A recent thread got me wondering - what would his world have been like if he had joined Slytherin? It could have happened innocuously enough. All he had to do was choose to hang out with Malfoy on the train. They could have been friends even
Would he have worked for Voldemort? Or would he have still opposed him?
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>Malfoy being friends with some poor kid from a muggle family.
Lets be honest, Harry would have been bullied so bad he'd be the kid showing up to the school dance with an assault rifle and bandoleer of pistols and ammo clips.
But the previous posters are right, take this to the proper board please, it's not Veeky Forums-related in any way.
Two issues with the premise:
1) Everyone knows who he is before they've met him - even Hermione does, which is kind of odd.
2) Even assuming Malfoy was genuinely nice to him, which is unlikely given the kind of person he was, he'd still be in Snape's sights, and he'd be the subject of his abuse a lot more often being in his house - even Snape's blatant favouritism towards his own students seems unlikely to be outbalanced by his hatred of James, so Harry would effectively become the butt monkey for all of Slytherin.
And being in the same dorm as at the very least 3 Death Eaters' kids can't be good for his health when the plot gets moving
1)Malfy would still be a dickhead
2)The hat wouldn't give a dick about whom he knew, it goes on his own personality
But even IF he would've gone to slytherin somehow...
Voldy hated him personally, and so in self-defence against his schemes, SlytherHarry would still oppose him.
And hell, with a slythering mindset? He could try to loot some of the shit Voldy was trying to get at for himself.
Yes, you do. Eject yourself.
The book would have been a lot better if the kids would have been in different houses (Harry-Ron-Hermione even fit into the Griffyndorf-Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw trio), and it'd have been about cooperation between friends putting aside silly tribal politics.
Also would have made the house cups a bit more exciting.
Why do wizards there only use wands? No staffs, rings, rods, orbs, clubs, other foci?
Diviners use orbs to help channel their sight sometimes if that help at all.
I'd imagine it has to do with concealability, ease of use and ease of make. Rods and Staves are off the table because they're big and obviously. Rings are off the table because inherently magical metals are, presumably, even rarer and more expensive than wood and magical animal bits. Orbs are generally more fragile and are the domain of wizards who have the "sight" and charlatans anyways. As for clubs, well, wizards aren't expected to get into melee combat so that'd be silly and barbaric.
However, there are some examples of a few things: Lucius Malfoy had a cane that he concealed his wand in. Hagrid used bits of his snapped wand as part of an umbrella handle so he can use it like a wand occasionally and several powerful wizards are noted as being able to use magic without the use of a wand at all.
He wouldn't be friends with Hermione and thus would fucking fail. The whole series may as well be Hermione Granger and that Specy Git She's Carrying
Wands, in my opinion, are a bit like a funnel. They focus the magic of the wizard, but in turn only so much magic can go through it at once. Wandless magic, every time you see it, has a large and powerful effect - it's unfiltered, uncontained. It might be a lot harder to learn wandless magic, but it seems to me like it'd definitely be worth the payoff - you don't have to rely on ANY easily-breakable/stolen item, AND your power is a magnitude greater than wand-using wizards. The fact that they don't teach you how to utilize wandless magic in hogwarts is proof of how shit that school is.
Not saying she doesn't carry the trio through a lot of the adventures, but she's not that good at the whole "defeating the dark lord" thing - notably, while all of them destroy a Horcrux each, Hermione is the only one who didn't do it on her own (she stabbed the cup with a basilisk fang, which she and Ron retrieved from the Chamber - which they were only able to do because Ron apparently has mad mimicry skills and a good memory)
Harry would get ripped to shreds in his first couple of years and Voldemort would win.
Too many death eaters in Slytherin. Even with a core group of friends inside the house, he would still be surrounded by enemies on all sides in his own fucking dorm. And as mentioned before, he almost certainly doesn't befriend Hermione this time around.
Kid is dead by the end of book 4, tops.
What if he becomes the new Dark Lord instead?
I know, I know, we are being edgy here, but so is the premise anyway.
He joins the DE kids, sabotages Voldemort's efforts, and becomes the true successor of Slytherin.
We might have gotten a series of more mature novels with a lot more moral ambiguity, and the feeling that there are no simple labels like good or bad.
