Title: The Reluctant Champion
Author: TheUnrealInsomniac
Rating:M
Genre:Adventure/Humor
Pairings:Harry/Daphne
Library Category:The Alternates
Chapters: 28
Words: 212,204
Updated: Dec 15, 2015
Published: May 18, 2009
Status: Complete
Summary: Raised in magic by a loving family, trained by one of the best Aurors the DMLE has ever seen for a war always on the horizon and the world has a very different Boy-Who-Lived on their hands.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5071058/1/The-Reluctant-Champion

A story where Harry grows up as the Boy-Who-Lived with his Father and the Marauders with him basically every step of the way. It starts out in fourth year but some stuff from the previous years are different. The author doesn’t have any set chapters dedicated to the previous years so we find out what went down as the story progresses and how those events affect Harry and his relationships.

So far it has loosely followed The Goblet of Fire template but it has some major differences, such as an altered golden trio that is Harry, Hermione, and Neville with a few extras added on. The different between this Golden Trio and the original Golden Trio is Harry and Neville live together and have lived together for a presumably long period of time. Harry is borderline OOC but that is to be expected when he was raised by the Marauder’s and James. He’s so confident in his skills that he is borderline arrogant.

It’s the first of a five book series that I would assume will go through the rest of Harry’s schooling and then the war, if the titles are anything to go by. The update rate is slow but steady and while it’s tagged as Harry/Daphne it doesn’t really start until about halfway through this story, around the second task. This book looks to be almost complete, and I’m pretty excited about the series as a whole if it gets finished.

My rating is a 4/5 but I’ll read practically anything with the tag Harry/Daphne if I don’t have any other reading material.

This being my first real post in DLP after 3 years of lurking it’d be nice to know if I screwed anything up or if my taste in stories is so awful that I should just stop so let me know. Thanks!


Checked by Minion, March 6, 2016
In contrary to Jrapp106 I labeled it as complete (as the first book actually is).

 

I've been following this story for a while, and I did enjoy it. Although, @OP, the first story is complete.

The story is massively AU, but the author's writing + the believable teenager characterization and Harry/Daphne made me like it a lot. It certainly isn't the best of its genre by any stretch of the imagination, but it's on my alerts list and I usually read updates within a day of them coming out. I'm also looking forward to when (if?) the author publishes book 2.

There are parts of it that kind of annoyed me though. The dueling scenes were especially boring, and the whole format with the friendly competitions outside of the tournament has been done way too much. Although I might be in the wrong here since the story was published in 2009 and it may have been before all of those stories. Chapter 23 as well just came out of the blue. I'm not gonna go much further, since I have yet to figure out how to use spoilers (help?), but suffice to say between chapter 22 and 23 I just didn't see any continuity.

Overall though, I enjoyed the story, and I'll give it around a 4/5. I do have to point out, though, that the story certainly isn't to everyone's tastes, and I'm inordinately generous for anything Harry/Daphne.

 

I tried this fic a while ago. While it's sound grammatically I can't stand the way he characterizes Daphne and Harry. Also James being alive bugs me as well. 2/5 maybe a three for being decently written.

 

I'm a bit concerned with how they wrote Tracey as a character. On the chapter where she's introduced, the fact that she's a lesbian is referred to about 4 times, and all of her conversations generally revolve around being attracted to women. Is this another case where the lesbian's character trait is that they're a lesbian?

----

Harry is on that weird line between Normal OOC and the sex obsessed Harry from A Black Comedy that you see in a lot of Indi!Harry fics lately.

Despite these, the writing is pretty solid and consisted after the first 6 chapters, so it's a 4/5 for now.
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So a major flaw with this fic is that Harry isn't a likeable character. Which is to say, the biggest possible flaw for a fic about Harry to have. 3/5 for a solid plot, regardless of pop culture references, spontaneous chapter-long sex scenes, and a dickwad for a protagonist.

 

I enjoyed the story for the most part, but to me the harry/daphne chemistry seemed a bit weak or forced at times. I also didn't really like the whole James Potter being alive idea, but that's a minor thing overall. Harry does come off as dickish quite a lot, i guess it's supposed to stem from a "Marauder" childhood. As already mentioned, lesbian!Tracey thing seems a bit unnecessary. Overall, a 3 for me, looking forward to the sequel

 

Okay, so this story definitely has both good and bad aspects to it, but in my opinion the bad outweighs the good. For example, it reads like it was written by a sex-obsessed teenager. Why do these fourteen year olds only talk about sex, ever? Don't get me started on the gay jokes.

None of the characters are likeable. They're all super obnoxious, with very few exceptions. No human beings act like that. I'm not gonna spoil anything(how does the spoiler tags work?), but Harry and James each have a very strange reaction that makes literally no sense. And Harry's Yule Ball prank? No. I'm not a fan of exchanging Ron for Neville either.

On the other hand, I like the Moody mentorship. It was interesting and I would have liked to see more of his and Harry's relationship. The first task was decent, at least I've never read anything like it before.

2/5. The writing was competent, if a bit chaotic, but it's all a bit meh.

 

I can also say that I can pretty much read anything Harry/Daphne If I have nothing else to do and am bored, so I am pretty biased as well.

I originally disliked the way Harry acted early on, but thinking on it now as a child most of us fashion our attitude around our role models, heros, or parents correct? James was also written to be a complete ass until about his sixth or seventh year, and there is no telling how many Marauder’s stories he’s been told by his Father and Godfather without a Mother-Hen figure like Molly to temper them. Harry also doesn’t have the Dursley background either, so he’s not inclined to hate bullies because he didn’t have Dudley to bully him.

