Ron the Death Eater/Analysis

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Harry Potter

  • The Trope Namer, Ron Weasley. In general, whether or not Ron is going to become a complete psychopath can be determined by two things: one, if Harry is in any House other than Gryffindor (Ravenclaw usually tends to be an exception, though), and two, if Hermione is paired with anyone other than him. Usually if Draco is paired with Hermione, Ron runs off to join the Death Eaters to oppose the now-good Draco. Usually so he can murder Hermione and/or whoever she's paired with.
    • In fact, just about any time Draco gets a Heel Face Turn, whether he gets with Hermione or not, Ron will be the Idiot of the Week who rants and raves about Draco being "the enemy". Granted that Ron is canonically the most hot-headed and reflexively anti-Slytherin of the Trio, you can still overdo it. This may also overlap with Informed Wrongness. After all, Draco is a Jerkass in the canon, so it would actually make sense to be suspicious of him trying to join the good side, but Ron will likely be portrayed as overreacting even if there's no real reason to think Draco is sincere. Indeed, it's likely everyone will jump down Ron's throat for doubting Draco.
      • It doesn't have to be Hermione/Draco shipping either: it's done at an alarming rate any time Harry is shipped with Draco as well, with Ron usually ending up being the jealous jilted wannabe boyfriend or a homophobic/down right bigot in worse case scenarios. And sometimes, it doesn't even have to be Draco to trigger Death Eater Ron in fanfiction, (though admittedly, he's usually the catalyst for it) if Harry, say, joins Slytherin at any point and time, no matter the reason, Ron usually ends up as this.
    • There are various arguments as to why a Face Heel Turn on Ron's part is plausible, with some being more cogent than others. Rowling herself has admitted there were parallels between Ron and Peter Pettigrew. The difference is that while Ron could have made a Face Heel Turn, he ultimately doesn't. This, by the way, is a recurring minor theme in the Potterverse—the difference between good and evil is the choice to reject dark impulses and urges. All of the characters have weakness that could lead them to turn evil, but the whole reason this trope exists is because of the Double Standard propagated by certain segments of the Fan Dumb: Harry, Hermione, Draco and Snape's weaknesses make them "human" and "complex", while Ron's equally human weaknesses are treated as proof that's he's teetering on the edge of the abyss and a single push will send him over to The Dark Side.
    • The Grangerverse, a group of fans who believe that Hermione Granger is the true hero of the books (making Harry Potter himself something they call a "frontkick", meaning he's a Sidekick even though his name is on the cover) do this as a matter of course, because their favourite character is far too good for Ron Weasley. Usually, Ron ends up being a semi-literate attempted rapist thug whose best features are his lack of comprehension and his atrocious table manners.
  • Ginny Weasley gets this almost as much as Ron does, usually from the Harry/Hermione crowd. In general she's portrayed as a lying, deceitful whore who alternates between acting as the school's bicycle and dosing him with love potion. Since the same pairing tends to make Ron evil, these fics often vilify the whole Weasley family.
    • The "Ginny slips Harry Love Potions" device is astoundingly common and taken for granted almost immediately despite its utter unfeasibility. The very book where they get together, and in which fanfics often claim she starts slipping him the stuff, is the same book that shows the effect of a love potion being blatantly obvious to everyone in the vicinity, debilitatingly strong to the point of reducing the victim to a blubbering single-minded love-obsessed mess, and that the victim remembers every thing they do under the short-lived influence. All this gets immediately ignored for the purposes of denying the possibility that Harry could possibly so much as find Ginny attractive under any other circumstance.
    • And the proof that Ginny haters have of her being a "slore" is that she dated three boys (not at the same time, and the last one ended up being her husband) within two school years. Whereas Hermione is a paragon of purity—no, she would never date anyone just to get attention. Viktor and Cormac? Who are they?
    • It's especially interesting when Ron gets this, but Ginny does not. Cue their relationship going straight to what would be Cain and Abel levels if the author hadn't seemingly forgotten that they are brother and sister. Sometimes she goes so far as to not even care if he dies, which, of course, has the intended effect of making her look like a sociopath. Even if he did join the Death Eaters, become more evil than Voldemort and tried to ruin the author's One True Pairing, you'd think Ginny would still experience some angst over his death.
