What if instead of gilly weed Harry had showed up to the black lake challenge in muggle scuba gear like “like where’s your advanced magic now bitches? Got me a free fishing knife with this thing”
Honestly I just want an AU where Harry approached all his magical problems with muggle solutions. Nobody knows how to handle it because he’s supposed to be there learning magic but you know what, it fucking works.
Give me Harry Potter who is like fucking MacGuyver up in this shit, creating his own non-magical solutions to magical problems.
“Potter how did you get past the enchanted keys to the Sorcerer’s Stone?”
“I used a fucking net.”
“How did you get past the dragon?”
Harry shines a little red light on the wall “works on cats, why not a dragon”
“How did you get through the hedge maze?”
“Weed-b-gone, it’s like a pound. Nothing will ever grow there again”
It’s the final battle between Harry and Voldemort. The Dark Lord begins to prepare a spell to end Harry Potter’s life once and for all when….
Ultimate security as Harry is the only one capable of opening it.
Myrtle proudly spending her time acting as a guard/lookout.
Later, Harry diligently teaching Ron, Hermione, and a few choice others, like Neville, how to mimic parseltongue so that they can open it too.
Muggleborns experiencing vicious satisfaction that they’re using this chamber as a place of education and defense, reclaiming the very space Slytherin built to rid the school of their presence.
Hermione methodically dismantling the basilisk’s corpse, covertly selling the priceless ingredients to potion masters, using the funds to continue their work – buying books and battle robes and new wands for those who can’t afford it.
(Hermione saving a portion of those ingredients for her own research, straightening in triumph when she learns what basilisk venom does to horcruxes, knowing she has vials of it hidden up in her room).
Harry reverently adding the Chamber of Secrets to the Marauder’s Map, proudly continuing his family’s work and reveling in the difference they’re making.
These students – these kids – choosing to train in a dark, horrifying place that was never meant for them. Learning spells amongst shadows, growing stronger in inches of murky water, the smell of a decomposing corpse in their noses, memories of all that had happened here haunting them. They know this is what war is really like and it helps to push them forward.
Updating this because people have brought up some REALLY GREAT plot-holes and I like trying to flesh out my AUs soooooooo…
Ginny is the one who suggests using the Chamber. Of course she is. Harry isn’t the type to think of that, but for Ginny… for Ginny the Chamber still haunts her dreams, too often, and she’s furious that a part of the castle is restricted to her – a part of her home that she wants to avoid. She suggests the Chamber, partly for the DA’s benefit, mostly for her own.
Visibility is a concern – what if someone sees them going into the girl’s restroom? They think it’s a serious issue until Ron starts laughing. No one comes near that bathroom anymore, he says. Not ever. It was barely an issue while brewing a month long polyjuice potion, Ron and Harry popping in and out to add ingredients or to stir. Now though? Now that Myrtle has stepped up her game (shrieking, flooding the room if someone unwanted comes near), now that Hogwarts is infused with rumors that Harry fought a basilisk rightin there, now that the nearby corridor still has a bloody, horrifying message that even the professors haven’t been able to erase*… well, students avoid the area like the plague.
Even if they didn’t, the House Elves help them out. Dobby did, after all, suggest the Room of Requirement before Ginny brought up the Chamber. Who better than the workers who see but are not seen to help the DA keep watch?
The castle helps too. By now it knows Harry and desperately wants to protect its students. More than once Umbridge follows a DA member, only to find the staircase moving unexpectedly, taking her in another direction entirely. Sometimes there’s even a door directly beside the lavatory – appearing out of nowhere – that students can slip inside if they feel the need…
Getting out is the other concern. At first they think to bring brooms or levitate one another out… but that’s just not practical. Then, one of the Hufflepuffs asks the obvious and yet oddly illusive question: how did Salazar get out? They start a search and by the end of the day they’ve found at least four hidden exits.
One exit leads out into the Forbidden Forest, a space that’s not nearly as terrifying as it once was. Harry speaks quietly to Firenze and secures the help of the centaurs for when they need safe passage late at night. One day they encounter a group of acromantulas… and Harry learns of Hagrid’s strict new rule – friends of Hagrid are never food, no matter how easy the prey. The students don’t realize it, but they’re slowly gaining allies. Those in the forest begin to take notice of the children who walk both bravely and respectfully through their trees.
