If you see Magic as a part of the soul rather than the body, the simple explanation would be that the magical "gene" affects the soul rather than body. Doesn't really contradict.

 

She mentioned it in one of her many post-DH 'interviews', apparently. Not sure which one.

 

Then you have a wizard and not a muggle. How would anyone know the guy is/was a muggle? If you're saying magic is connected to the soul, then the body Voldemort takes upgrades automatically to wizard and there is no reason to call him a muggle by the time said Voldemort starts attacking someone.

On a different note, I've got a plot idea based off the gene idea that I was going to use at some point where the enemy would be a squib. I'd probably play up the gene thing by having the differences between muggles and wizards be:

A protein structure found throughout the cells in their bodies, and an extra hormone produced in the pituitary or hypothalamus that is cycled through the body continuously. When the two components are together in one body you get a wizard. If one or the other is missing, you get someone who is non magical. From magic families a squib.

The Squib in this story would be missing the hormone. He would be killing wizards and witches cracking their skulls open and removing the structure where said hormone is produced. Eat or inject. Cannibal squib-wizard has to do this often just so he can be a true magical. He leaves a trail of dead bodies in his wake.

Squib either started out as a wizard who had a bad head injury that broke this, or was born a squib to a pure blood family and wants to prove himself as a wizard/wants revenge on the wizarding world for out casting him.

Obviously clashing with everyone's favorite dude, Harry Potter.

Yeah. So don't know if its been done before, but it is something I'd like to write in the future.

 

Stop being a dick; the point was that the Horcrux took over the body of a Muggle and not some magical person that might be recognized, etc.

I think your gene/hormone premise is somewhat stupid contrived, but I would read this nonetheless.

 

I wouldn't read it. Sounds too scoobie-dooish (in a bad way) for lack of better word.

 

That's nearly the same as the plot of an X-Files episode. Good? Bad? Whatever?

 

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Relic_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic_(novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliquary_(novel)

 

Contrived and stupid? Very much so, but the only answer I could come up with to JKR making it it be genetic based and magic being a dominant gene, without getting soul based. Multiple genes makes more sense to me than just one, and the hormone/protien thing is just to step away from leaving it at a DNA genes.

Never read/watched Relic or the twilight zone, but thanks for the info; I'm not surprised that that type of plot exists, its probably a popular scifi plot to use.

I'll be sure to keep the mystery machine from appearing when it does get written. It would be ascotless as well. Though a mystery it would be if I make Harry an auror at the time.

@Portus: Dickish and ham-handed though it might read, OP seems pretty interested in using a muggle by asking 'where it says that muggle means nonmagic' and the like. I really like the idea. And while saying muggle possession by LV has better chances than him landing, by chance, in a wizard strolling through the area, my main intent is a prevention of some random aura reading Ravenclaw student from popping up and pointing out that it is in fact a muggle straight off when the person attacks. Or something along those lines. A stupid fear, as I doubt anyone would do that, but that is probably what I should have said to begin with.

Why doesn't LV in muggle form transfer over to a wizard as soon as possible? He dislikes muggles in canon, and I can't remember his wraith form ever attached to one. Correct away if this is not the case. I only remember snakes, wizards and the weird baby thing. In canon if he could transfer to them, was he too disgusted by the idea of being in a muggle?

I suppose this question could be easily solved by saying horcruxes can't move at will, but then he must be sort of insane to attack Harry at Hogwarts with large numbers of wizards watching/celebrating the tournament. On his own, without knowing anything about the world he is in.

If he can switch, does, and still attacks for whatever reason, why not have him switch to a more popular wizard? Having a popular English wizard attack a random student might lead to more questions (looked into faster?), than it being an unknown wizard who could be explained as foreign or a crazy wizard who preferred to live the life of a muggle. This might be a good way to get the Ministry more involved if you make it a well known and accepted department head.

On the other hand, having Voldemort stay as an unknown wizard (possessed muggle) would probably be more researched by Harry's family, if they survive in this AU. No accidents on the job or anything. Depends on how idiotic the Ministry behaves in this AU, but I wouldn't be surprised if the canon one dropped it as some crazy act.


