I enjoy stories where Harry Potter uses Black Magic and is willing to do immoral acts for the sake of power.

But I think the main problem with most "Dark Harry" stories begins with the motivation of the writer for making him so in the first place.

Most "Dark Harry" stories can be summed up pretty easily:

Harry joins Slytherin
Befriends Draco
Bashes Ron
Kisses up to Snape
Dumbledore is "Evil"
Harry joins Voldemort

The motivation for most "Dark Harry" stories is the sole motivation to see him team up with the bad guys of the story.

And perhaps the main flaw with most "Dark Harry" stories has to do with the word "Dark" and the connotations therewith. It's almost never about a character with a set of personal belief, morals, and goals who, just so happens to have a strong desire for power and is willing to do almost anything to achieve it. It's almost always a one-dimensional character that does every random thing the author considers "evil" or "dark" even if it takes away from the character.

Or "Dark Harry" turns out to be nothing more than a Harry who is unaffected by anything, no matter how extreme, and he is a Slytherin who is having sex with every girl, and is charming and suave, etc. Just a bunch of pathetic wish fulfillment.

I think the best kinds of "Dark Harry" stories, are ones where he is either fighting against Voldemort, or simply a neutral party. A story where Harry Potter's darkness is less about teaming up with the "bad guys" and more about his use of magic.

And perhaps the biggest problem with most "Dark Harry" stories is the lack of subtlety and the need to have Harry do "evil" things just because they're "evil". He either rapes someone, makes someone his slave, or goes around torturing people just for the hell of it -- Complete Garbage.

 

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5866937/1/Control

 

I think the good example of Dark!Harry avoiding the cliches you described is The Birth of Evil:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4133028/1/The-Birth-of-Evil

 

Ruined in a Day and sequels is a pretty good Dark!Harry series.

 

There are a lot of challenges to writing a Dark!Harry story, starting with the fact that it runs counter to the theme of the entire canonical series. It is a lot to handle for an author to justify Harry being dark then to envision all of the subsequent consequences to plot points and other characters. I think far too many fics ignore the latter. Many of the fics that do work on consequences get too drawn into this intricate little slytherin world of deceit and cunning, losing sight of the fact that they are writing about pre-teens.

From what I've read, it is a lot easier to justify a dark!Harry driven to use tools to advance his ultimate cause rather than a totally amoral 11-year-old psychopath.

 

True enough.

And the saddest thing is that Canon Harry Potter would actually make a good Dark Harry. All you have to do is make him less forgiving, and very willing to do whatever it takes to kill Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Keep the rest of his personality the same and you have one hell of a character.

 

Just have Harry be more motivated in HBP, due to Bellatrix's taunts and the Prince book. He'll practice Unforgivables on the sly at Hogwarts, as well as having Kreacher nick some books from Grimmauld Place. (No summer training or anything indy like that)

In addition, to precipitate Harry's commitment to the Dark, have Ron actually die from poison. (Or if that's too radical, maybe Katie Bell dies) Harry and Hermione later confront Malfoy in Myrtle's bathroom, Malfoy inadvertantly confesses to Myrtle, Harry and Draco duel, Draco dies from a Sectumsempra. Snape comes on the scene, Harry and Snape duel, Harry loses, and Dumbledore is disappointed in Harry for killing Malfoy, but covers it up. Harry actively distrusts Dumbledore now since Dumbledore ignored his suspicions about Malfoy -- Hermione has also lost a great deal of faith in Dumbledore as well, although she isn't as inclined to follow Harry into darkness. Harry will still largely be his canon self, but is significantly less inclined to show mercy to Death Eaters now, since one of them just killed his best friend.

That should be a decent set-up for a DH Dark!Harry fic, although I think it's important to avoid cartoonishly manipulative Dumbledore and H/Hr. (Harry moving in on Hermione after Ron's death leaves a really bad taste in my mouth)

 

I actually don't think Dumbledore would be disappointed in Harry for killing Draco if the latter was responsible for Ron's death. Dumbledore would not approve, but even he would understand.

I could actually see Hermione practicing Dark Magic if Ron was killed, as she does have a sadistic streak in her, as we've seen in Order of the Phoenix.

 

The trap with Dark!Harry is having him be a sympathetic protagonist. Most stories are miserable failures with this regardless, but it's so egregious with Dark!Harry because, as you mentioned, he often does completely evil and horrific things for no discernible reason. It's like the author has no understanding of why people do "bad" things - the internal motivations, the circumstances that lead to them, etc. Control is a fairly good example - but I'd actually argue that On the Way to Greatness is better. It's not often mentioned in this context because it's so explicitly a Slytherin!Harry divergence, but if you look closely, especially at the last third of the story, the shoe fits.

