I really want to read a Voldemort Peggy Sue done well, and this little piece works well as a prologue to that sort of fic, so in that way it's certainly captured my attention. The use of the premise 'death' is fairly on the nose, too.

But I don't have too much good to say about this, much as I wish otherwise.

The opening is with a really passive voice which didn't hook me, and Voldemort felt severely OOC. He was weak and wailing and whining and clinging to other people. That's not the Voldemort I remember. He doesn't beg, he demands, even when he has no business making demands of anyone. Although he'd react to dying with fear, Voldemort in crisis lashes out at other people rather than confront his fears and cry. The clarity of death allowing him to overcome his preconceived notions and look back on life clearly is a mechanic I quite like when Pratchett does it - the argument of being free from mortal bodies and the associated hormones and glands and such granting an objective mindset is compelling. But I didn't really feel like it worked particularly well here. It's contrary to Voldemort's usual behaviour by such a wide margin that it doesn't feel like a deliberate choice so much as an oversight. Snape felt a tad OOC as well - him looking down on Voldemort with pity is a rather alien notion.

I didn't notice any glaring spelling mistakes offhand, but the sentence structure and flow of the writing were fairly poor. This should be an emotionally charged, surreal scene full of rich poetic imagery and evocative description. That was all absent. If I had come across this blindly on another website I'd have thought this was written by the likes of MuggleNet rather than DLP - it has that characteristic bland softening of every actor into one homogenous blob that's so prevalent in fanfiction.

 

I can't say that I particularly liked this one. The idea certainly has merit to it, this is a concept that could fully capture my attention if it were polished up further and devoted to a more accurate depiction of Voldemort. The writing came across a bit stilted in places, like the overuse of ellipsis when Harry somehow appeared to Voldemort to urge him to repent.

I get that you wanted to parallel the Dumbledore & Harry scene on the whole with Snape and Voldemort, but this interaction demonstrates where that really comes apart. Voldemort's sudden breakdown and Snape repeating Dumbledore's line falters, I think because it comes about rather more quickly and without the emotional buildup to sustain it. There's no weight behind it, even though there should be from their talk to this point. You were going for that with the whole cry-talked thing, but it just didn't manifest.

Snape's purpose here is more-or-less to explain the situation to Voldemort and then to leave him to his despair by the end. I get that, and the need for a secondary character given Voldemort is unable to move under his own duress. It's just something of a one-sided conversation. Voldemort asks/begs/demands, Snape obediently obliges him. I just feel like Snape could have been a bit less forthright in places(see, how did Harry survive), a bit less helpful.

On the note of Voldemort cry-talking, I wasn't particularly enraptured by that choice. It does make sense given what he became, it shows that he has become even more diminished than he had been, but if Snape can clearly understand him, then is it really all that meaningful?

In closing, despite my tone here, I do want to thank you for submitting. With more time and a little more effort, I can see this one shining.

 

Honestly, the idea has real merit. Voldemort is trapped in some otherworldly limbo, forced to watch those he has hurt move on while he's stuck in some fate worse than death. Like Otters said, this could work as a prologue to a really good fic. He mentioned one where Voldemort is thrown back in time, but a crossover or thrown into an alternate universe are also possibilities.

Unfortunately, I'm also going to have to echo Otters that this is underwhelming. Voldemort (due to a sudden and permanent out-of-body experience) realizes a bunch of things about how he done fucked up, but due to the lacking descriptions it lacked a lot of impact it could've had. Let's see an example.

And then you move on. This line is so bare when it could've used a lot more meat on its bones, to not just tell us Voldemort is very much despairing but to show us.

 

I like the idea this is going for, but I feel it's kind of empty or lacking in something. It's quick though which helps mitigate any amount of emptiness I felt while reading it making it one of the few times I enjoy something being shorter. Also while I enjoy seeing Voldemort reduced to what he was in this story, it felt kind of rushed. That said I didn't mind that Snape was just infodumping here, it felt like he was gloating to Voldemort to me.

