Generic:

Harry Potter -- Master of Death

After uniting the Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter becomes the Master of Death and absorbs the Hallows into his body.

But what does that grant him?

Elder Wand: The ability to bend the rules of magic. It does not make Harry more powerful but, instead, allows him to do things that, would otherwise, be impossible, such as creating gold, food, people, souls, gifting magic, removing magic, etc.

Invisibility Cloak: Immortality -- he can still die, but after 7 years, his body reforms and his soul is returned.

Resurrection Stone: The ability to bring the dead back to life, but for the price of an equal soul. So, if you wanted to bring Albus back to life, you would have to find someone of equal value to exchange.

Totally generic and not really my cup of tea.

Or you can go with Harry absorbing the knowledge of every spell cast with the Elder Wand.

 

That story was What You Leave Behind, btw.
And IIRC it was Sirius and Snape.

 

If I have any recommendation along these lines, it's that Harry doesn't need to become better than Riddle, or even equal to him, in order to win. This isn't a video game where 'a 65th level warlock has no chance of losing to a level 30 paladin'. In point of fact, Harry's greatest asset here should be his need to rely on others to compensate for the shortfall.

Harry doesn't need curse-breaking skills- he knows Bill Weasley. He doesn't need to have encyclopedic knowledge of curses and counter-curses. Hermione is there for that, and only the curses actually used against them will matter. There are very few curses without a defense, and they are well-known. He doesn't need to be able to dual-cast. Ron and Ginny can shield while he sends curses and the Twins toss traps and Neville sneaks up from behind with a freaking epic sword. Harry doesn't have to be able to fight him one-on-one. He has a gang.

Tactics to leverage Riddle's ego should be enough, if they can truly assess what will work and what to do if they're wrong. If Riddle is the Tyrannosaur, then Harry and his mates need to work like Velociraptors. If three second-tier wizards can't take Riddle down, you bring ten. The key factor is being ready when the fight begins. The best way to do that is to start it when you're ready and they're not.

 

Well,

Thanks for laying out the final battle in my Taking Umbridge. You Ass! (Not that I have it typed or anything, but that's pretty much how it's going to go).

 

I agree. That'd be the technically correct, believable and convincing way of doing it.

Having Harry earn all of these skills himself, gaining shitloads of powers, preparing and planning carefully and utterly whooping Voldemort's ass is more fun, though.

 

It is, and it's a 300k word fic, as I'm learning to my own frustration. And here, I thought WAVC would be 80-100k when I first started. My story beta at the time laughed at me.

 

Has to earn it

For a true Harry story to show he's advanced powers to be plausible, he must truly earn them. Only through training and my personal favourite is a apprenticeship with a true master of wizardry. Just my own thoughts

 

Honestly, I would rather read a cunning Harry. Some fics have realistic developments regarding his powerlevel, and I could believe that with the right amount of drive he could become by the end of the series competent enough to hold his own or even win against people like Moody, Dolohov or Snape. Unfortunately, Voldemort and Dumbledore are on a league of their own, so Harry will not win by challenging Voldemort to a direct duel, but by stacking the odds so much on his favor that the only possible outcome is his victory. 'How' is the main question. I think the fic What Would Slytherin Harry Do hinted that Harry did something like that but I'm not sure.

 

I agree that Harry has to earn it, but I don't think training is sufficient for plot-determining powers. If a power is going to determine the plot, I think it has to be earned via plot. So, for example, Harry's Patronus Charm "solved" the plot of PoA, but was also earned for plot-related reasons (weakness to Dementors which attacked him repeatedly).

Simply referring to Harry going through a routine and getting better doesn't feel like he's really earning it. The problem is that while Harry feels the struggle of working at his abilities, we don't. It's much easier to read a training sequence than to actually train XD

 

I removed all the tru-isms for clarity. Consider doing the same.

As the reader, there's only so much of walking the marathon with him that can be endured. Go too detailed and the story drags.

On the other hand, if you skip to the end after a few funny moments, it feels too easy and discerning readers treat it like a cop-out. Worse still, the plot of the canon is time-limited as soon as Voldemort returns to full size, leading to equally-improbable shortcuts to competence via skill download, time dilation or an enabling epiphany (sometimes retranslated as 'taking the blocks off his magic').

[I'm suddenly having a resonance with Ed Harris as Gene Kranz in Apollo 13, showing on the blackboard that the solutions offered so far leave a significant gap that won't bring the astronauts home.]

The optimal solution seems to be to start the story after the grind, or intersperse training/epiphanies/sacrifice bonuses with plot-meaningful action or drama scenes.

...

er, ran out of steam on this thought, so I have no conclusion aside from 'it's harder than it looks'.

 

How about the Triwizard Tournament as plot device?

Fake!Moody still has his original plan of getting Harry through the tournament, but he decides to take a more hands-on approach. He actively teaches Harry from the get-go.

He convinces Harry to take a vow of silence to keep everything secret and Harry agrees, because outside help is frowned upon, but he knows, that the other champions are already years ahead and get help by their headmasters. Dumbledore knows about it, but he wouldn't think twice about the secrecy and Moody helping Harry.

