Hail Odysseus
is a Harry Potter fanfic by Brennus (author, among other stories, of The Thorny Rose) that takes four scenarios that are quite cliché (someone takes Harry from the Dursleys' house before he goes to Hogwarts, Dark!Harry, Slytherin!Harry and the Late To Hogwarts Fic) and delivers an amazing story, well built and engaging for the reader, plus adding a few details of warmth and love.
The story begins in 1990, when Gellert Grindelwald — the wizard Dumbledore defeated back in 1945 — recovers the will to fight after reading an article about Harry in the newspaper. Escaping from the prison of Nurmengard, he returns to England and rescues Harry Potter from the Dursleys before forcing the latter to kill themselves via Make It Look Like an Accident. As a consequence, people believe that Harry has died.
Nearly seven years later, the British magical world is amazed to see that Harry is not only still alive, but that he is also fighting the good fight against Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Unfortunately, he is not the saint many would expect of the Boy Who Lived, and when he gets sorted into Slytherin, people begin to believe that he might actually go dark. While there, he meets Ginevra Weasley, who was also sorted into Slytherin, and Tracey Davis, and Harry must learn the trappings of being part of a Hogwarts that is somewhat different from what he expected, while he finds allies for when he starts fighting Voldemort.
This fanfic contains examples of:
- Atrocious Alias: The fake name in Snape's passport when he is spirited by Harry to America, getting him out of the war. The name in question? Artemius Higginbottom.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Harry and Ginevra. She actually mentions this trope by name after the two of them drop out of Hogwarts.
- Big Damn Heroes: Harry swoops in to save Ginny from being subjected to the Dementor's Kiss by destroying them with white phosphorous and then using other Muggle weapons to distract the wizards while he frees Ginny and grabs Madam Bones as a hostage.
- Bittersweet Ending: Harry and Ginevra get to live their lives happily in America with Sirius, but only under fake identities after leaving Magical Britain and swearing off harming Voldemort.
- Also, two young adults are not going to be completely uprooting and reforming an entrenched and corrupt national government anytime soon.
- Black Sheep: Ginevra is this to the Weasley family, after she is Sorted into Slytherin. So much, that the Weasleys have no problem in giving her up to the Aurors.
- Black Widow: Blaise Zabini's mother is this, seducing rich wizards and then poisoning them — without leaving any proof — to inherit their money. Blaise plans to become the male version of this but when he accidentally kills Tracey Davis, Harry and Ginevra kill him in revenge.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: what Harry underwent when he was kidnapped by Bellatrix Lestrange. Both times.
- Combat Pragmatist: Harry has no problem in going for his enemies' weakest points, ambushing or resorting to dirty tricks to win a fight.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Harry's fights with anyone that attacks him at school. Particularly the fight in the first night, where he puts six of his fellow seventh-year Slytherins into the hospital wing, only using magic with one of them.
- The duel between Ginevra and Hannah Abbott. Hannah barely has the time to cast a shield before Ginevra blasts her away.
- Dark Action Girl: Ginevra is a morally grey version of this.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Harry may be willing to hurt, kill and beat the crap out of anyone he fights against, but he is fighting to destroy Voldemort, one of the most evil wizards to ever exist.
- Deconstruction Fic: Of many Harry Potter fanfic tropes:
- Harry getting sorted into Slytherin does not endear him to anybody, as everybody in Slytherin hates him because he opposes Voldemort, while every other person in the school hates him for being a Slytherin.
- Just because Harry is cunning, powerful, rich, and had a badass mentor doesn't mean he can't make mistakes.
- Ginevra getting sorted into Slytherin caused her to toughen up a lot but also turned her into an angry, mistrustful girl.
- Double Entendre: Harry plays this up for what it's worth when he tells Professor McGonagall that he can smell her pussycat Animagus form.
- Erotic Eating: Tracey Davis does this, eating things from Harry's plate, both to joke with Harry and to make Draco Malfoy think she is willing to work for him. Unfortunately, this accidentally gets her killed when she drinks poison that Blaise Zabini had put in Harry's drink.
- False Flag Operation: Harry and Ginny kill one of Voldemort's spies in the Ministry and make it look like Death Eaters did it.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- Turns out Dumbledore was right when he said there were worse things than death. Namely, being condemned to stay in Limbo forever, without moving on.
- Or, as Madam Bones discovers, losing all of her memories from after leaving Hogwarts, i.e. pretty much more than half of her life.
- For Want Of A Nail: Grindelwald fell in love with a Muggle woman, and spent quite a lot of time with her. This coincided with Hitler's decision to attempt to take both Moscow and the southern oil fields, and several Russian wizards managed to help the Red Army hide their moves during Operation Uranus.
- Good Is Not Nice: Harry is nice to those he can trust, but anyone that attacks him or his friend(s) can expect him to retaliate as fast and brutally as possible.
- Groin Attack: Ginny bites Dawlish when he tries to force her to practice fellatio on him.
- Heroic BSoD: Harry has one when he learns that Dumbledore knew that Pettigrew was a traitor and used that to get the Potters killed and put the Prophecy in motion.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager:
- Harry is quite shocked to discover that, at least in Slytherin, the older students have a lot of sex (in particular, Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini are apparently in a threesome).
