By Viridian
Reviews
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 4:15pm
I'm thinking Harry will need to come clean with Dumbledore at some point; being at odds with the Headmaster can't be good for his long-term goals, and if he let Dumbledore into his mind, showed him all that transpired, Dumbledore would probably give his full support to Harry's efforts at preventing the tragedies to come, especially since he's already proved that the timeline can be changed without engendering any universe-destroying paradox.
"Some varieties of Muggles think wizards and witches are inherently evil, too." Heh! Nice plink at the fundy twits who'd like to ban the Harry Potter books...
"He knew that when Hermione came up with a scheme, she usually preferred to not unveil it until she’d worked out all the bugs." Interesting insight! I hadn't thought of it that way, but that does explain some of Hermione's more frustrating actions in the series, notably how cryptic she was about setting up the interview. That one especially annoyed me because it royally screwed up Harry's first (and, because of that, last) date with Cho, and I sail on that particular ship. If Hermione had told Harry why she wanted him to meet her, he could have told Cho, and she could have come with him, and probably felt a lot better for actually being present when he gave his account of Cedric's death. All through OotP I kept wanting to shake the boy and shout, "For the love of Merlin, when a girl picks your shoulder to cry on, that's a good thing!"
If Harry keeps making such effective use of his alliance with/hold over Rita, I wonder if Lucius might have her assassinated? She ought to do something about her personal security... although actually, a highly successful professional libeler like her probably has pretty decent security, as there must already be plenty of people in the Wizarding World who'd love to see her dead.
"It amazed Harry that some people considered Arthur Weasley ‘weak’ or ‘hen-pecked’." Heh. Some people in the Wizarding World, or in fandom? It seems to me those stereotypes are more prevalent out here than among characters in the books.
Great idea of Hermione's, and I like that Harry has no problem capitalizing on his celebrity when it's to help his friends and teammates, rather than for his own benefit (he, after all, doesn't even need a new broom).
"how to destroy the ring without losing a hand." Not really a problem, if you have the sense not to put the bloody thing on before destroying it, but of course we didn't know that until DH.
Didn't think burning the the diary would work, even if this was written before JKR revealed just how hard Horcruxes are to destroy. Still, the solution is down there in the Chamber; Harry just needs to expose the basilisk to the sound of a crowing rooster, then collect six of its fangs... or perhaps only five, since he hopes to extract the Horcrux from the Sorting Hat without destroying the Hat itself.
"...secret alliance with the Vampire clans." Not the Tremere, I hope? Better them than the Lasombra or Tzimisce, though...
Nice job planting the seeds for a Neville-Luna romance -- it didn't happen in canon, unlike H/G and R/Hr, but with the Hex (as some of us like to call the group that fought at the DoM) forming up so much earlier, and Luna in Gryffindor, it makes a lot sense that the two erstwhile outcasts would bond.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 4:12pm
A Moody-style trunk sounds like a very good investment. Reminds me of D&D -- the one magic item every adventuring party simply *must* acquire as soon as humanly (or elvishly, dwarvishly, etc.) possible was always a Bag of Holding. Maybe Harry can get himself a backpack with that sort of extra-dimensional space inside...
"He never did find out what happened to Draco during the war." That's an interesting bit of news. It seems like something Harry would make an effort to find out, too, especially since you mentioned earlier that he suspected Draco was the one who'd butchered Ginny during the Hogwarts Massacre.
"keep certain peoples’ mouths from writing checks their bodies can’t cash." Brit-pick! Of course, that's exactly the sort of Americanism Harry could have picked up from the war-mages, so it doesn't really matter if it's not a British idiom.
"Envious, Potter?" Sound like I was right: it is the Malfoys influencing the Ministry to prevent Sirius' release. And Draco just let it slip, if Harry's sharp enough to work it out...
"In case anyone was wondering, I’m not a Gilderoy Lockhart fan." Is there such a thing? It seems to me he and Umbridge are the only two characters so unremittingly awful, so lacking in anything resembling a redeeming quality that they're NEVER portrayed in a positive light even in the most acanonical of fan-fic. I think it's that they're not only villainous, but utterly incompetent -- Voldemort, Draco, Bellatrix etc. are appealing in some ways to some readers because of their abilities, whereas there's nothing at all to admire in the narcissistic fraud or the bureaucratic hack.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 4:11pm
"I asked him to make sure that the next time Voldemort comes for me, he’ll come to Hogwarts because it’ll be the easier target." Yup, that about sums it up. No half-measures here. :)
"In the future, Hermione had usually taken care of such things when needed. After her death, he and Ron usually moved about too much to bother with them." Interesting. As speculation about DH, this is half-right: Hermione does take care of warding their campsites, but the wards are always needed even when they're moving every single day. Fortunately, Hermione didn't die; Harry and Ron would have been up a creek without her.
"He wanted any survivors of an attack on The Burrow to have nightmares about it for the rest of their lives." Yeah, that does sound like it would make Hogwarts the easier target...
The way you've worked Arithmancy into this story is interesting; JKR established that there is such a thing, but never did anything with it, or with Ancient Runes, even though Hermione studied the subject. It makes sense that mathematical magic would play a key role in the construction of permanent wards around a magical site.
The anchors for the permanent wards around the Burrow sound rather like the Charter Stones of Garth Nix's "Old Kingdom Trilogy" ("Sabriel," "Lirael," and "Abhorsen").
"It seems he was promoted and sent out of the country." Heh. Do wizards use the expression, "kicked upstairs?"
"a letter for one of his contacts." Rita? Given her penchant for raking the Ministry over the coals, I would think the Sirius/Pettigrew story is one she could really sink her teeth (or mandibles, as the case may be) into. Even if she wasn't so inclined, Harry has a lot of leverage he could bring to bear...
