Title: Reprieve
Author: Zennith
Rating: T
Genre: General
DLP Category: General
Pairing: None
Words: 6,424
Published: February 8, 2011
Status: One Shot
Summary: At the brink of living and dying, in the moment before choosing either to return or to pass on forever, Harry Potter is given a moment away from it all by a mysterious red headed woman. One single moment, to simply lie back and just... breathe. - Took 4th in January Competition.
Link: FFNet

I hope that Zennith doesn't mind me posting this. Aside from Sesc's masterpiece this is my favourite of all the submissions. There's a definite poignancy to Zennith's beautifully understated writing coupled with the depth of the entire concept behind it.

Personally I think it's an easy 5/5.


Checked by Minion, August 19, 2013

 

Great writing, really like it.

Edit: Huh, I have the most reading material I've had in weeks now.

 

There's a formal announcement in the story showcase.

 

Thought it was fantastic. The emotional writing and the picture Zennith draws are excellent. Definitely a great story.

Two things did bug me however. First the placement of the scene in the timeline seemed off. With the message that is imparted here, it's seems that it's meant to be the moment where Harry makes the decision to return to life or pass on. However, with the Kings Cross conversation having already occurred and about to return to the clearing, it feels like he's repeating a decision he already made.

From Kings Cross in DH

Zennith's scene is emotional, poignant and powerful but it feels slightly out place. If it were just a chance to rest, a lull, it would be perfect. But there's a message imparted about the choice between moving on or stopping and Zen's summary says, "in the moment just before choosing."

My only other niggle is the message about how we have to make a choice seemed to be hammered home a little hard. Between the parable and Lily letter spelling it out, it seemed overdone. One or the other would have worked better I think.

These are small things though, and this is still an excellent story. Great work work Zen. 4/5

 

Okay, let me say, that was a fine piece of writing. I took notes, the first time in a long while. Before I get to the tl;dr I would like to disagree with Tenages. And to say that the summary may need to be tweaked a little.

This does not seem to be a moment where Harry has to move on, by making a decision. I did not take that away from this piece at all. It was just Lily giving Harry a moment of peace. A moment of respite. He had already made his choice.

Now to the critiques.

Personally, getting rained on doesn't seem very peaceful to me, not where I would fall asleep, anyway, but that could be a character trait for Harry.

A few sentences were too long, bordering awkward.

This one is not too long, but sounded awkward. "Long locks dusted red framed a young but knowing face; the girl's green eyes kind as she looked at me – simply, frankly."

Better example. "The walls were a light shade of blue, very calming – a few windows on the wall directly ahead, I spied through them the very body of water from which I'd emerged now harmless – probably a kilometer away at least. It could not touch me here. The room was sparsely decorated, but I didn't mind. It was functional, certainly."

But there was a great parallel in that excerpt with long sentence, short, long sentence, short. Used well.

Paragraphs were a bit jumpy it seemed, too short and too many. If this was an intentional use the 1st person POV, it almost worked, but with the sentences being long it took away from the effect.

How they talked seemed strange at times. "worse for the wear." "I can't weight that little." It did not happen very often, so doesn't take away from the scoring. You do need to work on Lily telling the story, it seemed liked it meandered for a bit too much. There was some odd sentences in it disrupting it. Maybe you had her sounding a bit too dramatic, pruning some of that would help and would not take away from the tone.

Teh good.

Absolutely loved the descriptions! Very detailed, mingled with how they made him feel. This was prevalent throughout the entire fic. Awesome work. Liked the 'eggshell blue."

Liked how he had forgotten his memory, and how he mentioned he could not remember. Yet it did not bother him. And slowly his memories came back. The way you did it was nice prose.

"I do know, however, that when I awoke I was no longer on the beach. Instead I found myself in crisp linen sheets in a small but cozy bed that seemed designed to fit me personally."

The above is a great example of said descriptions.

There was one point where I grew a bit bored with what was going-on, him wanting to know what was going and her not telling him just did not grip me that much.

The last moment, of her wanting to keep him protected for as long as possible was great. Just like a mother. There is also something I would like to congratulate you on, one great bit of storytelling. The fact that in less capable hands there were a HUNDRED moments where there could have been accident hints of Harry/Lily. There were none. He did stare at her a lot, but there was not even a hint of attraction. Then you introduced the qualities of a mother with great finesse. Bravo.

Also as I said above, this was not him choosing, but just being given a moment of respite by a loving mother before returning to war. Also there was a good moment from Canon where he had only pity for Voldemort. That was a nice little touch.

