About the need for Harry to willingly go towards death: Pettigrew kills Cedric with a killing curse. Just have Harry recover from the shock of the portkey faster, then have him jump in the way to save Cedric. He sacrifices himself willingly, knowing that he is going to die. Horecrux gone.

Pettigrew uses blood from Harry (no reason it would not work from a fresh corpse), Cedric is still killed, and Harry wakes up to find a restored Voldemort talking with his Death Eaters nearby.

 

Silver Peas, I'd been thinking of something similar. To make it work though Cedric would have to live through the initial fight and then Riddle would have to execute him, not Pettigrew. Perhaps they would keep him alive to toy with for the rest of the DE's?

Also, I wonder what Dumbledore would really do if he knew that the one Horcrux that he actually cared about was destroyed. Since we seem to be trying to keep this fairly close to canon, I just can't see Dumbledore sitting back and relying on Harry as he was forced to in canon. He might have his flaws, but cowardice is definitely not one of them.

 

SP: I'd definitely read something like that. But have Wormtail use Cedric's blood instead. With the element of surprise on his side, and supposedly being just a corpse, Harry just might be able to escape with Cedric alive. How will the unsuspecting wizard react to having been an unwilling instrument of Lord Voldemort's resurrection?

 

I don't see why we need to be bound to Rowling's dictate that Harry is a Horcrux?

The more interesting consequence of Voldemort using someone else's blood to resurrect himself is the fact that Harry still has certain protections against him.

Whether or not that still results in Harry being able to perform a FACE MELTER with his bare hands, is of course up to the author.

 

Doesn't work like that until Voldemort has his blood as the reason Harry survived the curse in DH is because his blood in Voldemort's body tethered him to life.

 

That's exactly what I'd been trying to get across, enembee. JKR basically gave Harry a horcrux without the need for cold blooded murder or splitting his soul. It makes any changes to the rest of the series more interesting since Harry is anchored to life because of Voldemorts arrogance. Or at least I think so.

 

How about Harry and Cedric somehow (luckily or not, doesn't matter) managed to get away, but not before Harry lost enough blood for Pettingrew to be able to collect it and resurrect Riddle?

 

Blood of the enemy, forcefully/forcibly taken. So you'd have to come up with a good reason for Harry and Cedric to both escape after Wormtail takes Harry's blood.

 

Harry might be hit with some cutting curse during escape. It will be forcefully taken and I'm certain it's possible to pick it up from the ground with magic.

 

That gives me an idea of sorts:
Lets say Cedric ducks the killing curse and gets to the Cup, when he goes back to Hogwarts, they'll assume its Sirius Black, as Voldemort's top supporter avenging him. Harry has no way of getting back to Hogwarts, and get hit by a killing curse from Voldemort in the duel they have after the rebirth.

He either remains dead for a period of time and comes back as in DH, or a coma of sorts. Beyond that, he's pretty much off the grid and Voldemort would not be factoring him in his plans.

 

@Hashasheen: I could see a story working with your idea.

As a sidenote, LOL @ Nightfox getting you to change your sig , but back on topic:

I feel like Cedric should have easily ducked the curse - or at least made a token attempt. Some extra sweetness would be Pettigrew's AK hitting Harry, causing the shitbaby!Voldemort to die and incapacitate Pettitgrew in the process.

 

Nice, that would be a really original fic, but I don't see how it could go beyond a one shot or maybe a short story if Harry and Voldemort die and Pettigrew is captured.

 

He still has other horcruxes, so Voldemort would probably go all wraith/spirit-like as he did in SS.

As a slight alternative, perhaps Pettigrew's AK still misses Cedric, who manages to get the Cup and bail out. Harry ducks and dodges for a while, before shitbaby Voldemort gets impatient and grabs Peter's dark mark - summoning the others. Battle ensues, blah blah blah, then Dumbledore arrives after snatching the location from the escaped Cedric's mind.

A good author could play with the details. Thoughts?

 

I hate to admit it, but I can never see Harry beating Voldemort in a straight-up duel. Look at the last battle in DH, where Voldemort is at least holding his own against McGonagall, Slughorn AND Shacklebolt. McG and Slughorn along with (I think) Sprout, ran Snape out of the castle, at least implying that he was no match for the three of them (some might say Snape didn't want to kill any of them, but still...). And Snape absolutely wiped the floor with Harry at the end of HBP, hardly breaking a sweat and having time to taunt Harry as he whipped his ass. The reasoning for me is that Voldemort - who by the way duelled Dumbledore to a standstill at the MoM, is beyond a premier dueller - and Harry would have zero chance against him in a duel.

In CoS, the phoenix tears are the exact reason Harry survives, so I'm not sure what you're saying. One question I've had for a while now, is why didn't the basilisk bite in CoS kill the Horcrux in Harry's scar? It certainly killed the diary-Horcrux quickly enough, so why wouldn't it have done away with Harry's Scarcrux (I'm gonna copyright that...)

