I apologise in advanced fro this if the mods think this is too similar to the Plot Bunnies thread.

Basically I'm curious what stories people tried to write or wrote but for whatever reason will never be published. So maybe you write something and decided it wasn't as interesting as you thought, you got stuck one chapter in and haven't written a thing on it in years, the plot idea was far more unworkable than you thought etc.

I've got tonnes. I even have a folder in my fanfic folder called "abandoned and never will be published". I assume others have something similar.

Holly's Multiverse - HP - Basically a Fem!Harry who is chasing Voldemort through many dimensions. Was going to be slightly crackish. Most of the worlds visited would parody various fanfic tropes. I was going to have canon HP world as one of them. Abandoned at the planning stage because it was just too difficult.

Harry Potter and the Illicit Substance - HP - Harry comes back from summer after X year a stoner. The plot was going to revolve around making Hermione chill out with drugs. Abandoned because I had no idea where to take it or how to conclude it.

[Untitled] - HP/STALKER - 10 years post Hogwarts, the ICW puts together a team to investigate the Zone. Laid out the first few chapters, abandoned because I had no idea where to take it and didn't want to have to reconcile the Zone and magic.

House's Ship - nBSG/House MD - Transplant House and Princeton Planborough to Caprica, have House and his team survive the Fall and end up on the Galactica. Wrote one chapter, abandoned because I couldn't think of what to do that wasn't a slightly modified canon rehash.

[Untitled] - Pokemon - Anabel takes time off from the Battle Frontier and joins Ash in Sinnoh. Wrote two chapters, abandoned because I felt like it would end up a canon rehash.

No Longer in Vale - RWBY/LotR - Weiss and Ruby end up in Middle Earth. I've only got 300 words and I didn't leave notes. I have no idea where I was going with this.

Rise of the Inferi - HP - Voldemort decides to create infectious Inferi as an experiment. They get out of hand and next thing you know the UK is full of them and the rest of the world is following. Wrote 3 or 4 chapters, as it was one of my first stories I decided to rewrite it, never picked it up again.

I'm curious what ideas people tried for.

 

"The Island" A James/Lily prequel where they leave England right after graduation and sail a ghost ship to a deserted island. Or is it? This one is kicking around in my head, but I can't decide if it would work better as original fiction or an HP fanfic. Basically its wizards meet Jurassic Park.

 

There isn't much I won't sling into Assortment of One-Shots or still kick around years after beginning, but I've got a couple that I've pretty much given the boot to.

A branch off of my Last Dragonrider!Harry that featured a sort of culmination of DH!Harry's from across several millennia of journeying, taken out of their original points and captured by the end-game version who had gone mad along the way. Supposed to feature anthropomorphic versions of Fate and Time, who the Mad!Harry wanted to usurp the positions of, and Fate planned to use the earlier versions to fight the Mad!Harry. At the end Time stepped in to snip and paste creation so that Mad!Harry was never allowed to go on his journey and the others were fixed of the burgeoning madness while being sent back to continue as they were. One of the earliest pieces I was toying with years ago before I developed Last Dragonrider's various snippets into a coherent whole.

Then there's another DH!Harry, landing in a world with Religious!Gryffindor!Tom Riddle. Instead of descending from Slytherin, Riddle came from Gryffindor's stock, raised at a church instead of his usual orphanage, and was themed accordingly, for a Dark Lord. The religious aspect came from Tom rediscovering a long-lost branch of ability, Divinity. Divinity grants one the (Heavenly-)Authority to raise their Power in a place, and where two with Power clash, the greater Authority wins out.

 

A Naruto/fem!Kyuubi fic.

 

An immortal trio!fic, homage to all the MoD Harry fics where he lives forever by himself. Usually these fics handwave just how horrible that would be for someone like Harry, or anyone really, where everyone dies around you and you cannot move on. Basically in this fic Harry is 100% immortal and cannot die so Hermione and Ron in true friendship find their own immortal way to live life with Harry, while basically trying to kill him.

