I suppose you could invent a criminal record for Tobias Snape. That would probably narrow it down.

 

This was hinted at earlier, but Dobby is a lifesaver here. Harry calls Dobby and asks him if he can find out where Snape lives and then take Harry there. This way, Dobby finds out offscreen and you don't have to go into the details. You can even make it a little more mysterious by having Dobby come back a little banged up, or a little ragged and breathing hard, or whatever. If you want to give the reader a bit more, you can have another elf peak around the corner really fast when Harry arrives, and then quickly disappear with a guilty look and the sound of an oven door slamming, followed by a muffled cry.

 

I am (re)writing an AU where James and Lily chose to ally themselves to Voldemort after Snape delivered the prophecy to - assume a slightly saner - Voldemort.
However, after Voldemort's first demise (Neville BWL and all that), James and Lily were found out and went to Azkaban. I need the Potters to be reasonably sane and functional after breaking out of prison, but to still show that Azkaban has fucked them up. Any ideas of subtle ways to do that? I don't want Harry angsting "my parents are broken/crazy", but still aware of how everything Voldemort related destroyed his family. In the first version of the fic my attempts at that killed the characterization (probably because they weren't subtle at all).

 

Why would James and Lilly do that?
Were they fucked up before they went to Azkaban?
Did Harry know about this, or was the survival of his parents hidden from him?

 

You'll have more trouble explaining why the Potters chose to become Death Eaters without shattering SoD. What does James and Lily joining Riddle add to the plot?

 

Yes, I'm aware that explaining that is tricky to say the least. But this idea started from the question that if the Potters were ready to die for Harry, what else would they do to protect him? Not to mention, that the prophecy stated that Harry/Neville had the power to defeat Voldemort, so they might even been thinking about that - letting Harry grow up in "security" (instead of, for example, running away and living forever in fear that Voldy/DEs would find them), while perhaps putting Harry in a place where he could fulfil the prophecy. Gryffindors are brave, but I can't see why being brave renders them unable to long term thinking enough to pull of (or try to) something like that, and I've seen little of that explored. As for them becoming marked DEs, that would be a prerrogative of Voldemort, of course.

And of course, James and Lily didn't count on going to Azkaban in first place, so anything they might have planned out/how they would have used the opportunity to escape after Voldemort vanished was thwarted by their imprisonment.

On the other hand, they being DE's add to Harry's characterization. I want to write him as someone who is trying to figure out his place in the magical world, and later rise in power, but have part of that related, among other things, to his desire to have a family.

JKR has said that Voldemort tried to recruit James and Lily once, so it isn't as unbelieavable that Voldemort himself could accept something like that. But I admit that I probably need either a slightly different Voldemort, or a different wording/part of the prophecy to be overheard for that to work.

James and Lily were not fucked up before Azkaban, not more than the situation they found themselves caused an ethical and emotional turmoil, at least.

Harry didn't know about magic until he received his Hogwarts letter. Right now I have him living in an orphanage (Petunia did not want the child of his criminal sister), but I am still considering to put him with the Dursleys. Either way, without any of the "Harry who hates muggles and performs controlled magic since he is four years old and controls Slytherin house since his first day at Hogwarts" thing. I have him remembering his parents vaguely, but not knowing what happened to them.

 

This question is for those here with a better handle on math that I have. If a person in flight at 500 feet in the air then freefalls, head down with everything maximized to reduce friction, what is the impact force in pounds? Do the following numbers look correct? I used an online calculator, but am not familiar enough with the math at this level to say whether I did it right.

Falling body = 110 pounds.
Distance = 500 feet (and let's use 1000 feet as well).
Distance traveled after impact is .5 meters.
velocity (based on a typical falling object the above weight and distance) = 54.65 m/s.

I get the average impact force of 149023 N.

So, my question: is this close enough to being right that I can go with it in a story and be confident that it is within the bounds of reality? Also, am I right in simply coverting N to Lbs to get the impact in pounds. As in, "That equaled XYZ pounds of impact"?

 

@Joe's Nemesis: Numbers look roughly right for an object falling straight down and embedding itself half a meter into the ground. I got something a little different, but probably just rounded differently somewhere.

A newton is kg*m/s^2 though, so it's not a 1:1 conversion. Using Google's conversion, 149023 newtons is equal to 33501.7032 pounds of force.

 

Interesting. So, if a person is falling from that distance at that speed, and has something very hard between them that denies give of their body, and hits another person, who gives half a meter or so, that person has just hit the other person with around 33 thousand pounds of force?

