I'd tried Voldemorte as Susan and Harry or Dumbledore as V. Didn't work at all.
Given Harry Potter Day is in a little more than a week, I've started tackling the Big Pile Of Books by rereading the whole series. Partly to see how the earlier books read now that I know the events of Order of the Pheonix and Half-Blood Prince; I don't think I reread the lot two years ago.
Some thoughts on having finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
- Queerman Quirrel is probably the most boring character in the series.
- Jo's prose (heh) and characterization... hell, arguably most of her writing skills, has improved remarkably over the course of events. I don't mean the implicit knock against The Sorcerer's Stone, but Dumbledore seems significantly less competent than he will later prove, and (I expect and hope) a rewrite would lose such an idiot-ball plot-device as Harry forgetting the Invisibility Cloak in the tower.
- I'd forgotten how languid the pacing is at the start of the book. A lot more time is spent with world building than with plot development. Still, given both how many people have fallen in love with the Wizarding World and how much of this lays the groundwork for the next six books, you can't fault what works.
- Some nice foreshadowing, particularly with respect to Firenze. And how did I never put any weight in Dumbledore's "Not today. Not now. You will know, one day..."
Anyway, because what I usually do (write reviews of the thing) is kinda dumb, seeing as you've all read them, I'm going to do something different:
Alden's Idiot Ideas for Harry Potter Fanfic.
That's right. These are (as far as I can remember) entirely me, and entirely things which would be interesting for me to write if I actually had the time patience to write Harry Potter fanfic instead of stuff which can actually (in theory) be published. God willing (and there's no reason to think he would be) I should be able to give you one for each book. You can lynch me whenever you want.
1. V for Voldemort: In the aftermath of the First Wizarding War, Wizarding England has gone fascist. Slytherin House has been abolished. The pure-blooded families have been forced to integrate with the mixed and the mud-bloods. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore Susan, driven mad(er) with power, rules the nation with an iron fist. Azkaban is all the more terrifying for the rumors that Dementors are no longer the greatest of horrors, the whispers of wyrd experiments in Defensive Dark Arts. But only in certain circles; in many ways, the willing blood-traitors have never had it better, provided they don't mind the Daily Prophet having sold out it's journalist principles to the Ministry of Magic and High ChancellorDumbledore.*
* This, of course, makes V for Voldemorte's Daily Prophet exactly the same as the canon Daily Prophet, only with different boots to lick.
And then, one day, Draco Malfoy, the son of a wealthy pure-blood family ruined in the War's aftermath, forced to walk the streets as a male-prostitute (because it ain't fanfic unless someone is gay'd up) is rescued from the Ministry of Magic's Dementor street patrol by a masked figure, robed in black, who defeats the Dementors and spirits Draco away to his secret lair.
A man of anarchy, who believes men should be free to do what they want, and kill who they want for whatever racial reasons. A mysterious man, known only as Voldemort. V teaches Malfoy his doctrines, attacks Ministry officials who were responsible for the ruin of the House of Gaunt, and preaches freedom and Blood Pride over the Wizarding Wireless. By the end of the novel, the Ministry's offices are in ruins, V is dead, but Draco (and Neville Longbottom, the intrepid head of the Department of Investigations) plans to help rebuilt the nation into a bastion of freedom, unfettered by the rule of law or the need to accept mudbloods and race-traitors as equals.
... OK, this may have gone bit more Turner Diaries than I'd really wanted it to. *shudder*
I think I'm going neurotic again.