Half-Blood Prince's Challenge #1 - Fallout (Either blame or give credit to ip82 for the name; depending on whether you like it or not)

Challenge:

After reading a thousand of the same 'Harry goes through the veil and finds a new perfect dimension' fics I decided to put my own spin on an old and worn idea. I want an author to write a Harry goes through the veil fic with a less perfect twist.

Here's a link with a bit of info that I liked. Thanks to ip82 and Dark Oblivion for helping!

The Rules (More like guidlines):

1. After and even during the war the veil was used to send war criminals to their 'Death'.
2. A corrupt ministry official sends Harry through the veil.
3. Rather than finding death on the other side, Harry finds a world torn more by war than his own.
4. The death eaters sent through the veil are sent to random drop points in this new world and could pop up anywhere from in the middle of the Atlantic to within Hogwarts herself. So now their are two of some of the worst of the Death Eaters under Voldemort and the Light Side is highly outnumbered.
5. The Harry Potter in the other dimension died in a fight that the original Harry lived through thanks to the extra Death Eaters that came through the veil.
6. There are no horcruxes or Deathly Hallows in the new dimension. Actually, if the author wishes, they can forget HBP and DH completely and make up their own little back story for the war in the first dimension based on there rules.
7. By the end of the first dimension's war the second has been nearly taken by the dark. With a huge boost in the Dark Lord's forces the Light Side could barely save themselves by fortifying in different key locations across the globe.
8. The muggles were another matter entirely. Almost all muggle civilization was destroyed in the European and American regions beside small armed rebel groups living below ground where wizards wouldn't patrol. Only those countries that had enough time for the magical Governments to supply heavily warded locations even partially survived after Voldemort took England and went after the world. (you can keep the story just within England if you wish, but the muggle Government must be nearly destroyed after Voldemort was able to take the wizarding world.
9. This is to be an action/adventure fic with lots of fight scenes and such. Other side genres like romance or maybe even a hint of comedy may be added but they should be background to all the exploding shit.
10. The goal of this fic is the save the second universe. There is no way back to the first.
11. No emo bullshit! No slash! And Ginny died in both dimensions!

Example Beginning: (I'm not to good of a writer but this is sort of how I imagined it.) (Rereading this I can only cringe. I am really not a very good writter. I haven't quite got down the showing not telling part yet. BTW, the beginning part was more summary than story. I didn't want have to make it to long.)

The day had finally come when Harry could rest. Voldemort was no more and it was at the hands of Harry Potter that the task was completed. But not all were so happy at Harry Potter's victory over the infamous Dark Lord Voldemort.

It was not Death Eaters, though, that wished Harry no more. Or, at least, those few that remained would not be around long enough to pose a serious threat to the battle hardened boy-who-lived.

Led by none other than Minister Percy Weasley, the Ministry of Magic was throwing the Death Eater scum through the Veil of Death held deep within the Department of Mysteries. This was the new prime means of capital punishment, now that officials no longer trusted the dementors to guard their high security prisoners and to 'take care of' the ones too dangerous to leave alive.

Percy Weasley, the very same man who was leading the deadly crusade against Death Eaters everywhere, was pacing back and forth in his office. He had finally reached the position he had been dreaming of since childhood and yet, things were not going exactly as planned. He would never reach the height of fame that he had always dreamed about because there was someone forever above him. There was someone who the world loved more than he; someone who the world loved more than their courageous minister who had forever changed the world when he made a stand in the 1997 Ministry elections.

Harry Potter would forever be the greatest hero alive after vanquishing the Dark Lord. And, if allowed to continue existing, he would surely only become more famous. He would surely take whatever chance of great fame and fortune Percy had left. Percy had always been the most ambitious Weasley son. He would show himself just how far his ambition would take him that night.

Harry Potter took the letter from Hedwig's talons. 'The Minister wants to see me, huh?' While he had never agreed with a few of Percy's dirtier tactics, such as throwing every Death Eater he could get his hands on through the Veil, he and Percy had grown to have a better relationship than Harry had ever had with any other higher minstry official. Percy at least seemed to have his heart in the right place. And, after Penelope's death, it was hard to blame the guy for reacting so badly. If Ginny had died before rather than after he had found out she was drugging him with love potion than perhaps he would have reacted the same way.

Harry picked up the portkey and tapped it three times with his wand. He smiled when he saw Percy approaching as he landed. His smile faded as he saw the two score of aurors stepping out from the shadows of the giant, familiar room. Percy was smiling almost fondly as he stepped forward.

"I guess this is where we say goodbye, Harry." He pointed behind Harry and Harry turned his head swiftly as he went to pull out his wand. Harry felt Percy's boot slam into his chest as he took in the object behind him in shock. As he was swept through the curtains of the veil of death he wondered just what death would feel like.

Harry landed hard on his back with an 'oomph!' of pain. If there was one thing Harry had never expected death to feel like, it was a painful oomph as he fell on his ass. He could almost believe that he had done nothing but fly through the curtains and that he would be able to stand up and kick some Percy Weasley ass once his head felt a little better. It was the sunlight shining brightly even through his lidded eyes and the breeze that tickled the tip of his nose that told him otherwise.

Harry sat up slowly, caressing his aching head where it hit the hard earth. Shading his face from the sun, he slowly opened his eyes only to snap them closed again with an achy sigh. He definitely had a light concussion from that fall. Picking up his wand he tapped the back of his head where the pain was and mumbled an incantation. The pain went away and he blinked open his eyes.

