Sooooo....when does he boink Daphne?

Not a bad story by any stretch. Not amazing, but not horrible. 3.5/5.

Harry's characterization seems to get better proportionally to how far the Weasleys are away from the main plot.

So, needs less Weasels. Not like that's really news or anything, though.

 

'Tis. In four/five chapters time is where the changes truly, truly begin.

Several people have reviewed mentioning that Daphne is now their favourite choice. Last chapter it was Padma, and then Fleur before that. You people don't know what you want! It's a shame - I've had a good run with the relationship side of late. You guys are going to dislike the second to last scene in the next chapter, however, given who's left.

Scrimgeour is got more going on with him than he does in canon... but then, that isn't too hard. His and Harry's relationship will change dramatically from how it was in canon from Easter onwards.

I honestly thought that this part of the chapter would be the least well received as it did stick quite close to canon, and that's usually a bad thing. The only real changes were mostly adjustments to suit the changes made in the fic so far. Yet, it has been liked across the board (out of those who've mentioned it). So, all's good.

Well, throughout the remainder of this year and the next, Harry will have a relationship with Daphne, Fleur, Hermione and Padma. Each will be to different extents and have different focuses - either emotional or physical. The whole aim of the relationship side of the fic is to have Harry experience several relationships before finding the 'one'. I hope to satisfy everyone but I know I'll have to disappointed a number of people regardless... unless I do a harem, which is not going to happen. Strangely, a dozen or so people have mentioned along the way that I could quite easily make this a believeable harem fic.

Susan and Hannah... I doubt anything will happen in this fic. I don't think it'll fit with their storyline and Harry's relationships with the rest. I can always attempt to write an Afterthought on it...

Most of the Hogwarts story was always to be in the first semester. The holidays and second semester has a focus on training and family. But, given my chapter lengths, I shouldn't need anymore than four chapters to do that.

I hope to have it out the same time this weekend at the earliest, and latest mid-week. And, fingers crossed, the next the week after. But I shall have to disappear again after that due to another influx of assessments to work on.

Thank you. Now, I just need to keep it up.

As long as nothing irreperable happens, Dumbledore was pretty content to keep Malfoy around. And as you've concluded, the same applies here.

I hope to satisfy that requirement from Easter onwards. But, in the meantime, we're still focused on Hogwarts.

In Seventh Year.

Some of the Weasleys still have roles to play - Arthur will play an important role in the lead up to the climax, Bill will play a role there, Ginny will have one more storyline in Seventh Year, as will Ron. For all intents and purposes, however, they won't play that much of a role in the fic.


Thanks everyone. Now, time to eat and then time to write some more.

 

lolwut?

Your at 300k words somehow I think you'll manage.

 

Ha. Way to ruin the suspense of when Harry finally nails Daphne. Though I can't believe the word 'boink' was actually used to describe sex. Gave me some Road Trip flashbacks.

 

Lol.

Going by lord geryon's logic, the answer is pretty damn broad. It was more sarcasm than a real response, anyway.

 

300k words and 6th year is barely half-over.

Giving an answer of 7th year is roughly translated as: "within the next million words."

 

Great Story, I've been following it for a while, Lurking around and finally decided to post, I have to ask, could ya please give Harry more of a backbone? He cares for his friends and gets mad when they are attacked but he does nothing. Time after time he allows shit to happen and does nothing but bitch and even then its not alot. Canon Harry is a pussy, you follow canon in some ways and in others you blow it out of the water. In most real life situations a person can only take so much, when is he allowed to snap?
Personally I would have dragged Malfoy into a unused classrom and beat the shit out of him and been done with it. He's "The Chosen One" who would be more important, him or a death eater?

As far as the relationship angle, hook him up with Su and throw them all in a tizzie....lol

I understand the reasons behind the ginny thing but how long is Harry gonna dwell on it?

Thats it for now, I'll just sit here and stare into space awaiting an update, there are'nt too many worthwhile fics left to read out there that update often enough to pass the time.

 

Given how few friends canon Harry had, I imagine he's pretty loyal to them. And leniant, as shown with Ron. Therefore, that carried over to Ginny. In Daphne's case, it blends into the same problem as below. All I'll say is that Harry is becoming less and less adverse to breaking laws to do what's right and that there's one more thing before Harry 'snaps'.

In my mind, there are limits to what the 'Chosen One' can get away with. And attacking someone, Malfoy or not, wouldn't be received too well - eg. expelled - and I'm not quite ready for that to happen. But that will be disregarded as the stakes raise further. As I said above, Malfoy gets what's coming to him soon enough.