"It was surprising to Harry that some of the Weasleys didn’t get sorted into Hufflepuff instead of Gryffindor." You've noticed that, too, eh? One interesting thing about the Trio is that, while they're all unquestionably Gryffindors, they each have a strong affinity to one of the other houses. Harry, with his Parseltongue and capacity for ruthlessness, "would have done well in Slytherin;" Hermione has more of Ravenclaw's cardinal virtue than any Ravenclaw in her year, somewhat to the chagrin of that house's students, and admitted that the hat considered placing her there. Ron isn't as sharp, most ways, as either of his friends (though he obviously possesses a great deal of the peculiar kind of intelligence needed to excel at chess), but he's intensely loyal. I played a bit on that in my own fic with this little exchange:
Cho smiled at Harry. "That’s better. Now, who wants to talk Quidditch?"
Hermione rolled her eyes as Ron grinned like a madman. "What team do you follow?" he asked.
"The Tornados."
"You and half of Britain."
"They are picking up a lot of new fans this year, aren’t they? But I’ve supported them since I was six."
"Ah, well, that’s all right then," said Ron. "I just don’t care for fair-weather fans."
Cho laughed. "Let me guess: Chudley Cannons, right?"
Ron’s smile turned rueful. "Got it in one."
"I have to admire your loyalty, then. You could have been in Hufflepuff."
"Nah, only a Gryffindor would be brave enough to keep going to their matches year after year."
I think I figured out why the Ministry would want to delay Sirius' release: who inherits Twelve Grimmauld Place and the Black fortune if he dies now? Best guess would be Narcissa Malfoy. She's the youngest of the Black sisters, but with Bellatrix in Azkaban and Andromeda disowned, she's probably still Sirius' legal heir, although Andromeda might conceivably contest that.
I'm thinking that once Pettigrew is neutralized, the next major loose end Harry should be working out a way to tie off is one Bartemious Crouch Jr. It would be nice if he could foil the little creep's parents' plan to sneak him out of Azkaban in the first place. (Actually, if that hasn't happened yet the tightened security of Azkaban could have an unexpected fringe benefit.) Of course, if the Ministry morons let Pettigrew escape, knocking that link out of the chain leading to Voldemort's resurrection will become a lot more urgent.
I just read the "Snape's Eyes" essay on HP-Lexicon; very interesting, and I'm pretty much sold on the idea that Snape was using Legilimency, at least to scan surface thoughts and emotions for duplicity or animosity, throughout the series. However, it also makes a strong case, which DH proved correct, that Snape was actually working for Dumbledore, not Voldemort, even when he "murdered" (euthanized would probably be more accurate, given the headmaster's condition at the time) the former.
Oh, a couple of additional thoughts about the last chapter. First, a Glock-19 doesn't really have unlimited ammunition, but it could seem that way to the poor slob with the six-shooter on the other side of a gunfight even if there's no conjuration involved. If one was going to enchant a gun to give it unlimited ammunition, why not do it to a .44 magnum? Dirty Harry Potter, anyone? Second, I like the side benefit of getting rid of Scabbers early: the biggest source of conflict between Ron and Hermione in Year Three was Crookshanks' constant pursuit of the rat (or rat-bastard, as it turned out). I'll be interested to see what kind of familiar Hermione gets, if any, now that Crookshanks is Ron's cat.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 4:10pm
It just hit me, a little way into this chapter, that *this* Ginny won't *need* the diary -- she's already been pouring out her heart in her letters to Harry just the way she did with the diary in canon, and now she'll have him around to talk to.
Caramels with fish hooks? What a nasty image. Good metaphor, though.
Loved Harry calling Draco a poofter. "Rule Number One: No poofters!" Given the ever-present Crabbe and Goyle, it's an easy accusation to make, too.
That letter in the previous chapter, offering a carrot and a stick... it was to Rita, right? When will that pay off?
I'd always thought it a bit odd that canon!Harry *wasn't* much of a bibliophile; given his lonely childhood and bullying by Dudley, I would think that reading would be one of the few forms of escape and relaxation available to him, and the inside of a library is one place where Dudley would be unlikely to find him...
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 4:07pm
Mantis FA 2008-06-05 . chapter 18
"I asked him to make sure that the next time Voldemort comes for me, he’ll come to Hogwarts because it’ll be the easier target." Yup, that about sums it up. No half-measures here. :)
"In the future, Hermione had usually taken care of such things when needed. After her death, he and Ron usually moved about too much to bother with them." Interesting. As speculation about DH, this is half-right: Hermione does take care of warding their campsites, but the wards are always needed even when they're moving every single day. Fortunately, Hermione didn't die; Harry and Ron would have been up a creek without her.
"He wanted any survivors of an attack on The Burrow to have nightmares about it for the rest of their lives." Yeah, that does sound like it would make Hogwarts the easier target...
The way you've worked Arithmancy into this story is interesting; JKR established that there is such a thing, but never did anything with it, or with Ancient Runes, even though Hermione studied the subject. It makes sense that mathematical magic would play a key role in the construction of permanent wards around a magical site.
The anchors for the permanent wards around the Burrow sound rather like the Charter Stones of Garth Nix's "Old Kingdom Trilogy" ("Sabriel," "Lirael," and "Abhorsen").
"It seems he was promoted and sent out of the country." Heh. Do wizards use the expression, "kicked upstairs?"
"a letter for one of his contacts." Rita? Given her penchant for raking the Ministry over the coals, I would think the Sirius/Pettigrew story is one she could really sink her teeth (or mandibles, as the case may be) into. Even if she wasn't so inclined, Harry has a lot of leverage he could bring to bear...