 

Snape is a solid choice for who Voldemort would see in the limbo, but it works better if Voldemort approaches the situation differently. Snape treating Voldemort with scorn and derision is right, but Voldemort sees Snape as a (respected) subordinate and he should act as such. Snape is an instrument of his will; he's somebody to instruct and order not plead or beg. Instead, he's treated as a life raft as you merge Voldemort into the homunculus. Again, a good idea, but it gets in the way of Voldemort acting like Voldemort towards Snape, and so it all feels off.

This is the big emotional transition we're going for. Rage to helplessness with an undercurrent of fear. Good, but it fails because there is no transition. His rage was never really established or felt, and instead I just saw the helplessness which (lacking justification) was uncharacteristic. It was more like "a fearful man dying who happens to be named Voldemort" than "Lord Voldemort dying". Voldemort needs to break down in front of our eyes for any of this to work.

Snape repeating Dumbledore's lines was just Snape blatantly repeating Dumbledore's lines. Snape doesn't talk like Dumbledore, so it was never going to work, but it just feels shoehorned rather than anything earned.

Wool's Orphanage was a nice touch. Good call on that. Prose was fine throughout, the issues were bigger picture.

Overall, there's some good pieces, but it's missing the right ties to put them together. Flawed but perfectly readable, and a solid "eh, it's decent".

 

This is a good line.

Too many words to convey this idea. We get it, he's a frail little homunculus.

Overall, kinda mixed on this. Essentially what we've got here is a "Voldemort realizing how badly he's fucked up" short piece. Snape got in a couple good lines, but once we got into the "meat" of it, there just wasn't enough depth for me to feel any real schadenfreude at Voldemort's situation and dawning understanding.

IMO, he needed more arrogance and malevolence to make the contrast of the "yep, I'm fucked" realization hit harder.

There's a decent framework for an idea here, but the execution felt like too little butter spread over too much bread.

A piece this short you need to absolutely nail the writing - completely gripping, no wasted motion. This didn't quite get there.

 

You know this wasn't bad. The concept, of course, is not original, but it has a little spin on it that I haven't seen before, that of Snape meeting Riddle after death. There is quite a bit about their interactions that I like, but also times where I feel Snape is far too kind with his explanations and even his phrasing. Consider your last line, where Snape indicates he wanted to see Riddle dead, yet he isn't precisely by Snape's own words. A bit of a unbalanced thematic throughline there.

There were sentences that were halfway to being truly evocative, such as "The surrounding was not formless but had not yet decided to have form."

That's the sort of doublespeak line that's aching to be cool, and I liked it for what you were trying to do. I also felt a lot of the inner monologue felt fairly true to life, with the one exception being "In death there was clarity" - I don't buy that he would give in so easily.

Also "Lord Voldemort felt his heart soar" doesn't work either. Too heroic a term.

So what doesn't work? The whole baby/infant angle and description, which is ultimately discarded and thus feels pointless in many ways - is he a baby (and thus cannot speak) or a baby-mutant? "Cry-spoke" doesn't mean anything legitimate, as crying in this context implies a lack of words instead of "in addition to".

What would I change? I think the characterization and dialogue needs to be tightened and honed in on more carefully. Use a different method of communication - for example we know Voldemort is a Legilimens, right? Avoids that whole awkward phrasing, as his mind (if not body) are still under his control. And add a bit more "oomph" to that final line.

Hope this helps!

 

It's short. There's not a lot of introspection even though I would have liked to read about Voldemort’s thoughts, rather than his emotions, since he's so emotionally stunted in canon. It didn’t feel like Voldemort to me though. His intellect should dominate his being no matter how shredded his soul is, in my opinion.

I like the idea of this, especially Snape coming to see Voldemorts sorry state.

The final two lines are very poignant, the best part of the fic, I think.

