Brainstorming, Plot Ideas, and Story Help
@bolstark This is a lovely and very original story premise! The only part I'd question is your characterization of Salazar Slytherin, specifically his attitude toward Muggles. While I understand wanting to make him more tolerant, it feels unnecessary and unrealistic.
Sometimes it's best to let characters keep their flaws, especially "historical" figures who come from a different time. Painting a sharp contrast between "what was" and "what is" can create interesting dynamics, something you won't have the opportunity to explore if you rely too heavily on presentism (ie reshaping characters to fit modern standards).
Quote from Heatherlly on July 12, 2023, 10:15 pm@bolstark This is a lovely and very original story premise! The only part I'd question is your characterization of Salazar Slytherin, specifically his attitude toward Muggles. While I understand wanting to make him more tolerant, it feels unnecessary and unrealistic.
Sometimes it's best to let characters keep their flaws, especially "historical" figures who come from a different time. Painting a sharp contrast between "what was" and "what is" can create interesting dynamics, something you won't have the opportunity to explore if you rely too heavily on presentism (ie reshaping characters to fit modern standards).
After your and @thegestaltprince comments I'm really starting to reconsider the Salazar idea.
Something that came to mind was that instead of Salazar - who isn't budging from his stand in the matter of muggles and muggleborns - Sev does get a gift from Merlin, the most famous Slytherin of all time.
Merlin would be a better choice, I think; he'd be a good substitute and representative for Slytherin
Regarding Salazar's stance on muggleborns, if you really wanted to include him you could think of how maybe history twisted his stance on muggleborns into something it was not? Or maybe he came to change his view because he was wrong?
Although Merlin would be a great choice too.
Given the Fantastic Beasts franchise and their use of obscurials, you could claim that he was only trying to protect their world because back then many muggleborns turned into obscurials and he believed the magic of muggleborns was corrupted, let's say they did not understand back then that an obscurus is formed through the wizard or witch suppressing their magic after suffering abuse because of it but that muggleborns are just born with a defective magical core, they are freaks of nature and should not be allowed near other magical children lest they infect them with whatever illness it is they are suffering from.
So I followed a fic called "Certain Dark Things" and I reread the part regarding Salazar. There the trio stumbles upon his journal and Hermione figures out that mudblood means traitor, not muggleborn. Salazar hated wizards who betrayed their own kind for muggles, that is why muggleborns can be sorted into Slytherin, Salazar may not have liked them but he also didn't want to exile them from the magical world. The basilisk was meant as a secret weapon to protect magical folks from muggles should the need arise. So you could go with this idea and preferably give credit to Eira Jenson/Rentachi who originally came up with it in the relevant chapter or you add your own twist.
Merlin is also a great idea!
I think you should still put Salazar if you are going with other founders.
We've to consider that the founder time was full of conflict between muggles and wizarding folks. Founders founded Hogwarts as safehaven for teaching wizarding kind.
Salazar could've distrusted muggleborns for being muggle spies or simply didn't trust them, he got super paranoid and kept Basilisk as a weapon to protect against muggles and muggleborns. His stance was born out of paranoia but his ideology got twisted for discrimination against muggleborns. History is ultimately written by winners and other founders or their followers could've written conflict with Salazar with an unfavorable account.
So you can still have Salazar, just keep him a Grey figure who not only can't bring himself to trust muggleborns but also doesn't want to genocide or kill them.
@darkangel and @naaga came up with really good idea for how to handle the Salazar situation. After some thinking I'm actually considering to put both Salazar and Merlin in it.
Salazar would be more of a grey character, he doesn't want to kill Muggleborns because they have Magic in them, they're magical. But at the same moment he doesn't trust them, and the Basilisk was thought as a way to defend the castle if it should ever be attacked by muggles.
For Merlin I actually came up with the Idea that he might be the link to the Prince family, maybe telling Sev that the Prince family are actually descendants of him and through that Sev also is. Merlin actually might make Sev his heir, so that he can access his vault in Gringotts because the goblins definitely would know that a heir was appointed.
Sev wouldn't become the heir of Slytherin, Salazar's gift to him I'm still thinking about.
What do you all think about that?
Thank you all so much for the input and help so far! This is an awesome community!
Severus could still receive the parseltongue ability from Salazar as a gift? The basilisk is not the best defense if there's no one capable of controlling it, right?
Regarding Merlin, is Prince a suitable name for a descendant of Merlin though? A magical descendant of King Arthur, alright. But Merlin? Merlin is known for his magic not for his noble ancestry (although, I haven't kept up with every single new adaptation maybe there's a royal Merlin out there?)
Quote from Dark Angel on July 14, 2023, 5:39 pmSeverus could still receive the parseltongue ability from Salazar as a gift? The basilisk is not the best defense if there's no one capable of controlling it, right?
Regarding Merlin, is Prince a suitable name for a descendant of Merlin though? A magical descendant of King Arthur, alright. But Merlin? Merlin is known for his magic not for his noble ancestry (although, I haven't kept up with every single new adaptation maybe there's a royal Merlin out there?)
There's one or two versions (probably not compatible with Harry Potter lore) where Merlin is a cambion (half-demon), but this is due to medieval writers wanting to recontextualize the figure in a Christian setting, like how they did with Arthurian legend in general.
Quote from Dark Angel on July 14, 2023, 5:39 pmSeverus could still receive the parseltongue ability from Salazar as a gift? The basilisk is not the best defense if there's no one capable of controlling it, right?
Regarding Merlin, is Prince a suitable name for a descendant of Merlin though? A magical descendant of King Arthur, alright. But Merlin? Merlin is known for his magic not for his noble ancestry (although, I haven't kept up with every single new adaptation maybe there's a royal Merlin out there?)
You're right, it would make sense if Salazar gave him the gift of parseltongue in case the Basilisk should be needed. I will include that, especially as it might help him to get some basilisk venom.
And once more you're right, Merlin isn't known for his noble ancestry and so Prince would not really be a suitable name.
But what if the descendant of Merlin was actually his daughter, that may have fallen in love with a son of Arthur. Could be that the son decided that he would never ascend the throne as he wanted to stay with Merlin's daughter and because of that Arthur gave them the name Prince, as the son would forever be a Prince.
What do you think?
Well...., here's the thing. As an author you have a lot of artistic liberty and Arthurian legend has been played around with quite a lot. The BBC TV series "The Adventures of Merlin" deviates in many points from the original legend as an example. How about you read a little on the classical legend and some of its more recent adaptations to give you more inspiration?
Something crossed my mind that's a mix of the 1998 Merlin movies and the BBC series: Morgan Le Fey is a witch, seduces Arthur and Mordred is born with magical powers as well. Merlin could have a daughter with the Lady of the Lake who later falls for Mordred? The Prince title would still suit Mordred well as Arthur's son and because he was born out of incest (in Harry Potter the circumstances of your birth seem to predict your character), he was attracted to evil or Dark Magic. That would also explain why Snape supposedly knew more Dark spells than the 7th years, it runs in the family! As Mordred was born of incest, no one would accept him as the heir to throne so over time he may have gotten the nickname Lost or Evil Prince, it is not a title anymore but a moniker?
That's my two cents. But I do encourage you do read a little bit more on Arthurian legend, you will definitely get some inspiration.
