Title: The Burn of the Phoenix
Author: laughandlove
Rating: K+
Genre: Tragedy/Family
Status: Complete
Library Category: General, Oneshot
Pairings: No pairings
Summary: ...Signifies a new beginning. Harry dies in the Final Battle. Dudley attends his cousin's funeral, quickly discovering that there was much more to Harry's life than he ever dreamed. Can regret give way to a fresh start? Canon, aside from Harry's death.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7721379/1/The_Burn_of_the_Phoenix

This is actually my own story, a oneshot that hit me in a stroke of inspiration. I tend to gravitate towards the depressing, and am usually sated by simply reading the work of others. Harry Potter fics on FF.net, however, seem depressingly lacking in semi-canon deathfics (if there exists such a thing). In addition, whenever Harry does die, there's usually the lingering issue of Voldemort still being around; something which grates on me a bit, as I've always felt that Harry needed to be the one to end it.

There's a time and a place for AU, but I had the goal of exploring possible emotional reactions to Harry's death. Where to go from there? Dudley. This is the simple concept my mind landed upon. Rowling gave us some tantalizing hints as to his possible change in personality, but we never got the satisfaction of seeing anything definitively play out. Here's where that happens. I wrote with as much descriptive language as possible without bogging it down in prose - it went slightly against my tendency to over-explain, but I feel that actions speak louder than words within this story. Please forgive me of my trite cliche. The length is long without being overbearing, the plot spanning Harry's murder, his triumph, the reaction of the Dursleys, and the funeral. Though this could, perhaps, be considered fluff, I like to think of it as a celebration of the entire series.

I hope you all enjoy. I created an account on this forum simply in the off chance that this could be added to the DLP 5-Starred and Featured Authors community at FF.net. Not that I'm sure I won't enjoy my stay here nonetheless. My goal is to broaden the possible audience for this story as much as possible - I was shocked by my 75 reviews, and think that even more readers could squeeze a few tears out for this little fic of mine.

I think some have said it before me, but you all are intimidating as... well. I'll keep my language clean. By the way, ignore some of the earlier stories on my account. I was a dumb teenager.

---------- Post automerged at 10:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 PM ----------

I seem to have a typo in the thread title, unfortunately. I *do* know how to spell "phoenix", so please do not let that sway your opinion of my intellect.

 

Hello to you too, laughandlove. Like Syaoran said, not my type of fic, but I'll get around to actually reading and reviewing at some point in the future.

Just noting that this comes off unbelievably arrogant. I don't plan on holding it against you, but it does.

 

Haha it wasn't meant to sound arrogant, I just didn't know if there was an official thing I had to say to formally submit this for consideration, or if it was automatic. Just trying to express interest. That was the whole "on the off chance" thing. But yeah... looking back, I can see the whole arrogance aspect to it.

 

Voldemort is too talkative.

Your characterization of Dudley is terrible. You forced his characterization to fit into this scene: a character's expecting someone to come back safe from war. He sees someone else, but optimistically thinks it's still the person he's expecting.

All the while, the audience knows the person's actually dead and anticipates the breakdown and tears.

This should be sounding familiar to you, the way I described it.

And Dudley spends the entire one-shot finding out all the horrible things that happened, cue his guilt and horror. "Oh no, I never knew Harry was that amazing a person!" "Oh no, I can't believe he underwent all those tortures, while we treated him so nastily."

I'm not surprised you had a lot of readers driven to emotional tears. You're taking the most common, hideously trite melodrama plot, applying it to the HP storyline, and milking the scenario for everything its worth. I don't see much merit in that.

2/5. This would be a few steps down from everything else in the 5-Star Community. I also don't like the immodesty:

Immodesty is something you earn. I will be the first person to feed someone's ego if that writer is that good. Your writing isn't.

A celebration of the entire series.

 

To CheddarTrek: Thanks for the well-rounded review, I really appreciate it. I do recognize the shortcomings you mention, and they all have occurred to me at one point or another. I wrote the fic a little too quickly, so there are definitely some things I'd change. And yes, poor Hermione. It may have been a bad decision, but I wanted some of Harry's life to get out to the wizarding world somehow, and was unsure how to do it. As for Dudley's outburst... I think I agree with you. My thought process was that he would feel angrier at his parents than before, realizing that his chances were gone for redeeming things with Harry, but that's probably a little too OOC. I like the feedback here so far, muuuch more constructive and detailed than at FF.net.

