plan to have Harry psychologically evaluated and use it as leverage, Scrimgeour would use it as leverage over Harry. The psychologist would find several problems with Harry, such as fixation on Dumbledore's death, on Ginny, or his 'hero complex' and the psychologist would probably declare him mentally unsound. Harry then either makes a break for it and escapes leading to him being a dangerous criminal on the run, or someone form the Order helps him escape and becomes his spy inside the Order. The only major flaws with that is the fact Ron and Hermione would probably tell people about the prophecy and the Horcruxes, so something would need to be done about that.

That is just a few ways to have Harry become a criminal, while giving him a slightly darker side as if he had little to no attachments then he would feel a lot less remorse about killing or maiming Death Eaters or doing something illegal, whereas if you made it a normal cannon Harry on the run then he would still have morals.

I realise there are probably many better ideas; I just thought I should post several psychological reasons why he could become a criminal. I just get sick of seeing stories where Harry suddenly 'snaps' post OoTP and suddenly becomes this cold uncaring person who does what ever it takes, the change would be gradual.

There you go just a few ideas, don't mind if you use them, or tell me there are non applicable, but just thought I'd post them.

 

You'd have to do that one very quickly...there is only a six-eight week time period where that could be valid.

A couple of things on that one...

The basic idea of Dudley doing something to 'frame' Harry...pretty good, but does any of Dudder's 'gang' actually have the brains to pull it off?

Secondly, why does keeping the wand matter? It isn't need to apparate.

 

How about a very simplistic approach. Start with the cliché of Harry waiting up until midnight on his 17th to use magic, he uses magic then promptly receives an owl from the ministry for underage magic use. It details how the date does not officially change until 6 am on the next day in ministry records or some other such of bureaucratic tripe.

 

I think you should have Rufus talk to him, perhaps have Him come to the ministry. Not sure on that point. Then have Rufus ask about Voldemort's rebirth. Make sure Harry describes the ritual. Then once everything is over, Rufus again tries to Make Harry the poster boy. When Harry refuses and leaves, have Rufus charge him with participation in an illegal, dark , necromantic ritual. After all he did participate even if it was unwillingly, and the ministry has never let silly things such as morals and laws get in its way.

 

Better yet, when exactly was Harry born? Was he born exactly at midnight? Unlikely, but when an overbearing beuracracy says "Wait until you are seventeen" they mean not one moment before.