Alternate Harry Potter Authors

[Big Brother]

The Harry Potter series, if it had been written by other authors:

Gene Roddenberry:
The children at Hogwarts always get along with each other, even the Slytherins, and there is never any real conflict between them and their teachers. However, they must constantly go on field trips to explore the darker and less well-traveled parts of the Forbidden Forest, where they frequently get into dangerous situations, which are often solved by the virtue of Hermione knowing some obscure and oddly specific spell that no one else had ever heard of. Sickles, Galleons, and Knuts do not exist, as “wizards have evolved beyond the need for money”. Voldemort is eventually persuaded to bring the Death Eaters in as full partners in forging a new, larger Ministry of Magic.

J. Michael Stracynski:
Dumbledore instructs Harry and his friends, preparing them for the coming war with the Death Eaters. However, shortly after Harry’s long-thought-dead mother returns and is revealed to be secretly working for Voldemort, Dumbledore reveals his true colors by starting to kill the entire families of all known death eaters. Harry and the other kids rebel against both Voldemort AND Dumbledore, eventually telling both of them to “Get the hell out of our Hogwarts!” When the other Teachers leave with Dumbledore and Voldemort, Harry and his friends must run the school themselves, and soon have to deal with the Slytherins, who are using some spellbooks left behind by the Death Eaters to secretly curse the Muggle-born students.

Robert A. Heinlein:
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny (note the minimum 50% redhead level) have a lot of adventures for the first half of the story, frequently escaping from mysterious and never-fully-revealed enemies known as “blokes in black hoods”. However, as soon as the author puts them in a situation from which they cannot extricate themselves, a horde of mostly red-headed characters from previous and otherwise unrelated books by the same author (and a handful of cameo-appearance characters from classic novels by OTHER authors) suddenly show up. This swarm of redheads call themselves the Order of Ourorborous, and they are part of a pan-dimensional multi-universal society dedicated to preventing war across the dimensions of time...by forming an elite strike force that battles evil in all the dimensions. Harry and friends are whisked off to the planet Tellus Tertius, where they enter into a group marriage and have lots of red-headed kids, some of which are their own clones. They then go on to make their own cameo appearances as the dues ex machina squad to rescue the heroes of other, later books by the same author.

Terry Nation:
Despite his failure to kill young Harry Potter, Voldemort survives and becomes ruler of the world, and institutes a repressive and violent regime, where his will is enforced by an army of jackbooted thugs. Many years later Harry Potter, whose memory of Voldemort’s attack on his parents was erased, begins to regain his memory with the help of Dumbledore. Dumbledore is killed in a raid by the Death Eater troops, and Harry is sent to Azkaban Prison. En route to the prison, however, he and several other prisoners stage an escape, and steal a powerful armored giant flying broomstick, which they then use as a mobile base of operations as they wage an unrelenting guerilla war against Voldemort’s oppressive rule.

Tom Clancy:
The Ministry of Magic is actually the secret technological-research arm of MI5, the British Secret Service. They have genetically-engineered Harry Potter to be the perfect covert operative, and are using a secret facility on the grounds of Hogwarts Naval Air Station to train him to do battle against the evil Communist hordes and their leader, Chairman Voldemortov of the KGB. Of course, the entire British Secret Service and MI5 are both just another branch of the American CIA. Much of the text is given over to long and detailed descriptions of how all the “magical” gadgets work, and what sort of training maneuvers the students go through as they learn all the “Plausibly Deniable Curses” that can be used to kill fellow human beings in the name of national security. Pretty much everyone is a Catholic, and even characters described as Jewish or Protestant ACT like Catholics. Even the occasional Islamic Terrorist acts like a Catholic IRA terrorist.

Ian Fleming:
Pretty much like Tom Clancy, except the Brits aren’t puppets of the Americans, and Harry Potter (aka Agent S.C.A.R.) has a lot of meaningless sex with dozens of exoticall beautiful women, since Ian Fleming wasn’t burdened with Catholic morality like Clancy is.

