I have to say I have followed this for a while and while I love it, I am sort of upset that I will probably need to start over or atleast reread some stuff to understand it.

Its one of the best huge stories out there and is quite interesting. I encourage anyone who likes a bit of everything to check it out

 

WARNING: MAJOR POTENTIAL SPOILERS: IF YOU'RE INTENDING TO READ THIS FIC, YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ THIS.

I've read this entire fic in its entirety twice, and that's a pretty damned big time commitment to get through the sheer amount of detail and words that Bexis crams into this fic. Subplots everywhere, a magical world that seemed rather well fleshed out, and a fairly solid main plot to back it up.

I remember reading this fic as my intro to the Indy!Harry '6th Year' genre of fics that exploded after OOTP, and boy, it was an intro. lf there is not a cliche found in a sixth year fic that wasn't in this fic, I'd be surprised. Literally, with the amount of words in this fic, it would be quite possible to see them all - along with a couple dozen original ideas, most of them good, some of them mediocre, and a few of them causing anemic dysentry.

Let's begin with the ships... well, what do you expect from a Harry/Hermione fic? All the cheap, cop-out romance elements are there, along with a few that even caused me to raise my eyebrows (and I have a higher tolerance of romance than most). There's the godawful soul bond that shows up (although it is entertaining that it sends Hermione into a coma), and some pretty sickening fluff at points too. Frankly, I preferred the Harry/OC relationship - it was better written, and I genuinely liked Eliza as a character (plus there was that memorable scene of Harry Potter completely high, which was quite awesome). The Harry/Hermione ship seemed... I dunno, not as real as the Harry/OC ship. Not as believable, or as intelligent.

It is around the discussion of intelligence, I believe, that this fic shows some of its most gaping weaknesses - Hermione's a fucking super-genius, and Harry's not too far behind her. Even despite Bexis' attempts to keep Hermione under control (half-hearted attempts at best), she's the Mary-Sue of this fic, and a pretty blatant one too. She and Harry both got the 'super' treatment (Auror corps, unbelievable brooms, super money, insane magic, etc.) and after a while, I was genuinely pleased when the two of them managed to cock everything up.

Here's where I applaud Bexis for the things he does excellently: his intrigue; his action; his history; and his atmosphere. Fleshing out the story as he does with detail allows him to write some genuinely intelligent intrigue scenes, and the politics (where present) is done surprisingly well. I also really appreciated the historical elements. Maybe it's because I'm a history fan and I like that sort of thing, but the way he crafted a wizard/Muggle history in detail, defining a whole culture behind it, is incredible. I was genuinely impressed: he did research, lots of it.

On to the aciton - and I'm not going to lie when I say it is some of the most inventive and well-written action I've ever seen in fanfic, and considering how difficult it is to write good action sequences, I was greatly impressed. Once again, his attention to detail really shone through, making the scenes both well-paced and entertaining.

But even despite all the good things, the only reason I've ever deigned to keep reading this fic (besides the plot, which, while a bit frustrating at times, is decent) is because of the atmosphere. I'm not going to lie when I say that Bexis writes some of the most tense, balls-to-the-wall scenes in fanfiction, and with the sheer amount of detail that he uses, the author is at his best here. The plane crash/explosion chapters midway through the fic remains one of my favourite scenes in any sort in fiction, and that's testament to how good of an author Bexis is. If he wrote more of this and less cheap, pathetic romance, this story would be genuinely worth a higher rating.

Now comes the real problem - rating a story like this, because in all honesty, you can't. The early chapters were solid enough to keep my interest, despite the cliche abundance, and the Harry/OC romance was well characterized, so it gets a 4/5 for that. The middle sequences, where everything goes to absolute hell, will get a solid 5/5 from me for being bloody terrific. The newest stuff... sure, Bexis' quality of writing is still there, but the plot has gotten bogged down in romance so bad I could barely stand it (and there were some elements of magic that I absolutely couldn't stand - Muggle music on magical guitars, Bexis? Really?). Those segments get 3/5 from me, and I'm being generous. In all honestly, I can't give this story a solid rating, simply because it should have been split into about four or five different stories surrounding the culminations of the various subplots. In my opinion, though, unless he starts amping up the action again and bringing the story back to the dark, edgy side that he writes extremely well, this story is going to end up going downhill.

