Granted, Dark!Harry storylines are pretty common, but are there any decent Dark!Hermione ones out there?

I seem to remember two where in one, Hermione became a Dark Lady and in another, she grew obsessed about the Hallows post-DH, but I haven't been able to find any others.

Does anyone here know of any good, Dark Hermione stories?

Seeing Hermione's character grow malformed/become twisted as she descends into the Dark Arts and the effect that it has on Ron/Harry could be worth a good read, if it has been done correctly.

 

Dangerous is a good one. It's on www.grangerenchanted.com

Hermione is the leader of a muggle/muggleborn/blood traitor terrorist group that is striking against the Ministry that did nothing to prosecute the DE's and such. Very, very dark and graphic.

Some Harry/Hermione smut.

 

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2697864/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Dark_Lord

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3127161/1/Blessed

Two fic's by Erised Burning. One cannibalistic Hermione.

 

I remember reading this a while ago. I liked parts of it, the concept in particular, but I really hated it overall.

 

The latter might be this one, which I wrote (Hallows and Pathos).

 

Muttering mentioned "Dangerous" by blacklotus, it's one of the best !DarkHermione fics around the net. The backround story is incredibly detailed, Hermiones "fall" believable and the tension building works just fine.

I've read my share of !DarkHermione fics. Here a few of the better ones:

Not great, but solid writing and some funny ideas.

In this one the author plays with an interesting concept and it's rather enjoyable, but the end sucks.

Very dark- and good. There are even some sequels, check the author profile. It got some praise on DLP too- Dark Arts

And finally, there is this 18.000+ words fic fragment sitting on my hard drive, waiting for me to wrap up the first chapter...

If any of you would like to beta this, pm me.

 

Yeah, I read that this morning. I liked it: Hermione's portrayal was excellent, as was her slow descent into darkness due to the situation at hand.

The only downside, is that I had expected Harry to be become dark -very dark- after the trauma that he had suffered, since him traveling the world was very similiar to what Tom Riddle had done in the past. I sort of expected it that when he finally did return to England, curious about the situation and his old friends, it would of been a three way toss-up between Hermione/Nova, the Ministry and a very dark -and very goal secretive- Harry.

The interaction between a dark Harry and Hermione (and her group) would of been great, as with the reactions of the wizarding world/Ministry when they find out that their hero has become magically blacker than coal.

Cannibal!Hermione sounds interesting, I'll get through those two later.

Yes, that's the one! It was a very interesting read, Pers.

The other one I was thinking of is where a dark Hermione was starting to take control of the wizarding world, but had fallen in love with Harry eventually -due to him seeing her as 'just Hermione' and not anything/anyone else- and then keeping him under her control via potions/ignorance. (It was originally her goal to eliminate Harry and Ron when they became too much of a hassle to be of use).

It was a pretty dark one-shot piece. I cannot remember the title, though.

I read 'Screams' and the following sequels: very disturbing and dark, and the interaction between Hermione and her 'Smiling Man' was simply great!

Thank you all for the links: I'm going to be busy tonight, that's for sure!

 

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2972273/1/

king or pawns -is the second one you where after i think

 

One question Pers: Didn't you say at one point that you were going to rewrite the ending of that? If so, are you still planning on doing it?

(For the record, I'm not trying to make a not-so-subtle request for an update, I'm just trying to make sure that I'm not crazy, because I remember it having been said.)

 

Yeah, I did, but I haven't yet. Add it to the list.

[Edit: You have an excellent memory, by the way.]

 

Yep, that's the one!

 

Decided to raise this topic from the dead instead of creating a brand new one, thus not cluttering up the forum.

Does anyone here know of any fic's where either (or both) Tonks and Hermione are supportive of Harry yet completely psycho/fanatical in their demeanor? (Like, Bellatrix type fanatical).

Also, does anyone know of any decent Harry/Tonks fic's? I've ripped through the fanfiction.net character section, and I'm pretty much starved for more. Please, please feed this poor, fiction starved waif.

Edited by iRC suggesion: to clarify, by Tonks and Hermione supporting Harry, I don't mean Tonks and Hermione being together in a romantic pairing. No slash!

 

I remember this story from a while back, and I imagine that, unless I've missed my guess, much of your reaction has to do with Harry's characterization.

Harry's portrayal for much of the story is infuriating. He comes across as spineless, thoughtless, ignorant, weak, hypocritical, unskilled, nearly infantile in his lack of experience compared to Hermione's worldly wisdom... the list goes on.

Until the last few of the current 17 chapters, every time he's in Hermione's presence, Harry can't seem to do anything but simultaneously quake in fear at her awesome power and skill, pop a boner at her beauteous splendor, and put his foot in his mouth because she's always right and he's always wrong.

Most of the arguments, jabs, and hurtful insults she slings at him are either baseless, or refer to situations where they were either both right, or both wrong. However, since the author's desire is to allow the mighty Granger to run roughshod over Harry, he just can't muster up any defense for himself but to gape and gibber like an imbecile.

