21 KiB
Blindness - Harry Potter fanfic
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Author: u/Pencil-Monkey *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2vn26m/blindness_harry_potter_fanfic/
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Score: 31
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Created: 2015-02-12T10:31:46
Post:
Blindness is a Harmonian HP fanfic where Voldemort's killing curse ended up leaving Harry with a much larger scar on his face, and rendered him blind. However, Harry developed a new form of mage-sight, allowing him to see the colors of magic and life.
Dumbledore has no use for a blind Chosen One, and Harry's left with his Muggle relatives - fortunately, his blindness has also compelled his aunt Petunia to have more compassion for him, which in turns influences Vernon and Dudley. Thus, Harry's home life is far more pleasant than in canon - especially after he meets Hermione Granger, a Muggleborn witch whose parents withdrew her from Hogwarts after a nasty incident with a troll in a bathroom.
Together, they begin to study the magical world with far more scientific methods than most wizards or witches would think of using. Much like in Methods of Rationality, this Harry is just as intelligent and studious as Hermione, and their rational approach to unravelling the world of magic is a central part of the story.
TL;DR - quite well written, definitely worth checking out, although it's much less comedic than HPMOR.
Comments:
u/Kodix [+14] (an hour later)
I'm amazed I keep missing fics like this one, somehow, in spite of searching quite hard.
Sounds quite interesting. Will definitely check it out.
[Edit] I'm on the last chapter right now, and it was definitely worth a read. Quite enjoyable.
I particularly like the following quote (may be slightly spoilerific?):
Harry paused, shook his head. "I'm not breaking any rules. Magic isn't, either. It's taken me all summer to figure that out. There is reason and rationality and rules to all magic can do, just like there is with everything the muggles have figured out so far in nature. What we call magic is simply another force to consider mathematically, one whose limiting factors have not all been discovered. More complicated than most, of course, because I am almost positive that if there is some sort of math to it it is capable of changing based on the user and how it is used, or, better put, its environmental factors."
Finally. FINALLY.
Other analytic HP fics I'd read were often.. less than stellar on this point. They called magic unexplainable and that was that, and some were even smug about that, somehow.
I could hug the author.
Oh, and the author also has a 700k word HP story on her profile. If it's of similar quality, I think I'll enjoy myself a great deal.
u/Pencil-Monkey [+3] (4 hours later)
I could hug the author.
Glad you liked it. :-) Oh, and make sure you leave a review on the story at FF.net, if you haven't done so already, compliments and honest critiques are like fuel for fanfiction authors.
u/Memes_Of_Production [+10] (a day later)
The story has some great potential, with innovative ideas with the magic sight and the way it helps unravel magic. The "if neville had been harry" plot outcomes also make a great parallel timeline, with lots of fun responses (like voldemort's) to the new situations. The "supporting cast" as it were, is very strong.
However, Harry is a pretty frikkin massive Marty Stu, and a bit of a bore to read about. He is smarter, stronger, nicer, cooler, and morally better than everyone, has no weaknesses (he isnt even actually blind!) and gets the girl by default. He also has this weird monk aesthetic going on, being "above" petty childish things like pranks or lust. And most of these abilities are informed; when he makes magical discoveries, its not like the story had some problem it presented to us, and the reader thought "man, how would i fix this", then harry pulls from existing knowledge and shows his genius. instead he simply "discovers" solutions to problems we didnt know existed.
it is also being held back a bit by the "omniscient 3rd person narrator" style; dialogue is infrequent, scenes tend to be sketched out from afar instead of lived, emotional developments often happen off screen, and we dont get to see people's thought process too much for the main cast. This improves as the story goes on, but is still a problem, and i think contributes to the blandness of the protagonist.
