Harry Potter Underused Canon Titbits

[Glimmervoid]

Canon is a big place and fanon is even bigger. Despite that, the follow-the-leader nature of many stories means some canon ideas are made far more important than they ever were in the books, while others are pushed to one side. This thread is for the latter kind.

My ideas;

In canon, there are many intelligent magical creatures. Goblins appear in ever second story, vampires are popular too, veela are common and even centaurs have their billings, but what about hags? No one does anything with the poor (possibly child liver eating) hags.

Next up, patents. In Quidditch Through the Ages a spell is described as patented (the Horton-Keitch Braking Charm), in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them we are told of patented potions and in Order of the Phoenix we find out the Ministry has a Ludicrous Patents Office. This is seldom touched upon but there lots of stuff there. DRM for spells anyone? What about the Spell Creation Industry Association of Britain? Magical SOPA where every wizard would be forced to wear a Trace amulet which would check if the spells they cast are still under licence? The Wizarding World is, in a large part, a satirical commentary of Britain. No reason the fandom shouldn't do the same.

What about Creaothceann, a semi-suicidal game currently banned by the Ministry. It involves broomsticks, a cauldron strapped to the head and falling rocks, and was played by Scottish wizards to prove they were real men. That is just crying out for an underground game at Hogwarts.

Finally, the International Confederation of Wizards. While this one does get some attention in fanon, it's still not being used much.

Does anyone else have titbits they'd like to throw in the pot? Doesn't need to be the best of ideas (mine sure aren't). The point is to throw a bit of light on canon elements you think could use it.

 

[Lord Raine]

What canon ideas are being underutilise?

The idea that Harry could never take Voldemort in anything approaching a legit fight in a million years, and that Dumbledore was actually a responsible adult for refusing to 'train' Harry and then send him off to get his ass hexed into a walnut.

 

[Cynical Kyle]

What canon ideas are being underutilise?

The idea that Harry could never take Voldemort in anything approaching a legit fight in a million years, and that Dumbledore was actually a responsible adult for refusing to 'train' Harry and then send him off to get his ass hexed into a walnut.

This, though fanbase confusing Harry with your average shounen lead would vehemently disagree.

 

[ragnarok1337]

Well, it's not underutilized, but in the Author's Notes of a HP fanfic the author put up a very convincing argument for the "Love Potion" fanon.

Potions ClichÚ:? Yes I know it is used a lot but I like using it for two reasons. One, from canon it explains a lot and if JKR is going to throw in stuff like how Molly spiked Arthur with it, then people shouldnÆt be surprised if fan-fic writers build on it. Secondly I think you can have the potions option without a manipulative Dumbledore colluding with Molly to marry Ginny to Harry so they can steal the Potter fortune. Like I had Luna point out in A Different Path, Molly has her own demons and wanting happiness for her miracle girl and her socially inept youngest son is enough for me to see her æhelpingÆ the kids out. Thirdly, I once again want to highlight the utter disgust I have that JKR never seemed to connect selling love potions as a novelty item and the fact her entire series is driven by the fact a witch used a love potion to ædate-rapeÆ the man sheÆd been stalking. Voldemort is the direct consequence of that crime.

There are a lot of horrifying implications, and readers picked up on that. It's only natural that many writers would work that into their fanfics. Yes, I realize that it's often just an excuse for the author's OTP, but damn it it's a GOOD excuse that's SUPPORTED by canon.

 

[The Eromancer]

Giants, not used nearly enough and we still don't really know shit about them except that they really like to smash things.

 

[Pirazy]

What canon ideas are being underutilise?

The idea that Harry could never take Voldemort in anything approaching a legit fight in a million years, and that Dumbledore was actually a responsible adult for refusing to 'train' Harry and then send him off to get his ass hexed into a walnut.

How about training him so that he can rofl-stomp every Death Eater that might be sent to capture him and bring him to Voldemort?

 

[Rahhel]

One of the things that are rare is to see the Fidelius Charm being used to keep something a secret. Most of the people seem to think that only locations can be kept secret.

Only story that I remember had Harry use it to hide the fact that everyone could learn magic as long as they are being taught.

Wonder if you could hide the incantation of the unforgivables with it.

The other canon fact that is rarely seen is Dumbledore's hobby of bowling. I think only Renegade cause mentioned it and used it in a really unexpected way. I wonder why Dumbledore never created a bowling club for Hogwarts.