"It was surprising to Harry that some of the Weasleys didn’t get sorted into Hufflepuff instead of Gryffindor." You've noticed that, too, eh? One interesting thing about the Trio is that, while they're all unquestionably Gryffindors, they each have a strong affinity to one of the other houses. Harry, with his Parseltongue and capacity for ruthlessness, "would have done well in Slytherin;" Hermione has more of Ravenclaw's cardinal virtue than any Ravenclaw in her year, somewhat to the chagrin of that house's students, and admitted that the hat considered placing her there. Ron isn't as sharp, most ways, as either of his friends (though he obviously possesses a great deal of the peculiar kind of intelligence needed to excel at chess), but he's intensely loyal. I played a bit on that in my own fic with this little exchange:
Cho smiled at Harry. "That’s better. Now, who wants to talk Quidditch?"
Hermione rolled her eyes as Ron grinned like a madman. "What team do you follow?" he asked.
"The Tornados."
"You and half of Britain."
"They are picking up a lot of new fans this year, aren’t they? But I’ve supported them since I was six."
"Ah, well, that’s all right then," said Ron. "I just don’t care for fair-weather fans."
Cho laughed. "Let me guess: Chudley Cannons, right?"
Ron’s smile turned rueful. "Got it in one."
"I have to admire your loyalty, then. You could have been in Hufflepuff."
"Nah, only a Gryffindor would be brave enough to keep going to their matches year after year."
I think I figured out why the Ministry would want to delay Sirius' release: who inherits Twelve Grimmauld Place and the Black fortune if he dies now? Best guess would be Narcissa Malfoy. She's the youngest of the Black sisters, but with Bellatrix in Azkaban and Andromeda disowned, she's probably still Sirius' legal heir, although Andromeda might conceivably contest that.
I'm thinking that once Pettigrew is neutralized, the next major loose end Harry should be working out a way to tie off is one Bartemious Crouch Jr. It would be nice if he could foil the little creep's parents' plan to sneak him out of Azkaban in the first place. (Actually, if that hasn't happened yet the tightened security of Azkaban could have an unexpected fringe benefit.) Of course, if the Ministry morons let Pettigrew escape, knocking that link out of the chain leading to Voldemort's resurrection will become a lot more urgent.
I just read the "Snape's Eyes" essay on HP-Lexicon; very interesting, and I'm pretty much sold on the idea that Snape was using Legilimency, at least to scan surface thoughts and emotions for duplicity or animosity, throughout the series. However, it also makes a strong case, which DH proved correct, that Snape was actually working for Dumbledore, not Voldemort, even when he "murdered" (euthanized would probably be more accurate, given the headmaster's condition at the time) the former.
Oh, a couple of additional thoughts about the last chapter. First, a Glock-19 doesn't really have unlimited ammunition, but it could seem that way to the poor slob with the six-shooter on the other side of a gunfight even if there's no conjuration involved. If one was going to enchant a gun to give it unlimited ammunition, why not do it to a .44 magnum? Dirty Harry Potter, anyone? Second, I like the side benefit of getting rid of Scabbers early: the biggest source of conflict between Ron and Hermione in Year Three was Crookshanks' constant pursuit of the rat (or rat-bastard, as it turned out). I'll be interested to see what kind of familiar Hermione gets, if any, now that Crookshanks is Ron's cat.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 4:00pm
You used "floored" instead of "flooed" twice in this chapter; could your Word spell-checker be making that change automatically as you type?
"It sure as hell doesn’t feel like August out here." My understanding is that British Augusts in general are a lot colder and wetter than the North American variety. Have you ever heard Flanders & Swann's little ditty about the English weather? It goes like this:
January brings the snow -- makes your feet and fingers glow.
February's ice and sleet freeze the toes right off your feet.
Welcome March with wintry wind -- would thou wert not so unkind!
April brings the sweet Spring showers -- on and on for hours and hours!
Farmers fear unkindly May -- frost by night and hail by day!
June just rains and never stops -- thirty days and spoils the crops!
In July, the sun is hot. Is it shining? No, it's not.
August, cold and dank and wet, brings more rain than any yet.
Bleak September's mists and mud is enough to chill the blood.
Then October adds a gale -- wind and slush and rain and hail!
Dark November brings the fog -- should not do it to a dog!
Freezing wet December, then... bloody January again!
And Flanders adds, "I hope that's been helpful to those of you planning your holidays."
Moody achieved a much more worthy end in your fic than in canon. I was saddened not so much that he died in DH, as by the notable lack of a large Death Eater honor guard to accompany him through the veil. If any character in the series cried out for a massive blaze of glory, it was Moody.
Uh-oh... Harry's going to be even more vulnerable to Dementors this time around, isn't he? So many more bad memories for them to work on. The bloody things are depression personified, and that's a bad, bad combination with PTSD. (I'm a life insurance agent, incidentally; a diagnosis of PTSD is an automatic rejection, no matter how long ago it was: it's considered an unacceptable suicide risk.)
"Yeah, it was brilliant. I wasn’t so crazy about the green and silver uniforms, but…" Dead freakin' brilliant! ROFLMAO!
I think Arthur and Sirius would have known one another better than you've portrayed here, though; they were both in the Order, and there's no indication that it had any kind of cellular organization that would keep every member from being acquainted with every other (not that that would have been a bad idea, but my sense is JKR doesn't think like that -- she writes fantasy/boarding school/whodunits, not military or political thrillers, after all.
Great job on Scabbers -- I love watching Harry using his foreknowledge to efficiently circumvent the main threats that bedeviled him in canon, while struggling with the new and unexpected ones. Can't wait to see how he deals with the diary this time. Of course, if you'd known how tough Horcruxes are to destroy, that would actually have presented a bigger problem for the plot. Harry would need to take out the basilisk just to obtain some of its fangs for Horcrux-hunting...
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 3:58pm
"Ron, full sentences and the Queen’s English, please." Ha! Usually it's Hermione that speaks in cryptic sentence fragments and expects her friends to follow her maglev bullet train of thought...
