I'm sure I've read AUs where the muggles are enslaved, but none really spring to mind right now.

As to whether it would be a thing... It would.

If muggles are viewed as a separate species, just another animal, then I can imagine wizards organising "muggle fighting", treated much like dog fighting. Their only use is for entertainment, or as ritual/potion components.

In the case of something like the Romans and 'barbarians', then labour, concubines, and first-wave combat forces would maybe be a thing. And maybe on the outskirts of civilisation, some wizards and witches might even have (gasp) common-law marriages with muggles!

At the very least, if muggles were treated pretty decently, they'd have uses as 'indentured servants', if not citizens (or civilians, at least) in their own right. Food prep, housework, farming, all the menial labour. Technically, a wizard could do it, and much faster. But they could also be inventing the next generation of healing potions, which a muggle couldn't. So doesn't it just make sense for the muggle to be freeing up wizards for that? After all, that way we can all build a better world together!

 

Thaumologist

But aren't house elves much better at all of this?

 

Elves are expensive as all get up too though. And enslaved is probably too strong term--I believe in a world integrated by Grindelwald, Muggles would just be firmly third class citizens.

Plot Bunny: Led by Dobby, house elves stage a violent uprising, sparing only their favoured humans. When the Dark Lord returns, he is not a terrorist but a freedom fighter.

 

Sure.

But we don't really see many of them during canon - Hogwarts has a bunch, the Malfoy family had one, the Crouch family had one, the Black family had one... And that's about it. The Blacks had some before Kreacher, and Hepzibah Smith had one, but we don't really know how common they are. Admittedly, we don't know who else has them, so it could be that every family but the Weasleys have some, but they don't appear to be everywhere.

And humans could be more of a status symbol, especially if they're just regarded as a lower class of citizens - you have the money to hire and keep multiple servants.

Or you're right, there's no reason to enslave the muggles... And so the wizards just wipe them out instead.

 

I think that Harry Potter and the Greater Good had enslaved muggles, or something similar.

 

I'm sure people here have come across a time traveling Snape fic or the dreaded Severitus fic where Harry is mentally retarded and Snape consumed by grief over Lily cuddles and coddles him and they become a family. There is definitely too much of that shit hanging around.

How about a fic where canon Snape finds himself brought to an AU where he is expected to help a poor handicapped Harry. Only instead of doing that he shocks everyone by acting like his canon self and takes his petty revenge out on a mentally disabled Harry.

 

I would read it.

On the topic of good ol' Sev...

Sirius and Remus recounting the time that Snape tried (hopefully failed) to use a love potion on Lily, but they all treat it with the canon attitude of love potions, whatevs, while Harry and Hermione are horrified.

Snape tried to... to my mum...

Yeah but don't you worry Harry, we got him a week later with a stinging hex in the middle of Potions- made him drop his gnat wings HAHAHAHAHA

Harry, be a dear and help Ron set the table.

Are NONE of you hearing this.

Yes dear, schoolboy pranks, but the chicken is ready so you and Ron...

 

Idea: The blood purity at its roots was not actually having pure blood children but about not having bastards.

It goes like this, when you have love potions and compulsion charms it is trivial for a wizard to go out to muggle world and have as many one night stands as they like. Espacially when Statue of Secrecy was in effect meaning most wizards didn't spend a lot of time in Muggle world. It made hiding indiscrinations really easy.

The problem arose from the fact that most wizards were not really careful so 12 years down the line children started to seek out their fathers or in some rarer cases mothers in the Wizarding World.

So most half blooded were seen as a thread to marriges and they were kept away from the places their parents live by the significant others in the relationship. Or perhaps by their own magical parents to ensure that their spouse/husband does not hear about it. It was a great scandal if that happened after all.

Muggleborns were mostly there by association but also because the suspicion that they were actually half-bloods in hiding.

At this point marrying to half-bloods or Muggleborns is actually pretty normal thing.

Ofcourse centuries down the line, after generations of bitter witches and wizards (Whom have been cheated by their partners thanks to easy access to sex) made a point about talking to their children about those filthy Muggles and how they should stay away from them, things change.

The thing is they didn't tell the real reason to next generation. So Great grand children of those people just made their own justification. Blood Purity was important.

And yes "Toujours pur" means there is not one extra marital children in that tree. It is not actually about having pure blood at all(in conventional sense). And why only Sirius's mother blasted branches off. I mean blasting legal marriages from the tree? What nonsense is that. It was not a thing until her.