All random musings and even if none of this information is what you were looking for, if it helps you develop your plot by considering some of this or how it could come about, then awesome.

 

An idea that came to me while pondering on the May contest. Tentatively named "Speedrunner".

Harry Potter is given a chance to go back in time and fix things, preferably to stop Voldemort's return and the second war from every happening. But there are things that limit what he could do.

(1) He is to go back into his own body at the time (so he can't go back to before he's born, and if he's too young he can't do anything).
(2) he isn't allowed to use magic at all.
(3) he only has 24 hours' to fix everything.
(4) he is not allowed to kill anyone.

Do you think these are difficult enough obstacles?

 

It would allow you to explore a sort of butterfly effect. But without him being able to use magic...you really limit what he can do. A whisper here, and comment there. Or even sitting down with someone and detailing the future to them. These could work and effect massive change...or they could cause no change at all. I mean, if one of your friends walked up to you today and told you..."Next time you are going to turn left, go right. You'll meet the love of your life if you do." You'd look at them, laugh and go about your every day business and joke about it in the pub that night. You wouldn't deliberately do as he said, just because he said it.

Thats the level of influence Harry would have. Unless he can split the 24 hours across different time periods. An hour here, an hour there etc. That could get more interesting. Influencing multiple different points in history, tracking the changes forward and keeping them on course. That could be interesting to read and even to plot out.

Also when you say he can't do magic at all..what about apparation? Or the knight bus? Or even floo travel? Do they count? Cause if not, you seriously limit him in what he can do.

 

If you don't plan on splitting the 24 hours which day would you choose?

If you do decide to have Harry tell someone the future, using the methods Mordecai mentioned, you could have Harry write it down and give to the friend to open later. It'd probably take a while, and he'd loose a few hours that he might need.

For number four, can he still influence someone kill to kill someone else?

 

Floo and Portkey are allowed but Apparition isn't, because it channels his magic. Knightbus doesn't use magic at all; he needs a wand and cash, however.

I'm split about parseltongue though; it'd be great if he could use it, but he might not want to risk it (depending on the time-travel plot device, that).

The 24 hours are a single day (although your split-hour idea has merit of its own). And the 'write down details for someone else' angle is not allowed, or at most, be his backup plan.

His magic is either unbound (so he can use his magic, but he must refrain from doing so) or it is bound (all of it is being channeled for time travel). Basically it's the older Harry's soul overriding younger Harry's soul's control on his body for the single day.

The idea is to force Harry to use his brain, his cunning, to make things work instead of busting in with wand blazing.

Parts of the current idea:

Spoiler

Harry go to his 10-year-old body, on the day Luna's mother died, so that he could save her life.
Then he'll go to Lucius Malfoy, convince him that Harry Potter is in fact possessed by/ is a reincarnated Voldemort, so that he can get the Diary (in Lucius' hands), the Cup (have Narcissa access Bellatrix's vault) and the Locket (have Narcissa bring Harry to Grimmauld Place so he can convince Kreacher to help). Harry will say that they were for a rebirthing ritual and order Lucius to gather the Death Eaters for an attack that night at Hogwarts. He may also order Lucius or another Death Eater to burn down the Gaunt hovel with fiendfyre (hence destroying the Ring horcrux).
He'll then go to Hogwarts, get the Diadem, release the Basilisk, destroy the four Horcruxes in his possession, and using the Basilisk, petrify all of the Death Eaters gathered there. At last he'll leave a message to Dumbledore, telling him to investigate Harry's cursed scar.

Again, this is just a rough idea thus far, so please feel free to shoot it down or add to it.

 

And how does a 10 year old convince anyone of anything beyond the fact that they want a biscuit? Thats where your fic falls down. Even if Malfoy received the boy...he wouldn't give him any credence and would most likely just turn him over to the ministry.

How does he destroy the Horcrux's if he can't use magic?

 

Spoiler

(1) Using Harry's knowledge of Lucius and the Malfoys in general, plus a demo of parseltongue.
(2) After releasing the Basilisk, have it bitten down or donate some venom to use on the Horcruxes.