Speaking of sentence fragments, Gred and Forge are beginning to sound a bit like Xamot and Tomax; they really don't switch off *that* often in canon.
I'm really looking forward to Harry explaining to his friends what's going on; all the secrecy and manipulation is hurting his relations with them in spite of his best efforts, and it'll be a relief when they're in on it. (And, in some ways, a bigger relief when most of the secrets he knows have been used and he's back on a more equal footing with them, with no more idea what's coming next in the altered timeline than they have.) In particular, I think it would be helpful to get Hermione's input on his ideas for handling upcoming events and adjusting the timeline.
"since it didn’t involve actual spell-casting it didn’t count as under-age magic." Huh? I thought you'd mentioned in one of your earlier author's notes that you're aware that, canonically, there is no issue with underaged magic in magical households; children at the Burrow are under Molly and Arthur Weasley's authority, not the Improper Use of Magic Office's, because when a spell is cast there, the MInistry has no way of knowing who cast it.
The description of Harry and Ginny cooking together was very sweet; that's something that's been speculated on in discussions at FictionAlley Park. I've always maintained that Harry's kitchen skills from his childhood would carry over into adult life, and that the negative memories of the Dursleys would not keep him from enjoying cooking for, or, better yet, with his girlfriend/wife, whoever that might be.
Harry's argument to the judges sounded a lot more like an actual lawyer than any eleven-year-old I've ever met; he's letting the mask slip, and that might not be a very good idea in front of the Malfoys... not that they're likely to guess what's really going on, of course.
I don't think Dumbledore in canon was ever this arrogant and sure of himself, but we only really found that out in Book 7 -- and the one place where his confidence appeared to be misplaced, his trust in Snape, turned out not to be a mistake at all; Snape was "Dumbledore's man, through and through," from the day he went to Dumbledore and begged him to protect Lily. The only real mistakes Dumbledore made in the war were not telling Harry about the prophecy sooner, which would have averted the DoM fiasco and Sirius's death, and not taking Harry's fears about Malfoy in HBP more seriously -- Malfoy's attempts to kill Dumbledore directly were ineffectual (though dangerous enough to the people on whom they misfired), but what he did with the vanishing cabinet could have been catastrophic if Harry hadn't given his friends the Felix Felicis, and was plenty bad enough even with that.
Oh, I'm surprised I didn't think of this sooner: it's not fan-fic, but given that you like this type of time travel story (travelling back from an unbearably horrible future to change the past and make a better time line), you'd probably enjoy Eric Flint and David Drake's Belisarius novels: "An Oblique Approach," "In the Heart of Darkness," "Destiny's Shield," "Fortune's Stroke," "The Tide of Victory," and "The Dance of Time."
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 8:45am
So I was right about the goblins' appreciation for the art of revenge. One should be leery about accepting an invitation to a wine-tasting from one of them, especially amontillado...
It's interesting that, in some ways, Harry is able to show more of his true self to Goldfarb than to his friends; Goldfarb, after all, is extremely close-mouthed about his clients' affairs, and doesn't have to spend several hours a week face to face with Severus Snape. That name keeps jumping out at me, though -- my parents' next-door neighbors are named Goldfarb, and given that the goblins in canon already come off a bit like an anti-Semitic caricature of Jewish bankers, giving one a patently Jewish name is a bit off.
Oh, so Rita's sniffing around? Can't wait to see Harry use some of his verbal jujitsu on her. Given what he knows about her, she could become a useful tool, actually -- Hermione certainly got some good mileage out of knowing what Rita is, and I suspect this version of Harry could do even better.
"Yes, I know JKR said that Ollivander only makes wands with Dragon Heartstring, Unicorn Hair, or Phoenix Feather cores. Given the rarity of Phoenixes, and the number of combinations involved, it seems rather limited in terms of ‘every wizard needs to find the wand that fits them’. Two or three, multiplied by a couple dozen varieties of wood, would hardly fill a shop. It wouldn’t be the first time that the numbers don’t seem to support the story."
I don't think it's ever been suggested that each combination of wood and core is unique to a single wand; I think it makes a difference *which* dragon, phoenix, or unicorn provided the core, especially given what we know about the relationship between Harry's wand and Voldemort's. So there could be other phoenix-and-holly wands out there which wouldn't (or perhaps would, though it's doubtful seeing as Harry's wand apparently chose him *because* of his connection to Voldemort) have fitted Harry.
Even if every wand is unique, there are two more variables: length and flexibility. Length is technically a continuous variable, but even if we limit it to quarter inch units, we've seen wands from seven inches to sixteen, and those might not be the actual limits. Given the number of adjectives we've heard Ollivander use for flexibility, that probably adds another multiple of ten or twelve at least, which gets us well up into the five figure range: three cores times twenty-four woods (and I think two dozen is a conservative estimate, frankly) times thirty-six lengths (quarter-inch increments from seven to sixteen) times ten gradations of flexibility would give us 25,920 possible wands; Ollivander would have to produce one wand a day for seventy-one years to exhaust the possibilities.
"I don’t think Merged Harry will have any doubts about who he wants to take to the Yule ball. I don’t imagine him putting up with a lot of nonsense from his friends either. Of course, you know someone or something is going to have to louse it up for everyone…"
Actually, I was kind of hoping that was one of the things that would run smoothly* this time around, like dealing with Quirrell and Dobby...
"He’s a good bit older and did a spot of wandless during the dementor attack." I wouldn't exactly call that "wandless;" what he did was light his wand while it wasn't actually in his hand. It probably helped that it was only a few inches away, and "Lumos" is a pretty elementary spell.
(I can imagine merged!Harry, in one of his more frustrated moments, quoting Mal Reynolds: "It never runs smooth! How come it never runs smooth!?)