All in all, tl, dr; my expectations are high, but my hopes are low.

 

This story's been updated, though I doubt anyone cares. 65 chapters in, and the author's only at Christmas break...bitch of a story. I honestly don't know why it's taking this long to flush out, but for anyone who hasn't read it and is looking to waste time, give it a go.

Spoiler

The last two chapters have been slightly boring/annoying, as Bexis has gone above and beyond to establish the Black family's involvement in damn-near every historically negative upheaval (Nazis, slave trade, Christianity's validity). Hermione's unbelievably smart, Harry's unbelievably useless - but hey, at least he's a griffin animagus...maybe. We've only seen a wing and legs.

Ugh. I take it back - don't read this. 2/5.

 

Has anyone been following this? I think I stopped reading it at chapter 65 a few years ago and was wondering wether the quality of writing has stayed the same? I know that I', necroing here but I'll take the abuse if it saves me from reading 1.4 million words only to realise that it wasn't worth my time.

 

I got to about chapter 78 or something, can't remember the exact chapter, but no, it doesn't improve at all. Last I checked, the romance is sappy as hell, Ginny plots with Malfoy to slip Harry a love potion and Hermione a Draught of Despair, Luna can read auras or something, and Ron nearly kills Harry in anger because he though Harry was cheating on Hermione and Harry doesn't fight back.

 

In case anyone was wondering this fic. has 88 chapters now. Some of them are less romance based in nature. However, there are five chapters dedicated to the love potion storyline. I mostly skimmed those because, I have a high tolerance for romance and angst but, that was too much even for me. Anyway I have enjoyed this fic. The word count makes up for a lot of the flaws. I love getting engrossed in long stories. The characterizations we interesting to read and have held my attention well. It was an incredibly engrossing story that left me wanting more. So for those reasons I'm giving it a 5/5

 

You mean this is still updating after nearly 10 years? Dang.

 

Is there any way to access this easily on a mobile platform? neither schnoogle nor portkey support it last I saw.

 

This story is fantastic in lots of technical fashions, but I simply cannot get into the actual details of it. Harry is pussywhipped to an extreme degree, you may as well write 'Hermione's Bitch' on his forehead, Hermione is desperate for his dick but incredibly overemotional about it, Ginny and Ron are caricatures of their canon selves, AncientSuperEvil!Black Family. It's just... as much as the author is good at delivery, flow, word choice and description, the characters he writes about and the plots themselves are terrible. I'm a Harry/Hermione fan and I was actively rooting for the Harry/OC romance over Harry/Hermione.

Yeah, they're both that hard to stand.

The worst part, is, when it's not involved with Romance, it's actually fairly good. But Romance is a heavy, heavy part of this story. So you can't really escape that terrible part of it.

2/5.

Also, this story is now rated 3/5. I think that means it goes to the recycle bin?

 

The author is a fantastic writer, as WD says above me. His foreshadowing is something I've admired since I read this a few years back. What I read I thoroughly enjoyed. But after about Ch 45 or so (wherever it is, I'm referring to a few chapters after Hermione reawakens), I started getting bored very quickly. I felt like the fic had lost its direction. Maybe that improved in the remaining forty chapters, but I was a bit weary after reading 500,000 words and lost the hook I had in reading it (Harry and Hermione getting together). I moved on to something else and haven't returned.

So, to the point where Hermione reawakens from her coma, this fic solidly deserves a 4.5/5. I'll round it down to 4, seeing as I haven't finished and therefore doesn't deserve full marks. I'll try again to finish this though, seeing as it is now complete, and update accordingly.

 

Hermione eventually does call him out on this, but unfortunately it's a good million words after it first became annoying. I was more annoyed by how the plot was mostly driven by the characters being idiots than any actual personality traits of the characters, though.

The main problem is that the pacing is unbelievably fucked. The first month passes at about 10k words per day, and 1.3 million words in total for a year is completely ridiculous. It doesn't even manage to resolve half the plot threads, since they were supposed to be in year 7. Bexis can write some amazing climatic scenes... but the problem is that he writes trivial and inconsequential scenes in just as much detail.

