Plot Bunny Threa(d/t) V

New thread, fun!

Well, to start things again, let me bring something to everyone's attention:


What are the most important events which shaped the Magical World and most importantly the Wizarding Britain?

Below I have compiled a list I believe to show these events and I also believe that each and every one of them could be altered to create very interesting Points of Departure.

Instead of focusing too strongly on Harry Potter's personal life, I went with events that have had a truly big impact on wizarding society and the way it is shown in the "present" of the books.

I believe that each of these events, if altered, would change the wizarding world to become an almost-unrecognizable Alternate Universe.

Well, for this thread this is the name of the game.


First we have the events before the era highlighted in the main books:

990 - Hogwarts is founded.

1050 - Earliest recorded Quidditch match.

1294 - First TriWizard Tournament.

1631 - Wand Ban is enacted.

1692 - Statute of Secrecy goes into effect.

1707 - British Ministry of Magic is founded.

1718 - Azkaban is turned into a prison.

1811 - Current definition of a Being is established.

1940 - Grindelwald's War.

1945 - Gellert Grindelwald defeated by Albus Dumbledore.


And now the events highlighted by the books:

1970 - First War against Lord Voldemort.

1981 - Harry Potter survives the Killing Curse and Lord Voldemort is defeated.

1995 - Second War against Lord Voldemort.

1998 - Lord Voldemort finally defeated by Harry Potter.


Consider how strongly the wizarding world would be changed by any of these events, especially the ones listed as before the era show in the books.

For example, if Hogwarts was not founded, everything would change for Britain. Would each of the founders create their own schools? Imagine the possibilities. We could have wizarding Britain develop into four different societies, each governed by different rules and following different values.

Or how about an AU in which the Statute is never introduced? Would the wizarding and muggle societies eventually learn to live together or would some unthinkable war happen?

The wizard relations with other races is also interesting. Such issues as the Wand Ban and the definition of a Being could prove to be very influential. If creatures such as Goblins were to be more strongly integrated into the wizarding society, how would it develop?

I love thinking of such possibilities.

 

Or if Voldemort didn't become a lich, but used some other kind of immortality technique?

 

Well if he used the philosophers stone he'd be dead for real.
And I can't think of any other plausible immortality techniques he could have used.

 

The story of the Four Founders creating four magical schools can be extremely interesting. Battles for the funding of the schools, the rivalry rising to the new extremes, the overblown importance of the school traditions, you name it. And I'm not even saying anything about the changes in the history.

 

Sometimes, I wonder why I bother looking at the Plot Bunnies. They just make me mad that potentially awesome ideas are probably not going to be written.

 

After DH, Harry is recruited by the Department of Mysteries (insert your preferred Because Reasons here).

He tinkers away at the Veil, because why not and the Head Unspeakable agrees, so what the hell. Maybe Sirius isn't dead, just dead bored and waiting until someone releases him from this peculiar artifact.

Over time, Harry begins to notice some strange little things. How most Unspeakables never actually seem to be doing any work that he can observe, how senior Ministry employees can never recall when the current Head Unspeakable rose to his position, or even who ran the Department before him. How there seem to be no records on the matter and no one, even Hermione, finds it weird.

More strangeness follows and eventually Harry discovers a sinister truth, when he storms the Head Unspeakable's office and they engage in a confusing conversation in a very Matrix Architect fashion.

The world that Harry knows isn't... well, it's real, it certainly exists, but its origins are... let's say not quite natural.

The human race has been graced with rare individuals who are not as bound by time, space, or even reality as their less extraordinary brethren. They have found a way to find answers to complicated questions without negative consequences. This method has allowed humankind to flourish and the society and the planet are almost entirely trouble-free and humanity is preparing to start conquering the stars.

The method involves those most gifted individuals creating alternate realities, with alternate Earths, which they are able to customize to their preferences in order to play strategy games, conduct various social experiments and make observations of the human behavior and development on a planetary, civilization-wide scale. Knowledge gained from those experiments has allowed the humans on Original Earth to advance to the space era hundreds of years faster than they would have otherwise.