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 8:04am
"Gregory Goyle was snickering about the remark when Ron pulled his wand out and asked him which armpit he wanted his nose moved to." LOL! Looking back, one of the clearest early hints of Ron and Hermione's future romance was Ron's instant, furious defense of Hermione's honor when Malfoy called her "Mudblood." Both Harry and Ron are quick to protect Hermione from physical danger (a good thing, as her greatest weakness is her tendency to panic and freeze when faced with a crisis too immediate to reason her way out of -- "Are you a witch or not!?", Harry pulling her out of harm's way when Grawp grabbed at her, etc.), but Ron reacts much more strongly than Harry when someone insults her.
Good insights into Hermione's character and her thoughts and feelings about Ron and Harry; I guess I needn't have worried that she'll end up in unrequited love with Harry instead of getting together with Ron.
Loved this little exchange:
"Yeah, brilliant, isn’t it?" Ron’s grin was infectious.
"It’s very bright, I’ll give you that."
Yes, well, that's one meaning of "brilliant," isn't it? LOL.
"For a moment, Harry toyed with the idea of finding a way to leak their address to Voldemort and letting history repeat itself." Whoa, Harry's Slytherin side is getting a little out of hand now...
"He wasn’t going to sit back and rely on his foreknowledge anymore. He still retained some of his abilities and knowledge, and moreover he knew how bad things were going to get when Voldemort returned. There were changes to be made, and anyone that got in his way was going to think they’d been run over by a Hungarian Horntail."
It seems to me, fate aside, that the most sensible change to make would be to stop Voldemort's return altogether -- figure out a way to expose and eliminate Pettigrew, then hunt down the Horcruxes (shouldn't be hard, Harry already knows where all of them are in this timeline) and destroy them. Once the last one is gone, Voldemort should either pass beyond the veil, or become a harmless ghost if his terror of death led him to do whatever it is witches and wizards to achieve that peculiar form of undeath (it can't be too hard if Moaning Myrtle did it while she was still in school) -- it seems like something Tom might have done early on, before he discovered the way to make a Horcrux. If, as in canon, Harry's scar was a Horcrux, that might present a problem, but you haven't indicated that in this fic. (That was another thing I guessed right before Deathly Hallows came out, though I didn't figure out the wrinkle about Voldemort also acting as something like a Horcrux for Harry due to the use of his blood in the resurrection spell.) However, I'm probably inclined toward this approach because I don't believe in fate.
Speaking of which: "As someone whose entire existence has been defined by prophecy, Harry has a healthy respect for their significance." I don't quite buy that, after Harry's discussion of the prophecy with Dumbledore in HBP chapter 23. It's canon that the vast majority of the prophecies stored in the Department of Mysteries have never come true; prophecies derive their power from people's belief in them, and, often enough, from their efforts to avert the outcome. Harry, though, knowing not only Trelawney's second prophecy (before she actually makes it!), but exactly what it really meant, should be able to circumvent it, prevent it not only from coming to pass but from ever being spoken in the first place.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 7:59am
"Privately, Harry thought the healer’s eyes were a little too calculating." Ahem -- Kettle, meet Pot! Of course, given how calculating and manipulative this version of Harry is -- the hell he lived through really brought out his Slytherin side! -- it's hardly surprising he'd be hypervigilant for that trait in other people. Hypervigilance in general is also a standard symptom of PTSD, as you probably know. I'm rather familiar with it because my wife has PTSD from growing up with parents and an older brother who, in their own way, weren't much better than the Dursleys.
"Magical Resonance Imaging" -- snerk! Of course, such a test would probably have shown more or less what Healer Stanhope described if they'd done it on Harry *before* he merged with the memories of his older self, given what his scar turned out to be in Book Seven. Maybe that's what you had in mind anyway; I would have thought the memory merge was smoother than that, given how well integrated Harry seems to be now.
I'm not a Brit, so I could be wrong, but "Whoa, Ron, back it up" sounds awfully American to my American Anglophile ears.
Do you read Lois McMaster Bujold, by any chance? Your dialogue occasionally reminds me of hers -- "I don’t want anyone getting revenge on my relatives… unless I’m personally involved in the planning and execution" sounds like something Miles Vorkosigan might say (though not about his family -- Miles gets on very well with them, apart from some of the more distant Vorrutyer cousins). If you're not familiar with her books, just know that that's about the highest compliment I can offer in regard to dialogue.
Glad Harry has decided to nip the diary plot in the bud; I just can't see any reason to put Ginny through that again. He probably ought to do something about the basilisk, though; the thing's a menace, and Voldemort will probably use it somewhere down the line if it isn't killed. This time, if he thinks of it, he could do it the easy way: borrow a few of Hagrid's roosters and let them loose in the chamber of secrets. A cock's crow, after all, is as lethal to the basilisk as its gaze is to everything else.
Love the letter from Goldfarb -- curt, cryptic, very goblinish. My sense is that ruthlessness and calculation are traits goblins respect; I think Goldfarb is taking a bit of vicarious pleasure in assisting Harry with this elegant revenge on Vernon.
I'm enjoying your Gred-and-Forge dialogues (or comedy routines, as the case may be), but I think they're a bit over-the-top, a caricature rather than a faithful rendition of the way the twins talk in canon. They're not telepathic, and they do finish their own sentences now and then, as I recall.
One small deviation from canon: Hagrid couldn't have helped Molly and Arthur escape from Filch, because neither Hagrid nor Filch held their current jobs at Hogwarts when Molly and Arthur were there. The caretaker at the time, Apollyon Pringle, once gave Arthur a severe thrashing when he caught him returning from a night-time stroll with Molly in the small hours, and both elder Weasleys reminisced about Hagrid's predecessor, "a man named Ogg" (GoF, chapter 31).
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the canonical introduction of PTSD in Deathly Hallows, which showed just how bad it could get for a witch or wizard traumatized during childhood (although it wasn't explicit in the book, my reading was that Arianna was gang-raped -- what I know of PTSD suggests that nothing else the three Muggle boys could have done to her in a single, isolated incident would cause that much lingering trauma).
