This is the only H/Fleur fic I like. I still go back and read it now and again merely because I hold this fic as one of the absolute best examples of what Indy!Harry should be like. TLIL shaped my opinions on Indy!Harry as an entire genre. In a way, every Indy!Harry fic I read is compared to Harry in TLIL and almost always found lacking.

Everything else of any real critical import has already been said. Repeating it at this point would be empty of meaning.

My personal rating for this sits at a 4.5/5 from nostalgia alone, but realistically it's more like a 3.5/5 now, merely because of the issues of aging and a more mature fanbase who is less tolerant of the Hat's pointlessly foul mouth.

 

Great story, I have read it multiple times and it entertained me every time it is definitly worth reading.

 

Hmmm, i remember this fic. I have to admit that it was one of the better fics at the time. its been a while since I read it though. I think the author intended for there to be a sequel, but it never popped up. Shame that.

 

Yeah a sequel would be appreciated, especially with the lack of good harry/fleur fics.

 

Don't see how a sequel would help with that. Kappa.

 

I have mostly enjoyed jbern's fics except To Fight the Coming Darkness. Jbern has a definite style and characterization of Harry that has varied in intensity for the things folks have criticized but in general is pretty good. Dated? yes. Perfect? no. Fun to read, if not tolerable, vs. the plethora of shit that's out there by comparison? Of course. Joshuafaramir and Taure probably had the better of the positive/negative reviews of this, but it has been enjoyable seeing people's reactions...on almost all the reviews here, sometimes better than the stories themselves.

 

Can't say I was too big of a fan of it. When it started it out, I enjoyed it, but by a few chapters, it turned mediocre. I dislike the Harry and Fleur interaction, it felt.... disingenuous I guess? The whole stag thing felt forced. Anyway I'm not generally very good at describing my issues with stories that well, but overall I'll give it a 3/5 because the sorting hat was fun to read, although I found it overall lacking.

 

I read this fic a long time ago. Don't remember enough to leave a review but I recall that the ending pissed me off so much, I completely swore off Jbern.

 

I'm sorry, I can't hear you guys over how awesome Hat is.

 

For a long time, I avoided this fic due mainly to the summary. Something about it just turned me off, mainly because I didn't want to read a fic that was about a Harryish character.

When I got passed it and actually read the fic, I thoroughly enjoyed it as it passed the most important test for me: can a story pull me in and not break my immersion?

Obviously, in hindsight, as my own writing and editing ability has evolved, so has my critical reading of other fics. Applying that to TLIL, Harry comes across quite a bit more arrogant (even in the beginning when he hasn't yet switched to HJ) than canon. Moreover, there are large parts of the story that I have grown to find simply boring (the whole spy flies thing, sneaking onto the boat, etc). And His treatment of women sometimes borders on misogyny.

Yet, there are other elements of his story I still find utterly brilliant. I read what Taure wrote, but I also remember Fleur standing up to her parents and realizing their marriage was pretty much a societal maneuver from her mother, one Fleur utterly rejected. And yet, she also explained how she stood up to her mother not for Harry, but for herself, showing much agency.

On the level of sheer enjoyment, two scenes still come to mind. The first is Dobby's knife trick. I get a smile every time I think about it. The second is Harry asking Fleur to the ball. The way he switched it up, and then played up Fleur's frustration with him was hilarious. Speaking of which, I also thought using Fleur's best friend as a secondary authorial voice to sidestep 1st person POV issues was well done.

As for the discussion of this fic, one of the problems I have is that I think many are applying critiques that are unfair due to the nature of the fic. It is not a literary work, or a singular story unto itself, and never intended to be. It's absolutely a piece of fan-fiction where the author expects the reader to bring his or her entire knowledge of the canon world to the story, then set it on the shelf and draw from it whenever the author wants to reference something (hence, the wandless magic). You simply cannot do that in original fiction. But this story was never meant to be original fiction.

With that said, and even with its problems, I'd still give it a 3.5 to 4.5 stars, depending on how heavily I judge for parts that just bore me. It is what it is, a great, fun fanfiction.

Had it been an original story, because of its lack of background, certain character development issues (that Jbern seems to be depending on canon for the reader to understand without him dealing with), etc., I'd give it a 2 or 2.5.