So in all, I was impressed.

tl;dr. 4/5. The only thing keeping it from a 5/5 were the hitches in the prose, sentences and speech and such, which to me have a strong effect on the rating. And honestly, with more experience those will become ironed out. So keep up the great work.

@nmb. What's a 'soht?'

 

A typo, clearly.

 

I know. Was just drawing it to your attention.

 

@ NMB - Can't say I mind. I'm glad you enjoy it. While there are definitely things that could be tweaked if I spent more time on it, I threw it up on FF.net because I'm content to just leave it as it is, warts and all.

@Tenages - I agree with you to a point. Also, the summary may not be perfect.

@789 - I can't believe I'm about to say this... I pretty much agree with you fully. The beginning with the rain, and the moments of the storm coming - all of that's supposed to indicate the struggle of magic trying to eradicate this place that shouldn't exist, Lily fights against nature itself to make this place for Harry. Regarding sentence structure, I agree at times it gets a little cumbersome. Like I said, there are things that could be changed and tweaked - but I'm not likely to do it. As I said, I'm content.

 

Completely understandable about tweaking it. It was a one-soht typed out and posted for the competition. It brought new blood for fellow DLP'ers to read and enjoy, which it did, the negatives aside.

Just keep in mind the sentence structure in future works, and please please please, keep using that style of description. Concise and thrown in with how the character reacts to it, the rain in this case. That adds wonderfully to the setting.

Rereading that first part, I can see now what you were going for with the ran and Lily's struggle with it. If you wish to try for something like that again, going subtle, you could maybe allude to it. Would have to be careful, because something like that could become too blatant. In this case add a line, "In the girl's presence, the rain and weather had abated." Not quite right, but gets the point across, I guess.

Still solid, and you have a ton of a potential, seriously.

Okay, I think I'll stop inflating your ego now. LOL. Can't help it, I really liked the piece.

 

Ok.. first half didn't strike me very much, really, and some of the dialogue felt awkward. After that though, it got a lot better. Not really sure why, maybe I just got into reading it. 4.5/5 rounded up =)

 

Dude, I think you hit this one out of the park.

5/5

 

Amazing. Should have been canon. 5/5.

 

No point in double posting here and in the contest thread, so I'll just post here.

As this is a oneshot that you are satisfied with, I won't bother discussing the minor issues or quibbles, just mention my general thought.

The most evocative parts for me were the descriptions of the environment and what was happening. The “dream” was something that got more intense as the story went on – I can say I didn’t try to figure out what was going on at any conscious level, so that ending really blew me away. It made a logical sense that worked well for the story as a whole. Hard to rate this one, because it improved so much as it went on... I'm not comfortable giving it a perfect score, but for me it certainly rates a
4/5 or so... If the quality was consistent, I think it'd be more like a 4.5.

But still, a very well done one-shot story.

 

I'm gonna jump off the bandwagon here.

2.5/5 rounded up to 3/5

Everything was good. Nice buildup and all, kept me wondering what was going on. Then the ending came and ruined it all. Yea that's was the problem with this fic in my opinion. Just seems like a very mundane ending to an awesome story.

Sure it fit, but oh it could have been so much better.

 

How do you think he could have made the concept better? Fleshed out more of the island, done a bit more build-up, had a different ending?

I'll not demean your opinion of the fic, just curious how you think it could have been done better.

EDIT: I can understand that, I guess.

 

No idea.

The ending just felt like a let down to the rest of the fic.

 

K - I'm not gonna go back and change this fic in any case, but for the future, do you say that because you found out what was going on? Because of the jump back to canon?

 

For the record, I thought the ending was perfect <_<

 

For me the story didn't have the 'awesome twist' moment, because there was enough foreshadowing to have a basic idea of what was happening. But by that I don't mean that it was badly written, in fact, I really enjoyed the scenery, the mood, and how the pace changed as he got closer and closer to remembering. There was something evocative not only in the 'reprieve' world but also the characters.

5/5 for pure satisfaction.

 

Your mom is a let-down to the rest of the fic.

(I keed.)

While I disagree with you, I think I can sorta see where you're coming from. I think you can't really appreciate the fic for what it is because you want moar. It's not a condemnation - I'd love to see parts about the island flushed out a bit, given how vividly Zennith writes - but the only reasonable extension from where he stopped would be onward through the final battle. At that point, all of the island imagery would seem distant and pointless.

But that's just, like, my opinion, man.