David Weber:
The hero is Hermione Harrington, who as a good patriotic subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, enlists in the Royal Dumbledorian Navy to fight the evil minions of Chairman Robert Stanton Voldemort and their vicious scheme to conquer the world and install welfare-state Socialism. Harry and Ron pretty much just tag along as she performs incredibly brave actions, all while sitting on her butt in a chair and ordering other people to do the actual fighting.

Robert L. Forward:
Practically no plot or character development, and utterly no romace or sex, just a long and creaky story that mainly serves as an excuse to examine all the magical devices and creatures in excruciating technical detail. Includes a long Ph.D.-worthy scientific paper at the end describing all the devices and creatures all over again in such painstaking detail that actual footnotes and journal citations are included. What’s more, they all would ACTUALLY WORK if built that way.

Stephen King:
Everyone, not just Harry, has the same recurring dream about being a snake and crawling along a corridor. Finally they realize that the Forces of Good are calling them all to gather at Hogwarts, and it is only the magical charms around the Hogwarts grounds that preserve them when the rest of the population of the planet is wiped out by a genetically-engineered biowarfare agent that accidentally gets released into the atmosphere. The Gryffindors and Slytherins then battle it out for global supremacy amid the rubble of civilization, and the colossal struggle is only decided when the Hand of God itself intervenes at the last second to stop the Slytherins from detonating a stolen nuclear dungbomb.

[Lolua]

This is long and evil, but PrincessMojo and I put much work into it.

Emily Bronte's Withering Hogwarts

The Condensed Summary:

Struggles between the Malfoy and Weasley clans result from the madness and greed of Potter, a vagabond orphan raised by the Malfoys but denied full status in the family. Confusing and less-than-creative character naming nails home the generational parallelism, but nobody can really be happy until Potter is dead. So, wait, how is this different from JKR's version? ;D

Extended Summary:

Lucius Malfoy brings an orphaned vagabond child known simply as “Potter” home to the manor. He grows up like a beloved but teased brother to Lucius’s daughter, Hermione, but is hated by her older brother, Draco. As time goes on, Potter’s brotherly love for Hermione grows into a fiery passion.

When Lucius dies, Draco inherits the estate and the care of Potter, whom he tries to kick out of the house. Hermione, meanwhile, has discovered the delights of the family in the next house and has become acquainted with their son, the charming young Ronald Weasley. She is courted by Ron, and agrees to marry him, after saying that it would be a step down for her to marry Potter. However, Potter heard her words and is driven mad. He leaves home and returns years later. By this time, Draco is married and has a son, Parkinson Malfoy, who is angry and tempestuous and often has to be hidden from his violent, drunken father.

Potter visits the Weasley home and captures the attention of Ginny, Ronald’s younger sister. To satisfy his anger at Hermione and Ron’s happiness, Potter swears to marry Ginny and then treat her very, very badly. He does this, and Ginny is indeed very miserable and regrets marrying Potter and moving to the Malfoy house, where everyone is mean to her.

Hermione finds herself pregnant with Ron’s child, and after a difficult labor, dies, leaving her daughter Hermy motherless. Potter is again heartbroken, because his beloved Hermione has been taken from him. His wife Ginny gives birth to a boy, imaginatively named Weasley Potter. Ginny dies during Weasley’s childhood, and Ron tries to take the boy away from Potter but ultimately fails.

The cousins Weasley and Hermy grow up separately, but meet again by chance in the Forbidden Forest. Potter invites Hermy to tour his home, where she meets Parkinson and teases him, much as Hermione once teased Potter.

Separated again by Ron, who warns Hermy about the dangerous and vengeful Potter, young Weasley and Hermy begin a secret correspondence. This develops into love letters -- though the sentiment is only genuine for Hermy. Potter plots to consolidate his son’s claim on the Weasley home by marrying him to Hermy. He convinces Hermy that Weasley is expiring for love of her, and she takes advantage of her father’s illness to visit him. Ron dies, Potter fetches Hermy and brings her to his home; Hermy marries Weasley, and Weasley dies.

Hermy keeps mocking Parkinson as he teaches himself to read, and this of course develops into love. Potter continues to be obsessed with Hermione’s dead body, and after he dies, his ghost wanders the Forbidden Forest with Hermione’s. Finally free to live their own lives, Hermy and Parkinson get hitched. The End.