    • A very large portion of Slash Fic with Harry in the main pairing has its authors vilifying Ginny in any number of the ways detailed above. This has become increasingly common in fic written post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: ironically, it's especially true in fics that try to conform to canon up to and including the epilogue. Needless to say, the things they make Ginny do to shatter the obvious happiness Harry feels at the time of the epilogue are often downright heinous.
      • What's particularly odd is these fics almost always contain the canon next generation, so apparently the fanfic authors don't mind the kids; it's just the women they don't like. Unfortunate implications, indeed.
    • Ginny becomes a Death Eater or sympathetic to Voldemort in fanfiction about as often as Ron does, partly owing to fan theories that she is still possessed by Voldemort after the second book, or should have been in Slytherin (or simply that it would have made her a better written character.)
    • Some fics have use a mixture of this trope and Alternative Character Interpretation, with Ginny and Harry breaking up after the events of the last book for Harry to then be with someone else (normally Draco. The idea they use is that Ginny fell in love with the idea of Harry as a hero when Harry just wants to be normal. Not helped by the fact they have so little screen time together, particulary in the films.
  • The Love Potion thing isn't limited to Ginny demonization- in general, fic writers will frequently dramatically reveal that the person they wish death for their ship upon has been Slipping a Mickey to make the other person fall in love with them (e.g. Ginny in the above example, or James if the author is a Snape/Lily shipper) and thus the entire relationship is based upon a lie.
  • The Weasleys in general are prone to this sort of treatment. In Alternate Universe Fics in which the Hat put Harry in Slytherin, Draco will usually be put in leather pants and the Weasleys will suddenly become the biggest assholes in the world. Often, it is Ron who gets the worst of it with the rest of his family acting little to no different (especially the twins), though there have been instances where all of them will look upon and treat Harry with disdain just because he's not a Gryffindor.
    • Molly in particular gets this almost as much as Ron and Ginny. Molly's canon mother hen personality is twisted until she becomes a screeching shrew who pretends to be acting out of love, but is actually just an insane control freak obsessed with social-climbing. Often Ginny is only pursing Harry because this social-climbing version of Molly has forced her to or has even groomed Ginny all her life for the all-important mission of snagging Harry. It never seems to occur to anyone that Ginny could easily be seen as a sympathetic victim in this scenario. But no, she's still considered an evil whore for some reason.
    • The usual exceptions to the "evilization" of the Weasleys are the twins, who get a pass because they are cool and funny and always side with Harry against their own family, and Arthur, who is just ignored.
  • This also tends to occur with regards to Albus Dumbledore, whose canonical status as The Chessmaster tends to be twisted and put through a strainer darkly until he stops being Dumbledore and starts being Voldemort with a beard. This tends to be especially prevalent in fanfiction that addresses (and usually overemphasizes) Harry's abuse at the hands of the Dursleys and events over the school years, in which this strange man completely unlike Dumbledore everyone is addressing as Dumbledore for some reason seems content to send Harry into the mouth of Hell (because protection from the Evil Overlord trying to kill him is best when placed over a house full of people trying to kill him) and mwa-ha-ha into his bowl of lemon drops rather than give them a stern talking to.
    • Oddly enough, when done in shipping stories that contain Harry/Draco (unless Voldemort keeps his status quo) or especially in Harry/Tom Riddle(Voldemort) pairings, Voldemort will become the new 'Dumbledore' (as he's meant to be portrayed) to Harry.
    • Often times Dumbledore's new manipulations have no point other than to establish that he's evil, and often times contradict his ultimate plan (what good is controlling Harry if he's going to die at the Dursley's hands) or else make him so blatantly bad at being bad, that it implies Harry is an idiot for being manipulated for this long.
    • Stories set in the Marauder era also tend to turn Dumbledore into a horribly biased Headmaster who never punishes the Marauders for anything and has a vendetta against Snape for simply existing.
