Thinking about cancelling my vacations now. Group of three friends staying in the forest for a couple of nights. All I need to do now is start remembering the Blair Witch Proj...well, fuck.

 

Whenever I think of a new Plot Bunny, I usually either try to be completely original or at least put a new spin on existing concepts.

This time its time travel.

I was thinking how to make the old and overused time travel fic concept new and fresh. I'm a firm believer that any alterations to the story should make things harder for the protagonists instead of making them easier. That way their efforts and eventualy victory shall be much more earned (provided no silly Deus Ex Machinas are involved).

But the problem with time travel is that it is inherently an immeasurable advantage for the heroes. If Harry the Adult wakes up as Harry the Kid he is going to have his victory cut out for him. He could probably end Voldemort in a pretty short amount of time (a week or so). So I'm thinking to myself: "How do I fuck this up? How do I ruin the entire thing for Harry?"

First we have to determine from when Future Harry has arrived. The recent discussion I've had with Taure and Warlocke revealed that Canon Harry would immediately go to Dumbledore. As that would be a very short story, we will not be using the Harry from canon, but Harry from a timeline where after he found out he's a Horcrux and has to die, he refused to sacrifice himself.

Because he is not entering the battle on his own, but is dragged into it by Voldemort, things with the Deus Ex Machina magic become a little tricky.

Harry enters the Forbidden Forest, but rather than letting Voldemort kill him, he himself sends the Killing Curse at the Dark Lord. To put it in short terms: there is an explosion and instead of appearing in the Ethereal King's Cross Station Harry wakes up in the cupboard under the stairs in his younger body.

Of course, it wouldn't work like that in canon, but we're talking about time travel fanfiction here, come on.

Anyway, Harry is in the past and after he figures out what has happened, he begins planning to bring down Voldemort before the Second War even begins. He still has no idea how to remove the Horcrux from himself, but decides to cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Unknown to him however, Voldemort came back in time as well and has grand plans too.

And that, I believe, is the solution to counter Harry's great advantage.

 

Mu uncle is dragging me hunting Tuesday. Thanks a lot, dude. At least there'll be a rifle around.

 

Personally, I think the simplest way to keep a Time Travel story interesting without creating random bull is to bring both Harry and Voldemort to the past.

In one Butterfly I thought of, the two came from a world where the War continued for years. While the future Harry does tell Dumbledore and the Order almost immediately, the future Voldemort (who is a lot smarter than his younger self) gradually takes control of the Death Eaters and makes them a lot more effective. The War, naturally, escalates.

 

Hm... what if you can not transmit memory so much as intuitive knowledge?

Say Harry mastered Accio and the Stunning Spell, having practiced the motions every day for ten years, and he decided to send the knowledge back into his younger body to avoid having to commit ten years to those spells. His younger self does not suddenly receive a flood of memories a decade long on practicing this magic, but finds himself more attuned to their motions and what to do to perform them the next time he wakes up.

You could have an escalating war set in two ever-fluid eras, the future and the past, where knowledge sent from the future directly alters it thereafter as the past selves become increasingly more prodigy-like with their usage of magic? I know canon debunks the BttF-style time travel but really, that's the best kind to have fun with when writing such stories. Ripple effects.

You could spin it so all of the truly great wizards in history since Merlin have used this method to become who they were eventually renowned as. Godric Gryffindor? Merely a simple squire with a brave heart and abundance of foolish determination to become competent. Several (dozen) knowledge-jumps across the years and he has the traits to become a magnificent spell caster.

 

Or, how about we send only Voldemort back and leave Harry wallowing in even deeper shit? Maybe he'll finally get his act together then. And hopefully Voldemort would also live up to how scary the first three books made him out to be.

 

Had some weird idea (they belong here right?). Similar to canon with a few important changes. It turns out Voldemort really did die that night, there was peace for 10 years until Harry learned he was a Wizard, which triggered a dormant split personality he received from Voldemort's death (think the classic "Harry gets tons of knowledge from his horcrux"). Both personalities are unaware of each other, and Voldemort (who is Harry) is constantly trying to get his body back.

Every time Harry ever fought Voldemort early on he was alone, he thought he was fighting him but it turns out he was just talking/fighting himself.

