This is a typical problem with time travel redo stories, usually worked around by sending the hero(es) to the past against their will or without warning (so that the mere act of them being sent back destroys their original future, and, while they can't be blamed, there's also nothing they can do to fix it).

However...

Spoiler

While you could possibly make the argument that "Hermione Weasley" was acting selfishly, in her mind she was fixing something that had gone horribly wrong in the first place and was never meant to be.

And the fact is, Ginny pretty much demanded she do so. Granted, she wasn't really in the proper state of mind to be making that call...

I imagine a lot of people spent the first few chapters suspecting Dumbledore of interference...

Anyway... The fact is, the Harry that did the actual meddling that caused all the problems did not have children, was not married, and did not have friends that were married either, at the time he did his tampering.

The only people, as far as he knew, being affected were himself, Hermione, and the Weasleys. All he knew is that his changes would make it so Hermione lived instead of died. He couldn't know that it would also make it so she ended up with Ron instead of him... and eventually fuck the entire future.

He thought he was saving a life at zero cost to anyone. No harm, no foul.

By the end of the story, the Harry and Hermione who are still present literally had nothing to do with any of this time travel stuff.

The Hermione that did, really only played a small part: She simply told the Harry who had done the original meddling that it was wrong of him to do so, then almost immediately faded from existence, because the moment Harry changed plans, it undid that future.

At the end, we have a Harry and Hermione who have virtually NO clue what happened or why. They can only guess at what's been going on. The last bit of time traveling they did, was to save Sirius and Buckbeak.

They aren't the same people as the versions of themselves that did revise the post HBP timeline, and, while it might seem too much to some people like they're getting off on a technicality, they can't be held accountable for the motives, decisions, and actions of their alternate timeline selves.

There's really only one character you could pin that whole murderously selfish rap on, and that character, as part of a vanished timeline, has ceased to exist by the end of the story.

Like I said, call it 'getting off on a technicality', but I think the larger percentage of your ire is misplaced.

Really?

Spoiler

You mean other than the MAIN mystery of how the OriginalTimeline!Harry will be able to ensure Hermione's survival, without making the mistakes he made in his original meddling that caused Hermione to end up with Ron, Harry to end up with Ginny, and the entire CanonEpilogue!Future to go down the toilet?

Ignoring that: You've read that far, why not just finish it and find out? I mean, sure maybe your fears will be justified, but with half the story already read, you'd might as well stick around and confirm what happens (and maybe be able to give an educated review), rather than bail out because of what you think might happen?

 

2/5

It was an okay read, Albus Severus was wiped from existence (good), and I beat off to the H/Hr scenes - as per the author's intentions.

 

I suppose we'll have to disagree.

Spoiler

Most time travel stories at least provide the comforting fiction that there is another timeline where everyone is alive and well. This one explicitly doesn't. "You'll cease to be" "I know, but I can't accept how things are" is incredibly juvenile and morally bankrupt, the kind of thing written by self-absorbed teenage girls who lack the life experience to recognize that while one's happiness might be paramount when living a pampered life in Mommy's and Daddy's McMansion, it ain't so once that nine-month parasitic infection starts sucking on one's tit. "I wasn't happy with my life" isn't an excuse for strangling and tossing a newborn into a trash can at the Junior Prom and it ain't here.

For all its faults (including being largely unread), I thought Hermione's estrangement from Harry in Mother In Law's Love was at least realistic--Harry's confessed to an act of genocide for purely selfish reasons and Hermione, to her credit, calls him on it, horrified at what he's done. There's a reason for that scene--I'd come across one too many stories like this one.

This story:

Ginny: Wah! I'm not my husband's true love. I'm a selfish bint. Hermione, help me commit suicide and murder our children.

How Hermione should have reacted: *slap* Man up. So Harry fantasizes about another while he's humping you? Boo fucking hoo. Get used to it. It's called life and it sure as hell ain't fair.

The Hermione of this story: Wah! I know just what you mean! I like totally love Harry and he was into me. I know! I'll help you kill yourself and my kids by going back in time and commit suicide! Then I'll be with my one true love!

Harry: Wah! I love Hermione, but I know she'll die if we try to be together. I can choose her fate, knowing with 100% confidence that she'll be happy, with two beautiful children and married to a man who dotes on her, or I can take it all of that from her and me and Ginny. I know, let's just fuck and decide what to do afterward! That never turns out badly.

Technicality or not, in this story, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny are the kind of people who would place their own happiness ahead of the very existence of those they would claim to love. It's a teen-aged angst play for adult stakes and it's repugnant to me.

The only blameless character here is Ron, who is kept oblivious throughout. Go Ron.

