Unwritten sequels to "Icarus"
Oct. 19th, 2008 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marblegloveSometime back, I wrote "Icarus", a fanfiction story that paired Hermione Granger with Lord Voldemort. It's posted on fanfiction.net. It was a challenge to myself since the pairing was so very improbably but I had a lot of fun with it and I've gotten a lot of very nice reviews regarding it. One of the main responses, though, is a general request for a sequel.
I don't intend to ever write one. I like where I left it off because it combines coming to a nice conclusion with maximum uncertainty for the future. I'm quite pleased with it.
However, I've had plenty of ideas for where it could go from there, and one reviewer asked me just to summarize some of my ideas. In case anyone else is interested, here are some possible futures for the characters:
1. Somebody finds Voldemort’s last diary in Hermione’s bookshelf. The ministry, her friends, one of her future colleagues, ... someone nominally on the side of good. They try to convince her to destroy it, force her to hand it over, and she has to decide whether she’s willing tohat—she’s not—and finally really think about why she’s refusing. Then, of course, she has to figure out how to make her refusal matter since there are a lot of people who will take it by force. Is this really something she wants to fight over?
2. The aurors, including Harry, are tracking a serial thief of powerful magic items that various families have hidden away. It’s made more difficult by the fact that few of the victims are willing to admit to owning whatever was stolen. There’s now a (excuse the pun) witchhunt out for the thief. The victim’s are trying to get him. The Aurors are trying to get him. And when Voldemort’s diary is stolen, Hermione is trying to get him. Can Hermione get it back before anything is done either to or with it. There are plenty of people who would try to recreate Voldemort for the purpose of torturing him; there are plenty more who would try to use him as a tool to torture others. Or maybe it’s someone who doesn’t realize what they’re getting themselves into and it’s them that needs protecting from the book. And like all the other victims she wants to get her item back before anyone can see what it is and would love to get a peak an what everyone else has. Although she’s tempted to just wait and see what happens. This could have some seriously slapstick comedy.
3. The ministry of magic is poorly run (examples: failing to notice Voldemort was back, seriously threatened by a grade school), highly corrupt (examples: Malfoy buying himself out of jail, Sirius Black in jail without trial), and in many ways quite vicious towards muggles (examples: people who discover magic or even are attacked by magic have their memories wiped, and people are attacked with magic). Hermione, now Dr. Granger, becomes furious at the way the wizarding world is run after she discovers something or another at her hospital (maybe a muggle is suffering from a curse but she can’t fix it because the victim can’t remember enough for her to figure out exactly what it is, maybe a muggleborn infant is kidnapped by a pureblood family and a sickly squib abandoned in its place). She decides that Something Needs To Be Done. So she starts her own revolution. The story is interspersed with snippets of Voldemort’s diary as she struggles to overturn a society, much like he did, while also struggling not to become too much like him.
4. Hermione is an old, old woman. She was happily married for nearly a century but has been widowed for some decades at this point. She has accomplished a great deal within both the muggle and the magical worlds. Much like Dumbledore was, she is very respected by those who like her and very feared by those who don’t. It was really only the late great Harry Potter and the late great Ronald Weasley who ever smiled like it was a joke when they described her as being “brilliant, but scary.” Preparing to die, she smiles with some pleasure at the thought of her portrait awake and hung in the Hogwarts gallery. When it goes up, so too will the portrait of Voldemort she had secretly made and connected to it. She won’t release him out in the real world, after all, not where he could do immediate damage. But that one step removed in the land of portraits… well, her portrait self will be there to see what happens. She’s quite looking forward to it.
5. A dark lord has arisen. He is uberpowerful in some way or another. Maybe it’s Harry, twisted by some dark spell he stumbled across during an Auror mission. Maybe it’s a muggleborn undiscovered by any magic school, selftaught but powerful with raw magic and shaping the world to his will: Lex Luthor with magic. Whoever it is, he’s changing the world for the worse and he needs to be stopped. But the knowledge and the skill to stop him is dark and forbidden and the last known master of it was Voldemort. It’s a dangerous thing to fight fire with fire and Hermione wonders why all of her metaphors seem to involve her fiery demise?