The real reason for the secrecy is however so that fake!Moody can have fun with Harry by being an incredibly unforgiving and cruel teacher, which Harry accepts, because he thinks Moody was just shaped by war and fighting dark wizards his whole life. Furthermore fake!Moody uses his time to poison Harry's mind with ideas and opinions about various people (Snape, Lucius, the "traitors").

Over the year Harry's classmates start to notice some changes in Harry (temper, skill, etc.), some are concerned, some think it's just the strain from the tournament and others just don't care. Harry believes that the gains outweigh the pain and knows that he needs the teaching, so he keeps coming back for more. And knowing just who Moody actually is the reader is left wondering what Barty is up to.

I have something like Harry's first year with Quirrell in Santi's the Boy Who Lived in mind.

 

Personally, I think there is massive difference between power, and skill.

Making Harry powerful is a mistake many writers make. Power is easier to write, sure, but its also boring to read about. Having his spells be simply more powerful than his opponents completely robs a scene of any tension, because you know reading it that, for example, his stunner will always beat his opponents. Therefore, he can always beat his opponents.

Its the same for giving some bullshit new ability. Basically what it means is that the writer can always either give him another ability, or make his current one stronger. Parselmagic is a good example, because the author can always give Harry a new "super" spell whenever he wants.

Making Harry skillful, however, means that he has to think up some way of getting out of trouble. Because he's had to work for it, it means that he can't pull something out of his ass, because he hasn't worked for that, too.

 

It also has the failing of needing to lower everyone else's skill level for him to stand a chance. Voldemort and Dumbledore did things with magic that people had never seen before. Lily, Snape, James and Sirius all mastered difficult magics at a very young agen(multiple kinds of adult level magic) . Even if you put Harry on the same level as Snape (extremely talented in one or two areas) Harry will still not have a chance against Voldemort.

Even then other death eaters shouldn't be beaten by a talented 16-18 year old unless they're highly incompetent. The advantages that Harry has to have need to overcome years of experience and likely similar or just slightly lesser talent in the same field. Yet even if you removed all of the death eaters Harry should still not be able to take on Voldemort, whose skill was prodigious and experience measured in decades.

The point is that power and skill aren't two completely different things. Using deus ex to give Harry more of one is not any better than giving him more of the other, at the end of the day you've still contrived to give to give your protagonist an advantage he 'earned' because you've said so. Being clever is usually much more satisfying for the reader but any device that gives one combatant an advantage over the other is going to feel contrived when it lets one person completely dominate the other, especially if the one dominating is in their teens and the one that can't do anything is an adult.

 

These parts stick out to me as a huge area of confusion for writers.

At what point is it realistic for Harry to reach a point of 'mastery' for a skill?

Unless it's an extreme AU, Harry only begins to practice any magic at age 11. At what point is it realistic for him to be competent? 14? 16? That's only after spending a couple of years taking a two hour course, twice a week, for about 32 weeks out of the year, which is about 128 hours a school year.

This doesn't account for homework, and the weeks/hours are an estimate. But this doesn't seem like enough time to be SKILLED at an area of magic.

Lily and Hermione studied more in their free time which is what made them above average in skill.

Sirius, James, and Snape were all raised in magical households and probably had more time pre-Hogwarts to be acquainted with magic. Especially Sirius and Snape, who I could imagine had households that primarily focused on magic above muggle means of living.

I'm rambling but my conclusion is: Harry (Post 3rd Year, I can't imagine a 12 year old being anything amazing) has to be both above average with his power, and has to be consistently studying to be on par with an adult wizard.

 

You can be highly competent at a skill (even a combat one) at a 'young' age (16-18) if you've studied it for years. Those people are motivated and driven to succeed, of course, and have lots of support in multiple ways but it's definitely possible to be a more skilled combatant at a young age than the average person. The trick in this case is that the main villians in the HP series have good reason to also be motivated and studied in combat magics, so it doesn't make a lot of sense one way or the other (skill vs power) to be his main advantage, as opposed to being cunning and planning beforehand (Ambushes, nullifying a main advantage an opponent has, etc.). Having Harry have more 'power' or 'skill' is wholly irrelevant for which you chose, because at the end of the day it's a deus ex by the writer to power up the protagonist.

 

Canon doesn't do a great job at sword and sorcery action and is more plot driven in its attention to magic than a hard sci-fi approach would be. In my own musings I find myself drawn toward creating magical processes and items. Then I realize that I don't have a story I want to tell and these things become akin to the skills described in a rpg or like attributes on the back of a Magic card.

If Harry was powerful enough he might be able to shirk his involvement in the war and go see the world, do any number of things. But what is the story I want to tell, is it interesting enough to spend the time writing? The trappings of the HP universe make it a fun place to play but most stories lack a plot that is good and characters that are enjoyable, rather than a more exiting than cannon protagonist.

So power Harry right up, cool magic one of the things that keeps everyone coming back for more, but have a story to tell, and make it a good one.