Harry Potter Divergence

[Nekomata-sensei]

I have often thought that Ron Weasley is a bit of a jealous jerk, and that it was only a variety of circumstances, one of which was never having had a friend before, made Harry easily accept his friendship. I also thought that Harry is a bit smarter than his Hogwarts grades seem to indicate, I think that Ron, however, is a major distraction to his studies, and Harry is still in the habbit of holding back since he was in muggle primary and not being allowed to get better grades than Dudley, and continued holding back and not focusing as much on learning because of subconciously not wanting Ron to become jealous. This is a divergence where Ron is a bit more of a jerk at the key event that forms the Golden Trio, separating him and Harry and reveiling his undesireable traits from Harry, and giving Harry a chance for a much closer friendship with Hermione.
I was thinking something along the lines of this being a story with Dumbledore portrayed as very manipulative, in an innocent sort of way, not realizing what he's doing while circumventing a lot of rules and regulations and ending up hurting Harry in the process, and purposely creating situations for Harry to be tested and get stronger, there is cannon evidence for this, but in this divergence, Harry and Hermione will discover this, and begin to counteract it. They will both become more powerfu through training, learning, and discovery, as clues are laid and they seek to survive in this strange and dangerous world of magic, this makes up for their lack of backup from Ron.
Rather than have Harry and Ron wanting to study less and Hermione having to convince them to study. Harry and Hermione _both_ want to study and share their learning and help each other learn, Harry tending to go for more exciting things like hexes and curses and things that would be useful for a duel or quidditch, and Hermione leanding more academically. Harry's Slytherin side and Hermione's Ravenclaw side will be more prominent. Ron Weasley will be as, or more annoying than Draco Malfoy.
Of course, this is a big undertaking. I've started the story, but I'm unsure of my writing skills and ability to continue with this, I don't have all the books and I very much want this to remain cannon universe, with only slight embelishments that can be explained as things we simply didn't know about cannon universe. I was thinking of taking crossover elements as well, perhaps having Harry and Hermione in third year begin to learn similar forms of magic to that shown in Nanoha, or perhaps one or both of them finding and becoming the masters of powerful magical artifacts that lead them on more adventures a 'la Card Captor Sakura (Maybe Harry is a reincarnation of Clow Reed? Maybe Clow Reed went to Hogwarts and that was where he learned 'Western Magic', and learned Eastern Magic from some Li family ancestor he ended up marrying).
I was also thinking of how much of a problem it would be to have Harry at odds with Ron as a roommate. Ron is the sort that could probably easily be convinced to spy on Harry or get him in trouble whenever he gets the chance if Harry isn't his friend, at least in this divergence. And of course since we're in a Ranma1/2 boards, I thought perhaps magic could be involved in bringing about a female Harry, which would allow Harry to dorm with Hermione and the other Gryffindor girls instead, perhaps escaping the prophesy at the same time, and thus transferring it over to Neville, who may have been marked in some less direct way. Maybe whatever it was that causes Harry to become female is an attempt to remove the cursed scar which Harry complains is paining him to Hermione, and the potion or spell or ritual or whatever they use causes some odd side effects...
Anyway, I don't plan on continiuing this story personally. But I very much liked the idea I came up with, so I thought I'd put it here in case it inspires someone.
"It's no wonder no one can stand her," he said to Harry as they pushed their was into the corridor, "She's a nightmare, honestly."
Someone knocked into Harry as they hurried past him. It was Hermione. Harry caught a glimpse of her face -- and was startled to see that she was in tears.
"I think she heard you."
"So?" said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. "She must've noticed she's got no friends."
Hermione didn't turn up for the next class and wasn't seen all afternoon. During which time Harry felt really guilty. After all, he'd faced his own share of bullying thanks to Dudley. On their way down to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Harry and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling her friend Lavender that Hermione was crying in the girls' bathroom and wanted to be left alone. Ron looked a bit more awkward at this, but then he snorted.
"She shouldn't have let it get to her that badly. What a crybaby." Ron said.
With those words, Harry was beginning to doubt his friendship with Ron. He'd never liked the way Ron starred at his scar when they first met, and while he sympathized with how Ron was poor, he didn't much like Ron's often showed jealousy. He remembered how Ron had made fun of Neville's toad when they fist met Neville on the train, and how Ron never wanted to talk about anything but Quidditch, which while Harry liked it, he might also have liked learning a bit more about magic. Now that he thought of it, he realized he'd been subconsciously continuing to hold back his intelligence like he had to avoid punishment from the Dursleys for getting better grades than Dudley, there were no Dursleys here, instead, he was avoiding Ron becoming resentful of him. But was Ron really a good friend if he'd be resentful of someone being smarter than him? Even the amazing Halloween decorations couldn't pull this from Harry's mind.