You know you're reading a poorly executed bashing scene when one character rants for two or three lengthy paragraphs, and the object of their ire either just sits there, taking it, or they attempt to protest and get totally shut down. Then, when they finally get a word in edgewise, they either say something stupid, or wrong, or simply stutter in shock, with the end result that they totally fail to defend themselves, and the basher jumps right back in with a snappy, laser-targeted rejoinder, and another three or four paragraphs of self righteous verbal bludgeoning.

I've done this myself (though I, at least, have the excuse of not having posted any of it), and it is not good. While I have seen this happen in real life, it's rare that someone will just sit there and take it for that long.

And, if they do, that's usually because they're beyond caring and have succeeded in tuning out the person who's ranting. "Hmm, I wonder what's on the Discovery Channel..."

Let me be clear when I say that Harry is NOT one of the people who would just sit and take a bitching-out like that.

Scenes that play out like that are only satisfying in the most base way, and if the reader looks beyond the surface visceral enjoyment of watching someone expertly filleted, the writing loses its luster very quickly (because there's nothing expert about it).

Trade Harry for Dumbledore and Hermione for Harry, and you get one of any number of scenes where Harry rips into the headmaster, verbally demolishing him, with Albus either not being able to get a word in, or having everything he says countered with ease by the raging schoolboy.

Most people above fourteen will admit that these scenes, while possibly entertaining in the short term, like literary junk food, ultimately fail to satisfy.

Part of this is because, in order for such a scene to truly work, the dialog (especially Harry's) has to actually BE intelligent. He has to make a good case for himself, and do so against a Dumbledore who hasn't been handicapped and reduced to an easily-bullied mental midget by the bash-happy author.

Sadly, many writers simply don't have what it takes to capture Dumbledore's style of speech, nor the wit and wisdom of what he actually says, and certainly fall short of what it takes to pen a scene where Harry and Albus cross verbal swords, without lobotomizing Dumbledore and turning it into a meaningless screaming match.

Imagine your average ten-year-old trying to write dialog for a century old scholar, and a teen hero... Yeah. And given the apparent comprehension, vocabulary, et cetera, of the average 20 or 30 year old, the situation doesn't improve much.

I won't exclude myself from that statement. After all, you don't see me uploading any stories, do you? My old Draco kill-offs are riddled with punctuation errors and mishandling of speech tags, I'm sure. Then again, me trying to fit anything into 2500 words is like trying to tightlace a hippo in a corset.

But I digress.

Directly related is the author who IS technically smart enough to write such dialog, but they either aren't familiar enough with key canon details, and thus have a character misrepresent a fact, causing them or the character they're arguing with to lose the debate, or they simply have character-1 spout accusations, and character-2 fails to defend, not because they couldn't have, but because the author transparently wants them to fail. And, thus, everyone can see it's the author directly pulling the puppet strings from behind the curtain.

[For a hypothetical example of that first one, imagine a scene where Ron unloads on Harry because he wouldn't have gotten hurt in the chess match in the first book, if Harry had gone to a teacher about the problem first. Harry stutters, unable to counter this statement and loses the argument... but we all know that, in the book, he DID go to a teacher.

I'm not even talking about AU material here, a conscious change by an author; I mean instances where an author clearly forgot what really happened in the books, and so someone loses an argument based on an incorrect statement.]
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It makes it hard to enjoy the old man getting his metaphorical teeth kicked in, when you can see that he's been tied to his chair and gagged, so that he's an easy target for Harry, who is blindfolded and trying to stand on one leg.

ANYWAY... the sad thing is that the author of Dangerous doesn't seem to suffer from either a lack of intelligence or talent, or even canon knowledge.

It's hard for me to put into words that the story is good, but most of the early characterization of the leads is bad. And most of the dialog would be top notch... except that Harry gets hamstrung by the author, and Hermione gets to do all the talking.

The plot seems really solid, clichés are scarcely present at all. For instance, the DOM workers are portrayed, correctly, as researchers and scholars, not the bastard children of the Illuminati and S.H.I.E.L.D.. The grown-up versions of Harry's peers are handled rather well, Draco's presence is kept to a very pleasant bare minimum.

Really, the single glaring issue is Harry being a chump and the way Hermione turns into a complete *-Sue around him. Most of her followers look up to her and are loyal to her (with a few fanatically so), and that's understandable. She's powerful, almost excessively so, but that's not such a big deal... (considering she's the next 'dark lord').

Until she's in a scene with Harry.

The minute they're both on the page at once, their flaws are instantly exacerbated by each other. Harry's perceived wimpiness is magnified by his initial unease around/fear of Hermione, versus her power and confidence, his apparent naivete, inexperience, and stupidity multiplied by her worldly knowledge, traumatic experiences, and always being right.

And Harry's flanderized weaknesses make Hermione's uber-ness cross the line from reasonable, into Sue territory.

At least Hermione's characterization can possibly be blamed on some form of insanity...