 

Really, the problem is that too many people who write a Dark story have no idea to actually write a story with dark themes. Harry's motivation for going evil, if he even has one at all, is usually something really stupid like: "Vernon raped him and that made him hate muggles!" or "Dumbledore let Vernon/Snape/Someone Else rape him, so he hates Dumbledore!" Likewise, the actual dark themes are pretty much just throwing lots of random murder, torture, and rape into the story with little rhyme or reason.

The damning thing for me is that the characters are ignored, which is a problem since a good properly dark story is all about the characters. I mean for a classic archetypal dark story, go for good old Heart of Darkness, which at its core is about struggling to hold onto humanity in inhuman circumstances. Or another favorite of mine, Deep Space Nine's "In the Pale Moonlight," where the main character slowly throws away his principles in the name of winning a war until he's handing out bribes to cover up crimes and is an accessory to multiple murders.

Bad dark stories don't give us anything like that. Harry struggling to fight Voldemort and finding himself resorting to more and more extreme measures until he fears he might be little better than the monster he's facing is a good dark story. Harry just torturing Death Eaters because they're evil and they deserve it is crap.

 

My main beef with Dark Harry stories is that every ficwriter's got their own personal definition of 'dark magic' and they are always at least three-quarters fanon. Dark Patroni, Dementor Aura mimicking, parseltongue magic, etc.

The worst is when they take some purely utilitarian or clearly context-based spell or ritual or what-have-you, and say that it's considered dark for more or less arbitrary reasons. I realize that it is by no means out of character for the Ministry of Magic to make arbitrary and self-defeating judgements, but that still doesn't make these cases more than shoddy world-building.

 

Dark Patroni? I can honestly say I have never seen this. What the hell does it even do?

 

It varies. Honestly, I couldn't even point to a specific fic that uses them, but that's because they tend to belong to trash-quality fics that I don't bother to retain.

 

Well, there is a difference between having a dark protagonist, who commits "dark" acts for a reason and who still has some moral semblance or code and having a lunatic psycho. In other words, it might be interesting to have your character do "the wrong things for the right reasons" but not so much if your main character is Ramsay Bolton.

The difficulty with HP is the trappings. One, in stories where Harry tends to go darker are the ones where we have Light and Dark as factions. Usually, Dumbledore, the Weasleys and Hermione are getting bashed for it, because they are stupid, ignorant, antagonistic or a happy combination of the three.

And if you have to go out of your way to either make those characters worse or have to artificially make Harry's suffering in his childhood even more abusive, then your story is going to fail.

Shezza's Denarian Series had a pretty good dark Harry, a Harry who had less moral scruples and was using dark magic and amoral means for his own goals but nonetheless was not a complete monster. Neither was anyone bashed. Granted, Hermione was portrayed in less than favourable light but that was mostly due to the POVs being heavily biased against her. (and let's be honest, Hermione was completely right and justified in everything she said. Sure, we liked Harry, but he was an abusive jerk to Amanda)

Dumbledore wasn't an idiot who was masturbating to the prophecy, twinkling at everyone and doing his best to make Harry's childhood miserable, but rather someone who worked with Harry. Hey, it was the best Dumbledore I have seen in fanfiction, period.

But that story is the exception, most of the ones with a similar premise, Harry gets artifcat/dark magic corruption usually go wrong by how they treat the supporting cast and Harry's motivation and conduct.

Not specially Dark Harry but the Hermione centric fic Applied Cultural Anthropology has a very promising descend into the dark arts for Hermione, with her methods slowly but surely becoming more and more mean-spirited. It's a slow burn though.

 

As many aspects of fanfiction, Harry's Darkness is a spectrum. Harry's Lightness is another spectrum. Something like this

[Vanilla Ice-----canon Harry?-----the average person][the enigmatic Grey Harry-----actually good examples of DarkHarryism-----Ramsay Bolton would balk at this]

and those spectrums meet on one end. I don't mind Dark Harry, I welcome it, if it's well written. Probably the best examples I can think of (mind you, I haven't read all the fanfic) are in Swim's Circular Reasoning and Silent's Renegade Cause.

CR gets pretty dark and brooding in places and goes full horror sometimes, but it's not retarded. Harry isn't ripping out throats and raping every hot Slytherin he comes across because "evuul Darkness". We don't get to see the change Harry goes through because of the structure of the plot, but you can really see how different this Harry is from canon and Swim doesn't leave the reader completely in the dark, we're given some of the "why" for Harry's descent.

RC does a credible job of shifting Harry from a shaken kid after GoF to a young adult who takes responsibility (but still fucks up, because he's just learning the game and he's still a kid by most standards) and expands his interest in the shadier aspects of magic.

The most jarring problems with Dark Harry are those: it goes so "Dark" that it becomes a caricature instead of what the unskilled author was probably aiming for and then I can't take it seriously because every chapter Harry smiles like a demon (don't get me wrong, those descriptions can work if used sparingly) or performs bloody rituals in between being a total cunt.