 

Just FYI Bexis is a she, afaik.

 

That was actually what I thought from his writing, but his Blogger profile says Male.

 

To moderators: this is no longer WIP and may be re-tagged as complete.

BTW: it is also at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4098039/1/Harry-Potter-The-Fifth-Element but unfortunately it contains only 72 chapters ("I have been asked why there are more chapters to this story on FictionAlley than here on FFN. I have finally finished the story (88 chapters), after almost a decade. Now, I will edit all the remaining chapters (such as this one) and post them here.")

 

I think this took me about five days to finish, nonstop, constant reading. That was about seven months ago. I loved the length back then - hell, I digged the fic. Now, though, I'm waiting for the sequel and even though the fic gets shitty over time, I still remember the scenes that made me go "awesome!"

 

You know, I think I've nailed down precisely my issue with this story, and it's surprisingly simple: for as much as Bexis has been writing it for his kids, it's an incredibly masturbatory fic.

Think about it - for as much as Harry and Hermione get shit piled on top of them, they've never suffered any serious, grievous consequences of their actions. There's danger - some of it extremely well-realized in the best moments of the story - but in the end, we're still reading about two wealthy, highly intelligent, extremely well-trained characters developing magical powers and political influences that in the hands of a less indulgent author would be enough to steamroller Voldemort twenty times over. Yes, I know Bexis started writing this well before the 'power-up' Indy!Harry fics took precedence - and I still hold this story as one of the few that does that element reasonably well - but I never feel that Harry and Hermione's relationship or their safety is in jeopardy or that there is any real tension to their story.

As I've said in this thread before, the best parts of the story are Harry's relationship with the OC Eliza, because it felt human and vulnerable and real, and the subsequent kidnapping subplot triggered after Voldemort's airplane attack had phenomenal atmosphere and stakes that actually had weight. But the second that subplot faded and the stupid soul-bond burnout with Hermione ended, I completely lost interest because I couldn't see a single damn thing that could harm these characters.

Let me bring up a counter-example this site loves: the Dresden Files. Sure, there are definitely masturbatory elements in those stories (one of the reasons I'm a little put-off by the more recent stories, but that's a rant for another day), but the reasons the stories work is because Harry is, more often than not, completely outmatched. He's in deep shit, and not only does Butcher know to take risks with his characters, he also has Harry lose or suffer some goddamn consequences for his choices. I did a lot of the same thing with Renegade Cause, because you need to have consequences and stakes for your story to have weight - although having gone back to reread that story, I'm all the more aware of the bloat and long-running problems in that fic, and it could direly use a heavy pruning (but then again, so could Bexis' magnum opus).

And I'll definitely argue that when Bexis is at his best, he really delivers with a lot of detail, an engaging plot, and phenomenal atmosphere building. But without any real stakes or consequences for Harry or Hermione, I don't buy into their problems and even less their relationship (I've pretty much accepted their characters as ciphers, mostly because Bexis was never good at characterization). It feels weightless, and considering how damn hard Bexis is trying to make us give two shits about everything, it really undercuts his fic.

3/5

 

Honestly, the only real bit of this fic' I liked was the Harry/Eliza romance, for the reasons stated above.

Everything else (and, yes, I'll gladly use that as a general brush) was generally mediocre - average at best, horribly cliche and cringe-worthy at worst.

Rounding it off at a 3/5.

 

I have been reading it for some time now, and I agree with what's said above.

It is exciting at first but gets boring in the long run - and as it is a very long run, I doubt I'll ever finish reading it.

3/5

 

To give credit where credit is due I have to say that the amount of detail in this fic is amazing. Either the author did an astonishing amount of research for each chapter or is one of those really smart people who makes other smart people look like idiots.

That said, sometimes there's too much detail. The romance irritated the hell out of me, mostly because I enjoyed the Harry/OC relationship than the Harry/Hermione one. It really, really annoyed me when Harry and Hermione were separated and then one of them got a message to meet Dumbledore or McGonagall and automatically assumed it was because the other one had been hurt.

Harry's every action being met with the approval of the goblins got old fast. I also hated how everything had to be foreshadowed, even the smallest details that weren't resolved until two very long chapters later.