Title: Harry Potter and the Weasley Seer
Author: Puiwaihin
Rating: K+
Genre: Adventure/Humour
Status: WIP
Library Category: General
Pairings: None
Summary:
A prank in Professor Trelawney's class leads to Ron being hailed as a seer. But nobody could predict how that would change Harry's fate. AU, starts 3rd year. Powerful!Harry. Adventure/Humor.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7866134/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Weasley-Seer

I fully expected this to be crack - Ron's fake predictions becoming true and whatnot - but it's turning out pretty decently. It does rewrite the magical system quite a lot, but not to the complexity of Taure's Lords of Magic levels. I like the Dumbledore in this fic, even if it's not perfectly canon, because he seems like a legitimately powerful and honest wizard, unlike those that set him up as a villain or a saviour. All n all I thought it was a pleasant read, 3/5.

 

Gonna be honest, I intensely dislike the magic system in this. Whenever belief based magic shows up in a story it annoys me. But this one really stands out. Specifically for this bit here.

Nerfing the killing curse is a major turn off for me.

 

Well, Junior did say in the fourth book that everyone could pull out their wands and cast the spell at him and he "Wouldn't get so much as a nose bleed."

 

Yeah, and it's also told to kill 100 percent when cast by a wizard who is competent. Well except for the one time, with Lily's love shield bullshit.

 

It's the same justification canon uses for Harry's inability to use Crucio in book five. His "hate" (belief) isn't strong enough. The AK is in the same class of spell...

 

It wasn't that his hate wasn't strong enough, but that Harry attempted to fuel the spell with righteous anger which apparently doesn't cut it. You have to want to cause pain for the sake of causing pain. You also can't fight a Crucio by believing real hard that it won't hurt you. It's really irritating when authors nerf the Unforgiveables. They wouldn't carry a life sentence to Azkaban if they were so easy to block.

My biggest problem with this fic is the same problem I have with a lot of other fics that reinterpret the magic system or has Harry discover a new magical rule. Harry abuses his discovery to solve every problem plaguing the wizarding world and when the question of why someone else hadn't though of it already, the author usually handwaves it away by saying wizards have no logic or some other bs.

That being said, the story wasn't terrible. It was mildly entertaining.

2.5-3/5

 

Yeah, the whole thing is weird. The thing Moody is talking about in Canon is that the students wouldn't be casting the spell properly. There's more to it that just saying a few words and swishing the wand - the emotional component is a very real requirement, and without it, the spell will be miscast. It's like saying "I survived the Killing Curse, but it wasn't actually the Killing Curse." Also, technically Voldemort survived the Killing Curse as well, due to his horcruxes. The changes in this story seem completely arbitrary and a thin effort to try and make the magic system seem more complex than it actually is, but it doesn't really stand up to deeper scrutiny

 

Is it ever outright stated in canon that there's an emotional component to the casting of the killing curse? I know there was something like that mentioned for the cruciatus, but Harry cast the imperius curse without needing to be in a certain emotional state, so...

 

AFAIK, this was in the Almost Recommended thread an year or so ago. And the 1-2 updates it got recently isn't enough to bump it to Library level.

3.5/5. Decent time waster with a different view on how magic works.

 

I don't love this fic but I don't hate it either. It just sticks in my mind as something mediocre.

 

I thought this fic seemed like something better suited to a oneshot. That is, the initial idea was interesting and somewhat humorous, but the follow-up is disappointing. The plot seems to have slowed down and is stuck in canon re-hash. The idea is 4/5, but the rest of the fic brings it to 2/5 in my mind.

 

And the previous post steals my thunder, with brevity and under my nose...typical bhelliomatic. Typical as a poster who falls to read valuable posts while eating popcorn and hashing out...sonofbeach.

 

Basically this. The writing isn't particularly engaging, Harry is overly sacrificial/appeasing (though that could also be said of canon Harry), and the magic system is particularly off-putting.

2/5

 

Couldn't get into this fic, just didn't tick the boxes for me at all. There was nothing outright wrong with it, but it just wasn't particularly enjoyable.

 

I always understood that to mean it would do nothing at all, using the nosebleed as an example of a vastly reduced reaction that wouldnt even happen, either.

Not to say the killing curse could, at varying levels, cause things like nosebleeds, but no one there could even make it work to hurt him in any way (example given: getting a nosebleed), much less do the actual effect, that of killing him.

 

Well, there was an update to the story so I hope this post doesnt break the rules.

Lastest chapter seems to imply Ron predicting Sybill's death at the hands of Voldemort and making it happen due to the belief. There is small scene of a Hufflepuff showing prejudice towards Muggleborns, which is nice for indicating not all bigots are Slytherin

As for the overall story, I will admit while it is not the best of fics, nor was it memorable enough for me to keep track of its progress and saved it, rereading it reminds me of why i liked it in the first place.

First, it handles Ron a bit better than most other fanfics do. The central conceit, of Ron given space to shine because of something that Canon Ron and Harry would probably do, was interesting enough to hook me in when various other fanfic authors don't quite know how to handle Ron in Hogwarts Era stories. The dynamic of the friendship Harry and Ron is more faithfully captured to me and the resolution of the feud between Harry and Ron is something that Harry in the novels would have done for Ron.

Second, i am more forgiving of the belief-based magic system. It ulitises Divination, which is oft unexplored area of fanfic magic. I don't really think it nerfs the Unforgivables but rather ties the power and strength of their ease of use not to any inherent magical capability of the caster, but their intent in casting it. The author has further explored how Harry and the other characters would have to work in this system where morale and faith is even more important to the stability of the entire society.

I would rate this a 3.5/5, edging over to a 4. It is still pretty short and the author has infrequent updates. But we could do with more fics that do not sideline Ron and explore Divination