To Andro: Well, you have a right to your opinion. I have tough skin. As for the last bit about immodesty, I never stated that my story was a successful celebration of the series (at least to others), just that it was my original goal. I don't see arrogance in that statement. These books have been a part of my life for 14 years, and - no matter what you have to say about the intelligence of FF.net users - the 136 people who added this to favorites obviously saw some redeeming qualities. That's all I care about. This submission is a shot in the dark. Yes, I could make improvements upon this fic. Yes, I understand if it is not up to the standard of the library. But I'm still happy with the result. I actually want to thank you for providing my first tough review: that's life, and I'd better get used to it.

And I can understand (to a certain extent) everything you said except for this: Voldemort being too talkative? Do you REMEMBER the graveyard scene in GoF? Just trying to stay true to character.

 

Voldemort being talkative was the least important part. I didn't put much weight into it at all in my criticism. So I concede that. Though his sentence structure and word choice doesn't quite fit. Does using the phrase "guinea pig" for example fit his diction, the tone of his dialogue from canon?

Sorry, I misinterpreted what you meant by celebration of canon. I was thinking more on the meaning you see sometimes on blurbs where it's like "A literary celebration of five decades of science fiction" or something. I understand what you mean now. I think that's really great.

I'm not arguing with anything you say about your fans. Statistics are statistics, after all. But also, 75 reviews for a 13,000 word long story isn't unusual. And you use certain tropes which tend to garner more of a response. Finding ways around those tropes (or at least, the worst and cheapest of them, like what you're doing with the audience when Dudley's expecting Harry to come home) is usually more rewarding.

 

Welcome. I won't have a chance to read and review this before work, but I intend to when I return.

Though I have to say, I don't know why Andro and Fiat decided to bite your head off— I didn't think you came off as arrogant or immodest. A little too verbose about your own writing perhaps, but I think it's nice that people are interested in the C2.

The one thing I will suggest is to stop replying to every review here— find the salient points and respond to those instead. Lots of people here are going to have strong opinions and challenging them is just going to lead to a pointless argument.

I'll read and review in about 6 hours or so.

 

It might be my fault. I misread the

sentence -- I missed "in the off chance" somehow -- and commented on IRC about the new user being so full of herself.

That said, this isn't my thing, and I'm not going to even try to read it unless it already has some high votes, which it doesn't for now.

 

Well, the story is alright.
I'd give it 3.5/5 - somewhere between library and almost there. Not a five star one though.

It's been correctly said that the main selling point of the story is the textbook use of drama tropes. Of course, not all tropes are bad, but it feels.

Voldemort doesn't sound like Voldemort.
Also, he claims that Harry has lived through two killing curses already, and uses some kind of a custom killing magic. Alright, makes sense.
The spell connects and Harry apparently will die soon. Makes sense.

Then - Harry lounches expelliarmus at teh same time as Voldemort launches the Killing curse. Wait, what? WHY?
Haven't he just established that Harry is one leg in a grave?
So what if he stood up? Just get on defence for a few seconds and see if the hero falls over dead. I mean if you're not sure if the wand will kill it's true owner, maybe it would be enough to deflect a few spells?
Establishing that Voldemort thought before casting, and then have him cast before thinking is not very thought out, is it?


Dudley forgives too fast.
However it's a point to begin the story, so it's kind of ok.

What else, looks written alright, reads quite easily and is slightly moving, if only for the drama tropes.

So, as I said before, 3.5/5 from me. Probably rounded down, but might change my mind yet.

p.s.Goddamnit, lost one reply, hope this sticks.

 

First, your use of all-caps words turned me off to this story more than any other aspect. There are a myriad of pleasurable ways to dictate someone yelling, and capitals are unfortunately not one of them.

I wasn't drawn into the story. Dudley's change of character was sudden although it had been a process lasting over a year. Petunia's seeming fear of Vernon is overdone, to the point that I found it distracting for a while.

Voldemort seemed out of character due to his word choices and patterns. The battle as a whole lacked any form of oomph and I found myself wishing for it to end so that I could reach the meat of the story. The only thing I felt when Harry died was a sense of relief that the plot was moving forward.

The funeral itself lacked any emotion. People are mentioned crying, but the eulogies and the descriptions do nothing to add to the emotional impact. There is no atmosphere set, no interactions between characters that depict the gravity of the situation. You mentioned people laughing before the funeral began, that's hardly any way to make someone cry, or even feel like crying.

