I have given this fic a second chance, and I have to say that it grew on me a lot. I'd rate it very highly. The tongue and cheek nature of the writing and the very on the nose references to certain fanon tropes can take you out of it, but they're also genuinely funny for the most part. Tracey's POV chapters are a tonal shift, but they're still interesting for that.

I'd probably give it a 4.5/5. I love the combat and the dialogue for the most part.

 

I love the duels and the characters, but the last few arcs have really been kind of a drag. I almost wish the story had taken the war a different direction and wasn't dwelling on this relationship fallout for so long. The tonal shift felt very sudden and I'm not sure the story's benefited from it.

4/5 maybe a 4.5 if the newest arc can get back to being cool fights and less lengthy drama.

 

I like the story, but I agree that the tonal shift of the Tracey POV and the lengthy drama are dragging. I particularly dislike the way Tracey talks with all the "'Tis" and other insufferable shortenings of words. It feels like she's from a different story with a different genre and era, in a very bad way.

 

Read this over the last few days. I'm of two minds about it.

On one hand, it leans a bit too hard into memes for most of its runtime. The banter is overdone. Tracy, as mentioned, doesn't land her intended narrative role, I think. And I have no idea what her speech patterns are meant to convey. If it's an accent, it shouldn't be present during her POV that isn't dialogue, but it is. As it is, it's just annoying without seemingly having a purpose.
The fic also essentially changes gene a third of the way into it. The author is aware of this and notes it, but it's not not well done. I wish more time had been spent on the dueling aspects as a profession, since it was built up so much at the start and then is seemingly completely abandoned.

Even with all that, the fic does a lot of things well. The characters are all distinct, the duelling is interesting, the writing is solid. Voldemort is engaging. The author also has the guts to go for things rarely seen in fanfiction, letting his characters do controversial things without some underlying aspect that makes them okay actually.

As much as some aspects of this annoy me and how I wish some different choices were made, this is a well-written story with a solid vision of what it what it wants to do (even if that seemingly changes halfway in).

I can't imagine why this hasn't entered the library yet. 4/5

 

It has yet to enter the library because nothing has moved out of the Review Board in about five years.