That one really interesting DH subplot

[star-dragon5.livejournal.com]

We all know that DH is an unholy mess of stuff being dropped on the readers' heads that were neither mentioned nor hinted at anywhere in previous books. But there's one subplot I wish had been introduced earlier, because it carries a lot of potential for conflict, and with conflict comes plot and character development and all that. I am referring, of course, to Dumbledore's backstory.

What if Harry had found out about Ariana and Gellert and the rest while Albus was still alive? Would he be able to look his Headmaster in the eye, knowing young Albus had once plotted world domination with the future Dark Lord Grindelwald? Would he realize how narrowly he'd escaped going mad, like Ariana, after living with magic-hating Muggles for ten years--Muggles that Albus placed him with, no less? (Seriously, why did no one catch that plot hole? Even I didn't see it until guardians_song pointed it out.) How would this change things?

But we can't have any of the above, since the plot of DH depends on Harry obeying Dumbledore absolutely. (I've been meaning to write something about how post-GOF Harry fails at the Hero's Journey. Remind me, will you?)

There's also so much potential for fanfic, and I don't mean just the Grindledore variety (though one can never have too much of that! *Grindledore shipper*). We've all seen those dreadful fics tagged "Powerful!Harry", "Independent!Harry", "Super!Harry", "Dark!Harry" or whatever, in which Harry becomes a Gary Stu of the highest order, usually with super-powerful wandless magic. Well, guess what? Thanks to Ariana, you can still have a Harry with super-powerful wandless magic, he'll just be mad. And I don't know about you, but I'd LIKE to read about mentally-ill!Harry.

So what do you think? The possibilities are endless!

Comments

[traverse.livejournal.com]

There's plenty of this stuff. Lastcrazyhorn, for example, wrote about a brain-damaged Harry and mobility-impaired Harry (Burnt and Sessions Transcripts).

I am currently reading a fanfic where D-dore sort of adopts Harry and at one point reveals to him a rather sanitised story of Ariana, without mentioning his own infatuation with Gellert and the Greater Good (nicely alliterative, this!). Gellert also plays a role in the plot. There, Harry is sympathetic towards D-dore, but he is unaware of the whole story, and on the whole readily forgives him rather a lot. D-dore is of course very remorseful and all that. It would be interesting to see what the author is going to make out of the G-wald backstory - it's an epic size WIP, and Harry is perhaps still too young at this point (3rd year) to provide a satisfying reaction.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

What if Harry had found out about Ariana and Gellert and the rest while Albus was still alive? Would he be able to look his Headmaster in the eye...

I guess it would depend on how he found out, and what Dumbledore did to explain himself, if anything. This line could go different ways, depending on how Harry found out, who told him, what that person's motivation was (which would dictate how the information was presented) and so forth. If Albus told him, that would make a bigger difference than if Bellatrix had used the information to taunt him. I'd guess it would also influence the reader's perception of Dumbledore.

People here have been mentioning leaving Harry with the abusive Dursleys for a while. It just doesn't sit right. When Harry is allowed to spend only a couple of days at the Dursleys' before moving over to the Weasleys', it raised the question of why that wasn't done before. The explanation of wanting to keep Harry from hero-worship in the WW doesn't stand up when you recognize the stated abuse and speculate on other abuse that may have happened outside of the narration (generating lots of Abused!Harry fics.) Someone here, I think, has even mentioned that Harry doesn't behave like an abused child, so that does open up a few cans of worms.

Now, me, I lean more toward the Dursleys as cartoon-style villains, the OTT types who try to be mean and nasty but are too inept to be effective, but then, the rest of each book is more 'realistic' (in the context of their universe) so... Dunno.

(I've been meaning to write something about how post-GOF Harry fails at the Hero's Journey. Remind me, will you?)

So, how has post-GoF Harry failed at the Hero's Journey? Does it have anything to do with his intellectual stagnation?

[sunnyskywalker]

Or even if he'd just found out part of the story, then the really explosive parts could have felt more shocking instead of just infodumpy. Like, if Dumbledore had once mentioned that he had a sister who died tragically young in an "accident," and also maybe talked about how the previous dark lord, Grindlewald, did many evil things and also went searching for immortality like Voldemort in some conveniently nebulous manner ("Ah, who can say what methods he considered?").

Then finding out in DH that OMG, he wasn't just friends with GG but actually gave him his propaganda line and that Ariana's "accident" was actually a huge fight between Grindlewald and the Dumbledores and Albus might have fired the fatal spell? And he told Harry versions of the story that made him seem totally innocent? How could anyone trust anything Dumbledore ever said? Now there's drama.

But then, I also thought it would have been better if Dumbledore's master plan had failed somehow and Harry had to make up his own, as part of growing up. Obviously JKR disagreed.