Fanfic / The Odds Were Never In My Favour

The Odds Were Never In My Favour by Antony444

A Harry Potter AU fanfic where Neville Longbottom is the Boy-Who-Lived, his family's location betrayed by James Potter, who was thrown into Azkaban (and the picture painted for his arrest is worse than Sirius got in canon). Furious at this treachery, a mob killed Lily Potter and nearly their daughter, Alexandra Potter. Or at least that is the official version...

Now going to Hogwarts, Alexandra is the school pariah, viewed and hated as the daughter and heir of the one the whole Wizarding World regards as Voldemort's greatest lieutenant. It soon becomes clear that even just surviving Hogwarts is going to take all she has got, even as Voldemort makes his moves against Dumbledore. Only barely less a problem is how Neville Longbottom has embraced his role of The-Boy-Who-Lived at Hogwarts— and has the muscle to back it up.

Worst of all, within the shadows, an ancient organization continues its careful moves to achieve total domination...

This fic can be found on fanfiction.net and AO3.

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The Odds Were Never in My Favour contains examples of:

# - M

• 0% Approval Rating:
  • Leo Black, particularly after his suspension. The only reason nobody has killed him yet is because everyone who isn't fanatically devoted to the Light is hoping the European Magical Tournament will do it for them.
  • Frode Falk, a Light Champion so arrogant and shameless that other Light wizards quickly find him repulsive and completely untrustworthy.
  • Neville Longbottom, After the Boat Race during the European Magical Tournament's Fourth Task, all of the members of the Day Court other than himself consider him to be the wrong choice for the Day Court's King, and are preparing to vote him out... before Death Eaters attack the Day Court's citadel.
  • Ra, Outside of the most fanatical members of the Light, Ra is nearly hated by everyone for his arrogance and extremist views about the Light. It gets to the point where after the Fourth Task, Albus Dumbledore considers him a madman and thinks that the world would be better off if he were sealed away forever.
• Action Girl: Alexandra for sure, but she is training up Hermione and Morag to follow suit. The Dark Queen of Durmstrang as well.
• Adaptational Heroism: Dolores Umbridge is much the same as her canon self, with her enduring hatred of were-creatures and wielding the law as a hammer against her opponents. However, her Freudian Excuse (where family and loved ones were killed by werewolves in the last war) makes one understand where her hatred comes from and her first appearance in the story has her oversee Alexandra's custody hearing, where she follows procedure and favors no party or person in particular (with Alexandra being satisfied with the choice of guardian, even if she would have preferred Morag's father) and later stymieing Dumbledore and Sirius' questionable methods of exerting authority. Considering how utterly despicable Dumbledore and Sirius are in this AU, Umbridge seems downright respectable in comparison.
  • Peter Pettigrew is not the cowardly traitor he was in the original. Here, he joins the Shadow Blades due to some family debt but didn't do so until after he left the Order of the Phoenix over their deplorable actions. He's ironically by far the noblest member of the Marauders, which in context just makes him the least despicable, because he has a conscience and self-awareness that the others distinctly lack.
  • Barty Crouch Sr. still has his flaws, but he never helped his son escape from Azkaban here, and helps cut Dumbledore down a peg or two after the chamber of secrets debacle.
  • Marcus Flint, while not exactly a progressive-minded person, is portrayed as being utterly disgusted by Voldemort's philosophies and Ax-Crazy tendencies and holds great contempt for those who hope to see him return. He also indulges Draco's antics far less and comes to despise him by the halfway point of their second year.
• The Alleged Expert: Durmstang champion Karl Schumacher is a member of a monster-hunting guild, but is repeatedly injured by magical creatures without putting up a good fight in the first two Triwizard Tournament tasks. He ends up being eaten by giant crocodiles, but only because Lyudmilla destroys a bridge he's standing on, so it isn't technically a case of The World's Expert (on Getting Killed).
• Alpha Bitch:
  • Fleur Delacour comes across as vicious, haughty, and ungrateful throughout her appearances so far. Deconstructed a bit though, as according to Lyre this had made her decidedly unpopular.
  • Daphne Greengrass comes across as this to the Slytherin girls at first, but seemingly mellows by third year.
  • Alexandra and Susan apparently see Lavender Brown as one, although its mostly an Informed Flaw, gossiping aside.
• Animorphism: Animagus Transformation. The Exiled all drink a potion to figure out what they would transform into - Nigel is a boar, Hermionie is an arctic seal, Morag is a tiger, Luna is a platypus, and Alexandra is a hydra.
• Armor Is Useless: In some circumstances. Alexandra declines to wear armor in the first task of the European Magical Tournament on the grounds that it would slow her down, and XXXXX class monsters like she expects to be going up against are likely to be strong enough to tear through any armor she could come up with anyway, so mobility would be a far more practical defense than armor.
• Artifact of Doom / Holy Is Not Safe: The sword Excalibur, made by Merlin, was made by fracturing off a part of the Light Powers and turning it into a sword. According to Alexandra, anyone with a magical core more powerful than a squib would be killed by wielding it, especially if they're Dark.
• At Least I Admit It: The Army of Light and Exchequer both have many atrocities to their name over the centuries, but the Exchequer at least has never bothered to pretend that their actions were excused by being done in the name of a higher power, or that their hands are clean.
• Authority in Name Only:
  • Neville is named King of the Day Court in the Fourth Task of the European Magical Tournament, but he has little to no actual control of the conduct of the other Champions ostensibly sworn to his service.
  • After besting Leo/Galahad in a duel, Alexandra becomes Ruler of Britannia by right of conquest... a title that is totally meaningless given that Britannia had ceased to exist as a political entity in the Sixth Century, and holds no authority over Great Britain, the nation that was eventually founded over its ruins.
• Back from the Dead: Lily Potter is resurrected as a vampire.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Merlin and Arthur actually ruined it in order to establish the Light's hegemony. Now, the backlash from the Dark is brewing, and it promises to be nasty.
  • It's later (at least temporarily) re-established thanks to the plotting of Lucrezia Sforza, Romeo Malatesti, and the Exchequer during the Fourth Task of the European Magical Tournament, as they corrupt Fleur Delacour's Power of Life from being aligned with the Light to being aligned with Fire.
  • Ra broke the balance before any of them by shifting several powers from their original nature to the light (when it was originally only Innocence) and that Osiris had to shift the other powers to the dark (originally only Chaos) to prevent a total takeover. Fire was Life's original attribute.
  • The balance is almost completely restored after the finale of Book 4, as Alexandra kills an exhausted Ra, freeing all of the Powers he chained to the Light, and Osiris willingly releases Corruption, Confusion, and War from the Dark Powers. Combined with Life and Lust being restored to the Powers of Fire and Water respectively, Innocence is the only Power still aligned with the Light, while Chaos and Death are the only Powers aligned with the Dark.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • The basis of the fierce loyalty and friendship the Exiles show one another. Each of them is the first friends they have ever had (which frankly says some sad things about the Wizarding World). Especially for Alexandra, as they are not only her only friends from her age-group, but among the bare handful of people who have ever cared about her, and shown genuine kindness.
  • Lupin's absolute loyalty to Dumbledore stems from the fact that Albus allowed him to get a proper magical education despite his lycanthropy. It even holds when it's pointed out to him that in the twenty years since, Dumbledore has never once even tried to get another werewolf into Hogwarts, despite many possible candidates.
• Big Bad: It's hard to tell with so many possibilities, but up through the first half of year four, the primary candidate seemed to be either Osiris, King of the Exchequer, or his brother Ra, Archmage of the Army of Light. Then their mutual defeat caused the rebirth of Apophis the Great Enemy.
• Big Damn Heroes: Alexandra arrives just in time to save Lyre (and the Malfoy family) from the Death Eater attack at the Quidditch World Cup.
• Big Eater: One description of Crabbe and Goyle includes the following:
  The topics they valued above all were food and how to obtain more of it. if there was a drop of ambition in their heads, it had to be food related.
• Black Widow: Lady Zabini, who has been through numerous husbands over the years, all of whom have died, usually through accident or misadventure. Even though there's no proof she killed any of them, the sheer number of deceased husbands makes everyone certain that she's behind it somehow. She did kill most of them (her first husband may genuinely have been a casualty of a Death Eater raid without his wife's involvement), by poisoning them with bad luck inducing Lamia venom, to cover up her not entirely human heritage when her husbands turned out to be not as tolerant as she'd hoped.
• The Blank: Anyone with certain types of Dark magic-based immortality, though special mention goes to Rook Imposter, the Exchequer agent infiltrating under the stolen identity of Professor Sinistra for most of Alexandra's third year at Hogwarts.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Dumbledore openly loathes Erasmus Rincewind and makes no mystery of it. It's hard to blame him when Rincewind openly confesses he burned the city of Dresden (catching innocents in the crossfire) and feels no remorse about it. That being said, Rincewind isn't wrong when he points out that Dresden was indeed a strategic target full of Asshole Victim's due to its support of both Grindelwald's dark wizards and Hitler's Nazis, and that Dumbledore is displaying an incredible amount of self-righteousness given how he (and Magical Britain in general) spent so long doing nothing to stop Grindelwald.
