Archive of Our Own ^beta

A Slytherin Harry story which grows increasingly divergent from canon as time goes on, particularly from the end of Harry's 4th Year.
Written from multiple third person limited perspectives, newspaper headlines and letters in a linear narrative.
First Year features the following PoV characters: Petunia Dursley, Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, with some Death Eater cameos.

This series started from a pretty standard premise - what if Harry never had a reason to avoid Slytherin. The first draft didn't diverge much from the original plot at all, but as I did more worldbuilding and went back to fix some inconsistencies (my own and from canon), I ended up with something different enough from canon that I thought it was worth sharing.

Plot divergence is driven by Harry being Sorted into Slytherin, no wildly irresponsible adults (without in-world explanations!) and some creative license. Characters largely have canon-compliant backstories but aren't necessarily compliant with fanon.

At the time of first posting to AO3, Harry's first year is fully written and edited, the next three years are written and partially edited, and the fifth year is partially written, with some later scenes sketched out. There will be a mix of canon-compliant and non-compliant pairings but the only ones I know for sure at the moment are past and future Wolfstar, no Harmony, no Remadora. No plans for smut but there will be references to sexual activity when the characters are a bit older.

This isn't a Dark Harry story, but Harry will be darker and more powerful than canon. Harry is the heir to the Potter seat in the Wizengamot but nobody bothers to tell him for a while. It's a Warlockship, not a Lordship, and not a central focus of the plot, but it will be fairly pivotal for Harry in Sixth Year. If I add my explanation of how the Wizengamot works as a textbook snippet, I'll link here for anyone who's interested but put off a longfic with not-quite-lordship elements.

Multiple viewpoints mean there will be elements of character and House bashing and sympathetic portrayals of objectionable views such as blood supremacism, homophobia etc. although these will get less sympathetic as the series progresses.

Because the series is incomplete, I'm conscious some readers might get invested and then feel betrayed if a later work goes somewhere you weren't expecting. To try to prevent that, I'll do my best to keep this list of possible "deal-breakers" up-to-date as I write:

Redemption of some Death Eaters and Death Eater-adjacent characters
Dursleys divorce

Non-canon character deaths

Mrs Norris

Non-canon relationships

Remus/Sirius
others not yet known

Non-canon protagonist use of Unforgiveable Curses

Harry (Imperius Curse)

Non-canon animagi/metamorphmagi

Harry Potter (animagus)
Draco Malfoy (animagus)
Andromeda Tonks (metamorphmagus)
Sirius Black (metamorphmagus - historic)

Characters inheriting seats in the Wizengamot

Lucius Malfoy: Malfoy
Sirius Black: Black
Harry: definitely Potter, possibly Slytherin, definitely no others
Neville: possibly Longbottom