Overall a decent read and good premise, but some flawed execution and a very unlikable main character. Good effort on the author's part though! Great to see writers tackle an interesting premise.
u/2-4601 [+4] (6 days later)
However, Harry is a pretty frikkin massive Marty Stu, and a bit of a bore to read about. He is smarter, stronger, nicer, cooler, and morally better than everyone, has no weaknesses (he isnt even actually blind!) and gets the girl by default. He also has this weird monk aesthetic going on, being "above" petty childish things like pranks or lust. And most of these abilities are informed; when he makes magical discoveries, its not like the story had some problem it presented to us, and the reader thought "man, how would i fix this", then harry pulls from existing knowledge and shows his genius. instead he simply "discovers" solutions to problems we didn't know existed.
Yup. What broke it for me was the Ministry being interested in Harry's Transfigurations. HPMoR has Harry do stuff that they'd be interested in too, like partial Transfiguration, but they're quite rare and rather important/unique. Plus, the story goes into how difficult it was to create them, like going evil after facing a Dementor and having to rewrite his mind manually to do partial Transfiguration. Blind!Harry here just sort of glosses over them, which makes it perplexing when we're told they're apparently so important when it didn't cost him anything we saw.
It makes him look, well, overpowered, along with other Sue warning signs - having more powerful equipment that no-one else does despite it being available in Diagon Alley (see many, MANY fics in which he gets a trunk, HPMor included, that is as powerful as Moody's despite him being the only one to have one in canon and having a powerful artefact for an eye, suggesting the trunk is rare too), having a "disability" that is quickly or immediately nullified by a magic sense that is even better (see Princess of the Blacks for an example done well), and Harry being neglected in favour of a different, wrong Chosen One.
u/Uncaffeinated [+5] (6 days later)
Re the trunk: There aren't any other magical trunks, but we do see numerous magical tents with similar space expansion that are treated casually, so it's not really a stretch to assume space expanded trunks aren't that big a deal.
u/derf213 [+2] (7 years later)
I mean, if Hermione made her bag, then I think a shop could definitely make some trunks
u/aerolithos [+1] (6 years later)
Which story is HPMor?
u/Uncaffeinated [+1] (7 years later)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
u/Belgarion262 [+4] (an hour later)
I've been subscribed to the author for a while as well.
I'd recommend her other works as well
u/eltegid [+5] (4 hours later)
Seems interesting.
What's a harmonian fanfic?
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (4 hours later)
Harry/Hermione.
u/Pencil-Monkey [+2] (4 hours later)
Harmonian is shipping slang, it means that it's a story with a Harry/Hermione pairing.
u/kaukamieli [+3] (5 hours later)
So I guess with Luna it would be Lunarian? :p There a list somewhere?
u/Pencil-Monkey [+4] (7 hours later)
Actually, Harry/Luna is often referred to as Huna or sometimes Lunarry, again using the same naming scheme that gave us such delightful portmanteaus as Brangelina and Tomkat. Threeway Harry/Hermione/Luna relationships are also quite popular, and are often referred to as "Lunar Harmony".
There's a good organized list here, and a massive list of rather amusing although less-than-serious possibilities here.
My personal favorite when it comes to shipping names (as opposed to favorite ship, which is an entirely different kettle of fish) is Honks = Harry/Tonks. :-P
u/rumblestiltsken [+3] (13 hours later)
Drarry. Dramione. Druna. Drinny. Dred. Drang. Drape. Dron. Dronks. Drambledore. Droldemorte. Drudge. Drucious. Drumbridge. Dragrid. Drirenze. Draquid. Dracromatula. Dravil's Snare. Drewt. Drogwarts.
Anything with Draco is just portmanteau gold.
u/Nevereatcars [+1] The Greatest Is Behind (a day later)
Any good Drogwarts fics you could recommend?
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (3 days later)
No fics unfortunately. This is the only relevant thing.
u/autowikibot [+2] (3 days later)
#####
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#### Dracorex:
Dracorex is a dinosaur genus of the family Pachycephalosauridae, from the Late Cretaceous of North America.