• Breather Episode: Year three, with the primary conflict of the year (Azkaban escapees) being resolved at Halloween. But in return, Alex ends up learning that next year's problem (the European Magical Tournament) is going to be an outright doozy, so she'd better start preparing for it immediately if she wants to survive.
• Broken Pedestal: Alexandra reacts with clear disgust and disappointment upon learning that Exchquer members with whom she has engaged in Go-Karting with Bowser activities are involved in a plan to kill thirty million Egyptian civilians.
  I expected better from you. The Basilisk-Slayer didn't utter the words, but she was sure the other Champion heard them.
• Broken Masquerade: The Dark made no secret of the fact that part of their plot with the European Magical Tournament was to break the Statute of Secrecy. What they weren't expecting was for the Light to break it themselves first through their spectacularly unsubtle attempts to oppose them.
• Broken-System Dogmatist: The extreme corruption of the British Ministry in the late 20th century is supported because it shields the nobility from all but the most heinous legal consequences. Which the former matriarch of House Black exploited to develop a massive blackmail file.
• Brought Down to Normal: Relatively speaking, anyway - After Alexandra and Osiris (mostly) reestablish the Balance Between Good and Evil, all of the Powers released from the Light and Dark leave their current Champions, returning them to being normal wizards and witches.
• The Butcher: Erasmus Rincewind is known to the magical world as the Butcher of Dresden.
• Cassandra Truth: During the summer between their second and third years at Hogwarts, Alexandra and Morag visit Godrick's Hollow and talk to Bathilda Bagshot, who is... eccentric, to say the least. She makes multiple bizarre claims, supposedly to get attention, but she actually gets multiple conspiracy theories correct in some manner; Dumbledore and Grindelwald being in a relationship, Dumbledore being the source of Grindelwald's ideology, the Marauders all having animal forms, and Alexandra's mother being in a hot bisexual vampire threesome, to name a few.
• The Chosen Many: There are thirteen Powers, six Light (Innocence, Unity, Wisdom, Order, Life, Judgement), six Dark (Death, War, Chaos, Lust/Desire, Confusion, Corruption), and Fate, which used to be the Neutral balancing power but was forced into the Light by Arthur's actions at Camlann. Each Power has a Champion. And every single one of them is a Champion or Reserve Champion in the European Magical Tournament.
• The Chosen One: Neville Longbottom is the Boy-Who-Lived and eventually the Champion of Fate. Alexandra Potter is the Champion of Morrigan. Several secondary characters are the chosen Champions of assorted Light or Dark Powers.
• Chuunibyou: Alexandra is a very mild one. Her life is plenty epic and she often finds herself in serious and dangerous situations but she feels the need to regularly make grandiose proclamations and gestures that, while generally low-key, tend to be filled with Lord of the Rings references.
• Cooperation Gambit: Geoffrey Hooper, Ernie Macmillian, and Tasmin Apelbee (a Gryffindor and two Hufflepuffs) achieve second through fourth in the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff water preliminary by working together to make it through the obstacles, something no one else in the preliminary tries besides the Weasley Twins.
• The Coup: After the Statute of Secrecy falls, Alexandra walks into the Wizengamot and declares herself Lady Protector of Magical Britain.
• Create Your Own Villain: The Light does this a lot, which their more rational members are painfully aware of.
  Eleanora de Riva: Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, the Exchequer wouldn't find it so easy to recruit the champions of Darkness if you weren't trying to assassinate them before they're out of the cradle?
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Alexandra has a habit of handing these out to her foes once she's gained the title of Basilisk Slayer. The first trial of the Tournament shows this off well, as she uses Wingardium Leviosa to lift up a 100-foot long sea snake, use Depulso to hit and kill another Champion with said sea snake, and blast the entire arena with Fulmen Imperator Maximus, which would have killed Lyudmila Romanov had she not had her animagus form.
• Cutting Corners:
  • The DMLE got hit with a massive budget cut after the war ended that was never rescinded, leaving them short-handed when trouble starts showing up again a decade later.
  • Dumbledore cut several electives from the Hogwarts curriculum on the grounds of the small class size, such as Alchemy and Enchanting. After a generation of this, Britain has to call in foreign experts at great expense to meet its needs for enchanters and alchemists because there are only a handful of local ones left, who usually specialize in niche markets.
  • Albus dumping duties at Hogwarts he doesn't have time for due to juggling three jobs on his Heads of Houses instead of hiring dedicated staff to help with those tasks simply changes what tasks the staff doesn't have time to do properly. Now the tasks being underserved involve those required for maintaining order in Hogwarts.
• Damned by Faint Praise: Tracey Davis has this to say about Theodore Nott:
  On the plus side, the Nott heir was smarter than the only child of Lord Malfoy, not that this represented a particular achievement.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Alexandra Potter herself is a prime example of this, but the trope also applies to the Morrigan Herself (at least from what we have seen so far). When Alexandra encounters her in Pandemonium after escaping from an ambush from the Army of Light in Hogsmeade, the Morrigan is portrayed as dark and terrifying, but not fundamentally malevolent in nature. The Morrigan understands the importance of the balance between light and dark that Arthur and Merlin ruined and adopts a mostly neutral stance towards the Exchequer, giving Alexandra some information about the Exchequer and Morgana without forcing her to choose to support or oppose them. More significantly, the Morrigan also guides Alexandra to different places in the world to destroy various threats to humanity that could cause thousands of deaths if left unchecked, always giving her the option to fight or ignore them instead of coercing her as the Light would. The Death goddess even recommends to Alexandra that she spare Fleur Delacour after she tries to pursue her into Pandemonium to kill her, although admittedly this last one could fall under the purview of Pragmatic Villainy.
  The Morrigan: Death is permanent, but it is not without mercy.
• Deadly Game: The European Magical Tournament. The first task has three fatalities, several severe injuries that could easily have been fatal had the Champion in question not been medevac'd immediately, and one incident where a Champion only survived due to literal divine intervention.
• Deadly Prank: As detailed in Gone Horribly Wrong, Ron and Leo poisoning the Ravenclaw victory feast with experimental prank products sickens several people. This time, the Board decides they went too far and crack down on the school.
• Deceptively Silly Title: Hogwarts is one on purpose, renamed to amuse those who hear about it, and to cover up the fact that it was built on Camlann.
• Deconstruction Fic: Of Hogwarts, Magical Britain, and the Boy who Lived.
• Did Not Think This Through:
  • Most of the problems at Hogwarts stem from Dumbledore never considering what his various short-sighted school policies, which are derived from his personal philosophies and political agenda, might have on its ability to function as an educational facility, or as a small, somewhat self-contained community.
  • Draco does the whole "challenge Boy-Who-Lived to a duel to get him in trouble for being out after curfew" scheme, only here it backfires: it turns out that Honor Duels are Serious Business among the traditionalist families who make up most of Slytherin, who interpret deliberately skipping out on one to be a sign that he does not respect the old traditions that are the cornerstone of their subculture. This costs him a lot of respect within his house.
  • When Neville and his friends try the Polyjuice interrogation plot from year 2 here, they realize too late that unlike the canon Golden Trio, they don't have anyone in their number capable of brewing a NEWT-level potion. After more than half a dozen attempts at the month-long brewing process, none of which get past the first week, they end up having to buy some Polyjuice on the sly.
  • Dudley and his gang decide to threaten the father of a girl they'd been bullying at school by smashing up his car. This would be stupid enough in its own right, but they also didn't think to set a watch to make sure they left before the owner returned. They get caught red-handed, after which they are expelled from Smeltings and their parents billed for the damages to a quarter million pound Aston-Martin. Police follow-up to this incident gets the Dursleys investigated and arrested for various other crimes.
  • During the war, the Death Eaters regularly raided dragon reserves in order to slaughter the dragons for wand cores and potions ingredients without thinking about what would happen if you over-cull an endangered species. A decade later, the surplus of dragon parts gained from those raids is running dry, but since the dragon population has yet to recover, there is no replacement supply.
  • The entire reason why Dumbledore got the idea of restarting the Triwizard Tournament was to show off the magnificence of his school and talent of his students... without objectively assessing whether or not Hogwarts really is more impressive visually or academically than its rivals.
  • Given that the fields of magic being tested in the European Magical Tournament were announced a year in advance, Dumbledore should have required that people trying out to be a Champion be taking all or at least some of the non-core courses that would be covered in the Tournament, or at least have them learn them through self-study.
  • Fudge, the Minister of Magic, conspires with the Death Eaters to have the Malfoys killed to avoid the crippling legal proceedings against him. He does so during the World Cup Final, ignoring the political and economic disaster this would cause for Magical Britain as a whole, in a way that easily allowed the DMLE to trace it back to him (the getaway portkeys were copied from a Ministry portkey that could bypass the wards. Only three official copies of that portkey existed, out of which only Fudge's was not immediately accounted for when they went to check). The act was so selfish and shortsighted, numerous characters immediately lampshade his lack of foresight.
  • Dumbledore rescuing Leo/Galahad destroys his reputation in both worlds. In the magic world, he intervened in an explicitly declared one-on-one no quarter duel, showing a total lack of honor. In the muggle world, he aided and abetted the escape of a man who just killed seventy people, making him an accessory to murder.