Phew.... we're planning a "What if Dan Brown (of The Da Vinci Code) wrote Harry Potter?" as well.

[Lorpius Prime]

ugh, I had to read Wuthering Heights in a single day, I think part of my brain is permanently scarred.

[Big Brother]

In honor of this weekend's release of the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, I was inspired to add to this thread once more. Enjoy...

Douglas Adams: Harry Potter is an utterly unremarkable muggle boy growing up in London. One day, he is surprised to learn that the Dursley home is about to be demolished to make way for a new shopping mall development featuring a magic shop. He is even more surprised to find that the entire suburb of Little Whinging is simultaneously demolished to make way for a new campus of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His sense of surprise is utterly blown out of the water, however, when he finds that his friend Ronco Weedwhacker is not actually another muggle from Guildford, but is in fact a young wizard who is the teen editor of The Mudblood's Guide to the Wizarding World. Ronco (who choose that name after not doing enough research into Muggle society) saves Harry from the smoking ruins of what was once Little Whinging, and the two embark on a long butterbeer-fueled pub crawl through Wizarding Britain, getting in all sorts of hilarious scrapes, including a visit to The Pub at the End of Land's End. They are joined in this by Ginnian, a muggle-born girl who Harry had once unsuccessfully hit on at a school dance, and Nephod Longbottox, an obscure relative of Ronco's who used to be Minister of Magic until he stole the fastest broom ever built and became a wanted fugitive. And, of course, more comic relief is provided by Grangoid the Paranoid Golem, who has a brain the size of a planet but is terminally depressed about life.

S.M. Stirling: The story centers on the Slytherins and the Death Eaters. Draco Malfoy is the main character, and is a basically good guy who is unfortunately burdened with a twisted morality due to his upbringing in the Voldy-loving Malfoy household, which is a large rural plantation complete with a village of much-abused serfs who are nevertheless somehow happy with their lot. Draco struggles with the knowledge that he is simultaneously repulsed by Death Eater dogma, and doomed to fight for it because the muggle-borns will slaughter him and his family if they win. Pansy Parkinson is a lesbian, and goes even more crazy and becomes a sadistic monster when her teenage lover is killed in an early skirmish with the trio. In the same skirmish, she captures either Hermione or Ginny, and uses her as a sex slave to work out her frustrations and rage in prolonged sessions of lesbian torture sex. At least half the novel is composed of long walks through the Forbidden Forest and the lands of Malfoy Manor, with loving and detailed descriptions of the beautiful flora and fauna each contains. In the end, the Death Eaters win, and conquer the world, but the Order of the Phoenix members escape to a distant island from which they fight an unending and ultimately doomed campaign to somehow, someday, liberate the slaves of the Death Eaters.

Anne McCaffrey: Hermioneta is a poor farmer's daughter, but the local Grange was destroyed in a Thread Eater raid when she was a very young girl, and life has not been easy since. One day, however, she is rescued from poverty and sent to the Hogweyr School of Witchcraft and Dragon-riding. She utterly loves riding her dragon, Nimbus, and eventually discovers that dragons can travel through time and goes back in time to bring to the present all four Founders of the school to do battle against Lord V'd'mort and his Thread Eaters.

EDIT BY LOLUA: Edited for typos/spelling, because I like to remind BB that his language skills are fallible. ;D

[Big Brother]

A couple more --

John Barnes: Harry Potter is a gun-happy private detective whose parents are killed by the dimension-crossing dark wizard Voldemort, leader of the Baby Eaters, a group of wizards from an alternate Earth where Carthage defeated Rome in the Punic Wars. Obsessed with thoughts of revenge, Harry is eventually contacted by and becomes an agent of The Order of Ourobouros, a group of wizards from an alternate earth where Greece never fell to Rome or the Turks. From their headquarters in the orbiting space station Hyper-Hogwarts, Harry and his fellow agents are sent on missions to thousands of alternate-timeline Earths (well, the European and American parts of those timelines, anyways) to thwart the plans of the Baby Eaters and save a thousand histories from interferance.

