It's a common complaint that Harry was too reactive/passive in HBP. After spending OotP leading the DA, and then finding out the prophecy, he spends his 6th year largely ignoring the war.

You see plenty of fics that fix this problem. However, the vast majority of fics which attempt such a fix do so in a way that is not believable as an alternative route canon could realistically have taken. They either give Harry instant and easy power-ups, or an intelligence boost that has him becoming a walking library in the space of a single summer, or otherwise go the indy!Harry political route which disrupts the canon framework.

So, how would you have done the 6th and 7th HP books with a more proactive Harry, assuming you are restricted to character arcs and plotlines which are plausible continuations of canon?

 

I would have built upon the DA. After the events at the end of the OotP, the young generation had a legitimate cause to feel disillusioned with the adults. HBP should have been about teenagers struggling to deal with adult problems and trying to supplant them. Something like a magical Lord of Flies.
DH could do with a couple of chapters dealing with Hogwarts resistance.

 

It's an interesting question, Harry can't really catch up to the big players as they have years of experience on him.
That leaves politics and becoming a figurehead , his name would have carried some weight specially after being proved right about Voldemort returning and his earlier accomplishments.
But then again Harry isn't exactly comfortable in the spotlight.
I guess he might become an efficient morale boost for the army with some development.

Other than that I'd go for a continuation of the Dumbeldore Army, he seems to have a certain knack for teaching and preparing the Hogwarts students would be a logical continuation of his character.
The parents of the students would be more inclined to help if their children take a position in the war, a ripple effect will take place.

edit: cleaned it.

 

Make Dumbledore more proactive in his education, meaning that Harry doesn't only get the barest amount of information and instead actually gains the tools he needs to realistically accomplish his goals (and not, as he does in Canon, through dumb luck). That would include giving him some useful spells I'd assume, but I was thinking more of teaching Harry generally useful shit (like how to deal with Globlins, the Ministry, the Order itself, etc.), oh, and also the hallows. Like seriously, Dumbledore believes Harry to be brave/upstanding enough to sacrifice himself to defeat Voldemort but he won't trust him with the elder wand? That shit dont make sense even in Canon, but just with a few changes you can handwave it so that Dumbledore actively works to ensure Harry becomes the Master of Death, giving him max chances to succeed/survive.

With those changes you could probably make it so that the 7th book seems more like a struggle between equals, or an open wizarding conflict, rather than Voldemort wins and Harry scurries around like a rat trying to check off his treasure hunt list. A Harry more involved with the war effort, be it through his influence at the Ministry or the Order might be able to delay the fall of the Ministry, or organise an effective resistance once it does fall. Harry as the Master of Death might also be able to do some cool shit personally, like defeating Bellatrix in person or some such. Of course I would still keep the 'sacrifice yourself for humanity' story beat cos I think it is genuinely powerful, but with those changes in the Half Blood Prince the world is your oyster.

 

The master of death was never implied to give any power though, plus it is a sudden power up.

 

If I remember correctly Harry was only proactive in OOTP because Ron and mostly Hermione pushed him to create DA and Hermione did most of the work setting that up. So in HBP to have Harry be canonically proactive we need to have Hermione encourage him. Problem is that Harry is trying to be proactive about Draco but not only does no one believe him, they actively try to discourage him from doing so. And obviously Dumbledore is being very vague on purpose, there's no reason he couldn't have told Harry about horcruxes before Harry got Slughorn's memory.

So first we need to solve the problems between the trio (the potions book and Lavender) and then have them support and encourage Harry.

I hope my knowledge of canon hasn't been infected with fics and that makes sense.

 

In the Department of Mysteries, Harry and friends survive an incredibly improbable battle against several Death Eaters after they were ordered to spare only Harry, and kill as many of the others as necessary. There wasn't any good reason for this Scooby-Doo chase sequence that wasn't nearly lethal enough. Rowling just couldn't pull the damn trigger on it, so all the Death Eaters just had to magically become incompetents. What will 100% give Harry the motivation and the slap in the fucking face necessary to stop dicking around with Quidditch and Cho Chang and Slughorn's dumbass parties is for the Death Eaters to win the fight, obtain the prophecy, and literally murder most of his friends right in front of him. The Order then shows up around the same time they would have shown up, and manage to drive off the Death Eaters, mostly because they already had what they wanted.
If you don't want Harry to live as a mostly normal young man with hobbies, school life, and romance, and instead be a magical Punisher, slaughtering his friends is the best way of getting there. I understand the problem with a lot of AU stories is that they change something that should not have logically happened. I contend, therefore, the best way to have this change take place that would realistically happen is to undo one of the most unrealistic decisions that the author ever made. There is literally no question the Death Eaters should have won the fight. For most of the D.A, danger was something they knew existed, but they had never actually confronted it before. And.... none of them froze up? None of them tried to surrender, only to get murdered with their hands up?
Just start the AU at the beginning of the summer or something; there'll be some flashbacks that explain how they got there. Harry's crushing guilt is just too painful and too familiar for Dumbledore to ignore. He tells Harry the truth about everything, as well as he understands it, and that's where the story begins.

