17 KiB
[WIP] Hermione Granger and the Tesseract of Merlin (Worm x HPMOR)
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10627176/1/Hermione-Granger-and-the-Tesseract-of-Merlin
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Score: 13
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Created: 2014-08-18T21:31:07
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+8] (7 hours later)
I stopped reading after a few chapters. "HPMOR!Hermoine deals with canon HP" is an interesting idea. "Worm/HP crossover" is an interesting idea. Trying to do both those things at once? Feels like a giant, mishmashy clusterfuck that starts to resemble an original fiction with a paint job more than anything else.
Edit to add: The above aside, the actual quality of the writing is high. I would have kept reading if the ideas being elaborated on had been to my taste.
u/None [+3] (19 hours later)
I can see that. I'd be open to a discussion of how the Sunshine General would handle a sudden transition to canon Hogwarts. It's an interesting question. I just think she'd be too depressed to do much.
u/None [+8] (19 hours later)
I think it depends a lot on how you handle the transition. If she's dumped directly into canon, it creates a serious depression problem. Especially if it happens when she dies in Methods.
If I were doing it, I would probably take advantage of the post-death train station quasi-afterlife to serve as a transition. Not sure who or what would meet her there to serve as a situation prepper. Possibly have her intrude on Harry and Dumbledore's canonical 7th book meeting, and call the train station outside of linear time? It would be amusing to see 7th year Harry and dead!Dumbledore try and capitalize on a chance to alter the timeline once they realize Hermoine is headed towards her first year. And that would give Hermoine a chance for an off-screen debriefing of her canonical situation. The result would provide a greater chance for Hermoine to be motivated and engaged, without being too lost in all the changes.
Of course, you can moderate the level of prep/info she gets by altering how paranoid Dumbledore is about time paradoxes, and how determined Harry is to change the timeline.
That spectrum of pre-insertion preparation creates a neat corresponding spectrum of possible fics, too. Hermoine given heavy prep by Dumbledore and Harry would be ridiculously powerful in her first year, and able to capitalize on pretty much ever exploitable element of canon with hilarious ease. that results in more of a lighthearted power fantasy, with the central conflict probably arising from Hermoine's Harry-enhanced moral system conflicting with other characters', plus her desire to find a magic that would let her push back into the Methodsverse somehow.
On the other hand, a sufficiently underinformed Hermoine is forced to play a game of subterfuge and infiltration, as she tries to take steps to use the ambiguous (and partially unintentional) hints from Harry and Dumbledore to cope with the challenges of blending into a new, more overtly nonsensical universe and avoid getting caught as a bodythief (which she presumably is, if she just gets dumped into canon Hermoine's body and overrides her brain).
Although, with all that said, I think it would be interesting to make the background workings of the canon universe more closely resemble the Methods setup, just to give Hermoine a chance to encounter and solve some of the problems her Harry has already dealt with. But I'm really just saying that because I dearly want her to solve the problem of the Patronus 2.0. She deserves to understand what it really is.
u/None [+2] (20 hours later)
? It would be amusing to see 7th year Harry and dead!Dumbledore try and capitalize on a chance to **alter the timeline **
NO ALTERING WITH THE TIMELINE BULLSHIT WE ARE NOT DOING THAT
Anyway, there's still the problem of who Hermione talks to, aside from the diary Horcrux. Speaking to canon!firstyear!Harry would probably be torture. Not to mention dealing with Draco and her PTSD over that stuff. Maybe she hangs out with Blaise Zabini all day. Actually, that could work.
The plot is harder. If she's not hanging out with Harry, then she doesn't know about his scar hurting when he sees Quirrell. She has no reason to think a first-year, even a smart first-year could have anything to contribute to the magical defenses devised by a number of smart and powerful Hogwarts teachers, not to mention Dumbledore himself.
So maybe skip the plot and have it be more about the characters, Hermione overcoming her trauma and coming to appreciate the Methodsverse in new light, something like that. Strong enough characters, Hermione's inner turmoil, and a plethora of in-jokes could probably sustain a lack of plot. HP and the Sorcerer's Stone was mostly about Harry interacting with Hogwarts, not his battle with Quirrell.
u/None [+3] (21 hours later)
NO ALTERING WITH THE TIMELINE BULLSHIT WE ARE NOT DOING THAT
Suit yourself. I love timeline bullshit, personally. It just makes me smile.
Anyway, there's still the problem of who Hermione talks to, aside from the diary Horcrux. Speaking to canon!firstyear!Harry would probably be torture. Not to mention dealing with Draco and her PTSD over that stuff. Maybe she hangs out with Blaise Zabini all day. Actually, that could work.