 

Roughly so yeah. Little past my physics knowledge, but I checked with a friend. He said the exact interactions are complicated and depend on a lot of stuff, but that's a decent enough estimate.

 

I have a few ideas revolving around Harry travelling to an alternate dimension/limbo, and am curious if they seem too trope-y and cliche, or if they could be workable fics in your opinion.

So the scenarios are as follows: Harry goes to a limbo, and:

1) Time is diluted, he spends XXX amount of years training/learning in the limbo, and as such when he comes back he has a lot of experience

--or--

2) The way magic works in the limbo is different, it's like trying to run through molasses or punch underwater. Harry re-learns his basic spells, but when he gets back to his home it's like he's suddenly taken his weighted clothing off and things are easier.
​

I'm realizing both of these sound a lot like Dragonball plot points now. Perhaps that means they're bad and unoriginal. Oh well

 

Scenario one has been done quite a lot in all the "Harry get's super powerful during one summer"-fics. Havn't seen in in a while and I'm sure there's ways it could be done, perhaps if you fleshed the actual plot out some more we could tell you if it feels clichéd?

Number two I'm not sure I've read before but seems like a way to make a super!Harry. That doesn't have to suck, but why not have Harry really struggling to learn interesting spells instead?

 

@Stenstyren

In the interest of fleshing it out some more, my not-so-well-formed idea (for both scenarios) is essentially this:

Voldemort's killing curse sends the victim's soul to another dimension. It's not a heaven or hell, instead a sort of limbo. Other souls killed by Voldemort also reside there, but many have gone insane. This is essentially me stealing a concept from the Malazan series, if you've read that.

Regardless, what happens from here is merely a question of timelines. Does Harry stay in this limbo for what feels like XXX years before finding a method of escape (scenario 1)? Or alternatively, is magic extremely "slow" in the limbo (like I said, like trying to punch underwater) so when he gets out it's like much easier.

Those are two potential plot threads. Obviously I'm new to this forum, and I'm relatively new to HP fanfic in general. So I really have no idea if either of these scenarios will be retreading old, done-to-death ground or not.

 

Havn't really seen much like that before, so I wouldn't pass on the story based on a clichéd premise. As with most things, the devils in the execution. Guessing the killing curse would be for seventeen year-old Harry?
I think the limbo with Voldemorts victims could be done in a really interesting fashion. Don't have much preference for which option you go with.

 

You know, I was actually thinking of Harry getting hit with the Killing Curse at age 14. I don't want to redo the graveyard scene, so I have Harry either getting kidnapped from the Quidditch world cup over the summer or Barty Crouch kidnapping him sometime during the year. Then he takes the curse after giving his blood to Tom.

If he did die at age 17 in the forest, I wonder how long that wizarding Britain would hold up without both Harry and Dumbledore? I want to write about him coming back and helping in the ongoing war effort rather than him coming back to a world where Voldemort has won and everyone he loves has met some horrible fate.

 

Edit: Just saw the last post. Never mind


No, I wouldn't read that. Too many plot holes. What happens to the body when he dies? How long is he buried? Why now? so on and so forth. It seems as though the entire set up has to be handwaved away.

 

Well, maybe, and a very big maybe at that, it could work if Harry came back as a wraith because of the connection between him and Voldemort, but then finds that his old body unusable because of the decay. Then the first part of the story could be wraith!Harry trying to regain his body (how? Fuck if I know, maybe he'll haunt Voldemort in the toilet for shits and giggles and shack up with Myrtle).

Or Zombie!Harry. I dunno.

 

I figure that wizards have a way to preserve the body with charms, and the obviously wouldn't need to drain the blood and pump it full of embalming fluid.

Dumbledore didn't rot in his tomb. So either the tomb was enchanted or his body was. I assume Harry's body would get the same treatment.

 

I'm trying to come up with a satisfying way for Harry to become an Occlumens. Is it only possible to teach Occlumency if you are a Legilimens? If so, this limits the teaching pool, and I don't really want him to learn it from Snape, Dumbledore, or Voldemort.

I don't want it to boil down to Harry just reading a book, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts. Could a non-Legilimens teach Harry the principles or does that come off as too easy?

 

We only see it taught with Legilimency in canon. As you're writing fanfiction, you could bend the "rules" a bit, but I'd say don't. Doing so would be a bit like trying to learn how to be a goalie without anyone kicking the ball at you. You kind of need that person. Or at least a machine that does it, which makes me think about Harry using something like the Locket or Diadem Horcrux to teach himself Occlumency. A dangerous way of doing it though.