But that wouldn't happen because HP was for children and young adults, and they don't handle moral greyness well. Much easier and more efficient to say "Red = good, Yellow and Blue = unimportant, Green = assholes, except for that one guy but even he's kind of a dick too"
Dumbledore would probably smack him about the head and get him back on track
Or, do the "Kids will be Kids" thing, considering that at Harry's age he was conspiring for world domination with Grindelwald.
Or switch to Plan B: Neville.
That might make a more compelling story.
On the one hand we have Harry: Secret millionaire with the cash his mum and dad left him, super special "love" blessing that shields him from direct attack from adversary, snowflake birthmark, half the world wanting to suck his wand and surrounded by people utterly loyal to a fault to make up for his failings. Goes camping and scavenger hunting.
On the other hand we have Neville: Lower than average grades in everything but herbs, no hidden fortune, dutifully visits his broken parents every week even though it kills him a little every time inside, bullied and ridiculed for 8 fucking years by staff and pupils, no friends beyond people who tolerate him, no defining features that mark him out for greatness, lightning rod for bad luck. Raises armed rebellion and organizes a resistance movement.
If it had been Neville as the Chosen One Voldermort would have been slipped magic nullifying poison and then beaten with a plank. The other hoarcruxes would have ensured that he never died but that's not a blessing if you no longer have a single unbroken bone.
To be fair, the fact that Neville could have ended up as the Chosen one if things had played out slightly differently is pretty much accepted as fact at this point.
You don't get to the final boss if everyone is dead or if the company is broken two books ago though.
Harry is the Chosen One because of Voldemort though, he becomes the nemesis because he was marked as his equal. It would need Voldemort going after Neville for him to become the Chosen One. We could still have Harry as a spoiled slytherin kid though, wouldn't have been for the worst.
Hermione is the Book Smarts.
Harry is the Practical Smarts (He's always been the best in class when it comes to Defense Against the Dark Arts when it wasn't taught be Snape).
Ron is the rest of us.
Harry's pure blood as a mahfah, he's just staying with muggles during the summer. The Potters were old wizard money, just like the Malfoys.
The alternative is that Neville needs to kill Harry, as he's the last Horcrux.
Yes, but because Voldy knew that both the Longbottoms and Potters opposed his regime. It was pretty much a coin flip, and he went after the Potters instead because Peter Pettigrew was a dirty rat and revealed their location too him.
Except he's not? Lily Potter was Aunt Petunia's sister, whom was a muggle.
Harry Potter's a Half-blood like Voldy was.
Neville was also marked by Voldy in a "I've tortured your parents to madness worse than death and fucked your life up" sort of way.
So how pure is "pure"?
Are his children purebloods?
Does one drop of muggleborn ruin you forever?
True, but Harry does have the advantage of celebrity. Malfoy would probably have made an exception although the dynamic would have been kinda weird once his father found out.
Also, Harry's poverty is a mask. He's rich as hell, and being a young kid he would have probably said as much if he thought it would win him points with his friends. They would have probably laughed him off, but then he could have made a show of his Gringott's account, or bought something absurdly expensive to prove it.
Go read 3d10 of the innumerable fanfictions about that and report back.
>thinks HP isn't Veeky Forums-related
>The fact that they don't teach you how to utilize this incredibly difficult type of magic that could easily go horribly wrong in hogwarts is proof of how shit that school is.
Makes sense.
> and several powerful wizards are noted as being able to use magic without the use of a wand at all.
I suddenly remembered that background character from the first Harry Potter movie, who telekinetically moved his spoon without a wand.
I wonder what was his deal.
The dude reading a brief history of time?
Probably shouldn't fuck with him.
I'd agree that you shouldn't fuck with him, though it may be that to wizards muggle science books are what 'textbooks' on dragons and wizards and old alchemy books are to us - interesting and cool because of the amount of work that's gone into them rather than their non-existent factual content
He was also reading quantum physics
The content IS factual though; physics exist and work in the HP universe. A Wizard who studies them and applies magic using scientific principles could be a ridiculously powerful enchanter.
Dude's going to become the Robert Oppenheimer of modern magitek. When do we get his movie?
Guy needs a spin-off
That was the Premise of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, our favorite worst HP FanFic.
fanfiction.net
And please, get back to /tv/
Theoretically you could breed out the muggle like with most anything else genetic.
magic isn't genetic though
Far too late now. We're over 40 posts In, and the mods and Janitors have done nothing. Besides, they never really cared about what was in the OP as long as it was Veeky Forums or Veeky Forums-adjacent(fantasy settings) they care more about results, so as long as this thread doesn't devolve into something bannable, we're seeing this thread to bump limit.