Multiple pops sounded in the air around him as he went to pick up his wand and stand up. The ground behind him was peppered with multiple spells only a second after he rolled instinctively towards the direction he had heard the least popping from. He leaped from his roll at the first person he saw and took her down with him. He moved his wand tip to her neck and shouted,

"Stop now and she won't get hurt!" As long as it was only being used against the badguys, he really didn't care if he had to take hostages. Anything to survive. He was surprised when a familiar voice growled,

"You touch her and I'll kill ya, lad." Harry looked up in shock to see Mad-eye Moody squinting down at him with one glass eye and an eye patch. He looked around at the others that had apparated in and was shocked ever further to see a dozen of his old friends. Including Mad-eye there was Kingsley, Podmore, Vance, Neville, and Remus just to name a few. He let out a shocked cry when he looked down at his hostage to see a snarling but obviously frightened Nymphadora Tonks.

"The Order? Tonks? What the fuck...?!" He went to roll off of her only to have her use his movement to get the upperhand. He soon found a wand in his neck and a knee pressed far too tightly against his crotch.

"Tonks! What are you doing? I'm sorry for jumping on you, okay! I thought you guys were death eaters!" Tonks didn't let up and called to Mad-eye,

"I don't know what's happening here, Mad-eye. This one looks like Potter! I thought their dimension was supposed to be just like ours!" It was Kingsley who said calmly,

"It doesn't matter who he is, Tonks. The Dark will be here any second and we need to get out of here before they come. Stun him and use the Portkey. We'll find out just who he is when we get back to the castle..."

 

Shit, oops sorry, my previous post was wrong! Ummmm, as to this challenge, it would probably make a better humour fic that serious fic. Admittedly you could make a decent action fic from it, but I forsee it coming out more like Nonjon's A Black Comedy (nice update btw Nonjon) that anything else.

 

If someone wrote this, I would not mind in the least if it was comedy based as long as it had tons of good action scenes. I can imagine a few places right now where some really funny scenes could be added in, but if someone writes this I want a lot of shit being blown up. I want guerrila warfare and a heavy amount of war scenes.

 

I disagree. I can't see a single element of comedy about this, and I'm not sure if you're thinking this should be a comedic fic because of the similarity in premise (dimension-veil-jumping) to Nonjon's Black Comedy?

I love the challenge by the way. It sounds very neat - again though, it is a premise and not a plot. As a setting though, brilliant. Nice work.

 

You're right that there is truly very little place for humor in this new world, but if someone wrote this fic with a comedy base than they could forget all about that fact with ease. Also, while it is not a happy place I also don't want any emo bullshit (look at the rules ). Bad things could have happened left and right in the past but once he gets to this new dimension the emo angst should be kept to a minimum. I_hate_angsty fics.

 

The problem, IMO, is that I can't see a fic where Harry the Battle Hardened Warrior Mage Dude hunts down marauding psychpathic Death Eaters being massively interesting. It would be action scene after action scene, and whilst action is certainly enjoyable, there has to be plot development outside of it.

 

What I wrote in the other thread:

However, looking at the challenge version of this idea, I don't think that you're thinking big enough.

This alternative dimension would have been recieving the worst of the worst of wizard-kind for thousands of years (JKR said that the veil was there before the Ministy was). There's no way that the alternative world is going to be even slightly like our Harry Potter universe. The war with Voldemort would never have taken place in this alternative universe, because 100 Dark Lords have taken over in the past, and the world is now in a post-apocalyptic state. Complete anarchy. It'd be like the opposite of canon: the status quo is rule by Dark wizards, but occasionally a powerful light wizard (the equivalent of a Dark Lord) tries to take over to restore order, before he or she is put down ruthlessly.

Similarly, the Muggle world will never have progressed to the point of their current level of technology, because the multitude of Dark wizards won't have had light-sided wizards from stopping them from killing all the Muggles hundreds of years before the HP stories are set. Why wait until the 1990s before killing off the Muggles, if you've had no opposition for hundreds of years, other than competition from other dark wizards?

 

I like Taure's rendition of the challenge the best. Harry would be that powerful light-sided wizard, would search for his equivalent of Death Eaters, only the rest of the world, dominated by Dark Lords would already be at each other's throats.

 

@Taure - Actually that was my original idea (besides the hell bit which to me seems a bit 'meh'.) I wanted the new dimension to be nothing like the old dimension. I wanted the portal to have been being used since the time of the founders. Then whoever writes this could play with all sorts of new ideas that we don't get in canon Potter. Which was my original intention.

But then I thought about it, and ip82's advice, and I thought 'this is fanfiction! It's not Harry Potter anymore if I just take out the main character and stick him in an entirely new world.' So, in the end, I decided to go for a happy medium. In this world the veil hasn't been open for nearly as long. It has only been open since Grindelwalds time and it was only recently that it was used to throw in criminals (i.e. During the second war). But you still get a lot of the action and a lot of new open plot ideas. Just not nearly as many as if he went into a world which had constantly been reinforced with dark wizards since the founders' time.

EDIT: I may just decide to go ahead and make that challenge, as was my original intention before I 'thought better' of it. Would it be sort of lame to make such a similar challenge right after this one- even if the second challenge was my original idea?