Oh God, Not Again

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

So maybe everything didn't work out perfectly for Harry. Still, most of his friends survived, he'd gotten married, and was about to become a father. If only he'd have stayed away from the Veil, he wouldn't have had to go back and do everything again.

Oh God, Not Again is a Harry Potter fanfiction by Sarah1281. An adult Harry gets sent back in time and makes it his goal in life to save as many lives from Voldemort as he can. Okay, that's a lie actually. Not to say he doesn't do that, but he spends most of his time enjoying himself and wreaking as much havoc as possible. Also an Affectionate Parody, people and events are looked at and discussed from a different perspective when deemed appropriate. Or funny.

Well written and hilarious, this story is completed and comes highly recommended.

Has a darker counterpart in Sisyphus.

Tropes used in Oh God, Not Again include:
  • Adults Are Useless: The adults are more useless than usual, but mainly because they don't have knowledge from the future. Harry does sometimes get them involved on purpose when they can help, such as going straight to Dumbledore when Hagrid gets Norbert.
  • Adult Child: Sirius, so very much. Harry too, if you go by mental age.
  • Artifact of Attraction: Sirius starts to put on the Slytherin Horcrux ring despite Harry warning him that it would kill him. He manages to stop himself when Harry says, “Sirius, if you put that on then Snape will have to save your life. SNAPE.”
  • Badass Teacher: Sirius takes over as the History of Magic teacher. The badass part comes with the package.
  • Bad Liar: When Ron wonders where Ginny got the extra money she was spending on school supplies (which she got from her cut of a less-than-accurate book by Lockhart), she freaks out and demands to know if he's implying she stole it. Harry thinks to himself that the Weasleys were raised to be honest.
  • Big No: Fred and George when they see the Quidditch field is now a hedge and Harry at one of the times Hermione wins fifty points after he dedicated himself to losing the House Cup.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Harry is much more of a Cloudcuckoolander this time round, causing the general population to view him as somewhere between batshit insane and just full of it, but he's - usually - a nice guy, employing Dumbledore's tactics of destroying his foes through politeness and snark. Sometimes, though, he strays right into Magnificent Bitch territory:

Pansy: (After Rita Skeeter's Pentawizard Playoffs article) Stunningly pretty? GRANGER? What was she judged against - a chipmunk?
Harry: I wouldn't talk if I were you, Pansy. Seeing as I heard you came in third.

Molly: This is much better gossip than last year's 'Albus Dumbledore was madly in love with Gellert Grindelwald.' Honestly, you'd think Rita Skeeter would learn to stop making up such sensational stories. Obviously Dumbledore was struck speechless by the Blatant Lies and thus couldn't be bothered to deny it.

    • "How do you know that?" "My psychic scar told me."
    • Also, this exchange:

Snape: Is there a reason you felt the need to go running off on a suicidal rescue mission without informing a responsible adult, first?
Harry: I did get a responsible adult. Professor Lockhart is a Hogwarts Professor and surely Professor Dumbledore wouldn't have hired him if he didn't have complete faith in him.

Voldemort: You have been taught how to duel, Harry Potter?
Harry: I've been taught to drop my wand and summon snakes. Our dueling club was kind of substandard.

  • Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Ginny was quite put out by the lack of heroics involved in Harry's defeat of the basilisk.
  • Conveniently-Timed Attack From Behind: In the final battle, Sirius hits Voldemort from behind.
  • Crazy Prepared: When Pettigrew is caught, Luna pulls out a animagus-proof jar that her father had her carry around in case she ever ran across an illegal animagus she wanted to capture.
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right: Luna is the only person to figure out Harry and Sirius time-traveled. It seemed obvious to her. Harry comes off like this to others, as most things he says are bat-shit insane, but slowly people realize that the more over-the-top Harry's predictions are, the more accurate he gets.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: When Harry and Lockhart reach an agreement of sorts, Harry adds that if he tries to steal one of his accomplishments, he'll beat him to death with a paper napkin.

Lockhart: CAN you beat someone to death with a paper napkin?
Harry: *shrugs* I'll have fun trying.

  • Cute Clumsy Girl: Harry gets Tonks an anti-clumsiness ring to help with her Auror training, but figures she'll only wear it for work, suspecting that she likes to be klutzy.
  • Death by Adaptation: Mrs. Norris ends up killed by the Basilisk during second year.
  • Deathbringer the Adorable: Averted, much to Harry's dislike. In the original timeline, he and Ginny got a rabbit, and she refused to accept his name suggestion of "Mega Ultra Flame Deathsman", instead going with a more standard "Flopsy".
  • Deconstruction Fic: An affectionate, Deconstructive Parody using the Peggy Sue framework. Lampshades hung, inconsistencies trounced flat, and characters attacked at angles that reveal new aspects. And it has a ball doing it.
  • Do Not Call Me "Paul": Only three people are allowed to call Tonks by her birth name Nymphadora. Two of them are Charlie and Cedric because she lost a bet to each of them (and doesn't make such bets anymore). Remus can call her that as well, though the significance of it escapes him at first.
  • A Dog Ate My Homework: One of the papers Lupin tries to grade was chewed up by the textbook Hagrid assigned.
  • Double Standard: Neville points out to Hermione that attributing their obsession with Quidditch to their gender could be considered sexist.
  • Dragged Into Drag: Sort of. Draco gets a photo of Harry in a dress (technically a Boggart Neville made less frightening) and sells them to students as collectibles. Harry negotiates for a cut of the profits and is okay with signing them.
  • Everyone Can See It: Ron acts shocked at the idea of asking Hermione to the dance. Harry and Neville point out how obvious his crush on her is.
  • Exact Words:

