Title: Incorruptible: The Dementor's Stigma
Author: Matt Silver 3k (MattSilver on DLP)
Rating: M
Genre: Suspense
Chapters: 16
Words: 264,164
Updated: March 8, 2012
Published: November 10, 2011
Status: Complete
Library Category: General
Pairings: Harry/Astoria
Summary: A year has passed since the dead started returning to life, and the fate of the world depends on the best and the worst of humanity, the wizards and the Muggles, with politics and the undead in between. A Harry Potter Zombie Apocalypse Fanfiction.
Link: FFN


Zombies not your thing? Don't worry, there's plenty of politics to go around as well.

This fic is a masterpiece in the making, as far as I'm concerned. It's got great writing, superb dialogue, top-notch characterization, enjoyable OCs, Astoria, politics, zombies, zombies, and more zombies. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, there's some Dementors in there to throw a curve ball at you.

I've been waiting to recommend this fic in here ever since Matt and I marathoned about 20 zombie movies over the course of two weeks back in July/August whilst commentating over IRC. This was all done in the name of inspiration, and having read what Matt's come up with using the zombie apocalypse theme, I'm blown away.

Without revealing anything you won't find out in the first chapter, Harry's a 22 year old ex-Healer, whose history diverges from canon just after the Battle of Hogwarts. A zombie apocalypse wiped out most of humanity in the past year, and Harry has to weather politics and the pureblood agenda as a member of the Wizengamot while fighting to provide aid to the last two settlements of muggle survivors. Excellently written political shenanigans, combined with very suspenseful action and a cast of great characters both canonical and original mix together to make a very readable, very entertaining fic.

The wanton zombie violence only adds to the entire atmosphere.

The only downside to the fic is the somewhat wordy nature of the politics-related scenes, and if you're expecting action every step of the way you'll find yourself bored at the pretty darn long chapters. However, if reading about the machinations and manipulations of the characters appeals to you, there's nothing better. And hey, there's still plenty of gory zombie deaths to break the pace.

The most impressive part, though? MattSilver wrote the first draft (all 12 chapters and 232,000 words of it) in a period from late-August to late-October, before revising and posting the first chapter in early November.

The total word count is reportedly approximately 250k, spanning 16 chapters of which the 3rd has been released as of half an hour ago. With an update coming every two weeks, I really can't find any reason that this fic shouldn't belong in the Library.

A resounding 5/5 from me.

(My cameo in chapter 2 had nothing to do with the score I gave, I swear! :awesome)


Checked by Minion, August 20, 2013

 

The single worst piece of fiction I've ever read on DLP. Matt. How could you write something like that. You piece of trash. How dare you.

4/5 atm. Although I love it to bits the politics side of it is weak and quite frankly a bit boring right now.

 

This is a very fun and awesome story. I loved this and I even liked the politics section of the story.

And of course Draco in the second chapter is just :awesome

5/5

 

Fun, and I've been after a decent zombie wizarding world fic for a while.

Currently 5/5

 

Why is it on a two week schedule if it's all written?

 

Because Matt is a cocktease.

 

Huh, that's stupid as fuck.

 

I liked it well enough. I tried my hand at a zombie fix once, but I couldn't get the atmosphere quite right, and I do like where this fic is going. A lot. But I don't think it's masterpiece 5 star materiel yet.

To be honest, the every 2 week release date is not that great of an idea. The story is not that remarkable so far to whereas I'm going to be anxiously awaiting every 2 weeks for the next chapter. No, I'll probably completely forget about this story until the very last chapter is posted. I mean, fuck, the whole thing is finished and you want us to wait until next June before we can finally read the end of it? I don't have the patience or interest for that. Perhaps I'm greedy, and don't like waiting, but it's like one big cocktease.

 

Inverarity does twice-a-week releases for his completed stories - admittedly, his chapters are shorter (probably about twice as short) but it's still two times faster than this. And he does an editing pass for each chapter he posts, too. But whatever. It's really Matt's decision to post however he wants. I certainly wouldn't have the patience to post my own story like that, but I'm not enormously concerned with turning my work into a masterpiece either.

