Title: A Relic of the Future
Author: Runic_Rhapsody
Rating: T
Status: Work in Progress (68k)
Pairing: Harry/Narcissa
Genre: Time Travel

Author Summary

"The war had ended, and they had all returned. But not him.

He'd been left behind.

What remained was a piece for which there was no longer a place.

His reforging came not from the hard-won peace. No. Instead, he found his hope in the past.

While excavating an ancient chamber, he became the one unearthed. Cast into the eve of the First Wizarding War, a relic of the future that would never be."


A Relic of the Future

Writing is solid. Features a Harry who is kind of a curse breaker, but also something like a magical Indiana Jones?He's thrown back in time to the Marauders era while excavating an ancient chamber. Some really cool concepts and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Update rate so far is about 2 chapters a month

 

So, the melodrama can be a bit much, but I fucking adore that shit so. Also, the formatting with past and present thoughts is... weird? I thought it worked well when Harry, wizard #2, and Chad Goblin were infiltrating the ancient roman Fort, and the past thoughts of Harry and his... mentor? Altogether though, clicked the fuck out of subscribe. I liked the bait and switch with the egyptian ushabti and the chapter of implications that Harry is gonna enslave Rita's soul in there, before it just turning out to be a "less barbaric, heh, trust me sis" version of the unbreakable vow to use younger Rita as a propaganda mouthpiece. I love the Dumbledore and adore the Hagrid and if we don't get more Hagrid I will comment with a frowny face. He always has been, and always will be, a purer soul that we don't deserve.

Easy 4 for me. Could also easily go up or down. Along with many of these back-travel stories, it will depend a lot on how Lord Voldemort is depicted. It's somewhat refreshing that we've seen him... but once. I ranted here about stories that show us LV in every... single... chapter, and it's just don't.

Perfect. Hagrid basically noogied a Kelpie into friendship. After thinking he might need to strip buck-ass naked and swim in after a literal sea-horse that has fangs because he doesn't have swimwear. Take note, prospective NEWT Care of Magical Creatures' students! There's more to magic than wand-waving etcetera.

Then the last bit with them all enjoying hot cocoa with the house elf whilst the mooncalves dance. It's basically a perfect Harry Potter fanfic chapter for me.

 

So I read it all recently. And I'm a bit conflicted tbh. It's very classic HP Fanfic I think with some unique flavors of its own

But

Spoiler: spoilers

I feel like Harry is far to quick to acclimate to his new situation, has no problem marrying and getting involved with highly prejudiced blood purists and everything just feels so light? There's no weight to anything that really happens, characters just float from scene to scene. Bellatrix strolls into a family dinner to see if Harry is worthy of her sister and seemingly decides he is and just floats out again. Also why is Harry at a Black family dinner and so well liked? They all act like he's the funniest and most charming man alive. Also he's never once interrogated about his blood status by anybody so far and any inquiries into his holding of the Peverell title is explained away as being an orphan who doesn't know and that's just accepted by everybody. He also alludes to knowledge he absolutely should not have, like Albus and Ariana and Albus and Gellert, and no one questions it.

Marauders era time travel is pretty cool and I continue to enjoy the concept but it's just so inconsequential. Nothing bad happens ever, Harry has no consequences at all and seems to be barely thinking through anything that he does? He arrives in the 70s and his first instincts are to acquire property, a pure blood heiress for a wife, revive an ancient wizengamot seat he doesn't use and also exploit future knowledge to gain wealth.

Regardless most of my issues are with Harry being OOC or illogical which can still be resolved depending on where the plot goes.

Decently written and interesting if you care about the whole pure blood nonsense 3/5

 

2/5 I thought this was pretty bad. It reads as AI written. I don't believe any of the characters. No real conflict. It's unusual to see the Victorian (or whenever) English courting stuff mixed with powerful adventure Harry.

Edit: Thanks for posting though, always good to get a look at more fics that could be worth a read. Seems like others here enjoyed it.