Because it basically IS Voldemort in Harry's mind, Dumbledore and co. all believe he's actually still out there and expect his return. Maybe he somehow does "return" and start the war. (Not sure how you hide who he really is from his followers though, but whatever).


Thought it was an interesting concept, however I can't see it being a half way decent read.

 

You could make an interesting short piece out of it. If you spun it in a Fight Club-esque manner (without the actual fight club) it could be pretty fun. You could take it down a pretty dark path, too.

 

What I'm thinking about adding now:

Both Voldemort and Harry are surprised/disappointed to discover that their future knowledge is nearly useless. You see, time travel is not something to be taken lightly especially when you consider the butterfly effect being very influential.

Suddenly, things are happening completely differently from the way they remember them.

Quidditch games have different outcomes, the weather is different than originally, coin tosses and dice rolls are different. Basically, everything which is determined by random chance is now different.

Mr. Weasley won't win that lottery now, Viktor Krum may catch the snitch earlier in the World Cup, people may decide that renewing the Triwizard Tournament is a bad idea. Lockheart may decide against becoming a Hogwarts teacher.

Several magical things may enter into question. Does the DADA curse still work if Voldemort is technically from a time where his Horcruxes were destroyed and he was killed? Will Harry's blood protection and the Trace work if he's technically an adult?

Basically what I'm saying is that their trip back in time creates a blank slate for the plot: everything can happen differently and probably will.

 

LOL. Just remember, identify before cradling the trigger!

 

Here's a fun idea:

Harry and Voldemort both travel back in time, trying to undo the other. They abuse, no, break the laws of magic to make it happen. And Magic itself is Pissed.

Time turners shatter in their presence, werewolves change in front of them regardless of the moon phase, curses and hexes arc towards them, skirting around impediments to strike true, Prophecy after prophecy parades an endless list of vanquishers who are destined to kill them.

Now Harry and Voldemort must survive the past, with everything that magic has at its dispoal trying to kill them. They only have their own power, their wands, and each other.

 

There's one flaw with this premise, if magic is angry at them, wouldn't it turn them into squibs or turn their spells on themselves?

 

This is an idea I wanted to execute in one of the ancient Monthly Challenges(specifically the 1980's era AU stemming from when Dumbledore was taken by surprise and captured by Grindelwald 40 years earlier) but never got around to;

Immortality comes in many tales, but few true forms. Horcruxes are merely the earliest known devises, with the terrible cost of affixing the human soul to an outside instrument. The Philosophers Stone originated second, around the time of the Crusades, and was by far preferred by those who sought to live for ever.

But the third is far less known than even they. As Wizardkind began to use paintings to retain shades of the individual, little more than wisps of intellect and faint residue of persona, a rare method was eventually discovered that could reverse the bonds of time - attributed to 18th century squib Dorian Gray - that would allow time to ravage the image in the painting while leaving the physical body perpetually at the same age as when the painting had been constructed, never falling ill, recovering from wounds as the damage is transferred to the portrait, for the duration that the individual does not make any method of contact with it after the process had been completed.

Imagine any of the famous wizards of canon doing this. The biggest drawback is that if they so much as touch the painting(physically or magically) the effect is undone and all of those years kept at bay pour down upon the individual and very well may kill them from the shock if not the advanced age. Another is in trusting the painter to safeguard your portrait and never turn it against you.

 

It woulkd either create a society with a heavy emphasis on vows, espceially Unbreakable Vow, or this method would be even more obscuer than Horcrux creation.

Or maybe it would spark a new industry of magical portraitists, that create those portraits, enchant them, and then safeguards them in their personal storage vaults. This could be tied into Voldemorts war, as he was very keen on capturing such vaults, as they would give him means of blackmailing and controling a lot of powerful and/or rich persons.

 

The time travel discussion reminds me of an idea I had (I think I might have posted it last year but I am not really sure). As a thought exercise I wanted to see if a fic could be written that included as many cliches from the fandom as possible but with a twist to make each of them different. Or at least to make references if not using them. One of the first of them was time travel.

It started with Harry dying in the graveyard (Wormtail missed when aiming for Cedric and hit Harry instead) and Voldemort rising to power. Years pass, a resistance is formed and then Nargles are discovered to be real. Turns out they are a basic component for time travel but it has two limitations, they can't go further back than a few weeks and for some reason those who did go back died when they said anything about the future. They get around the problem by sending back the Master of Dead (Neville or whatever poor sap ended with the job) who uses the cloak to hide from death and be able to tell people his info. Since they go back a few weeks they already have the base materials for the ritual so they keep repeating the same weeks until it goes perfect and then they move on to the next, never running out of materials.

