Title: No Knowledge, No Money, No Aim ~
Author: Eternal Payne
Rating: M
Status: WIP
Chapters: 9
Words: 51, 748
Published: 20th September 2012
Updated: 24th June 2013
Pairings: Open
Summary: In a world where Neville Longbottom was marked as Voldemorts equal, Harry Potter is determined not to be his Inferior, and that leaves only one option... Not Slash.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8541055/1/No-Knowledge-No-Money-No-Aim

I found this yesterday while looking for something to read and I've got to admit that it was a pretty decent read. I don't think it's a great fic mind you, but it's worth a good read if you have nothing to do.

It revolves around Harry who isn't the BWL and therefor doesn't fit into Dumbledore's plans. He ended up with no guide into the magical world after receiving his letter and being kicked out by the Dursleys so he ends up making his own way into the wizarding world.

With nobody to inform him the need-to-know knowledge he ends up working at Tom's Leaky Cauldron inn/bar to make money and has no funds in his family vault because Dumbledore has actually been using the small amount left to fund his plans i.e making sure to get Death Eater's sent to Azkaban. James Potter had been one of the main funders for Dumbledore's vigilante group and had plans to make the money back with buisnesses that the Potter's had shares in, but because of their deaths they were never able to and thus left Harry with around 20k Galleons left at most, which Dumbledore basically stole because Harry isn't the BWL and therefore he doesn't rightly care for the most part. Or should I say he does? But actually takes the money for the Greater Good?

Anyway, moving on. Harry ends up buying a second hand wand that doesn't react to him at all and therefore he is rather bad at magic for the majority of his first year until he gets so angry that his magic reacts and forces the spells he was trying to work wandlessly. That mind you is a bit cliche, but the author does a good job of explaining over it. It also glosses over 'magical cores' if I remember right, so Taure will probably not be a fan of it at that point, although they aren't directly named 'magical cores' so that's an upside.

Harry's only friend is Hagrid so he spends alot of time with him and tending to the dangerous creatures Hagrid has always got running around everywhere.

There's a few bits that put me off, and no doubt you guys will notice them aswell. But considering I hadn't read a good fic in about a week, it was rather refreshing.

I'd rate this a 3/5 myself, but due to it actually being a good reprieve from the constant shit I muddled through. Then I actually found some other decent Naruto fics and the like in his favorites, so I'm bumping it up to a 4/5.

 

You had me at Dumbledore stealing money. Sounds like a sound 1/5

 

So Dumbledore robs the son of two members of his group that died in battle? That doesn't seem ridiculous at all :/ I'll give it a proper read and review it later

 

If you rate without reading, it makes me wonder just how accurate the categories on this forum are. The Trash Bin would obviously then have atleast a few decent fics in it if there are people like you here that rate without reading it. If you're not gonna read it, don't bother rating it. :facepalm

 

Why is this in for review? Why not almost recommended? With the amount of problems this fic has, it doesn't seem to be 4-5* quality. Your summary definitely didn't make me want to read this fic at all. I quoted which parts made me want to click the proverbial red X immediately.

 

I read this some time ago when I was bored. I thought it was a somewhat decent guilty pleasure fic too, but that was until Harry started to shoot wandless spells from his dick due to his massive magical core. Even without that, this isn't a library-worthy fic.

 

Yup I read this, and it's a guilty pleasure fic for me even with it's numerous spelling mistake and grammar mistake. Not fit to be in the library

 

How it is improving this story? I understand that it makes putting the author on list of potential sources for good stories but I am confused why this is supposed to make the story better.

"Not worse than an average fanfiction" is not valid reason to read story.

I am not going to read or rate this.

 

You don't always need to drink milk to see if it has gone bad, smell is enough most times. And I say this story smells rotten anybody wants to say otherwise?

 

This was pretty much my reaction as well. But I've read so many badly clichéd stories like this that I thought I could ignore it. It turns out that it's not even worth mentioning as a negative.

The story has pleasantly surprised me. We have a reasonable protagonist, who starts off with 'No Knowledge, No Money, No Aim' as the title suggests. He eventually starts to overcome this disadvantage. All while we have the potential for some many bad clichés - but the story doesn't take the bait at all. Except maybe:

Spoiler

In the later chapters Harry seems to be getting overpowered and can do whatever he wants. For example, originally him doing wandless magic was okay, but it's starting to get ridiculous.

In fact it is for the above spoilered reasons that I'm not particularly liking the last couple of chapters. I don't really like where the plot has gone:

Spoiler

He learns about horcruxes, steals back his cloak and then the elder wand, then he just goes off and starts destroying horcruxes without even thinking about it.

I would have to say the summary paints a fair more negative version of the story that it turned out to be. Most of these things are barely even mentioned, or they happen in a way that doesn't make you rage (or maybe I'm just that good at tuning out these kinds of things now...): Dumbledore steals Harry's inheritance, Harry is not BWL and the real BWL gets ridiculous favouritism, child labour, manipulative Dumbledore, Harry angry at Dumbledore, and a few other things too.

But there were things that annoyed me. I won't really go into them except for two: the English was occasionally poor and the story-telling really lacklustre at times. 3/5.