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 7:44am
I've had several reviews of my own work that complain about Harry getting away with rather a lot of underaged magic. I can't recall exactly where the monitoring method was described, but I know that Ministry doesn't react to underaged magic use inside the Burrow, Diagon Alley, 12 Grimmauld Place, etc. In my story, I have Harry using it at three different locations, but all of them are what you might term "magical territory," shrouded by various wards: a Quidditch Pitch, a cottage belonging to Walden Macnair and being used by a group of Death Eaters as a base for particularly nasty little plot, and an Order safehouse protected by the Fidelius Charm.
You mentioned Sirius and the Two-Way Mirror in one of your notes; what really boggles me about that is that the *first* time Harry risked expulsion to sneak into Umbridge's office and Floo-talk to Sirius, Sirius didn't think to ask, "Why didn't you just use the mirror?" Harry, of course, had never opened the present because he didn't want Sirius coming to Hogwarts to give Snape a talking-to, but you'd think Sirius would wonder why Harry wasn't using the thing. One of the changes in my own AU is that Harry gets the mirror for his fifteenth birthday instead of at the end of Winter Holidays, and knows what it is all along.
Okay, enough ancillary stuff, I'll comment on the actual chapter now. What Harry appears to have missed is the larger picture of Lucius Malfoy's plot: the thrust of it was to discredit Arthur Weasley by implicating his daughter in attacks on Muggle-borns, to the end of defeating his new Muggle Protection Act. Given Harry's intensified rivalry with Draco and Lucius's consequent greater awareness of Harry, it's not surprising that Lucius should pursue the same goal via an oblique strike at Harry, using Vernon Dursley as a cat's paw. Hence the lifting of Dumbledore's Memory Charm, and the box of doxies. On to the next chapter to see if I've worked it out correctly.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 7:40am
I absolutely LOVED this line: "'Harry Potter is always in danger at Hogwarts. Harry Potter is in mortal danger everywhere he bloody goes,' Harry growled." So true! And more true of Privet Drive in this timeline than ever before, between Malfoy's idea of an amusing birthday present (at least, I assume it was Malfoy, per or fils) and Uncle Vernon heading round the bend.
Also, unlike some of your reviewers, I thought Harry's miscalculation of the seriousness of Vernon's intent, and inability to do anything to stop it by the time he did realize how bad it was going to be, rang very true. None of his past experience with Vernon indicated that such an assault was in the offing, and no martial artist, no matter how well trained, is going to be able to defend himself effectively when he already has some broken bones and nerve damage, especially against an opponent who outmasses him four or five to one. Harry isn't a black belt at this point, anyway -- mastery of a martial art, like playing an instrument, is largely neuromuscular training rather than abstract knowledge, and Harry couldn't bring that training back in time with him.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 6:41am
Nice parallax view of the story thus far through Molly's eyes; that aspect reminds me a little of "Or Die Trying," which is essentially a parallax view of the entire canon from Year Zero (that is, the year before Harry arrived at Hogwarts) through the eyes of a very appealingly drawn Cho Chang.
Speaking of whom, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with Cho in this story; I'm assuming Harry will be taking Ginny to the Yule Ball this time around, not using his foreknowledge and greater confidence to get to Cho before Cedric does (what I would be inclined to do if I wrote something like this -- I have no animus against H/G, but I am one of the remnant band of die-hard H/C shippers).
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 6:11am
Nice cliff-hanger; I wasn't sure until I read your note whether it was just Fred and George (and why the heck would they grab Harry at that moment if they weren't completely certain he'd gotten the Snitch?), or some hostile person, probably Malfoy, had done a summoning charm or something of the sort on his broom to knock it out from under him.
I noticed more subtle hints that Hermione might be more attracted to Harry than Ron in this timeline; on the other hand, Ron's admiration for Hermione is rather more pronounced, too, and Ginny obviously likes Harry a lot already, so maybe it won't be a problem. Harry's observation about "puberty revisited" rang very true; I've thought some about this particular form of time travel fantasy (haven't we all wondered how much better high school could be if we could send all the knowledge of our adult selves back to our pubescent minds?), and that seems like a significant potential problem.
Also interesting that you used the phrase "greater good" in connection with Dumbledore's keeping secrets, given what that phrase meant to him in DH. Dumbledore, of all people, should be wary of letting the ends justify the means in pursuit of a "greater good," but we didn't really know him until Book 7.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 6:10am
Oops, this review was supposed to be of Chapter 7. I can't delete the copy I accidentally attached to Chapter 5, but perhaps you can.
Nice chapter! The way Harry dealt with Voldemort this time around echoes the climax of DH -- the word "owned" comes to mind. I loved seeing him talk down to his enemy, calling him "Tom," taunting him with his failure.
It seems to me, though, that keeping his friends out of the action might be a problem later on; Ron and Hermione grew a lot, and the Trio as a unit grew, from the challenges they overcame together. It might be that by protecting them now, Harry is keeping his friends from developing into the highly capable allies he may still need later on, if he's not able to avert Voldemort's resurrection altogether.
The hug and Harry's thoughts about it were intriguing, too. Despite his best intentions, it seems very possible that this more mature, studious, literate version of Harry might prove irresistable to someone like Hermione, leading to a potentially ugly entanglement later in the timeline when Ron loves Hermione, Hermione loves Harry, and Harry loves Ginny.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 6:07am
Nice chapter! The way Harry dealt with Voldemort this time around echoes the climax of DH -- the word "owned" comes to mind. I loved seeing him talk down to his enemy, calling him "Tom," taunting him with his failure.
