Here's to breaking a multi-year lurking: I totally agree with this interpretation of the scene.

 

...

...

...

Are you fucking kidding me? I don't know how you guessed hyena. In fact, I went out of my way to not even hint at it once....

Congratulations Silverlasso, you just earned that spot in the beta group that you wanted.

For 99.99% of the time I was outlining and writing this fic, Calypso's form was going to be a hyena, I even had her transformation scene written. Its only been during the last few days that I found something I thought would work infinitely better... and no it's not that honey badger, so don't bother guessing that.

Jesus, okay, I'll send you the beta group invite tonight.

Huh, I guess that means I'll have to kick someone out of my beta group to keep the whole 10 person maximum thing... well something to think about over the holidays I guess.

Congrats again Silver. Don't know how you rationalized that one out.

 

Holy shit are you serious? He randomly guessed out of thin air?

 

Man, what a guess. Grats silver.

 

Two errors in the latest ff.net update, Ch 11. Interlude: Responses

draught

I'm pretty sure that you meant to say: alive and out of prison. It makes sense logically.

 

I think Krum being the first to manage the Animagus transformation was a very nice touch. Professor Rosemburg emphasized that self knowledge is an important prerequisite for managing the transformation. I feel that between the four of them, Krum has clearly showed the most superior awareness about his own drives, thoughts and motivation. Therefore, it's not illogical that he would be the first to achieve a full transformation.

 

My reaction to Santi's "WTF" moment seems entirely appropriate, given the correctly-guessed animagus form that caused it:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

All I have been able to think about now, is Calypso devouring some cute innocent little piglet alive.

 

Well, to be fair, Hyenas have somewhat elongated heads compared to humans and it's a carnivorous creature, so it wasn't completely out of the blue. Frankly I'm a bit surprised I hadn't already guessed it, or anyone else, for that matter.

 

The new chapter was posted at fanfiction guess what was in the author's note


Now, this update is dedicated to the girl who was eating lunch outside on my college campus and decided to discuss my story in public with her friends. When my friends and I walked passed you, I nearly gave myself whiplash when I heard you mention me. I was so very tempted to turn around and say something, but I was with friends, and explaining the concept of fanfiction to them would have been awkward. Still, I found the entire situation hilarious.

 

Yes, we know.

A) We can read.

B) He posts on DLP well before FF.Net.

C) He talked about it in a different thread on DLP already.

D) He talked about it in this thread on DLP already.

 

I know that, he just hadn't posted it up on fanfiction yet. I though I would mention it since nobody else had. And comment A was simply unnecessary.

 

CleanRag becomes CrustyRag.

---------- Post automerged at 09:22 ---------- Previous post was at 07:49 ----------

Grammar corrections and observations for ff.net chapters 2 to 6.

Chapter 2: Hogwarts Fall

students

Karkaroff

So, can you please

I'm 90% sure about that comma. Rule #1 on comma placement seems to agree with me. Check with your resident grammar nazi for confirmation.

The Hogwarts Express is a proper noun, so shouldn't the abbreviated "express" also be capitalised?


Chapter 3: Choices

Rhetorical questions deserve question marks.

So,

This comma correction ties back into the previous one in chapter 2. Check with your resident grammar nazi. I'm not going to bring any more of these missing commas after "So" to your attention, because they're scattered throughout the fic and it'd be better to find them via ctrl-f than via my eyeballs. Also, there's the distinct possibility that I'm wrong about it and would be wasting my time.

Are you using Commonwealth English, or American? There are probably other examples of this, but that's the only inconsistency that's jumped out at me.

Judging from what I've read, I'm assuming that you're using Commonwealth English for dialogue, but only in the cases where pronounciation is different (eg. mum instead of mom), and are using American English for everything else. Is that correct? Your frequent use of "mum" in the first chapter had me initially confused until I noticed the pattern.

Update: While reading ch2 to ch6 that was the only accidental Commonwealth spelling that I noticed.

have

daughter, Ginny.

out of the girl

'til, till, and 'till.

I've seen you use both till and 'till in this fic. As a modern day abbreviation of until, 'til is the most accepted. Till is currently considered nonstandard English, even though it's the original word, and 'till is archaic.

I'd recommend that you stick to 'til, or till.

