Title: Vault 419
Author: SnorkackCatcher
Rating: T
Genre: Mystery/Humor
DLP Category: General
Pairings: none relevant to story
Words: 11,126
Published: October 19, 2010
Status: Oneshot
Summary: "Some business offers are just too good to be true. That's why Aurors Potter and Weasley are on the case. Although cases don't always go the way an Auror expects them to ..."
Link: here

Now here's something I haven't seen before: a good HP detective story. Starring Ron and Harry as Auror detectives a year out of the Second War, it deals with a case involving gold, Gringotts, the French, and a slew of nifty ways how a standard criminal case could be built in the Harry Potter universe.

First impressions are very good. Technically sound, although the grammar gets a little sketchy at few points. Ron and Harry are characterized well, as are the relatively small main cast. Dialogue is very engaging, and some of the humorous sections were actually pretty great (there's a particular piece regarding a certain photograph that I found hilarious). The humor reminds me a bit of later nonjon stuff - in small pieces, and very cleverly inserted into the main plot without bogging down the story in idiocy.

What makes this story great and Library-worthy is the plot. I can honestly say I've never seen anything quite like it in HP fanfiction, and even though I'm a sucker for a good mystery, this one really threw me for a loop. Ron and Harry are very believable detectives - perhaps a little smarter than canon, but I'm not going to complain about that. Hermione's role is actually pretty minimal (another thing I'm not going to complain about), but I liked seeing Ron and Harry flex some sparsely used intellectual muscles. And the ending that resolved everything was actually well-thought out and could even be canon-compliant.

I really liked this story, and it's probably the best thing I've seen come out of FictionAlley in a long time. 5/5


Checked by Minion, July 29, 2013

 

This is pretty good; the mystery is a bit simplistic but not pathetically so.

The writing is mostly solid, though there were minor mistakes andhaving certain letters in all caps detracted from the formatting.

I don't really have much else to say about this one. 3.5/5, rounded up.

 

I liked this a lot. The characters are done great, the mystery is well done enough to put a smile on your face when you see exactly who is involved in it. I'd rate it somewhere between a 4 and a 5, but with the freshness of the story i give it a 5

 

Haven't read the story yet, but I just have to say this. I saw the title of this thread and instantly thought HP/Fallout crossover.

 

Awesome oneshot. Loved that last line:

Spoiler

George opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. "Oh, all right." Then he brightened up and broke into a wicked grin. "You do know what this means, lads?"
​

"What?"
​

"Well, let's see, Ronniekins. Fudge has been involved in crooked activities for ages, he's been fighting a running battle with the goblins to get control of the gold, and Scrimgeour is a vampire."
​

"So?"
​

"So, it means that Luna was right all along, and Hermione was wrong. Which one of you is going to tell her?"
​

Harry and Ron looked at each other, aghast. "Do we look that stupid?" asked Ron.
​

"Don't answer that," said Harry.
​

5/5 for me.

 

For some reason, I've been trying to read this all day, but somehow Fictionalley is not loading for me.

 

Really entertaining light one shot. Nice catch as I rarely visit that site because of its broken search engine.

 

First MattSilver3k and now this guy?

*dumps 20k words*

OT: Will read and rate. Bitterness might taint my view.

EDIT:

Just read it. Happy to find it's quite...generic. :awesome *pulls 20k words out of the trash*

The mystery was bland and light-hearted, which was obviously the author's goal. It's fairly well written, too, but like Andromalius says, Matt's a much better writer, and this one doesn't hold a candle against Breach of Contract. There are some nice bits of humor in there, but it's too YA for my tastes. For example, Harry blushing at a picture of a naked witch when he's probably around his twenties.

The biggest mistake, IMO, was going with a "mystery" identical to the most famous internet scam of all time. The whole point of the mystery is to keep the reader guessing as well as the characters, not just the characters. As a reader, I already knew what was going on from the moment I read the first line of that first letter. Granted, exactly who was behind it wasn't obvious from the start, but still pretty easy to figure out by the time you're half-way through.

Unless, of course, the author was going for humour and humour only. In that case, the mystery is just the device that keeps the story going and sets the scene for the humorous dialogue.

It's an entertaining -- though not too much -- piece that takes around 15 minutes to read. Probably the kind of thing you'd read in the toilet.

3/5 because I like the premise of a detective Harry, even if the name could've been changed to practically anything and this still would've worked.

 

This isn't by any means close to Matt's fic in quality. While they are a little apples to oranges since they are very different sorts of mysteries, Matt is a much better writer.

Small injections of decent humor, a competent mystery, but none of the characters are really there. It's completely driven by the mystery, every single scene serves as advancement to that single-minded purpose. Harry and Ron were less characters and more roles, just any two detectives systematically and in a straightforward manner working their way through a case. It's not bad. 3.5/5, but the writing is too unexceptional to merit more.