I'd put this in the challenge section but it doesn't seem to have enough details to it. Basically Harry is really desperate to stop Quirrel from getting the stone, so when he looks into the mirror he's hoping to stop Quirrel. The mirror shows him a way to kill Quirrel and he does. Thus, we have the catalyst for a major change. Beyond this I havn't thought much.

 

While reading your idea another, similar, idea occurred to me.

Harry, in the same situation, looks at the mirror, wanting to know a way to stop Voldemort. The mirror, being highly magical and not bound by such things as time and space, shows Harry years worth of lessons in magical knowledge. Thus, we have a knowledgeable Harry.

The way you could get round Harry being too knowledgeable is by saying that he is only given the knowledge that he needed to defeat that Voldemort, i.e. a weakened Voldemort. Thus, while Harry is given more knowledge than the average wizard posseses, he is still not up to Voldemort's level.

 

You still end up with Harry getting instant knowledge/power, which is a red flag for many readers.

I've heard both sides of the "How Much Power Does The Mirror of Erised Have", and don't believe that the mirrow can show anything other than what it pulls from your brain. The only canon exception, the location of the stone, was designed by Dumbledore.

Of course, you can get around this by having someone else deposit their knowledge in the mirror years beforehand, but then you don't really need a mirror anymore.

 

This is idea for a long ass AU, starting from year one and probably spanning through hundreds of thousands of words. Your catalyst event is fine, but I think you'll need a LOT more material to make a proper story with this premise.

 

I didn't think the mirror can actually give anything to the person, outside of Dumbledore enchanting it to give the stone when "they want the stone, but not to use it." Hence, it couldn't just give Harry the knowledge. Raijin was on the ball when he said it could show "a way to kill Quirrell".

But if you count the mirror not being bound by time and space, it may just show Harry grabbing Quirrell's face.

 

It could, however, show him millions of pictures/whatever that implant the knowledge.

And Harry doesn't have to become instantly powerful. For instance, a scene where right after the knowledge, he tries a curse to bind Voldemort's spirit but fails miserably, and has to resort to the hand-to-hand tactic in Canon.

Then, it could be further modified by making the magical core somehting that grows, thereby ruling out many of the spells until Harry's at a respectable age. Again, another modification could be that the magical core keeps on growing with age, with no limit.

That could explain why Dumbledore's so powerful. It could also explain why Voldemort wants immortality...he'll get increasingly powerful, and never die at the same time.

So with this modification, you've got an extensively knowledgeable Harry, who isn't able to use the knowledge completely. So while he'll always be at the top of the class, something that the author might like, he'll also be bound by his age. Of course, you could make it so that his basic power level at birth was a lot larger than normal, thereby making him exceedingly powerful for his age, but still no match for Voldemort.

So now you have a premise that allows the story to run through all seven years of Hogwarts, which need not be described in full detail, and extends even after that, so that Harry is not completely capable of destroying Voldemort (who is still growing older, and therefore gaining a proportional amount of power) ever in his life.

This is where the Prophesied power comes in, so Harry has to use the prophesied power as well as his advanced knowledge to defeat Voldemort.

 

Yarrgh: Did the mirror implant knowledge of Harry's parents? Did it give his parents back?

I can't remember if it mentioned how long Harry spent looking at his parents in the mirror, but Dumbledore said that people had wasted away looking at it. Unless you're editing the mirror's properties to fit in with the AU, it just seems wiggity-whack. [Yeah. Wiggity-whack. I said it.]

 

Harry longed to see his parents, so the mirror showed him his parents. If he had wanted to see how to bring his parents back to life, it might have showed him bringing them back, and in watching that he would learn how to replicate its effects in reality. Possibly.

 

No, no, you're misunderstanding me.

At that point, Harry didn't know what his parents even looked like. The mirror showed him what they looked like, and so he learnt that. He learnt that his father's side of the family had knobbly knees, too

So what I'm saying is that in a split second, the mirror shows him millions of pictures, images that implant themselves into his mind. If it can store a rock, can't it store memories/knowledge, something that isn't tangible?

Maybe the mirror could be slightly sentient, like the Sorting Hat. Instead of enthralling Harry and making him waste away his life looking at his deepest desire, it instead captures his mind with Legilimency or whatever for a brief second, and forces a ton of knowledge into his head. Maybe it recognizes that he's the prophecized one, since Dumbledore's looked into it before, and it's scanned Dumbledore's mind to see what his greatest desire is. It therefore knows about the prophecy, knows that Harry needs the knowledge. And when Harry looks into the mirror in desperation and thinks 'I need to know how to beat Voldemort' it gives him all the knowledge he needs to do that.

