I always figured the Ministry seems so bizarre and confusing because it's seen from the point of view of a boy in his mid-teens. It's definitely corrupt, and completely unable to handle a civil war, but I figure that it does at least mostly function.
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Harry Potter Fanfic Cliches
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Well, true Reiko, but also consider that the Ministry (and the public) seems stuck on the extremes of fawning over Harry or hating him. Not exactly the best way to leave the impression of 'functional.'
Honestly, the only adults I can think of from canon who were competent and fair are Amelia Bones (who got one scene and a mention after being killed) Bill and Charley Weasley, who barely appeared at all. Everyone else either plotted around or against Harry, tried to 'protect him' even after it was obviously pointless or counterproductive, or was a bumbling nincompoop. Of course, to have a teen hero it's neccesary for the adults to be ineffective at resolving the conflict, but it still paints a pretty bleak
-- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
picture of how the potterverse actually is.
As for the power of combining muggle science and magic completely overwhelming the traditionalists... That's pretty much the only reason I can see them actually caring enough to have a Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, rather than just the Obliviator squad. -- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
I believe that in the DW-Harry Potter step, some more cliches were mentioned:
-Weasley Twins Twins' Speak -Self-Insert character with super-unique wand. I'm assuming that this is *not* the Elder Wand -Wand holsters (I guess that's not a cliche so much as a fan convention) I am super going to be using some of these, though. Though plans may change, I plan to use: 1) Fem-Blaise, 2) Genius Hermione, 3) Strategist Ron, 3) Dementors are super-hard to kill and killing one proves how super Super!Harry is You know, I haven't seen it here, but I'm assuming there was a Tenchi-solution given to all the shipping going on in Harry Potter at some point? Isn't that where Harem!Harry came from? [I will not use Harem!Harry] As for dementors, according to the harry potter wikia, they are called "amortal"--meaning they don't die and aren't born. Though it's weird, because I believe I remember one of the books saying that the dementors were breeding. -Murmur
I always figured they were some form of undead, so it would be more a matter of propogating whatever curse or animation or demonic possesion of a victim or whatever to make more, rather than birth as such. Or they could be fear elementals, and as terror per capita passes a certain threshold a new one just sort of fades in.
-- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows 
You are correct -- there is mention of them breeding in, I believe, Deathly Hallows.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
This is definitely off-topic, but I want to point out that sending is not part of Divination. Divination is all about information-gathering, which is only communication in the very loosest sense. And yes, both telesensing (magical seeking and detecting far-off events as they happen) and limited psychometry (viewing the past) appear in Harry Potter canon, but neither are taught as part of Divination.
Viewing the past - via pensieve I guess, that's actually pretty close to using a scrying pool with the magically extracted memory as a focus, and may just have not been explicitly called out as being a part of the diviner's arts. Tracking spells and the one to find the direction to something get rolled into Charms, probably because they're just another flavor of wave and words... I can't really think of any examples of remote sensing the present that weren't sendings (ward lines/scar visions) Examples?
-- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
I was counting "Point me" as telesensing, but a better example is the Marauders' Map: it displays the location of everyone in the area it maps. Similarly, Extendable Ears, even though they're physical objects, provide aural telesensing. The best example of all, though, is the Weasley Family Clock.
I hadn't actually thought of Pensieve memory-viewing as psychometry. The only real example I could bring to mind was checking wands to detect recently-cast spells, and the wand-shades in The Graveyard at the end of Goblet of Fire. In a vague attempt to get back on topic, has the "Magical Creature Animagus" cliche come up yet? Or "animagi everywhere", for that matter? Remember, there have been something like 4 registered animagi in the past century. While it's obviously not that difficult if three slackers could manage it under their teachers' noses, lots of fics have everybody flaunting their animagus transformations as if they weren't regulated at all. Proginoskes Wrote:In a vague attempt to get back on topic, has the "Magical Creature Animagus" cliche come up yet? Or "animagi everywhere", for that matter? Remember, there have been something like 4 registered animagi in the past century. While it's obviously not that difficult if three slackers could manage it under their teachers' noses, lots of fics have everybody flaunting their animagus transformations as if they weren't regulated at all.Actually, per the HArry Potter Wiki, there were a total of seven registered animagi in the twentieth century; considering there were at least four unregistered (Black, Potter, Pettigrew, and Skeeter), I have the feeling this is probably more common than the Wizarding World would like to think. No magical animagus transformations are known in canon, as far as I've found, though.
Here's one I don't think has been mentioned - "Harry is immune to veela powers," usually bmaking him super-attractive to veela who are just so tired of boys doing anything they say, and or because he's in wuv -twu wuv - with the author's favored character, possibly without even realizing it.
Threatening to transfer to Beaxbatons on discovering X dastardly plot is another perennial, but of course it never happens because everything that matters is in Britain. I've NEVER seen Durmstrang even considered... -- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
You always have remember that MoM is hyper corrupt... which probably explains most of the oddities... it is also old. I'm pretty sure the operating principles work like this in canon.