The other problem, which is more prevalent and stings me more, is the transition. I struggled with that in my own fic and I can tell you that it's not easy to kind of naturally evolve Harry (or whoever) from his canon incarnation in a believable process. Just the character itself doesn't make the cut here. You need circumstances, events to facilitate character development in that direction.

Many fics who claim to be Dark Harry and start from canon divergences instead of full-blown AUs (all the retellings of books, OotP and post OotP are the kings of this genre) rush through this process to get to the good stuff, when it's that process that makes everything else come together in the end, because Harry didn't just get a character transplant, you actually saw what happened.

 

*ugly sobbing*

But yes, there needs to be a logical progression from canon!Harry to dark!Harry. People are complicated. Well-written characters are equally complicated.

It's hard not to enjoy watching a character's slow slide into darkness - particularly if they are considered "good" or "noble". In Harry Potter canon, there's always been hints that dark magic is this powerful, addictive thing. The temptation to use such a tool is more complex. It's more realistic. And each time the character chooses to use this tool, they fall a little further.

The darkness is 'cool', but the toll it takes clearly means it's not something to idolize. Bellatrix Lestrange is fucking insane. Voldemort didn't have a body for thirteen years and by the time he did get one, he'd begun to physically morph into a snake - there's more than a few elements of body horror going on here. The Killing Curse splits the soul. And if you end up in Azkaban, the dementors consume all of your happy memories, leaving you with only the shitty ones.

Here's what most "dark" fics get wrong: the lack of fallout from making these bad decisions. Dark magic screws you over mentally, emotionally, physically, metaphysically; on a personal level, it's some ugly stuff to tangle with.

Then there's the social consequences of darkness. Harry's just killed ten people. Fabulous. Now who's going to discover the bodies? I can't see the Ministry being too chuffed about someone running around playing vigilante. Particularly when that vigilante may not have all of the information. One of those ten people might have been innocent.

Acceptable collateral damage? Probably not.

So now you have the consequence of facing Azkaban time and a royally pissed off Ministry, who would probably devote more than a few resources to catching said vigilante. Add in the aspect of being publicly outed as the murdering vigilante and it would make that smear campaign in his fifth year look like small change.

And inevitably, the truth will out. I can't see Harry committing all of these dark acts without emerging a very changed individual. I also can't see his close friends and family wanting much to do with this person he's become. Sure, they'd stick around for a bit, persist in believing that they could make him better. But at some point, Harry would do something fucked-up enough that they wouldn't be able to reconcile the person he's become with the friend he used to be.

Can't see Tonks wanting to hook up with such a mess. Nor Fleur. Or any of Harry's actual peers, for that matter. Media tends to idolize the bad boy. In actuality, they're big fucking messes trailing a ton of baggage and it usually falls on the people around them to carry it. Almost every intelligent female Harry meets would take one look at him and nope the fuck out of there.

Darkness is a miserable, lonely road. It makes for a great story, but a shitty lifestyle.

Don't do dark magic, kids.

 

Swimdraconian, er, I meant to put a "not" in there.

 

From an authorial standpoint this interests me...specifically the distinction and enjoyment of full-blown AU you mentioned versus cannon divergence. Enembee's Conloadh versus his Valbone work for example.

Is a cannon divergence more fun to write? It is easier probably, small changes highlighted in a familiar plot line. But it's that a failure to be creative, is cannon rehash worthless at this point. They represent some of my favorite time dump and are much more likely to finish but are they less than true AU pieces like wit of the raven or Conloadh...

Then is an AU a true start from scratch more enjoyable to readers. My biggest gripe with post hogwarts fiction is that fanfiction authors, by and large, fail and fail and fail at writing convincing adults and worlds, much less enjoyable ones. And then when all the trapping of cannon fall away there is none of that support to prop up deficiencies in skill/time spent/experience.

To watch the world burn or no...to walk a well stamped path or no. Which makes for the most enjoyable use of time, all Frost aside?

 

I wrote both. Kind of. I'm writing an actual divergence fic, my stab at AU was more of an exercise in finding my style. I suppose both would be fun to write, it just depends on what kind of story you want to tell. I imagine if I tried to create a full blown AU (like, oh, Harry Potter and the Untitled Tome is in the Review Board right now), I'd pay more attention to different things.

I will say that writing the divergence has given me an insight into character development, how characters drive events and how events affect characters. Good practice for when I start putting serious work into original fiction (It will happen. Don't doubt it. ).

 

ScottPress
That is the benefit of not going full AU (full retard, jk) even as a reader - a plot divergence forces the author to keep up with a pre-established aesthetic to some degree. Untitled Tome suffers from a lack of this structure and wallows and may sink because of the sheer scope of the reimagining. Your point, using this as an exercise, is right on.

I like lesser evils btw. Some very good work in there, look forward to your original fiction