I noticed some mistakes, which didn’t bother me much. What bothered me most was the cry-spoke and asked-wailed. The few times it’s used really stand out in a short fic like this. Why not just describe how his voice sounds and leave it at that.

Another thing that bothered me was how pathetic Voldemort seems. It’s as if he has no pride from the beginning and becomes more pathetic the longer the fic goes on.

Overall I think the idea is good, but the execution is somewhat lacking. I hope I got my thoughts across well. Thank you.

 

So, on the positive side, it's a solid concept. One that probably isn't actually that original, if I went looking around, but not one that I've seen done before, so well done there. Also, it's a clear engagement with the actual prompt, which is a bonus. Technically, I quite like it - the prose is clear, coherent, with a couple of nice turns of phrase.

On the other hand, I didn't really feel that this had much actual substance to it. I'm tempted to attribute that to it being fairly brief, but actually I'm not sure that it being much longer would really have helped, unless you did an extensive review of all the reasons Voldemort ended up in that state or something along those lines. Perhaps another five hundred words or so to get under the characters skin a little more would be helpful. On which note, Voldemort didn't feel an awful lot like Voldemort. Snape was kind of better, but at the same time, quite a bit of his dialogue is recycled from Dumbledore's in the canon version of this scene, so...

On a specific note, "his robes billowing at his heals" - should be heels.

All in all, there's a decent idea and start here, which with a bit of polish could improve substantially.

 

After reading this, I came away feeling neutral. I thought it was because the concept wasn't particularly impressive, but with some further thought, I realized that that was not true. It's because the person Voldemort is speaking with is Snape. In canon, Voldemort doesn't personally care for Snape (or anyone) really all that much, but in this story, he's forced to give Snape some regard because he's the only one with answers. It's an interesting theme, but falls short because everything Snape is saying is stuff we already know. Anything he could possibly say is well-worn track. We know how Snape feels. There's nothing new here.

I don't think it should've been Snape who Voldemort sees in limbo. If anything, Dumbledore would've been more impactful. Or even someone like Merope/Salazar Slytherin/his muggle father. You mention that death has a way of making people see things clearly. It would be very interesting to see what someone like Marvolo Gaunt has to say about what his grandson had become.

My favorite bit of this story is when Snape says “Just because it’s happening in your head doesn’t mean it isn’t real.” Which is, of course, what Dumbledore (or "Dumbledore") says to Harry in limbo. It makes me wonder if you've given this line more weight than it originally has in canon. It makes me wonder who or what these visions of Snape and Dumbledore really are. However it's ultimately unsatisfying because there's not enough worldbuilding threads for me to connect and theorize on.

This is the first line which felt jarringly un-Voldemort. There's other OOC moments, but this is a serious offender.

 

When it comes to oneshots, I'm not a fan of very short fiction (even though I wrote one myself), but if I do read one, I prefer that it have some sort of a story. It's hard to say there was a sequence of events here, it's more of an introspection, sort of an epilogue for canon Voldemort. Where Harry was rewarded with a glimpse of The Next Great Adventure, Voldemort is punished, sentenced to a personalized purgatory--at least that's what I took away from it.

A figure from his life haunting him in death is a classic idea, but I think little is done with it here. You open with a bit about realization that Voldemort is dead, and it takes him a while. I think you could have cut that out and dedicated all of the wordcount to the introspective exchange that follows. Though to be frank, I didn't find much in the conversation either. Voldemort is in a state of confusion and despair, and I think it's a waste of the character. For how hard he fought death in life, he seems completely defeated here from the outset, which misses an opportunity for some interesting conflict imo.

If the intention was to amplify the feeling of hopelessness and isolation, I think that also falls kinda flat here, and then it ends rather abruptly. Feels like the real story was just going to begin there, Voldemort being locked into his afterlife prison in a place he hated, and you could take the narrative in a dozen interesting directions here. I give you props for technical competence, but the content didn't wow me.