• Doorstopper: After 110 chapters and 1.1M words, the story has only reached February of Year 4. However, the author wrote it so that each year is its own distinct arc, so it could alternatively be considered a series of fanfiction novels, Alexandra Potter and the Exchequer's Shadow (20 Chapters), Alexandra Potter and the Blood of Slytherin (23 Chapters), Alexandra Potter and the Wars of Futures Past (34 Chapters), and Alexandra Potter and the European Magical Tournament (33+ Chapters, ongoing), that are all linked to the same story title on Fanfiction.net.
• Down to the Last Play: The Fifth Task of the European Magical Tournament is a broom race that comes down to a photo finish between Alexandra and Viktor Krum. Krum wins the race proper, but Alexandra ends up with more points due to the rules awarding points based on placement at every checkpoint, and Alexandra was in the lead at the start of the race.
• The Dreaded: Unsurprisingly, Voldemort, the Exchequer for those who know them, the Dark Queen of Durmstrang, and Dumbledore to his enemies and those who have a better understanding of who he really is. What is a surprise, is that the Alexandra not only fits this by her second day at Hogwarts, but regards it as the reason she is still alive. On her first night, twenty older students from her own House tried to kill her for her father's crimes, and she sent 14 of them to the Infirmary before Flitwick got there. While she was hospitalized too, that act, and her subsequent feats, meant that by her second year the assassination attempts against her had largely petered out from fear of her power. By the end of her second year, when the Slytherins are given a choice between drastically scaling back their pro-Pureblood mandate, or fighting the Exiled Queen, they nearly unanimously choose the former. And those opposed to that, are too scared to handle her on her own. In a happy twist, her House is now more supportive of Alexandra too... up until James Potter escapes from Azkaban, at which point she's right back to being the school pariah.
• The Dreaded Dreadnought: Alexandra raises a German WWI era dreadnought from Scapa Flow with the intention of eventually utilizing it as a mobile base.Later chapters reveal that it has magically expanded ammunition magazines, the shells teleport from the magazine into the guns, and the hull is so thoroughly enchanted that it would take a nuke to sink it.
• Enemy Mine
  • Deconstructed in Alexandra's second year. After she and Morag saves a bunch of unconscious and already injured Slytherins from Neville's gang of Gryffindors, the Exiles are approached by Blaise Zabini, Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis, and Lyre de Male-Foi. Hermione refuses on the grounds they are Slytherins, but Alexandra lays it out that while the assembled Slytherins are not active in promoting Pureblood ideology, they still believe in it. Moreover, none of them are willing to commit to any alliance to the extent necessary for the Exiles to know they will not be betrayed the moment it becomes more profitable for the Slytherins. Alexandra and Morag only saved them out of human decency. As the crisis with the Heir of Slytherin intensifies, only Lyre helps Alexandra, earning the latter's gratitude. After Alexandra kills two Basilisks and five Slytherins, Morag informs Daphne and Blaise that the pro-Pureblood agenda is to be dropped by Slytherin...or else. Daphne uses this to become the new leader of the First and Second years, yet this only establishes what is essentially an unspoken armistice with the Exiles, not the alliance that would have so benefited everyone. Lyre eventually joins the Exiles.
  • Further Deconstructed with Neville and his band of Gryffindors allying with Alexandra to go to the Chamber of Secrets. While working together against a mutual threat, their methods are pointedly different. Moreover, except for Neville's ability to speak Parseltongue, they provide barely any aid to Alexandra, and even actively endanger her.
  • Some of the more rational Light Champions have proposed this with Alexandra against Lyudmilla Romanov during the European Magical Tournament. Possibly remembering how useless Neville and his friends were in the Chamber of Secrets, she says that she'll give an answer after they demonstrate their abilities in the first task.
  • During the first task of the magical tournament, Hogwarts Slytherin champion Cassius Warrington and a Durmstrang champion team up to take on a particularly dangerous monster. They overestimate how effective that will be, and both end up dead within minutes.
  • During the fourth task Alexandra is forced to work with the Exchequer because the potential consequences of the Army of Light succeeding in this round are too horrible.
• Epic Fail:
  • The Hogwarts Champion selection trials for the European Magical Tournament were supposed to showcase Hogwarts' finest and select the best of them to compete in Venice. Instead, only two contenders really stood out as being any good at all (Alexandra Potter, Cedric Diggory), with the other fourteen slots going to the least bad. To make it worse, what was shown of the other school's trials indicated that many of their tests were harder, and they still had better overall showings.
    • Worst of all was the Potions preliminary, in which all Hogwarts students were clearly sorted into three groups: the rare individuals who had done extensive self-study - which still wasn't enough; the majority who had no idea what they were doing; and a small handful of Slytherins who all clearly had Snape's favor since he'd blatantly cheated on their behalf - and even that wasn't enough to pass some of them! Even the ones that did pass did so just barely, as the highest score was 55 out of 100 points.
  • The "Battle of the Quidditch World Cup" is this for the Death Eaters and Voldemort. The Malfoys survived assassination, all their dark wizards present were killed, their international reputation was sunk by breaking the unofficial truce of the sports event, and they lost an entire loyalist family as a consequence.
  • If things continue on the current trend, the European Magical Tournament may be this for at least one and probably several of the premier schools of magic in Europe. As of the third event, Scuola Regina is the only one whose Champions appear consistently competent, and Hogwarts and Durmstrang have come across as a pack of incompetents who got lucky enough to have a single monstrously talented powerhouse (Alexandra Potter and Lyudmilla Romanov, respectively) capable of carrying the rest of the team.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Draco, Draco, Draco, you know you've sunk low when Crabbe and Goyle finally decide that you're a worthless idiot and turn their backs on you.
• Even Evil Has Standards: For all its capacity for darkness and cruelty, even the Exchequer has nothing but the utmost contempt for those who attempt to achieve immortality through Horcruxes, and it is even said that those who dare to create them are "cursed by the Dark Powers for all eternity."
  • Despite his many crimes, Dumbledore thinks that no one deserves to be raped. Not even Narcissa Malfoy.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite Neville's antagonism towards Alexandra Potter, even he recognizes that Alexandra would naturally choose to rescue her own housemate over someone with who she has had an antagonistic relationship during the Quidditch match, and considers Leo's and Ron's revenge to be utterly insane and idiotic.
• Evil Is Petty: Dumbledore to a disturbing amount. He blatantly plays favorites, refuses to take action against those wronging those who aren't his favorites, and even makes up rules that are rather obviously tailored to hinder his non-favorites. He even bans the student newspaper for writing an editorial suggesting he isn't as great as he thinks he is.
• Evil vs. Evil: Considering the outright despicable behavior and actions of the Light side and Dumbledore in particular, the conflict between the faction of Light and the Exchequer could arguably qualify for this trope.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After Alexandra, in disguise, saves the Malfoys from a Death Eater attack at the World Quidditch Cup, Dumbledore, Bagman, Scrimgeour, and Crouch are trying to figure out who the unknown savior of the Malfoys is. Dumbledore theorizes that it's Alexandra, with it being her particular style of ancient war spells, but then realizes that the logistics would mean that she had to be more powerful than all of the Hogwarts Heads of Houses, and was quickly closing the gap between herself and him.
• Expy: Nigel Wolpert is this of Neville Longbottom from canon. In canon, Nigel would still be a few years from coming to Hogwarts still. He is shy, clumsy, seen as a borderline Squib by those around him, and even he does not know why he is in the House of Courage. Yet with the Power of Friendship and the various life and death situations the Exiles get into, he is showing how he really does have courage as he sticks with Alexandra to stop the Heir of Slytherin together. Unfortunately, he is knocked out in a sneak attack.
• Face–Heel Turn: House Black undergoes this, though in terms of the narrative, they actually went from an antagonistic force to a supportive one with Sirius's death and Regulus becoming the Black Family Regent. The narration even notes that, when Sirius dies, "House Black's brief foray into the Light ended", as the only remaining Light member of House Black is Leo.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Albus Dumbledore is seen as a Badass Bureaucrat Champion of the Light and defeater of dark wizards. Actually, he's an Obstructive Bureaucrat and arrogant politico who drags his feet about taking on (or recognizing) serious threats, abuses his authority at every turn, makes enemies easily and needlessly through his ruthless arrogance, and is willing to condone the killings of children without any remorse simply because it would benefit the Light from his point of view.
• False Reassurance: When pressing charges against Fudge and Dumbledore for illegally suppressing the will of Cassieopia Black, which will likely benefit Dumbledore's enemies, Narcissa notes to the terrified functionary before her that the massive legal penalties for this will be waived assuming the head of the DMLE at the time of the incident testifies it was necessary, or the head of the House is able to convince a jury that it was done with proper permission. Given that the former head of the DMLE absolutely hates Dumbledore and Fudge, and the average person on the street is well aware of what a notorious oathbreaker Sirius is neither of these has much of a chance of happening, and both Narcissa and the bureaucrat know it.
• Fluffy Tamer: During the Magical Tournament, one of the few champions to get past the beasts in the first task is Eleonora da Riva, who offers food to the monster and then caresses the creature and gets it to give her a ride.