The type (and only known) species is Dracorex hogwartsia, meaning "dragon king of Hogwarts". It is known from one nearly complete skull (the holotype TCMI 2004.17.1), as well as four cervical vertebrae: the atlas, third, eighth and ninth. These were discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota by three amateur paleontologists from Sioux City, Iowa. The skull was subsequently donated to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis for study in 2004, and was formally described by Bob Bakker and Robert Sullivan in 2006. However, Jack Horner et al. suspect that it is a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus and an analysis of pachycephalosaur fossils by a joint team from the University of California, Berkeley and the Museum of the Rockies has questioned the validity of two named genera of pachycephalosaur, Dracorex and Stygimoloch. According to the team, specimens of Dracorex and Stygimoloch might actually represent earlier growth stages of Pachycephalosaurus. As this article on the UC Berkeley website says, "The confusion is traced to their bizarre head ornaments, ranging from shields and domes to horns and spikes, which changed dramatically with age and sexual maturity, making the heads of youngsters look very different from those of adults."
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^Interesting: ^Stygimoloch ^| ^Pachycephalosaurus ^| ^Pachycephalosauria ^| ^Homalocephale
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+comidyl) ^or [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+comidyl)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Mods ^| ^Magic ^Words
u/Uncaffeinated [+1] (3 days later)
I think the best ship name is Mineverous. I mean their names just look like they're meant to go together.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (7 days later)
I rather liked "Pride and Prejudice - Severus/McGonagall"
u/Pakars [+3] (9 hours later)
I'm a little more than halfway through this, and it's pretty good.
Thank you for the recommendation.
Edit: Just finished, half an hour later. It is definitely quite excellent. Again, my thanks for the rec.
u/noggin-scratcher [+3] I am a happy tree (10 hours later)
This was fun, anyone know whether there are more updates coming, or (even better) when that might happen?
u/Pencil-Monkey [+1] (a day later)
The author mentioned that the story is planned to have four parts, with the first ten chapters being half of them.
Updates, as is so often the case, seems to depend entirely on when the author can find enough spare time to write them. ;-)
u/okaycat [+8] (5 hours later)
Just reading the first few chapters raises up a bunch of red flags.
First is the standard manipulative!Dumbledore cliche. Apparently Dumbledore doesn't really care at all about Harry's well being and only wants him because of the prophecy. But since he's blind he can't learn magic or something so Dumbledore abandons him? Dumb.
Second is that apparently the wizarding world is incompetent and doesn't even know how magic works. It's up to two muggle raised children without any real experience at all to discover how magic works. Even though wizards have been living and studying magic for thousands of years yet they're being outdone by a pair of schoolchildren.
Harry gets a staff.
The contrived relationship between Hermione and Harry.
Etc. This is mediocre at best.
u/DangerouslyUnstable [+6] (10 hours later)
Without having read it (and only in response to your second point), it's not neccessarily unreasonable that two muggle-born children could figure out so much more about magic than all of the wizardign community.
Humanity as a whole progressed extremely slowly up until the discovery of the scientific method, which allowed for huge advances at a much more rapid pace. The wizarding world has been cut off from the muggle world since way before that time. I think it isn't crazy to posit that the wizarding world has been making it's same plodding progress the way humanity did pre-science and that a couple of muggle born kids who aren't embeded in that culture starting at 11 and who therefore might get exposed to the scientific method could make some pretty basic discoveries pretty quickly.
It doesn't require them to be geniuses of the entire wizarding world to be idiots. They are just the first ones to be using a new, vastly more powerful analytical tool.
u/blazinghand [+8] Chaos Undivided (10 hours later)
I don't think it's too unlikely that Dumbledore wouldn't be too interested in Harry under the right circumstances. If you just swapped his treatments of Neville and Harry from canon with each other that would be entirely reasonable as a matter of prophecy interpretation. Dumbledore is support of Neville but to him Neville is just another student.
Probably this could have been portrayed better in this fic with Dumbledore offering Harry a place at Hogwarts anyways and giving him a magical eye (like what Mad-Eye has) so that he can see and learn, and Harry not being willing to gouge out his eye, potentially losing his mana sight, for a chance to see? There are a lot of ways you could go with it.
