I've definitely had a plot bunny, bouncing around my head for years, about wizards who experiment with hypnosis. It's the late 1960s, just before Voldemort's rise to power, and young witches and wizards are blurring the lines of what is and is not dark magic. Knockturn Alley is at the heart of this renaissance, and it's become one of the liveliest, most interesting places in the wizarding world.

One incantation that's gaining popularity seems to be unnervingly similar to the Imperius Curse, but people are using it on themselves, to become the people they want to be. Some use it to be happier, others more productive, some want to fall out of a love with a person who has no interest in them, etc. Not everyone has the skills required for casting such complicated magic, however, and so some people start to enlist those more skilled at charms to put them in a trance. There's a group of slightly older wizards who are particularly adept at it. You'd think Tom Riddle would be one of them — that same group of wizards all knew him in school, after all — but no one's heard from him in years.

Over time, it's not so uncommon for young witches and wizards to seem.... a little off. Their loved ones notice it. But the explanations are acceptable — the people who use this magic are more far content, they're progressing through their careers and personal lives in leaps and bounds after floundering for years. Anyone who is unsettled by this new use of this branch of magic is living in the past.

Why have we been so afraid to tap into this kind of magic for so long?

 

This conversation has taken a really interesting (though rather creepy) direction.

This plot bunny is all kinds of alarming, and I love it.

 

Opposite the muggles International Space Station is a little known wizarding space module, where a small lot of the British Ministry's Unspeakables study the effects of the great unknown alongside a handful of the best and brightest of the other magical nations. During their annual inspection, one Harry Potter, designated Head Auror, becomes embroiled in a murder plot as the whole module is sealed from further outside influence by automated safety measures. Harry must conduct an investigation and try to pin down the culprit.

So Potterverse meets Among Us, I guess, though I had this idea a year or two back looking through my writing.

 

It was a usual night in Bob’s pub, with only a couple of strangers quietly drinking their pints in the corner of the room, and a few more at the bar, watching the game. Bob wasn't much for football but he guessed it was an old match, judging by the lack of reaction when yet another goal was scored.

He took great pride in his pub and its discretion. Here, at Bob’s, everyone was welcome and no one judged. Bob imagined it as a safe haven for tired folks who wanted to escape a rashness of reality for a few hours

On a night like this, he would usually go about his business, and would not bat an eye on any talks, discussions going on around him as long as they don’t end up in bursts of violence. Those, to be honest, rarely happened.

However, he couldn’t help but keep glancing at the lone man, leaning on the darkest part of the bar, and disinterestedly watching the remains of his pint, as he slowly motioned his mug in circles. He wore a strange kind of coat, a bit too long at the ends, and a bit too loose around the middle, black as night and high quality, with its hood hanging at a stranger's back.

Bob was wary to approach him, but curiosity made better of him, as he had seen such coats in his past. In reality, he had a whole room, in the back, where he had dozens of photos and notes about all sorts of freakish accidents and strange sightings. What is more, those things were usually connected with strange folk wearing exactly the same sort of coats.

“Alright?” Bob grunted in his usual barman voice. “Another one?”

Stranger, a much younger fellow than Bob expected, raised his head, his eyes wide as if he was surprised someone actually talked to him. The corner of his mouth tightened, but whether in good humor or disgust, Bob couldn’t tell.

“Please,” he said, not rude, but not like he honestly meant it either. Now that Bob established eye contact, he wished he hadn’t. Green eyes, both shiny and tired, watched him carefully, as an unnatural hint of red crept around his irises. “Would you then?” Stranger chided Bob.

“Gotcha,” Bob said and hurried to get another pint, shaking his head on the way, willing the thoughts away. Perhaps it would be better to just let it go, but Bob had a very good feeling about this man and his connection with the content of his room in the back.

“Here you go, mate,” Bob said when he got back, and the stranger took his drink without another word, but Bob pressed on, “So what brings you here?”