Things look up for a while until Voldemort discovers the same method and is able to use it because horcruxes. The following weeks are somewhat confusing for everyone involved. After a while the resistance decides to up the ante and after some calculations they figure that sending the spirit of a dead person would allow them to send it further back. Of course, that person should have the cloak at some point to be able to tell people what happened so they have three options. a)Killing the new Master of dead and send him back. b)Send Harry's spirit back. c)Send Dumbledore's spirit back.

They decide for option c) but ever since they started the whole time travel business the resurrection stone is acting wonky. In an act of idiotic valor (and a very lucky hunch) they decide to use the veil to contact him. They can't but they do find Harry's spirit, that was unable to move on because his connection to Voldemort. So they settle for him, telling him to talk to Dumbledore as soon as he gets the cloak and that he needs to find out how is it that Voldemort is immortal (they have no idea). So they do the ritual and send him back.

They miscalculate. Harry ends up in Dudley's body and of course that timeline's Harry hates his guts. Which allows them to end in different houses, have different circles of friends and make Dudley!Harry not get the cloak and having to watch his words because he could die if people figures out that he is from the future.

There was also an explanation later on that there were two laws about time travel that are passed down since the times of Merlin that says that 1)There can be no paradoxes and 2)Time is finite in amount and when spent, magic is created.

In order for 1) to happen they could not be traveling to the past since changing it would stop them from going back in time. What they were actually doing was resetting the universe and make history flow to happen that exact way as before up until the point when they wanted to appear, at which point their minds overwrote that in that version of the body, allowing them to change 'history' without causing paradoxes. In order for this method to allow more than one time traveler, it also includes all previous iterations of reality when doing the repeats so whenever they use the ritual the time that passed since the beginning of the universe more or less doubles. And then the 2) rule comes into play.

There was also something about the Horcrux in harry landing in yet another person and taking possession of them occasionally while having all the future knowledge that Harry has but proving somewhat ineffectual because said Horcrux had later found out how to reproduce the ritual and traveling back to yet another person making this the second iteration with Harry going to the past and the first iteration with Harry having a sister because in the previous timeline Dumbledore had also discovered what was happening and piggybagging on the horcrux's time ritual to send his soul without memories but unlocking them once Grindewald, the real mastermind behind that clusterfuck, was lured to a false sense of security and showed his hand. So there would be a reincarnated Dumbledore, Harry and perhaps Voldemort trying to deal with a madman who ascended to godhood. Either that or Dumbledore holding him off while Harry fixes things.

It goes without saying that the goal was to make it as over the top as possible.

 

Well, in regards to time travel. If you want to stick with canon timeframe you could have someone other than the main characters come back and it can be from a troublesome point in time.

For example, Remus/Tonks/George goes back from when everyone thinks Harry died. The veil sends Sirius back in time to some point.

Have someone like Gabrielle D. go back in time 4 or 5 years with a time-tuner, so there are two of her and she hangs out/hides at Hogwarts trying to 'help' Harry. Since she's 5 or so years younger then Harry, she will be his age not an 11 year old with 20 years of knowledge.

Have someone like Colin go back and try and save his brother. Draco after he becomes a total pussy, Hannah wanting to save her parents, Susan wanting to save her Aunt, a Slytherin actually trying to help. Or hell, just have Dobby go back and help with the wonderful results.

I can't remember reading a non-shitty story that lasted more then a couple chapters where someone goes back and saves Lily and/or James. (I mean really, Lord V shows up, kills James and Lily just sits there as he comes upstairs....)

 

One of my earliest time travel fanfics, never posted 'cause never finished duh, was one where Harry and Ginny's future kids went back in time to save their parents's lives after they died in a crazy Voldemort-y apocalypse when their kids were, like, four. In the process of posing as students and hanging out with their parents, they instigated a series of changes that led to Harry and Ginny actually falling in love with other people. So basically their Parent Trap shenanigans backfired spectacularly and there was angst over the fact they failed like that, followed quickly by the realisation that hey, they weren't going to disappear into nothing ala Back To The Future because going back in time had created an alternate timeline entirely, so they said fuck it and just went on adventures and killed Voldemort et cetera.