Couldn't decide if it should be crackish in Addams Family style with Hermione and Ron trying ridiculous ways to kill Harry so they could all move on together, or to make it a deeper fic with all the aspects of Harry just not physically being able to move on no matter what. Hermione and Ron would try to help him find death while struggling with wanting to die themselves, while trying to stay alive for Harrys sake.

 

Bill Weasley as a cage fighter for the Goblins's entertainment. In the aftermath of [event] the Goblins managed to enslave the wizarding population, and now have the select few still alive fight in arenas. To motivate them they keep one or two 'keys' alive as well - people that the fighter holds dear, who are (during the fight) held in cages above the fighters so they remain visible.

In this AU Bill and Fleur never met until they come across each other in the pit. Bill's key is Ginny, last of his family; Fleur's key is Gabby. There's also a bit of phoenix mythology involved: the Goblins [for reasons] killed off all the phoenixes. Or so they thought. Fawkes managed to escape while Dumbledore held the attackers off until his dying breath. The plan was for Bill and Fleur to start a revolution, the reappearing Fawkes as the symbol of their hope, and kick Goblin ass.

Started this one for the Fleur-Bill challenge, but stopped when someone entered their attempt. Got maybe 3k words or so.

 

snip

Rereading my old stuff, I think I might continue this. Take a look over WbA

 

I'll just post this. https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=27916 Nothing for me has changed really, other than increasing the total amount of raw wordage. I've actually posted a complete story (similar to the last one on the bulleted list from that thread), which took up a fair amount of time (3-4 months to write and multiple edits. This one was labeled as HP/FD#9, while the one talked mentioned in that thread was HP/FD #7). A couple new fandoms have come to my interest, such as RWBY and FSN, so there are a few snippets and ideas from both, with one currently active.

 

Seems I'm the 13th poster on that thread. I thought I had seen something like this before.

 

I've got a few.

Limbo (or something between-y...) - a HP/New World of Darkness fusion series. Ever since I read the Mage: the Awakening rulebook, I was surprised that fics of this kind barely even exist. It would essentially be the HP cast and setting with nWoD elements, meaning I'd have to find a way around the problem of Muggles as any human with a soul can Awaken to the Supernal Realm (technically). There's more than that, but there's also the fact that I just don't have the time to take up a series.

The Atoll - a HP/Battle Royale fusion. All of the ones I've seen so far take the students' wands and give them Muggle appliances instead, whereas hiding a few with some other enchanted weaponry on an island with magical flora and fauna sounded way more appealing to me. I've got notes, but it probably won't get off of the ground any time soon, if at all.

And for the crack:

Infernal Bars and How to Spit Them - a songfic featuring parodies of recent urban hits from the mouths of the HP cast. Not sure if the audience is even there, but if I ever was to do this, it would be animated (and definitely dated by the time I become bothered enough lol).

- A fic where James Potter and Severus Snape - archangels/demigods Michael and Lucifer (not sure which) - race against each other to woo Lily Evans and sire the Messiah/Antichrist. No dice for obvious reasons.

 

A HP/Bartimaeus fusion. The wizards rule the UK openly, and nearly all societies are ruled by magicians of some flavor. Both magicians and wizards are allowed to have children. The wizards are the elite class, humans capable of magic without the aid of a demon. This came from ancient magicians successfully consuming demons (or a demon possessing the body of an arrogant magician) having children.

This practice was condemned as dark magic and largely eliminated by Merlin. Later on, the founders created Hogwarts to teach the wizards how to use their power. Hogwarts is now the leading academy of Magician's arts, though it's primary purpose is still to instruct young wizards.

Over the years, the power each individual wizard possesses has lessened, leading to the rise of the blood purists, which blame the loss of power on bloodlines being diluted with the blood of muggles and magicians. Voldemort rose to power on promises of bringing back the old ways before Merlin, claiming to have rediscovered the method of consuming a demon's power.

Most wizards now require wands to accomplish feats of any real power, sticks composed of special woods with a demon bound inside. Magicians are incapable of using wands, and instead use various magical trinkets or directly command demons.