“The usual,” he replied, and this time Bob was sure that there was some humor behind it, even if his lips were a straight line.

“Right,” Bob said. “Just haven’t seen you ‘round before, you know?”

“Expectable.” The stranger nodded and emptied half of the mug in a long gulp. “I’m rarely sent to these parts.”

“So it’s business?” Bob asked and raised his eyebrows. “What do you do?”

“You could say I’m chief executive,” he said, and grinned, showing his teeth, but Bob thought it wasn't a particularly happy expression, if at all.

Bob ignored the weird wording and asked, “You? A CEO? I’d never say.”

“I’m no officer,” he said, and chuckled, “but I do a fair share of bossing and executing.”

Bob stopped pretending to wipe the bar, and slowly raised his head, and two of them locked their eyes. Bob immediately saw some sort of shift in his eyes and knew that all of the pretenses were gone. They both knew. Bob let out the breath he didn’t even know was holding and looked around the pub, half a dozen folk still there. He was just about to go on the other side of the bar when a stranger spoke again.

“Hold on, now,” he said and tilted his head to the side, “haven’t you got more questions for me?”

“None,” Bob let out and winced when he heard how weak his voice sounded. “None at all,” he repeated, steadying his voice.

“Oh, but I do,” the stranger said softly. He cleared his throat and said a single word, a word that left Bob breathless. “Out!”

And indeed, Bob’s last line of protection, his guests, left one by one, not looking at him and saying no words. He was just about to start running towards the back door himself, but an invisible force stopped him right where he stood.

“Easy now, Bob. You’ve got something to show me, don’t you?”

Bob had plenty of words to say to the man, but none of them left his throat as his legs started to lead his body towards the biggest secret in his life. How could this be?

“You’re about to find out all the answers you’ve been after,” the man said as they entered the room. “Sit down.”

Bob sat down.

The man walked around the room, stopping here and there to get a closer look at some of his notes and photos, his arms folded behind his back and an elaborate, pale stick resting in his right hand.

“Why are you doing this?” Bob managed to find his voice.

“Because, Bob,” he said, leaning towards the blurry photo of a man in a similar coat that the stranger himself was wearing, “someone chose a wrong hobby.”

Bob didn’t like the sound of it. Not at all. His heart was pounding and there was a hint of sweat forming on his forehead, but his body was still unresponsive.

“What did you do to me?” he tried again.

“Proved my superiority,” the stranger said in a mocking voice, “so that even your worthless mind can understand.”

“Understand what?” Bob asked, his voice getting louder and higher. Higher than he would prefer.

“A natural order of things.” The man turned to face him at last. “Even your species, once it came to be, erased all previous ones. Lesser ones.”

Bob had no idea what this lunatic was talking about and tried to struggle, but without something to struggle against, it was futile. Still, he tried, and the man chuckled.

“The thing I do appreciate about your kind is your stubbornness. Your utter aversion to death,” he continued, “but it won’t do you any good in the face of what’s coming.”

Stranger stiffed and looked at the ceiling as if he expected something would fall right through it and sniffed. “They are close,” he said.

“Who is?” Bob asked, unable to conceal the sound of hope in his voice.

The man waved his stick, and the greenish, unnatural fire started to spread through the room from the tip of it. It dispersed in a flock of bird-like embers, each of them heading in a different direction and starting to set his photos on fire. Bob knew that if he could, he would be gaping like an idiot, but as it was, all he could do was to widen his eyes so much they threatened to fall out of their sockets.

“Optimists and fools,” he finally responded. Not that it meant much to Bob. “I can almost taste your awe, muggle.” He waved his stick again, and all remains of Bob’s collection and the smoke that was left behind vanished without a sound.

“Awe, and fear,” he continued, “for your kind always feared what they could not understand.” He leaned forward until his face was only inches away from Bob’s own. The hate and intensity in his green and red eyes made Bob shudder, even though his body stood still, and he said, all pride gone, “Please.”