Not so say it excuses his behavior but after looking at it from that perspective, his attitude makes sense to me.

It might be a guy thing, but when I was that age almost all of my jokes were sexual in some way or another and in my group of friends the main topic of conversation was either sports, girls, or school. Honestly those were the topics of conversation from about 7th-12th grade, at that age there isn’t much else to talk about.

I haven’t actually reread it all the way through in a while, but it didn’t have the whole sex-crazed fourteen year-old’s fantasy feel to it when I read it. In-fact if I remember right there was maybe two or three sex scenes in the entirety of the fic, but I could be really wrong.

Good thing that they are characterized completely different, Neville actually having a good reason to break off the friendship is one of the many differences between the two.

Spoiler

The biggest difference being Neville stopping Harry from killing Pettigrew, while Ron pretty much did nothing other than get dragged by his leg into the whomping willow.

Without Neville, this version of Harry isn’t who he is.

Also, thank you Narf for the wise-words.

 

2/5 readable guilty pleasure fic.

 

4/5 for me.

Well, it's really a 3, but I enjoy Harry/Daphne fics, so I bumped it up. As people have pointed out above, solid writing grammatically. On the whole, I liked how the author dealt with the whole James Potter being alive thing. Usually when you see this kind of fic the author goes to great lengths to justify inconsistencies with canon, but this fic just had one scene in one chapter and then focused on the story.

Again, as reviewers above said, the HP/DG pairing feels a bit forced, and I think DG in this fic is a bit bland, but besides that I liked the fic and I'll definitely read the sequel!

Also, this fic is complete.

 

4/5

I'm biased though in that HP/DG is by far my favorite pairing. I'll read almost any story with that pairing as long as it contains few grammatical errors and isn't too outlandish.

That being said I agree with the above posts that this Daphne is very one dimensional in her personality and seems to be lacking depth in her character. Hopefully this will get addressed in the sequel.

The Harry portrayed in the story also bothers me with his attitude of 'always-about-sex'. It's just a pet peeve of mine in stories especially when, like this one, there are so many other elements that could be focused on.

 

Kinda a month old necro, but TUI posted the first chapter of the second book of his series a month ago.

Fairly standard stuff, wasn't a particularly riveting start or anything. Hopefully, after book one was literally "The life of a horny teen and the TWT" this book starts to really show the upcoming war. Although there's supposedly three more, so IDK.

Still, it is Harry/Daphne.

Here's a link:https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11990339/1/A-Scattered-War

 

Potential

This story had somethings i liked such as a ,romance that has actual conflict, and inner turmoil for characters about decisions ,but i felt some of the interaction such as the Sinistra arch and the arch about the aurors in general were forced or just didn't progress the plot well enough. Overall 3/5 would not recommend but if you are a fan of this pairing you might enjoy it.

 

2/5 for me.

I read this because it was a completed Harry/Daphne fic. Overall, the grammar and writing was solid.

I liked that there were deviations from the typical 4th year (new tasks, aurors side plot).

What I didn't like were the portrayals of the characters. Harry in particular starts off very arrogant and sex-obsessed. It's basically like reading a Marauder's era James Potter instead of Harry Potter.

Also, Tracey being a lesbian, replacing Ron with Neville in the Golden Trio, Daphne the childhood best friend just tells me the author is indulging in some wish-fulfillment. Seriously, why would Hermione be friends this Harry?

The build up to the pairing was pretty contrived. It didn't help that the lead up involved lines of dialogue about sex and faux-relationship drama.

Still, now that the pairing is established and there's the chance for the plot to begin to deviate in the 5th book, I'll be following it.

 

Just came across this. I'd rate it a 3/5. It's Harry/Daphne, so I'm already willing to forgive a lot, but I agree with the criticism of Daphne's character being too 1-D. It's as if her entire life is built around Harry's. She's never mentioned in any other context other than her being with Harry, sex, feelings and a spot of duelling once or twice. The spot of duelling is the only way in which we see Daphne being a character in her own right, but it's so fleeting you'll miss it if you blink.

The pros are that it's well-written compared to most other fanfics with this pairing and the characters seem true to being 14-year olds. Mid-teen to late-teen kids are douches, and this story seems to capture them perfectly. Harry being polite to Malfoy because politics is a little too much, but

Spoiler

Harry and Neville talking to him politely and then hexing him so that "Arse Bandit" appears in pink on his robes

got me chortling. The dynamic between Harry and Neville is really well-done. The plot loosely follows GoF, as others have stated, and accomodates changes nicely. There are bits of the plot I don't like, such as

Spoiler

Harry managing to get his own workshop in which Daphne comes to sleep with him

but I suppose any teenager would do that if he could get away with it.

The cons are that all the female characters are nearly stupidly one-dimensional. While the most egregious offender is Daphne, the other girls aren't managed properly either. It's quite sad just how little the author seems to flesh them out, given their outsize role in the fic. I also don't really agree with the characterization of the adults in the Potter household. It might just be me, but I'd be a little careful teasing my son about his sex life and letting him tease me back. I also think Sirius's characterization could be improved a lot by making him a little more responsible and sensible. Sirius Black being a ladies man yes, but him being called "Dog Breath" disparagingly by a 14 year old repeatedly is a little stale.

TL;DR Strictly guilty pleasure material and nothing else. Not sure I'll go for the sequel.

 

4.5/5

It would have been 3.5/5 but I still read the whole thing and there isn't many fics that can do that for me anymore. It could also be I have a bias for Harry/Daphne fics. Which is kind of why I joined DLP, to find more of them.