There are a lot of Slytherin kids that dabble in the dark arts, so Harry would have either been trying to clean Slytherin house or he would have caved and started doing their practices along with them (due to peer pressure). I think he still would have opposed Voldemort because Harry has morals when it comes to killing people, but he would probably try and remake the Slytherin house to become a lot more aristocratic and less skeevy and conniving.
Maybe this unfitness between character and ability is what made the sorting hat put him in Gryffindor after all.
It might not be genetic but it sure as shit is inheritable.
Most of the magicals in Hogwarts had magical parents. Most magical couples will produce only magical children. Hermione and Filch were exceptions rather than the rule.
The Potter family is officially half-blood now, because Harry is a half-blood. They were pure blood up until James Potter married Lily Potter, but were never included as official pure bloods because they had what the other Twenty-Eight pure blood families (minus the Weasleys, who agreed with the Potters) called an unhealthy interest in the welfare of Muggles.
And it's mentioned in the books that the whole "pure blood" thing is a fucking joke that came out of the early 1900s in particular (it had strength earlier because of Slytherin, though his ideas were thought of as crazy talk), because there are no wizard families alive that don't have non-magic blood in them somewhere, no matter what they might claim.
>It might be a lot harder to learn wandless magic, but it seems to me like it'd definitely be worth the payoff - you don't have to rely on ANY easily-breakable/stolen item, AND your power is a magnitude greater than wand-using wizards. The fact that they don't teach you how to utilize wandless magic in hogwarts is proof of how shit that school is.
Wandless magic is also incredibly difficult to control, because it's unfocused. Lose your temper, get tired, do something stupid, and you've blown up your aunt. It does seem to be weaker, though. There's a reason wands channel and focus power to a much greater degree, and also make it easier to do so.
They don't teach wandless magic to CHILDREN for a very good reason, in fact they drive home the point very solidly by prohibiting them from using magic while underage and making sure they all have wands. Giving them magic is bad enough, you want to put unfocused power in the hands of hormonal adolescents?
When you're an adult, things get a bit different, you could in theory learn then. Apparition is literally wandless magic and they teach it under very controlled circumstances, and there's still a big deal with people tearing themselves in half because they fuck it up.
Like, for example, what happened whenever Harry threw a fit at the Dursleys?
Pretty much. The Dursleys were lucky he didn't do anything worse, from memory there are stories of wizard children with abusive parents coming into their powers much more explosively and violently. All Harry did was make some glass disappear, magically regrow his hair, and other minor stuff.
Compare that with Tom Riddle as a child.
That sounds similar to nonverbal magic (both in HP and Eragon). Hard to control, but much harder to predict or counter than verbal spells. I'd imagine powerful spells could be cast faster wandless since it doesn't have to flow through a small focus, but the magic in wands' cores would make powerful spells easier to learn and less draining.
Sphinx unrelated.
Harry isn't a half-blood, that's the term for wizards with a muggle parent. His mom was a witch, making him... Son of a muggleborn? Not a half-blood, at any rate.
Harry was an inch away from Slitherin pretty much the entire time. He could have gone dark anywhere from the start to the end. Every time he dabbled in dark magic, accidentally or otherwise, it went off without a hitch. He cast the "cut a bitch" spell perfectly the very first time he tried it, he cast the forbidden mind control spell perfectly the first time he tried it, ect.
And high level magic in that setting has emotional and mental components. You have to *want* it to happen. Most people couldn't cast that spell because it's just not in their mindset. Harry had no problem doing so.
Don't forget the time he used the Cruciatus curse on Bellatrix at the end of book/movie 5. It wasn't "torture the bitch sane" strong, but it was powerful enough to knock her off her feet.
>but it was powerful enough to knock her off her feet.
Only in the movie. IIRC in the book all it did was surprise her enough to make her stop and chirp at him for his impotence.
I did mention the movie as one of the sources. ;)
But, the point still stands. He could have driven right off into the dark end at any moment. The only thing that really stopped him was the people around him constantly reminding him to be the good guy.
>The only thing that really stopped him was the people around him constantly reminding him to be the good guy.
