The summer after the Triwizard tournament he walks past a muggle gift shop and realises there's money to be made by putting his face on cups and saucers and other such things, and lightning bolts on everything from quills to robes. He enlists Fred and George to manufacture them and starts an owl order business out of Gryffindor Tower. Umbridge gets sidetracked from the whole Dumbledore's Army thing by starting to investigate whether he's running a legitimate business and whether he's paying his taxes correctly. Turns out no one told him he had to pay taxes on any of his income thus far, and the Ministry slaps him with another load of debt that sets him back to just about square 1.

 

@Mordecai I've waited three months for the comp to be over to ask you if I could use your idea in my comp entry that I wrote. I created a wizarding park, which people can currently access by squeezing between Quality Quidditch Supplies and Eeylops Owl Emporium in Diagon Alley. I like your idea better — that they could access it through a different combination of brick taps on the wall behind the Leaky Cauldron.

I would've asked you sooner, but it didn't seem fair to use somebody else's idea in a competition, even if I got your permission. Now that it's over, I'd love to write this idea into my fic when I put it on FFN and give you a mention in an A/N.

Also, it's more than fine if your answer is "no" — this isn't the Steal My Plot Bunny Thread, after all. Feel free to DM me.

 

Mate, have at it! Send me a link when you've got it up on FFN.

 

I’ve been on a Destiny binge of late and the idea of a HP crossover stuck with me. I doubt I’ll have the time to write something unfortunately. Those who haven't played the game might be a little lost.

Essentially, the Traveler arrives same as cannon and its paracausal nature is magic by another name. The magical world maintains its secrecy but undergoes a golden age of its own, learning to harness its Light and work wonders.

Enter the Darkness, the Fall affects the magical world just as badly, if not worse than the muggle. Practically every magical person dies, targeted directly by the Darkness. The sole survivors are those holed up in the magical schools. It would be implied that they were intentionally spared by the Darkness as test of its philosophy, given the opportunity to start anew without the Travelers influence and given the chance to embrace its logic.

The world falls into chaos, the Hive, Fallen and Cabal arrive and wreak havoc as per canon. Wizards survive through evasion and secrecy and the three schools of Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang form the core of a new magical society. There’s no Last City for wizards, but a string of secret settlements and fortresses. The Hive are considered particularly dangerous as they have magic of their own and can pierce through wizarding wards and find their settlements. The other factions are dangerous but easier to evade.

A new threat to Earth would be the emergence of magical creatures, which find themselves well suited to the more dangerous world. The spread across the globe, minus dragons which are mistakenly slaughtered wholescale during the Great Ahamkara Hunt.

The Last City arises as per canon, but wizards keep their distance. There are few if any Guardian wizards and the “paracausal” nature of the Guardians worries the wizards. The same hold true for Queen Mara and the Reef, although the former is at least aware of their existence.

The story begins with the Hive beginning its invasion of Earth, beginning at the Cosmodrome in Russia and making straight for Durmstrang. Wizards are diplomatically isolated and massively outgunned. Things look grim.

A Ghost drifts into a White Tomb in search of its Guardian.

 

The Harry Potter series is set in the world of Cthulhu Mythos and magic works according to them.

First, a little background info:

In Lovecraft's universe, magic comes with tremendous danger to the user. For some greater spells it even requires the sacrifice of the soul.

Magic is usually very difficult to wield and requires knowledge and preparation, whether it needs several hours of chants, intricate esoteric circles or sacrifices, it is a very dangerous discipline that no regular human tends to come across.

Almost all magic users are servants of some higher entity like an Outer God or Great Old One.

On with the Plot:

There's no Ministry of Magic or any centralized magical government. Wizards live in hiding like in canon, but here they have normal knowledge of the muggle affairs.

Most wizards gain knowledge through apprenticeships and only the rich and influential can go to Hogwarts, which is smaller than in canon, but still a large castle. It is a school for adults, no children allowed.

While all wizards are cultists of some kind, they tend to not get in each other's way to maintain the exchange of knowledge.

Except Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Raised an orphan, he was always interested in the mystical and the occult due to his ability to communicate with snakes.

He finished his normal education, left the orphanage and began accumulating any magical knowledge he could acquire.

Eventually he learned of Hogwarts and discovered that to learn there he had to pay a lot of money. However, once Headmaster Grindelwald heard of Riddle's abilities he allowed him to join without paying as long as he could research them.

Eventually Riddle became Lord Voldemort, the most powerful wizard serving Shub-Niggurath in history.

Grindelwald, whose efforts to duplicate Voldemort's snake-speaking abilities proved fruitless became terrified of Voldemort. In an effort to halt his rise to power he expelled him from the school. Or rather tried, as Voldemort murdered him in his sleep and reanimated his body as an undead servant.

Voldemort's plan was to take over the British government while also acquiring immortality.

However his plans were foiled however on Halloween 1980 when he came to the house of James and Lily Potter, his most defiant enemies and servants of Nyarlathotep.

He managed to murder both of them, but when he attempted to murder their child Harry his body was suddenly turned to dust.

News of Voldemort's death spread like wildfire among the cultist communities, with many theories about what happened. Worship of Nyarlathotep rose for a few years before most people forgot about the whole affair.

What they didn't know, is that Voldemort wasn't dead and that everything went according to his plan. His soul was now in the body of Harry Potter, a child sacrificed. Voldemort now had his way of achieving immortality and once his new body grew up enough he would finish his plan to take over the government.

So yeah, no Harry but instead a story focused on Voldemort's rise to power. Political but assisted with magic.

 

The idea of combining HP with Lovecraft just made me think...The Laundry Files but done HP style. Hermione joins the Unspeakables, only to find they're merely one division of The Laundry, part of the Civil Service, an intelligence agency responsible for keeping society safe from the unspeakable horrors that lie outwith our reality. And the world's only ISO 9001 accredited intelligence agency.

