Not that I think it's a great idea or anything, and while I personally can't think of a way to do it well, I'm sure there is someone who might be able to. I think if the story itself was done well, I would enjoy it.

 

"A sufficiently good author could make it work" is basically a no-true-scotman response.

 

Or you could write a story about Lockhart's misadventures. We can get a glimpse of Harry when he goes on his hunt for the protagonist of Holiday with Hags (Harry sees a hag in the Leaky Cauldron during his first visit, I believe). Some interaction or further backstory with Fenrir Greyback or Remus during Wanderings with Werewolves would be nice. Throw in Sanguini for Voyages with Vampires. Maybe he meets Quirrell along the way of Travels with Trolls, and he's the one Lockhart obliviated; there could be a whole backstory there why Quirrell has an odd affinity with trolls. Maybe during Break with a Banshee we learn why Seamus (was it his boggart or someone else's?) is so personally terrified of banshees.

Obviously Lockhart just took credit for others' work, but there's danger in obliviating a ton of people, I imagine, especially since he's seemingly incompetent in all other areas of magic. I think it would be fun to read about Lockhart stumbling into danger along the way. His tendency toward self-inflected misfortune would be lulzy in itself, and our lack of knowledge of what actually happened would allow suspense to build. I feel like there would be fics written about this already, ones that don't alter canon events. I remember reading a Lockhart-adopts-Harry fic, but that's AU.

I'm in that lovely exhausted state where I'm not sure if the words I'm writing are actual words. They just look strange, you know. So sorry if I'm incomprehensible. Bedtime awaits.

 

Just because it is impossible to kill character it does not mean that it is impossible to harm it.

Especially for ones where we have no good information about their psychological state - for example Dumbledore, Charlie, Remus, Bill maybe even one can try something with Hermione's parents or other characters.

Given ridiculous possibilities of magical medicine it is possible to introduce any injuries and keep canon-compatibility (it is hard to make it reasonable, but one may even resurrect characters without introducing any new magic).

Other thing, subtler that "he ended as head in jar but recovered" may be using hilariously scary implications of mind magic - what about somebody trying to recover memories? (I remember one story like this with one subplot about recovering Hermione's memories, stolen and used by some DE as substitute for a proper education. Story was bad anyway, but this was really scary.)

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Or maybe something that completely failed to appear in canon? For example Hagrid doing something in the Forbidden Forest? Or Dumbledore dealing with crisis in some remote place - like in Eastern Europe or on an another planet?

Or about events during book 7? Maybe even it is possible to find characters where it is not clear whatever they died?

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May result in irritated readers but ending may involve character replaced by polyjuiced replica or some equivalent.

 

Indeed. For a while now the entire idea of needing to "preserve the timeline" has made me immediately stop reading stories which do this.

 

I think I'd be okay with "preserving the timeline" in an accidental time-travel story where things turned out pretty okay the first time around (as long as there was actually some sort of plot beyond rehashing canon, of course), but for some reason those tend to be the quickest to abandon the canon timeline.

 

I think the only "preserving the timeline" that actually works is a timeline that preserves itself, like in PoA.

 

But how can you preserve timeline, if it's already changed by your coming to existence? I mean, universe didn't explode, so either the now-future is being rewritten, or the timeline branched off, but previous timeline clearly didn't feature you, the time-travel-person, so something (possibly) major clearly already changed.

And with the rather smallish setting of HP (you have like what, 50 people involved in the most important events?), it's actually stupid to be under the impression that you can preserve the timeline by doing X,Y,Z, but be basically different person all the time. Not to mention that unless you have photographic memory, you are not recreating events, but rather events as you remember them, which by my experience can be wildly different thing.

Also, "preserve the timeline" is usually just an excuse for fucking anxiety over doing anything and retarded angst about now non-existent future.

