Harry Potter & The Wizarding World
Book I – Dark Arts
Written By Username: Seprith Li Castia
Author's Notes:
Chapter Zero: References & Notes
Hello and welcome to Chapter Zero! Not an update, as this book is already finished, but in my author's notes of Chapter Nineteen I promised a behind the scenes sort of reference chapter. Well, here it is!
The following contains spoilers for the entirety of this fanfiction so if you have not read it already, be warned.
Chapter One: A Potter Family Tragedy
- Canon never tells us how "Boy-Who-Lived" became the term of address. The canon Millicent Bagnold speech is only known to include the "let them party" line and seemed a good idea of where it came from.
- The choice to make Lily Potter infertile, apart from being a plot device, was a way to avoid the Potter story cliché of Lily having multiple children.
- The closing lines of the chapter are a reference to the "all is well" ending of the final canon Harry Potter book, which ends with a family together.
Chapter Two: Of Muggle School Boys
- Wendelin the Weird, the card Dudley Dursley ripped up, was a famous witch who had herself burned at the stake repeatedly. Clearly this is foreshadowing of the Polkiss scene later in the chapter.
Chapter Three: Letter, Goblins, Robes, & Wands
- Hephaestus, the first name Harry suggests for his owl's name, is a reference to the Harry Potter fanfiction, "Out in the Night" by Raining Ink in which Harry's owl is named Hephaestus. Good luck finding that story now, though.
- The next three names Harry suggests for his owl (Lucia, the Latin word for Lady, and Trish) are all a reference to Devil May Cry (two, three, and one, respectively) and the female leads for each.
- The part when Harry asks if his wand is "special" and Ollivander says all wands are is a not so subtle jab at many stories in which Harry obtains a famous wand like in canon.
Chapter Four: The Hogwarts House Sorting
- The traits the Sorting Hat says Harry has are an inversion of the traits it said he had in canon. The canon "plenty of courage" becomes plenty of brains in my version to reflect the coming change in house.
Chapter Five: First Days At Hogwarts
- During Severus Snape's first class, in canon and out, he asks three questions. Most stories have Snape ask the canon three, but mine only uses the first two and I made up the third. The question, for the record, was based on the Pottermore process for creating said potion.
Chapter Six: Power of Intent
- Harry's line of "Why isn't this working!?" is a self-indulgent reference to Devil May Cry 3 where the character Vergil says the same thing in a similarly angered voice.
Chapter Nine: Jokes On You
- Canon treats the Weasley twins and their "pranks" as a funny and harmless thing; then we are shown later on how they tried to murder someone. (re-read Half-Blood Prince if you do not remember that). Here I wanted to show how easily some of their pranks could go wrong. I have also never read a story where the Twins actually pranked Harry.
Chapter Ten: The Winter Duel
- I considered splitting this chapter at nearly three different points. I even considered making it a three parter, but I liked keeping all of the winter break in a single chapter. As a result, this became the longest chapter in the first book.
- Competitive and/or professional dueling has always been a fan "what would that be like" concept. While I have seen various stories address this, I know of very few who actually show it. This was whole chapter was my interpretation.
Chapter Eleven: Open Book
- I do not usually write single scenes out of context, but I actually wrote the section where Harry reads Augustus Rookwood's book three chapters earlier and wrote this entire chapter with the intention of leading into it.
Chapter Twelve: Accusation
- Rookwood's book argues for what is considered the "Intent Based Theory" of how magic in the Harry Potter Universe. This should not be considered the "canon" of how this story views the matter as the book is merely Rookwood's theory. Had a few people questions this one.
Chapter Thirteen: Challenge of the Second
- Many fan-fiction fellow canon and have Harry (or whoever their main character is) make friends with his core group early on and stay friends throughout. In my story, Harry first made friends with Terry Boot, but split over differences and he does much the same in this chapter he also split with Anthony Goldstien. In reality few people make life-long friends with the first person they ever meet and I wanted to sub-vert that trope.
Chapter Fourteen: To Whine & Dine
- The title is a reference to the come phrase "to wine and dine" which is usually referring to dating. Considering this chapter is about Harry getting ready to duel his rival, I thought it was an humorous chapter title.
- The scene where Harry confronts Lisa Turpin is one of my favorite conversations I have ever written and the original version was a much short exchange, but the back-and-forth between the two entertained me enough that I extended it.
Chapter Fifteen: Power v. Groans
- Interestingly enough, this chapter is the second most read of this story. The first most read? The first chapter. Ranked third is chapter ten.