 

Quite frankly I'd read that...raise an eyebrow and say to myself 'What...thats more than slightly contrived'. Its boring, and makes very little sense.

 

Just my thought. Have you thought of a reason WHY Harry goes back in time? If not, you could have it repeating. Meaning, he changes things, but it doesn't go the way he wants when he goes back to the future, and he returns once again (possibly to different periods in time) to try again. This way, you could explore different paths that can be taken, and show their results every single time until you finally reach a good ending.

Although, it will be a shame if he cannot kill anybody. Might be cool to have him massacre all the death eaters he can within 24 hours out of frustration, and STILL end up in a bad ending. (Ends up in Azkaban for the murders and Voldemort kills him soon after, etc. ) Of course, if he can't kill with magic, he will have to do so with more unconventional means.

Anyways, this was just the first idea that popped in my head after reading your plot bunny.

 

Well, it would have to be differentiated from the plethora of Japan/ninja/samurai!Harry fics out there, especially in the Crossover worlds.

To be honest, I'm not very fond of Harry-being-raised-by-Asians idea, especially when his new adoptive parents give him a new, Asian name.

On a different note, has anyone written a story in which the Chosen One isn't Harry, Neville, their brothers, their sisters, or any permutation thereof? Perhaps the prophecy is a little different?

Okay, so I examined the Ministry Six and analysed if any of the others could possibly make an interesting BWL/GWL after Harry and Neville. We have Hermione, Ron, Luna, and Ginny. Ron and Ginny are probably a no-no, simply because the key feature of the Weasleys is their large family size. How would you easily integrate that into the Chosen One concept?

That leaves Hermione and Luna. A GWL!Hermione would be interesting... but too open to the possibility of morphing into Super!UniversalBandAidSolution!Hermione, which we don't like.

The GWL!Luna intrigues me far more. A story could focus on her shenanigans; a trio involving her year, which is below Harry's, could be the main characters. This way, we get a "fresher" cast which doesn't feature the often-featured Class of Harry's Year. The new trio would have be balanced carefully to create foils for Luna's personality and be refreshing.

Possible combinations: Permutations of the following characters - GWL!Luna, Ginny, Colin, and Rolf Scamander (translation: basically, Luna's "canon" love interest, but practically an OC. It'd be interesting to make him more deadpan and rationalist, to foil Luna).

The new trio would obviously need to interact often with Harry and co. Hell, you could probably even include Harry in the new trio, although I don't know how. A cool, older mentor-esque character, maybe? Nonetheless, the main pitfalls of the GWL!Luna concept would be the difficulty in keeping Luna in-character and interesting.

A plus would be that since Luna is the GWL, you could perhaps alter the events and the order in which they happen. For one, why does the events of the PS/SS have to happen first? Does Quirrell have to be DADA teacher Numero Uno? What if the Basilisk happened first? Moreover, would Luna react differently to the events to which Harry was subjected?

The equivalent of PoA would be completely different for this story, obviously. The fun of the GWL!Luna concept is that you can play around with the backstory and circumstances behind the prophecy. Keep the readers guessing, just like how JKR did with us when we read the books. Are the Potters still alive? Did the Lovegoods even perish? Is it possible that Luna is the Chosen One whilst not being a Girl Who Lived? Perhaps Voldemort never attempted to kill her, and he was never vanquished.

So many ideas... The execution would be very difficult, though. Luna is hard to characterise properly, and deciding who'd be in the new trio would be difficult as well.

Rolf/Colin/Luna probably leads itself well to love triangles, while Luna/Ginny/Boy works better in pushing the girl!power and friendship angle.

 

It makes me lose interest when you mention love triangles with OCs. Unless you're writing a romance, there are a lot more important things to worry about in a story.

Aaanyway, I had this plot device stuck in my head.

The basic premise of it is that Harry is fighting a war on two fronts: the present (being the time he belongs to) and the past (being before he was born).

He continually travels back and forth between the two eras, fighting in both wars as if it was all in one time-period.

