Summary:

Its never quite sat well with me that in all those AU's, where Harry travels back into his younger body, that it's exactly ... right. Like, a twenty year old Harry lusting after a four year old Ginny, or Harry (intellectually) being a whole lot older than his friends, etc etc.

So - what if, just say, Harry could go back in time to his younger self - but he would only be able to retain one memory. Just one. No knowledge of anything else that had passed. In all other aspects he'll be back to his gangly little self.

The memory could be anything, from 'I'm a wizard' to 'free Sirius Black' to 'find Remus Lupin'. Anything - anything that would change everything.

Rules:

- This 'change' should have completely wiped out his previous childhood, so Harry can really be in whatever character, having grown with some new insightful perspective, you like.

- If any pairings, make it interesting.

- The fic could begin at any time (year-by-year reenactments of Harry's Hogwarts days and before have grown rather tedious). Fourth year is always a good starting point, IMO.


So ... yeah. It's not a very original concept (at all) but I figured if anyone was thinking of writing some kind of AU (and they are rather popular right now, so) it might be a good starting point.

I suppose it could even be a parody of all the cliché's in AU's - a huge build up to Harry going back to start over, with the usual angsty in-Dumbles-office scene, or directly after the oh-so-tragic-yet-victorious 'final battle' - only for his one piece of kept knowledge to be 'brush your teeth', or 'lubricant is great', or something else stupid.

xxoo

 

Erm....interesting, I'll give it that. Not really sure it's that brilliant, but certainly interesting.

 

You mean, like that "Get to know Ginny Weasley!" fic, only not so gay?

That could be a good idea, but it would ultimately depend on the author taking it over.

 

It does sound kinda like Intromit's Fate's Debt story, as IP indicated. (WARNING: That's a H/G fic. Read at your own risk.)

Just another slight twist on an idea that's been done a lot recently. For the most part though, it seems like while you could set off a chain of drastically different events, it would still play out very close to every other rewrite of canon out there. At least insofar as the big events are concerned.

To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed that in all the "go back to his younger self" stories, no one's doing their fics the way Ruskbyte's Backwards Compatible is. That is to say, it's usually, a last resort going back because Voldie was about to win, or because Voldie won and the costs were too high. But why must we go through all the child!Harry annoyances again? Why not future!Harry come back to post-OotP!Harry? Or come back to post-HBP!Harry? You can still super him up inexplicably or give him every advantage in the world, while skipping straight over say the first five or six years of Hogwarts (which I'm not sure even done well can interest me anymore - I've just read too many takes on Philosopher's Stone, which is often as far as people get before losing interest in their mammoth fanfic undertaking).

Going back to 1st year is too often simply because they wanted to stay within the confines of nearly JKR's world, but improve just a couple things, whether it's fluffy pre-teen love, making Harry smarter, different house, different friends, different guardians, etc... Then again, that is partially the point of fanfic, but it just feels like there's a middle ground between completely original and the average total retread of canon.