For those that haven't read them, the Laundry Files are equal parts James Bond, Yes, Prime Minister, and Lovecraftian Horror. Could be interesting to try and tie HP and the Laundry together...

 

So, I've been reading the Harry Potter books again to try and get fanfiction based ideas out of my head before trying to write an old plot bunny I said I would write years ago when I stumbled upon a line in CoS: "Ron went as red as Ginny. He dropped his books into the cauldron, too..." It seems like a brilliant setup for Ron getting the diary instead of Ginny, and Tom making use of all of Ron's insecurities about not being as good as his brothers or having much money to set up shop in his head.

 

Could be fun. You'd have to figure out a way for the change in victims to change the plot. The diary might influence Ron to turn on Harry and accuse him of being the Heir of Slytherin, leading to more ostracism. It might teach Ron some advanced magic so he could outperform Hermione and feel good about himself.

If you're not careful, though, it would just turn into a Ron-bashing fest. Or something very bleak. A story about Ron fighting back and overcoming the diary could be gripping and original, if that's the direction you wanted to go.

 

Yeah, I was concerned about that as well. I was really just fascinated by the prospect of Harry being truly alone at the end. Ron is in the chamber, Dumbledore is gone, and Hermione is out cold in the hospital bed. It does cause some other issues as well such as what do you do with Lockhart when Ron's busted wand is no longer in play? Mind you, I doubt Lockhart gets the drop on Harry like he did with Ron so does that mean he dies to the snake or Tom? I like the idea of him as a ghost though making life miserable for the professors and giving Harry unwanted advice on fame and some needed advice on girls which usually just descends into him bragging about his own trysts. While there are a few interesting ideas here, I'm also kind of concerned that there might not be enough to avoid certain parts feeling like a rehash.

 

Disregard, y'alls and ya'lls.

 

You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head....

Harry had always known he wasn't normal. It wasn't normal to live in a cupboard under the stairs any more than it was normal to dream of lectures on magic or long hours in the library reading large books on complicated magical theory...and then there were the other dreams, the darker ones that forced him to learn to control his dreams just so he could avoid their horrors. So imagine his surprise when he learned that all of those wonderful and terrible things he thought he imagined were real.

Just got a rough idea for this story so far. The basic premise being that during his time in the cupboard under the stairs Harry starts seeing Voldemort's memories and even learns to control them. Of course, he doesn't mention this to anyone even when he finds out it is all real because he knows enough to know that certainly isn't normal even for wizards.

The first two years go roughly the same as canon. It's the summer before the third year where things really kick off because destroying the diary caused him to see exactly how that object was created and what it was. He dives into those memories over the summer learning more and slowly coming to realize that the reason the protection his mother left him caused him so much pain in first year is because he has a bit of Voldemort's soul stuck inside of him.

Harry gets a lot of his understanding in magic from Tom's understanding of magic for both good and bad. It allows him to be incredibly advanced much faster, but it also leaves him with a giant flaw. Much like Tom, he knows of the magic his mother used, but he doesn't really understand it. This leads him to believe that the only course of action is to plot his own death, but he doesn't intend to go alone. Those memories of dark magic that he avoided he now embraces touching upon magic that even Voldemort was too afraid to use because what is there to fear when you don't plan on living for very long anyway?

 

@Rakkety Tam : I like this idea. I like it a lot.

 

Nuclear Plot Bunny.

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the international wizarding community changes almost overnight.

While Grindelwald was largely condemned before, now his ideas are seen as sound and logical.

"Muggles must not be left to their own devices" is the common thought.

Wizards and witches are confident that they would be able to defend their homes and loved ones from atomic hellfire, but who wants to live in a nuclear wasteland?

Clearly, a day will come when muggles will ruin the world for everyone.

Grindelwald is still kept in Nurmengard for his various murders and other crimes, but the International Confederation of Wizards decides to quietly take over the muggle world.

 

That's canon though.

 

I'd change it from 1945 to the late 1950s and early 60s.

In 1945 almost everyone just saw nuclear weapons as "big bombs". It wasn't until later the fear of nuclear war hit fever pitch.

 

Have you seen Crimes of Grindelwald? It’s shown in there that the wizards grasp the problem of nuclear bombs before they’re even invented. If that auditorium goes back to each wizarding country across Europe, and Grindelwald never chooses to share that knowledge again, I’d still say they’ve clearly had a fire lit up their arses.

 

I've wanted to do something with the Philosopher's Stone for a while.

To be short: as a transhumanist I believe that achieving immortality and making it widely accessible is the morally correct thing to do. So I want to write a story where a character with similar views and ideas seeks to steal the stone, presumably during first year. With the stone they would then seek to reverse engineer it.

The story would focus on the ethics of doing so along with other magical interpretations of transhumanism. Of course, they'll likely come into conflict with Voldemort in the process, along with Dumbledore and Flamel.

 

Interesting. I'm all for immortality but I view transhumanist ideas like "mind uploading" as suicide.

I'd be down to read about the different perspectives of various characters.

Mega bonus points if prolonged use of the Stone has side effects that have to be solved with other means.

 

Considering how old and frail Nicolas Flamel looks, I don't think the Philosopher's stone prevents you from aging in canon.

I wonder how many poeple would desire immortality, without eternal youth.

 

Mind upload is a minority view and I think most would agree with your about the suicide thing.

I agree on the last point, but that might be too far off in the future for the story.

I consider Fantastic Beasts to be mediocre and am almost guaranteed to disregard it in any story I write.

Also, if he created the stone later in life and it only halts aging, he'd look old.