I still toy with the idea periodically, but there's so damn much backstory to throw together I doubt I'll ever get through it. I've also yet to come across a good substitute to Bartimaeus's footnotes.

 

NOOOOOOOOO.

I searched ages for such a story but all I seem to find are downright horrible and tend to ignore that the Kyuubi is a demon.
That you considered the idea but discarded it is like salt in that wound *cries hysterically*

 

I have plenty that will probably never be published, such as my Creature!Harry troll fic. I also have a bunch of FemHarrys that disgust me two chapters in (I also cut off chapters at 10k words...)

I think I'll start giving the summaries of each...

1. At an Equine's Whisper - Lily and James have a falling out and Lily leaves in the dead of night with their son, disappearing to France... there, she finds work as a healer in a racing facility that caters to all sorts of creatures.

It was my attempt at a Hagrid-Mentors-Harry fic, since the end game was for Harry to go to Hogwarts around the time of Neville's -he's the Boy-Who-Lived- third year. There, Harry fails in everything but the one thing that captures his interest... Care of Magical Creatures.

The base moral was lame, "Stay in School, Harry; bare through it 'til the end... its worth it!"

2. A Salazar Slytherin reborn fic that I never found a title for - Harry is dying in the chamber when an old entity, a... whisper of that which once was decides that it still isn't ready to pass, enter the true puppet master: Salazar Slytherin!

This one was twisted and I look back on it with excitement at the idea of a good author pulling it off.

The plot was for Harry to have moral struggles that he loses against Salazar a wizard who manipulates him throughout his third and fourth year into making his new perfect body. What do I mean by that?

Well, when the dementor attack happens he takes all of Harry's trust and tells him to not fight back, spewing some lie like "They can't take a pure soul." Harry, being the fanatic Salazar had molded him to be, obeys and disappears forever into a dementor, giving Salazar a new body which he'd had trained for his purposes and, as Dudley screams for Harry's he laughs like the psycho he is and takes off running, leaving Dudley at the mercy of the dementors.

Harry had distanced himself from his friends in favor of Salazar so no one notices the new Harry.

That is how Salazar Slytherin came to be reborn.

I'd love to publish this but I don't know where to start in this, I would need an extremely patient beta to pull this off.

3. The only FemHarry that I think has potential, ignoring that it works with magical cores, was one where she is the reincarnation of Baba Yaga, a witch who discovered her own version of immortality which she never shared with anyone.

The key to her immortality was basically that she was a succubus who ate magic and the ability to use it... and in her past life she managed to make a friend of her own, the whispers.

Her best friend since she knew that magic would never betray its mistress... the plot was basically FemHarry trying to remember everything and find her chicken legged house which is where she sealed her whispers before anyone else does.

4. The Creature!Harry was meant to be a troll fic for slash fangirls since every Creature!Harry tends to lean towards Harry being an all powerful being taking it up the butt.

Harry isn't anything special, just the descendant of a Cait Sith who was very disappointed in her daughter who grew up to die under the name Lily Potter. His grandmother doesn't think much of him, but senses the potential in him. Potential to bring back a race that mixed with their muggle counterparts that spawned the breed kneazle. I thought up a lot of backstory to this which I won't put here.

Unlike the many slash fics that exist, this one actually has a creature based in local legend.

Look it up if it pleases you, but the plot was basically Harry's Grandmother struggling to teach Harry the Cait Sith way of life while in her cat form, to prepare him for the process of repopulating the world of cait sith.

The main conflict was that she's trying to hide his heritage lest he get hunted like her ancestors did, for sport.

I'll stop there...

There's plenty more, but I'm starting small and working my way up from there, these fics are out of my reach right now but I'd love to read them.

 

I wrote this brainfuck of a time-travel story on the premise that actually changing the past through time travel is impossible.

Thus, the Harry from the future realises that the only possible way to have the past be different is for the future to have not ever actually happened at all.