That and he did sincerely want to be the good guy.
I disagree with the notion Harry spent the whole series walking a razor's edge. There were a few moments where he was tested but even on his worst day he was never anywhere near as bad as Tom Riddle.
>Would he have worked for Voldemort?
Probably.
>Veeky Forums
Because this is surely a topic that requires circlejerking Ulysses for the billionth time, isn't it
That's like telling someone to go to /mu/ to talk about actual music.
>pic
Is retarded. The purity of your blood has nothing to do with your spellcasting capability. In fact, the most purebred heiress of Slytherin could only do potions, while her half-blood son actually became one of the most feared wizards ever.
In the HP-verse, alloys are stronger.
Don't forget Lily and Hermione, both remarkably intelligent and skilled witches despite having normie parents.
That said I think that pic is satire.
Voldy considered him a half-blood, at least. That's partially why he chose him over Neville, because he saw some special significance in both of them being half-blood.
>The book would have been a lot better if the kids would have been in different houses (Harry-Ron-Hermione even fit into the Griffyndorf-Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw trio)
Nah, the proper setup would have Ron in Gryffindor, Harry in Slytherin and Neville in Hufflepuff. Ron is pure Gryffindor: brave and outspoken but kind of a dick.
I heard that was Rowling's original plan but that she couldn't figure how to have Ron befriend a Slytherin Harry.
>Harry would have been bullied so bad he'd be the kid showing up to Hogwarts' winter ball with an assault wand and bandoleer of potions and chocolate frogs
Fixed that for you.
Well, if they had met on the train and become friends, but neither of them ever interacted with Malfoy before the sorting, Harry wouldn't have had any prejudice against Slytherin house and Ron could have been his friend based on their pre-sorting interactions. It might have taken longer for them to be really close friends, but the dungeon troll event would seal the deal.
>Ron is pure Gryffindor: brave and outspoken but kind of a dick.
I disagree, Ron was always the one who was afraid of stuff. Even the was his family is portrayed suggested that they are diligent workers, not heroes.
But every single one of them, Ron included, steps right up to bat every time they need to do something heroic or brave. Even when he was scared, Ron jumped right in.
"Knight to H3."
>Ron was always the one who was afraid of stuff.
It's when you're afraid that you can be brave.
>Even the was his family is portrayed suggested that they are diligent workers, not heroes.
His parents were in the Order of the Phoenix. Ron himself has dubious work ethic, Arthur and most of his sons just follow their passion when it comes to their job, and Ginny is your classic girl-with-an-attitude. Percy is considered the black sheep because he sucks up to his boss too much.
Sure, and Hufflepuffs did stay and fight against Voldemort. I think sacrificing yourself for the good of the group aligns with... Hufflepuffian virtues, and either way, everyone had a mix of traits from all the houses. Saying "Ron is Gryffindorf because he was heroic" is only as relevant as saying "Ron is Hufflepuff because he'd like a simple life and taking it easy."
Some Hufflepuffs.
Every Griffindor (Including ones that were too young and had to be individually pulled out), most Hufflepuffs, a handful of Ravenclaws, and literally no Slytherins stayed to help Hogwarts at the end.
Do note that Order of the Phoenix was introduced later into the series and was basically "all the good guys here".
>and literally no Slytherins
This was so retarded. I remember raging at shit like that in the last few books.
>"Ron is Hufflepuff because he'd like a simple life and taking it easy."
Have we read the same books? One of Ron's character flaws is that he's insecure and wishes he could be in the spotlight like Harry always is.
Ron's main Hufflepuff trait is that he's loyal, but Hermione is even moreso. Hufflepuffs are diligent, Ron is like Harry in that he doesn't take school all that seriously. Hufflepuffs don't rock the boat and are the "nice" ones, Ron gets in fight with his friends all the time.
>"all the good guys here"
And Mondingus.
>And Mondingus.
I... who was that guy? I'll admit, I don't remember him.
He's basically a petty crook who just happens to be an OotP's member. I think you only hear about him whenever he fucks up a mission.
This really fucking appeals to me.
Harry goes of with Ron and Hermione to have their adventures as per Vanilla because everybody Voldy, Dumbledore and the others all think he is the Chosen One because scar.
Meanwhile Neville Longbottom studies. He is quite angry. The cunt responsible for his parents condition and everything wrong with his life is back.