• French Jerk: Fleur Delacour, Lyre's Uncle and cousins, and Bastien de Rochefort (all fanatical Army of the Light partisans), and Exchequer member Helene de Brogile. Averted (albeit sometimes after Character Development) with Lyre and her father, Henri De Conde, Madame Maxime and possibly Minister Delacour.
• Friend to All Living Things: Blaise Zabini and his mother Stella are guardians to a magical fauna preserve.
• The Gadfly: The entire Exiled Army, but special mention goes to Alexandra Potter, who goes out of her way to taunt, rile up, and shock those she disagrees with or is fighting. During the Winter Ball in third year, she accepts Draco Malfoy's invitation, just to avoid and annoy the Golden Trio of Gryffindor.
• Girliness Upgrade: After being named Alexandra's guardian, Stella Zabini buys her a full wardrobe - shoes, dresses, make-up and all. Still, the girl doesn't start to genuinely use it until her inner Hydra makes her grow more conscious of her looks and develop a desire to be beautiful.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: When Neville gets injured from him and Cho falling off their brooms during a quidditch match and Alexandra choosing to save Cho under the assumption that Dumbledore will intervene to save the life of the Boy-Who-Lived (and he does), Ron and Leo are enraged at Alexandra's perceived refusal to save Neville and attempt to retaliate with a prank. Unfortunately for them both, Ron is under the effect of a Compulsion Charm that drives him beyond the lengths he'd normally be willing to go to and the two boys poison the Ravenclaws' victory feast with experimental and untested Zonko products, causing multiple people to vomit blood and go into seizures. This ends up in the Hogwarts Board of Governors spectacularly coming down like a bag of hammers on everyone involved:
  • Ron and Leo very narrowly avoid being expelled on the spot due to the severity of the prank, coupled with their extensive history of mayhem, mitigated only by Ron not having acted under his own free will. In the end, the two get away with a long string of punishments, involving the complete loss of all extracurricular privileges for the rest of their time at Hogwarts and out-of-school suspensions for months.
  • Zonko's is shut down for inspection and Sirius, being the primary shareholder, has to pay a severe fine.
  • Even Dumbledore isn't spared: having repeatedly pardoned the boys for expulsion-worthy crimes and barely even being at school due to spending all his time playing politics at the ICW and the Wizengamot, instead delegating his school responsibilities to the teaching staff who don't have the free capacity for it next to their own duties, prompts the Board to offer him a choice between resignation from his ICW and Wizengamot positions in exchange for retaining his position as Headmaster, or getting fired for gross negligence and incompetence.
  • The only reason Neville doesn't get into any trouble over having the Potter Invisibility Cloak is because Leo falls on his sword and claims that Dumbledore gave it to him. Dumbledore gets hit with massive fines for giving the cloak away instead of returning it to its rightful owner back in 1981.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Or rather, Light Cannot Comprehend Dark, as Dumbledore isn't nearly as good as he thinks he is. He seems incapable of conceiving the possibility that Alexandra Potter, despite being Dark, doesn't have a villainous objective, or any objectives at all beyond getting herself and her friends through school alive despite getting repeatedly caught up in the plots of assorted Light and Dark factions through no fault of her own.
• Good Is Not Soft: A major theme of the stories. The characters most often portrayed as truly good are the ones willing to fight (and often kill) Dark Wizards rather than merely hanging back and making tsskking noises at them.
• Gossipy Hens: Lavender Brown's nickname is the Gossip Queen of Hogwarts, and the gathering and spreading of information is described as her one real talent. (Susan comments that she apparently gets it from her mother.) Interestingly, the first scene to actually show such Lavender gathering together a bunch of students for such a purpose shows the group intelligently pooling and discussing information fairly relevant to the coming year, rather than cattily spreading nasty rumors or trading insignificant secrets (although whether or not this is the exception or the rule to their general meetings is unclear).
• Happily Adopted: Alexandra eventually becomes this with Stella Zabini as her magical guardian. Although she doesn't particularly trust Lady Zabini at first, being wary of her shady past and having preferred Morag's family, Lady Zabini proves to be a caring magical guardian who demonstrates repeatedly that she cares about Alexandra's well-being and is more than willing to help her fight her legal battles and deal with the problems caused by the Ministry and Dumbledore. Eventually, the two of them grow to trust each other to the point that Lady Zabini reveals her Lamia heritage to Alexandra, a well-kept family secret that she absolutely wouldn't have revealed to someone she didn't trust.
• Heel–Face Turn: Despite her reputation, Bellatrix was never as loyal to Voldemort or his ideals as people thought. She had already removed her Dark Mark about a decade before the start of the story with the help of Lily Potter and, during the Shadow Blades' attack on Azkaban, murders all the Death Eaters on her floor.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • The only crime that there was any evidence for James Potter having committed during the war was betraying the Longbottoms (which he didn't actually do). But a decade of propaganda escalation made Britain believe that he was an inner circle member of the Death Eaters who played a part in every crime they committed not attributed to Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange.
  • Various European wizards invert this with Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Compared to actions of Grindelwald and his followers, the Death Eaters are largely seen as failures who never took positions of consequence (Hogwarts, the Ministry) and whose great leader lost to an infant.
• Hunter of Monsters: Many Durmstrang students and graduates become members of a professional monster hunting guild. However, their competence is called into question when one of their members participating in the European Magical Tournament is badly injured by a chimera three minutes into the task, shedding the first blood of the competition.
• Illegal Guardian: Dumbledore blatantly uses House Potter's possessions and Wizengamot Seat for his own agenda without involving Alexandra for years prior to her attendance of Hogwarts. Notably the blatant conflict of interest involved is treated as normal by British Wizards. The degree to which he actively neglected his ward was not, leading to a scandal. It is implied and eventually stated outright he had openly hoped for Alexandra to die or remain in the muggle world to never claim her birthright.
• I Owe You My Life: After Alexandra saves Neville in the Chamber of Secrets, Neville offers to repay the life debt by canceling the debt the Potters owe the Longbottoms for their betrayal. The ritual doesn't work, hinting that the Potters hadn't betrayed the Longbottoms at all.
• Illegal Religion: Any religion worshiping the Old Ways, primarily Celtic deities like the Morrigan, as part of the Ministry's blanket ban on rituals.
• Impostor Forgot One Detail: Quite a lot of details, actually. When Neville sends a Polyjuiced Parvati to interrogate Alex over the Chamber of Secrets, Alex quickly figures out that she's an impostor and starts listing out reasons: 1 - Hermione's bookbag is never empty. 2 - Because of that, her posture is never that straight. 3 - Hermione doesn't wear perfume. 4 - She's asking about things she should already know.
• Informed Flaw: Alexandra and her friends like to imagine that just about everyone in Gryffindor besides the Hermione, Nigel, and the Weasley Twins are Ax-Crazy, incapable of independent thought and a bit too reverent in applying in Black-and-White Morality to her, but some chapters show that a fair portion of the house does hold some respect for her, criticize Cormac McLaggen and his friends for going after her during one of the tournament trials (getting themselves disqualified while not hindering Alexandra in the least) and don't automatically believe every string of Blatant Lies from the Light Partisans, even people she's quick to think the worst of like Dean Thomas and Lavender Brown. To be fair though, this may be the result of Character Development, even the better Gryffindors aren't flawless, and the house as a whole did give the Exiled Army plenty of reasons to feel disgruntled with them throughout the first two and a half years at Hogwarts.
• Inheritance Murder:
  • Not quite a murder, as the perpetrator was unwilling to commit kinslaying (probably because doing so would automatically disinherit him), but Sirius has kept his brother Regulus trapped in a comatose state at Saint Mungo's for years under an assumed identity to keep him from being considered as a rival heir to the family title.
  • A cadet branch of the Male-Foi family convinces the Army of Light to disappear their comatose Head so they can make a play to supplant the underage Lyre in the succession and claim the family title and fortune for themselves.
  • According to James Potter, the true betrayer of the Longbottoms was a cadet member of the family hoping that Voldemort would wipe out the main branch and leave him the new Lord. This has not been confirmed, however.
  • Multiple characters imply this will be the eventual fate of Leo Black, as no member of his immediate family has anything to gain from him become the Lord of House Black. As of the end of third year, the main thing holding them back is the possibility that his status as a Reserve Champion in the European Magical Tournament will place him in close contact with wizards far stronger than him in circumstances where they could potentially off him legally, so they're willing to wait and see if Leo's behavior will inspire someone else to kill him for them. After the Galahad incident, House Black disowns him, leaving him technically alive if crippled, in constant pain and wanted for major felonies by Muggle England, but no longer in the family succession.
• Initiation Ceremony: The Hogwarts Sorting. Several Slytherins supporting the Heir of Slytherin in 2nd year received an imperfect version of the Dark Mark. Morag MacDougal mentions Hermione would have to undergo some if she ever wants to join the MacDougal's religious rituals worshiping the gods of magic.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: Crabbe's mother once sung him a lullaby about the armies of darkness returning with a vengeance. And she sung it when he was ten years old.
• It's All About Me:
  • After the disastrous prank mentioned in Gone Horribly Wrong, Dumbledore and the Blacks are more concerned about how the penalties enacted on them impact their fortunes, reputations and future plans than any regard for the people who they wronged.
