Ok, divination has in the books been portrayed as a more or less useless branch of magic. However, it has been shown to not be as nonsensical as it's made out to be in a few occasions.
So my idea is, what if the stuff Trelawney says about needing to have "The Eye" are true--and Harry just happens to have this eye. Suppose he picked up a Tarot deck when he was in grade school, possibly encouraged by some cooky librarian who was into that stuff, and actually made successful predictions. Suppose he has some hints of the future that allow him to better plan his decisions--these could progress into full fledged visions as he develops this ability. Also, he could use divination to get a sense of what his enemies are up to, their real intentions, etc.

 

That would be interesting, but there would have to be some way to block or make his Divination ineffective or it would just be Super!Harry who knows what exactly what to do. And that would be boring.

 

This isn't a bad idea at all. Actually, it has some serious potential.

It'd be nice to use this as a path to slightly-revamp Harry's character. It'll also bring him into a more specific conflict with the Dursleys. They'll have a new point of contention to focus on. His family will come down hard on Tarot cards, and the school probably won't much like it either (they never liked that kind of stuff at any of the schools I went to in the 90's).

So, who is he going to practice his readings on? If it's the kids at school then he might have to do it surreptitiously, or out in the open like a school play/act. Perhaps he plays a fortune teller in a Halloween carnival.

And how will he find out that he's right... that his predictions have truth? Will he instinctually feel it and follow the person to see, or will he be as surprised as anyone else when the stuff he was saying becomes reality?

Either way, that might mean introducing, even briefly, OCs.

Alright, that's part of the setup, where does the plot go from here...

Yak.

 

Well, to avoid a super!Harry, it'd be important to not allow the rest of his magic talents to far surpass those he's shown in canon--so that even if he had extra knowledge of stuff, he'd still have to work to employ that knowledge productively.
Also, successfully applying divination would require a learning curve, with the techniques taught in divination class, for instance, each serving a separate purpose, or with some superposition but some unique parts.

Divination, even for those who have "The Eye", isn't as much of a scientific form of magic as the others are anyway, so that it can't be asked to perform on command, at least for heavy duty stuff like prophetic visions.

Well, there are some adaptations of Tarot style divination for use with the regular English pack, so that'd be a way to surreptitiously do it I guess.

Yea, the school-fair setting isn't a bad idea, also on other kids--this allows for a double-whammy by removing the completely far-fetched scenario of Harry having had absolutely no friends in Primary school. Seriously, this was supposedly because of Dudley's bullying, but does that really make that much sense? He's fat, but he's apparently strong enough to qualify as a bully, except the book notes that Harry's generally fast enough to escape Dudley, so why would Dudley's classmates be that afraid of him? And why does Dudley care that much about whether Harry has friends in school or not? They live together, so Dudley can torment Harry at his leisure, no matter how many friends Harry has. I guess you could say Dudley's insecure, and he feels threatened by whatever natural charisma he sees in Harry, but I have a hard time imagining him policing the entire school just to keep Harry isolated, not when he's supposed to be a lazy, unmotivated slob at home. You give him an ice cream bar and he'd probably leave you alone.

Of course, the real purpose behind this contrivance is that Rowling needed a way to extend Harry's hardship beyond his home life. The problem is, only the Dursleys would enforce his isolation, and only Dudley would be in a position to do so, and so we end up with Dudley the Spoiled Bully. Really, Harry probably would make more sense as the school bully, since he's the one with all the pent-up anger, the abusive home, the lack of affection and moral direction, etc. Dudley doesn't need your lunch money, because he can call his mom on his cell phone and have her pick him up from school and take him to Pizza Hut for lunch. Then again, Harry may not have the self-esteem needed for effective bullying, but all I'm saying is that you can make a case either way. The thing is, OK, Dudley's bullying the whole school into avoiding Harry. Why should the faculty put up with this? It's not like the Dursleys are rich or something and they can bribe the principal into going along with their cruelty. You'd think all they'd have to do is punish Dudley or just talk to Harry for five minutes and that'd put an end to the whole ordeal. At least, I assume that Harry's (Muggle) teachers aren't petty caricatures of callous authority figures, too. If they were, Rowling probably would have devoted an extra chapter to enlighten me.
*ahem* Where was I?