(And one day when they’re too tired to walk back, a familiar blue car pulls up and throws open its doors. Ron cheers like a maniac. Ginny laughs and threatens to tell their dad).
Though the exists are great, it’s Hermione who realizes the Chamber’s true benefit – it lies outside of Hogwart’s apparition zone. How can it not? Godric, Helga, and Rowena didn’t know of its existence when they first made the wards. So now the DA can go with ease, they just can’t pop in from anywhere else in the castle. Which is, admittedly, perfect. Apparition lessons begin in earnest.
(And during the Battle of Hogwarts, DA members take Slytherin students by the hand – those who wouldn’t, couldn’t, fight their own families. They take them down to the Chamber and tell them to apparate out. Leave while you still can. Keep safe).
Harry realizing that parseltongue is easily imitated and coming up with an actual password that has to be spoken, one linked to a spell too. It helps that the snakes around the entrance are semi-sentient and are loyal to their new master. They know who’s meant to go down there and who’s not.
Neville joking one day that they should be learning how to use swords, considering that’s how the original battle down here was won. Harry takes it seriously. Not the swords bit, but using physical/muggle fighting techniques on wizards who are too reliant on their magic. They begin reading up on hand-to-hand combat and knives.
Harry needing to test their progress and getting a really stupid idea… but honestly, those often work out in his favor. So one sunny, Saturday morning – when everyone else is lounging outside – Harry sneaks the DA into the third floor corridor. Fluffy is gone, as is the mirror, but the rest remains, no doubt left in case Dumbledore ever had to guard something else precious. Hermione, Ron, and Harry spend the day supervising, teaching their peers how to react under pressure, think through situations, and rely on one another’s skills.
And then one day things get weird (because they always do with Harry) when he realizes that the miniature chamber the basilisk was kept in is the only part of their hideout they’d yet to explore. See, given their rarity, it’s unsurprising that wizardkind knows so little about basilisks – not that they reproduce asexually or that only a parseltongue can hatch the egg. So when Harry crawls into the chamber, and finds a strange egg-like object nestled there, that begins pulsing a soft green color in his presence, and when he basically says, “What the hell…?” out loud, and when it comes out in parseltongue because he is surrounded by snake things…well, let’s just say a few minutes later Harry crawls back out, very sheepish, a baby basilisk cooing around his neck. He laughs pretty shakily and mutters something about finding their mascot.
(And they name the beast – because of course they do – and Hermione invents a soft device to cover its eyes and feeding it is an absolute horror… but they do grow to love their ‘mascot.’ And during the Battle – when Harry is off in the forest and Hogwarts is losing badly – no one is more surprised than the Death Eaters when Ron and Hermione come tearing out of the school riding a goddamn fully grown basilisk. Hermione rips off the cover on its eyes and sets to work).
MARAUDERS, NO QUESTIONS ASKED. But since you did ask, let’s jump on that….
MARAUDERS: THE SERIES
Okay so – five seasons, BBC produced OR HBO in Game of Thrones style, keeping it British (JKR would insist, as she should). 12-14 episodes a season, potential Christmas special at the end of season 4. The first three seasons are MWPP’s fifth, sixth and seventh years, starting about midway through their 5th.
The pilot uses Harry as a framing device – it’s needed to establish the world and time period etc etc – maybe in third year, when Snape is digging in to Papa Potter? Harry then walks along the Hogwarts corridors, thinking about his father, and everything Dumbledore and Lupin have said about him, until he finds himself in the trophy room looking at one of James’ Quidditch medals. Harry says “my dad didn’t strut”, and we close in on the medal…
….only to pan out on James, strutting along the same corridor. Remus, Sirius and Peter fall in, and we watch them as they head in to class. James is your typical asshole of a 15yo, eating an apple and accidentally bumping into people, only to grin and give them fingerguns instead of apologising as he keeps on walking. Remus has his nose in a book, Sirius is poking at his ear with a quill, and Peter’s trying get Sugar Quill residue off his fingers. They walk into Transfiguration, their usual boisterous selves, not noticing a red headed girl rolling her eyes and turning away from them to talk to her friends, or a skulking boy in a group of Slytherins behind her, glaring at them.