6. A new plague has struck: 40% fatality rate. Hermione and the rest of the hospital staff are working night and day trying to figure it out. Harry comes to visit her in the muggle world because the wizarding world is worse. There’s a 75% fatality rate and Harry himself is one of the few survivors. Hermione discovers that the difference is that the plague is carried by magic. Those wizards or witches who have survived have become carriers. She needs to find the solution quickly, not only to stop people (both magical and muggle) from dying, but also to prevent the carriers (Harry included) from being persecuted and/or committing suicide. What she needs are the sort of contacts with researchers and wizarding medical personnel that Icarus had. Icarus flies again.
7. Hermione was a brilliant girl and grew up to be a brilliant woman. However, at age eleven she was thrown into a new world with new rules and she had to do her best to play catch up to the purebloods who had lived with magic all their lives and were sure to point and laugh. It’s no wonder that she concentrated on academics and figured the pureblood culture was only theatrics. She didn’t realize that debts between magic users are binding and serious. (Wand oaths are binding and Snape felt bound by something to protect Harry against all harm.) There are real reasons and real consequences to such debts. She didn’t think about it at all when she released her cure for werewolves and then refused to provide any opportunity to make things even. What happens to a debt that large left unpaid? What happens the next time someone offends Hermione?
8. Hermione becomes ever more knowledgeable and powerful. She went to medical school and it was important to her to leave the magical world for a while but it was not permanent. And the time away, that helped so much with her emotions, seemed to have been a needed rest for her magic as well. The more Hermione studies, the more her knowledge and experience expand and her patience with fools diminishes, the more she misses her correspondence with Voldemort. His intellect kept her challenged and his danger kept her patient. Dumbledore is gone, and Harry trusts her too wholeheartedly to ever hold her back. No one puts any boundaries on her and it’s increasingly scary to know that she can literally do anything she wants and no one will gainsay her. She needs someone to argue with, and Voldemort held in potential in a book, is the only person she can think of who canhat. She just needs to find a place to safely waken him, so that they can hold each other back while endangering only the local flora.
9. Crack!fic: Hermione wakens Voldemort but it’s her choice what his body should look like. Ah the possibilities: does she go with a lovely young girl? Does she go with a fluffy bunny rabbit? Hmm… It’s too bad that Crookshanks finally got too old and died but neither Ron nor Harry had cared much for him to begin with. But the Kneezle she replaced him with is seriously creepy. And why does it always give Harry the evil eye?
I don't intend to ever write one. I like where I left it off because it combines coming to a nice conclusion with maximum uncertainty for the future. I'm quite pleased with it.
However, I've had plenty of ideas for where it could go from there, and one reviewer asked me just to summarize some of my ideas. In case anyone else is interested, here are some possible futures for the characters:
1. Somebody finds Voldemort’s last diary in Hermione’s bookshelf. The ministry, her friends, one of her future colleagues, ... someone nominally on the side of good. They try to convince her to destroy it, force her to hand it over, and she has to decide whether she’s willing tohat—she’s not—and finally really think about why she’s refusing. Then, of course, she has to figure out how to make her refusal matter since there are a lot of people who will take it by force. Is this really something she wants to fight over?
2. The aurors, including Harry, are tracking a serial thief of powerful magic items that various families have hidden away. It’s made more difficult by the fact that few of the victims are willing to admit to owning whatever was stolen. There’s now a (excuse the pun) witchhunt out for the thief. The victim’s are trying to get him. The Aurors are trying to get him. And when Voldemort’s diary is stolen, Hermione is trying to get him. Can Hermione get it back before anything is done either to or with it. There are plenty of people who would try to recreate Voldemort for the purpose of torturing him; there are plenty more who would try to use him as a tool to torture others. Or maybe it’s someone who doesn’t realize what they’re getting themselves into and it’s them that needs protecting from the book. And like all the other victims she wants to get her item back before anyone can see what it is and would love to get a peak an what everyone else has. Although she’s tempted to just wait and see what happens. This could have some seriously slapstick comedy.