  • On that note, the Dursleys' canonical abuse of Harry (neglect counts, folks, and even if it didn't, Petunia swung a frying pan at his head and Vernon was one accidental-magic attack from killing Harry in OotP) is Flanderized into anything from regular beatings to rape. This is usually either to make Harry more pitiable (and usually Snape's the one to rescue him) or to make Dumbledore into a mustache-twirling evil bastard.
    • Oftentimes, it's established that the Dursleys have just started treating Harry this way, which, it is frequently pointed out, makes no sense at all. Logically, if they were going to beat him, they would have done it when he was seven rather than wait until he's a teenager when he's not only physically stronger, but has wizard friends who will no doubt rescue him if he doesn't show up at Hogwarts.
    • Notably most "Dursleys abuse Harry" fics are really "Vernon abuses Harry" fics. The fandom tends to view Vernon as completely evil, but sees Petunia and Dudley as redeemable. Admittedly, this is somewhat justified by canon, since both Petunia and Dudley have Freudian Excuses while Vernon does not. And at the end of the series, Dudley has a minor Heel Face Turn, Petunia has an Ignored Epiphany, and Vernon just continues to be his usual asshole self. So when Vernon's behavior is made even worse than in canon, Petunia and Dudley will (a) be mentioned so little you'd think Vernon and Harry were the only people living in the house, (b) be too scared to stand up to Vernon, (c) get redeemed, or rarely (d) act as Vernon's minions.
  • Similarly, Lucius Malfoy, who is already plenty evil, often turns out to be an abusive bastard who beats Draco, giving the latter a Freudian Excuse. Narcissa tends to be cast as a battered housewife in this scenario. Blame Cassandra Claire. There's an irony to this in the canon, because by the end of the series, the Malfoys' love for each other is pretty much their only canonically redeeming quality. Earlier examples can perhaps be excused, though, as their family mechanics were not deeply explored before we see Narcissa weeping over her son and husband's fates in Half-Blood Prince.
  • James Potter is often the subject of this- while canonically he was a Jerkass as a teenager, he was also a fiercely loyal friend and (later) devoted family man who gave his life to protect his wife and son. James the Jerk Jock who is personally obnoxious and is nasty to people he doesn't like is canon- James the abusive user who has minions instead of friends and spends his days doing nothing but thinking of new ways to hurt people (in other words, Tom Riddle 2.0) is not. Also, the fact that Lily (who previously wanted nothing to do with him) married him implies that he at least somewhat grew out of it, as does some dialogue from Remus Lupin (generally the most levelheaded and reliable of the Marauders).
    • This is kind of helped by the fact that he was the childhood nemesis of Snape, a major recipient of Draco in Leather Pants treatment; as such, while it's fairly clear that James could be a cruel bully to Snape when they were growing up, this can be exaggerated to Complete Monster levels in order to make Snape more sympathetic. One of the more extreme examples being fans who have claimed that his use of Levicorpus in the flashback during Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the equivalent of raping him.
      • Also, one musn't forget that Snape wasn't completely innocent either. He "never missed a chance to curse James" either, and was hanging out with Death Eater wannabes during that time. Some fic writers tend to ignore that in order to make Snape look better and make James look worse.
    • Any fic that has Harry have a sister will invariably portray James as a horribly neglectful father who only has eyes for his son.
      • Not in the stories where the 'other sibling' is believed to be (and they usually are NOT) the 'Chosen One'...then it's usually Harry that gets the neglectful treatment, not just from James, but from Lily, Remus, and Sirius Black as well. Apparently if you aren't the one that is suppose to defeat Voldemort, you're doomed to be neglected by the Potter's and their closet friends.
    • Some people claim that he black-mailed Lily into dating/marrying him. This is based on one single line in canon where he offered to leave Snape alone if she went out with him, and ignores that she actually rejected him and called him out.
      • Which itself is also quite silly since James didn't even start dating Lily until 2 years after she stopped being friends with Snape.
    • Snape supposedly gave as good as he got (Dumbledore compared him and James to Harry and Draco, after all, not to mention that he invented Levicorpus) but of course we're not going to see this happening in a chapter entitled "Snape's Worst Memory".
