Surviving Voldemort and dueling Bellatrix to a draw are testament to his survival skills, not his dueling skills. He's considered competent by the elder Black because he managed to do what he did without any tutelage or knowledge of advanced spells.

EDIT: But the characters are very dumb. Harry knows Voldemort is going for his wand - knew it was probably a trap, but does he draw his wand beforehand? Strike pre-emptively? No! He gulps in fear! And don't get me started on Bellatrix, the fucking idiot. I want to like this story, but, as many have pointed out, the characters are too inconsistent.

 

Well, Bellatrix's stupidity is understandable: she is an inexperience teenage girl who doesn't really know the seriousness of the situation and ,due to her upbringing, she considers herself to be more talented than what she actually is; this kind of arrogance is not uncommon for naive people.

Harry, on the other hand, know the situation but he is, well, Harry... And CanonHarry never impressed me by his intelligence and his sense of self-preservation.

 

Not really. What I called filler was the scene where Harry and Bella host a dinner party. When the meeting with prospective death eaters is more of a lecture than a tense scene. I do enjoy the Malfoy/Black political stuff, its one of the best things about the story...when its there. It provides a decent excuse for most of the plot, but those characters and some excellent politics just aren't there enough.

If it was the central element of the plot, then I would be calling for that instead. What I see as being the center of the plot, the changing of the past, also does not happen enough. You have to agree that the chapters lately have seemed to be more about stalling than advancing the plot, bar the most recent, which still didn't resolve much at all.

 

So far so good, but this confused me:

Spoiler

"We never got to finish our duel back in DADA last semester," James growled as he stepped forward, drawing his wand from his belt. "How about we finish it now? Or are you scared, Black?"

We later learn in the story that they're twp(?) years apart, so what is he talking about?gl

 

Yeah, that was a bit blunt. Still, progression along one major plot point. Nice to know Orion isn't as oblivious as he seemed to be.

 

This fic is going further and further downhill for me.

Voldemort and his Death Eaters are now just wtf-are-you-guys-doing and Harry is beyond oblivious and even more idiotic than canon. It doesn't help that he is suppose to be bad ass from what happened in his time and now is acting like a chicken with his head chopped off.

Bellatrix is nearing the point of being a Mary-Sue and the Blacks being muggle lovers. Dear lord, where is the Black's insanity?

3/5 for me and going downhill rapidly. This at one time was a 4.5/5.

 

Dear Lord, flat characters, why does everybody love them?

 

They weren't all insane; the only one we have fair proof of is Sirius' mother, and that's likely near the end of her life. Also, remember, we get things from an inevitably biased perspective. The winners write the history books... or the family history.

Consider, if you will: the Blacks are supposedly rich and politically powerful prior to them all dying off. That doesn't really mesh with true insanity (prejudice, sure, but not severe mental instability).

 

I guess you guys are right to a certain extent.

All the Blacks in James and Lily's time, save Sirius and Andromeda, were Death Eaters or married Death Eaters. Obviously they did not care about killing Mudbloods and regardless with how cunning Voldemort is (which he is not in this fic) the prejudice had to stem from how they were raised.

This is the same family that disowned Andromeda from marrying a Muggleborn, disowned Sirius for leaving the house (to stay with another Pureblood) and had the least popular Hogwarts headmaster ever.

When I read about them in this fic, nothing screams blood purist to me, they seem dull, even Bellatrix whom should at least be unpredictable.

Maybe I just love Of Blacks and Malfoys too much and this Black family just feels so dull and boring compared to the Blacks in that amazing fic.

 

To be honest, you have a point. Orion and Bellatrix are the only Blacks who play a significant role in the story, and neither are very deeply characterized. I don't really mind revisionism in terms of their views on blood purity, as that's what fanfiction is for - making shit up XD

 

Still a 5/5 for me. It's one of the rare Harry/Bellatrix stories that's excellently written and has an engaging plot.

 

Well I just followed the link for the chapter update, and read the part with Harry escaping from Voldemort, and it was rather disappointing.

Harry thinking what to do next, should have been the point after he brakes the Imperius curse, and not while he is under it.
The casual wave with wand and throw fiendfyre then turning around to blow a hole in the wall, could have been an awesome scene, but what I read was blunt and lacked imagination...

Overall, very disappointing beginning of the chapter. Hopefully the rest is somewhat better.

 

I thought it was a solid update. The writer isn't very good at action sequences, they seemed either bland or totally expected.

I agree that the moving Bella to Lily's dorm seemed especially forced.

Harry being clueless, well, it's not like in canon he was ever bright, and what he's been through between canon and this story doesn't lead itself to make me believe he ever became more effective in planning so I don't mind. Maybe a bit disappointing, but not troublesome from a characterization perspective.

I like the characterization and depiction of the wizarding world. Bella, while not quite a mary-sue is interesting and he's caracterized her in a way that is almost beleivable to grow into the lunatic from the future. A princess that was bored and power hungry without much to care for. In the scene where she runs I was postulating that if we want to believe this is the real history of canon, if Harry hadn't gone back would Bella have joined? Would she have taken the truth serum and failed, being imperiosed by Lestrange until she complied, or barely passed and gotten slowly dragged in further because she had no anchor, even tenius to sanity?

Sirius is a brat, and from my reading his break-up with the family is as much his fault as thiers, which doesn't break canon. Orion can be proud of his blood status without being a muggle hater, it's common in aristocricy to be proud of the bloodlines.

Anyway. A decent update.

 

Updated. Was okay but felt a little too bland. A lot of 'he said, she said.'

Also, it seems like Harry is taking to his role as Orion's puppet a little too well. I'm noticing a little less independent thought from him every chapter. Could just be me though.

 

You're right, and it seems like he's slipping back into the role of taking orders, as it were. I'm not sure if it's deliberate but it actually makes sense for that to happen - in the original timeline, Harry didn't function independently like he did in DH. He still had Dumbledore's orders to follow.

 

I realized I've never actually put a 4.5/5 rating on this.

I agree with the above, and will further point out that the feel I get from harry is that he is plottting something, but we the reader's aren't up on it. He doesn't have the lost and confused feel of typical harry not having info and being led around by the nose. He feels confident and meticulous, though a bit passive, like he is waiting for something.

 

That was a fast update...

The plot moves forward - a little. This seemed very much a filler chapter.. I can't imagine that anything but the very end will matter, really.

 

Is nobody here irritated that the writer never specified this as an alternative reality past to Harry's? He writes as if Harry thinks it is his universe's past which makes no real sense to me because it doesn't match cannon past by a large margin. Really frustrating.