Italian, 31yo, law degree.

My desire when i started writing "Time of Retirement" was to create a clichè-free story where Harry was neither an awesome problem solver or a angsty teenager. Henceforth, my idea of making him an extremely old man who lived his life - a satisfying one - and is now "done" with it. He is not depressed or emotionally detached, even though i can see why some people can get that idea: he simply is not enthusiast about doing everything AGAIN, because living is wonderful but it also require a huge amount of work and dedication. While he will not stand by if something really bad is happening (which will be my excuse to make him interact with the canon story and the canonical end-of-year crisis) he will also have no desire to interact with others when he is not in the mood or it is not urgent; which will be most of the time. Just finding out what he should do will be a problem for him, and the amount of hassles he would face in doing it will be taken into consideration. This is also why i am unsure about romance: not because he will take some unbelievable moral high ground (Merlin, i could be this girl's grandfather! NonoNO!) which, if examined realistically, is crazy as it would force him to be chaste forever even when his new younger body's hormons will push him otherwise, but mostly for his pragmatic attitude (God, not a relationship AGAIN. ...maybe we can fool around tonight, she is attractive). Relationships and sex are a normal part of life, something neither to celebrate nor to undervalue: Harry, a mature man, knows that and wont shy away from it in the right situation. He would not fall in love though: this Harry would just roll his eyes at every sentence which has "love" into it. For him, there is affection for his children and maybe his late wife's memories, and that's as emotional as he consider acceptable to be. Everything else is for teenagers on their first crush.

The second focus of my story will be the magical world itself, which will be recreated taking JKR books at face value. That means an extremely low number of wizards, no complex magical governments, no secret powers or spells or deus ex machina. I love the fics where there is a real wizarding society (A Necessary Gift is one of the best examples) but i am not writing one. My only additions will be the logical consequences to what JKR wrote, or the covering up necessary to deal with plot holes. There will be a reason why Riddle simply did not drop one Horcrux inside the ocean, for example - and it wont be the overused "he went mad and stupid". Anyway, the limitations of the magical world will be a major plot point in my story, even if left on the background: imho wizards could have been considered, once, a powerful and numerically consistent élite of accultured peoples back in the middle age, by middle age's standards, but are now barely a small town on the border of a big metropolis. From this should come most if not all of the friction between muggleborns and purebloods: wizardly culture and achievements are lagging behind, and it is only going to get worse. This would pose (and will be dealt with in future chapters) an interesting dilemma for muggleborns, as if it is better to stay or leave all considered. It's all still unplanned though, i only have vague ideas for now.