 

Date-stamped scenes: -1
Incredibly contrived Halloween 1981: -1
Very shallow characterisation of Harry: -1
Too fast pace: -1
Magical cores: -1
Doesn't like Quidditch: -1
Awful Hagrid dialogue: -1 (Seriously, at one point he said tim' for time)
Absurd teachers: -1
Swearing on your magic: -1
Manipulative Dumbledore: -1
Very little plot: -1
Naruto stories in the author's favourites: -9000

 

I read up until Chapter Two when Harry simply stutters in front of the Cerberus and it befriends him and moves aside, but I must admit I was going to quit reading when I read Voldemort's rationalization for going after Neville instead of Harry, and then when James laughed at Sirius just a paragraph before he's murdered, seconds before he's brutally murdered alongside Remus and Lily (who kills Pettigrew as a last hurrah).

It also features a sarcastic, anti-hero Harry who some may enjoy enough to keep reading, but really irked me. Everyone's hugging Neville's balls, and Neville is way too conceited for someone whose parents died as an orphan. He's also received 'special training' from McGonagall before Hogwarts and is a narcissistic bastard about it. Most characterizations suck, though I'm sure some one will enjoy the novelty of Harry living through Hogwarts differently.

I have to say this is a 2/5, but only because the writing wouldn't be bad with some well-thought out characters. Can't really say it doesn't has a plot, as I quit very early on. I won't rate the story.

 

Well, just finished reading it, and, honestly, it's not Library material. I don't even think it would fit on the Almost Recommended section. A lot of things stand out with this story, but all of them are bad, like what Taure pointed.

2/5

 

Read the first few chapters, enough to rate at any rate (and people should really at least sample before offering up a tentative rating--it takes a few minutes and keeps newbies from acting all sanctimonious and shit. After all, several of us here *cough* Joe *cough* could slam out a cliché-ridden plot and yet make it Library-worthy).

That said, this story? Nah.

"Voldemort's Lair" sound like a bad Dungeons and Dragons campaign (where one envisions the Dark Lord sitting atop his pile of treasure like the dragon in Beowulf). Calling the Deus Ex Machina bus with accidental magic? Weak. Friendless angst? Predictable. Rather unimpressive prose, spotty grammar, occasional amateur mistakes (the Voldemort monologue at the start, e.g.)? Not particularly promising.

As a previous poster noted, this story is a guilty pleasure at best. I think it's a solid 2/5, possibly 3/5 if the author improves things markedly in the future.

To the OP: As a general rule, if you don't think a story warrants at least a 4/5 by your own standards, it's best to not put the story up for review right away. Better would be to send up a trial balloon in the Almost Recommended thread and gauge the response. If favorable, then consider putting it up for review. If not, you save a bit of butthurt. Most of us have read enough that we can (usually) tell by the description whether a story is worth checking out.

That said, that a DLP member suggested it made me set aside my initial reservations and read a few chapters. But I don't give a lot of second chances. There are some on here whose recommendations I probably won't ever read because they've put up enough second- and third-rate stories as to make it a loser's game. Please don't make the same mistake.

 

I did not rate it, I don't know what made you think that. All I said was what I think the most likely rating will be, based on "features" you mentioned - and it seems other readers don't disagree with my prediction.

 

I read it through the end and think it's not bad. Probably should be placed in the "Almost Recommended" section. That said, I think just because Dumbledore stole money doesn't necessarily indicate a bad fic and this one eschews the typical cliches and Dumbledore actually takes the money to put Death Eaters away which makes it complicated for Harry.

I enjoy an overpowered, somewhat of a loner hero and admit that this has guilty pleasure fic written all over it but tbh so does a lot of fan fic that I enjoy reading.

The worst strike I would say against it is the update date which makes it seem unlikely this will keep going.

 

That's not entirely accurate. If you look at the authors profile it looks like he/she is juggling multiple fics at once instead of doing one fic from start to finish. I still have hopes for an update, even if it's going to be a slow-going one.

 

I got through chapter five. It's just so... mediocre.

The worst part is that I really like the premise--it's always bothered me that Harry doesn't have to worry about money at all. I like the idea of these extra complications: no funds, no fame, having to pull himself up by his bootstraps. But the execution here is just plain awful.

First of all, it just feels like kind of a self-insert where the author sees himself as being better and smarter than everyone in canon, so you get a lot of attitude from Harry about people he doesn't even know (thinking of Dumbledore as a senile old man, even though he's never interacted with him, for example) and a lot of instances where Harry just figures things out as if they were intuitively obvious simply because we already know about them from canon.

The author does a lot of glossing over things and telling us in hindsight what happened--notably in the last chapter I read, where there was a feud between students that resulted in a majority of them missing from class. <--this is essentially how it's presented. It's like... the interesting events get a footnote, and the boring in-between scenes are the ones that get dialogue, while Harry reflects on that craycray thing he just saw.

And because this Harry is super anti-social, there isn't really much dialogue either, just a lot of internal monologuing. I just don't get the point of this--Harry doesn't interact with people. Why read about a kid who doesn't have relationships? Bluergh.

I'd give it a 2/5. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's pretty subpar.

 

My final rating is 2/5 for this one. Brings nothing new to the table and has absolutely nothing to make it stand out above the other non-BWL Harry fics. The two is for non-retarded grammar and somewhat interesting premise.

 

Let's see here: the BWL is extremely arrogant (even though you would think Neville would have been made even meeker by relatives who kept a firmer grip on him), Neville became the BWL with both of his parents surviving, Dumbledore is a Manipulative Bastard who drove Harry to bankruptcy and wouldn't let him have his family heirloom, Harry can master wandless Magic, play with fiendfyre, break into Dumbledore's office and steal all the really important stuff and read all the conveniently written notes in no time, and becomes Master of Death because of both the previously-mentioned office-breaking bit and by the previously-mentioned fiendfyre bit with a dosage of finding the Gaunt House two years before Dumbledore.

These are bad signs. Very bad signs.