John Norman: The series starts off fairly well. Harry Cabotter is a perfectly ordinary muggle, but he finds a magic ring that lets him transport at will to the alternate dimension of the planet How'Gor, where he becomes a sword-weilding wizard warrior in the service of King Dumbledore. He has several fairly pedestrian swashbuckling adventures. Then he kind of fades from importance in the story, and the last several books in the series each follow a similar plot to each other: a muggle-born woman is transported to How'Gor, where she is brutally raped repeatedly by Harry or his friends, until the woman realizes that she kind of likes it, and she finds new happiness as a sex slave.

[Lolua]

Big said:

Anne McCaffrey: Hermioneta is a poor farmer's daughter, but the local Grange was destroyed in a Thread Eater raid when she was a very young girl, and life has not been easy since. One day, however, she is rescued from poverty and sent to the Hogweyr School of Witchcraft and Dragon-riding. She utterly loves riding her dragon, Nimbus, and eventually discovers that dragons can travel through time and goes back in time to bring to the present all four Founders of the school to do battle against Lord V'd'mort and his Thread Eaters.

Ech.... not quite. Let's try this again, and let an actual fan do justice to the story. Or, shall I say, stories, because if you think Harry Potter is an overblown franchise, then clearly, you haven't read Pern.

WizardSpell. Lilia has been forced to live as a house-elf at Evansa Hold following her parents' murder at the hands of the self-styled Lord Karfax. After ten years' drudgery, Lord Karfax shows his face to inspect his property, and brings the dragonrider J'mes from Hogweyr School of Wizardry--and he's looking for the next Weyrwitch. They'll need a strong one, J'mes believes, because the Thread Eaters will return soon, sent from the skies by the erratically-oribiting planet known as the Dark Star. Karfax is doubtful and thinks J'mes is using the threat as an excuse to interfere at Evansa. Lilia uses her wits to force J'mes to kill Karfax in a duel. Leaving her home in the dubious care of Karfax's infant son Harry and the old tragedy-stricken warder Lupitol, Lilia goes to Hogweyr with J'mes and befriends his dragon, Prongth. When the queen dragon egg hatches, the newborn, named Spamoth, chooses Lilia (of course) and she becomes the Weyrwitch. J'mes manages to win the House Championship for Bendendor, but the Thread Eaters arrive soon after. Lilia discovers that dragons can travel through time, and to save Hogweyr from annihilation by the Thread Eaters, she goes back in time to bring to the present the four lost Founders of Hogweyr, nearly at the cost of her own life.

WizardQuest. Seven years later, the Thread Eaters continue to attack. S'rius, the younger brother of J'mes, gets injured a duel with some snarling Forterins and is sent south to recuperate. There he discovers small dragon-like creatures called fire basilisks, which he thought were only legendary. Meanwhile, J'mes' spurned lover, Bylatra, steps into the limelight because the author worried that otherwise this book might somehow be lacking in villains. She plots vaguely with Lord Rodon against J'mes and Lilia. J'mes gets in another duel, this time with M'volo (sometimes called T'riddle in times of bad continuity), one of the Founders of Hogweyr that Lilia had brought back to the future (which had been the present but was now in the past), over the Hogweyr House Championship. J'mes grievously wounds T'riddle and banishes him. Bylatra's sexual adventures with Lord Rodon cause the death of her dragon, PRIDEth, and the dragon of S'rius' lover, Berkke. *coughs just in case* Young Harry, heir of Evansa Hold, causes a great panic when he is paired with a scarred newborn dragon named Stuth. S'rius attempts to reach the Dark Star and fails, grievously injuring his dragon, Pfadpfooteth, but Berkke saves him. J'mes decides to look for other options.