 

I'm going to have to listen to AI accusations for the rest of my fanfic reading career and I'm already exhausted. True, false, every fic is gonna get them. I don't even work in an industry where I'm gonna have to listen to the accusations, but would at least be paid.

 

I don't know that it is written by AI - it'd be forgivable if it were well done. More of a comment on the writing itself. Substitute it for "written by template", or "I don't like the way it's written - irritating and repetitive."

 

2.5/5
It's a half decent 'turn your brain off romp,' but with people that don't much act like the characters they're supposed to be. Harry is the most egregious one, imo. It also suffers from from what feels like "and then X" event sequencing instead of "but X" or "therefore X," which doesn't quite work for the format of story they're writing.

 

This is really good, it takes inspiration from all of the right places I think. The Knockturn Alley shopkeeper is definitely a Luthen, and the Skeeter/Peverell publishing relationship reminds me a bit of the Mattie/Urquhart one in House of Cards, though with less of an affair and more threats. It's exceptionally well written, and by someone who has their colloquialisms down, so it feels right. As someone said above, Harry is ooc, and everything has gone unreasonably well for him so far. I love the magical archaeology and certain character descriptions like the Goblin's Goblin from Gringotts.

It's fun to read, but a bit more conflict would be appreciated. I'd love to see where it goes from here. I think it's a 5/5 so far, but if it's abandoned or if the quality goes down or if, well, no challenges arrive, I don't know if I'd want it in the library, even if it's better than a lot of the fics in there already. It's definitely lighthearted and fluffy, but the type of fluff that appeals to someone who's read too many HP AUs.

Having looked at the tags, 'slice of life', 'fluff and humour', and 'whimsy' don't scream conflict or high stakes. I think it's might stay a mostly smooth ride for this Mary Sue of a Harry, but that's fine by me because it's so well done.

As for the AI accusation someone made... well, my policy is to give the benefit of the doubt when there's no evidence. I don't think it's AI. There are a few odd stylistic choices in terms of spacing and formatting that are characteristic of hammy writing, and I don't think they would be present in a work mostly produced by an LLM.

 

Wanted to quote because I think most are heavily overlooking what you discuss in your spoiler. It’s a bunch of purebloods are actually good rehash, which is just icky to read in big 2025. It’s a bunch of racists and bigots and I’m supposed to want to see their side of the story? It’s not doing anything fancy with it either, so if you’ve read pureblood politics/marauders era fics before, you’ve read what this one will be like.

My rating:
Chapter 1: 4/5
Whole story: 2.5/5

Some thoughts below.

Spoiler

The first chapter can’t redeem an entire story. It’s kind of disappointing to read the direction the story goes. “On my honor” stuff in chapter 6 was about where I knew it wouldn’t amount to much for me. Lots of pureblood washing, hand waving racism/bigotry as things/people being “complex”.


I don’t typically scrutinize tags from recs, but it’s pretty clear upon review where this story would end up. The entire Black/Potter family tagged as characters, Wizarding politics tagged…


The first chapter sets up a nice little mystery quite well. There’s the deathly hallows symbol, the book to decipher and the rest of the loot from the cave/further digs from the future to drive the plot. And obviously the time travel. Doesn’t need to be another Black family redemption + pureblood politics story, but alas.


Did want to point out that the way the magic is used and written is very pleasing to me in the early chapters (CH 1-6). There’s a lot of trust in the reader to understand the referenced spell: lighting the wand (Lumos), lifting the rocks (Wingardium Leviosa), casting the Bubble Head charm, extending the warming charm to his clothes, all without explicitly “casting” a discreet spell like you’re selecting a pokemon move followed by the description of effect. Also an easy way to show competency in universe as well. Shows not tells that Harry is beyond rote wand motion + incantations.


Also clearly AI assisted. Reads very similarly to A Name in the Ashes. Just seems like they edited out a lot of the triplicate metaphors.

 

There are so many more interesting directions this story could have gone in than "Let's dive in to pureblood culture - it's faux/fantasy-Victorian so you know what that means! Lords, politics, and marriage contracts!"