AND SO WE BEGIN.
Each of the first four seasons would use one of the Marauders as a viewpoint into the main plot:
Season 1 – Peter, as he feels like he belongs less than the others, and his practical hero-worshipping of his friends means that he views them outside of his relationship with them, and is thus a good starting point for the viewer. Season one also introduces us to the Marauders era Slytherins, and we follow their story in a parallel to MWPP. Lily and Snape’s friendship, their subsequent fall out, and Snape’s further immersion into the Dark Arts are the season’s main subplot. Snape’s Worst Memory happens in about episode 9.
Season 2 – Remus. Season 2 covers MWPP’s sixth year, as they grow older and the war outside of Hogwarts begins to impact more on their isolated world. Lily and James begin to become friends – well, she dislikes him less – and this impacts on Snape, who begins to write in the margins of his potions textbook. Sirius starts to feel more pressure from his family and moves out; this makes him wilder than ever, culminating in the Snape prank (about episode 11). This is filmed to be a cruel trick, and we see the full blow out afterwards between Sirius and Remus. Snape approaches Lily in the aftermath and attempts to tell her about Remus, villifying James in the process; she tells him that she knows about Remus, and that Snape cannot reveal the secret. The season ends with Remus and Sirius still at odds, although partially reconciled, and James saying he just assumed that Sirius would be moving in with him.
Season 3 – This year focuses more on James, beginning when he and Sirius decide to crash a pureblood party at the Malfoy’s. They make their getaway, running past three girls, on Sirius’ new bike, which still has some…. kinks to be smoothed out – they almost fall out of the sky more than once. They return home to the news that James has been made Head Boy; Sirius thinks it’s the most hilarious news he’s ever heard, but James is determined to use the opportunity to get closer to Lily (“I am TELLING you she’s Head Girl, Padfoot!”) The gang head back to Hogwarts – crossing paths with Narcissa Black – who had seen them run out at the Malfoy’s – on the train station. She becomes our focus Slytherin character for the season. Lily and James’ romance takes a front position in this season, with the mending of the Sirius/Remus relationship as a subplot. The season also has flashbacks to the group’s younger years, focusing on the Animagus process.
Season 4: TIME JUMP. We go forward two years into the middle of the war. I see the final two seasons as one whole arc, with the season 4 establishing the various dangers of the war and MWPP’s role in it – focusing on Sirius, as suspicion starts to take hold of the group and their lives get more and more perilous. Through Sirius we get the Regulus subplot and our view into the Death Eaters, following Snape, the Blacks and the Malfoys. Two of Lily and James’ “thrice defied” events happen throughout the season. Remus is sent undercover into the werewolf community and drifts apart from the Order, causing the others to confide in him less and less. Peter sees this and, in the season finale, meets up with a Death Eater.
Season 5: We begin with the announcement of Lily’s pregnancy. The fighting gets worse – there are battles and disappearances every day, both sides begin to lose friends and mentors. Narcissa’s pregnancy is played out as a parallel to Lily; she and Lucius grow closer and begin to resent the influence of Voldemort on their lives. They strengthen as a family unit and at the end of the season decide to break away from their Death Eater friends (and family). The prophecy is told, Harry is born, Lily and James go into hiding. Sirius continues to fight in the war, becoming friends with the Prewett brothers and eventually witnessing their deaths, Snape becomes worried for Lily, makes the deal with Dumbledore, and begins sabotaging Death Eater missions he thinks may harm her, Karkaroff flees England, the Longbottoms announce that they’re expecting, Peter begins passing information on to Voldemort himself, Remus is thrown out of a werewolf meetup when they discover he’s a spy.