Stranger straightened himself again. “Please?” he asked softly. “No. Your time is over. The only thing you can beg for is for my mercy.”

“M-mercy?” Bob managed to say.

“Yes. Mercy.” Man’s mouth twitched, and his features turned into something cruel, inhuman. “Beg for it, and I’ll make your end painless. It would be like falling asleep.”

Bob tried to open his mouth when sudden tears started to drip from his eyes. He didn’t want to die.

“Few men have the chance to choose when and how to go on,” the pale man said, and Bob had the feeling that the man somehow read his mind. “Speak, Bob. Time is short.”

Bob met his eyes one more time, and all he could see there was his death. The moment crushed on his chest with the weight of hundreds of wagons, and he felt his mouth moving on its own, “Please.”

The man smiled, raising his stick and pointing it at Bob.

“As you wish,” he said, a cruel little grin on his thin lips. Bob could see man’s knuckles whitening as he gripped his stick firmer. He tried to open his mouth again, but a strange feeling overcame him as the light that escaped the tip of the stick hit him in the chest.

His eyes grew heavy, and his breath was ragged and short. Bob blinked, and once he opened his eyes there was only him in the room.

Well, better this way, he thought and approached his desk, frowning at his knees that were weak for some reason. No matter, though, they ain't gonna work for another day.

The gun was where he left it, in the top drawer and he pulled it out. When he bought it, he prayed he'd never have to use it. The thought made him chuckle as he pressed it against the temple.

You need to write a letter, fool, the small voice in his head said. Oh, right.

He fished the pen and a bit of paper out of his pocket. But write what? And to whom?

In the end, he settled for, I'm not worthy, sorry, and once done he frowned at it. It didn't make much sense. He looked around the room. It looked different. Emptier. It was supposed to be important to him, and, and-

His eyes widened as his gun hand started raising again. No, no, no... He grabbed the pen, the single movement making him more tired than ever, and he started scribbling. Over paper. Over desk. Wherever he could.

The green fire took it all, my collection.

Freaks in long coats - sticks.

They call us mugg...

The loud bang interrupted him, and Bob knew no more.

***

I've wanted to continue this for years so I'm gonna post it here, hoping for extra inspiration. This would be sort of prologue, or for me to know what happened. The actual story is two POVs - muggles and Aurors investigating this what obviously leads them down the different rabbit hole which I guess ends at the same place. Few open-minded muggles, seeing things that don't make sense, and through sheer stubbornness, discovering a whole new world. Aurors with no leads stumbling into a far larger conspiracy that makes them realize just how far certain someones are willing to go in order to protect the Statute of Secrecy.

I don't really have it all figured out, but I really like the idea about two different forces stumbling around each other and maybe even working together down the road in order to get to the bottom of the things none really understand. The draft is a bit rough since I didn't edit it, like, ever.

 

Nice writing, but I'm a little confused by the end - is he AK'd? Or is he obliviated and imperius'd to kill himself? Or is it intentionally ambiguous to the reader what has happened? Does it relate to the authorities drawing close?

 

I think the idea was Imperiused, but he managed to struggle a bit against it, long enough to write those couple of lines. That bang is where he blew his head off. It's all a bit ambiguous so the scene that should've come next (some sort of muggle detective investigating) isn't just the repeating of what was said, but slowly filling the holes.

Yeah, those people drawing close, I have no idea who were they supposed to be (notes don't say, unfortunately) so I guess I should polish that part a bit to make at least some kind of sense. Knowing myself, my guess would be that there's supposed to be two different groups chasing each other outside of the law, and then the plot - authorities getting involved.

 

Besides the political factions that wished to maintain the long-held status quo, the Winter War of 1983 had lasting effects on two old political factions and saw the rise of one notable new political faction.