Harry: Wait... Didn't Draco order you not to try to save my life or to try and drive me from the castle?
Dobby: Dobby wasn't trying to save the Great Harry Potter's life nor was he trying to send him away from Hogwarts. Dobby was trying to break Harry Potter's arm.

  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: In-universe. Sirius tells his History of Magic class the story of Voldemort's parents and asks them what the moral is; Lavender suggests, "Don't assume the guy you're feeding love potions is in love with you and stop."
  • Fantastic Racism: Parodied. Luna asks Snape if he is a Living-ist, or someone who judges based on whether or not a person is dead or alive.
    • At one point, it's shown that even the Weasleys aren't completely immune to the Pureblood mentality when Ron mentions they never talk about their second cousin who's a Squib (and an accountant). Harry notes that it's to Ron's credit that he doesn't grasp why the cousin is an outcast and that he's invoking this trope unintentionally.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Hermione's house-elf rights organization becomes SHOE- Stop Hurting Our Elves.
  • Genius Ditz: Lockhart is still incompetent as a teacher, but Harry admits he's a genius when it comes to anything dealing with the media.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: Or at least, Good Thing You Can Get Healed.

Sphinx: Right. Do not worry, though, as I am not permitted to kill you. That said, healers can work all sorts of miracles these days.

  • Grammar Nazi: Harry trademarked SPEW for his Grammar Nazi organization 'Stop People Abusing Words.' He chose to spell 'Abusing' with an E to be ironic (and make it fit the acronym).
  • Hand Wave: How Harry goes back in time is barely explained and goes against canon, but the setup barely matters.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: Draco points out that Hufflepuff never comes out ahead because working hard is such an ingrained, defining trait of theirs. “What are they going to do? Do exactly what they're supposed to do MORE?"
  • Harsher in Hindsight/Hilarious in Hindsight: An in-universe example. Mentally being an adult lends Harry a different perspective on many incidents, such as now being horrified at Neville's Hilariously Abusive Childhood or finally getting that Lockhart was joking when he implied he was more famous than Harry.
  • Hypocrite: Harry (affectionately) thinks this when Sirius insists Snape should really let go of his resentment. Because Sirius himself is quite mature in those regards.
  • I Reject Your Reality: In a lighthearted version of this, Sirius chooses to pretend he was in Majorca instead of Azkaban for over a decade. Everyone pretty much goes with it.
  • It Amused Me: Much of what Harry does is to avoid the crap that's going to happen, but most of it he does for the hell of it. The main reason he doesn't tell everybody his actual age is that then everyone will then expect him to act like it.
  • Karma Houdini: Lucius gets away with everything he does. Again.
  • Kill It with Fire: Most of the Horcruxes are destroyed using Fiendfyre.
  • Lampshade Hanging: The story is practically made of them.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When presented with a headline reading "Harry Potter and the Pentawizard Playoffs", Harry muses that it sounds like the title of a book...
  • Loophole Abuse: In Harry's fourth year, he was supposed to work with antidotes and "turned in a bezoar again".

Harry: It's kind of expensive, but the look on his face and the fact that he can't technically fail me because the assignment was to find a way to save someone from the various poisons makes it all worth it.

  • Love Potion: Discussed. When Sirius explains Voldemort's backstory and asks his class what the moral is, Lavender says, “Don't assume the guy your feeding love potions is in love with you and stop?", squicking Seamus out.
  • Mental Time Travel: The way Harry and Sirius end up going back.
  • Mentors: Lockhart mentors Harry in dealing with being a celebrity. They later give advice to Krum.
  • Muggles Do It Better: An example appears to explain why Theodore, a Slytherin, is in Muggle Studies. When asked why he was there, Theodore noted that his father learned the hard-way that Muggles weren't as harmless as he thought after being shot on a trip to Las Vegas, and wanted his son to learn as much about Muggles as possible.
    • There is also why some students begin to use pens instead of quills and notebook paper instead of parchment.
  • Only in It For the Money: Well, Harry's not only interested in money, but he does deliberately project this persona, to the point where he manages to convince everyone that he's not the Heir of Slytherin, because if he was he would be profiting off it.
  • Paranoia Gambit:

Sirius: It's going to take every ounce of my considerable self-control, but I want to wait until [Snape's] so paranoid he can't sleep before I start in on him.