While Harry's behavior isn't as excruciatingly idiotic in recent chapters as it was in the first three quarters of the story, we'll only know if this is an ongoing trend, or the author merely forgetting to bash Potter, when the story is finished.

I'd like to believe it's the former.

Unfortunately, any late improvement in characterization across the board won't make a difference if the readers bail out in disgust at the early chapters, never to return. I more or less did this back when I first found this story (or followed a link to it or however I came across it), and only caught up with it tonight because I thought it sounded familiar and wanted to check.

Such was my initial reaction to this story that, when the reread jogged my memory, and I realized what I was reading, I instantly became pissed off all over again.

As I said before, the portrayals improve, but unless you're a Harry hater, you may have a rough time making it through the first ten to thirteen chapters without spitting bile at the screen. I can admit Harry is a flawed character, but the level of dumb he's at in the beginning of this makes me see red.

Spelling and grammar are usually well above average, with some scattered errors.

Really, if Harry were written more realistically, with him biting back more often and more effectively when Hermione starts disparaging him and laying blame on him, then it would be SOOO much more tolerable. I mean, even internally he's constantly thinking, "Is she right? Am I wrong? Oh crap, she is right! I totally suck!"

Bottom line: If Hermione's such hot shit, then she should be able to stand up to Harry without the author turning him into a paper target, and the story would be better for it.

This situation seems to have improved in recent chapters, with Harry occasionally getting the best of her (for all of two seconds), momentarily stumping her, or throwing her off her game. She even actually concedes that he has a point a few times.

Appropriate for my ambivalent feeling toward this story, I'll say that it is well written, except for when it isn't, and the dialog, plot, and characterization are all very good, except for where they're horrible.

If this post veered drastically off course at some point, it's because I made the mistake of actually looking at TV Tropes when I linked to them, and spent the next three or four hours reading entries there before returning to this post.

 

Another winning deconstruction! I'm hoping that Warlocke's frustration level coupled with his overpowering desire to express himself will come to a critical mass and he'll post a freshman fanfiction work of 'Black Comedy' epicness.

Quick- somebody link him to another frustratingly well-written piece of fail!

EDIT: @Matt He already reviewed it, thanx.

 

Hey Warlocke, click wordhammer's sig!

 

Warlocke, I salute you: you are DLP's greatest scholar of mediocrity. Completely awful stories and superb stories don't get "the treatment," but the moderately flawed stuff gets dissected. And actually, I also find critiques of this sort of thing to be the most interesting. You can learn a lot from people like these, who are obviously competent at writing stories, but can't avoid having a few systematic flaws that taint the whole thing.

As far as this particular story goes? What gets me is that on the most basic level, she did have the right idea on how a conflict between these two characters would go. Hermione is the more intellectually bright of the two. Harry would be the more noble of the two, and have the greater guts and determination.

So I would expect this style of super!Hermione to, at first, dazzle Harry a bit, and be able to run circles around him in an intellectual debate. Harry would win her over by literally bludgeoning her down. He would not give up despite her attempts to sever the connection between them, and eventually his breed of common sense would prevail over Hermione's more elaborate philosophy. And again, the author seemed to understand this, at least on a basic level.

But in Dangerous, Harry ends up coming out excessively nerfed, as Warlocke described so well. So instead of having a masterfully intelligent Hermione vs. a competent but overmatched Harry, you end up with a flashy paper tiger of a Hermione vs. a sad sack of a Harry. Harry does improve in the latter chapters, but the Harry we see there is the one we should have seen all along, IMO.

The whole uncontrollable sexual attraction thing is the other problem with this story. It cheapens both characters, especially Harry, who (unless he spent his years abroad pretending to be a eunuch) shouldn't be acting like a middle school student peeking in the girl's locker room. It should have been put off for longer than it was.

 

Dangerous is probably dead, it hasn't been updated since February.

However I will say that I enjoyed the story. I actually had a lengthy discussion with the author about her story. She had the story pretty well planned out (there wasn't going to be a happy ending, it would be at best bittersweet and at worst a tragedy). She had not planned on keeping Harry weak and was in the process of beefing up his character in the last few chapters. She basically told me that Harry is every bit as powerful as Hermione and did not spend the last 10 years doing nothing like everyone thought he did (he did travel the world learning as much as he could).

I can see how the initial chapters could turn people off of the story if you didn't like how Harry was treated. I didn't much care for it either, but I stuck with it based upon the knowledge that it would change.

What I liked best about the story was not the H/Hr interactions, but the overarching storyline. This is one of the few stories that deals with the magical world's treatment of muggleborn in a realistic way. She may have taken it to the extreme, but it's still a very plausible reaction given what has happened to all of the muggleborn and the fact that literally nothing changed once the war ended.

On a related note, are there any other stories that actually have some sort of muggleborn uprising and/or a major civil war that isn't just Voldemort vs. Dumbledore/Harry? That is a civil war that is fought purely over differences in ideology and and beliefs rather than one side wanting to take over the world and the other just wants to stop them. Are there any stories like this? Because I can definitely see the magical world having a huge potential for a bunch of ideological shitstorms.