      • And the chapter title was deceptive. It turns out that this was Snape's worst memory because it was the day he alienated Lily, not because what James did to him was too awful, but of course people took it as the latter when OotP came out.
    • There are a lot of Snape/Lily fics where James is turned into either (A) a dirty cheating bastard with absolutely no faith toward his marriage or (B) an abusive Complete Monster who forced Lily to marry him after raping her, usually for the purpose of breaking up their marriage so Lily can get together with Snape.
  • Snape has a large fan following, but there's still a vicious group of haters out there doing everything in their power to make him look like a bigger asshole than he already is, including degrading his love for Lily and his requests for Voldemort to spare her as a desire to keep her as a sex slave. There's even a fic that has him raping female students and then erasing their memories of the incident. Often in 'Super Powered Harry' fics, Snape will attempt to use legilimency or even outright attack Harry or one of his friends. Harry will then use his ultra amazing superpowers to defeat and utterly humiliate Snape in front of everyone. Snape is usually revealed to still be a Death Eater and then either gets killed horribly or goes to Azkaban for life. It's more often than not the former.
    • And there are people who will justify James Potter and Sirius Black bullying him when they were students as " pre-emptive karma" and try to claim that they should have killed Snape then and there, with "no great loss" to the story. They don't seem to realize how bad a light that casts Sirius in, by making him not only a bully and capable of attempted murder (say whatever you want, it was well-established in canon that in a fight between a human and a werewolf, the human will lose and often end up dead), but saying "it's okay because it was Snape." Furthermore there are haters who claim that Snape was confirmed to have killed "many" people, when in fact the only person he was ever confirmed to have killed was Dumbledore, and even then (1) that's only one person, (2) that kill wasn't motivated by revenge or hatred, but Dumbledore's Gambit Roulette to defeat Voldemort, and (3) he didn't want to do it. This can be said of all characters who get Death Eater'd, but it is truly astounding how far people will go in their hatred of a character. (And, in the case of Snape-haters, how oblivious they are to the fact that a lot of what they say to justify their hatred of him makes them look like bigger jerkasses than Snape himself, which is saying a lot.)
    • And the less said about his portrayal in Dumbledores Army and The Year of Darkness, the better. Even people who aren't interested in Snape or openly dislike him have expressed their disgust as its horrible portrayal of him. Three words - attempted student assassination. Interestingly, this appears to have been an accidental example. The author claimed that he meant to write Snape as a canon-compliant mole whose benign elements were hidden from the students of the titular organisation, but ended up getting a bit carried away and depicting the guy as way more evil than he'd intended.
    • Then there are those who will argue that Snape's inability to beg Voldemort for James's life was an outright Murder the Hypotenuse, completely ignoring the fact that Voldemort was Stupid Evil and that even asking him not to kill Lily was an extremely risky undertaking.
    • Snape haters also claim he's an unrepentant pure-blood supremacist who calls his students "Mudblood". While he may have supported pure-blood supremacy as a schoolboy and in his first days as a Death Eater, he immediately abandoned it once he turned spy for the Order. And the only person he's confirmed to have called "Mudblood" is Lily Evans, and even then (1) that's only one person, (2) it was spoken in the heat of the moment, and (3) he was immediately remorseful for it and actually tried to apologize.
      • Canonically, however, Dumbledore does call Snape out on pretty much exactly the above (before his Heel Face Turn).
  • The above part about abusing girls and erasing their memories is sometimes attributed to Lockhart. Well, not that far off the canon, actually...
  • And just to round out the entire cast, Lily Evans-Potter has earned a small but rabid Hatedom for daring to choose James over Snape. It's not Ron the Death Eater to disagree with her choice or her actions, but the fic and essays portraying her as an evil, stuck-up, abusive, shallow demon spawn because she didn't love Snape back (even though he at one point called her "mudblood," the wizarding equivalent of the N word) definitely is. Many of these fans don't stop to consider that this might have an indirect Ron the Death Eater effect on Snape as well, because if Lily is as horrible as they say she is, what does it say about Snape that he liked her so much? The true problem is when people argue that she has no concept of love or selflessness, even though her very first act in the book is to sacrifice her life for Harry's.