...I'm just imagining my reviewers flaming me for that. Some of them can be quite... enthusiastic in their attempts to convince to make the final pairing their female of choice.

I only mention it three more times that I know of so far, actually. Once where Harry and Padma are reflecting on past mistakes, once when Harry and Arthur are talking, and once when Ginny makes her next story appearance next year. It may or may not weed its way into other conversations, but we're pretty much beyond that now.


@ Everyone. Question. I'm plotting out the Horcrux hiding places (different from canon, as I don't agree with any of them except for the cave and possibly Gringotts) and I believe that Voldemort would have used his most secret and darkest magics to protect them. In canon, we saw some reasonably difficult protections on the fake locket, but that's about it.

My question is, what kind of magics would you expect to be on something as valuable as your soul? And are there any good stories with good examples that I can take inspiration from? I seem to recall Dumbledore mentioning Voldemort would want to see who had found out about his Horcruxes - may or may not be canon - so the protections can't be overly lethal but enough to cripple someone. Boy, I make this easy, don't I?

 

If you truely wanted to be evil have them hid under a fidelius but Dark lord's aren't smart enought to do that now are they? Now despite what dumbledork thinks anybody who split their soul is gonna be paranoid after one gets destoyed( the diary), why not have tommy pull all the remaining ones to himself? With his ego, he would think no one could defeat him to take them. Hagrid had huge pockets on his trenchcoat, why can't Tommy? have him carry them all with him and leave fake's with traps and homing spells where they were originally. Protects them and lets him know if anyone else knows. Just my 2 cents...

 

Dumbledork? Tommy? We couldn't just be refreshingly mature and call them Dumbledore and Tom/Voldemort?

Despite that, I agree that Voldemort would become paranoid about his horcruxes after he learns that one has been destroyed--but only if the one destroyed was still in its hiding place and under Voldemort's protections.

I don't think he'd become too paranoid about the rest of his Horcruxes based on the diary, since it was Lucius who put it within reach of Dumbledore and Harry by giving it to Ginny. Its loss was due to carelessness, not a weakness in Voldemort's own hiding places or protections. He might move whichever one he considers to be the most vulnerable at this point, but probably not more than that.

And scary, I wouldn't change the supposed location of the locket horcrux, but that's just me. As far as Hufflepuff's Cup, making someone break through the vaunted protections of Gringotts--which have never been breached--is also probably enough of a challenge. Good luck coming up with your own creative hiding places, traps, assorted curses, and the adventure of getting around, through, or even to, all of them.

 

Glad to see you're changing the locations of the Horcruxes other than the locket. I would consider hiding the Cup elsewhere, since someone can get access to any vault with Polyjuice. Just not secure enough.

I don't think that any Horcruxes should be placed under Fidelius Charms. In order to hide (this is disregarding DH, which really fucked up this concept to the point of it not making any sense) them, he would have to trust another DE with being a Secret Keeper. With Voldemort would not trust another person to do that. Trusting someone else with anything is a liability.

Shit, have to go to work. More later.

 

If he was smart he'd just throw one off the side of the ship in the middle of the Atlantic.

Horcrux hunting never made sense to me. There's no way to know you got them all, no way to track them, and (I think) nothing actually preventing him from re-horcruxing since it was implied the soul returns to him when the horcrux is destroyed. A much better solution would be to somehow permanently trap him without destroying his body, like a stasis. Given that the wizarding world has draught of living death I'm sure it's possible. Then if you want you can spend 50 years figuring out a horcrux finding spell.

 

Methinks someone was watching a certain Kate Winslet movie :awesome It's a good idea, though. Still, the whole business with horcruxes was highly in Voldemort's favor, given (a) barely anyone on the planet knows about them, and (b) it was pretty much dumb luck that Dumbledore figured out they existed in the first place.

No it wasn't; they said that the soul was destroyed outright. Otherwise he'd probably start looking less snake-like with the destruction of each - thus cluing him to their destruction in the first place.

 

If Dumbledore already has the scorched hand, I think it stand to reason that the ring remains in the Gaunt House, as in canon.

I don't think you should use Ravenclaw's tiara. That fucking sucked, terrible hiding spot, horribly convenient for plotting.

Harry's going to need someone that's good with warding, since I would assume that Voldemort would use a fair bit of it.

So, as the cave would show, Voldemort wants to stop people from getting away, but wouldn't want to kill them.