- Hilariously, not even Harry is immune to this. While he resists Tracey Davis' "offers", he cannot do much in regards to Ginevra, particularly when the two of them have sex while in their Animagus forms, and after they drop out of school they enjoy spending quite a lot of time in bed.
- Hypocrite: Madam Bones claims she wants an orderly and lawful society, but has no problem in locking up one of the few people that can fight Voldemort or allowing an Auror to rape a teenager.
- I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Tracey Davis when she tries to get some information on Harry. Sadly for her, Harry is smarter than to fall for that.
- Insistent Terminology: Ginevra is never called by her canon nickname of "Ginny", save for one instance. She does tell Harry to start calling her Ginny after a talk with Luna Lovegood that happens shortly before they leave.
- I Told You So: it does not happen, but Ginevra knows Harry would be within his rights to say this when his reluctance to visit the Burrow proves right, after the Weasleys trap Ginevra and give her up to the Ministry.
- Leave No Survivors: in response to Madam Bones nearly having Ginny subjected to the Dementor's Kiss, Harry and Ginny decide they will have no more mercy for Aurors or Death Eaters (not that they had any for the latter before).
- Make It Look Like an Accident:
- Grindelwald gets rid of the Dursleys this way, by causing a rupture in the gas line and forcing Petunia — under the Imperius curse — to light candles.
- Harry and Ginevra getting rid of Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, although it is more of Making It Look Like A Murder-Suicide.
- Mook Horror Show: it does only last for a few minutes, but there is quite the descriptive tale on how Harry and Ginevra kill several Death Eaters with Muggle weaponry.
- Moral Myopia: when Draco Malfoy learns that Harry and Ginevra killed Blaise Zabini and are going to kill him and Pansy Parkinson, he gets angry at them, forgetting that he has already tried to kill or have Harry and Ginevra killed several times.
- Muggles Do It Better: when several Death Eaters attack a Muggle town, Harry and Ginevra attack them with submachine guns (a Skorpion and a MP5) and explosives, wiping them out in a few minutes. Amelia Bones (the Minister for Magic) orders the reports to be suppressed to avoid the Magical World from rioting, because, in the eyes of the magical community, Death Eaters trump Muggles defending themselves.
- New Transfer Student: Harry, who joins in his seventh year.
- Pædo Hunt: Madam Sprout thinks she is doing this against Harry when Michelle, a second year Hufflepuff girl Harry has befriended, attacks Susan Bones when the latter starts to spread lies about Harry.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the Aurors decide they would rather kill Harry and Ginny instead of working with them against Voldemort, Harry and Ginny decide Magical Britain don't deserve their help anymore and contact Voldemort, offering him a deal to never fight against each other, and, that way, when Harry dies of old age, Voldemort will be free to conquer the world. Of course, Harry and Ginny cheat: they managed to find the last Horcrux and destroy it before making the oath, knowing that Voldemort is now mortal, and whether he gets killed by someone facing him or he tries to transfer his essence to another body when his current one decays, he will eventually die.
- Talking to the Dead: possible for anyone with the Resurrection Stone. Harry uses it to speak with his parents, and to interrogate Death Eaters (and Dumbledore) after killing them.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Harry's and Ginny's fights with Death Eaters. Ginny riddling Dawlish with bullets in revenge for his trying to rape her the day before.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Ginevra mentions this by name when she tells Harry that she is done with them dancing around each other.
- Villainous Breakdown: The reason why Dumbledore was able to defeat Grindelwald was because he lost his will after the Muggle woman he had fallen in love with died in an Allied bombing.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Madam Bones, who claims everything she is doing is to try and avoid The Masquerade to fall, thinking that Muggles will immediately attack the Magical World.
- Wham Episode: A four-parter.
- Chapter 13. Harry and Ginevra kill Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, by Imperiusing the latter to leave a suicide note over learning that Malfoy is marrying someone else, and then having her trap Malfoy on the tower and make the two of them fall off it to make it look like a If I Can't Have You….
- Chapter 14: Harry destroys Tom Riddle's Diary, recovers his father's Invisibility Cloak and realizes Dumbledore has the Elder Wand. Harry and Ginevra then drop out of school, and have sex for the first time.
- Chapter 15. Harry and Ginevra kill Dumbledore to take control of the Elder Wand, then Harry summons Dumbledore's spirit and he learns that Dumbledore engineered James and Lily Potter's death to put the Prophecy in track. Harry sends Dumbledore to Limbo for eternity.
- Chapter 16: Ginny tries to visit her family, but they give her up to the Aurors, and she is sent to Azkaban. One of the Aurors tries to rape her, but she manages to defend herself. Harry rescues her from being kissed by a Dementor, and in revenge they wipe Amelia Bones' mind, leaving her without all of her memories post-Hogwarts graduation.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Sirius when he tried to convince Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks that he is innocent. Unfortunately, none of them believed him, and they were ready to send him to the Dementors without even considering the possibility that he might be innocent.
