Harry Potter is the last healthy wizard to be born in the UK. Over the following year, the number of squibs vs wizards being born is close to 100% globally. By the time Harry arrives to Hogwarts, it is a reality that Hogwarts will be having no more first years. Some believe Harry's class is "the last class of Hogwarts".

What has resulted in this catastrophy? Nobody really knows, but what's-his-face is probably the culprit. Maybe the world simply couldn't accept somebody surviving the killing curse? Some popular solutions to the now-inevitable death of Wizards and wizarding-society are to:

Kill Harry
Sacrifice Harry
Drink the fruit of Harry's loins
And many other bizarre theories that only the magically gifted could come up with.

Naturally, certain pureblooded families blame mudbloods and as a result the number of pure-ists and racists in wizarding society have increased by at least two-fold. It's hard to deny such a possibility when nobody is being born with proper magic anymore!

Since 'the end is nigh' by the time Harry is fifteen or so, wizarding society may start to break down. Plenty of marriages might come undone- and in general, wizarding society on the global scale is becoming increasingly unstable.

This idea is meant to happily co-exist with The Final Nights - the Vampire the Masquerade setting - World of Darkness. Around the 2000's is when the original World of Darkness series comes to a close, with Vampires and other mythical creatures being abolished, destroyed, or otherwise disappearing from earth (sometimes in a happy fashion, but it's usually pretty grim and/or destructive). Probably would be a good idea to pit Harry against an Antedilluvian or something similarly horrific.

This kind of challenge can maybe summarized as "wizarding apocalypse". How does Harry cope or try to solve the problems resulting from societal meltdown? How does he cope with being both a target of Voldemort's followers and other factions who blame his birth for their misfortune? Finally, can Harry survive this apocalypse? Reverse it to some extent? Or does he maybe see it as a fair and fitting end?

I'm not a huge WoD buff, you don't need to use that element, but I definitely think it would fit well.

 

I'm sorry, man, but I don't see the hook.

These ideas can be put together erratically but the problem is it doesn't come together for me.

 

The worst part of this, to my eyes, is the suggestion that you pit Harry against an Antediluvian. That would be a very fast way to have no more Harry. He wouldn't stand a chance against an Antediluvian, simply because they are supposed to be pretty much God-like in their power. When the Antediluvian of the Ravnos awoke, it took the combined efforts of the Technocracy and 3 of the eldest Kuei-jin to weaken it enough that sunlight then killed it. Harry doesn't stand a chance against that.

 

I approve of Harry Potter crossovers with Vampire: The Masquerade, but your idea makes no sense.

 

Eh. The only scenario in which Harry would have a small chance of standing vs an Antediluvian, would be an adult MasterOfDeath!Harry (with plenty of allies), and even then only if you built it up in the way that the combined Hallows give Harry extra abilities - maybe immunity to vampiric domination? and/or resistance to blood magic, the ability to conjure pure sunlight.

Whole thing would still be iffy.

 

That is an interesting point actually. How would being Master of Death affect Harry's interactions with vampires. A couple of potential routes would be it could give him immunity to vampiric powers, so he'd just have to deal with them being able to physically rip his head off with no effort, or maybe give him some level of influence over weaker/younger vampires?

 

Now this, I like. Essentially Harry could start to subtly influence the pawns of an ancient vampire, to start building his destruction. A game of manipulation, which is what VtM is all about anyway.

Could be better in a setting just before the Apocalypse too. Maybe Harry is the instrument of the Vampires' destruction and doesn't even know it - the Hallows are guiding him to their elimination.

 

Definitely interesting. But I have trouble seeing where in Harry's life it would be reasonable to have that happen. Unless you have some sort of early divergence from canon, he's just not manipulative or puppet-mastery enough to even try and match one of the older vampires, let alone an Antediluvian. He'd try to start spinning his web, and whatever ancient he was trying to influence would probably kill him by the end of the week. Maybe not the most exciting end to a fic.

 

So, my first thought on this was, huh, a VtM cossover thread.

Then, I didn't even open it, because "yeah, right". And it turns out it actually was. Huh.

Having Harry facing Methuselah's would be challenging enough with all the master or death tricks up his sleves - and then I wouldn't bet on the wizard. Antideluvians would be pushing it beyond impossible.

Still, the themes in this particular instance are conflicting. Gehenna is interesting to lead up to, and an event that hangs over the head of every immortal creature of the World of Darkness, but actually having it arrive...

The point is, it's not the "if this device works, there's going to be an end of the world." where you can watch the protagonist trick fate and win the human realm a few years.

Gehenna is supposed to be final. Absolute. The End.

Writing a story up to it might be interesting - playing on the paranoia and it all - but having Gehenna actually happen... Not the right type of crossover, I'd say. Look at the crappy Gehenna book - writing the endgame in WoD was a failure in most aspects. Fic built on such a premise just...


Of course, it's not for me to say this, since I do have a HP/VtM crossover in the works, even if its priority is extra low these days. (Gah, I probabaly need to rewrite some of it, too)

If I had to write such a story, in the end everyone would die. Maybe I'd even go for Vycos Cathedral, but who cares about such things anyway.

 

Sounds sort of like Children of Men as well.

 

The idea was half-baked, admittedly, but what's wrong, fundamentally, with an apocalypse story? What's wrong with Harry confronting some sort of horrible evil, some elder vampire whose mysteries and powers are nearly cthulhuian in nature? It's never fun when your protagonist dies in the end, but such a story would be rife with conflict and tension, so it really appealed to me, I guess.

I'm aware Gehenna is not exactly something the fans of WoD particuarly enjoyed, but we have seen some successful stories with a similar theme. Joe's https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6325846/ is a pretty good example and execution of this - Harry dealing with forces beyond his station.

I suppose it would be difficult to write, but given how superstitious and illogical the wizarding world is, I think it meshes well with VTMB. They would definitely rise in excitement when end-of-the-world signs really began to crop up.

I guess I need some more convincing these ideas don't fit together! Sure, Antedilluvians are strong, but it's pretty easy to contrive ways to make them weaker. Harry is special, as that's already been stated in this thread, and it's not stopped authors from pitting Harry against other ridiculous things. It would require sufficient build-up, and I did not mean to imply Harry would ever defeat an antediluvian - he wouldn't. They're kind of not supposed to die? Killing one is rather ridiculous - I'd advoid killing one ever in any story ever - it's just an unreasonable task.

The "hook" could be anything really, it depends upon which vampire clan Harry encounters first, or what supernatural thing he deals with first. If it's the Nosferatu, maybe the hook of the story is Harry a growing paranoia - maybe Harry knows the world will end, but nobody believes him initially? I guess maybe I should have fleshed out this idea more, to provide the hook, but it feels like the two universes mesh so well together that a hook would come naturally. Each of the vampire clans have consistent themes - beauty, distrust, decay, decadence, corruption, madness... each of these themes can be applied to Harry in some manner easily enough, effecting his established relationships with everyone at Hogwarts and elsewhere.

But just to consider a beginning - Harry is out late at night and stumbles across an altercation with a vampire doing something to another person. Perhaps it's a freakish Nosferatu, its hideous face later haunting him in his dreams? He'd tell Hermione what he'd seen, but she'd dismiss it? A small event like that is enough to hook a reader and begin a slow build up toward something much bigger, with Harry trying to research what he had seen and uncovering other darker things. Luna offers an interesting angle as well, if you're careful not to fall into all-to-enticing tropes of fishmalks or something.