I had an idea aged ago for an AU where Sirius scooped baby Harry up out of the wrecked house and just booked it across Eurasia, the Arctic Circle, and then traveled around North America for a decade before Remus finds them and gives Harry the Hogwarts letter.
but I also…well, I want that AU where Remus never shows up (or he ran with them) and the plot of the main series has to happen without Harry. The Marauders didn’t know about the Prophecy! They just knew Voldie was weirdly interested in the Potters. They don’t know there’s a soul-bit stuck in Harry’s head! Sirius knows Peter betrayed them, but doesn’t know who else might be a traitor. There’s every reason to run and no reason to come back. Harry gets homeschooled or attends a wizarding school in North or South America or Australia under an assumed name. When he starts getting headaches and visions, they consult an expert on cursed scars and deal with the whole “sort of but not really a horcrux” issue, because we don’t have anything in canon saying we can’t deal with it outside of unresisted-death-spell-to-the-face, even if canon doesn’t say we can deal with it nicely either.
But that’s a side thing. That’s not the plot. The plot is, what the hell is happening back at Hogwarts with no Harry Potter? Does anyone stop Quirrell? What goes down with the Chamber of Secrets? With no Sirius escaping from Azkaban, does Scabbers even bother leaving Hogwarts? Whose blood is used in the resurrection ritual, if anyone’s? How’s the Tri-Wizard Tournament? Does Draco have a different classmate for a nemesis? Was Hermione still crying in the loo the night Quirrell let a troll into the school? What happens with Norbert? Is Dumbledore using the invisibility cloak himself or storing it guiltily in case the Potter child ever shows up again? Does he give it to someone else to use? Who helps Hagrid with Norbert and Grawp? If Remus went with Sirius and Harry, who’s the DAtDA teacher in 3rd year instead of him? Which of these poor children does Dumbledore decide to groom as horcrux-hunters? Is he going after the horcruxes himself? Desperately looking for Harry? He canonically told Harry to not “put too much store in the Prophecy” and not feel trapped by destiny, insisted that Harry would try to stop Voldemort without ever hearing it, but Dumbledore’s own actions didn’t really seem to support that. Voldie cared about the Prophecy, but if he doesn’t face down Harry over the Philosopher’s Stone, does he care as much about killing the kid? Would he even bother looking for Harry, when Dumbledore is right there and has such a longer history of thwarting him?
There are so many ways this could go!
That sounds amazing. There are SO many ways this could go.
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