The first thing you can extract is the books is that 'Dark' is a major legal term. The Darkness of an object or spell is voted on by the MoM's Congressional equivelent. and those are all apparently herditary seats. Once the 'Darkness Value' has been assigned it is compared to the target's GPP number. GPP is of course 'Generations Provably Pureblood. If your GPP number is less than required by the ojects/spells' DV your to be (in terms of severity) Verbally reprimanded/ Fined/ Imprisoned/ Have your wand snapped/ Fed to dementors. The severity of this punishment is determined by the size of the number. It can even go into negatives... meaning you get rewarded for having less Dark Dark items sitting around the place... you now get paid to 'contain them'. This seems a dubious system... until you remember that they are called 'Wizards'... the wise ones.. They literally call themselves 'those that actually know what they are doing'. Pre-founding of Hogwarts with the apprentise system at best, this was the only way to avoid magical idiots from killing themselves spectacularly. After Hogwarts, which was prohibitably expensive, you had magic users trained and educated magic users wandering around. Large knowledge stores, libraries if you will, started popping up in the hands of the literate by default graduates. Poorer magic user trained under the Hogwarts educated ones. Wizard/witch was an earned title for the wise ones. Muggles on the otherhand were illiterate morons for the most part outside the upper classes. Muggle probably started off as meaning, 'Those illiterate morons'. The Renaissance happened and then Industrial Revolution... eventual the non magicals ended up in their own reading is basically mandatory society. Things would have updated except the 'Muggles' invented new forms of war. we know this as wizards got directly involved up to WW2. I personally blame cannons. See a cannon or other altilery can pick you off from outside of line of sight. This mean home defense went from activate the heavy defenses during attacks to on all the time. This means hiding from sight in the first place.. so you can't get targeted without magical people being involved. Magical people started becoming myths and legends when cannons came around. By the time of Napoleon entire wizarding families could get wiped out near instantly if they could be found. Death from above and all. As the number of people with high GPP numbers dropped the remainder got more paraniod. The seats on the ruling group started to empty out. Come the turn of the 1900s and the eugenics movement (Go pure blood power!) was making its rounds. Come WW2 and culling none purebloods gets in vouge. Over half the GPP big numbers are gone and middle class twits become upper class twits. By this point offing relatives becomes in style.. and this led to removing the spare from the heir and a spare equasion... come HP books your looking at a society that needs a public enemy to funstion. The Dark Lords, Harry Potter, Muggles, Muggle Borns (a GPP number of 0 and raised by those stupid evil Muggles.) --- We know that the ministry has a global enchantment that effects the entire British Isles... the entire say 'Voldemorte' and get a strike team preceded on an antimagic shock wave of doom. If they set it to the words for the Unforgivables... it would have nuked the Death Eaters from existance in a month. Thus I'm guessing the use of this enchantment was 'legally' considered 'Dark' for dubious reasons. That and the bit about the ones using said Unforgivables were the people regulating such things.
Erm... please identify speculation from fact, Nectratoid, because while vaguely plausible I've never seen anything remotely that explicitly detailed in HP fic...
and on that note, more cliches: Hedwig cliffhanger-"killed," but becomes a white, black, and/or blue pheonix instead. Hedwig the baconfiend -- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows ClassicDrogn Wrote:Threatening to transfer to Beaxbatons on discovering X dastardly plot is another perennial, but of course it never happens because everything that matters is in Britain. I've NEVER seen Durmstrang even considered...I've read a few stories with a transfer to Beauxbatons in the last few years; sadly, I'm wracking my brains for titles but nothing's coming. And I know that Harry's seriously considered Durmstrang in a couple stories, but it's an author-interpreted Durmstrang where the dark reputation is a misapprehension on the part of the rest of Europe. Harry Potter and the Temporal Beacon does something like that during its extended Triwizard sequence. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. ClassicDrogn Wrote:Hedwig cliffhanger-"killed," but becomes a white, black, and/or blue pheonix instead.Hedwig who perfectly understands conversational English, and the only thing keeping her from responding on an equal basis to people talking to her is the inability of her beak to form the right shapes to speak. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
While told instead of shown, my impression was that at least in the gap before 1st year, while locked in 2nd, and staying at the Cauldron 3rd Harry does talk to her quite a bit, and pet owners extrapolating involved responses out of their critter cocking its head at them and blinking or any sort of vocalization is hardly rare. So, Harry may well imagine it to be so, whether true or not.
(he said, while the little dog on his knee huffed at her silly human playing with that THING again instead of her...) -- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
No, I'm talking about scenes like those in Harry Potter and the Marriage Contracts by Clell65619 where other people interact with Hedwig and are astounded at how she appears to have human-level intelligence.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Ah, yeah, that does qualify, though I wouldn't say it's neccesarily bad. "Comedy relief" starring the cartoon style secret hijinx of the familiars, though... Foamy the Rat, Kung-Fu Toad and Laser Owl was funny, the first time, but repeats and knockoffs seriously begin to grate. That's more due to breaking the tone (unless the rest is a cartoony crackfic as well) and delaying the plot than the cliche as such for me however.