Say, for example, Harry goes back in time to July 10th, 1977 to fight a major battle. Right after the battle, he returns to his present time, say... August 16th, 2001. Because of his participation in the battle, things in his present got worse instead of better. To fix it, Harry decides that he needs to go back in time and change something else. However, when he goes back in time, he can only go to the point where he left, i.e. July 10th, 1977, right after the battle. And when he returns to his present, it'll, again, be right after the point where he left.

Therefore, he's not getting any second chances to correct his failures. No do-overs. He's just fighting the war in two eras on a day-by-day basis, hoping that his actions in the past will change the present for the better and not the worse.

It seems pretty complicated to make work in a story though. I might have given it a shot if I didn't already have like 15 other stories that I'm already planning on writing.

 

Sounds like it would make a boss story. You'd need to limit his timetravel so he doesn't just go back to 1940 and kill Voldemort, or whoever hes fighting, so maybe some kind of localized magical phenomena. Also, he'd have to find some way of disguising himself as a person who can appear at random times and have enough influence to change battles.

If you can fit those, you'd also have to plan the changes well enough to account for the chaos effect and keep the timeline recognizable, because the members of Harry's side would change, as would tactical situation which would make fighting a war difficult, as well as coherent in a plot sense.

Actually, though I like the idea, it has a lot of problems as a story. That said, if someone could pull it off it would be balls to the wall awesome.

 

Well, I never said I liked the idea of love triangles; all I said was that Luna/Rolf/Colin lends itself easily to producing those, even if you didn't really try to make one.

To be honest, Luna/Ginny/Rolf is probably the best bet; I don't really see Colin as being charismatic enough as a character to really lend himself to the story, at least until he grows up a little. Perhaps he could take Neville's role in this AU story?

Although the Luna/Ginny/Colin trio would be very interesting when you're covering the Basilisk plot. Would Ginny still possess the diary?

Okay, for the plot, I do think Luna's mother probably did blood sacrifice, and the Curse scar deal still happens for Luna. But the twist! Voldemort attacks the Lovegoods when Luna turns 9, as in, when Luna's mother dies in canon. Perhaps Voldemort didn't discover the Prophecy until then. Thus, we have the First War ending much later in this AU, resulting in a massively different HP universe to work with. You could use the extended war to justify your new changes. Perhaps in this world, the Minister for Magic isn't Fudge, but someone more competent? The post-War "cleanse" of Death Eaters would have been much harsher, and so the Malfoys probably are poor in this universe.

I'd also like to think that Xeno is still alive.

The story should concern ideas of determinism vs fatalism. Surprisingly, Luna perhaps believes that the Prophecy is a fallacy and would maintain her "weirdness" stance by asserting that Voldemort would die not by her hand, but by another's. Rolf/Dumbledore would argue that, although everyone possesses free will, some things are predetermined.

Malfoy could still be the Chosen One's "rival", per se. But it'd be interesting if we make him creepier by making him want to bone GWL!Luna too.

I would laugh so hard if the author of this bunny makes Luna, as she often is with her crazy ideas, right: she isn't the Chosen One. She's the main character, and everyone thinks she's the Chosen One (even Voldemort), but perhaps Ginny possesses the Horcrux. The redhead's Voldemort visions and Parseltongue abilities? People wave it off as vestiges of the Diary (assuming Ginny even got the Diary in this AU).

Hence, for potential cast ideas:

GWL!Luna - weird as always; perhaps more stressed and realistic than her canon counterpart.
Ginny - outgoing foil to Luna; tomboy in her initial years, more boy-aware in her later years (in contrast to the rather asexual Luna).
Rolf - grandson of the famed magizoologist, Newt Scamander. Deadpan and Hermione-esque rationalist foil to Luna. Although he's more of a slacker/I-don't-care-type than Hermione.
Colin - the Neville/Alt!BWL counterpart; over-the-top enthusiastic photographer who becomes more serious as time goes on. A rather dim-witted character, who's loyal.
Harry - cool, older brother/mentor type; more easygoing and less-angst ridden in this universe, because his parents are probably still alive.
Hermione - bossy bookworm; became injured in the Troll Incident; friends with Harry. Go-to person when you have a question.
Ron - Harry's friend. At first, apprehensive of Luna. Luna probably later dates him once, and then breaks up with him. Perhaps takes Cho's role?