Experiment No 324 has reached its end. Project Engineer Algernon Croaker has collected his data. Harry has followed the path Algernon predicted. Time to go home and share the news with fellow Engineers.

It doesn't matter how much Harry believes that he is real in all the same ways Algernon is, because the facts are simple.

"You are a tool, one which has allowed me to better humankind. Everything you see around you was constructed to be the setting of an experiment. And now the experiment is done, conclusions have been drawn and it's time for me to clean up, just like I cleaned up Sirius when he finished playing his part. Don't worry. You won't feel a thing."

A bit of the Matrix, a bit of the Truman Show and a downer ending because I felt like it.

 

And then Harry acts as Harry will, and their duel spills out into the Ministry proper. The truth is revealed, and as a consequence the world cannot simply be 'deleted' en masse, not while there exist people who know the truth. Croaker calls in the HR Department Agents, and a new, stranger war starts. A war that centers on looking for an individual who could become a Project Engineer like Croaker--only this one was born in Experiment No 324.

 

In Soviet Russian, the Matrix is had by YOU!!

 

When thinking of alternative childhoods for Harry, I had a vision of Harry as "The Outsider" from the excellent Lovecraft story of the same name.
If you don't know the story, when applied to Harry, the premise will be that there are no blood wards with the Dursleys, and Dumbledore suspects Harry for whatever reason (maybe he suspects a "Changeling" situation), and has Harry grow in an unknown, locked section of Hogwarts, where he can be observed and safe from remaining Death Eaters. The only beings Harry comes in contact with are ghosts that DD let in to teach Harry, and he spends his time reading the books DD put there. Finally, on his 11th birthday he manages to escape the section, and winds up in DD's office, where he explains a bit to him, and his Hogwarts years begin.

Yeah, I know this is very OOC for Dumbledore, but I just let the idea flow in my mind, since I love "The Outsider" so much, and thought it could be an interesting premise for a Weird!Harry.

 

Severus Snape, Dungeon Master. Make it so.

 

Snape and Slytherins are actually huge D&D nerds? Seems legit.

 

Severus accused Albus of cheating because his Champion is constantly rolling a D20.

 

I wrote a very long, elaborate version of this bunny, but it never made it into the last thread. Essentially, it's a Diablo/HP crossover.

Mathael wanted to end the Great Conflict by ripping the demonic essence from humanity, thus ending their existence and leaving Heaven the true victor of the war. Tyrael, the mortal Aspect of Wisdom, confronted his brother, but was forced to watch as the Horadrim who had travelled with him to destroy the Black Soulstone had their souls devoured by Mathael, who had taken on the Aspect of Death. Tyrael was spared, as Mathael knew his soul was not tainted by demonic essence, but he defiantly claimed the Nephalem would destroy Mathael.

"No one can stop death..."

When the Nephalem arrived, after crossing the Battlefields of Eternity, Mathael destroyed the Soulstone and claimed the power of Diablo and the Prime Evils for himself.

From within the Pandemonium Fortress, a battle was fought for hours between the angel and demon born Nephalem and Mathael. Eventually, the Nephalem stood over his fallen foe, and though the defeat signified the continued existence of humanity and the high heavens, Diablo's spirit was released.

"How long, I wonder, had his madness gone unnoticed by those closest to him?"

While Tyrael sadly ponders how long his brother had been mad with power, Diablo flees from the site of the Nephalem's victory, searching for a way to return himself to a body. In order to return to the mortal realm, Diablo he needs a mortal vessel to house his spirit. Unfortunately for the Lord of Terror, consuming the souls of powerless individuals only keeps him alive long enough to find another, and so he wanders for centuries, until the world is very different.

Tristram no longer exists. Sanctuary has been erased by time. New languages have formed, as well as kingdoms powered by technological advances of the resourceful but ultimately powerless. Cities more massive than even Diablo's warped mind could have dreamed appeared over the duration of his travels, and yet, still he can only sustain life by briefly absorbing it from the humans around him.