And hell, I'm a guy who still likes Harry and Ginny stories - if done right - but the long play trolling of a story based around the idea of their future kids doing everything in their power to ensure their parents hook up and then failing at that while succeeding in the department of killing Voldemort before things go apocalyptic-y? Classic.

Shame I never actually finished it, because I'd actually had plans for every year to have different shenanigans. No canon repeats or nothin'. Time travel fics are such a fertile ground for some crazy AUs no matter who is sent back, and ain't nobody really planting seeds. The basic fundamental thing for most readers is that they don't really want to see a story where Harry isn't the main protagonist, going back in time and kickin' asses, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun shit.

Imagine the plot bunny I just outlined above, but only from Harry's POV? He has two student friends that seem eager for him and Ginny to hook up, act all mysterious and shit, freak out when he's danger, and then after a while he unravels the mystery that they're his kids and woah wait he had them with Ginny what. Of course, the execution of this would have to either be upfront to the reader in a non-Harry POV prologue (Thus running the risk of making the reader feel fatigued that Harry hasn't figured who his two mysterious friends are), or it needs a hook outside of that so it doesn't just feel there's two random OCs for no reason, then later revealing that that hook exists 'cause of the time travelling kids in the first place and leaving all sorts of clues. But eh. Hypotheticals.

Point is, that's one time travel idea of a million that hasn't been done. One out of like sixty I have, even. Yay?

 

Here's something Nauro and I talked about during the DLP Meetup.

You could say that one of Voldemort's main goals, if not the biggest goal, was immortality. He was willing to kill people and do other unspeakable things to achieve this goal.

But what if immortality was relatively easy to acquire, with no problems?

There wouldn't be any special potions or rituals for that, it would be just a skill a Hogwarts students could learn. Comparable to the Animagus Transformation, this would be the Immortality Activation (or something like that).

Imagine Tom Riddle, having grand plans about creating Horcruxes only to find out that he can just learn to become immortal in later Hogwarts years and that it is no big deal.

So right from that we have one of Voldemort's goals diminished.

That only leaves his desire to be the most powerful wizard ever and the desire to take over the world (of course).

 

You do understand one of many implications of anyone able to be immortal, right?

You can easily have people who live hundreds or even thousands of years old. And assuming immortality doesn't either reduce their minds to mush or turn them into Dr. Manhattan (aloof dicks), you are going to be left with God knows how many people around with an enormous amount of experience.

On one hand, this leaves 'good' wizards like Godric Gryffindor and Merlin alive and well. On the other hand, this also leaves 'bad' ones like Salazar Slytherin and Morgana alive.

In other words, Voldemort would be laughed at if he seriously told anyone he was going to be "the most powerful wizard ever' or his 'desire to take over the world'. Short of having a Level 42 Magical Core Dumbledore tried and failed to block to prevent him from being powerful enough to defeat Dumbledore ( ) , he will be squashed like a bug if he attempts anything.

With that all said, I'm honestly more interested in the Immortality part. How does it work? Can a person still die (and if so how)? What kind of cultural ramifications did everyone being immortal have? Is there some sort of war going on between the really old people over who should rule? And so on and so on.

 

Let me reiterate: not everyone will be able learn this. Just as not everyone is able to learn to become an animagus. It is some advanced magic, but the point is that it is doable. Think of how many animagi wizards we have seen in canon, not that many.

Basically I'm moving immortality from "IMPOSSIBLE" to "POSSIBLE BUT HARD".

As for how this immortality works, I'm guessing that it is a little bit more than simply youth. I'm guessing that, depending on your skill, you will be able to survive anything except maybe the Killing Curse (or maybe someone who has fully mastered this skill can also survive the Avada Kedavra).

You are also forgetting the small numbers of existing wizards and witches, magical folks don't seem (on average, Weasleys are a notable exception) willing to have lots of kids. Not every person who is immortal would be interested in having children. In fact, I'd argue that the magical population may not increase all that much compared to canon.

So, to summarize, you're asking the incorrect questions. Not everyone is immortal, only the smart folks and I don't think there is going to be a war between old and young, given that there are not enough people to have a war.