It depends, I think. If Hermoine has a chance to understand that canon!Harry is not Methods!Harry, then she could probably cope. It would give her a chance for a bizarre inverse-mentor situation. Although Hermoine would have less to work with than Methods!Harry ever did. Trying to teach canon characters even a tiny portion of what she's learned would be... an undertaking. You're right about her Draco problems, though. Shit's harsh.
Aside from Blaise, she would be in a unique position to talk to other professors and Dumbledore on a more equal level. Especially if at least some of them are made aware of her origins. Methods!Harry was similarly privileged with the ability to force his professors to treat him as an equal, and this fic idea would give Hermoine the opportunity and incentive for the same.
The plot is harder. If she's not hanging out with Harry, then she doesn't know about his scar hurting when he sees Quirrell. She has no reason to think a first-year, even a smart first-year could have anything to contribute to the magical defenses devised by a number of smart and powerful Hogwarts teachers, not to mention Dumbledore himself.
I'd be in favor of completely derailing the plot right off the bat. Force her into higher stakes interactions with Dumbledore and Snape, give her glimpses of the plots behind the plots, as it were. She's powerful, she's smart, and her recent traumatic experiences gave her some help developing a real
killer's intent, so she could probably do all sorts of interesting things to the setting.The other interesting question is when she arrives. The obvious, default answer is that she ends up at the same point in time that she left, but considering this is blatant universe-hopping bullshit to start with, she can justifiably arrive anywhen. And if she arrives at the start of the school year, before the sorting, that creates lots of new opportunities for her to establish herself as an interesting person. And it negates some of the problems relating to spontaneous bodysnatching.
u/None [+3] (22 hours later)
But who or what is the antagonist? Voldemort is in ghost mode. Lucius is just a bigoted old politician. Making a fool of Draco would be pretty easy for Hermione once she got her head on straight. So what's this story about exactly?
u/None [+3] (22 hours later)
I don't really know. I guess I'd say "reality" and go from there. Some wacky magical force kicked Hermoine out of her death throes and into an alternate reality that may or may not be some kind of really long, complicated delusion she's having as she bleeds out. In her shoes, my number one priority would be verifying my sanity and my situation before anything else.
And assuming Hermoine manages to verify to a reasonable degree that she's not crazy, she could easily embark on a few basic optimization quests. Within Hogwarts specifically, there's a Philosopher's Stone that can grant something resembling immortality, as well as a chamber of secrets and the Room of Requirement. Along with all the other completely broken parts of magical canon, especially magical oaths.
I'd focus less on creating a single, central antagonist and more on presenting the whole of the magical world as a problem to be solved, with her end goal being to return home having done as much good as possible in the meantime. Less of an RPG and more of a puzzle game, I guess.
u/None [+1] (22 hours later)
It's just not obvious to me how to get a plot out of that. What you're describing is basically what HJPEV sets out to do, but in HPMOR Quirrell drives the plot, introducing the armies, the trip to Azkaban, committing murders and so on. Something like that would have to be done for Hermione, and then it feels like HPMOR but with a chick.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
Please tell me you are going to take the time to write this. It looks like a wonderful idea.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
Unfortunately, I have no capacity whatsoever to transmute abstract story ideas into actual stories. I just wrote this all up as a fun thought experiment. Anyone who wants to write the story has my blessing, because I certainly can't.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
Especially if it happens when she dies in Methods.
HERMIONE DIES IN METHODS??!?!?!?!?!!!!!!
(Kidding. Yes, I knew. ;) )
u/bbrazil [+5] NERV (47 minutes later)
Hmm, I recognise this story. Is this a renamed Hermione Granger and the SPEWW?
u/None [+2] (2 hours later)
Yep.
u/Articanine [+3] Imperium of Man (4 hours later)
Oooo This is going to be good!
u/nohat [+3] (23 hours later)
This is intriguing, and I'm looking forward to more. Frankly I wish there was more at Hogwarts. The 'rational Hermione infiltrates canon hogwarts' has a lot of potential.
So far the worm stuff seems more like head nods than an actual crossover. That's fine, and makes more sense, but it does make the Worm tag a little confusing. I was expecting scion, protectorate, parahuman powers, etc.
The Tesseract and other artifacts are interesting, and seem to fulfill the role of parahuman powers in worm. I'm kinda surprised Gilderoy let Hermione take his artifact.