Actually, either would be fine.
I have nothing against good OCs, in fact, if nothing else, the wastes experience of reading the Alchemist's Cell taught me that OCs can be better than the canon characters anyway.

 

This reminds me of Simon R. Green's Nightside series, which has a protagonist who has a Third Eye, a Private Eye with which he can find anything.... as long as he knows what question to ask. That's rather difficult, sometimes. Also his power can be shut down, but that'd take a very major-league power (the Devil for instance... that gives you the idea). John is a P.I. who investigates the weird. He's also the mortal son of a motherfucking powerul entity.

I had started a crossover once, but abandoned it... however, the setup has potential to be a great fic.

 

Another way to limit the 'Third Eye' and keep this from becoming Super!Harry would be to let Harry see several logical conclusions to any plan or action that he wants to set in motion. Figuring out which logical conclusion is the best one, and how to plan (and follow the plan) to end at that location would force Harry to be a more strategic thinker than we saw in canon. It would allow for a Smart!Harry, too. I like the concept, but so far I'm having problems envisioning the story itself.

 

I read a book like that. It's called Improbable by Adam Fawes and it's really quite good. Here's the book's website. http://www.improbablebook.com/about-improbable.html

You could make Harry like the main character, with epileptic seizures- and the Dursleys give him to a hospital to test drugs on. Harry would have the power to see every possible outcome to an event, and pick the one he thinks will work.

On the downside he couldn't acess it at will-at least at first, but as time goes on he learns to control it.

 

I'm not a huge fan of that. There is only one possible outcome for events--especially in the HP-verse, else there is no way the time travelling scene in PoA made sense.

 

I disagree. Had Remus taken his Wolfsbane Potion like he should have, he would have just turned into a normal wolf, not a werewolf. With Sirius not concerned with having to fight off a crazed Remus, he could have kept his eye on Peter, who may or may not have gotten away. When the Fudge would question Remus afterwards, he would tell him that Sirius is innocent, and Peters the bad guy. Harry would go live Sirius, and that would be that.

 

To agree with Humbolt here...the HP universe seems to be based around choices. Each choice can have large effects and smaller ripple-effects, too. Seeing different logical outcomes would be based on the choices he makes, etc, etc. Either way, if done right, this could be fun to read. If done wrong, it could end up quite painful for anyone attempting to read it.

Then again, it isn't my brainchild, either.

 

Don't really have much to say on the challenge itself besides that it could be interesting, but this ....

 

Seriously, Harry would pick up a normal deck of tarot cards, turn over six and get the Lord of Ruin every time. It wouldn't be very interesting.

 

Mordac's point is that in Harry Potter there is no "had X done Y". Things have to happen exactly as they happen. There are no alternative timelines - just the one, which happens only in one way, and no other. This is shown by the POA time travel scene in which, even if you have gone back in time, you can't actually change things.

This makes sense, because at the point in time at which you go back in time, any changes you may have made when you were back in time would have already happened, so nothing is changed.

 

This story has some interesting potential, but I think it would be more interesting if, like Trelawney, Harry went into a State and spewed forth some vague shit and then didn't remember any of it.

In elementary school, right in the middle of class, he suddenly blanks out, starts rambling about the green bike and the broken limb, or some shit. There are thirty kids in the school who ride green bikes. The next day, one kid, who does in fact ride a green bike, comes to school with a cast on his arm. He broke it falling off his bike. He gives harry a scathing look and says, "Fuck you, Harry. Fuck you."

That would really isolate him from the school because they would think he was cursing them all, not predicting the future.