Not really sure how canon that is, but is it just me or does Harry seem emotionally cold towards other people? Thinking about the sixth book here. I cannot really remember it well, but I think Harry was more bummed out that he couldn't leave the Dursleys earlier by becoming Sirius ward. At least that is the vibe that I got from the book. Might have been my imagination, since fanfiction tends to exaggerate how much Harry mourns Sirius and Cedric.

 

[Chuckg]

How about training him so that he can rofl-stomp every Death Eater that might be sent to capture him and bring him to Voldemort?

Hell, how about training Harry so that he knows enough to not get instantly dead while Voldemort rolls out to kill him and is then ambushed by Dumbledore, Mad-Eye, and half the Order? Even if you think you're stuck with the prophecy... the prophecy never said Harry had to do it all by himself, just that he had to be there at the time.

 

[OniGanon]

the prophecy never said Harry had to do it all by himself, just that he had to be there at the time.

"either must die at the hand of the other"

Has to be by himself? No, but Harry has to deliver the killing blow.

 

[Chuckg]

Yeah, and absolutely nothing says that Voldemort can't be disarmed, unconscious, with all four limbs broken, and tied to a tree stump at the time.

 

[Christopher Robin]

Playing with prophecy is generally a good way to get prophecy playing with you.

 

[nycazn]

Eh, one idea that I've had for a while was with the Marauder's Map. Remember when Harry first got it from the twins? The map showed him the password to open the secret passage to leave the school and go to Hogsmeade. It was never mentioned again, but I always thought that it'd be a good way to (maybe?) start a crossover.

What are the extent of the map's ability? It can't show conversations, but if it can show the password to open a secret passage, can it show the password to get into another house's Common Room? The degree to which the map can do this would obviously be left up to the author. I personally have neither the talent, desire, and time to write a fic using this idea, but I had been thinking of putting it in the ideas section for a while.

 

[Ninsaneja]

The map doesn't know anything that the marauders didn't know. The passwords it knows are the kind that don't change.

 

[Lord Raine]

the prophecy never said Harry had to do it all by himself, just that he had to be there at the time.

"either must die at the hand of the other"

Has to be by himself? No, but Harry has to deliver the killing blow.

That's an underused canon tidbit, right there. The idea that Dumbledore gave absolutely zero shits about prophecy. I can't count the number of fics where Dumbledore inexplicably thinks the exact same way Voldemort does, even though Dumbledore had a freaking five page rant about why prophecies are bullshit. By that same token, I think I've read maybe two or three fics, TOTAL, where Dumbledore does not put any stock or belief in the prophecy whatsoever.

At the end of the day, fans are butthurt because Harry never got to be Neo. The problem with that, is that Harry Potter is ultimately a mystery-drama, and not a goddamn shonen, and the "Neo Moment" was never going to fucking happen. People get pissed at Dumbledore for not "training" Harry, because in their minds, "training Harry" is "Harry getting to kick all kinds of ass." Only Harry is already quite an ass-kicker, and even if he wasn't, Voldemort was never a problem that could be solved by throwing down a gauntlet and shouting LET'S ROCK AND ROLL MOTHERFUCKER, because if you tried that shit with him, he would turn you into a walrus and then set you on fire.

Dumbledore did the responsible, reasonable, intelligent thing, and all he gets for it is being shat on by crowds of people who claim this is what they wanted him to be, but in actuality what they wanted was for Dumbledore to be stupid and irresponsible in a way that would make Harry look really cool.

These people are pissed that they 'only' got to see a car blow up instead of an entire airport, and they decided to 'blame' it on the air traffic controller who refused to let little kids take one in for a landing.

This is an underused canon tidbit. We need to see more of it.

 

[Ina_meishou]

Dumbledore did the responsible, reasonable, intelligent thing

No

You're right that 'training' harry into some sort of shounen badass whatever would be utterly outside the type of story the series has, and irresponsible besides.

But Dumbledore, while not evil, not obsessed with prophecies, and canonically brilliant at magic and powerful and etc. etc.

Is an utterly terrible strategic planner.

His first plan? Failed.

His backup plan? Was nothing but guesswork and hope and chance that we're told was a plan.

It worked, by authorial fiat, but it had no basis in intelligent planning.

He didn't make a plan that lead to the least casualties at the highest chance of success, he made a plan that he hoped would lead to somewhat fewer casualties than other plans, but had a terrible chance of success, might not even have been possible at all, and relied on coincidence and happenstance.

And then he kicked it off by getting himself killed, ruining his ability to influence the outcome if things ever went wrong.