A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. The feats appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term banquet.
Harry was just helping himself to a baked potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into he hall, his turban askew and terror on his face. Everyone stared as he reached Professor Dumbledore's chair, slumped against the table, and gasped, "Troll -- in the dungeons -- thought you ought to know."
He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.
There was an uproar. It took several purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Professor Dumbledore's wand to bring silence.
"Prefects," he rumbled, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"
Percy was in his element.
"Follow me! Stick together, first years! No need to fear the troll if you follow my orders! Stay close behind me, now. Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me, I'm a prefect!"
"How could a troll get in?" Harry asked as they climbed the stairs.
"Don't ask me, they're supposed to be really stupid," said Ron. "Maybe Peeves let it in for a Halloween joke."
They passed different groups of people hurrying in different directions. As they jostled their way through a confused crowd of Hufflepuffs, Harry suddenly grabbed Ron's arm.
'"I've just though -- Hermione."
"What about her?" Ron asked irritably.
"She doesn't know about the troll."
"Forget her, the girls' bathrooms aren't near the dungeons." Ron replied.
"I'm going to get her." Harry replied.
"Fine." Ron scowled, "Go on. I'm not stopping you. But don't expect me to apologize to her."
Harry frowned and ran off, he peered around a large stone Griffin and saw not Percy, but Snape, running down the hall, he crossed the corridor and disappeared from view. Harry silently wondered what he was doing up her rather than down in the dungeons with the rest of the teachers.
Quietly as possible, he crept along the next corridor after Snape's fading footsteps.
"He's heading for the third floor," Harry murmured, frowning.
Harry suddenly smelled a foul stench, a mixture of old socks and the kind of public toilet no one seems to clean.
And then he heard it -- a low grunting, and the shuffling footfalls of gigantic feet. Harry looked around and spotted it -- at the end of a passage to the left, something huge was moving towards him. He shrank into the shadows and watched as it emerged intoa patch of moonlight.
It was a horrible sight. Twelve feet tall, its skin was dull, granite gray, its lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. The smell coming from it was incredible. It was holding a huge wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.
The troll stopped next to a doorway and peered inside. It waggled its long ears, making up its tiny mind, then slouched slowly into the room.
Harry suddenly realized that room was the girls' bathroom, Hermione was probably inside.
"HEY! BIG OAF! OVER HERE!" Harry yelled hoping to distract it.
There was a loud grunt, accompanied by some screaming, "NO HERMIONE! DON'T YELL! IT'LL COME AFTER YOU! I'M TRYING TO DISTRACT IT!" Harry yelled loudly, and heard Hermione shut up, "PEABRAIN, OUT HERE!"
Harry felt a panic rise in him as the Troll lumbered out and searched dumbly for whatever was making the noises.
"OVER HERE LUNKHEAD!" Harry yelled.
The troll began lumbering off down the hall. Harry stuck to the shadows and quickly darted around it, and into the girls' bathroom. He immediately spotted Hermione rooted to a corner.
"Shh! I've got it to go off down the hall instead and snuck around it! We'll just have to wait until the coast is clear and then get back up to the common rooms." Harry said, turning back to peer out the door.
Hermione crept up behind him and whispered loudly, "What's a troll doing here?!"
"I don't know. Quirrell burst into the Great Hall during the feast and said there was one in the dungeons... I realized you didn't know and came to get you back to the common rooms. Ron didn't want to come with me. I didn't expect to see the Troll up here." Harry whispered back as the troll lumbered around the corner. Harry sighed in relief, "Good, it went the other way, we can get up to Gryffindor tower now."
Hermione nodded, the two rushed away as Hermione wiped the tears from her face from her earlier crying. As they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, there were still some upper year Gryffindors shuffling in, and they followed them in.
The common room was packed and noisy. Everyone was eating the food that had been sent up. Ron started to approach Harry and tried to drag him away from Hermione.
"Come on, you got her to stop crying, let's go eat." Ron said.
"No," Harry replied, "I'm going to sit here with Hermione. And unless you're going to apologize to her, I'm not going to eat with you."
Ron puffed up angrily, glared at Hermione, then stormed away without a word.
"Thanks..." Hermione said.
They hurried off to get their plates.
From that moment on, Hermione Granger became Harry's best friend. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other. Escaping a 12 foot mountain troll is one of them.