 

It's on a two week release schedule because c'mon. How often do you guys get a fully finished fic from a DLPer with a decent update rate? Yeah. Matt's a cocktease. Get over it and enjoy it when he does bring out updates.

Btw, the cunt is never stopped editing and reviewing the thing. Jesus he went through two drafts before declaring it finished iirc. He still edited and went through chapter three for the whole day before he felt ready publishing it though.

His release schedule isn't him saying, "OMFG YOO GUYS ARE GONNA HAVE TO WAIT FOR MY DELICIOUS PLUNGESACK." It's drawing a good thing out.

 

Basically, I've only read three chapters of this and I already want this story street-legal and in liquid form so I can inject it directly into my testicles. 5/5.

 

I like this. I like it a lot, actually. The atmosphere, the tension, the politics, it's all very well-done. And your Draco is the best I've ever read. Plus, zombies.

It's the most promising start to a story I've seen in a while.

5/5

 

Yes yes yes yes yes yes. Yes. YES.

Love everything about this story. Not least the fact that it's completed.

This is zombie fiction, but has passages that are of the caliber of the best literature:

That's a really lovely passage.

The Dementors are a great touch - the mist signalling their presence is quite ominous.

The descriptions are good, and Matt Silver has a great understanding of how to present a story.

The plot of the Muggle settlements is brilliant too, and important. It gets at this underlying theme of proving one's humanity that's slowly emerging.

This is literally the top dog of apocalypse stories in Harry Potter. Maybe there aren't that many to begin with, but even if there were, and a lot of good authors wrote excellent stories in this genre, this one would still be king.

5/5, no hesitation.

 

This is quite awesome.

The only flaw there is - if it's trully completed, why not update at least once or twice a week...
The effect would be the same and the extra editing and polishing could still be done.
In any case, now there is a long wait ahead.



Even zombies are done believingly, and that must have really been hard.

Again - amazing and epic.
5/5

Nauro.

 

I want this to be a movie.

And I can't even begin to comprehend the bitching about update rate. We know he's got the whole damn thing written. When was the last time any of us have the luxury of that knowledge when starting a story in fanfiction? Do you even remember back when Perspicacity was writing Dagger and Rose? There has not been a single writer since then, not one. That's how rare and special it is to have a completed story like this one.

If he uploaded everything at once, reviews would just be paltry. I wouldn't even tell the readers that it was complete just so that they wouldn't take it for granted, but Matt's a nice enough guy he's not even doing that.

Matt, I hope you get enough reviews for you to swim a lap in as you deserve, and I for one will be reviewing every single last chapter to do my small part.

 

I'd watch the shit out of that.

This is quickly, very quickly, climbing up the list on my favorite ff's.

I'm somewhere in the middle of chapter 2 right now, and I'm just totally and utterly hooked. The zombies, the dementors, the zombies, the feeling of apocalypse, the characters, the zombies, the character interaction, the political intrigue... did I mention the zombies? It's one of those stories, if all 250k were released at this moment, I just know I will be reading it non-stop, without doing anything else before I finished it, then reread it, then reread it one more time just to be sure I got everything. Just taking a break to write this is hard.

So I, for one, am quite glad that it's being released on that bi-weekly schedule. I'm already looking foward to all the chapter rereadings, y'know, just to make I didn't forget anything.

But in all seriousness, this is a fantastic story. The whole atmosphere is great. If you're reading this, and haven't read the story, then you're making a huge mistake. Read it. NAO!

Oh yea, vote. awesome/5.

 

It's good. That being said I don't think it's nearly as good as some of these reviews make it out to be. The writing is brilliant, and the the zombie parts are great. But the politics are weak. Very weak. I have lots of trouble believing, that in a society thats supposed to be less than 1000 people, the politics are still this important. Really if Harry's faction decided to say fuck it and help the Muggles on their own, what exactly is going to happen? The purebloods are going to attack them and start a civil war when the entire wizarding population is less than 1000 people? I doubt it. I really, really do.

