Super-Powered Harry Potter Characters
Another pet peeve:
Some youthful character from Harry Potter canon (Harry, Hermione, whoever else) either undergoes a traumatic experience or has some revelation and decides to go out and kill Death Eaters, or become really good at magic, etc. Oh, and they're really successful. And quickly learn more about magic than people 20 years their senior.
It's just not possible to learn things that quickly. Even if you 'tweak' a character to be really smart, true expertise won't take less than 10,000 hours of solid practice - probably have to be guided practice. If you worked 40 hours a week, that would take 5 years. Want someone to be an expert dueller? Sure - give them 5 years of training. Probably from Flitwick.
There are a few really powerful people who could go out and commit mass murder. Lord Voldemort, a magical genius with sky-shattering ambition, spent all of Hogwarts and a decade afterword becoming magically powerful before putting the Death Eaters together - and I doubt he stopped there. He may have done little when he was disembodied, though. Albus Dumbledore, another magical genius with close to a century of practice - along with the Elder Wand - could no doubt do a lot of damage. Somewhat farther down, you could make an argument for Severus Snape, who was bright enough and non-conformist enough to re-write his potions book and create new spells as a teenager in school; it's probably he pushed magic quite a bit farther once he left, and then during the decade he spent at Hogwarts with little but the library and his imagination to amuse himself.
You could, of course, take a minor character and create a new backstory. Mad Eye Moody is ambiguous enough, and successful enough, to turn him into a semi-super person. Another one of the Aurors. etc.
But it's hard for me to accept the idea that in 3 months someone (dedicated) can be ready to play in the big leagues. Who could hunt down Death Eaters and kill them, or survive a battle with Lord Voldemort, etc.
And what's the motivation? Where does such an idea come from? It's a transformation of a character, perhaps accepting a (Godlike) heritage... but you're no longer writing about the character, and it also leaves open the question of why someone else couldn't effect a similar transformation.
Some youthful character from Harry Potter canon (Harry, Hermione, whoever else) either undergoes a traumatic experience or has some revelation and decides to go out and kill Death Eaters, or become really good at magic, etc. Oh, and they're really successful. And quickly learn more about magic than people 20 years their senior.
It's just not possible to learn things that quickly. Even if you 'tweak' a character to be really smart, true expertise won't take less than 10,000 hours of solid practice - probably have to be guided practice. If you worked 40 hours a week, that would take 5 years. Want someone to be an expert dueller? Sure - give them 5 years of training. Probably from Flitwick.
There are a few really powerful people who could go out and commit mass murder. Lord Voldemort, a magical genius with sky-shattering ambition, spent all of Hogwarts and a decade afterword becoming magically powerful before putting the Death Eaters together - and I doubt he stopped there. He may have done little when he was disembodied, though. Albus Dumbledore, another magical genius with close to a century of practice - along with the Elder Wand - could no doubt do a lot of damage. Somewhat farther down, you could make an argument for Severus Snape, who was bright enough and non-conformist enough to re-write his potions book and create new spells as a teenager in school; it's probably he pushed magic quite a bit farther once he left, and then during the decade he spent at Hogwarts with little but the library and his imagination to amuse himself.
You could, of course, take a minor character and create a new backstory. Mad Eye Moody is ambiguous enough, and successful enough, to turn him into a semi-super person. Another one of the Aurors. etc.
But it's hard for me to accept the idea that in 3 months someone (dedicated) can be ready to play in the big leagues. Who could hunt down Death Eaters and kill them, or survive a battle with Lord Voldemort, etc.
And what's the motivation? Where does such an idea come from? It's a transformation of a character, perhaps accepting a (Godlike) heritage... but you're no longer writing about the character, and it also leaves open the question of why someone else couldn't effect a similar transformation.