  • This is constantly noted to be one the greatest problems for the British Ministry of Magic. Classist hiring policies, racism against many magical creatures and restrictions on esoteric magic fields exist more for control and propagation of the status quo than coherent economic/civic policy.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Lockhart may be a fraud and a spy but he makes several scathing critiques of Magical Britain that are proven to be true.
  • Lily Potter and Peter Pettigrew are both disgusted by James Potter and Dumbledore using the prophecy of the Boy who Lived as explanations for their actions. They lampshade how many people have or will die for a incredibly vague prophecy of victory by a child.
  • How Bellatrix now views Voldemort's attitude towards British Wizards as little more than sheep in desperate need of a shepherd. Insane tyrant or not, the sheer amount of head in the sand management and corruption accepted by the public makes it hard to disagree.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Hogwarts is its own jurisdiction. The DMLE can't even enter the grounds without the Headmaster's consent, even if students or staff report a crime to them unless the Headmaster's desires are overruled by a unanimous vote of the school board. Between Dumbledore's Control Freak tendencies, his refusal to let his favorites face the consequences for their actions, and the way he doesn't care about what could happen to those who aren't his favorite, said permission is never granted, and the only times the board was able to amass the votes to overrule Dumbledore over the course of three years of chaos were the Chamber of Secrets (after several months of attacks, and only because of Lucius blackmailing some of his colleagues) and Deadly Prank incidents.
• Kangaroo Court: Crouch ran one during the war. It got so bad that an escaped Bellatrix was able to take her trial transcript to the ICW appeals court and they they were so appalled at the lack of due process that they invalidated her conviction and allowed her to walk free on the spot.
• Karma Houdini: Dumbledore refuses to appropriately punish students for numerous expulsion-worthy events, resulting in them concluding that it's okay to give it another go. One student made multiple murder attempts on Alex and only stopped because he accidentally crossed paths with an angry troll during his third attempt and got his head smashed in. In the end, dozens of students whose actions should have resulted in expulsion if not arrest get off with only a large series of detentions.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After the Deadly Prank, the Golden Trio and Dumbledore start to truly feel the consequences of their actions. They (with the possible exception of Neville Longbottom, who isn't really involved with the worst of their actions and behaviors) still refuse to see the error of their ways.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After the potions Preliminary for the International Magic Tournament, the Gryffindors reaction to their performance can be summed up as this (which is a bit short-sighted given how they really should be considering how to improve their potions skills before the actual tournament).
  Oliver Wood: And thus it had been decided that this preliminary will from now on be referred to as "the preliminary-which-must-be-forgotten. The very memories of this disaster will be sealed out of mind and out of our hearts.
• Life Isn't Fair: A fundamental truth of magic and something the faculty of Hogwarts routinely comments upon, for example;
  • Babbling cheerfully describes the versatility of using Runes as an alternate form of magic, and one that predates focuses like wands. A very good student will learn and adapt 8 scripts by the time they graduate Hogwarts. The most pessimistic number of runic languages is well over 300.
  • Flying a broom is not a joke, requires a proper technique and can easily lead to devastating injuries . Hooch holds nothing back in telling more affluent students they've been doing it wrong for years prior to attending Hogwarts.
  • Flitwick remarks that any wizard who fails to master a spell non-verbally can be crippled with a Silencing Charm. As non-verbal casting is not taught to anyone below N.E.W.T level in skill, a large number of wizards fall into this category.
  • One of Lockheart's books explains magical strength on a scale using the Greek Alphabet from Alpha (strongest) to Omega (Weakest/Muggle). 6 out of 10 adult wizards don't even reach a Theta classification. A Beta like Voldemort can take on a dozen Theta level wizards alone.
  • Mcgonagall warns her students in their very first class that Transfiguration is both complex and dangerous. It also requires an immense amount of theory and concentration to use properly.
  • Rincewind warns that Defence Against Dark Arts is mostly useful against Dark Creatures (Werewolves, Vampires, Dementors) and actual fights against Wizards come down to tactics and opportunity.
  • Vector casually reveals that because Hogwarts has Arithmancy as an elective, every British student is years behind their European counterparts who consider it a core faculty.
• Life Saving Misfortune: Montague bungles the second task of the Triwizard Tournament in an Epic Fail manner that makes him a laughingstock and earns him no points. However, if he'd lasted longer, he'd have faced Alexandra (who's infinitely more powerful) in a duel. That being said, everyone is convinced that a Cheated Death, Died Anyway fate awaits him once the third task starts... until he gets disqualified ten minutes in. He then manages to survive the fourth task by hiding after everything went crazy until the killing stopped, and still got zero points.
• Light Is Not Good: For being the political and spiritual leader of the Light faction, Dumbledore is perfectly willing to engage in morally and legally dubious actions if they advance his goals, including blatant intimidation if he doesn't get what he wants right away. Starting with him being outright disappointed that Alexandra hasn't died as a child since it means she can (and does) contest his control over the Potter family's wealth and Wizengamot vote, by the third year he outright believes he should've killed her at first chance and after Stella Zabini gains Alexandra's guardianship and fleeces him of a significant part of his own personal wealth for his unlawful handling of the Potters' Invisibility Cloak, publicly humiliating him and forcing him to re-prioritize some of his future political plans, Dumbledore outright considers Make It Look Like an Accident as an option.
  • For what it's worth, though, Dumbledore's shadier actions do eventually catch up to him, losing him political support left and right. By the third year, the entire Hogwarts faculty and Board of Governors have turned against him, he lost his representative position at the ICW and was forced to resign as head of the Wizengamot as well.
  • The implementation of the Statute of Secrecy led to a steady decline of the magical world due to their sudden separation from the mundane world, the subjugation of magical creatures and the destruction of magical Lichtenstein. This was pushed by the Light faction so they could break their Dark faction rivals and enemies.
  • The Army of Light and the Champions of Light tend to care more for the destruction of anyone they see as Dark than they do anyone or anything that might get in their way, or whether or not their targets have actually done anything deserving of death, for that matter.
  • Averted (so far) with The Trinity, another Light Faction, are said to focus more on the gathering of intelligence than preemptive strikes, with the one member seen so far displaying disgust at the tactics and champions of the Army of the Light. The Exchequer also implies that the Trinity and the Army of the Light are different enough that it would take the return of Merlin for them to start working together again.
    • Then somewhat Played Straight when Eleanora de Riva and Henri Conde, two of the more real reasonable champions, refer to the leadership of the Trinity as being on board with the Army of the Light, although not all of the members are.
  • Pettigrew has stated that ascribing the concept of "good" or "evil" to the Powers behind the Light and Dark is pointless: as primal forces tied to concepts only tangentially and retroactively associated with human morality, they are no more inherently good or evil than the weather.
• Locked into Strangeness: What Sang Royal did to Ginny. Not only her body was reshaped into a beauty, she gained blond hair and purple eyes.
• Loophole Abuse: The Tournament rules state that Champions cannot be aided by spectators. Spectators are defined as anyone in the arena or viewing grounds who is not a Champion or Tournament staff. So someone providing artillery support from outside the arena doesn't count.
• Lost Technology: There are a lot of magical arts that have been lost to time. Some of them are still known to the Exchequer. Alexandra is rather annoyed about the way that some of them have been deliberately lost due to the efforts of the Ministry, because when she tries to research ways to protect herself from them, all she can find are short entries that boil down to "this art has been forbidden by the Ministry since XXXX", without any information about countermeasures.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!":
  • 2/3rds of the Gryffindors taking the magical tournament preliminaries develop expressions of horror upon being told that the 3rd preliminary will test their abilities in potion-making (a class which not a single Gryffindor is good at since Hermione transferred to Ravenclaw).
  • Every Gryffindor watching the European Magical Tournament groans when Alexandra says the third task is potion-based.
• The Mole: James Potter wasn't a traitor, just an incompetent would-be double agent who never shared his plans with anyone, so his botched infiltration of the Death Eaters got him branded a traitor.
  • Lyre de Male-Foi joins the Exiled but opts to stay in Slytherin House to be this for them.
• Mooks: Dudley's gang is this to the Exiled after Dudley himself is kidnapped by the Shadow Blades.
• Motive Rant: Horace Slughorn gets one when asked by Alexandra why he sees the Exchequer as a good option.

N - Z

• Never My Fault: An inability to even consider the possibility that they might have done something wrong seems to be a common trait in the hardcore light followers.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ultimately, it's revealed the current situation was caused by Merlin and Arthur's desire to permanently crush the Dark in order to let the Light reign forever. It would be a laudable goal if only the Light didn't need a break once upon a time. Now, the Dark is ginormously powerful from a millennia of repression, while the Light is barely able to muster its forces which gradually depleted from their incapacity to be repleted.
  • Ra is proven to be the original transgressor for shifting several of the powers away from their original attributes to Light. Merlin and Arthur only hastened the collapse.
• Noble Demon: Romeo Malatesti, the champion of Ares, is a vindictive Blood Knight, but he also seems to respect Alexandra and expresses opposition to whatever Lyudmila Romanov is planning, even though it will certainly lead to large-scale hostilities. It doesn't last.