The Scarred Dragon. By this book we begin to figure out that Harry is really the central character of the series. He is unhappy with his life at Evansa under the over-protection of Lupitol and the watchful gaze of his aunt Petunan and his cousin Dudse. He "rebels" by flying Stuth to a big cold lake in the mountains and learning how to fight the Thread Eaters on his own. In a desperate attempt to regain the House Championship, the aging exiled Founders steal a queen dragon egg from the Bendendors. Harry and Stuth figure out where the egg has been taken and steal it back before the dragons start attacking each other. As the Founders make a last desperate play in the last Quidditch game of the season, Dumbinton has a heart attack but survives and is retired to the south. Meanwhile, Lord Malfic is quietly hoarding Dark objects that he thinks Lilia and J'mes will actually let him keep. Which they end up doing, but only so Harry can marry Malfic's sister, Ginara. Harry, Ginara, Hemenolly, and Ronmur discover an ancient wizarding settlement in the south.

All the Students of Hogweyr. The culminating book of the series. The dragonriding wizardry students, led by Harry and his dragon Stuth, and aided by the all-knowing plot-device PENSIEVE (Positron-Emission Network Simulated Intelligence and Emulated Visual Evolver) system, finally rid the world of the Thread Eaters by altering the course of the Dark Star. Dumbinton dies, leaving the Yule Ball in the hands of Krumbell and Hermenolly.


Stay tuned for future installments:

The Yule Ball Trilogy, wherein we are introduced to Hermenolly, a witch too talented and too insecure for her own good, and Ronwur, a loveable scamp.

Rowena: Weyrwitch of Hogweyr, which tells the story of a Founder of Hogweyr and her tragic errand to save the wizarding world not from the Thread Eaters, but from an epidemic borne by wild half-kneazles.

Hengist's Story, in which the founder of HogHall tells his own story, parallel to Rowena's. And after you read it, you no longer give a crap about Rowena.

The DADA Teachers of Hogweyr

The Franchise Overkill House Elves of Hogweyr
Another Unnecessary SequelThe Astronomy Tower of Hogweyr

[Severus Snape]

The Yule Ball Trilogy:

WizardSong. Nobody in Hermenolly's hometown understands her, except for old Abertiron, who has just died from the goat syphillis. Hermenolly is not allowed to do magic, because her family considers it unseemly for a young MuggleBorn woman to do a wizard's tasks. Hermenolly gets a bad papercut and her mother lets it heal weirdly in the hope that it will prevent her from doing magic. Little does Hermenolly know that Abertiron told Dumbinton to be on the lookout for a MuggleBorn talent, and that her skills are needed at the Yule Ball. Life with the Muggles becomes too much for Hermenolly to bear, and she runs away from home to live among the fire basilisks she has befriended. One day while on the run from the Thread Eaters, Hermenolly is picked up by the Knight Bus and brought to Hogweyr. She meets Headmaster Dumbinton of the Yule Ball during the Sorting Feast. He realizes she is Abertiron's lost apprentice and invites her to contribute her magic and continue her training at the Yule Ball.

WizardSinger. At the Yule Ball, things are not easy for Hermenolly. She is envied by everyone for her friendship with the fire basilisks; Lavona and her Forterin friends call Hermenolly a Mudblood. However, Hermenolly does make several friends at the Yule Ball. She befriends Ronwur, a loveable scamp; Audvati, a girl in her dormitory; and Dobbo, a simple kitchen worker. Hermenolly is defended from the Forterins by Krumbell, an older student and Prefect who is her guide, and Minervina, the Deputy Headmistress, as well as Headmaster Dumbinton herself. After a week at the Yule Ball, Hermenolly begins to feel at home, and she is made a Prefect.

WizardDrums. Ronwur is worried he will never become a Prefect when he discovers that his wand has broken. While waiting for his new wand to arrive from Ollivander's, Ronwur is assigned to the Owlery while secretly taking on covert missions and message-carrying on behalf of Dumbinton and the Bendendors. While spying on Lord Rodon, Ronwur is accidentally cursed and sent to the Common Room of the banished Forterins in the south. Ronwur goes on the run from the Thread Eaters and meets Ginara, Malfic's awesome sister. He spends time learning from Ginara how to survive in and chart the southern lands. Meanwhile, Hermenolly and Krumbell have begun to search for their missing friend. The search ends well when Hermenolly and Krumbell resolve their UST and then find Ronwur and give him his new wand.