  • Peggy Sue: Harry and Sirius travel back in time and fix things. When they don't goof around.
  • The Power of Love: The story has this to say on the subject.

"...What was that last part?" Sirius asked.
"Remus and Tonks got married?" Harry repeated innocently.
"No, the other last part. The one about Voldemort killing you," Sirius clarified.
"Oh, well he killed me and I had a nice chat with Dumbledore's soul who informed me that just because I was imagining things it didn't make it not real and then I got better."
Sirius just stared at him.
"It gets better," Harry grinned. "Apparently I only survived because of The Power of Love."
Sirius groaned. "For the record, when you're telling this to other people, try to come up with an explanation that sounds more Badass."

  • Power Trio: Double Subverted. While Harry, Ron, and Hermione become friends like before, Neville is added to the ranks right from the get-go, making them a Power Quartet. However, Ron, Hermione, and Neville end up more of a unit without Harry, making them a Power Trio and him more of the Draco to their Crabbe and Goyle.
  • Psychic Powers: Harry's main excuse for knowing what he does is that his scar is psychic. Note that he is not psychic - just his scar. Professor Trelawney calls him a Seer by proxy.
  • Replacement Goldfish: After Mrs. Norris is killed by the basilisk (the only casualty in that incident), Harry and Mrs. Figg send Filch a kitten to Sirius's horror. She's seen working alongside him like Norris had and he seems to like her.
  • The Rival: Draco, but in a way that is far more friendly than in canon. Neither likes the other's friends and they sometimes don't speak to each other, but generally they are on rather good terms. It may be best described as a cross between this and Vitriolic Best Buds.
  • Sarcastic Confession: Harry constantly tells the truth about how he knows certain things, stating specifically that no one would believe the truth. Now and then, he just uses Blatant Lies.
  • Scaled Up: Harry's animagus form is a snake. He uses it to capture Pettigrew.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Harry is constantly able to bribe government officials for whatever he wants, including a Time Turner for Hermione and a pardon for Sirius.
  • Set Right What Once Was Wrong: Harry spends time defeating Voldemort earlier with a far lower body count, but admits that the future he came from was pretty good anyway.
  • She Is Not My Girlfriend:

Remus: Nymphadora is not my girlfriend!
Harry: She lets you call her Nymphadora.

Harry: Draco grinned. Harry was sure that as a result, somewhere a puppy just died.

    • At one point, Snape lampshades this trope.

Snape: POTTER! Enough about your mythological creatures and your obscure Muggle literature!

Harry: [Dobby's] apparently gotten it into his head that Hogwarts is a walking death trap and therefore I'm better off with my Muggle relatives and in particular my Muggle uncle who could snap at any time and try and strangle me. Therefore, he sealed the portal to the platform and Ron and I got bored so we decided not to wait for everyone to fix the mess and just fly here.
Draco: That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

    • And later...

George: Besides, the Slytherin team apparently couldn't find anybody to spy as they showed up in person. And full Quidditch gear.
Harry: Why in the world are they wearing their Quidditch robes to practice in? That has got to be the stupidest thing I've seen all day.
Fred: All day isn't very long, Harry. It can't be more than ten.

Sirius: Top box. It was part of my reparation. Of course, the rest of it went to buying Harry a Firebolt but...
Harry: You don't mind because I'm your godson and you love me?
Sirius: ...Let's go with that, sure.

  • Surrounded by Idiots: Harry simply considers most of the human population to be mindless sheep.
    • "Harry, you've predicted 'I will be besieged by the general stupidity of the population' three times this month!" "Only three times? Looks like it's going to be a good month then."
  • Trickster Archetype: The first thing Harry does when meeting the Weasley twins (again) is trick them into starting a rumor, stunning them and Ron. He later encourages others to try to lose the House Cup, calling it a "Suck-up" Cup. Then there's, well, everything else he does...
  • Troperiffic: Tropes are invoked, discussed and parodied all the time. Several tropes are even mentioned by name - Blatant Lies, Cannon Fodder, The Power of Love, Unexplained Recovery, UST and Unresolved Sexual Tension (spelled both ways, in fact)...
  • Uncle Pennybags: Harry both makes and spends money far more extravagantly this time around.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Harry points out that Ron and Draco's rivalry looks suspiciously like this (Hermione finds it hilarious while it goes right over Ron's head). He later thinks Ron and Hermione's relationship clearly falls under this as well.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Harry and Draco. See The Rival above.
  • A Wizard Did It: A couple times, when someone asks how Harry knows something, he says it's “Magic” and refuses to elaborate.
  • Worst Whatever Ever: Sirius calls himself the worst guardian ever after Harry dies again. Harry assures him he couldn't possibly be worse than the Dursleys were. For some reason, Sirius doesn't find this comforting.
  • Worth It: In a rare serious example, Harry has to tell himself that it's worth it to be obnoxious to Voldemort even when he's being hit by yet another Crucio curse.


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