[bissek]

Ron's real purpose in the HP series is to serve as an interface by which Harry can learn about the basic structure of wizard society. That role is needed less and less over the course of the books, but Ron never really develops a purpose beyond that.
There is a fanfic with a Jusenkyo cursed Harry. It's called Magic and Martial Arts: Year 1. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2140593/1/. It hasn't been updated since February, and they haven't gotten to the troll yet. So far, the only people in Hogwarts who know that Harry James Saotome Potter (distant cousin and adoptive brother of Ranma Saotome) and 'Jade Tendo' are the same person are Hermione, Professor McGonagall, and possibly Dumbledore.
The biggest parallel between Ranma 1/2 and Harry Potter is that people in both stories will never learn from their mistakes if they can possibly avoid it. In Nerima this seems to create a chaotic climate that brings mild mayhem to everybody, but in England this seems to have created a situation that appears peaceful but has the entire country wired to self-destruct.
The whole problem starts at Hogwarts (and, by extension, Dumbledore, as he's been in charge there for more than forty years). The house cup may at one point have been a way to encourage students to do their best and not misbehave, but it evolved into a reason for all the houses to be at each other's throats. Educational rivals in the muggle world don't cause problems. The rivals only see each other at football games (or whatever other sport), so conflicts are minimized, and once you leave that school, there are so many schools in the country that the odds that you will have to deal with someone from a rival school you dislike are fairly low. At Hogwarts, the rivals are different dorms of the same school. People have to deal with their rivals EVERY DAY. To make matters worse, the most severe rivals (Griffindor/Slytherin) meet under the supervision of the teacher least capable of acting in a mature and unbiased manner. And to make things worse, virtually every mage in Britain goes to the same school. Because of four teachers squabbling over who gets to keep a piece of tin in their office for a year, the next generation of wizards is stuck with a lot of petty grudges that will carry over into their adult lives, and make it impossible for their society to work with itself.
The whole plot of HP derives from a failure to learn from mistakes. If a baby can incapacitate a dark wizard when nobody else can even hurt the guy, the most logical conclusion is that the Aurors aren't very good. Nobody increases Auror training or numbers after the first war. If a social position is openly backed by a mass murderer, maybe that position is morally wrong. Blood purism is still a socially acceptable viewpoint ten years after the first war. If a person proves that he cannot act responsibly in certain situations, then he should not be put in them. Dumbledore continually forces Harry and Snape to deal with each other in the hopes that Snape will learn to act his age, but Snape just keeps on acting like a twelve year old bully who knows his victim isn't allowed to fight back. The only thing Snape really teaches is that it's all right for Slytherins to be treachorous, bigoted and cruel, which he does by allowing his students to get away with anything, no matter how obviously they are in the wrong.

[nuclear death frog]

and giving Harry a chance for a much closer friendship with Hermione.

I snipped the rest.
Posts with this premise amuse me. Greatly.
Personally, I think they're a result of people seeing the movies first and reading the books later, if at all. Movie Hermione and Book Hermione are virtually nothing alike -- they are, in fact, so different that I have repeatedly seen Movie Hermione referred to as "Hermione Sue".
This HP Lexicon essay looks very closely at the Harry/Hermione dynamic and is well worth reading, even though it doesn't cover Half-Blood Prince since there wouldn't be much point for it to do so. And here is an essay solely on Hermione from someone who has read and analyzed the books to extremes. His analysis is, in my estimation, exceptional and VERY thorough.

[Atlan]

I always found it iritating how Fanfic Ron, like Fanfic Akane, are always shown as jerks. Would it kill people to write a fanfic bassed on the paper version (book or manga) as opposed to the big screen version?
In the book, Ron is a jerk. For about a third of goblet of fire. The rest of the series, he's a good friend, sticking to harry through thick and thin. Yet in most of the HP Fanfic i've read, he's a jerk who hates harry, is jellous of him, or just plain sucks.
The Harry Potter movie, the first one, i expected to be awesome. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for it. Dear god, it was one of the worst movies i've ever seen! And they just got worse and worse. For gods sake, people, the movies are a fricken cancer! A mutation! And about as benificial as being born without a stomach or intistines.
This soured me to all HP fics realy, except 'Make a wish' and 'Browncoat, Green eyes'.