He meant well, and he got lucky.

Still a dumbass plan going into it.

 

[Lord Raine]

He didn't make a plan that lead to the least casualties at the highest chance of success, he made a plan that he hoped would lead to somewhat fewer casualties than other plans, but had a terrible chance of success, might not even have been possible at all, and relied on coincidence and happenstance.

And the problem with your entire argument is that, when your enemy is an immortal demon-sorcerer that no one but you on the planet can out-duel, you can't kill him, and you're an old man who doesn't have much time left anyway, the second bit is pretty much synonymous with the first bit. That was the plan that lead to the least casualties and the highest chances of success. You're just failing to grasp precisely how fucked they all were to begin with. Voldemort is no joke. If he hadn't been a raving egomanaical crazy person, the series would have ended in book five with the world being conquered.

Also, I never said Dumbledore was a strategic genius, nor was that even a part of the discussion until you introduced it just now. Stop moving goalposts. I don't care if you want to make a deliberately flawed point for yourself to oppose and knock down at your leisure, but do it behind closed doors where no one can see it, and for fuck's sake don't assign it to me. I'll have no part of your ego masturbation.

 

[Ina_meishou]

Rain, you said his actions were responsible, reasonable and intelligent.

They weren't.

I'm not setting up a flawed opponent to argue against, I'm directly disagreeing with your position that Dumbledore's plan was responsible, reasonable, or intelligent.

It's not a matter of his motives or his lack of reliance on Harry to be some sort of uberwarrior, that's not the position I'm taking and it's not one I see often outside of the moronic camp (speaking of building flawed positions to attack).

It's a matter of him choosing a path that might result in fewer casualties on the extremely unlikely chance it worked, over a path that would result in more casualties but could be reasonably expected to work with some reliability based on known information.

A good plan, a reasonable plan, a responsible plan, an intelligent plan, must have as high an expectation of success as you can manage (up to a point), based on known data, not unreliable supposition. Dumbledore's didn't, and yet he picked it anyway, risking complete failure rather than being willing to take the hit of the less clean but more likely options.

 

[Prince Charon]

A lot of fics where D thinks exactly like V in regard to prophecies were written before the book in which D explains why prophecies are bullshit came out, and thus those specific authors cannot be blamed for not knowing D's opinion of prophecies.

Also, a lot of people stopped reading the books after Book 4 or Book 5, out of disappointment that the editors stopped telling JKR when she was making a mistake.

EDIT: Clarification - I am not calling Dumbledore's prophecy rant a mistake.

 

[ilalthal]

A good plan, a reasonable plan, a responsible plan, an intelligent plan, must have as high an expectation of success as you can manage (up to a point), based on known data, not unreliable supposition. Dumbledore's didn't, and yet he picked it anyway, risking complete failure rather than being willing to take the hit of the less clean but more likely options.

Ya, good plans are great to have but they don't exactly grow on trees. With Dumbledore's time limit, the ministry being corrupted and Voldemort being a scary mix of insane and cunning and nearly unbeatable, whare exactly is he supposed to get a better plan?

 

[troutpeoples]

Eh, one idea that I've had for a while was with the Marauder's Map. Remember when Harry first got it from the twins? The map showed him the password to open the secret passage to leave the school and go to Hogsmeade. It was never mentioned again, but I always thought that it'd be a good way to (maybe?) start a crossover.

What are the extent of the map's ability? It can't show conversations, but if it can show the password to open a secret passage, can it show the password to get into another house's Common Room? The degree to which the map can do this would obviously be left up to the author. I personally have neither the talent, desire, and time to write a fic using this idea, but I had been thinking of putting it in the ideas section for a while.

The Marauder's Map, I think, had enormous potential; He got it, when, mid-third year from the Twins? Not even two years beforehand his greatest wish in the entire world, his deepest desire, was to have/be with his family. The Marauders Map basically hands him a way to get closer to bits and pieces of his family - not his mom, sure, but his Dad and two Uncles. And yes, their personalities on the Map are probably more akin to their 16-year-old-teens than the 20-whatever adults/parents, but the fact remains that The Marauder's Map gives him a grand sort of opportunity to get to know his parents when they were kids.

 

[nixofcyzerra]

Time-turners. There are fics that use them, but never to the utmost potential.

I would love to read a fic with a duel that's a reference to the climax of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.

"Well, Tom, after this battle is over, I plan to go back in time and swap out your left shoe for a rabid wolverine. By the way, finite."