 

Spoiler

So not even an ounce of horror at the fact your life is how it is because it was somehow manipulated behind the scenes is appropriate? Even if Hermione had, in the end, said "No, we'll live the life we've been handed." You think she should have robotically ignored any emotional response to that revelation, the very instant she had it, and slapped Ginny in the face, telling her to snap out of it?

Spoiler

But now you're ignoring that he already knew with 100% confidence, that things hadn't worked out perfectly for Hermione. The events, as they originally happened, saw Hermione dead at the Battle of Hogwarts. The changes he originally made, resulted in a timeline where, however happy Hermione was with her life, obviously changed enough after she learned (part of) the truth, that she took the drastic measure of going back to stop him.

So he did not know she would be happy, he knew things were messed up enough that she, herself, came back to make him change things.

The story tries to make original!Harry sound wiser than he is, but in the end (as Hermione was so surprised to discover) it was just a seventeen-year-old Harry, fresh from sacrificing himself, dying, resurrecting, killing Voldemort, and watching Hermione die... who was trying to manipulate time.

So all original!Harry really knows is that...
Original events = dead Hermione, not "happy Hermione."
2nd timeline = fucked up enough Hermione came back to fix it, not "happy Hermione."

And, yeah, they had sex. Whatever future!Hermione's excuses (I already said she's the real offender in this story), it's a bit harder to blame Harry too much. He loved her, watched her die, then she came back... and he realized she was breaking a marriage vow and tried to back out, however briefly. I guess I can't muster too much indignation at that response from a shell-shocked teen, under precisely those circumstances, getting a visit from someone he knew was dead, and soon to be so again (as she came back to before he made his "edits" to the timeline).

In your world of idealized robo-people, I suppose he should have shrugged off what he'd been through and his feelings about the person he loved and said, "No thank you."

When the terrible truth was that the future she came from, and everyone in it, was gone the moment she went back, and there would be nothing he could do to change that. In light of that, Harry making love to a ghost is...

Anyway, original!Harry and future!Hermione knocking boots is hardly the most important issue at hand.

So Harry's left trying to figure out how to keep Hermione alive, but he knows what he did lead to Hermione effectively destroying the timeline by coming back...

All those "Happy" people in the future had already ceased to exist, because Harry failed to commit the "perfect crime," and however anyone felt about them is moot. They're gone and he can't save them. All he can do is damage control.

So he figures out a way to save Hermione without leaving behind memories or clues that would cause someone in the future to figure out what was up and end the timeline in an effort to "fix" things. He does so by simply dying in her stead, which allows for the bare minimum changes to be made, without the deceptions that caused so much disruption down the road.

Spoiler

Future!Harry never made any decisions or demands about fixing the past. He was barely conscious. The original!Harry, who did the meddling in the first place, only tried to save Hermione. He had no idea his 'edits' would result in Hermione/Ron, and no idea that his hand in things would be detected and prompt someone to come back, thus destroying the timeline and everyone in it.

So the only thing he was guilty of was trying to save Hermione. Selfish? Sure, saving anyone you care about at all is an inherently selfish act, to at least some degree. But that doesn't make him the baby-killer you're trying to make him into.

And the Harry and Hermione at the end of the story have no idea any of this stuff ever happened. All they know is that a copy of Harry died in Malfoy Manor. Like Ron, they are ignorant and blameless, and Ginny even more so.

I get that you have a family and you feel strongly about this. That's fine. I have no problem with that and would not attempt to change the way you feel about this story.

Were selfish acts committed? Sure, MURDEROUSLY selfish, but the only two people who KNEW that what they were doing was killing an entire future full of babies and families, were future!Hermione and future!Ginny, and they are the only two people to whom you can attribute that blame.

Original!Harry was actually stopped BEFORE he made his changes, and told they were a failure. And they were, because just by someone from the future appearing to him, they had already pulled the trigger on that future. All he could do at that point was get over his bewilderment and go to plan B... which he didn't have.

Finally, it's curious that you would demand/expect such complete and total mastery of emotions from these characters, particularly the abused seventeen-year-old war veteran who just watched most of his friends die on a battlefield that was so fresh the smoke was still rising from it, when it's apparent that your own emotional response to this story has prevented you from logically laying blame where it belongs.

I guess, when it boils down to it, you're angry at the author for writing the story as it is. I suppose, from what you said, the rationale here is that this isn't legitimate fiction, it's the wish-fulfillment fantasy of someone writing on the level of a teen girl, or someone with the emotional state and sense of responsibility thereof. And if a story is written "correctly," getting mad at an author for their character's views/actions would be silly, but this one wasn't written correctly...

I won't bother commenting further on that (and I've certainly been mad at fanfic authors for their stupid choices), but the facts remain that there are only two characters guilty of the crimes for which you wish to blame them: future!Hermione and future!Ginny... and they've ceased to exist by about halfway through the story.