/rant

 

CheddarTrek I think the issues lie less with the "can't kill the protag" angle, as I haven't feared for the life of the main character for quite a lot of stories and was still able to enjoy them. it is the rare story that can really convince me that the protag is in danger of actually getting killed, unless it is one with multiple POV's. There can still be tension, of course, since they can fail without dying or lose something else, but survival is really not the core there. You can't tell me that you people think Harry is going to die in every Harry centric fanfic that you read. Or that you thought Harry would die in the books, even in book 7.

Then again, that's not really the point here. If you are hell-bent on writing something that plays in the middle of canon without rocking that boat at all, then, yeah, you are bound by a lot of things. Whatever you write, it can't really introduce or built a friendship with someone permanent, since it really doesn't make much sense for the protag of canon to ignore that character from then on.* Similarly, it can't be that profound of an experience, since, again, wouldn't make much sense that the protag is the exact same person as he was before the story started.

With these criteria, you are really more or less bound to little character pieces, exploring friendships or how the characters deal with certain daily situations. In HP, it could be something like a conversation between Harry and Luna or Hermione and Susan Bones or whatever. Or show how Hannah Abbot felt about the whole Umbridge thing, or how the Hufflepuffs discussed whether they should get involved with DA or not. Daphne Greengrass befriending Padma Patil or Fred and George interacting with the three chasers.

I mean, you could write a story about Harry, Ron and Hermione having some sort of mini-adventure whenever the books skipped weeks and months, but I wouldn't really know what about.

If anything, One Piece would lend itself better to it, there, it seems more plausible that between two canon islands, that they can visit an island of your own choosing, and make friends and whatnot. Granted, they still can't sustain and lasting physical injuries and the adventure shouldn't be really all that significant, like, it would be weird if they encountered a genocide on that island, since that sort of thing tend to leave a mark and a lot of issues, but still. The OP would take most things in stride. And it is possible to tell a story without anything emotionally scarring happening to the cast.

So, I guess, it depends a bit on the source material. Similarly, you could get away a lot easier with this on the Dresden Files as well, with Dresden being a grown man of whom we know he has a lot of cases over the year we are not with him. Granted, again, it can't be bigger than what happens generally in canon, but small scale stuff is interesting as well, or let him have an odd job with Butters or the Alphas or Molly or Murphy or Thomas.

Or just explore those characters. Molly dealing with her family, school and her training could be an interesting story. Thomas and his family as well. Butters right after finding out about the supernatural and returning to work could also be interesting.

Generally, there is a lot more leeway than with HP, since they are school kids and don't have all that much experience or opportunity to experience stuff. Anything big would be mentioned in the books.

So, yeah, it really depends on the setting and what kind of thing you want to write. That Seamus and Harry exploring Australia story really wouldn't work, since that is kind of a big thing. Would be weird if Harry never reflected on his aussie adventure with Seamus since he would be basically ignoring Seamus. That would really fall more in the AU territory again and I think you wanted to avoid that. However, you could do that with someone who is not Harry. Seamus and Dean, for example. Similarly, that would work in the Dresden Files. Harry and Billy having an aussie adventure is something that could happen which Harry wouldn't need to think about or mention since, ultimately, it's one of the many things that happened to him. To harry potter, that would be a big deal.

Naruto going on a mission with another team, however, or even with his team that wasn't mentioned in canon is again more possible, since we were told that before the chunin exam, team 7 probably completed some missions,or after the Sasuke retrieval arc, that Naruto joined a few other teams. Yeah, basically the premise of the filler episodes, only, you know, good. The problem with the filler episodes, to me, at least, weren't that they were filler, it was that they were BAD, pointless filler. Sure, you can't have Naruto learn a new technique, and Tenten can't lose an arm and Shino can't die, but you can still do stuff. Canon tries to sell us that the rookies are all friends, even though it's never really shown how they connected, or that team 7 has this strong bond which has no grounding in reality, so, "filler" stories where we see them bond could be canon compliant.

*unless that friendship is with someone divorced from the main setting and/or an OC. Like Hermione befriending a muggle girl over summer, who was an old classmate or something. It's not like Hermione can write her over the school year and she wouldn't mention her to Ron and Harry.