I don't know, a tension with Dumbledore instead with "Dumbles" or "manipulative Dumbledore" is so rare . . .

On a serious note, if you want to avoid Dumbledore, then perhaps she goes back at his death or just after . . . but then you'll get people asking "why not before if he's the only wizard Voldemort ever feared?"

 

Or have Dumbledore die earlier due to Tonks' interference. As Tonks would have no idea about Snape being good, she kills him off early, which leads to Dumbledore's death because he no longer has a spy protecting him.

Killing off Snape early would have tremendous repercussions on the new timeline as well. You might have Harry get possessed by Voldemort or a worse MoM event happening due to Harry not having any mental training.

It would be very interesting to see someone go back in time and create a bloodier and more devastating war. In the end, Harry would win (unlike the first timeline) but the costs are much higher.

 

Actually, you could do much worse than that, since Snape was the one to tell the Order about Harry's vision. Future Tonks could go to the Ministry intending to give an edge to the Order and they end up not coming, or arriving even later, with dire consequences.

 

I can only speak to my own school but it was a boarding school of the type Hogwarts is modelled after, so:

The school had about 100 students each year (so around 700 students total), divided into 4 houses. But year 7 (i.e. first year) was not allocated to Houses until the end of the year, so take around 100 students off the total for House purposes. So that's about 150 students per house.

Now, each House did have its own common room, as well as its own locker room. But you have to remember that the house common room was just one option out of many as a social venue. People also hung out in: the library, the computer rooms, the field at the front of the school we called the Valley, the music school (corridors and practice rooms), 2 different courtyards, the lunch hall, and just dotted around the place in random stairwells and corridors.

The house common rooms would seem to go through cycles of popularity in terms of how much people liked to hang out there. Obviously wet weather increased their popularity. But there was basically just one time a week where anywhere near the whole house was in the common room at any one time, and that was the weekly House Assembly. At such time we were rather packed in, with people sitting on tables, standing on the stairs etc, but we fit.

With respect to the size of the room, they were much smaller than the one pictured. Unfortunately I don't have a picture (pre-smartphone era!) but we're talking around the same size as a reasonably sized classroom, maybe 10m x 10m?

 

I am going to try to expand on taure's answer to Sesc.

As Taure mentions, 100-150 people can fit in a surprisingly small amount of space. This is helped by the fact that students probably wouldn't spend all their time in the common room. They have the grounds, the library, unused classrooms, etc. To further help the cause, we should remember that Hogwarts can seem alive at times. Hogwarts has moving staircases, talking portraits, the room of requirement, and a room that was able to support a small forest for that centaur divination teacher. While it is not even touched upon in canon, it's obviously possible that when the common room was reaching capacity, it could magically expand and create more space with couches/tables, without the students batting an eye.

 

How long does a broken nose take to heal up after it's been reset (no magic)? The patient is dosed with some high-juju pain killers. (He might or might not get his nose rebroken in the future.)

Another question, more broadly speaking, what could be a common writing pitfall when it comes to a broken nose?

 

To add to Taure, at my boarding school, houses were a day time thing only, there were four and they affected the school and forms only.

The boarding side of things were all separated into different boys and girls houses divided by size, with a mixture of ages and then each actual boarding house had their own common room for their students. As Taure said, the common rooms were not as large as your photo.

Everyday the common room of each boarding house would accommodate all the boarders for that boarding house for the House Meeting after prep and a register was called. That was the busiest it could get, generally there'd be 40-50 boys all scattered around chairs, some sat on the arms or leaning on the walls. The rest of the time it was never overfull because people would hang out elsewhere, their rooms, the grounds, the library etc.

@Eilyfe Broken noses take a couple of weeks to a month to heal in some cases. Even after they're set they may not be as pretty as they used to be. Erm, pain killers don't affect the healing much, not sure what you're quite getting at there.
Don't know much about writing about a broken nose and I've never experienced one. I imagine it hurts and breathing gets easier and less noticeable after a few days. Bruising maybe a few days to a week from that. How large a focus is it, in the narrative? What narrative reason do you have for it to be a big focus, can you not just say it was painful?
- I'm an ED doctor at the moment.