The politics would fit much better if the wizarding world wasn't this tiny already. But when the population is <1k people and the zombies and dementors run rampant, I really have trouble believing that the politics are this important and that Harry et al are still tip toeing around the purebloods. I understand the themes Andro mentioned, but I don't think it makes up for what to be is huge overemphasis of the politics. Quite frankly, in an apocalyptic world where people have magic, like this one, no one will be paying the amount of attention and giving the amount of respect to the political process and bureaucracy that Matt is forcing his characters to pay and give.

And unfortunately, so far the politics are the biggest part of and the main driving force of the story and seem like they will be going forward as well. And like I said, they're weak (no thats not strong enough; I think the political side of the story is flat out terrible) and I can't stand them.

3/5

 

I see the angle where you're coming from Tenages, though I disagree. If I understand properly, it's an issue of suspension of disbelief and contrivance that politics is still so important.

There's no disconnect because the wizarding society because it survived the disease mostly unscathed. It lost the physical Ministry and there were losses, but there's still a thousand wizards left.

Granted, the scale of the wizarding world's losses is unclear, I really knew for certain when I checked the longer summary on Matt's profile. This might be an important edit to make.

So the wizarding world isn't on the brink yet, and the Ministry survives with its most important politicians. They can have fun killing zombies and hold onto their traditions and hide in their safe haven, why wouldn't politics be important? Another key aspect of this setting is that the Minister wants to create enough resemblances to a normal world, and they have enough security to afford it. The ones who bear the brunt of the risk are the wizards making the supply runs.

These wizards are people who fully expect to continue living as they please, and as such they aren't desperate to the point of letting go of politics. In their minds, they've internalized the certainty of the world returning to normalcy, and one where they have to deal with public opinion of a still-intact populace. They don't want to live without power and status that their political positions give them.

The rest of the wizards can't ignore or topple the purebloods because they are still the ruling body who controls the Aurors and the forces keeping them safe.

So the politics may be slow and the device of securing votes is not the most original political subplot to use, but it's not a result of Matt forcing or contriving anything.

For the purebloods, this is a golden opportunity to permanently wipe out Muggles from their country. They seem to have taken action outright with Liliford, and they would outright blast Granford into oblivion as well, but as with the latest chapter, we can see that they're using Granford to try and neutralize Harry. So these politics are well-justified in-universe.

 

I agree, the politics becomes substantially more tolerable if the wizarding world has survived mostly unscathed. However, the impression I received was that it hasn't. It appears to me as if it has suffered substantial damage. Diagon Alley is gone. The Ministry has been forced into Hogwarts. The common wizard appears to be in peril, (for instance the Burrow no longer exists, presumably it was lost to the horde/plague) and Bill has gathered a community of displaced wizards to live together. Harry makes a point of noting that the population of the wizarding is "only 1000". The context implies that it is much decreased from where it was. (If 1000 is in fact fairly normal, then I'd argue that Matt choose to use a ridiculously low figure for the normal wizarding population.) The wizarding world is surviving off of food foraged from Muggle supermarkets. All of these factors suggest that the wizarding world has suffered huge and damaging losses. It hardly appears unscathed to me.

All of your other points are well made, but I think they only apply if the world is still fairly normal, or at the very least, not in near apocalyptic circumstances. To me it appears that Matt has created a world that is intensely damaged and ravaged (hence my earlier use of the term apocalyptic) , but still have politics, bureaucracy, etc. carry on as normal. And to my mind, you can't have both.

And while I understand your point about the pureblood controlling the Aurors, I'm afraid I have to disagree. From what I've seen while the purebloods are the political power and have some symphathizers, Harry's faction (Kingsley, Susan, even Robards to an extent) are the ones actually in control of the Aurors. That they would side with the purebloods to the extent of attacking or arresting their fellow wizards for assisting Muggles seems distinctly unlikely to me.

EDIT: People keep referencing the extended summary in Matt's profile. I don't find it relevant. If the wizarding world is all hunky dory and basically normal, that needs to be made clear in the story, not in an extended summary thats not even on the same page. If anything, that would be another mark against the story, that it relies on outside information rather than the story itself to make clear important, scene setting and world building details.