#(maybe that's why I love time travel harryd--)

[firendgold]

Hi, I dont know if your exactly the right person for this but you know those james and lily lives aus? Well i cant stand them and thats because they always make all the problems go away as well. But I figured out an au of this which I like. Which start of with Sirius actually becoming the secret keeper but then the rest stay the same like Peter is still a spy voldemort is still at large Harry is still the chosen one. And then you have Harry start school and hes probably friends with Neville allready and knows about wizard stuff but the rest of the actual story stay mostly the same. I think that would be quite interesting to see.

Hmm. Interesting, definitely... I don't know if that much stuff would stay the same if James and Lily lived. Not to say they're super important and would Definitely Change The Course of the War or anything, but their presence would definitely change Harry's story drastically, especially if he's still the main character of the fic. You'd have to grapple with the fact that for starters, Harry might not be chosen by Voldemort at all. There's a lot of new dominoes here.

But let's assume Voldemort does still think Harry is the greater threat to him. If Peter remains the traitor but he doesn't have the Potters' address to pass on, then Voldemort goes after Sirius. Since Secret-Keepers can't be forced to give up their secret, Sirius is definitely dead in any modern day AU like this. Peter may or may not be dead as well if he didn't have any more information to offer, but not without taking even more Order members with him who originally survived. Whether or not James finds out about Peter's treachery, that's two of his best friends he's lost in probably only a few years. It's likely to make him even more reckless than he already is, which may badly affect Lily and Harry.

Annnd that's only true if James, Lily and Harry are even alive past all that. Is the AU just that they live past Halloween or they somehow manage to evade Voldemort into the 1990s? If so, that could be because Voldemort kills Harry without having to go through his parents.

As for Neville... I think it's likely that if Voldemort had succeeded in killing Harry, he would have killed Neville too for good measure, so I have no idea what Neville's family looks like in a Jily lives!AU or if he's still alive to experience it.

We also don't know what Snape will do in a world where Voldemort threatens Lily, he swears his allegiance to Dumbledore and becomes a spy, and then Lily just... stays alive and married to his worst enemy, while also possibly popping out kids every few years as the wizards like to do for some reason. Does he remain loyal? Does he start giving Voldemort a little too much information in hopes that maybe James, Remus and Harry get caught in the crossfire somewhere?

But let me put all my conjecture aside. Assuming everything happened as you said, that version of Harry would have to work very hard in a fanfic or else he'd probably bore me. I know that's awful to say! But I don't like Jily lives!AUs either. There are some characters in canon whose deaths I'm super okay with, and they're high up on the list. A Harry who grows up with his parents probably ends up inheriting a lot of James' flaws. He loses the attachment issues that make him compelling to me. I also find it more fun that Harry straddles both the Muggle and magical worlds because of his upbringing. Not in a muggle!wank way though! I'm not on that "Muggles do everything better" train.

So yeah, I'm kind of boring but the only time I read James and Lily being alive is if Harry either time-travels backward before 1981 or if he ends up in another dimension where he gets to experience his parents without actually experiencing his parents.

#thanks for the ask! #sorry if my answer wasn't satisfying since I only read dimension-hopping AUs and such #but working out all the ways an AU could be different and good would be cool! #I like Harry being in pain #(maybe that's why I love time travel harryd--) #ANYWAY #fireandgoldposts #not fireandgold