  Romeo: Whatever war [she would start] would know no discipline, no honour, no sides...and no rules.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Gilderoy Lockhart. He still acts like canon Lockhart. Only, he's secretly a spy for the magical American government, and he acts like The Ditz to throw off suspicion.
  • Subverted with Crabbe and Goyle. The rest of Slytherin initially thought they might merely be posing as dumb brutes but have long since abandoned this theory.
• One Judge to Rule Them All: Dumbledore does the last-minute points awarding as he does in canon, but it isn't as well-received - between the fact that a horrifically out of control prank war caused everyone to know that Gryffindor earned their place at the bottom of the House points competition and only a handful of people knowing what the last-minute point awards are actually for, it's seen as blatant favoritism. His repeat the following year, where he gave a thousand points to Gryffindor for Neville's (negligible) contributions to resolving the Chamber of Secrets incident while deducting a thousand points from Ravenclaw for Alexandra killing Death Eaters to protect the student body causes the entire school to stop caring about the points at all.
  • He later attempts to unilaterally declare an unfavorable (for him, that is. Alexandra thought it was perfectly reasonable if not ideal) result at Alexandra's guardianship trial null and void, only to be told (by Umbridge, of all people!) that no, the law doesn't work like that and when he attempts to intimidate Alexandra into compliance in front of well over a dozen witnesses including the judge, said judge instantly fines him on the spot for illegal use of aura pressure on a minor, adding insult to injury.
  • Deliberately averted with the European Magical Tournament whose organizers go against tradition by choosing an international panel of judges instead of the various Headmasters.
• One-Winged Angel: Champions naturally have this when they become Animagi, as their gods give them powerful and unique forms.
  • Alexandra has begun her training to unlock the ability to become a Lernaean Hydra.
  • The Dark Queen of Durmstrang has the Animagus form of Fenrir. According to Lily, Loki only gives Fenrir, Jorgunmandr, and Hel as Animagus forms to his champions.
  • Romeo Malatesti has the Animagus form of a Stymphalian Bird, a giant carnivorous bird with feathers of bronze capable of blocking a Chimera's stinger that can be launched as weapons.
  • Morgan le Fey, former Champion of Death, has the form of a Styx Viper, making her the Exchequer's insurance of control over the new brood summoned by their first ritual during the EMT.
  • Lucrezia Sforza has the form of a Nundu, a beast the size of an elephant that exhales deadly diseases.
  • Neville Longbottom has the Animagus form of Nemean Lion.
  • Henri de Conde has the Animagus form of a Light Falcon.
  • Frode Falk has the Animagus form of the Eikthyrnir. Stag which stand upon Valhalla.
  • Eleanor de Riva has the Animagus form of the Unicorn.
  • Leo Black has the form of a Griffin.
  • Ra has the Animagus form of white phoenix.
• Only Sane Man: After the deadly prank that nearly gets Ron and Leo expelled, Neville is slowly starting to become this at least in comparison to the other two. Unlike them, he doesn't blindly despise Alexandra Potter, and he understands that she was not responsible for failing to catch him at the Quidditch match when she was logically trying to save her own housemate first. He also has a much better understanding of how badly things have been going, has all but stopped playing pranks and started hanging out with other more reasonable Gryffindors over Leo and Ron, and seems to be the only Gryffindor who suspects that an unknown enemy is pulling the strings behind Ron's compulsions.
  • Henri de Conde, at least so far, is presented as one of the few Light Champions who ISN'T an arrogant, self-righteous, and potentially murderous fanatic. He has nothing but contempt for Fleur Delacour and possibly the Army of the Light as a whole, content merely with gathering intelligence on Alexandra Potter instead of confronting her directly and knowing full well that Alexandra would destroy both him and Fleur if the two were to fight each other. He even goes so far as to ignore orders that are implied to have been sent from the Army of the Light and/or The Trinity, showing loyalty only to his parents and to Horus, and is overall infinitely more reasonable compared to Dumbledore and anyone associated with the Army of the Light.
  • Eleanora de Riva joins Henri de Conde as another reasonable Light champion, who similarly has nothing but contempt for the violent methods of the Army of the Light and prefers peaceful and non-violent methods instead, something that actually puts her at odds with more radical Light champions. She's also the only Light champion who actually has anything resembling a friendly relationship with a Dark champion (Lucrezia Sforza), although the actions of the Army of the Light have strained that friendship permanently.
  • This behavior is best exemplified the day before the tournament, where Neville, Henri de Conde, and Eleanora de Riva all approach Alexandra to discuss the prospect of an alliance against the Exchequer and Lyudmilla Romanov, despite the fact that Alexandra is a powerful Dark Champion and that their actions completely fly in the face of the Army of Light's fanatics. Tellingly, Alexandra (who has made it very clear that she would kill fanatics like Fleur Delacour or Leo Black with zero remorse) doesn't brush off the prospect entirely and engages in perfectly civil and honest conversation with them, although she makes it clear that she considers Lyudmilla the greater threat at the moment and that the Light champions will have to prove themselves in the First Task before she even considers accepting.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Glamdring, aka Fragarach, aka Clarent, aka The Answerer the sword that killed King Arthur, may only be wielded by the Morrigan's Champion, in this case Alexandra Potter.
• Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting: The Logical Weakness of Polyjuice, which Parvati learns the hard way.
• The Peter Principle: The Ministry of Magic, unsurprisingly, given how Fudge doesn't come across any better than his canon counterpart at leading the nation.
  Scrimgeour was honestly wondering why the standards for the Auror Corps were so high when it was blatantly obvious the post of Minister could be seized by the first moron.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Dumbledore's three jobs ensure that he spends more time out of the castle attending to the Wizengamot and the IWC rather than actually running Hogwarts (in Year One he spent fifty-three days out of a ten month school year actually at the school). This causes a lot of his responsibilities at the school to devolve to the heads of houses, which means that they don't have time to do their jobs and keep the student body in line.
• Playing Against Type: Invoked Trope. The Dark Court adds a second layer to their Carnival disguises by making costumes for archetypal roles that are totally at odds with the person assigned to wear them, such as Matamore with Victor Krum and Arlecchina with Lyudmilla Romanov.
• Prison Dimension: Nidhogg, First and Last of the Elder Dragons, is held in one of these connected to the wardstone of Hogwarts, which inflicts Mana Drain in order to weaken the dragon and empower the wards and magic inside the school.
• Promotion, Not Punishment: After the Chamber of Secrets debacle, the Ministry of Magic has Lucius Malfoy is unceremoniously dismissed from the Hogwarts Board of Governors for his abuses of power and suspected role in the whole affair. Then they turn around and give him Dumbledore's job as Britain's ICW delegate due to being far more pissed off with Dumbledore than they are Lucius, and feeling that for all of his flaws, he does have the skills needed for the role.
• The Prophecy: A recurring prophecy at that:
  It will begin at Samhain. Born with the eyes of death, dark will be her first breath. She is the Heiress of the Forgotten. She is the agony of this magical era.
  Six Kings, Six Crowns, Six Swords.
  One by one, the Fall begins.
  Come Day of Battle, O Angel of Death.
  Cast thy lightning and reign over the ashes.
  Ragnarok.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Professor Snape when Cormac McLaggen complains following an army of Gryffindors ambushing a group of Slytherins.
  Snape: McLaggen, if you weren't such a dunderhead, you would shut. Your. Mouth. NOW!
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Alexandra hesitates to kill a Wererat leader until he threatens to rape her.
  • Dumbledore thinks that no one deserves to be raped, not even Narcissa Malfoy.
• Really 700 Years Old: The youngest known Knights of the Exchequer are around Dumbledore's age (literally — Knight Teacher was his former lover Gellert Grindelwald and his replacement Knight Necromancer is Albus' sister Ariana). Many of the senior Exchequer members predate the Statute of Secrecy, and some of them even predate Christianity.
• Refuge in Audacity: Bellatrix Lestrange outright walked into the ICW's headquarters at Geneva to claim her innocence from all her accusations of terrorism and ask for a fair trial, while she was hunted as a Dark Witch. She wins, leaving Dumbledore frothing at the mouth.
• Refusal of the Call: A villainous version; the Exchequer mentions that out of the four Dark Champions they've approached, two (implied to be two named Alari and Malastri in a later chapter) showed no interest in joining them (although both are planning to compete in the Triwizard tournament). Alexandra (who they have not made overtures to) is also determined to resist the Exchequer and their plans, feeling that being a champion of Morrigan isn't inherently evil unless you choose to use if that way.
• Religion is Magic: The worshipers of the Old Ways are basically worshiping magic itself, and all the religious celebrations have magical effects on the surroundings and the participants.
• Ritual Magic: Benign ones like Beltane and other holiday celebrations, horrific ones like Sang Royal which permanently warps and rebuilds a person's personality, appearance and magic and the ritual to give Diary Tom Riddle a new body. Also, presumably the Salamander a gigantic monster of fire and shadow was the result of a summoning ritual. Alexandra also uses a simple ritual to magically claim the corpses of the basilisks she killed.
  • Human Sacrifice: Sang Royal to turn Ginny Weasley into a dark witch and Voldemort supporter and involving the murder of multiple non-magicals. Also The ritual to give Diary Tom Riddle a new body, which involved the sacrifice of an adult witch.
