Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past

Ok: Kokopelli=cool
The story was awesome, it made me laugh a LOT. lol.

Oh, and I love the yahoo discussion group, i guess, although I've never heard of it. :)

"Privately, Harry thought the healer’s eyes were a little too calculating." Ahem -- Kettle, meet Pot! Of course, given how calculating and manipulative this version of Harry is -- the hell he lived through really brought out his Slytherin side! -- it's hardly surprising he'd be hypervigilant for that trait in other people. Hypervigilance in general is also a standard symptom of PTSD, as you probably know. I'm rather familiar with it because my wife has PTSD from growing up with parents and an older brother who, in their own way, weren't much better than the Dursleys.

"Magical Resonance Imaging" -- snerk! Of course, such a test would probably have shown more or less what Healer Stanhope described if they'd done it on Harry *before* he merged with the memories of his older self, given what his scar turned out to be in Book Seven. Maybe that's what you had in mind anyway; I would have thought the memory merge was smoother than that, given how well integrated Harry seems to be now.

I'm not a Brit, so I could be wrong, but "Whoa, Ron, back it up" sounds awfully American to my American Anglophile ears.

Do you read Lois McMaster Bujold, by any chance? Your dialogue occasionally reminds me of hers -- "I don’t want anyone getting revenge on my relatives… unless I’m personally involved in the planning and execution" sounds like something Miles Vorkosigan might say (though not about his family -- Miles gets on very well with them, apart from some of the more distant Vorrutyer cousins). If you're not familiar with her books, just know that that's about the highest compliment I can offer in regard to dialogue.

Glad Harry has decided to nip the diary plot in the bud; I just can't see any reason to put Ginny through that again. He probably ought to do something about the basilisk, though; the thing's a menace, and Voldemort will probably use it somewhere down the line if it isn't killed. This time, if he thinks of it, he could do it the easy way: borrow a few of Hagrid's roosters and let them loose in the chamber of secrets. A cock's crow, after all, is as lethal to the basilisk as its gaze is to everything else.

Love the letter from Goldfarb -- curt, cryptic, very goblinish. My sense is that ruthlessness and calculation are traits goblins respect; I think Goldfarb is taking a bit of vicarious pleasure in assisting Harry with this elegant revenge on Vernon.

I'm enjoying your Gred-and-Forge dialogues (or comedy routines, as the case may be), but I think they're a bit over-the-top, a caricature rather than a faithful rendition of the way the twins talk in canon. They're not telepathic, and they do finish their own sentences now and then, as I recall.

One small deviation from canon: Hagrid couldn't have helped Molly and Arthur escape from Filch, because neither Hagrid nor Filch held their current jobs at Hogwarts when Molly and Arthur were there. The caretaker at the time, Apollyon Pringle, once gave Arthur a severe thrashing when he caught him returning from a night-time stroll with Molly in the small hours, and both elder Weasleys reminisced about Hagrid's predecessor, "a man named Ogg" (GoF, chapter 31).

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the canonical introduction of PTSD in Deathly Hallows, which showed just how bad it could get for a witch or wizard traumatized during childhood (although it wasn't explicit in the book, my reading was that Arianna was gang-raped -- what I know of PTSD suggests that nothing else the three Muggle boys could have done to her in a single, isolated incident would cause that much lingering trauma).

This has always been one of my favorite chapters for the enormous amounts of implications being set up. Anyway, since you were going through it all again... Healer Stanhope asks if Harry has been exposed to any USUAL magical energies :)

Got it! Thanks!

Good chapter.

gunny

This is a tough but marvelous chapter.

Finally, Harry gets some family time.

Actually, the way I pictured Kingsley, is more like the Big Boss Man at the end of Daredevil! SLJ is fairly skinny (relatively to JK's description anyway). I imagined Shacklebolt as being more chunky!

Your magical MRI was pretty cool. You have lots of good ideas.