He would need cohorts.
Luna Lovegood to take the place of Hermione as the clever one. Her knowledge is fringe shit that the rest of the wizarding world thinks is insane. But she is dangerous, she has seen some shit, she doesn't have enough marbles left to feel fear and experiments. Experimenting in HP magic is dangerous for all involved but when it pays off it pays of big.
The Ron equivalent would be Fred and George. Why are they helping? At first pity. Afterwards because it's entertainment and excitement. After that because shit just got real. Also dropping a jocke shop darkness prank bomb in a room full of people is almost as good as an invisibility cloak.
He was also constantly stealing stuff from headquarters and selling it on to collectors.
Neville and Luna are kind of criminally underused in the series.
(Hitler checked)
I think that calls for a sanity check.
(also checked
HPMOR became laughable when I did some research about Yudowsky, LessWrong, and his AI cult. Really stupid stuff.
>NAXALT, bro! I know one mudblood who's good at magic, therefore all of them are just as good as purebloods!
Also Mad Eye Moody has a staff. But he has a wand too.
>Even assuming Malfoy was genuinely nice to him, which is unlikely given the kind of person he was
This is the problem; there are actually two separate issues which get confused here, namely that Slytherin are the evil house and that Draco Malfoy personally is a right dickhead. Even with Potter in Slytherin Malfoy is still going to get pissy with him if he'd rejected their possible initial friendship because Malfoy is just a dick like that. Their entire school rivalry is because Harry snubbed him on the first day and Malfoy makes it last six years.
Given his fathers supposed role within society and his ties to people in power it's actually shocking how unsubtle Draco is about making useful friends in school and keeping his behaviour in check, hearing his son called one of Harry Potters friends a filthy little mudblood should have earned him the mother of all beatings when Lucius found out.
> I know one mudblood who's good at magic, therefore all of them are just as good as purebloods!
Name one "Pureblood" who is better at magic than the best of the mudbloods of their generation?
Tom Riddle, Harry, and Hermione all have muggle blood in their veins, and don't have a lot of competition. The only character I can think of who was pureblood and notably awesome was maybe Dumbledore?
You don't go there to discuss anything, it's nothing but hipsters masturbating over Endless Jest or Ulysses.
Doesn't their house head lead a bunch of them back in mid-fight?
Yeah, Dumbledore is both explicitly a pureblood and uncontroversially considered one of the greatest wizards alive in-universe.
Grindelwald might have been a pureblood too, though I'm not sure how much credence wizards give to that outside of Britain.
>clips
>literally Fanfiction.net: the thread
HP and the Natural 20 is the best worst HP FanFic. Too bad its dead and that awful muggle sideplot took up so much time and space at the end/.
Wizards are always going to be a little old-fashioned.
You need to genuinely want someone to suffer for that curse to work, so yeah.
The best HP fanfic is Seventh Horcrux anyway.
On the top of my head, Bellatrix Lestrange, Alastor Moody and Sirius Black aren't too bad pure-blood wizards for instance.
>alloys are stronger
Just like real life, then
There are a lot "best worst" HP fanfics in existence, because just so many amateur fanfic writers entirely misunderstand how to write an engaging plot. Instead they either drop a setting infodump, or get untangled in meaningless relationship drama that has little place in a highschooler's life - much less that of 11-year old, which is a popular place for many writers to start their story.
*entangled
Rowling did later on say she regretted how irredeemably shitty all of the Slytherins acted. It really says something when the only one even close to a decent human being was Severus fucking Snape.
Snape was on the side of good, but decent he was not. The closest a Slytherin get to someone you'd actually want as a friend is Slughorn, and the guy still sucks.
I would like to see a film from Luna's perspective.
Admittedly there would be a dearth of childlike wonder and whimsy but there would be distorted Sin City graphics and an internal monologue not quite in kilter with how everybody else reaches conclusions. Also lots of Family Guy/Scrubs style throw away flashes in the same odd style that make it hard for the audience to follow what is actually happening in the feet-on-the-ground reality. Also hard for her.
Also it would be a bleak slog through a dangerous institution to master the forces that killed her mother rather an an adventure of a magical school. Where she spent the better part of a decade being mercilessly bullied to the concern of seemingly none of the teachers or staff.
And then she gets kidnapped and gets to spend some time at Malfoy Manor.
Wrong country.