  • Summoning Ritual: The Salamander a gigantic monster of fire and shadow was presumably the result of one. While we are not shown the ritual, it is referred to as a Summon, and The member of the Exchequer responsible is codenamed Knight Summoner.
• Rules Lawyer: Dumbledore, Alexandra Potter, Lucius Malfoy, Neville Longbottom, pretty much every major player in this story, good or bad, needs a firm grounding in the law to keep from getting screwed (or screwing others).
  • Read the Fine Print: Dumbledore uses an obscure law to deny Alexandra access to the money from harvesting the basilisk corpses until she marries. Alexandra uses the fine print from the same law to force Dumbledore to compensate her. The compensation is a tiny fraction of what the basilisks are worth, but better than nothing.
  • Stella Zabini also spectacularly knocks Dumbledore down a peg when she shows up with half a dozen lawyers in tow to demand why he not only held onto James' Invisibility Cloak for twelve years with evidently no intention of ever returning it to Alexandra, but actually gave it away to Neville despite its status as a Potter family heirloom. In the end, Dumbledore is forced to pay a significant portion of his personal wealth to Alexandra as compensation - and that's before Zabini points out that he'd better go fetch the Pensieve he also 'borrowed' from James because she'd hate to make him shell out an even bigger fine next year for that!
  • Bellatrix weaponizes the Kangaroo Court that oversaw her trial to plead her case for innocence in front of the ICW International Court. Crouch and the Wizengamot made no effort to even keep the appearance of due process, charged her with crimes she could not have possibly committed, and used her Dark Mark as justification for her terrorist affiliation without bothering to build a more comprehensive case. As a result once she has her Dark Mark magically removed before the trial, the case collapses. Finally the ICW judges dismiss the killing of Azkaban guards during her escape since she had no reason to trust the government, and the world considers the conditions of the prison a massive Human Right's Violation in the first place.
  • Narcissa hits Dumbledore with another one over the will of Cassiopeia Black, which he had sealed because he (correctly) feared she would leave substantial bequests to his enemies. It turns out that the Chief Warlock doesn't have the authority to arbitrarily seal wills indefinitely without grounds, and when the discretionary time period expires without him either unsealing the will or providing grounds for the Wizengamot to confirm his actions in a formally introduced and passed bill, Narcissa sues him.
• Sadistic Choice: When the third year's Gryffindor-Ravenclaw quidditch match gets interrupted by Dementors, both sides' Seekers fall off their brooms. Alexandra is the only one close enough to intervene, but she only has time to catch one of them. She chooses Cho over Neville, knowing that Neville would be saved by Dumbledore. Although Neville survives the fall, Ron Weasley and Leo Black are enraged by her choice and attempt to prank her in retaliation, which ends with very nasty repercussions for not only the boys, but Dumbledore as well.
• Samus Is a Girl: Mordred was a female, and the previous Champion to the Morrigan who was intended to succeed Morgan only for Arthur to kill her and ruin the balance.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Dumbledore, Fudge, and to a lesser extent the Malfoys.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Pretty much everyone in the wizarding world that have enough money, although the Malfoys stand out.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Pretty much everyone in the wizarding world that has the right connections, although Dumbledore and the Malfoys stand out.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Great Enemy was sealed in multiple cans, which are starting to fall apart because Ra failed to realize that there were multiple cans, or that there's a difference between the evil and the can, and set in motion events that broke several of them.
• Secret Circle of Secrets: The worshipers of the Old Ways, The Exchequer, The Shadow Blades, Death Eaters, generic Dark Magic cults... really, in this story you could chuck a rock and randomly hit a cultist. Not all are evil, but all of them involve invoking powers beyond mortal ken. The protagonist Alexandra Potter is not only a member but a champion of one of the deities worshiped by her particular cult.
• Serious Business:
  • The Malfoys were willing to spend political capital so that their son could become the leader of the Slytherin underclassmen at Hogwarts (a position he quickly lost due to his inability to use that status effectively).
  • Other, unspecified houses were willing to sell political capital to Dumbledore in exchange for him rigging the House Cup in Gryffindor's favor.
  • Lucrezia Sforza and Eleanora de Riva nearly come to blows over who's family's tailors would have the dressing of the Night Court for the Carnival.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: The default state of the animagus spell. One of the signs of true mastery of the craft is getting the transformation to include clothing. Alexandra hasn't mastered it, and gets around the inherent difficulties by using a magical device that can dress and undress her in various stored outfits so that she doesn't ruin good outfits when switching to her enormous animagus form.
• Shout-Out:
  • Erasmus Rincewind wears a pointy hat with "WIZZARD" embroidered on the rim, his Animagus transformation is a huge orang-utan and he uses a legged, carnivorous luggage for a lesson. Now, I've already seen that somewhere... Not to mention his nickname: The Butcher of Dresden.
  • The first battle between the Day and Night Courts in the Fourth EMT Task featured Alexandra going on a rant about farcical aquatic ceremonies and slapping the Day Champions with fish until they fell into a canal.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Alexandra and Susan. The Exiles around them are ready to gag whenever the two get flirty.
• Single Line of Descent: Discussed by the Outcasts in regards to the Heirs of the Founders. The line of Ravenclaw is extinct (as her only child died childless), the line of Slytherin is believed extinct (as the last known member of the Gaunts, the only family to claim that descent, died in Azkaban in the forties), and Gryffindor was such a notorious womanizer that it would probably be easier to name the British magicals who aren't descended from him somehow.
• Smug Snake: Dumbledore, to sociopathic degrees. He's constantly over-estimating his political capital and squandering it on petty, self-centered matters. He completely (and regularly) ignores good advice from Flitwick and Snape warning him about mistakes he's making, or how he's misjudging the student body. He's remained painfully oblivious towards major threats such as the Exchequer. He treats any defiance against his authority with an It's All About Me attitude. He makes deals with dangerous factions while remaining dismissive of the potential blowback and blind to any evidence of their instability or evil nature simply because they're "Light" factions. By the winter break of Alexandra's third year, most of the characters agree that he's setting himself up for a hard fall, and are patiently (and often eagerly) waiting for it, while Dumbledore himself remains utterly confident of his own righteousness and invincibility.
  • Ra takes all of Dumbledore's flaws and turns them up to eleven. He's so caught up in his delusions over the inevitable victory of the Light that even Dumbledore himself has recognized and pointed out the flaws in his beliefs more than once.
• Stating the Simple Solution: How Dumbledore ultimately realizes Alexandra did not kill three of the four Marauders. Despite having the power necessary, and a physical description forewarned by a seer; the survival of her now vampire mother provides a suspect with far clearer (and accurate) motives for their deaths.
• Storm of Blades: Romeo Malatesti, Champion of Ares, is able to do this with the sword he has due to his patron, capable of summoning enough weaponry to practically recreate Unlimited Blade Works. That said, it's certainly Awesome, but Impractical in his current circumstances, as he can't really do anything except summon weapons, and the European Magical Tournament only allowed a single magical focus in the event he took it to.
• Straw Misogynist: Dumbledore's inner narration has shades of this, particularly when he's thinking about Stella Zabini.
• Strong and Skilled: Alexandra has a lot of raw magical power at her disposal, and she's shown to regularly be researching new skills and practicing her abilities, in addition to seeking out tutors like Flitwick and Slughorn.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Puberty has been very generous with Susan Bones and Alex has had to keep her eyes from straying more than once.
• Succession Crisis:
  • The war between Light and Dark started out as a feud for the throne of Keter between Ra, the future Archmage of Light, and Osiris, the future King of the Exchequer, which has never stopped despite the fact that Keter ceased to exist thousands of years ago because of their fighting.
  • Not everyone in the Exchequer is willing to accept Osiris ceding his authority to Morgane on a long-term basis. Once a lasting solution for Apophis is found, the organization could fracture on who his permanent successor is.
• Super Serum: Supping from the Holy Grail ages or youthens the drinker to an idealized version of what he/she could be/have been at age twenty, along with augmenting one's magical potential, master it at an accelerated rate, among other things.
  • Power at a Price: However, the best-case scenario of the side effects is losing twenty years of one's expected lifespan. The worst-case scenario involves taking seven months to die after a bad case of Spontaneous Human Combustion due to having that much Light magic in one's system literally burning the drinker out after a relatively short period of time.
• Superior Successor: Nidhogg, the giant black dragon trapped under Hogwarts to power the castle, considers Alexandra to be one to Mordred, stating that until the final battle, Mordred mostly depended on her mother's wizards to fight her battles. In contrast, Alexandra killed two Basilisks, almost by herself, at only twelve years old. And that's far from Alexandra's only impressive accomplishments.
• Sweet Tooth: Sugar, especially alchemically refined sugar, is highly addictive for dragons.
• Sword Fight: Alexandra and Lyudmila Romanov have a weapons-only duel, Clarent versus Gungnir, at the end of the Second Task as a way for them to have a fair fight, since Alexandra had almost exhausted her magical core while Lyudmila was still in top shape.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The fourth Tournament task has the Champions forming into teams, with Alexandra being the only one putting any effort into creating a functional or effective team.