It's worth noting some of the plot elements (Dumbledore being a dick, Harry getting equipment not used in canon like the staff, or unique discoveries magical discoveries that aren't game changers but make Harry stronger) are pretty much standard HP Fanfic fare.
u/puesyomero [+2] The Culture (9 hours later)
artistic license? :D
u/Transfuturist [-2] Carthago delenda est. (6 hours later)
sigh
u/Traiden04 [+2] (17 hours later)
The author thanks you, u/Pencil-Monkey, for posting her story to here.
u/Pencil-Monkey [+2] (a day later)
Oh! Thanks for telling me. :-)
I was about to ask whether you were, in fact, the author, but a quick check on the story's review page seems to indicate that's not the case. (Really good and detailed review you left for the author, by the way.)
u/Charlie___ [+2] (a day later)
Man the beginning was good. Everything went too well and the characters were a bit boring, but still a fun read.
Now I want to see a fic with the opposite setup, where Harry is just regular blind and has a hard life, but gets to go to Hogwarts and is still targeted by Voldemort. Harry is way less good at fighting but is the moral / strategic voice and plot McGuffin, Hermoine gets to be awesome, and Ron
can jump in a lakegetsreplaced by Nevilleinterpreted as a more awkward, sympathetic character.
u/Pencil-Monkey [+2] (4 days later)
Good idea, but if I may be so bold as to offer a suggestion? ;-)
Ron can jump in a lake, gets replaced by the Giant Squid interpreted as a more awkward, sympathetic character.
Not that there's anything wrong with Neville, mind you, but even the Squid would be a better candidate than Ron Weasley. (It probably wouldn't want to share a lake with him, either.)
u/Uncaffeinated [+1] (6 days later)
But the Giant Squid is secretly Dumbledore's animagus form.
u/diraniola [+1] (14 days later)
Head Canon accepted
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (3 days later)
2 chapters in. how does harry know about wands and "muggles" before entering the magical world?
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (3 days later)
and how does he know what colors the auras are with such high specificity if he is blind?
u/Pencil-Monkey [+1] (4 days later)
It's mentioned in several places that he doesn't know what colors other people see, and any time he talks about colors, he's approximating or guessing based on information he's been given from others. There's probably a fair bit of free and/or random association going on. Harry might be assigning the names of colors he's perceiving with mage-sight based on what he (or his subconscious) associates those colors with, e.g. blood red is lethal Dark magic, brown earthy tones correspond to animal or nature magic, etc.
Or perhaps there's even a magical imperative involved, which may or may not be discussed further in later chapters - the story isn't over yet, after all.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (4 days later)
Upon further reading,I think he's created a mapping of some sort between real colors and aura "colors" (He asks if the goblet's fire is blue because it showed up as something he mentally labels as to "blue" in his mage sight, etc).
That kind of explains why he describes things in terms of precious gems and metals so often. I think he just asks people what colors various things are, and maps it to whatever aura-sense he is perceiving, and it turns out an imperfect relationship exists.
u/Pencil-Monkey [+1] (4 days later)
Yeah, there are several large swathes of time during his research with Hermione, and before that when he was getting (slightly less able) assistance from Dudley, that are glossed over. They probably spent quite a bit of time working out as many details of his aura-sight as possible, as you pointed out.
u/Pencil-Monkey [+1] (4 days later)
Petunia probably told him. In fact, here's a relevant quote from chapter 7:
"My boy, there has been a… misunderstanding, at the school. We are having a Tournament, you see, between the magical schools of Europe… your aunt has told you of your heritage, surely?"
Harry heard restless movement from the doorway; his aunt was uncomfortable.
"Yes, of course."
Petunia might not know any specific details on the magical world, but she would be able to teach him the basics she'd picked up from Lily (and Snape) - such as, for example, the ubiquitous use of wands and common terms like "Muggle".
u/kaukamieli [+1] (a day later)
I really liked this and I'm waiting for more.
u/aerolithos [+1] (6 years later)
Which fanfic does HPMOR stand for?
u/Erekt-Swims [+1] (9 years later)
Absolutely loved this, probably the best book ive ever listened to its uploaded to YouTube under fan fic AI I was worried it was wrote by AI that thought scared me I’m glad it actually has a author,