 

As a person who has had a broken nose, it sucks. Big time. You end up breathing through your mouth more because your nasal passages swell up, which dries your mouth out a lot and makes your breath stink. The swelling dies down fairly quickly, though fully healing does take longer as Blorcyn said.

 

It's not overly plot-relevant but I wanted to get my facts straight. It's mainly for immersion and since I've never had a broken nose I thought I'd ask. (I only mentioned the painkillers to give a rough overview of what's going on.)

For more details:

The character had a manly bout of fisticuffs and got his nose broken. A priest reset his nose and gave him some herbal brew for the pain. That's about it. With the new information I can add in that he's got trouble breathing through his nose, and I have to take out some of the more olifactory-based descriptions of later scenes. I assume by breathing through the mouth instead the nose (and the swelling) the sense of smell is also somewhat impaired?

I can use quite a lot of that actually. The dried out mouth is good, too. I've already got a vague sense how I can torture the character with that one.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate the help.

 

Working on a new story (Durmstrang!Harry), trying to work out some minor details. The main problem is that I don't want people to think that the story is just a clone of a certain other story, or a clone of canon. So, I'm working on who Harry's group of friends are going to be. I don't want to do Boy 1 and Girl 1, because that the same composition as canon, and I don't want to thing that they're just replacements for Ron and Hermione. So, one friends, three friends, 4 friends, no friends? thee boys and a girl? two girls? Idk.

Secondly, one of the secondary characters (probably Harry's eventual love interest) is going to be the daughter of someone currently in Azkaban. The question is - is there a good way to do it? Is there middle ground? One one side, they could be following in their parents footsteps, learning all the dark magic they want and becoming a feared badass. The kind of person that Dumbledore, if given the ability, would want as far away from Harry as possible. On the otherhand, the character could be the exact opposite. They hate their parents and everything they stand for. They don't want to learn dark magic just for the sake of learning dark magic, and they want to get out of their parent's shadow. Maybe they try and become a healer. Like, the idea of Durmstrang having this super-serious dark reputation, for this girl to be the daughter of a death eater, only for her to be a nice girl with good intentions... idk. The issue is that both of these feel kind of generic (not that that has ever stopped me before), and I don't want people to just think it's a Calypso Rosier stand-in, or a Mary Sue goody two shoes.

 

Is dark magic consedered to be totally evil in canon? Given that it is teached as a core subject in a school makes me think otherwise. Maybe, dark magic to have this kind of reputation in England because the recent events in the country.

Also, I believe you should be careful with "super-serious dark reputation" of the Durmstrang. As I remember it does not accept muggleborn students, however it is a wizarding school that educates - from the of the school's name and the supposed location of the school and ethnicity of the students - students from Germany, Northern and Eastern Europe and Balkans. It would be absurd for Durmstrang to have "super-serious dark reputation". Or you can embrace it and attach that reputation to aformentioned countries too.

If you want to avoid Calypso Rosier situation, just make the group full male and make love-interest just a student. Maybe learning darks arts are considered no different then learning transfiguration in Durmstrang environment, so there isn't a moral conflict she feels over this issue. Her conflict would be - I am assuming she is at least half English since you mentioned father or mother in Azkaban - the prejudices she encountered in England because of Durmstrang Education.

 

The dark arts situation in the story is pretty much as you say - I was just simplifying it for context in regards to the question. No special attention will be given to the dark arts, and it will just naturally be a part of most classes like any other magic would be. To call attention to it in such a way would signify that they acknowledge that it's not on the level, which kind of defeats the point. Any reputation would be more hearsay than actual truth, based on a smattering of details, similar to the idea that "all slytherins are evil" that gets thrown around a lot.

My idea for the student population is that the students are mostly handpicked for a variety of reasons. Perhaps so and so is the son of an Austrian Noble, or so and so is the daughter of a Russian Politician, or so an so is the son of a prominent dueling champion, or so and so is the only person in recorded history to survive the killing curse. Any bias presented so there are no muggleborns is merely coincidental *wink wink*. Anyways, you'd be correct that with the OC being raised outside of England their whole life, they likely wouldn't have that English bias, so there really wouldn't be an internal conflict of that nature. I think you've hit the nail on the head. There would likely be some prejudice, but I'm not sure how far it would go. I don't think it would go far enough for the OC to think that her parents were falsely imprisoned or anything like that, but she would hate the fact that she's not able to live in her own country.