The Isolationists saw a resurgence as older and generally more distrustful witches and wizards sought to move the magical community further away from what they saw as muggle barbarism. They wished to completely eliminate muggle influence from magical society, generally through any means possible. A small minority were anti-blood purist and believed that removing muggleborn children from their parents and adopting them out to magical families was the best solution to the muggleborn problem, but the vast majority were more firmly rooted in the blood purist ideology carried over from generations of witches and wizards and rekindled by You-Know-Who.

In light of the most-recent conflict and an influx of new ideas, Grindelwaldianism was rebranded as Neo-Grindelwaldianism. The Winter War supported the beliefs of their imprisoned leader Gellert Grindelwald that the muggle world was better ruled by by witches and wizards which would eventually allow for the creation of a utopia for muggles and magicals alike. Further, the sheer brutality of the war was used to justify the excesses of Grindelwald in the 1920s, 30 and 40s. Put rather simplistically, three months of fighting had produced many orders of magnitude more casualties than thirty years of Grindelwaldian terror and those casualties would be seen as acceptable collateral damage to avoid a repeat of the Winter War.

Lastly, the Winter War lead to the foundation of a new movement called Unmasquism which primarily enjoys support among muggleborns and half-bloods with close muggle relations. Similar to Neo-Grindelwaldianism, they seek to throw off the Statute of Secrecy to create a magical and muggle utopia, but unlike Neo-Grindelwaldianism, their movement rejects its belief in magical superiority and is decidedly anti-authoritarian, sometime bordering on anarchism.

These three groups lead to such incredible political polarisation and tension, that by the time You-Know-Who returned to body, magical Britain was a very different place from the country he had terrorised for more than a decade.

-A Modern History of Magical Britain, 2010.

Basically imaging what effect a Cold War gone hot alternate history might have on magical Britain. Starts with the Soviets committing to the idea that Able Archer 1983 was a ruse of war and launching a first strike on Nato.

The story would assume that magical protection beats nuclear weapons meaning most magical homes and locations survive, but that decentralised command and control of nuclear weapons means that the magical world could not stop the button from being pushed, leading to three months of brutal tactical nuclear warfare in Europe followed by a strategic nuclear exchange that rendered the Soviet Union debellatio and led to most of Nato's member states fracturing shortly afterwards.

This lead to renewed support for isolationist/blood purist views who see the war as proof that muggles are animals, the reemergence of Grindelwaldian ideology and the creation of mostly muggleborn movement that seeks to use magic to repair the staggering damage caused by the war.

Writing a brutal alternate history story on Able Archer 83 is something I've been thinking about for many years and this is an extension of that. This probably won't ever happen though. Regardless, it would be neat to see a story like this that is strongly anti-mugglewank even if I'm not sure how a story focussing on a muggle war would go over.

 

Umbridge decides she really likes the ideas of this You-Know-Who guy, so much so, that when she tries to sends dementors after Harry Potter, something inexplicitly protects the boy.

I.e. a story where the blood protections suddenly extend to protecting Harry from Umbridge.

 

I've been rewatching Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad lately and I was kinda hooked on the world depicted there.
Latin American culture, New Mexico, and the unforgiving and seemingly endless desert in between.

So how about a magical version of it starring a young fresh (OC) auror stationed there, that has to deal with...

- a brutal magical cartel in the south, that fashions itself after the Aztecs with rituals dialed up to eleven
- they are brewing a magical drug and are trying to sell it across the border, that wrecks havoc on addicted wizards and witches
e.g. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4745329/13/On-the-Way-to-Greatness the "Mindfuck Mints" by Fred and George
- the border is protected by anti-apparition charms, stuff similar to the Thief's Downfall in Gringotts and so on.
- Maybe they use animangi to smuggle stuff across the border

Basically, you have magical (but smaller) versions of the various factions (cartel/DEA/Fring/Biker Gangs/addicts) of the show in the Harry Potter World.

Deadly magical creatures wandering the desert, Taboos, cursed rituals sites, magical sicarios, and a young man caught in between, desperate to make a decent living in a dangerous job, but also faced with the challenge of staying legit.