The season finale is two hours long. It begins with Harry’s first birthday – Bathilda Bagshot is present, and speaks of Grindlewald. The scene changes, and Sirius is sitting with Kingsley and a few other Order members – they’ve just heard the news of the McKinnons. Moody comes in with blood everywhere; he’s lost an eye. Sirius can’t stand to look at the blood and begins to walk out – then catches sight of Remus in the hall. He confronts Remus, asking where he’s been – Remus can’t say, under Dumbledore’s orders. They end up in a fist fight, beating each other senseless until they’re separated. They don’t speak again for fourteen years. It’s a cold day, and windy – Lily goes outide and pulls the clothes off the line before they can blow away. She and James decorate their cottage with jack o’ lanterns and streamers, and dress Harry up as a little Merlin in a purple gown. They eat Halloween dinner together, the three of them, and James jokes about how “it’s nothing on a Hogwarts feast – just you wait and see, Harry!” Lily goes to put Harry to bed – we watch as she changed him into his pyjamas, lays him in the crib and sings to him – until she’s cut off mid song by a blast downstairs. She’s at the door when she hears James scream, and then there’s a green flash of light, bright and cold, and she runs back to the crib, too choked with fear to even cry for her dead husband. A hooded man steps in the doorway, blocking out all the light. The screen is still black when we hear the revving of a motorcycle as it touches down on the ground. Sirius stands in front of the ruined house, and there are no words for the look on his face. He makes a sound – more animal than human – and before even knowing why, he starts forward, searching among the rubble. He hears a sound, and digs underneath the debris, forgetting his wand entirely, until he finds Harry, crying, the scar still bleeding. Sirius doesn’t know how long he stands there, holding the baby, until suddenly Hagrid is behind him, saying something about Dumbledore, and argues for a while but hands Harry over anyway, saying Hagrid can take the bike. It’s only then that Sirius thinks of Peter. Hagrid says something else, but Sirius doesn’t hear him, doesn’t hear anything – he Apparates, and he’s not even landed before he’s running, up and into Peter’s apartment, banging through the door and making things explode like he did when he was young and couldn’t control his magic. We follow Sirius through the confrontation with Peter and his arrest. Sirius is dragged away, laughing and crying manicallay, cut in a montage to parties and celebrations, random wizards and the Order, a thousand people cheering and smiling and all whispering “For him! The Boy who Lived! Harry Potter!” And, finally, a baby and a letter, lying side by side in front of a Surrey door.
if you’re gonna shit on ginny because she was a mary sue / “overrated” at least acknowledge that we saw her from the perspective of an incredibly biased person (aka the inventor of denial), of course she’s not actually perfect but there’s a reason she goes from ~ron’s little sister that i do like but isn’t rly relevant to my life i’m sorry also i’m actively ignoring her crush on me so it’s a tiny bit awkward~ to !!! good god what an angel?? like ginny’s beautiful?? and plays quidditch!!! and she’s popular and so funny holy fuck ron would KILL me but.. worth it tbh is this.. … what some people call love??? and that reason is called harry potter who spent a good portion of the final books internally combusting whenever ginny did anything what a nerd
tbh the most unrealistic thing in harry potter is when mrs weasley in the first book asks “now what’s the platform number?”
like this woman has been going to that school for seven years and then dropped kids off on the same place for nearly ten like why on earth would she forget the platform number
I still have the headcanon that Molly BAMF Weasley saw a scrawny underfed child with an owl who had no idea where he was going and looked lost and confused and was like, “Ah, yep, new son.” but didn’t want to scare him by outright approaching and asking if he needed help so she was just like, “MUGGLES, MUGGLES EVERYWHERE! DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE PLATFORM NUMBER TO WIZARD SCHOOL IS? WHAT’S THAT? NINE AND THREE QUARTERS? OH, YES, THAT’S RIGHT. THE PLATFORM NUMBER IS N I N E A N D T H R E E Q U A R T E R S!”