 

[Chuckg]

Ya, good plans are great to have but they don't exactly grow on trees. With Dumbledore's time limit, the ministry being corrupted and Voldemort being a scary mix of insane and cunning and nearly unbeatable, whare exactly is he supposed to get a better plan?

'Hey Tom, here's that Prophecy Orb you wanted!'

*arranges for him to steal/touch it*

*orb explodes, killing him with basilisk venom tainted shrapnel*

'Okay, that'll keep him out of action for a little while until he gets a new body. All right, here's everything I have on his Horcruxes and where they might be stored. Order of the Phoenix search teams GO! Moody, you and Snape take this one, Remus, you and Tonks take that one, Bill, you and Fleur take this one...'

This took me, like, 15 seconds. Dumbledore had years.

 

[Cynical Kyle]

Ya, good plans are great to have but they don't exactly grow on trees. With Dumbledore's time limit, the ministry being corrupted and Voldemort being a scary mix of insane and cunning and nearly unbeatable, whare exactly is he supposed to get a better plan?

'Hey Tom, here's that Prophecy Orb you wanted!'

*arranges for him to steal/touch it*

*orb explodes, killing him with basilisk venom tainted shrapnel*

'Okay, that'll keep him out of action for a little while until he gets a new body. All right, here's everything I have on his Horcruxes and where they might be stored. Order of the Phoenix search teams GO! Moody, you and Snape take this one, Remus, you and Tonks take that one, Bill, you and Fleur take this one...'

This took me, like, 15 seconds. Dumbledore had years.

To be fair to Dumbledore, at that point of time he only had faint suspicions about Voldemort's Horcrux usage so this particular plan of yours falls flat without access to meta-knowledge.

 

[blabla1994]

Ya, good plans are great to have but they don't exactly grow on trees. With Dumbledore's time limit, the ministry being corrupted and Voldemort being a scary mix of insane and cunning and nearly unbeatable, whare exactly is he supposed to get a better plan?

'Hey Tom, here's that Prophecy Orb you wanted!'

*arranges for him to steal/touch it*

*orb explodes, killing him with basilisk venom tainted shrapnel*

'Okay, that'll keep him out of action for a little while until he gets a new body. All right, here's everything I have on his Horcruxes and where they might be stored. Order of the Phoenix search teams GO! Moody, you and Snape take this one, Remus, you and Tonks take that one, Bill, you and Fleur take this one...'

This took me, like, 15 seconds. Dumbledore had years.

And... How would you arrange for him to touch it? This also works under the assumption that Voldemort is so terrible at magic that he wouldn't realize that the orb was going to explode. And to head off the inevitable "without magic" response, I'd really like to see how you manage to make a see through orb explode without magic in a way that keeps anyone from realizing that there is something rather wrong with orb. Also Dumbledore had not the slightest idea as to where most of the Horcruxes were. I'd really like to see how you rationalize them finding the more obscure ones like the Diadem, or Nagini.

 

[WhiteKnightLeo]

Ya, good plans are great to have but they don't exactly grow on trees. With Dumbledore's time limit, the ministry being corrupted and Voldemort being a scary mix of insane and cunning and nearly unbeatable, whare exactly is he supposed to get a better plan?

'Hey Tom, here's that Prophecy Orb you wanted!'

*arranges for him to steal/touch it*

*orb explodes, killing him with basilisk venom tainted shrapnel*

'Okay, that'll keep him out of action for a little while until he gets a new body. All right, here's everything I have on his Horcruxes and where they might be stored. Order of the Phoenix search teams GO! Moody, you and Snape take this one, Remus, you and Tonks take that one, Bill, you and Fleur take this one...'

This took me, like, 15 seconds. Dumbledore had years.

And... How would you arrange for him to touch it? This also works under the assumption that Voldemort is so terrible at magic that he wouldn't realize that the orb was going to explode. And to head off the inevitable "without magic" response, I'd really like to see how you manage to make a see through orb explode without magic in a way that keeps anyone from realizing that there is something rather wrong with orb. Also Dumbledore had not the slightest idea as to where most of the Horcruxes were. I'd really like to see how you rationalize them finding the more obscure ones like the Diadem, or Nagini.

By what CANON means would he determine that the orb would explode? DD DOES seem to have some kind of "Detect Magic" skill, or else he wouldn't have been able to tell so many details about the traps around the fake Amulet. Voldemort, on the other hand, never demonstrates any such skill.