So by the Canon Hp Death Eaters completely miss the point about what Pure blood means and start a civil war.

That is the tragedy of Wizarding world. A lack of communication.

 

Deus-ex-reasons, Voldemort uses the same sort of curse he put on the DADA position on magic just before he dies the first time at Godric's Hollow. Every child born to a magical family after that date is a squib, no muggleborns either.

Given the population size at Hogwarts, this means that it's plausible - if perhaps unlikely - that Ginny Weasley is the last witch. Make with that as you will.

 

Call it "Harry Potter and the Last Class" for added stakes. Imagine what would happen once it comes out that he is The Chosen One this time around... I doubt Harry would be able to dodge The MoM simply by being 'Dumbledore's Man'. Hell, ol' Albus might get off his duff and either train the poor kid or be more proactive in finishing the war (since he'll undoubtedly be the first person to figure out what Voldemort did on his way off the mortal coil).

Added wrinkles: What if Voldemort's followers find out he's the reason for the epidemic of squib births? How would classes change due to Harry's year being the titular "Last Class"? I'm also presuming that Voldemort only fucked Great Britain over, not the world.

 

Time Loop plot bunny:

Ron Weasley relives the day of the Yule Ball until he does things right.

 

it is Ron, he would never get it right, it would be a continuous loop, eternally

 

It's eternity. If a room full of monkeys can type the complete works of Shakespeare, Ron can avoid being a dick at a party.

 

I don't know, there's magic involved here.

 

Ron bashing is so 2005.

 

Ron only fails because he continually sets his own sights higher and higher.

Time Jump 54:

Have successfully seduced HG and talked my way into having her watch tomorrow's foursome with PP, PP, PP. Malfoy transfigured into a bone - good trick, that. Reminded Dumbledore I still haven't received that 'Special Services to the School' trophy I was promised back at the end of 2nd year - he told me he'd have it taken care of first thing in the new year.

Time Jump 55:

Colossal failure. Did not realize I could literally shag Pansy to death. Only managed to jump just in time to avoid Azkaban. Probably didn't help when they found about Malfoy. Will alter plans accordingly. Have decided to avoid asking Hermione this time round - think I'm finally ready to do something about making a fool of myself in front of FD in the original timestream...

Time Jump 56:

Turns out Veela are just tarted up succubi. Bollocks to that, Roger Davies is welcome to her...

 

Big fan of Nier: Automata. Easily the best game I've played in several years. If you haven't played it I strongly recommend you do so instead of reading my plot bunny.

Spoiler

Assuming you've chosen to ignore my warning, a not-so-quick background for those that know nothing about the series:

Nier: Automata is actually spin off of another game series called Drakengard. In one of the endings the sociopathic MC and his sociopathic dragon sidekick follow the teleporting big bad to the final boss fight. Finding the big bad and themselves in a big city they duke it out to the death. As the MC and his sidekick savour their victory, they're blown out of the sky by a fighter aircraft... and die. The city they've arrived in is non-magical Tokyo.

This is where the original Nier starts off: The big bad got the last laugh. Basically it turned its remains into a magical disease vector that turns people into salt (very Biblical). As it's magic the non-magical Earth has no defence against it. Over the next 100 years or so it wipes out most of humanity, until some scientists eventually learn some magic.

With no hope of defeating a disease created by a demi-god (the back-story is a bit more detailed than this) they essentially use magic to split a person's soul from their body which stops the disease (how is explained). With the spread halted they could get rid of it. The project was called Project Gestalt and ran for about 1500 years with its day to day running managed by semi-magical androids and the soulless bodies ("replicants" in the lore of Nier) continuously re-cloned as they aged and died.

The problem is the soulless bodies developed consciousness (and presumably souls). So when it comes time to reunite the bodies and souls again, the bodies obviously object. The MC (Nier), a replicant, has his daughter kidnapped by a shade who turns out to be his soul (a "Gestalt") trying to save his daughter's Gestalt. A lot of stuff happens but the basically Nier is the master copy for the Replicants and the Gestalts, and without him the project would collapse and humanity would go extinct. To save his daughter and his friends for plot related reasons, Nier sacrifices himself, presumably leading to the extinction of humanity.