• Temporal Duplication: The Exchequer puts an upper limit on how many times one can travel back to the same moment with a time turner because of this trope. Specifically, an incident where, due to a lack of safety precautions, having more than one of a person at the same time drove both of them insane, and since they had time machines, they then went and started creating more of themselves, all of them insane and rampaging. It took considerable effort to make sure that they had put down all of the insane Pawn, and the story is used within the Exchequer as to why one should always double-check one's safety precautions before launching a new experiment.
• These Hands Have Killed: While Alexandra strongly believes in meeting lethal force with lethal force, and refuses to risk living enemies at her back, she does strongly regret killing anyone. When discussing with Hermione about killing Assistant Professor Davin in self-defense, she corrects her friend to say she did not "kill" the person, but "murdered" him. Unfortunately, Alexandra tends to repress such concerns during times of crises, and only opens up with her most trusted friends about this, which means nearly everyone else —particularly Dumbledore and all of Slytherin —assumes she is a psychopath who has no qualms of killing even more. Still, the Exiles are willing to use that reputation if necessary; see The Dreaded above.
  • According to the author, one of the reasons Annabeth Blackford is being left alone is because Alexandra is tired of killing, and believes a life sentence to Azkaban to be too harsh.
• Thrown from the Zeppelin: When Ra tries to take over the Day Court during the European Magical Tournament and order them to purge every dark wizard nearby, one Locked Out of the Loop wizard, Lucas Gauthier, says that this has nothing to do for the tournament, that Ra is an Ax-Crazy madman, and that he (Lucas) is leaving to tell the authorities. He is incinerated on the spot by Ra, although his death also turns many others against Ra and makes them desert at the first opportunity.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Even after being told that his life literally depends on acquiring Alexandra's goodwill, James still refuses to apologize for any of the actions he took that resulted in her early life being a misery, or even consider that he might have been wrong to do them in the first place.
  • After being hit by a Dark Ritual whose effects accelerate the more magic he uses, Sirius declines to seek medical attention, instead trying to kill the party responsible in the belief that this would break the spell. And then goes after the first suspect that comes to mind without seeking to confirm that said person was actually responsible, causing him to burn out his magic and life trying to kill the wrong person.
  • Thanks to his incredible ability to offend virtually everyone outside of Gryffindor every time he opens his mouth, the odds of Leo making a deadly enemy out of some of the powerhouses competing in the European Magical Tournament from other schools are pretty high, but despite being informed this by his own acting head of house, he shows no signs of wising up.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • For the first two and a half years of the story Leo Black often came across as more restrained and a better student than his two companions (not that this is saying much), but has grown into a borderline Hate Sink since the events leading up to and following his suspension.
  • Minerva and Snape act much as their canon selves but are cast in a much more negative light by the (pre-dominantly Ravenclaw) Exiled. Both are noted to be completely ineffective at controlling their house.
  • Percy Weasley goes from being a somewhat Reasonable Authority Figure who's cordial towards Alexandra and is considered as a possible recruit for the Exiled Army to letting his ambition consume him (even worse than in canon) and achieving a Hated by All status at Hogwarts.
  • Played with in regards to Peter Pettigrew. He may be a mercenary who consorts with Vampires, but he does so for money and has no illusions as to the deaths and evil it entails. A good deal of his former compatriots in the Order of the Phoenix and the Marauders have no such self-awareness and many stubbornly refuse to accept the consequences of their actions.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: Ludo Bagman, unsurprisingly.
• Underestimating Badassery: During the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, Neville spends a while commenting about the weak, scrawny, and bookish appearance of Giovanni Ruspoli and thinks that he "didn't look like he was very dangerous."
  ''Five seconds later, the Venetian teenager conjured a bridge of solid flames, and Neville realized the proverb 'Thou shall not judge a book by its cover' applied here."
• Unfit for Greatness: Some of the Magical Champions are viewed this way, such as Fleur Delacour and two Durmstrang champions - one light and one dark - who are far behind in the preliminaries.
• The Unmasqued World: This appears to be one of the objectives of the Exchequer that they are trying to use the European Magical Tournament to accomplish.
• Uriah Gambit:
  • The moderates of House Slytherin encourage junior Death Eater Warrington and other (largely talentless) undesirables who've been dragging the house down to sign up for the European Magical Tournament out of the hopes that they won't come home from it. This largely fails because Montague, the first Slytherin reserve, keeps managing to fail the events so badly that the judges pull him from each round before he gets himself killed.
  • At least half of House Black considers Leo being a Reserve Champion in the tournament to be one for the same reason, even if Leo signed up well before they knew he needed to be eliminated quickly. While he technically survives - at least in the short term - he ends up causing an international incident that gives the Black family grounds to disinherit him.
• Vain Sorceress: Albeit a more benign (and humorous) example than most. Stella Zabini thinks a witch needs two luggages when traveling, only for her wardrobe. And that's magical luggage.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Harshly averted with the users of the Holy Grail. Drinking it instantly grants the user their idealized body and maximized magical talents, with the limit only being their magical ceiling. Even with a harsh reduction of the users' lifespan, Dark wizards openly refer to it as a method of cheating. That said, it does have the Logical Weakness that the drinkers gain the ability to use all their talents at full strength, but does not gain the experience to know how to use their talents effectively, rendering them Unskilled, but Strong.
• Villainous Rescue: Alexandra is saved from an assassination attempt by the Army of Light by the Knight Priest of the Exchequer.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Exchequer tries to portray itself as this to Alexandra, but she finds the alleged good intentions don't make up for the extremes they're willing to go to, such as trying to murder 30% of the people of Egypt to ease their overpopulation problems.
• Wham Episode: In chapter 47, Bellatrix Black and James Potter escape Azkaban and she implies that Lily Potter is possibly alive and wants a divorce. She also definitively announces that James was a failed double-agent.
  • In Chapter 53 Alexandra learns that her inner animal is a Lernaean Hydra, yes like the one that Hercules had to fight.
  • At the end of chapter 55, we learn that Ariana Dumbledore lives and joined the Exchequer's ranks as Knight Necromancer to gain vengeance against her eldest brother.
  • The end of chapter 57 and 58 shows us that Morgana Le Fay is alive, is the Queen of the Exchequer and was the former champion of the Morrigan. She has also been disfigured by taking Excalibur in the face. Knight Recruiter is also revealed to be Angelica Sforza, the headmistress of the Scuola Regina and who apprenticed Lily in Enchanting.
  • Chapter 60, Morgane announces that Alexandra will take part in the European Inter-School Tournament and if she wins; will become her apprentice. If she refuses to participate... "by May I will come to the plains of Camlann once again and raze Hogwarts to its foundations with my army."
  • At the end of chapter 64, we learn that the wards of Hogwarts are powered by the magic given off by an ancient and extremely powerful dark dragon kept prisoner beneath the castle... and that the spells keeping him captive are failing.
  • Chapter 103, Ra goes off the deep end and decides to kill every Dark wizard in Venice, shattering the Statue of Secrecy. The resultant fight damages the Grail, which threatens to explode and unleash a magical wave that will hit all of Europe.
  • Chapter 109, Ra is defeated once and for all, and the Powers are now freed from the Light and Dark, but the seal on the Great Enemy is coming undone, and Osiris sacrifices himself to buy his followers time to come up with a permanent solution.
• Who Will Bell the Cat?: By year 4, Alexandra has grown so powerful that Scrimgeor refuses Fudge's orders to arrest her on flimsy grounds because he isn't sure if the entire Auror department would be capable of arresting her if she chooses not to come quietly.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Light doesn't care if a Dark mage is underage, they must be eradicated.
• The Worf Effect: During the second task, Beauxbatons champion Ambre (who was previously injured and sidelined while fighting a cockatrice) proves how effective she is against human opponents by trouncing Eleonora, a champion who excelled during the first task.
• World-Wrecking Wave: When The Holy Grail breaks, it threatens to send out a wave of magic that will kill anything insufficiently pure (read: everything) within a radius reaching from Venice to Gibraltar. 90+% of the inhabited parts of Europe is in that range.
• Wrestler of Beasts: Between the first and second events of the EMT, the students who found and deciphered their clues wound up the others by spreading rumors about what their clues revealed, with one of the notable ones involving wrestling with ten foot long, twenty-ton crocodiles.
• You Can Leave Your Hat On: Given that the second task of the EMT permitted runes that had been painted on one's body, Lucrezia Sforza starts out by stripping down to her rather skimpy undergarments in front of the other champions to reveal just how many runes she had prepared.
• You Can't Fight Fate: After Nigel (along with Crabbe and Ernie) hear Trelawney make the very ominous Prophecy of Camlann, Alexandra flat-out says that they shouldn't do anything to stop it (instead focusing on mentally preparing for it to come true and increasing the castle's physical defenses), pointing out that historical attempts to prevent prophecies tend to have an even worse endgame than the prophesied one, something which plays a large role in the backstory, with Arthur and Merlin being the prophecy-tamperers.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • The reason why the Exchequer sends Grindelwald to fight a second duel with Dumbledore — his expertise has run its course and his health is failing.
  • The Death Eaters attempt this with the Malfoys once it is clear they have broken ties with Voldemort.

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