It seems to me, though, that keeping his friends out of the action might be a problem later on; Ron and Hermione grew a lot, and the Trio as a unit grew, from the challenges they overcame together. It might be that by protecting them now, Harry is keeping his friends from developing into the highly capable allies he may still need later on, if he's not able to avert Voldemort's resurrection altogether.
The hug and Harry's thoughts about it were intriguing, too. Despite his best intentions, it seems very possible that this more mature, studious, literate version of Harry might prove irresistable to someone like Hermione, leading to a potentially ugly entanglement later in the timeline when Ron loves Hermione, Hermione loves Harry, and Harry loves Ginny.
mantis posted a comment on Sunday 12th April 2009 6:02am
I'm copying my reviews from FF.net here, where they won't be quite so lost among the one-liners and squeeing. Hope that's all right.
This is a very impressive fic, so far (I haven't read past the chapter I'm reviewing, and will continue to review as I go along whenever I feel inspired to). Given the high quality of your craftsmanship, I'm not surprised to see in your notes that you've also written novels for publication; I've only read a couple of other fan-fics as well-written as this, one of which (Monkeymouse's Or Die Trying) was also by a professional author (though not of fiction -- Monkeymouse is Patrick Drazen, author of a pop-scholarly work called Anime Explosion! The What? Why? & Wow! of Japanese Animation).
The only thing that's really bothered me so far is your characterization of Snape. I understand that this fic was started shortly after HBP came out, and obviously you were in the camp that took the "proof" of Snape's villainy at face value, just as Harry and all the rest of the characters did. I take some pride in having reasoned out almost precisely what Rowling was doing by the time I turned the last page of HBP: I maintained, until DH came out and proved me right, that (1) Snape killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore's orders; (2) Dumbledore had no more than hours to live in any case due to the potion he'd consumed, the curse on his hand, or both; (3) Snape loved Lily Potter, and the real reason that the pensieve scene in OOTP was his "worst memory" was that it was the day he'd called Lily a Mudblood and killed their friendship. I did not, of course, realize the full significance of what Dumbledore had done, because Rowling provided no information about the Elder Wand or the inherent difficulty of destroying a Horcrux until the final book. I figured the plan was for Snape, having won as much trust as Voldemort ever gives anyone by slaying Dumbledore, to backstab the Dark Lord at the moment when his betrayal would do the maximum possible damage, enabling Harry to prevail.
Of course, the rationale for your fic could not be compliant with DH; it requires a far longer, more devastating war than actually happened in canon. However, one could change a couple of crucial plot points in DH to achieve the same goal; if Voldemort had gotten true control of the Elder Wand, for example, he might well have ended up destroying Hogwarts when its people failed to capitulate, recovered at least one Horcrux (the diadem, probably) before Harry could eliminate it, and waged the campaign of terror that sets up your story. I would have been very interested to see how you wrote the time-travelling Harry's relationship with the canonical, not at all nice but ultimately good version of Snape. (Shades of Into the Woods: "Nice is different than good;" "You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right! I'm the witch, you're the world.")
anonymous5 posted a comment on Saturday 11th April 2009 4:29am
"Harry jammed the diary onto one of the sabre-like fangs, right through the bloody hand-print he’d left on the cover." Please tell me this is Chekhov's gun.
Sam Watts posted a comment on Saturday 28th March 2009 7:42am
Posted this on your FF page, but figured I should probably do it here too to make things thorough. It's a wee bit wordy, but here goes!
Well, I've been following your stories for years and years (since Junior year of high-school, astoundingly enough), but have never reviewed before, so figured now's as good a time as any.
Firstly, I'd just like to say that this is, without a doubt, the single best HP (and anything else, to be honest) time-travel fic I've ever read. Secondly, your story has the makings of an absolutely wonderful bit of fiction...quite possibly the best HP fic out there, though we won't be able to fully measure until completion.
Now that we've established I'm a huge fan and that you're 1000x the fiction writer that I'll ever be, time for the actual review.
Thusfar, your story has been EXTREMELY fun and engaging. Without fail, every other Time Travel work I've read struggles with an overpowered protagonist with all the cards stacked in their favor. I mean, that's the point of a time-travel fic, isn't it? Your protagonist is predisposed to own by going back. As such, decent authors try to keep their character in check and challenged by either upping the ante with harder enemies or limiting the protagonist's impact on the timestream somehow. The first option usually leads to ridiculous plotlines involving a ridiculously powerful hero taking on secret organizations that nobody knew about that're capable of exploding the sun or something silly like that. They usually read like something out of a manga that's continued too far and is desperately trying to find challenges for the heroes. OH MY GOD, THE UBERSECRETPOWERFUL VILLAIN WHO YOU JUST BARELY DEFEATED REALLY WAS JUST A MINION OF THIS OTHER REALLY POWERFUL BOSS. Yeah, terrible.
The second option is a little trickier, but the clever stories usually set things up so that the protagonist's individual power isn't everything. Sure they may be the most powerful character around, but for some reason...they can't directly change everything, bringing the supporting cast (usually overshadowed in TT fics) into the spotlight.
I started reading absolutely terrified that your Harry would turn into a terrible, infallible, overpowered Gary Stu. You've managed to brilliantly avoid that pitfall by limiting Harry's omniscience as the world changes, tying his hands with the need for secrecy, and making his friends just as important--maybe MORE important--for the actual fight than Harry himself. Sure, he could win against Voldemort again, but "winning" alone isn't enough. The way Harry's defined victory, he'll have lost unless he manages a nearly perfect win against Voldemort with almost no casualties. With this scenario, you've managed to circumvent (or at least cut down) on the whole power-level issue. Harry may be REALLY bloody powerful, but the fight isn't just about him. What's more, the way you've defined the power scope of your HP universe, he'll never be strong enough to simply wade in and take everyone out himself. Some fics take that route and have Harry single-handedly disposing of dozens (or even hundreds) of wizards. You've kept things a LOT more interesting, engaging, and bloody SANE by keeping your Harry human. He's got a lil' extra oomph, to be sure, but nothing obscene that'll allow him to wade through everything with impunity. In short, he has to involve other people, all of whom are at risk.
