Today I am posting Chapter 20 of Shame’s Desire .  It is the last chapter I have ready to post, but I hope to have another one ready next week.  if I don’t I will be posting another chapter of His Blood.

Any story is made up of characters.  There are many to choose from in the Harry Potter universe.  It is one of the reasons I liked to write Harry Potter fan-fiction, I have so mach to work with.  I would even go so far as to say Hogwarts itself has character like qualities.  Today I am going to walk about what I personally think of some of the character that are often used in Harry Potter fan-fiction.

Harry Potter

So I obviously have to start with the title character, because it would just be silly not to.  Harry Potter is a classic “reluctant hero”.  He doesn’t want to be savior of the wizarding world.  He would much rather be an average kid with a loving mom and dad.  I think even if he couldn’t get his parents back, he would give up the title of savior.  Well he would give it up if the world didn’t need saving, but since it does there is no one he would have take his place.  Not because of ego, but because he wouldn’t want anyone else to have to go through it.  Yeah he is a martyr as well.

Now I hardly ever use Harry as a main character in one of my stories unless I have messed with the core of who he is.  In the Sense of Submission series I have turned his dominance up to eleven, and given him a much more serious view of the world.  I have also gotten rid of his aversion to dark magic and made him question what that even means.

In the Face Trilogy I’ve just introduced the real Harry Potter, and there are already some readers who can tell something is off about him.  It is part of the plot so I won’t go into it now, but it is there.  Even in the spicy little Spark of Dark, Harry was corrupted by darkness.

It is only when he is a secondary character that he is much more like the Harry Potter we known from cannon.  You’ll be seeing more of him in Shame’s Desire, and in the rewrite of Quidditch Lessons, but he will be much more like himself in both.

Lord Voldemort

I feel the need to warn my readers that I am about to rip apart this character.

Voldemort is pure evil.  He represents all that is wrong with wizarding society and then some.  In cannon he a caricature just this side of mustache twisting villain.  He is two diminutional.   Even the bits of backstory, and motivations don’t do anything to round out who he is.  He was much more believable and scary as a elemental force of evil that he was in the first three books.  We are told many times in the books that he is super smart, but he doesn’t make very many smart choices.  But this is all okay because at the end of the day Harry Potter is a story for kids and in kid stories evil can just be evil.

Now after all that I should tell you I actually like the Lord Voldemort character.  Because we only see one side of him, I am more able as a fan-fiction writer to manipulate what we know about him and turn him into the bad guy that I need.  he is easy to pair with pretty much anyone, the only thing one needs to give the paired character someone he values and wants.

In the Face Trilogy Ginny has many things Voldemort wants.  He is from an old wizarding family, and she is seen as his enemies girlfriend which he uses to help himself politically.  In any of my many shorts about Hermione her intelligence is where it really begins and ends, but I also usually add in some dark mysterious power, just to make things really fun.  I don’t really have any posted stories that pair him with anyone else, but I do have one in the works that will pair him with Luna.  In it I plan to make her an oracle, and we all know how into divination Voldemort is.

Ron Weasley

Ron is sort of an everyman.  He is average in almost every way.  But even with all his leaving and coming back, Ron is loyal.  Even when he isn’t talking to Harry, he works the best he can to try and protect him.  He is the guy that stand next to the limelight just out of view and is hard on him, but in the end he rises to the challenge.

I don’t use Ron a lot as a main character.  He’s just too much of a straight shooter to use for the kind of stories I like to tell.  But I as a secondary character I try to keep as close to a cannon depiction as I can.  In Smell of Submission he blows his stack a lot, but at least he has Luna to calm him back down.  In the Face Trilogy he has the brotherly protectiveness and stubbornness we wall love.

Draco Malfoy

Draco is the childhood advisory for the golden trio.  Because of this he comes off as childish a lot of the time.  Until his sixth year with his father in prison he is insulated from the real world.  But we know that he is intelligent as he is the second in their year.  We assume he is charming because so many people go along with his ideas when he does mean pranks to Harry and others.  But in the books we see these things from afar because of his place in the story.

I use Draco a lot.  He is one of my favorite male leads and the lead of my very first fan-fiction.  I make him everything that a good Slytherin should be, cunning, charming, and manipulative.  This I think is obvious in every story I write about him.

Blaise Zabini

Blaise is a non character in the books.  We know he is a blood-purist.  We know he is beautiful.  We know he is a chaser on the Slytherin Quidditch team.  Besides for that he has like two lines in the entire series.

I personally always make Blaise a bit of man slut.  He is so pretty he has to spread it around.  I also tend to make him smart and charming like Draco, but usually he ends up seconding to Draco for whatever reason.  Probably the fact that the Malfoy line has more political power.

So because it is nearly time to post and this got a bit longer than I was thinking, I’ve split in two.  I will be talking about the women of Harry Potter next week!