    • It's not even that the choice was about Snape or James, but about her cutting off her long-time friendship with Snape. People claiming that James had anything to do with her choice forgets that her friendship with Snape ended in their fifth year and she didn't date James until the seventh year. And these fangirls still paint her as a stupid snob who cruelly broke poor Snape's heart for no reason than wanting James's status and money and ultimately deserved to be dead by Avada Kedavra, because breaking off a toxic friendship that caused her heartbreak and trouble means that she's a slutty and snobbish bitch who should have stayed next to Snape and never ever question his racist ways even after he by calling her "Mudblood" in a blatant tantrum. Which Snape himself aknowledges as the biggest mistake of his life, as it robbed him of the person he cared the most.
    • Surprise surprise, the yaoi fandom has it out for Lily too... she must be evil to marry James and take him away from the Marauder orgies, after all. Expect the inevitable Marauders = Beatles and Lily = Yoko comparison.
  • The level of Remus Lupin hatred coming from Snape rabid fans is becoming scarier and scarier. Apparently, he was an horrible bully as well as completely not trustworthy, a bad father who will pass his lycanthropy so he shouldn't have reproduced, an ungrateful bastard who kept making Snape suffer [dead link] and/or an evil pervert who *raped* poor Sevvie-kins, thus he's a pedophile too.
    • This is especially weird considering that Remus is the one member of the Marauders never to do anything cruel to Snape. The one time he tried to hurt him he was out of his mind in werewolf form.
  • And to round out the entire Marauder cast, we have Peter Pettigrew. One might think that the fact that he is a Death Eater might make this impossible, but the fact is before he was a Death Eater he was a friend of James, who adored all the Marauders. Yet in Marauder age fanfics, he's often portrayed as being evil and ambitious from day one, despite him being a Gryffindor, not a Slytherin.
    • Regardless of whatever secret intentions Peter may or may not have, in fanfic his other three 'friends' tend to ignore him or treat him like garbage (if this happened in the actual canon, it would probably be the reason why he betrayed them all to Voldemort, though there's no evidence that they ever treated him badly). The Marauders were Remus, Sirius, Peter and James, not Remus, Sirius, Lily and James as Fanon would have you believe. This is especially prevalent in 'stories' where they read the Harry Potter books, where the three other Marauders and Lily will be holed-up together for some reason, with Peter mysteriously absent. In the rare times that he does appear, once they get to the part of The Prisoner of Azkaban that confirms his betrayal and status as a Death Eater, everyone else will turn on him like rabid dogs and force him to run away, even though the events in question never actually happened yet. It never occurs to anyone that Peter could be saved from his future darkness, or they don't care.
  • The Patil twins and Lavender Brown don't get too much "screen time" in canon, but when they do, they come off as silly and girly and a little airheaded. Fan fiction tends to assume that they are total sluts and/or Alpha Bitches. It's also common to see their airheadedness get Flanderized to the point where they start acting like Valley Girls. In the case of Lavender, the "slut" portrayal may be a little more justified than normal given her relationship with Ron in Half-Blood Prince, but even then she came off more as a Smitten Teenage Girl than The Vamp.
  • On that note, Pansy Parkinson, who is canonically a Libby, is almost universally assumed to be a major slut as well. However, for all her other flaws, Pansy has never shown interest in any boy other than Draco and we've never seen her try to win him through underhanded methods. Apparently, her book portrayal as an unattractive, vindictive bitch just isn't unsympathetic enough for fanfic authors. Oh no, she has to be the whore of Hogwarts too.
    • Alternatively, she is slavishly devoted to Draco, either keeping him in a relationship he doesn't really want (so he's free to hook up with an OC or suddenly pureblooded Hermione) or else is completely delusional, convinced that he loves her despite him showing indifference at best. Either way, expect her to glare at and verbally assault any girl who even looks at Draco.