Perhaps the Smith ancestral catacombs could be a good place for the cup, to mock the Hufflepuff heritage. Seeing as how Hufflepuff would probably produce the least amount of Blood-Purists, and the hiding place would reside under a church, coupled with Helga Hufflepuff's supposed affinity for food-centered charms, access to the Cup would require the adventurer to take communion. A ward scheme could be employed by Voldemort, that detects whether the intruder has ingested "body of Christ", and "blood of Christ". If both are ingested, when the intruder passes the ward line, the Cup will rise up from the ground. However, the two potions, when combined, create Draught of Living Death, effectively incapaciting the intruder. The idea certainly has many flaws, but it did occur to me.

 

Super Hermione would come along and say "Accio Horcrux." like she did with the books from Dumbledore's office.

 

Journey to the bottom of the ocean, anyone?

 

Update. Not bad, but not the best of this story either.

 

Compared to the great reaction to the past two chapters, I know/knew this one wouldn't be as well received - due to the Hermione scene near the end, if nothing else.

That said, a lot of this was setting up the next couple chapters at Hogwarts - e.g. the Lavender scene for another Parvati and Padma confrontation and some more interesting things about the step-mom with a role to play; the request to restart the DA so the students take a more active role in defending themselves and not relying on the Aurors, and the reemergance of a character or two (Ron in particular - and I can tell you right now, as I've said earlier, he has a minimal role in the fic), amongst a few others things I can't speak of yet; Horcruxes to start weeding out those who aren't up to task, and set up the events of the Easter break; and lastly the Harry and Hermione part to bring their friendship back to the level they were at at the start of the year, if not just a tad closer.

I'm pretty certain the fake-locket will remain in the cave, as there's little need to be changing it - Gringotts is a difficult place to break into, however, I'm going to be writing a completely different seventh year as to what DH was, so I won't have mine and canon overlapping like that. I've got a few places in mind, but I really need protections to think of.

I already established earlier in the fic that a very select few know how to perform the Fidelius - my reasoning because of how valuable the magic would be to any criminal - and mentioned it in the most recent chapter, as well. There wouldn't be a way for there to be a victory if they were.

Quite true. But I want to follow JKs idea that the Horcrux hinding spots would be significant to Tom Riddle - like the Gaunt house, the cave, to a lesser understandable extent Gringotts, and to an even lesser extent the Room of Hidden Things. There's a lot of time where Tom was vanished from public view and a great many places he could've hidden Horcruxes. However, I do worry I'll think of some place so perfect and difficult that I'll make it next to impossible to have Harry find it without it being complete luck/a fluke like everything in DH seemed to be.

Absolutely not. I hope to make my Hermione a lot more falliable and likeable than the DH version was.

I probably will keep the Tiara as the item, but the random history behind it will either change or not exist, and it certainly not be in the Room of Hidden Things.

That is a... different idea than what I've had and what I've seen. I'm afraid I don't know nearly enough about communion to write it, though, but it's certainly outside the box.



I'll ask again as I've received no answers so far and my mind is failing me on what protections to use; does anyone know of any fics with well done Horcrux hiding places/protections?

 

If we weed out the Hermione interest, I'd say the quality of the update is on par with the last few. But yes, I'd say the Harry/Hermione interaction lowered the interest for me a little bit. It's a little slower, but it had to slow down again at some point.

On the other hand, the practice at parrying and deflection with Flitwick was done excellently. Having Harry failing more often than not, and then showing slight improvement throughout the passing of time, until one night when he was almost constantly on the ball...brilliant. His success didn't seem rushed at all, and it didn't seem as though you were just making him fail at the task for the sake of slowing his advancement.

Ok, the rest of the DA...The scene with Lavender was likeable, but felt a little out of place to me. And I can't really see how it would be of any benefit to Harry to split even more of his time to teach the original DA members after having picked his Inner Circle. He's spread out enough with his own tasks (Horcruxes, duelling lessons and anything else he needs to learn), teaching his IC, trying to find a balance with Dumbledore again, trying to find a balance between friendships and romance, etc. etc.

I also can't see the motivation for filling other people in on Horcruxes at this point. Maybe once Harry and Hermione had learned more about them, and how to go about finding them, it would be helpful. Am I missing something about his character or motivation here?

Either way, I liked it. Hurry up with the next update, dude.

Edit: Sesc is right on to mention The Seventh Horcrux, in my opinion. It was the best Horcrux Hunting fic I've read. Especially the thing Harry does in the Deatch Chamber very near the end of the tale. If you're looking for something to get your creative juices flowing, that story might help.