And this is where Nier: Automata starts off. It's now the 11,900s, so ~8,500 years after the original Nier during the 14th Machine War (probably better described as the 14th campaign of the Machine War). Humanity is supposedly on the moon (they're not, they actually went extinct following the collapse of Project Gestalt), following the invasion of the plant by aliens. The androids that managed Project Gestalt are now very much sentient and build more of themselves while the aliens have built clunkier but far more numerous machines (they're literally called Machines) to wage war on their behalf.

A lot of things happen in Nier: Automata but the key themes are: what makes a "real" person, love, existentialism, revenge, warcrimes etc. The sort of thing you might find in a deep game about war and about androids coming to terms with their own existence etc etc.

The key plot point that is still a missing (I'm hoping it will be explained in a sequel) is that an unknown cabal of androids are conspiring with the Machines to perpetuate the war because both the Machine leadership (the Machines killed their alien masters before the start of the game) and the android cabal believe that the conflict is required for both species to evolve. The android cabal also believes that the lie of humanity still existing on the moon is required because the androids need a God/Gods to fight for.

One of the major points in the game is the Cabal opening a computer back-door on the YoRHa servers (YoRHa being your faction inside the android army/resistance) and allowing YoRHa to be wiped out because YoRHa's Commander has failed to keep the secret a secret. So they decide to wipe YoRHa out to perpetuate the secret.

In the game, who the Cabal are is never resolved. The ending seems to imply a sequel hook.

This leads to my plot idea (sorry about the preceding essay and get ready for another):

Going with the theme of existentialism, what about the simulation hypothesis? The hypothesis argues that if creating a simulation that is indistinguishable from the real thing is possible, then chances are you yourself are in a simulation.

Harry (probably going to be Fem!Harry given every YoRHa combat model is female but I guess that doesn't really matter too much for this description) grows up with the Dursleys, goes to Hogwarts, learns magic, fights Voldemort on several occasions and then defeats him for good. Only then he/she wakes up, and discovers everything wasn't real and was a giant simulation.

It turns out one of the android cabal feels guilty for what they've been up to and decides to work against them. Only, it can't do it alone. So it looks back through history looking for the right person to be its sword and finds Harry Potter.

I have two choices here. Either I can have Harry Potter literally be a story and have the Cabal-member decided that that is the perfect person to craft in a simulation. This would be the easier route but there would be no HP magic. Nier magic is somewhat limited compared to HP magic but is world-ending scale.

The other is to merge the two worlds together and reconcile the differences, so the cabal member find HP in a history book. It could be that even the magical world couldn't defeat the disease by themselves so nearing extinction they worked with muggle scientists on Project Gestalt. This would mean HP goes looking for magic at some point though it also carries the issue of androids already shown to be capable of magic in canon.

So, the cabal-member created a simulation to grow their hero in; either taken from history or taken from a story. Once the hero had defeated a worthy foe (i.e. Voldemort) the cabal-member sent them onto YoRHa as a new consciousness for loading into an android body to fight the war.

Part of this is that HP isn't the type to shrug off the experience. HP will going looking for explanations. I'm also considering making it two "real" people in the simulation because with one I fear lots of thought and little dialogue with only one person. The main goal initially of HP will be to find out what has happened to them, which leads to them digging up the conspiracy.

Another thing is that kind of person do you get out of this simulation. The person made in this simulation might very well be better than canon HP. It could be by mistake or design, or maybe the actually HP the person was based off was more powerful?

Obviously you have to avoid Indy-Harry wank there. Really have to avoid wangst too as it could easily develop in a story like this.

Another issue is that this concept could be done with almost any other fandom featuring a hero protagonist. Maybe I could do a better job in another fandom?

At the moment all I have are some notes and my attempt at writing a scene with the confrontation between HP and the cabal-member.

Like Nier: Automata the theme will be partially about existentialism. Depending on the path I take it could also be about find a place in the world after discovering pretty much everything is a lie.

Any suggestions/feedback would be sweet.

 

Through some sort of magical accident, Harry and Su Li develop a Seoul bond.

 

The accident is a magical Chinese finger trap. In order to escape it the need to accept their love for one another.

 

"Seven reasons why I created Horcruxes."

After Voldemort's death Harry is summoned to Gringotts and a goblin hands him a box of magical cassette tapes that turn out to be reasons why Voldemort created Horcruxes.

The reader is sucked in by morbid curiosity and the drama comes from the realisation that Harry and Voldemort were nothing but starcrossed lovers born in the wrong time. The ultimate Harry/Tom slashfic.

Also.

Harry gets a new trunk.