[Nekomata-sensei]

Posts with this premise amuse me. Greatly.
Personally, I think they're a result of people seeing the movies first and reading the books later, if at all. Movie Hermione and Book Hermione are virtually nothing alike -- they are, in fact, so different that I have repeatedly seen Movie Hermione referred to as "Hermione Sue".

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not looking here at a Harry/Hermione relationship in a romantic sense, but in a frienship sense. After reading the essay in your link, I agree that Hermione is a poor source of fun and a poor romantic choice for Harry, but I still believe Ron is more of a negative influence on Harry than a postive one, at least in terms of his overall survival and success.
In this divergence, I take some interpretations with Harry that can't be proved in cannon, and seem rather unlikely, but are still slightly explainable. Harry learned to hide any inteligence in his formative years, he wasn't allowed to go of on his own to places like the library, and the Dursleys certainly never went there, he never made friends and was bullied horrendously. In this story, Harry sypathizes with Hermione because of how she's hurt by Ron's attitidue, when he realizes she's only trying to help. It's Ron's behavior that brings about these revelations. It was, mostly thanks to sitting with Ron on the train, that Harry became a Gryffindor rather than a Slytherin, because he stood up to Malfoy in defense of Ron and heard so many bad things about Slytherin from Malfoy, rather than just from Hagrid, who isn't a seemingly reliable source of information.
I'm taking Harry's character in a way that assumes that Harry, in cannon, gets _used_ to hiding his inteligence, he's afraid of being seen in a similar vein as Hermione, or attracting attention to himself, but he is facinated with this new world of magic, the way he avidly reads his school books at the Dursleys when he gets the chance while waiting for the day he leaves for school in the first book shows that he's excited, it's just that he hasn't truly been bitten by the learning bug, and interaction with Ron curbs his curiosity and joy of learning, as he immitate's Ron's dislike and finds enjoyment in other activities like discussing Quidditch or playing exploding snap.
But, given the essay I just read, I think it's important that Harry gets out and has fun more. However, this fun doens't have to be the way he has fun with Ron. Harry can learn to have fun finding creative uses for spells, or maybe practicing dueling with Hermione or doing sneaky, but academic things like learning to become an animagus, something I had hoped he would do by now in the books with his discoveries about the Marauders in 3rd year. I think Hermione would be less of an overbearing and annoying presence if Harry didn't resist studying and learning, but instead wanted to find more exciting and interesting things to study and learn on occasion, was actually trying to get the best grades he could, and with Hermione's help, he'd succeed at getting much better grades than he does in cannon, and then when they're done studying each afternoon, they'd have in fact, _more_ time to have fun, because Harry would be resisting and procrastinating less and Hermione spending less time trying to force him and Ron to study. As bissek said, people don't learn from their mistakes in the Harry Potter series, characters really don't develop that much, but what if the did? Both Harry and Hermione, at this point in the first book, have a lot of room for development, neither of them have had much in the way of friendship before, they both have difficulty with social interaction, but perhaps if Harry was a bit less resistant to Hermoine's mothering, maybe if he didn't have Ron discouraging him from listening to her and didn't get into the habbit, she wouldn't be so nagging because she knows she learns she only has to tell him once. Maybe after hearing his past, Hermione will try to listen to Harry more?
The relationship I was imagining was something where Hermione is still rather mothering of Harry, he's slightly sarcastic and bitter, but occasionally shows strong leadership qualities, but most of the time, Harry would let Hermione deal with other people for him, keep attention off him by drawing it to herself instead, help him fight against the injustices in his life, be a confidant to Harry's pain and secrets and understand him better because of that.
I really doubt anyone in the cannon series but Ron and possibly Mrs. Figg really knows just how bad Harry's life with the Dursley's was, but I don't think _anyone_ in the series understands the impact of it who knows. Ron probably doesn't even know the meaning of the words 'Child Abuse', and Mrs. Figg is a batty old sqib obsessed with cats who is loyal to Dumbledore to a fault and was told not to interfere or tell Harry about who and what he is. And if Dumbledore knows, then he's obviously the master manipulator some fanficion I've read makes him out to be.

[Sunshine Temple]

okay I've had enough of your imense babble Nekomata-sensei.
Especially since this idea isn't really anime or manga related, and it's devolved into a personal argument.
Don't make me gag you.
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