@ Taure: The end of your post was also a possiblity, but in the interests of making Harry stronger, knowledge might serve him better. Though, if the author wants to take on an emotional tendency, the presence of his parents might also help him tremendously...like he gains the knowledge to do both things, bring back his parents and defeat Voldemort.

 

Isn't that what AU's are all about: editing canon and seeing what happens?

 

Yeah, but that wasn't part of the challenge. I was sticking with the mirror's original function, to show a person's greatest desire.

 

Well, the mirror didn't show Harry nothing new - he had seen his parents before, he just doesn't remember them.

Another twist on this challenge could be Harry using the mirror to gain knowledge slowly, like watching a movie customized to his needs. He would come to know a spell to turn redheads into sheep, or something like that, and watch it happen and learn it.

This could lead to him becoming inreasingly dependent on the mirror, fueling an addiction - a problem that the author can extrapolate and deal with. This will also help Harry to be antisocial, thereby eliminating the trio.

Has potential.

 

Just in case in reply to ip82, I have no intention of writing this just thought that it might help someone spark an idea for a story.

Furthermore, while its nice to give Harry knowledge and all of that I was thinking more of the effect and change in Harry's character due to killing Quirrel in a 'real' fashion. This doesn't even really have to span all of canon, just a few chapters detailing the changes then skipping a couple of years with highlights to the events that have happened.

 

I dunno. I was a little shocked, myself, that Harry was so damned chipper after literally murdering a man with his bare hands. If anything, that would impact his mind more than saying "Hmm...Avada Kedavra." Killing by magic seems to have a slight impersonality to it...but if you choke someone to death/grab on to them and burn them to ash with your bare hands....that has to leave a mark on your mind.

Yeah, sure, but he hadn't seen his parents' families, had he? THe mirror showed him his grandfather, uncles, aunts, great grandfathers and stuff on both sides of the family.He couldn't have known that his father's side of the family had knobbly knees and messy hair/glasses/both.

It showed him things that he didn't know before, and once he left the room, he still knew what the mirror had shown him, so its obvious that the knowledge given...is permanent.

 

Yes, well he fainted before he thought Quirrel was actually dead if i recall correctly. Though that leaves it possible to change so that Harry actually sees Quirrel dying which would do the same thing.

 

Don't use a Year One AU, that means you have to totally rewrite canon, and those fics are sually abandoned. Start in the summer after GOF/OOTP. Harry is doing w/e and thinks of the Mirror as a way to help him. The Mirror is a depository of knowledge from the various desires of thoussands of individuals, Harry discoveres this and somehow accesses the knowledge.

 

What about this--since Quirrel/Voldemort are right behind Harry when he looks into the mirror, couldnt the mirror leech off of Voldemort, knowing what Voldemort did and what he knows of how to undo it?

 

Theoretically it could do that if Harry desired Voldemort's knowledge, or you had this really twisted thing with Harry's scar but overall I don't think it'd work with the Mirror of Eirsed. Plus thats basically a cheap way to avoid the legimancy trick with Harry digging in Voldemort's mind.

 

Step back a moment. Year one Harry was pretty open to impressions. He didn't want to be in Slytherin House because two people that he'd only recently met - Hagrid and Ron - spoke badly of the house and one boy who hoped to be sorted there made a first impression as a spoiled brat (Malfoy). Quidditch was cool because several of the wizards he'd just met thought so - and you get to fly. (Odd how nobody seems to focus on the fact that perhaps the one area where Draco and Ron agree is that Quidditch is cool. Probably for the best though, or else we'd see a swarm of Ron/Draco quidditch-inspired slashfics. ick)

Have Harry look into the mirror wanting to find a way to stop QuirrelMort - or the seperate Voldemort. Or just wanting to find a way to escape the Dursley's...

The mirror shows him learning from lots of books, maybe some rituals. It gives hints and leaves the definite impression that knowledge gives power and magical stregnth. Maybe it could even show some impressive looking fragments of duels and magical combat.

Not instant knowledge of how to do everything, but a kick in the pants to learn, to search for new ways to do things, and to take this seriously. ... and for those of you who like the darker Harry fics, what is there to guarantee that all that knowledge is good? Tom Riddle decided that learning more about magic was a GoodThing, knuckled down and put some serious effort into learning. Granted, he didn't turn out so well, especially in the later years, but it wasn't because he was an ignorant, uneducated git that didn't pay attention to his lessons.

 

Most kids are impessionable at 11, he just wanted the first magical people he met to like him. He is afraid of losing his friends, most kids are like that.

I like Taure's orginal idea. I, admittedly, am a fan of super-harry, but this idea seems alot more plausable. I'll admit, super harry is incredibly unrealistic, this could make some sense. Harry wants with all his heart to know how to beat this Voldie-possesed guy, and the mirror gives him the knowledge.