The eulogies consisted of nothing more than a summary of the books. Yes, we know Harry fought a dragon. We know what happened to Sirius, we know he broke into Gringotts. Nothing separates the eulogies from Mrs. Figg's discussion with Dudley on the train.

Sometimes people are mentioned crying, sometimes they're mentioned laughing. That's the extent of the emotional connection you try to make with the reader. You tell us what people are doing, and expect us to feel something one way or another about it. Too much tell, too little show.

I can't see this making it into the library. It may come close, but there's not enough there to hold this up as an achievement that others should try to follow.

3.5/5 rounded down to 3/5

 

Isn't a Harry a bit too overconfident? How could he have been so sure? Yes, there was no horcrux left, but still, it was not as if Voldemort was a pushover without Horcruxes. Taking elder wand into consideration too, the odds were still stacked against Harry.

When Harry fell after the death of Voldemort, the immediate reaction of his friends would have been, temporary shock, then impulsive urge to get any help. But in the story, without getting any help(yes, they are waiting for Pomfrey, but urgency is not shown) they are just, too unreal. I mean Ron is uncharacteristically calm and Hermione is not a fool, who would predict Harry's death so quickly and try to give a long 'resurrecting' speech. If anything, they should have been too shocked to say anything coherent.

And, if you were trying to show, that they knew Harry was going to die. Then, in that case, emotions were sorely lacking in that scene.

For example, when Harry was speaking about Snape's memory, Hermione just acted as if he was a normal fellow human, and it was out of respect that she should follow his last wishes. They were letting Harry go, as if he was just a casual acquaintance.

Again, in Dudley's reaction, his emotions were too unreal. This time it was not lack of emotion but too much emotion.

After reading till that part I couldn't continue because seeing Dudley in too much good light, is not really fascinating for me. So, it was not your fault that I couldn't read this story. I just didn't expect Dudley to be this, 'changed'.

 

Thanks for all of the renewed feedback everyone. I actually really appreciate it, and it's certainly better than the occasionally misspelled and vague reviews on FF (though I do, of course, appreciate them as well). I don't expect my first submitted fic to make the library - it was worth a shot anyway. I'm impressed at the amount of time that all of you devote to reading and writing detailed reviews; you really take this site seriously, and that's something to be applauded.

I honestly am not sure if I believe Dudley would be that changed either, but it was a possibility I chose to expand upon here. I hate all caps too, but I (I'm sure mistakenly) tried to use a few of Rowling's devices that I wouldn't have normally, not because I think I'm as good as her, but because I feel it can be a little off-putting to read a HP fic that isn't at least somewhat similar. Meh. I kinda hated that yelling part looking back even before I submitted this. And yeah, emotions are hard to portray for me. I've mainly written (sucky) fanfic in other fandoms, and am more an academic writer than a fiction writer. I know that's a weakness I need to work on.

 

As I don't write creatively myself, I rarely post critique on stories. But for this one-shot, I felt the urge to express my thoughts.

Things I enjoyed: The bare simplicity of your writing style. Many authors, including some of those that the average DLP member would worship with blind devotion, burden their readers with extensive imagery and costume porn. A skilled writer knows how to use such details in moderation.

That being said, a little more detail would have vastly improved certain scenes. :awesome


Things that could use improvement:

I enjoy Dudley redemption stories, but not when his internal conflict is resolved without any semblance of plot. Speeches and eulogies can indeed be moving, but rarely do they instantaneously change a man's inner character.

It's not just Dudley's portrayal that irks me. As other's have said, everyone and their mother is out of character. They weren't bad characterizations, but they certainly seemed out of place in the immediate post-war aftermath.

Suggestion: Nix the funeral. Rewrite and have the whole 'Dudley coming to terms with his cousin's heroism' crap take place years after Harry's death. This would give the characters time to mourn and room to grow into the people you're describing. Perhaps the wizarding world could have a 'we remember' vigil for those who died in the war.

Edit: 3/5

 

KHAAAN, when you say costume porn, do you mean the Captain's Hat? if you do I'll fucking kill your parents.

 

Of course not. I am deeply offended you would suggest such a thing, Gambit.

 

Okay, so I've read it and though I agree with most of the comments made above, I feel there's something broader that this story is missing.

For me, a good one-shot should fall into one (or several) of perhaps four categories. There's 'emotional development', 'awesome story told quickly', 'genius idea that wouldn't suit a longer piece' and 'this is writing for the sake of beautiful writing'. Some merge two or several categories and some stick mainly to the one. For me though, this didn't fit into any one or combination of these categories.