 

I quite like that idea, I don't think its one I've actually seen done in anything I've read. Harry loses several of his friends at the DoM, maybe he's even the only survivor. That could be a massive catalyst, much more so than losing Sirius is on its own.

And you get some quite interesting drama out of it as well, the other Weasley's split over blaming Harry for Ron and Ginny dying. Someone who turns out to have been in love with Hermione blaming Harry for her death. Luna's dad writing hatchet jobs in the Quibbler about Harry. That sort of thing.

 

Thank you; those are good ideas. In a year or so when I'm done with my current story, I might go back to this idea. I had a thought that Ron could be the only survivor apart from Harry, but still be totally fucked up by the brain thing as well as multiple dark curses. In that state, the Death Eaters would have left him for dead rather than actively try to kill him. We're already losing three Weasleys, and it would make lead everyone to believe that Harry's favorite surviving was not a coincidence.

 

Firstly, I'm fine with the death eaters being more competent, I'm not quite okay with them killing the kids in cold blood aside from maybe Bellatrix.

Malfoy isn't a -wizard- child killer. Maybe muggle, but I think most of the DE's would have moral quibbles with just blatantly killing children. Even groups like the KKK still had members who wouldn't kill a white kid who was hanging out with a bunch of african americans.

So, I think back off the edge a bit and, instead, remove just hermione and ron. Ron get's brainified. Hermione killed by maybe bellatrix or one of the other zealous death eaters for being a muggleborn.

You still have a potential supporting cast in the survivors and you still motivate harry with the loss of his two closest friends. But having the DE's killl them all just breaks my suspension of disbelief.

 

Interesting point @Arthellion, it doesn't even have to be that all his friends get killed. Maybe Hermione gets killed, and the brains put Ron into a catatonic state. Beyond that the others could all get badly hurt. A lost wand arm, a horrific scar, nightmares and ongoing trauma. All of those could play a major role in how those characters (and other characters) interacted with Harry going forwards.

EDIT: I'm just imagining a scene between Harry and maybe Neville or Luna where they say "You realise I've not slept properly since last June? I can only sleep a couple of hours a night Harry, I can't focus on anything, I'm jumping at shadows, and I'm terrified to close my eyes. I've not finished a single bit of homework this year, and I've got detention just about every night. And its your fault. What made you think we could fight Death Eaters? Who do you think you are, Dumbledore?"

 

I have to agree that it would not be something they would enjoy doing. The thing about them is that they go straight to the killing curses at every opportunity, and if they leave pureblooded kids alive, but permanently disabled, then they can go back to being concerned about them when the war is won. Malfoy tells the other Death Eaters that they can kill the others if necessary, meaning getting the prophecy is more important to them than keeping the purebloods like Luna, Neville, and the Weasleys alive. He even tells them to leave Nott to his injuries. Most of them would probably only stun the supporting cast, but if Bellatrix or another Voldemort loyalist felt like it, they would very well murder a few of them. Remember that a lot of these people are fresh out of Azkaban, some of them aren't really ideologues, and Lestrange's interpretation of blood purism, 'blood traitors are worse than mudbloods' or something like that, allows for killing several of Harry's friends. Even if Malfoy were to change his mind and try to make the other Death Eaters capture them rather than killing them, they would only die later when Voldemort incinerated them because he has literally zero qualms about that sort of thing.
The final thing about them is they're not adults, but they're not exactly toddlers, and they're casting dangerous spells. I imagine most soldiers in Vietnam didn't really see themselves as child killers when they shipped out, but kids would literally run up to them with grenades. They shot the kid like they were ordered and had nightmares and flashbacks after that. So that could be something else the story explores; how the Death Eaters who weren't normally willing to kill children lived with their own split-second decisions.

 

I'd change the finale of GoF. The ending of that book has to cement in Dumbledore's mind the idea that at the end of everything, Harry has to be willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

At the end of GoF have Crouch's plan become partially revealed during the third task, enough that Harry knows he has to stop Cedric taking the cup. Harry goes willingly to stop Crouch taking them both, Cedric goes to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore immediately starts searching places with Godric's Hallow the first, obvious choice. It's when he checks the gaunt house at Little Hangleton he sees the lights at the graveyard and arrives in time for a resurrected Voldemort to flee.

Use this then as an excuse for Dumbledore to trust Harry with the prophecy and begin a few extra lessons. Combine this with the above idea of Dumbledore secretly attempting to ensure the hallow plan and bish bash bosh, Barry Scott here with a better fucking conclusion.