 

Lol, so the Coyote smugglers might be literal coyotes?

 

A story wherein an adult Harry would work with other muggleborns to adapt muggle inventions for the Wizarding world.

The story would be about them brainstorming what technology to adapt, how to adapt it, and promoting its use by the wizarding society. May have some intrigue if it replaces another industry.

Example: Developing an enchanted, automated network of magic mirrors, to become the magical equivalent of a cell phone network. Continue development so like our smartphones, these would have other functions. Floo calls fall out of fashion because of this. Ministry has fierce debate on how to regulate this properly. Old Money wizards want to buy out the tech company, or steal the secrets via corporate espionage, etc., etc.

 

That could be interesting, but remember that Harry is technically a member of Generation X. You'd have to tweak things if the technology of the day is the smartphone. He'd been out of school for nearly a decade by the time they were widespread.

A story about magical advancement would be the way to do it I think - instead of Harry and co. ripping off ideas from the Muggle world, they're the first wave of spell creation and enchantment invention. You've got Fred and George as entrepreneurs already, so you could bring them in, only they do more than focus on jokes and pranks. The new generation wants more than the same awful transportation options, they want to be able to watch the World Cup without having to hide from Muggles while doing it, etc. Even without porting in Muggle inventions, you've got a fertile ground for conflict with the old guard traditionalists.

 

I think it's okay to get inspirations from muggle inventions. With two caveats. Not just being the same thing but running on magic, or some lazy shit like that. Secondly, the inspiration doesn't necessarily need to be an in universe one, the magical and muggle product may simply parallel one another independently (or with magical equivalent coming first, today's tech in the 90s). We have plenty of evidence of that sort of relationship happening between both worlds.

And it would be neat to see failure on part of the inventors. Just because it's successful with muggles doesn't mean the same will happen with the wizards. The cultural and technological disparity is just too great. There are plenty of cases of companies arrogantly trying to implement their otherwise successful product/service in foreign countries with no local knowledge only to see it bomb. A story where the protagonist(s) have to adapt and struggle for their success would be much more interesting.

I had a similar concept. You buy a mirror and its pair stays in a central where a house elf acting as operator pairs it up with whom you want to call. I wouldn't have it being extremely successful, wizards just don't need that sort of mean of communication so much, with all other means available (which also includes various forms of teleportation). Maybe the creator ended up eavesdropping some conversations and blackmailed some people. Eventually the Ministry took over the business, for security reasons and the greater good, of course.

A similar idea is a text message device. A little notebook/notepad with several "twin" pages. You give a matching page to a friend and they share what's written. The creator might have intended to make a fortune out of selling new pages when the old ones have been filled, but people figured out how to safely erase and reuse them. As for smartphones, they might just be an aggregation of a bunch of itens, preferably with the features being more analog a tactile, physical apps if you will. The aforementioned mirror and notepad in the same case, for starters. Eventually it becomes like a swiss army knife, with only magic keeping it compact.

 

I like the idea that the #supercool™ inventions that the sensible muggleborn inventor comes up with just doesn't fly with the general wizarding population. It honestly makes a lot more sense.

 

A late twenties/early thirties adult Harry, instead of a freshly out-of-Hogwarts/post war one, should satisfy this.
The impetus could be that, he wanted to reconnect with Dudley, and other muggleborns wanted to keep in touch with their own families, and a few separate groups got started before finding each other and working together.

Can be that, during the brainstorming session someone would pitch an idea, only to get shot down because there is already a Wizarding equivalent and does it better.

 

The goblins dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoken in the darkness of Gringotts…

 

Could it be forgotten lordship that is somehow linked to Harry?

 

Either that or the portraits of Harry's parents. Or an ancient demon that will destroy the Statute of Secrecy.

 

The crypts of the forgotten, ancient law-goblins. Now the goblins attempt to conquer through legalese and tort rather than strength of arms.

The lawblins are coming.

 

This but Bloodborne crossover.