I'm looking for a fic that chronicled the years following Voldemort's defeat in a more realistic way. As I recall, the first chapter was about Harry being upset that the ministry would not punish Death Eaters, with the minister(?) explaining to him that Harry's standards were too indiscriminate (or something like that). If they chucked Lucius Malfoy in prison for using Unforgiveables, then they would have to throw many of Harry's allies into prison too.

I never actually got around to reading much of this fic, but I think the final chapters were about Lucius gaining control of the wizarding world through less cut and dried darkyness. Also, some magical disease got around to wiping out most of the muggles and a lot of the wizards and witches too.

Maybe some of the details are wrong, but that was the gist of the fic. It covered a broad range of topics, and each chapter was mostly an isolated incident. I know I saw it on DLP once, but I wasn't sure what to search without a title, so....help please.

 

Wait, are you saying Lucius became a poor black child?

Anyway, this is either As Yet Untitled by bellerophon30, or The Golden Age by Arsinoe de Blassenville. Probably the latter.

 

It's The Golden Age. A good story, but rather depressing.

 

Was that the one where Hermione randomly found out that about every Muggleborn was actually the child of a magical rape victim and no one really cared?

I think the author also mangled canon, just to make the Malfoys less evil. "What, that diary full of Dark magic was dangerous? I had no idea! I'm just a poor old man who fell victim to his own desire for power and murder."

Yeah, I didn't like it much.

 

I'd forgotten how much I liked this story.

On the first... sort of. It's not that cut-and-dry. But I'm not sure I liked that part of the story too much.

As for the second, Lucius didn't know that the diary was a Horcrux. He thought it was merely a cursed object that might embarrass the Weasleys in some way. The author's reasoning for this seems sound.

 

He might not have known it was a Horcrux, but he damn well knew it would put the lives of students in danger. Hell, even Dobby knew. And Dumbledore pointed out Lucius even knew it was the key to opening the Chamber of Secrets. I'd say using the Weasleys seemed more like a lucky coincidence, seeing as he didn't know they would be there when he took the diary to Diagon Alley.

There was more though. Like Ron suddenly returning to his eleven year old mindset. One moment he wants to save House-Elves during the Battle of Hogwarts and the next he's completely confused when Hermione gets mad when he destroys her books.
Or how Malfoy's guilt couldn't be proven in court or something, even though he escaped from prison.
Or Harry not understanding there's something wrong with memory charming an innocent woman to get her out of the way. This is the same guy that used Disarming Spells on people that tried to kill him, because they might be under the Imperius Curse.
Or just that pretty much everyone was carrying an Idiot Ball all the damn time, except when they needed to be intellectually or morally superior to Harry or were named Malfoy.

To me, this was nothing but attempt at a dysutopian magical society, that failed because the author couldn't get over the feeling that 'Rowling did it wrong!' and completely bogged down in ridiculing everything she didn't like about the books. And I don't like bash fics, even when they're cleverly written.

 

I really enjoyed some of it, but then, as ViolentRed said, everyone started becoming idiots:

The rape-kids was an interesting thing, and reasonably well done. But just too many little things that were daft or out of nowhere.

 

To be honest, the first third of the fic sucks for the reasons stated above (mostly everybody turning into idiots). After that it becomes better, and the last third is actually good.

 

I might get some flames for this, but I even liked the way Snape was *literally* resurrected in this fic. The whole story is still a 4/5 in my eyes.

 

Eh, I read The Golden Age back in my halcyon days of, "Oh, it's H/Hr? Fuck yes, I'll be reading that!" and was promptly blind-sided by the depressing and dark picture it painted of the magical world.

Still, I liked it then and have fond memories of it. Yes, there were quite a few liberties taken, but IIRC the author had set out to write an Epilogue-compliant dystopian-future fic, and I say she (?) succeeded.

 

QFMFT.

Very polarizing fic. Some love it, some hate it. I fall into the hate category. I think it's atrocious, completely filled with character bashing, and mangles the characterization of every single character. I found nothing about it either believable or a logical progression of thought and action (if canon is the starting point, as the author claims). That being said, it is quite well written.

I vaguely recall someone in the library thread putting it this way (and I'm paraphrasing). "Beautifully written but doesn't have much of anything to do with Harry Potter."