As I'm sure you know, all decent plots require obstacles and a sense of risk for their protagonists. Every story worth telling involves conflict of some kind. If there's no real danger, there's no point to the story. So far, you've managed to keep your readers engaged by keeping Harry fallible, powerful-but-not-ridiculous-and-limited-to-boot. He and his friends could feasibly win the war, eventually, but they could also feasibly lose. It could go either way without resorting to deus ex machina or lame plot stretches.
Now that that's all said, I have to put up the obvious caution signs. I think you've probably got things under control, but still have to point out the pitfalls, just in case.
If Harry and friends grow too powerful too fast, your story will, without a doubt, be jeopardized. You'll be left with only a few options, e.g. the secret organization of string-pullers, out-of-the-blue twists to weaken Harry's crew, or out-of-the-blue turns to strengthen the dark wizards. None of those options are good. At all. Cheesius maximus.
The reason for my concern is, as you might have guessed, Harry & Friends getting stronger and stronger. In the beginning, your Harry had the potential to double his original magical strength, which was already sufficient to take down Voldemort in a relatively fair 1v1 fight. This nifty little time-travel perk initially set off warning claxons, but you managed to actually assuage my fears with a nifty bit of writing. You set things up so that Harry would slowly integrate his old magic, meaning he WOULD be 2x his original power...by the age of 30 or so. In your earlier chapters, it reads like he's just a slightly-more-powerful kid with a wee bit of a time-traveling boost and an advanced spell repertoire, making him ridiculously powerful for an eleven-year-old... Fine for playing with the kiddies, but things could be tricky when he deals with grown adults. In those scenarios, he has to rely on underestimation and superior tactics. As for his friends, they're initially normal, but soon become very good...for kids, meaning they might be able to magically/martially take on students a few years ahead of them, but they're nowhere near ready to tango with the Death Eaters.
Of late, however, things have been changing a wee bit. Harry's been making ginormous water pillars with his magic, implying he's already more powerful than all of his friends combined (danger, Will Robinson, danger). He basically nukes a boggart and damaged Hogwarts to a ridiculous extreme. In his little experiment with Remus, he displays unheard of levels of power (it's over 9000!!) for your universe. Olivander's reply leads me to believe that Harry has far surpassed the normal level of strength for an adult wizard and is now in the Dumbledore/Legendary Wizards realm. He may not be QUITE on par with them, but he's either in the same tier or approaching it fast. This HUGE power boost threatens to overcome the plot limiters you've carefully placed and could put you in something of a box, plotwise... As I can see it, you've already limited your options to something like:
1) Harry leaves all his friends sitting way back in the dust, power-wise, and takes care of everything himself, culminating in a shonen style showdown with Voldemort. Tre boring. And it defeats the purpose of everything you've done by reducing his friends to cheerleaders as he goes on a Gary Stu fest.
2) Harry's friends increase in power proportionally (nowhere near him, of course, but he's the lead protagonist for a reason). You end up with, shonen style, the band of powerful friends going in, each with their own specialty and fighting style, to pwn and save the day. His friends fight off the Death Eaters, Harry takes out Voldemort (easily, with his 2x power). If you take this tactic, Harry's friends'll need to gain at a similar-but-slower rate...meaning that, judging by Harry's strength (remember, he's already in Voldie's ballpark and is still going up very quickly), they'll easily be ready to fight Voldie by fifth year. The problem with this scenario is that you've got the big-bad of the whole series, the bloody antichrist badass & elite minions who caused this whole problem, being taken out by a bunch of fifteen-year-olds. This would trivialize...everything...and sort of ruin your whole series. Oh yeah, and because your protagonists are uberpowerful and prepared, there's no real risk. Bad taste in mouth.
3) A variation on 2, things accelerate so the final confrontation arrives before the gang is fully prepared. On the plus side, there's risk. On the minus side, you've got a bunch of 13/14 year olds taking on the big bad, which is just ridiculous, no matter how well you write it.
4) Secret society of ever-escalating-power-levels
5) Gimmicks to make Harry's group weaker or Voldie's stronger
There are a few others like this, but for the most part...things look bad if Harry continues to power up. I'm hopeful, seeing as you seem to plan things out very far in advance and have a good sense of plot pacing, but still have to urge caution. Take your time, man... It took what, 20 years of growing-up before Harry was able to take on Voldie the first time around? Should you do it in 3-5 here, it'd just trivialize everything. If the end of a story like this makes you go "Oh...that was surprisingly easy", then something's terribly, terribly wrong.
Now, to end on a positive note. The way you deal with Harry's age is absolutely phenomenal. In most time travel fics, an older Harry comes back from the past and essentially replaces his younger equivalent which, if you think about it, is tantamount to murder. Seriously, he just axes the younger kid's life to make up for his earlier mistakes? Come on. You, however, neatly sidestep that whole can of worms by actually fusing the souls. Okay, everybody says that the two Harry's fuse, but we all know that means the older one replaces. With your story, it actually feels like the older Harry is gradually being assimilated by the younger one. This allows you to avoid the whole older-and-wiser Gary Stu issue, as your Harry seems increasingly like a kid trying to make his own life while dealing with all the life experiences and memories of a socially stunted/traumatized adult. Another perk: your treatment of Harry's age dodges all the creepy pedophilia issues with Ginny. He may not fully be 11/12/13 inside, but he's sure as hell not 30. He's not even consistently 17ish (the average), which allows him to move within his social scene amongst his peers while taking advantage of his more worldly perspective at the same time.
Congrats!
mantis posted a comment on Monday 13th April 2009 7:56pm