3. The ministry of magic is poorly run (examples: failing to notice Voldemort was back, seriously threatened by a grade school), highly corrupt (examples: Malfoy buying himself out of jail, Sirius Black in jail without trial), and in many ways quite vicious towards muggles (examples: people who discover magic or even are attacked by magic have their memories wiped, and people are attacked with magic). Hermione, now Dr. Granger, becomes furious at the way the wizarding world is run after she discovers something or another at her hospital (maybe a muggle is suffering from a curse but she can’t fix it because the victim can’t remember enough for her to figure out exactly what it is, maybe a muggleborn infant is kidnapped by a pureblood family and a sickly squib abandoned in its place). She decides that Something Needs To Be Done. So she starts her own revolution. The story is interspersed with snippets of Voldemort’s diary as she struggles to overturn a society, much like he did, while also struggling not to become too much like him.
4. Hermione is an old, old woman. She was happily married for nearly a century but has been widowed for some decades at this point. She has accomplished a great deal within both the muggle and the magical worlds. Much like Dumbledore was, she is very respected by those who like her and very feared by those who don’t. It was really only the late great Harry Potter and the late great Ronald Weasley who ever smiled like it was a joke when they described her as being “brilliant, but scary.” Preparing to die, she smiles with some pleasure at the thought of her portrait awake and hung in the Hogwarts gallery. When it goes up, so too will the portrait of Voldemort she had secretly made and connected to it. She won’t release him out in the real world, after all, not where he could do immediate damage. But that one step removed in the land of portraits… well, her portrait self will be there to see what happens. She’s quite looking forward to it.
5. A dark lord has arisen. He is uberpowerful in some way or another. Maybe it’s Harry, twisted by some dark spell he stumbled across during an Auror mission. Maybe it’s a muggleborn undiscovered by any magic school, selftaught but powerful with raw magic and shaping the world to his will: Lex Luthor with magic. Whoever it is, he’s changing the world for the worse and he needs to be stopped. But the knowledge and the skill to stop him is dark and forbidden and the last known master of it was Voldemort. It’s a dangerous thing to fight fire with fire and Hermione wonders why all of her metaphors seem to involve her fiery demise?
6. A new plague has struck: 40% fatality rate. Hermione and the rest of the hospital staff are working night and day trying to figure it out. Harry comes to visit her in the muggle world because the wizarding world is worse. There’s a 75% fatality rate and Harry himself is one of the few survivors. Hermione discovers that the difference is that the plague is carried by magic. Those wizards or witches who have survived have become carriers. She needs to find the solution quickly, not only to stop people (both magical and muggle) from dying, but also to prevent the carriers (Harry included) from being persecuted and/or committing suicide. What she needs are the sort of contacts with researchers and wizarding medical personnel that Icarus had. Icarus flies again.
7. Hermione was a brilliant girl and grew up to be a brilliant woman. However, at age eleven she was thrown into a new world with new rules and she had to do her best to play catch up to the purebloods who had lived with magic all their lives and were sure to point and laugh. It’s no wonder that she concentrated on academics and figured the pureblood culture was only theatrics. She didn’t realize that debts between magic users are binding and serious. (Wand oaths are binding and Snape felt bound by something to protect Harry against all harm.) There are real reasons and real consequences to such debts. She didn’t think about it at all when she released her cure for werewolves and then refused to provide any opportunity to make things even. What happens to a debt that large left unpaid? What happens the next time someone offends Hermione?
8. Hermione becomes ever more knowledgeable and powerful. She went to medical school and it was important to her to leave the magical world for a while but it was not permanent. And the time away, that helped so much with her emotions, seemed to have been a needed rest for her magic as well. The more Hermione studies, the more her knowledge and experience expand and her patience with fools diminishes, the more she misses her correspondence with Voldemort. His intellect kept her challenged and his danger kept her patient. Dumbledore is gone, and Harry trusts her too wholeheartedly to ever hold her back. No one puts any boundaries on her and it’s increasingly scary to know that she can literally do anything she wants and no one will gainsay her. She needs someone to argue with, and Voldemort held in potential in a book, is the only person she can think of who canhat. She just needs to find a place to safely waken him, so that they can hold each other back while endangering only the local flora.
9. Crack!fic: Hermione wakens Voldemort but it’s her choice what his body should look like. Ah the possibilities: does she go with a lovely young girl? Does she go with a fluffy bunny rabbit? Hmm… It’s too bad that Crookshanks finally got too old and died but neither Ron nor Harry had cared much for him to begin with. But the Kneezle she replaced him with is seriously creepy. And why does it always give Harry the evil eye?