That is, until he meets three brothers with extraordinary talents. Knowing that absorbing their strength alone will never revive him, Diablo develops a rather ingenius plan; fashioning them each an artifact of their own choosing, he tricks the Peverell's into wearing items that will absorb their souls over time, as well as the souls of each to come into contact with it. One soulstone stays much the same, allowing the holder a glimpse behind the veil between life and death, though the others become an unbeatable wand and a cloak of invisibility, respectively. Each has its own distinct ability, but everytime the owner dies, that person's power begins to resurrect Diablo.

Centuries pass before Diablo's plan can come to fruition. When young Harry Potter unites the Deathly Hallows to stop the darkest lord of his time, he finds that the horror he has released into the world is much greater and darker than the one it replaced. Immediately, the hallows are displaced with a pop much louder and more powerful than the one accompanying Apparition. Bereft of the hallows, Harry is forced to wonder who has taken them, and how they could even be taken when he alone is master over them.

Caught in a web devised by the most terrible being in existence, without his mentor or the hallows themselves, Harry is contemplating the ultimate extinction of humanity from the top of the Hogwarts Astronomy tower when he notices a falling star smashing into the Forbidden forest and lighting most of it aflame.

The man who he finds at its source remembers nothing. Frantically searching for his sword, he enlists Harry's help to find it, and they locate it at the bottom of a great crater. The sword, however, is broken into three pieces, and the only spell Harry knows to fix it, Reparo, is not at all helpful.

Harry enlists the help of his most intelligent allies, but Hermione is at a complete loss, while McGonagall and Flitwick struggle mightily but cannot overcome the inherent power of the sword. Knowing that it has something to do with the hallows, Harry consults Xenophilius Lovegood, but even he has never heard tale of the hallows simply disappearing or a newly-restored sword replinishing someone's memories.

Eventually, Harry and Hermione devised a way to fix the sword; knowing that Gryffindor's sword was crafted by goblins, they seek to use Griphook's untimely death and the fact that Gryffindor's sword has returned to the Sorting Hat, as a way to get the sword fixed. Earning their cooperation is paramount, so they give away the sword to fix the other.

The man is not human, instead he is an angel turned mortal. He then explains the events surrounding the hallows construction, the Great Conflict between angels and demons, and Sanctuary, now known as Earth, which Diablo hopes to destroy alongside the high heavens.

Ron does not want to continue the journey, even after Harry and Hermione explain that the hallows being taken away and Diablo being reborn is one of the worst things that could possibly happen. The three have a falling out as a result, with Hermione dedicating herself to the cause alongside Harry and Ron returning to the Burrow.

(more to come, if I feel like it)

 

Never played Diablo, but this seems legit. However, why the hate for Ron?

 

First off, if you haven't played any Diablo then you're seriously missing out. Great for PC, and the PS4 Reaper of Souls game is super dope (until you try getting through the harder difficulty levels and inevitably stop playing!)

As far as your comment about my Ron hate... Why not? If it makes you feel better, I was going to replace him with Luna, who knows more about the Hallows through her pops than Harry and Hermione. And I totally see Ron on the back of Voldemort's death seeing the hallows disappear and being like: "Good riddance."

Keep in mind that Diablo is reborn, but he hasn't commenced to destroying all of the world yet. It's just the words of a man (Tyrael) that no one knows that is tempting Harry toward chasing Diablo. Ron, given a reason to dislike Tyrael, would see Harry and Hermione as being fools for trusting a falling star.

I didn't envision it being Harry/Hermione anyway! Harry/Luna maybe.

 

Harry and Snape - Breaking Bad, Harry Potter Style.

Or, Harry arrives at Hogwarts and due to his natural curiosity gets drawn into a web of organized crime and violence between the houses. Neville growing weed, Slytherins cooking up synthetic drugs in their dungeons, you get the idea.

Not sure in which direction to take this: either a bitter rivalry between the houses in which Harry aims to destroy the Slytherin Syndicate, or a super!Harry story where he unites them to create his personal underground empire.

... because Hogwarts is only a school by day and the real magic starts once the moon rises.

 

Ron is smuggling whiskey, the twins are smuggling wizard porn (this is canon).

 

"You've got to mean it Harry..."

Playing on that moment when Harry takes Voldemorts advice, tortures Bellatrix and in that moment Voldemort realizes the Boy Who Lived can be corrupted, if given the right motivation.