Vladbat speaks truth.

 

It's one thing to not have had a scientific revolution, it's quite another to have had 2000 years and no one so much as accidentally stumbled on the maintained connection between a switched body part and its original body. That's like saying that because IRL people kept the Greek stuff, no one stumbled upon addition or subtraction. This is why I don't think that aspect should be anything special. What should be special is that if there is a demonstrable law of magic that you can't switch a non-living part with a living part, up to and including transfigured "living" things," then Harry's just discovered a way around it.

It makes sense that no one would have stumbled on this.

I'll concede that there may have been a number of people in the past that have already discovered this through ingenuity and deduction, but they were probably loners who didn't bother to share. After all, Flamel didn't bother sharing his cure for death. Suffice it to say, you can deduct that if botched charms give that "spark of life" to inanimate objects, then you may be able to switch parts with them, but the odds of someone accidentally stumbling upon this are extremely thin.

I certainly don't think Harry is the Wizarding world's newton, but the Santi has already established him as an intelligent, capable and talented wizard. Why cheapen that by chalking this all up to "luck" and a super shit-stupid Wizarding world?

The first version, to me, and I would guess pers and anyone else who had a problem with it, is that it came across as so grossly unrealistic that no one would have figured it out that it broke the suspension of disbelief. I think it's telling that the Santi himself had a problem with it.

 

We can discuss Harry's discovery all we want, but I really hope that Santi is writing next part instead of thinking more about how to improve this scene.

 

I agree that Flamel himself is a dissapointment. He has had 6 centuries to advance his fields of magic, and should at minimum on dumbledores level of skill, even if he doesn't take much interest in anything other than Potions/Alchemy.

 

And where exactly are we ever told about Flamel's abilities?

 

I think Rin effectively sums up why the original scene was objectionable.

In any case, Pers' suggestion was fine, but Santi just didn't incorporate it properly. He shoved it in without doing a proper rewrite. I actually don't care as much about the fact that Harry would have made two discoveries; it's more that one of the discoveries is completely glossed over and forgotten in favor of the other. This happened, of course, because Santi largely preserved the original scene without considering the implications of another discovery.

tl;dr: Change a few sentences and it will become believable enough.

 

You pricks can keep nitpicking on minor shit. This is how authors lose inspiration and start to abandon their fucking stories. I'd rather a finished story that wasn't the greatest piece of literature ever than an unfinished masterpiece.

Quit. Fucking. Bitching.

 

Well I am assuming that considering that he was scared of Voldemort stealing the Philosophers Stone when he wasn't even at his full power, I mean come on?

 

Oh, gee your totally right!

Except for the whole point of the first book was that Voldemort was going to steal the Stone out from under Dumbledore's nose. DD even said at the end of the book (IIRC) that if Harry hadn't been there that Voldemort might have succeeded.

We have no knowledge of what Flamel was capable of.

In general we have no knowledge of the greater wizarding world. We only have the perspective of a single high school student who is more worried about not being killed than than about the fine points of wizarding culture.

Let's give the stupid debates a rest.

 

Because of debates like this one, the thread for this fic is now the third longest single-fic thread on DLP (I think). Two of the longer ones are from Shezza's Denarian series, and the other one I found was Miranda Flairgold's "A Second Chance..." fic.

And the story is only in 2nd year. Holy crap.

Santi, you may want to sit on that experiment scene for a bit, depending on if you'd rather write new scenes or not. Then you can return to the experiment when you're idling between new updates, or something.

 

What does it matter how long the thread is? It isn't reason to carry on a useless discussion well past the time when all relevant points have been brought forward.

BTW
Flairgold's fic is actually the sum of a trilogy, not a single fic.

 

Well, it certainly doesn't matter in any important way, though I think it's an interesting data point.

But heck, I suppose that means I made the thread at least two posts longer with some very trivial crap. FFFUUUUUUUUUUU- ...

Thanks for the correction about Flairgold's fics, BTW - I can never quite work myself up to attempting that read.

 

Even I can agree with Vlad on MOAR UPDATE PLOX!

 

You've got a few simple mistakes here, and I'll point out what I found.



You used 'their' instead of 'there' when Snape is talking about the powdered Romainian Longhorn horn.

You left out the word 'to' when Lily offers Snape a drink.

When Snape is telling Harry that Lily went to a lot of trouble to arrange the lessons, you used 'You're' rather than 'Your.'

When Snape is describing what a strong Legilimens can do, you used 'navigating' rather than 'navigate.'

When Snape is seeing Harry's memory of the conversation with Calypso, you said she could 'careless' rather than 'care less.' A couple sentences later, you forgot to put a space between 'How' and 'had'--when Harry is wondering how he'd ended up on the floor.

When Snape mentions how he was taught by Dumbledore, you use the words Occlumentes rather than Occlumens to describe one who is proficient with Occlumency.

When Snape tells Lily he didn't see the memory in its entirety, you put the words together to say 'seeit.'


Those pointed out, this was great fun. You kinda just made my day by updating, so thanks for that. Great work, Santi.

 

I quite literally giggled when I saw you had updated. /emberassing revelations

I liked the update, particularly the ending where it is revealed that Snape actually just helped Lily because she asked. It seems much more in-line with what we know about him from canon.

The occlumency was also done pretty well. I liked that you chose to stick with a more canon friendly version of it, since I always thought it mich better than all of that fanon crap about castles and shields. Plus, despite the canon parallels, you could still see that Harry made some progress.

So, MOAR!

 

That chapter was fantastic. The occlumency is what made this chapter, your idea of the mind arts is very much like mine and is nothing like the rubbish shields and mindscapes fannon comes up with that could be done in a couple of months, I always viewed them as a lifetimes work. In fact the part with Snape projecting anger unto harry is exactly how I see legilmency working. I always thought the spell was only for putting the casters mind in contact with the recipient and the way to view memories was by projecting emotions at the recipient and in turn memories with those emotions attached to them could be viewed.

Very impressed.

 

Enjoyed the update. Once again I find myself curious as to what Albus thinks of Harry, and I wonder if Sanpe figured out Calypso's family name. I'll echo the comments on the occlumency, but that will lead to something I fear is happening.

I feel that Calypso is becoming a bit Mary Sue-ish. She excel’s at defense, is improving rapidly in charms and transfiguration and, unless I’m reading too much into it, she has mastered occlumency. Now granted I know she's been instructed in defense by her father and Harry had tutored her in both charms and Transfiguration, but it seems to me that this is leading towards her being at least a proficient occlumens. About the only thing, that has been shown so far, that she is not good at is making female friends. Granted this is more of a nitpick then anything, as this is still one of the best ongoing stories around.

 

I don't know if phoenixes can have bored expressions, but ymmv. I'l actually happy that you took the canon Occlumency route, it just fits well into Harry Potter magic.

Yes, a pleasantly long update. Keep it up!

 

Sooo....

....Herr Snape versteht der die Deustche Sprache, ja ?

 

Snape is inside Harry's head, so I'm assuming that the translation is happening automatically, since Harry knows both languages, and thinks in English. If not... well that's a pretty big plot hole.