Of course seeing as how Harry isn’t the most observant bloke, she probably ushered her kids past him fifty times as different ones screamed the platform number until they finally got his attention.
how did jk manage to write ootp and not come to the conclusion that the only career w any true meaning for harry james potter was as a goddamn professor at hogwarts like how do u write the da scenes and say “nah he’d want to be a wizard cop”
#but it would be so perfect??? #bc it would help normalize his life so much #like there would just be this generation of kids who are like #‘ugh who cares that he killed the dark lord he gAVE US HOMEWORK OVER BREAK’ #like the beginning of every year there would be the new first years who would freak out a little #but then it would calm down #and most of the students would literally forget #until like clockwork the fifth years would have their history of magic class on the second war #and they’d all show up to DADA looking a little awestruck and everyone would be extra quiet #and harry would give this kind of annoyed sigh—except it’s fake bc he TOTALLY knew this was coming #bc binns is a bro and he totally gives him a heads up every year #and harry wouldn’t have any lesson plans for the day and instead he would just sit at the front of the room and answer everyone’s questions #but otherwise everyone would just be like ‘professor potter!! i can’t get my patronus to work! help me!’ #and like they’d go home at the end of the year or for break and their parents—who ARE still starstruck by harry james potter #would pester their kids with questions#and the kids would just be like ‘merlin i don’t know?? potter’s such a huge dork you should hear him talk about proper wand movements’ #but they would all love him #and he would feel safe and normal and utterly accepted #AND I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE (via @cinematicnomad)
Not to mention it would be an ultimate Fuck You to Voldemort, who put a curse on the teaching position in the first place.
Like, Jo, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but COME ON
I already queued this but also, you do this, but still have Ginny become a famous Quidditch player. Imagine the first time Harry gets called “Ginny’s husband” before “the boy who lived” or “the chosen one.” Imagine how fucking pleased he’d be.
Imagine the first time a student comes up to him looking starry-eyed and Harry’s thinking “Oh no” because he doesn’t want to talk about Voldemort or the war but instead this little eleven year old is like “ARE YOU REALLY MARRIED TO WEASLEY FROM THE HOLLYHEAD HARPIES???!?? WHAT’S SHE LIKE?” and he’s like “oh thank god” because he could talk about Ginny all day.
I’ve just come to the realisation that Hermione Granger probably memory charmed her parents and packed them off to Australia long before she told Harry and Ron she’d done it at the beginning of Deathly Hallows.
She literally never goes home from Goblet of Fire onwards, spending her summers with the boys instead. In GoF she’s remarkably blase about her teeth, something her dentist parents would have noticed and felt hurt about.
If I were to guess, I’d say she probably did it after the wizarding world cup when she’d seen exactly how the wizarding world treats muggles and decided not to let that happen to her folks. Hermione knows which way the wind is blowing and gets in early. She’d be more than capable of doing it.
…Oh my God.
hermione is fucking ruthless and i will fight anyone who tells me otherwise
that was her “negative” gryffindor trait
was she incredibly brave and courageous and loyal? yes
but she was also vicious and violent and trapped a woman as a beetle in a jar for over a year because she pissed her off
sorcerer’s stone: oliver just lets a fresh 11-year-old boy wizard join his team, no questions asked. tells this kid there’s a sport where the balls want to kill you and basically says “good luck out there.” known for his long-winded speeches and love for the game. very passionate. solid start. (7/10)
chamber of secrets: oliver doesn’t care if there’s a monster on the loose snatching up schoolchildren willy-nilly. YOU CAN’T CANCEL QUIDDITCH. (7/10)
prisoner of azkaban: his obsession now borders on manic. he doesn’t care if harry lives or dies. gryffindor finally wins the quidditch cup (probably the crowning achievement of oliver’s life tbh), and there now are no worlds left to conquer. (12/10)
goblet of fire: the world cup happens, this is true, but oliver wood has graduated from hogwarts. as a result of this and nothing else, no one plays quidditch the entire year (5/10)
order of the phoenix: harry asks if oliver’s been killed because angelina johnson seems to be channeling his spirit. however, oliver wood is playing for the puddlemere united reserve team and is thankfully alive and well. (3/10)
half-blood prince: no mention of oliver wood nor his abiding love of quidditch, except for when fred says oliver would’ve murdered the entire slytherin team if he could’ve gotten away with it. we can assume he’s gently caressing a broomstick wherever he is, but the fact remains that we can’t KNOW. (2/10)
deathly hallows: oliver takes a quick break from quidditch to fight in the battle of hogwarts. he’s fighting for a new world, a better world—a world where quidditch is allowed to continue existing. very noble. (9/10)
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