There's no character development. If this story had been about the Dursleys being changed in some way by Harry's sacrifice, it probably would have been enough to make this a complete story, but instead each of them leave with exactly the same attitude and values that they started the story with. Vernon's staunch, irrational hatred of all things wizardly. Petunia's timid, cowardliness with regards to her husband and her own feelings. And then there's Dudley, who's smugly, self-righteous, moral superiority and projected victim complex somehow manages to make him more unpleasant than the other two.

There's no story, just a collection of people reminiscing about a story we already know.

There's no noteworthy new ideas, Dudley's abrupt change of character, the train from King's Cross, the funeral in Hogwarts by the lake, even right down to the tufty haired wizard who conducted the service — all of it was originally done by JKR. Normally when I read a one-shot I think 'that's an interesting take on that' or 'that's a nice idea', even if the story is horrible (which yours isn't).

So that leaves the writing and by your own admission, 'I wrote with as much descriptive language as possible without bogging it down in prose - it went slightly against my tendency to over-explain, but I feel that actions speak louder than words within this story.'

Except, they don't and even if they did, the constant speaking undermines your own point. There is no action, or fluid, thought provoking prose, just a lot of empty words.

To go back to your original post again:

'Rowling gave us some tantalizing hints as to his possible change in personality, but we never got the satisfaction of seeing anything definitively play out.'

This is exactly what I wanted from this story. To see Dudley develop, change and grow from the experience, but all we get instead is a cursory, throw-away paragraph about him finding his own adventures. There's nothing at all satisfying about that.

On the other hand, it's readable. The language is varied and interesting. There's a few issues with the perspective of your writing, for example you mix between Harry and Voldemort's thoughts in the first section, which is very disorientating and then in the rest of the fic, when you're writing from Dudley's perspective, you write things such as 'Dad said x, y and z' as if writing from the first-person perspective, rather than 'Dudley's dad' or 'His dad' or 'Vernon'.

This is coming over as overwhelmingly negative, but it's not what I thought while reading it. There is quite a lot of good stuff mixed in, but the bad stuff is easier to identify and quantify.

Like others have said already, this is somewhere between Recycling Bin and Library, but I'm gonna have to err on the side of Recycling Bin.

3/5

EDIT: For what it's worth, I think you ought to post the next thing you write into WbA. I know for a fact (as does anyone who read my first story) that whatever skill I have as a writer was nurtured and refined by DLP. Having good, insightful advice when writing is nigh essential and I will always recommend the WbA process to anyone.

 

Ugh.

I'd barely rate this as better than okay, if I'm going to be absolutely honest. It's not that it's bad or horrible or repugnant, but there are things about it that irk me way too much for me to consider it anything close too good.

First, the writing style. There is a place for over-description and decompression, and you could argue that an extended funeral montage from the perspective of Dudley Dursley is a good time/place for it... but I feel it's necessary to emphasize that decompression only works well if you have something meaningful to convey, or the decompression serves a symbolic purpose. Here, you want to 'over-describe' to emphasize the feelings of guilt and sadness that Dudley might have experienced after Harry saved his life... but without any significant character transition for Dudley outside of a few lines, there's nothing to reflect upon or think about. You don't see any of that growth or development, where the decompression would actually have meaning.

Instead we get a montage of how awesome Harry was, and a hammering of a guilt trip dropped on the Dursleys designed to evoke raw emotion that isn't conveyed interestingly enough to disguise how flat and cheap it is. It's basic, it's simple, and if anything, it's rudimentary.

And here's where I circle back to talk about your writing style - in short, it's bland and completely unchallenging. Between the lacklustre and cliche dialogue, the non-existent character development, and the generally uninteresting avalanche of 'telling, not showing', there's nothing that hooks me in here. Oneshots work best if they're trying to tell a short, potent story, or even as a mood piece designed to inspire contemplation. But a montage isn't a story, and a mood piece requires significantly more evocative writing to pull off.

I mean, I'm not surprised most fanfiction.net reviewers lauded such a story - it's safe. It pushes convenient buttons and gets convenient, predictable results. The writing is good enough to suck in the casual reader, but it doesn't hold up under any degree of scrutiny.

2/5. Would have been 3/5, but I dropped a point for the utterly useless title and the general presumption that you'd get into the C2.