I added a couple of commas and a full stop, just because I could.

"Mum, Dad," Nathan said, arriving with a bright smile. "These are my friends, Ron and Hermione."

The manner in which you've portrayed Ginny throughout this scene is lulz. Delightfully lulz.

There's that 90% comma again.

"actually didn't" doesn't read very well here. Google tells me that "didn't actually" is ten times more commonly used. Try this:

"So, Nathan didn't actually catch the snitch, Dad." Harry smirked at his blushing brother. "He swallowed it!"

Is it Sirius' or Sirius's? You're using both.

Ideally you should use Sirius'. I think that's the grammatical trend you've been following throughout the fic so far. It happens a couple of times in this chapter; you should ctrl-f "s's" to catch them all.

James'

Parkinson

hurt."

The trailing quotation mark is missing.


Chapter 4: Durmstrang Spring part 1

most of the class

"Harry wanted to snap" and "Dumbledore had assured him"

Durmstrang

spell casting


Chapter 5: Durmstrang Spring part 2

unfortunately, they had come to the conclusion that

While it was highly unlikely that a first, second, or third year could properly cast the bone-breaking curse,

Fearing that he could be facing serious jail time in France,

Statute


Chapter 6: Durmstrang Spring Part 3

gained the attention of

"back onto her work" would usually be phrased as "back to her work". I'm not sure that your original phrasing is wrong though.

You use "slight grin" and then "slight smile" in the next sentence. "Small smile" might work better in the latter case.

couldn't be

Rosemburg

stared

was wearing

possess

Up until now, you've always spelt it as half-blood. I went back to the preceding chapters and ctrl-f'd to check.

somehow managed to grow teeth

had happened to the caretaker

Harry isn't responsible for future happenings to the caretaker, only the one past tense happening. So, the sentence should end with "what had happened to the caretaker."

Bad comma. Scritch it.

Comma required.

Krum paused at the door and then added, "I will also get Kira.

"What? No way," Harry said

This isn't an error, just an observation. Dragon preserve makes me think of jellied dragon in jars. Perhaps for kids school lunches. I don't know if that translates. Does a jar of strawberry jam/jelly = strawberry preserve in the USA?

This is just an informal letter from Nathan to Harry, so I don't know if Nathan's goof was intentional on your part or not. You can always pretend it was.

in the race for the House Cup.

Within chapters 1 through 5, you always used ellipses with no spaces after them. Eg. "You...are going to teach?" I'm not sure if it's an incorrect usage or merely nonstandard, but I didn't criticise it because at least you were being consistent.

In chapter 6 however, you've been writing them both ways: with and without the trailing space.

eg.1 "You... are going to teach?"
eg.2 "You...are going to teach?"

I prefer the way it's used in the first example because that's what I'm familiar with, but whichever style you use, try stick to it. There are a bunch of different rules on ellipses depending on which grammar/style book you choose to follow, and I'm not going to dictate any of them as being more correct than the others.

That's all for now. I might do more later, but if anyone else wants to pick up a chapter and comb through it, please, please do.

 

To be honest, when I read the above paragraph (and the word "stretched" in particular), I immediately though of one of the hyenas from Lion King with a "stretched" sort of evil grin. >_> It also seemed to fit in with Kira's "ugly little cuntish" line, the description about hair, and as a plausible option for Calypso. But now I'm curious to see what you came up with that's infinitely better.

Thanks for the invite, by the way.

This too. There was a line by Calypso regarding her skull which seemed to make sense in the context of a hyena hypothesis.

 

Santi did say that although he'd planned for her to be a hyena, in the last couple of days he'd found something better. So anyone guessing hyena is actually wrong, so don't feel too surprised that nobody got it. Silverlasso had a phenomenally well-timed bad guess.

But all the same I really wish I had your guessing skills silverlasso.

 

I wonder if she's a mongoose, and if Calypso isn't the honey badger does that mean there's hope that Harry is?

 

Did Santi even say that Harry has an animagus form? After all, animagus are said to be pretty rare, so Santi might shit on us and decide that Harry doesn't have the gift.

That would hurt a lot but it is, after all, Santi's story, and even if he talked about animagus transformation, I don't remember seeing him write about Harry having a form.