She definitely ought to have taken 5 minutes to give preemptive orders to Dragon. Stuff like: "Priority one: don't let me die or be disabled or mind affected, priority two don't let anyone else get the tesseract" really isn't difficult to plan ahead for. Maybe if there was an actual time limit on the Vance attack so she was in a rush? Or something previously unknown about the Tesseract that invalidates her previous orders. Say, if it fails at one command, all others in that chain are invalidated too. So when her "don't let me get hurt" command is failed because of the knife, all her other protective commands are also disabled. Similarly I'm having difficulty imagining Hermione leaving Hogwarts without food and equipment.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
She definitely ought to have taken 5 minutes to give preemptive orders to Dragon. Stuff like: "Priority one: don't let me die or be disabled or mind affected, priority two don't let anyone else get the tesseract" really isn't difficult to plan ahead for.
That was the original plan, but I was tired while writing it and just moved ahead to the fight. But I think it would be better the original way it because it puts the focus on the interaction between Hermione and Dragon, which is more important, so I might change it....
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
u/nohat [+2] (2 days later)
Yes indeed. This shows how she was trying quite well, but hampered by time, pressure, and unfamiliarity.
u/turbinicarpus [+3] (3 days later)
An interesting premise, definitely. Worm references are nifty.
At the same time, the Hogwarts scenes left a very bad aftertaste. They felt rushed, like the author was trying to get them out of the way so that Hermione could go hang out with the Cool Kids.
There are also bits there where Hermione comes off as not-as-smart-as-she-is-purported-to-be: she doesn't notice where she is sleeping and her uniform colors; when she starts noticing that everything is different, she continues assuming that everything else is still the same, and she keeps getting surprised by new divergences. That would be plausible if all the revelations came over the course of an hour, but they come over the course of several days. At no point does she actually try to investigate what's going on.
Her interactions with other characters at Hogwarts wound up feeling kind of bashy towards them, as if intended to draw attention to how superior everybody in MORverse is. (They are, in fact, superior, but it still reads as bashy to draw attention to that.) I did like how Harry finally blew up at her. (Generally, having the protagonist not win all social confrontations is good.)
And, then, she runs off, and nobody stops her? Also, why doesn't her casting warming charms trip the Trace?
u/None [+1] (5 days later)
Crud, I forgot about the Trace. Ummmmmm. Maybe it fell off when she died?
This Hermione is no smarter than me lol
u/None [+5] (a minute later)
Remember when this subreddit was about fiction? Anyway, Hermione died lol and ended up in sort-of-Canonwarts. Then she gets the hell out because the Sunshine General does not do that work for nobody. Then I fuck canon to pieces. Then Worm happens, sort of.
Basically, Hermione gets Heberted. You got a problem with that?
u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (4 hours later)
I stopped reading Worm halfway through. Are there massive Worm spoilers I should worry about, just in case I return to it one day?
u/None [+6] (4 hours later)
It's a crossover with Worm not so much in content as in the spirit of an underage girl with superpowers doing implausibly well in a string of fights with psychopathic murderers.
u/Zephyr1011 [+1] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (11 days later)
Does that really count as a crossover? There are many stories on this subreddit where characters act rationally, and similar to HPMOR Harry. That does not mean that they are HPMOR crossovers
u/literal-hitler [+5] (6 hours later)
I stopped reading Worm halfway through.
BLASPHEMER. Go read worm and rectify your mistake.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)
To be honest, I think that was a good call. The power creep in Worm is less a "creep" and more a "giant galloping stampede." I really enjoyed the story when it was about people--even enormously overpowered people--but eventually it was just about gods, and that gets boring fast. Basically, stories with gods as the antagonist boil down to "zomg, they are huge and powerful and kill everyone and we are totally helpless up until we defeat them because we are tricky and awesome!" And that bugs me because the fact is people can't realistically win against gods. It requires the gods to carry the idiot ball in order to lose, and that does not a satisfying storyline make.
But, yes, I'm sure that YMMV on this one.
u/TabethaRasa [+2] (18 hours later)
I'm missing a reference here. May I ask where the expression "gets Herberted" is coming from?
u/Ashrand [+6] (18 hours later)
Heberted. And it's the name of Worm's protagonist, Taylor Hebert, who is famous for being a "underage girl with superpowers doing implausibly well in a string of fights with psychopathic murderers."
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
Someone please add this to urban dictionary, or or tribe equivalent, even if it is TvTropes
u/TabethaRasa [+1] (a day later)
Thanks.
u/None [+2] (19 hours later)
The main character of Worm is named Taylor Hebert.
u/TabethaRasa [+1] (a day later)
Thanks, I'll check this out. Sounds interesting.