Not a bad idea, but there's still the whole bit about Harry needing to have his blood in Voldemort to "tether him to life" or whatever. Of course, Dumbledore in DH was very specific to Snape that Voldemort himself had to kill Harry, the implication being that if anyone else hit Harry with the AK, he might just die anyway, Scarcrux or not. Then again, Dumbledore was taking a gamble that Harry would survive at all, regardless of who AK'd him, since this was all new territory with all the Horcruxes used.

I like the concept of Harry's Horcrux being done away with earlier, and Dumbledore would definitely have to adjust his plans for Harry.

 

I guessing that either its another plothole or perhaps it was the fact he didnt die immediatly and was healed by Fawkes. And that begs the question of what effect would Phoenix tears have on a Hocrux, if Basilisk venom does destroy Hocruxes.

 

I don't know how the hell I managed to forget Fawkes healing Harry in the CoS. Let's call it a bad memory and move on.

On the venom not killing the horcrux there, it could easily be a plothole. But the horcrux could literally have been in Harry's scar, while the venom was in his veins. Who knows?

 

The basilisk not killing the Voldemort bit is easily explained. The horcrux is attached through Harry's mind and soul, while the venom attacked his physical body. Now if Harry actually died, then it would have been destroyed.

I have another thought... what is Voldemort's reaction to finding out that Harry is still alive? He's been obsessed with immortality since he was young, he read the book, studied the spells, he killed the people, and lost his good looks because of it. (Not that he really cared, because immortal.)

Then Harry comes around, and not only does he live through a killing curse twice, he also did it by accident. I assume Voldemort would raise the stakes considerably.

 

You're pretty much preempting and voiding (well, potentially) the entire prophecy this way. By removing the scarcrux, Harry has no further purpose for the entire fight. He can live just fine, no matter what happens to Voldemort, and Voldemort has no link to Harry anymore.

If someone else tracks down the horcruxes, and then destroys them, they can kill Voldemort without any involvement from Harry. And there is no need for Harry to be involved. Indeed, Dumbledore is more likely to completely sideline Harry, since he is so keen on letting the boy have a normal childhood.

Of course, that is the case with our out of universe knowledge of how the prophecy works (or at least a good enough reconstruction). Dumbledore might still think that Harry needs to be involved, even though that is very much unlikely, given his apparent knowledge of horcruxes.

Now, that wouldn't be much of a story, of course, so some twists are in order. Harry, after 4 years of being involved, isn't going to take being sidelined at all well. As his earlier adventures show us, if he isn't involved, he'll get involved on his own, and that rarely works out as planned.

It would be a bit mean, but the whole thing could center on a comedy of errors kind of approach. Harry always gets in the way, crashing any plans to deal with things made by the adults. Can play on his canon behavior, and the adults are actively encouraging him to focus on Quidditch and girls, yet he is all the more intent on doing his part.

No matter how much he tries, he isn't going to turn into a threat to Voldemort though, with his observed knowledge and drive. And it's very unlikely that the entire Elder Wand ownership technicality will go down the same way. So, Harry vs Voldemort, that'll be short...

Could perhaps provide Harry with a protection against the killing curse quite similar to what Voldemort has. So he won't get killed. The entire blood angle could work to let Harry get back up again Highlander style, after a period of recuperation.

Hmm, twisting that even more, you need to kill Voldemort, for death to stick to Harry. The boy is no more suited to killing Voldemort than anyone else, and indeed he has a psychological hang-up about killing, going by canon, so he is unlikely to do it anyway. On the other hand, he would now be the ultimate attack tool, since nothing will keep him down, as long as Voldemort carries his blood.

Could take this many directions from that point. Go for slapstick, and have Harry keep on dying in rather gruesome to amusing ways. A more serious angle would be to have as a sort of expandable trap trigger. He might die a gruesome death, but he'd be useful for the horcrux hunt anyway. (Could have something like the curse that took out Dumbledore in canon hit Harry instead. Harry then gets a mercy killing, and just gets back up after some time, no worse for wear, physically.)

The psychological angle could also be interesting, since Harry is going to die a lot, in all likelihood. It's not something he can share with others thought, since they are still quite mortal.

Anyway, you asked for what could happen next, and this should be a number of possible plot hooks.

 

This would be an interesting twist. If it actually happened and both Harry and Cedric got away, you can bet your ass there would be an entirely different sequence of events occurring. The most interesting bit would be if the Ministry learned that Harry survived being hit with the AK a second time.

It is quite possible Harry might have more things to worry about than Voldemort. The Ministry might decide to experiment on him to find out why he survived.

I do think Dumbledore might handle Harry differently if he realized he no longer had a horcrux in his head. The one thing to consider is that Voldemort would still be after Harry regardless of what might happen in the graveyard. Voldemort would still perceive him to be a threat and as such would want him eliminated. In this scenario, with the horcrux eliminated, Dumbledore might approach Harry's conditioning quite differently.

You would also have an very different Fifth Year playing out. Without the horcrux, Voldemort wouldn't have a connection to Harry and would have to figure out some other way to lure him to the Department of Mysteries.