Original!Harry is the only one left to offend you after that, and he can hardly kill people who were made to never exist, by a third party, before he ever took his original action. Nothing he could do at that point would restore the Rose, Hugo, Lily-Luna, et al future.

If he were to do nothing, Hermione would die as she did in the original timeline, and there would be no connubial bliss (with a tinge of Harry-lust on Hermione's part) for Ron and Hermione, and their children would never exist... because it would have never happened.

He thought his original changes would hurt no one, and regardless of who Hermione wed, she'd be alive. He didn't realize those people would sabotage their own existence later on, and by the time he found out, the ship on that timeline, and all the scenarios and people it encompassed, had irrevocably sailed.

 

Guess who can't highlight and read shit in /spoiler tags? Anyone reading on an iPhone, that's who! All I can do is highlight, copy and paste the shit into my notes app to see what it says, which I would do for very few people beyond Pers and Warlocke. Goddammit.

So anyway, I read the story, and liked it. I liked it enough, in fact, that I dropped a review over at FFnet - something I very, very rarely take the time to do these days. That's not to say the story was perfect, because as I pointed out in my review, unless future!Hermione has more facts than canon-DH-Epilogue!Hermione, she has no way of knowing the last two places to possibly intercept future!Harry, because she wouldn't know what *that* Harry knew.

If the premise of the story is that both Harry and Hermione love each other but are too scared/whatever to admit it, then future!Hermione should never know that post-MoM Harry tells her he loves her, and according to her timeline, Harry never tells her he loves her in the tent, so again, how can she know to go to those moments to intercept future!Harry?

Aside from that, I did enjoy the story, and in my mnd, I brushed off the destruction of the canon post-DH universe by assuming it was all a set of alternate universes or some such. Rose-colored glasses? Maybe, but I chose to just go with it.

I didn't like the way the story dragged in the middle, but after that it was well worth it. As a fan of HHr, I'm always glad to see a fresh and well-written addition to a sgment not k own for an abundance of quality fics, at least if you prefer no bashing. I had figured out who the culprit was and what the artifact had been immediately, but was pleasantly surprised by the good writing and the reappearance of future!Harry, and to me, the Arithmancy b.s. aside, I really enjoyed how future!Harry *became* the Master of Death through his actions when he reappeared. Possibly my favorite part/twist.

I can't give it a 5 because of the saccharine nature of some parts and the way it did in fact have a bit too much uber-leader-beautiful!Hermione for my teeth to stand, but I'd definitely rec it for the Library.

4.5/5

 

Spoiler

Jesus Christ, Warlocke.

Brevity, motherfucker - are you capable of it?

Inb4singlewordaffrimative/negativeresponse

 

Warlocke, man, you're fighting a losing battle.

 

No. /lol

That implies I'm trying to win, or even participate in one.

You'll note I never disagreed with the way anyone felt. (And I'm not trying to get anyone to "like" a story they don't like. There's really nothing in it for me, in any way, shape, or form.)

Edit: Oh, and sorry, Portus.

 

Spoiler

How incredibly sad am I that I was actually a little disappointed that Blaise's post had a purpose other than *just* fucking with me?

Spoiler

And I'm putting my response in /spoiler tags so I don't have to see it anymore...

 

okay, I enjoyed this story up to the very end because I had miscalled what the ending would be, and here is what I thought it would have been:

Spoiler

I expected that after all the celebratory we love each other and always were meant to-be's, they would look at the mirror and see the children that NO LONGER FUCKING EXIST because they went back and wiped them from existence. That would have been a very nice tragic ending to this love fest. The entirety of the fic otherwise was great besides the casual dismissal of multiple lives that they had brought into the world together...I really thought the end would be Harry facing the Mirror of Erised again and seeing the children that were supposed to exist. Now that would have been a deserved ending.]

 

^ That would indeed have been ballsy, and completely unexpected on my part. Sort of an anti-romance angle, although I think there's a better word or phrase that is currently eluding me.

 

I think its called a 'punching the shippers in the dick' ending.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of 'Things horribly gone right.'

What they changed should not have been written off as inconsequential. It would have taken the story from good to epic.

 

This fic gets a 4.5/5, I'd say.

The writing and the romance at the beginning is indeed superb. I enjoy the characterizations of most characters, most of the time, though I wasn't fond of Suicide!Ginny.

The idea itself is very well executed, though there were some places that could have been better. The grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation were all nigh-flawless. (Not quite, though.)

My one problem is that sometimes the shifts in focus can be a bit disorienting, and the story threads as well as individual character actions can be confusing at times, what with the time traveling.

But then, with two, sometimes three, of both the main characters I can see how it might be a bit difficult to do, thus the loss of only half a point.

If the author decides to write more H/Hr, I will most certainly be reading.

Definately worthy of the Library.

 

Most of the important points were already covered by others, so I'll just say that I thoroughly enjoyed the story. 4.5/5.