-- "Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows Duane Peters Wrote:Actually, per the HArry Potter Wiki, there were a total of seven registered animagi in the twentieth century; considering there were at least four unregistered (Black, Potter, Pettigrew, and Skeeter), I have the feeling this is probably more common than the Wizarding World would like to think. No magical animagus transformations are known in canon, as far as I've found, though.Well, it's less the actual "half the population is an animagus" part as it is the "let's use our animagus transformations in front of these Ministry officials!" part that bugs me. Your aunt is the head of the DMLE, Susan! Even if she keeps the Aurors from going after you, she can't cover for you if you're spotted by Unspeakables! Her job's worth more – to her, to you, and to all of bloody Britain – than that.
My personal favorite: Dumbledore and/or the Weasleys have been stealing from, or even spent the entirety of, the Potter fortune.
One extreme variation on this I recall had a combination of theft and mismanagement having not only destroyed the Potter fortune but driven it deep into debt, and the Goblins are -very- interested in collecting said debt. In blood and/or flesh. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode. Bob Schroeck Wrote:It's pretty hard to create another entire school of magic. I only know of two really good attempts (neither fic is complete, both are long reads), if you don't count Harry ending up in the X-men world at Xaviers and being tutored in his 'mutant powers'.ClassicDrogn Wrote:Threatening to transfer to Beaxbatons on discovering X dastardly plot is another perennial, but of course it never happens because everything that matters is in Britain. I've NEVER seen Durmstrang even considered...I've read a few stories with a transfer to Beauxbatons in the last few years; sadly, I'm wracking my brains for titles but nothing's coming. Alexander Harris and the Shadow Council by Tenhawk which is a crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer AND the Addams Family, featuring Xander and Wednesday original going to the Salem Institute in Washington State, but then using a foreign exchange program into Hogwarts after a magical accident conjures an active volcano and it messes up Salem's first year area. The Salem Institue isn't expounded on much, only during the summers briefly when Xander (the main character) has to make sure his English magical education is up to American standards. http://fanfiction.tenhawkpresents.com/v ... &chapter=1 -- starts there, having trouble getting the preview link to work so might need to copy/paste URL. Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived by The Santi Ff.net description for this one doesn't have much to do with the actual story. Slytherin Genuis!Harry has a twin brother in Gryfinndor and really starts to hate Hogwarts. He gets the permission of his parents (alive James+Lily) to transfer to Durmstrang where he befriends Viktor Krum and a pureblood dark witch. Her family is a big anti-light enemy that Harry's parents would hate (if they knew about it). The author goes through multiple years at a dark arts centric Durmstrang, very in depth. I think the author stopped at the end of year three. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5353809/1/H ... -Who-Lived Necratoid Wrote:We know that the ministry has a global enchantment that effects the entire British Isles... the entire say 'Voldemorte' and get a strike team preceded on an antimagic shock wave of doom. If they set it to the words for the Unforgivables... it would have nuked the Death Eaters from existance in a month. Thus I'm guessing the use of this enchantment was 'legally' considered 'Dark' for dubious reasons. That and the bit about the ones using said Unforgivables were the people regulating such things.where are you getting the 'antimagic shockwave of doom' bit from? I recall that the Ministry (and for book 7, Tommy Boy and the Douche-Eaters) could make a word 'Taboo' (I believe that was the word Ron used), so that the ministry could pinpoint where someone said it. The DEs set 'Voldemort' as a taboo, then waited for the good guys to say it and drop an hit team on them. I agree that the ministry would have been more effective during Moldyshorts first rise if they had set the unforgivables (and maybe the spell to create the DE's symbol in the sky) as taboos. detect one of them, send an auror team, set up anti apperadtion/port key wards and go in after the baddies. ---------- As for Hedwig being human level intelligence, I can see a lot of animals bred for use as familiars (or post Owls) being far more intelligent that most expect. A combination of magic influenced breeding and wizards/witches tending to ignore things that don't directly impact them. The Post owls have no trouble taking directions on who/where to deliver and find their way there. ___________________________ "I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
The taboo thing really only works once unless you can be absolutely sure that everyone in the area it covers is a coward or a moron (or, as in the case of canon Wizarding Britain, both). Otherwise it's just an on-demand ambush.
Judah Wrote:Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived by The SantiAh, that brings up an entire category of cliches we haven't even covered yet: Harry isn't the Boy-Who-Lived, Neville is. Harry has a twin brother/sister who is the Sibling-Who-Lived. Harry has a twin brother/sister whom everyone thinks is the Sibling-Who-Lived, but it's really Harry. Same as above, but Harry is ignored or even abused as everyone fawns over the sibling. Then there are the female Harries. "Harriet" is not an unexpected name for them, but for some reason "Rose" is almost as common. And while we're on the topic of names: The Grangers. Unnamed in the source material, but like late Mrs. Soun Tendo, the fanficdom has bestowed names on them. The most common set is annoyingly meta, calling them "Daniel" and "Emma" after two child actors whom almost no one has ever heard of. (And at least one author got cutesy with the idea and named his Grangers "Emmett" and "Danielle".) -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. |
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