- The titular "Power v. Groans" comes from Terry Boot's magically charmed flag and might seem familiar if you remember the "Potter Stinks" badges from the canon Goblet of Fire.
- Similarly to what I tried to do in chapter ten, the Harry versus Hermione duel was high-lights my attempt to avoid the more narratively boring spell slinging and show how good tactics can make a difference.
- The duel's ending was meant to be inconclusive and while Harry certainly came out ahead, it was not a clear win.
Chapter Sixteen: Sigh of Burden
- As a way to give the characters (but mostly just Harry) a breather, this chapter consists of mostly studying. However, following a common theme of this story, this chapter also shows these school children actually studying, something canon did rarely.
- The difficulties Harry is shown to have in this chapter with certain areas of magic (most notably Transfiguration) also help to avoid the "this character knows everything" trope. Harry is smart, yes, but he works for it.
Chapter Seventeen: Met By Moonlight
- The phrase "Ill Met By Moonlight" is commonly associated with werewolves and this title reflects the character's fear of being attacked by werewolves in the Forbidden Forest. The phrase, however, comes from a work of Shakespeare and there (as in this story) it refers more to a bad encounter at night.
- In one of my many deviations from canon, Hagrid never gave away his dragon: there was no Ron Weasley with a convenient dragon handler brother to take it, after all. Eventually the dragon would have broken free and here it did. Norbert's ultimate fate is not clearly revealed in this story.
Chapter Eighteen: Rumor Has It
- The return of James Potter and his associated scene are meant to set up book two and the conflicts there. Consider re-reading that section if you are curious what the second book might be about.
- The original story-board of this chapter actually had Harry reconcile with Anthony Goldstein and while the two would not have become friends again they would be civil. However, after the release of the first Fantastic Beasts film and the apparent importance of the Goldstein family there I decided to remove the scene entirely.
Chapter Nineteen: Finals Week
- Properly presenting the examinations over the course of a half weeks' time was an editing nightmare and required multiple scenes to be edited or rearranged to help it flow together more easily.
- Quirinus Quirrell's explanation to Harry, how he convince him to help him, were all lies. Dumbledore did not trust him and Snape was watching him the same as in canon. Quirrell only needed Harry to pull the stone out of the mirror while Harry trusted Quirrell. Just clearing that up.
- The largest portion of this chapter comes from Harry and Quirrell trying to reach the stone. I wanted to show how Quirrell accomplished the tasks and tried to stay as true to how I could imagine it was done in canon.
- Protections from nearly every Hogwarts teacher but most notably Aurora Sinistra and Bathsheda Babbling were included in the protection of the stone. I always wondered why some-one like the Ancient Runes professor was not included in guarding the stone and this whole section was how I chose to address that.
- Quirrell mentions that Babbling enchanted the third floor corridor door closed. This is not canon and was added to explain why it actually took a year for Quirrell to make his move he had to break down the seals on the door without alerting anyone. Then came everything else.
- The Dark Arts spell Harry uses, incantation "Repurgare," is non-canon and was created by me since there are only around five named Dark Arts spells. Expect to see it again. For the record: the name is Latin for "scalp" and the effect is exactly what you would think.
- There is a deleted scene of Harry learning the above mentioned Dark Arts spell, incantation "Repurgare," from Rookwood's book. The scene was planned for a number of different chapters, ranged Sixteen to Nineteen, but it never felt right for the narrative to have Harry run off and just read a book. Harry did, however, read it off-screen in chapter Seventeen before going into the Forbidden Forest.
- The ending sequence was rushed; for the good or ill of the story, it was rushed. Not all of this was unintentional, however, and much of it comes back in later books. For example: what happened to the Philosopher's Stone that was last shown in Harry's pocket? It was not with him when he woke up so where did it go?
- The closing line of this chapter, "All was well," calls back to the closing line of the first chapter and the likewise canon line that is referring to.
Closing Thoughts: Hope you enjoyed those subtle and not so subtle nods to other works. There probably a few even more nuanced references I did not remember including, but whatever. What is done is now completely done! Thank you everyone who took the time to read not only this, but this story as a whole; even if you dropped it somewhere along the way. Extra special thank you goes out to anyone who took the time to review and share your thoughts.
But the real reason I am sure many of you even bothered with this Chapter Zero is news on Book Two, right? Rest easy in knowing it is already in the making, but I do not have a release date for you yet. While I am working on Book Two, however, I will be posting a new (and much shorter) story to keep me from suffering a Harry Potter creative burn-out. The new story will be up on January 20, 2017. If you like my work, be sure to check back then.
Thank you all again for reading!
Seprith Li Castia here wishing you a fond farewell!