 

First of all, the daughter of an Azkaban prisoner might not know where she stands on it all, and is waiting to see how she's treated for it and otherwise keeping a low profile. Better still, break them out into different characters - the love interest is besties with the Death-Eater child, who may be keeping secrets for good reasons. Harry's year-mates could include cooler guys than the one he dorms with, who may have used political leverage to get to room with the Boy-Who-Killed-Voldemorrrrt.

 

For sure. She's probably never been to England, but her guardian (her grandparent) has, and probably harbors some deep feelings in regards to there. So, the OC's probably a bit biased because her grandparent is biased. The idea I'm thinking of is similar to yours. There's probably a small group of three-ish friends who've known eachother for a long time, one of which is the OC (and all probably English). They might see Harry alone or something, and try to befriend him for their own various reasons. It would probably work, but the one concern I would have is that it would be weird for Harry to be going to Durmstrang, only for all of his friends to still be English anyways. So, perhaps it's like you said, and just the OC is English, and has befriended two of the locals from whereevery she happens to be staying, rather than just all of them being related to Death Eaters somehow. Now, it would probably be better storytelling if Harry became better friends with one of the others first, rather than an immediate friendship with the OC, but I guess some logic would say that Harry would be more drawn to his countrymen (though I guess if the OC is raised in luxemborg or wherever her whole life, would she really seem English to Harry? Would she even have an English accent? I guess she might have whatever accent her grandparent has?). This might be one of the things that just works itself out as I write it.

 

All friends (3-4) being only boys, maybe? Having no close 'girl' friend would definitely change his perspective in certain areas. If you want a major girl character, you could make Harry's rival (?) in his year a girl (sorf of girl!Draco). She would be the bully, not that Harry would let himself be bullied.

 

So I'm unsure about a prologue of the fic I'm planning. My initial idea was to, after the main part of the chapter, show headlines and fragments of Daily Prophet's articles published between Voldemort's "demise" and the start of the main action of the fic. And end it with an introduction of a mysterious man pinning a clipping of the last one of those articles.

This would serve as a quick introduction of some of the differences between my AU and the canon Potterverse, which, as the exact background of those (often drastic) changes wouldn't be included, could serve as an early hook into the story, especially in connection with a character introduced at the end who shows a lot of interest in many people who are close to Harry.

On the other hand, I'm afraid that it's too infodumpy and may bore readers, and thus I should limit my prologue to the main part.

Thoughts?

 

I think we all have an image of Dumbledore being super into "second chances" and seeing the best in people. I'd suspect that he wouldn't do anything to the suspect immediately, but quietly behind the scenes he'd set up multiple ways to watch the student carefully to ascertain whether or not he/she was actually guilty.

And even if he/she was, I don't think he'd do anything direct about it; more like he'd try to figure out his/her motives and then see if maybe he can bring his/her way of thinking around to the point where it wouldn't happen again.

I kind of just get the sense that Dumbledore isn't super confrontational about this kind of thing. Like, Dumbledore doesn't even do anything to Malfoy despite having pretty definitive knowledge of him injuring other students while trying to murder him.

 

Dumbledore has been watching students grow up and grow into their powers for decades, and he has a keen insight to motivations and behavior. If he suspects someone but has no proof, I think he'd gently intimidate the student or students to understand the motivations and such. He'd let the student's own guilt and discomfort with the drastic action they've taken bubble to the surface. I don't think he'd ever act like he wasn't sure what was really going on, except in the most bland and unbelievable way.

It isn't necessary for him to seek proof, so much as to explain or eliminate the factors that don't fit into his understanding of the situation. As headmaster, he can take all sorts of actions based upon suspicions, but what he chooses to do usually has more to do with guiding students to grow into taking responsibility for their actions.