  • Harry himself doesn't get this very much. Interestingly, fics in which the villains are portrayed positively almost always feature Harry being on their side, usually with Hermione and without (you guessed it) Ron. As noted below, fanfiction does often feature an essentially evil Harry whom readers are expected to sympathize with, but the point stands that Harry is usually portrayed as being in the right, for whatever the writer's definition of "right" is. The most common exception is Draco fics in which both Harry and Ron are made into adolescent idiots to contrast with the "sophisticated" Draco. Even then, Ron will be the dumber of the two and Harry will stand a far greater chance of eventually being won over to Draco's side.
  • Cho Chang gets this, in some Harry/Ginny Harry/Hermione fics. She is seen, as early as third year, as trying to break up the One True Pairing. Never mind that, in canon, it was Harry who pursued her, and only her at the time. And after their disastrous attempt to get together, it was Cho who dumped Harry.
  • Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan often appear in fanfic as abusive boyfriends or rapists - usually towards Hermione or Ginny, so she can be rescued by Harry/Ron/Draco/love interest of the week. There is one scene in Half-Blood Prince that shows Dean might have been a little overprotective while dating Ginny (trying to help her through the portrait hole when she had asked him not to), which doesn't translate immediately into above points and no evidence at all to suggest Seamus would behave like this.
  • Despite never being shown to ally with Draco in Canon, most fics mentioning Nott with a nasty Draco, is a nasty Nott, and pretty much the third Crabbe/Goyle.
  • The Ministry of Magic in itself is often made even worse that what it is in canon (Which is already bad enough) bolstering its corruption and pureblood favoritism from canon with instances of sexism, racism and plain stupidity
  • Hermione gets this treatment sparingly, but she's not immune to it. This is most likely to show up in Harry/Draco or Harry/Snape fics. If Dumbledore is paying Ron to befriend Harry, there's a decent chance Hermione's on his payroll, too.
    • In some evil Dumbledore fics, Hermione's deference to rules and authority is Flanderized, turning her into a female version of Percy who betrays Harry to Dumbledore, sometimes under the belief (or pretext) that it is for his own good.
  • In stories where Snape is portrayed sympathetically and/or romantically, McGonagall will, as his opposite, be turned into a vicious anti-Slytherin harridan who only thinks for the welfare of Gryffindors, whereas Snape is justified in favoring his own house because everyone hates Slytherins and need a break from that.

Genres

  • In stories where Harry ends up in Slytherin, for any reason (Unless he turns evil. SOMETIMES.), then both the Slytherin House and Gryffindor House will get Flanderized but switch roles: the Sltherins will be good if not saints while the Gryffindors will become so evil, they would make the Death Eaters blush. And each house's respective professors (though for some reason this happens more with Dumbledore rather than Minvera) and even family members (more so in the case of the Weasleys or Order of the Phoenix members) will follow suit, with usually Ron being the absolute worse and Draco being Harry's new BFF (and often love interest). There are even instances where the DEATH EATERS are portrayed as the good guys (along with the Slytherins) and the Order of the Phoenix, The Ministry of Magic, and Dumbledore are betrayed as being the real evil threat.
  • It's not just the Slytherin!Harry fics, or even the Draco fics. There is an entire subgenre of fanfic where Harry's "chest monster" turns out to be because psycho stalker Ginny is dosing him with love potion. Often they also throw in that Ginny got the potion from her mother, who is secretly an ambitious shrew hoping to enrich herself by having her daughter marry Harry and then inherit all his money if/when Harry dies fighting Voldemort. Things like Ron having been hired by Dumbledore to spy on and manipulate Harry are very frequent in such fics as well. Oddly, even in the worst fics of this example Arthur Weasley and the older Weasley brothers (Bill, Charlie and the twins) still remain honest, well-meaning people (except Percy, but he's an asshole in the canon, so it's not like he's any different). It's just Molly and her two youngest that get their characterizations done over.
