Voldemort's Children
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"Albus, please... I value your wisdom above all things, but about Tom Riddle, you will never understand."
—Severus Snape
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Voldemort's Children is a Harry Potter fanfic webcomic by Eli Dupree, set in an Alternate Universe where... well...
The story starts with Hermione Granger, the Head of Auror Office, interrogating Harry Potter, who has been arrested for killing a lot of people. It quickly becomes clear that this version of Harry hasn't escaped the effects of ten years of abuse. And that's only the beginning...
The author describes Voldemort's Children as "A reimagining of the Harry Potter series from a neurodiversity and social-justice perspective", and zir annotations often begin with a question about a moral or philosophical issue.
The art style is unique in never using panels; each page is a continuous flow of images and dialogue.
As a story comic with its own continuity, it should be read from the beginning.
- Abusive Parents: Dumbledore leaving Harry with the Dursleys may not have been the best idea. Similarly, Lucius Malfoy being friends with a Dark Lord seems to have lead to some fallout in Draco's upbringing...
- Awesome Yet Practical: Hermione Granger does not simply walk down a staircase.
- Bizarrchitecture: Hogwarts
- Deconstruction: This comic explores what might've actually happened had harry been locked in a closet for the first 11 years of his life...
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: The Aurors made sure Voldemort stayed dead when Harry was still a baby, short-circuiting the plot of all seven books.
- Hidden Eyes: Other than Voldemort and Dumbledore (see The Faceless below), other characters (especially Harry) have a similar appearance when they're doing something particularly dark or intimidating.
- The Faceless: Voldemort and Dumbledore have the top halves of their heads concealed in shadow whenever they appear.
- Flashback Effects: An old ministry broadcast appears in monochrome.
- Nested Story: "You know you're reading an Eli Dupree comic when you enter two nested narrative frames on the same page."
- Never Learned to Read: Harry's abusive past has left him barely literate when he enters Hogwarts.
- Our Time Travel Is Different: The Time-Twister.
- Painting the Medium: Each character gets a distinct text style for their speech. Harry's is sharp and ragged, Luna is a sort of nebular green, dumbledore talks in script.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Harry is (so far) implied to have gone on a killing spree as a result of prior mistreatment.
- Hero's Journey: Either averted (unlike canon-potter) or horribly twisted and deconstructed.
- Telepathy: Harry discovers early on that he is a Legilimens. Turns out A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read.
- Title Drop: Twice so far, with a different meaning each time.
- School Bullying Is Harmless: Oh so averted. May overlap with Bullying a Dragon.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Far towards the cynical end.