The only way to achieve this? He wakes up, in third year again, and memory charms himself into thinking the grimdark future he came from actually happened.

If that sounds confusing, complex and illogical to you, well you're almost on the money. The whole story only gets more complicated by it all actually secretly making sense. But dear god was it hard to write. I eventually gave up and resolved never to try anything as bullshit as this again.

 

HP/Worm

Albus Dumbledore wakes up after his death at the first Endbringer fight against Behemtoh, wand and stylish robes in hand. He proceeds to wreck everyone's shit, accidentally joins Cauldron, and just does crazy and hilarious stuff.


PoJ/Worm

Percy Jackson succeeds at saving Olympus from Kronos, but Annabeth dies from her wounds. After moping for months, a mysterious man appears in his dreams and swears on the River Styx that he will bring back Annabeth if Percy agrees to another Quest. The only thing the man tells him is "to assist Alexandria and assist Cauldron in their Terminus project":

He drops into the ocean off Brockton Bay an hour before Leviathan arrives, makes a name for himself in the battle as a powerful Brute who managed to neutralize much of Leviathan's hydrokinetic abilities and vastly reduce expected causalities.

That's the fun opener.

I had some vague ideas for who the mysterious man who arranges this would be, but had trouble thinking of great plot ideas beyond isolated scenes. Percy fighting Endbringers and heroes is fun, Percy having issues with letting Cauldron keep experimenting while needing to follow orders to get back Annabeth, etc.

 

That certainly would be an interesting twist on the Peggy Sue.

 

I once got a crackish idea of a typical Black Metal fan going to Hogwarts. I don't have any plot for this, but once in a while when inspiration strikes I type little unconnected scenes. It makes fun of the protagonist more than anything else - basically a Black Metal parody of My Immortal. Yeah, it will probably never be published.

 

Supercritical
Many posit the existence of a magical core of sorts, a replenishing repository for magic used up when casting a spell. But given what happens when magic is released on a grand scale, it’s quite a good thing that most wizards don’t understand the basic principles of fission. Hermione Granger, however, does.

The idea is that the magical core works like the core of a nuclear power plant, magic has equivalency to particle physics (RIP Sir Terry Pratchett), and it’s very, very possible to cause a self-sustaining reaction wherein more magic is continuously produced, by a process analogous to basic fission, than can be contained by the body. So wizards are unknowing walking nuclear bombs.

Would probably be a silly oneshot story featuring a death eater being primed, sent back to voldemort, and causing a huge kaboom.

E: Now that I think about it, it's probably already been done.

 

The unfinished story about Fawkes looking for a new wizard to bond after Dumbledore's death, and finding... Raistlin Majere.
Abandoned because it reminds too much about all the stories about Hedwig the SuperOwl.

 

1: Once I had this idea for an epic AU, wherein Harry has eliminated Voldemorts in 63 out of 64 dimensions (because because), lands on the last Earth and learns that he can't go scorched earth here because that's where he'll stay.

No SoS. Global war in progress, Grindelwald rules Europe, British Empire in exile in Australia, Riddle is Grindy's former right-hand who went rogue and now runs a guerilla war in Europe. Topping on the cake is Voldemort #63 actually survived (barely), entered dimension #64 and just complicates everything.

It sounded cool in concept.

2: Fight Club, Potterverse Edition. Some years after DH, Harry has grown tired of the peaceful life.

3: Harry fakes own death post-Voldemort, assumes a Hit-wizard persona, Indiana Joneses his way out of some spikey adventures, then has a ball as an instructor in the Auror Academy.

4: Mass Effect, OC human ex-Alliance sabotage specialist finds a mercenary niche for himself working jobs for Citadel's richest. Draws the turian Councillor's attention. Starts working for the Council. Old military habits awaken, he starts thinking maybe he's actually doing something to improve the galaxy. Becomes the first human Spectre, thus Shep remains Alliance military only. OC and Shep meet during the Saren hunt. Two year gap between ME1 and ME2 was going to be a big arc with a dastardly villain, featuring a time machine and temporal paradoxes.