Harry as part of the mobile task force that deals with the action side of temporal investigations in the Department of Mysteries. (That is to say, he--and by extension the writers--can avoid getting bogged down by the logical/theoretical side of time travel.)

You want action? Adventure? Horror? Time travel? You get them all. And you can do extreme AU (steampunk as mentioned) and crossovers too, if an opportunity present itself.

 

Time Travel can include action/adventure/horror, so it looks like the best bet.

 

What sort of time travel is everyone thinking: peggy sue, hopping about history, or time loops?

 

Why can't it be both time travel AND steam punk? Please?

 

Harry Potter, infamous time traveler, has made a serious mistake. Trying to jump back into his 13 year old body, he missed the mark just a bit... and landed in Mrs. Norris's body. Now, Harry Potter-Norris, the cat (and his pet Squib, Argus), must prove Sirius' innocence, defeat Voldemort, deal with the mysterious stranger who somehow managed to tag along for the time travel, avoid discovery and fight off Crookshank's very forward advances, all at the same time. Will he succeed? You decide.

 

Arguing in the alternative, aren't there enough goddamn time travel stories out there? Not that a well written one wouldn't be welcome but how about something a bit more novel. Harry Potter + Horror is something I haven't seen all that often. It pops up every once in a blue moon but fics in that genre never seem to be as prevalent as one might expect in a supernatural setting.

 

I can't be the only one that would read the shit out of this.

 

Ched, that idea rules.

 

Some of these ideas are good for general stories but not suited to a round robin. We should be looking for story ideas which naturally dispose themselves to an episodic format.

 

CareOtters's time loops idea could be worth a shot. Episodic enough. Loop for more than a day or something, and if Harry dies it resets. Harry does his thing - in Hogwarts, prolly - but faces various random shit in each loop because consequences and ripple effect from the start of his loop et cetera. And each successive episode could include shoutouts or callbacks to previous loops ("Man that Giant Squid attack was intense in the last loop, I better not piss 'im off this time."), or it could even have this list of, like, challenges for Harry to overcome in the current loop. Each loop adds a new challenge for the next writer. Or something.

Time loops in, like, sixth year, for more than a day at a time. That's my vote.

 

Mmm, I certainly think time travel lends itself best to episodic format, and it also gives us the opportunity to explore all sorts of different settings. A time travel plot involving some sort of "home base" in the present from which Harry and co. go out on various "monster of the week" time travel missions.

I'm not sure about the longevity of a Groundhog Day style timeloop though. Seems like it could get old quite fast.

 

How about body-hijacking every time Harry Travels through time he ends up in a different body, often time in the bodies of people he knew, or knew of.

For Horror aspect he could end up as Narcissa during her wedding day or a Barty Crouch Jr. just as Death Eaters started Longbottom torture.

 

To expand on the "Harry and co. going on time travel adventures from a base in the present" idea...

Post-DH but not epilogue compliant.

It's January 2010 and Harry is 29 years old. He quit the Auror department 6 years ago following the collapse of his relationship with Ginny and boredom with Auror work in a nation at peace.

He's been working as a freelance curse breaker ever since, funding expeditions with his own money, and he's just hit the jackpot. It took a year's work to gain entrance to the hidden catacombs beneath Glastonbury Tor, and there he found, among other treasures, a mysterious and ancient magical device of great power.

He barely had time to celebrate. He's hauled into the Ministry, which demands that he turn over the device. Harry is reluctant to trust the Ministry. He negotiates a compromise: he'll loan it to the Ministry, so long as they include him in whatever they're doing with it. The Ministry agrees.

And so Harry gains access to the Ministry's greatest secret: a unit dedicated to the study of history and the timeline. Previously they were limited to time turners, but now, with Harry's device, they can travel through all of history.

A team is assembled. It'll be led by an Auror, and Ron Weasley is picked for the task. They also need a historian: Hermione. And of course, Harry insists that he go along too. maybe a couple others fill out the team.

Their continuing mission: to go back to historical periods and learn the truth behind the history, remaining undiscovered and not tampering with the timeline. The idea: one mission, one episode-chapter, one author, with chapter one being the set-up chapter.

Inevitably in each mission things always go wrong via interactions with the locals, and they end up having to act to preserve the timeline and return to the present safely, sometimes even becoming the actual cause of various historical events.

At some point a "series antagonist" could be unveiled. A villain who spans episodes and has some nefarious time-travelling goal.

In addition to the time-travel idea, you've got interesting interactions in the older trio with a complex past. Harry and Ginny didn't turn out well (why did they break up?) and how does Ron feel about that? How does Harry, natural leader that he is, feel about Ron being the leader? What does Hermione think about Harry abandoning them to go off and be a curse breaker? And of course you have "back home" storyline possibilities involving Ministry politics.

 

Time has been called a river by many philosophers, both in the Wizarding World and without. Some have said it is perilous at best, treacherous at worst, to wade against the natural current plodding us along each day. We even have the most famous example, of Camelot, known to both our cultures as warning. But I disagree; when even the Killing Curse comes up short, just how much more deadly can it be to swim against the flow of Time?

As it turns out, not much more at all, for an ocean; once you've learned the undertow, and what appeases the leviathan and sharks, and avoid the abyss where things out of horror are perpetually caught in loops. Once you know how to spot a storm of change brewing, and where best to settle in on the little islets of immutable course dotting the inhospitable waves, to brace yourself and not be swept away to a world much-changed. Signed, Harry J. Potter, 1764 AD, aged(collectively) 294.

*shrug* Just throwing it out there. Harry(etc) doesn't necessarily need to be employed by the DOM to go buggering around in Time, though he could have begun there to get a basic understanding. Being Harry of course means that he winds up too deep. The DOM may or may not be one of the islets of stability(being that certain people, places, or events must exist in one form or another regardless of what else has been changed). Could run into other Time Swimmers. Maybe run into Chronos, who keeps the horrors locked at the farthest point of time from humanity.

EDIT: And then, of course, Taure posts in the time I spent fiddling with this, oi.

 

Harry Potter ends up as the head of the Time Department, and is in fact, responsible for both allowing his younger self to get away with illegal meeting with himself and in the first place is responsible for getting Hermione her time-turner, since after getting the position he has to do paperwork that stretches into the past, allowing him to sign permission slips of the past while in the future.

What follows is silly adventures in time, trying to fix the timelines ala Time Squad?

 

Harry Potter: Time Bureaucrat.

 

Tragedy/Horror/Suspense. I love me some grimdark. :mrgreen:

(Unrealistic expectations aside, DLP would probably fare best in crowd-writing a Humor story.)

 

Just FYI, if this idea is not used, I'll try developing it into a full Bunny.