  • Stories in which Harry is framed for a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to the Chateau d'If Azkaban for life tend to have this happen to just about all of the characters except usually Snape, Neville, Luna and a random Weasley or two the Weasley Twins and almost never Ron, and sometimes at least one of the older brothers who are barely mentioned in the series immediately becomes Harry's new best friend. Common murder victims include Neville, Hagrid, Ginny, and the Dursleys. Those who were supposedly his closest friends and trusted adults will suddenly denounce him as being evil on par or worse than Voldemort (if not joined with him), exaggerate or outright lie about his past misdeeds (often in the Wizengamot), assault or torture him (sometimes by illegal curses or means that should get them thrown into Azkaban), and destroy/break/burn all of his prized possessions, especially the photo album with pictures of his parents inside. Rarely, they may also go to the extreme of brutally killing Hedwig right in front of Harry just to spite him. Despite all of this, they will act like nothing has happened and ask for forgiveness nearly the very moment Harry is proven without a doubt to be not guilty, almost always by Voldemort telling everyone the full details of how he set up Harry and turned everyone against him, even though there is usually still no solid evidence of Harry's innocence.
  • In Dark Fic or Revenge Fic, this sometimes happens to Harry himself as well whether he joins forces with Voldemort or not, to the point where he becomes little more than a cruel blend of Voldemort, Snape and Bellatrix Lestrange, which the author expects the readers to sympathize with and root for. Apparently, having Harry becoming a psychotic, sadistic murderer on par or worse than Voldemort is what should have happened in canon post-Order of the Phoenix. Often, these stories are rife with the Manipulative Dumbledore and Abusive Dursleys examples explained above as an excuse for Harry to go to The Dark Side. Not surprisingly, one of his worst victims is usually always Ron, even if he didn't turn against Harry.

"Diffindo." And his right arm was gone, blood spurting from the stump. Ron screamed again. Harry smiled sardonically, not even bothering to move as blood started seeping toward his feet. - Traitorous, Chapter 12

  • In most fanfic where Harry has a sibling, and is not or mistaken not to be the Boy Who Lived, James and Lily Potter end up being examples of this trope to the point where the Dursleys look like saints. They belittle, abuse and/or ignore him while heaping praise upon Harry's brother or sister, who is usually also a huge Jerkass that flaunts his or her status at every opportunity. Often, the three of them despise Harry for the mere fact that he exists, and more so if he befriends the wrong people (Snape, the Malfoys, or any Slytherin in general). Ron is usually portrayed as little more than a Gryffindor equivalent of Malfoy who often hates and mocks Harry for no reason at all. And heaven forbid if Harry ends up sorted into any house besides Gryffindor.

"I can not believe that you were put in Huffelpuff! You have disgraced your family and their fine Gryffindor heritage. We would have even preferred Ravenclaw over this. You will not be coming home for the Christmas holiday, that is your punishment." Mr. & Mrs. Potter - The Chronicles of Merlin: The Return, Chapter 1

  • Face it, "Wrong Boy Who Lived" stories are pretty much a hodgepodge of every single example above and then some. Dumbledore is at best a Well-Intentioned Extremist who chooses the wrong child because he thinks the scar on him or her is something Voldemort would be more likely to mark someone as his sworn enemy with, even though Voldemort was just going there to kill all the Potters outright. Sometimes, even if Voldemort doesn't attack them, Harry's brother or sister is still called "The Boy/Girl Who Lived" even though this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
  • A number of Harry/Hermione fics, usually from the Die for Our Ship Vocal Minority portion of the fandom, do this to Ron and Ginny as a matter of course. Sometimes Mrs. Weasley and Dumbledore will get this as well, the former trying to gain Harry's wealth and fame for her family, the latter pushing Harry down the path he needs him to go down in order to defeat Voldemort and/or Take Over the World.
  • Emancipated Harry fics are always guilty of this. Usually right after the events of Order of the Phoenix, Harry will suddenly forget everything he learned in Dumbledore's office and realize that Dumbledore is just using him. Ron is always either a spy planted by Dumbledore in their first year, or else just too dumb to realize what's going on. Molly Weasley is usually helping them in exchange for Harry marrying Ginny. Ginny herself escaped Death Eater treatment as often as not, and Hermione is usually loyal to Harry, but not always.
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