One thing I can't take away from it, however, is the authorial voice. Whether I liked it or not, it had a surprisingly strong and consistent voice that I continue to find intriguing whenever I venture back to rereading it.

 

I'm a fan of Jbern. I think he writes gritty dark HP fiction well. TLIL is his best story. What makes the story excellent is an independent Harry who is cool and handles tough situations realistically, the originality behind the tasks, the romance between Fleur and Harry, excellent OC's like Aimee and the awesome sorting hat.

 

I reread this story and certain parts didn't age well at all. I remembered having gripes with a few issues in the story and discovered a few more.

The fic has good points, no doubt, I enjoyed it back then in 2009 and I enjoyed a lot of it on the second reread the last two days. The Hat is just pure entertainment, but I can understand if it is grating for others. He was wearing out his welcome at times and it just feels plainly juvenile that he, as a fucking hat, still wants baths from naked women. It just feels forced and sad. Also the reason I am getting more and more tired of Bob from the Dresden Files, tbh.

The fanservice in general is grating and unnecessary, as most fanservice is. Stuff like Daphne being nearly naked when Harry threatens their family is just egh.

I can understand why Taure would dislike the new tasks but I enjoyed them. They were drastically more participant vs participant than participant vs task, and the staff one was just boring and simply shoehoerned in to force Harry to lose at least at one without being sabotaged in order to make him seem like not the Gary Stu he is, and it read like that. There is a reason that task is rushed through. Still, in general, they were fun to read, even if it was meh that Harry was able to steamroll through most of them and had to participate under handicaps all the time just to make things a bit interesting.

So, yeah, the tasks, plus the hat were fun. However, the cahracters were mostly the problem to me, on the second rerad. The Weasley children were generally ill-handled, and the only reason I don't think jbern has a hate on for them is that in all of his fics, he makes a different character the fallguy, IIRC. Here, several characters are railroaded into being petty jerks and dedicate their whole lives to that. Fred and George are simply horrible in this and I did not buy their reasons for doing so at all. Oliver Wood was only that in name. Snape, while a horrible teacher and douche, would simply not gather all the Slytherins together to go insult Harry in his hospital bed, neither would he expand so much active help in pranking/humiliating Harry. Be a jerk to Harry in his classroom? Yes. Actively participate by distracting McGonagall with lies or helping Malfoy with the potion? No. That's just not him. Krum was also vastly different, of course, but still, didn't like that much, although it worked rather well.

Most glaringly, I just did not like Harry, or HJ. Even if the story insisted on repeatedly pointing out that Harry was not as big of a womanizing douchebag as James Potter was, he was still an unlikeable jerk. Then there is the whole peeping at Fleur thing, of which he was wholesomely unrepentant and had this entitled attitude that if it came out, Fleur just had to get over it. And she kinda did, as did Aimee, the former ultimately not caring all that much while the latter found it charming and funny for some reason, even though it was firmly on the creepy and disturbing part.

I did like both, Aimee and the greek witch (Manos?), and the take on Penelope.

The fic also treats James as this mature grown up, even though he was what, 21, when he died? He felt certainly older at certain parts of the story.

Another point was mostly at the beginning of the story and I guess that was more common back then but it's offputting to read casual homophobic comments from the main character like that, like how being perceived as gay is the worst possible thing ever. I get the time and age of setting, when the story was written and character, but still. It still annoyed me, at least. Same with all the "notches in the wandholster" comments, which do little to make one like a character.

In the end, reading about a trust fund skirt-chasing misogynistic jock is just not fun, even if he (pretends that he) is not as bad as he once was.

Ultimately, I still read through the story and when the elements that annoyed me weren't in play, I did have fun with both the story and the humour.

So, overall, I would give it a 3.5/5, I guess. I was going to give it a 4/5 but when listing the issues I've had with the fic, can't really go higher than that.

I do get why so many people enjoy the fic, though. If you turn your brain off, as one watches an action movie as joshuafaramir says, one can enjoy it, but that's not really what I do. Too many flaws for me to forgive them all just for the action.

 

That reminds me of the surprise task with the Dementors. I don't know, but it seemed a very fresh take on the tournament tasks to me. What I found best about it was Harry's internal dialogue so the reader understood why he wasn't on the floor in the fetal position like the previous year.

Again, it's moments like that, that still make the story shine for me, even if there are other places and moments where it falls pretty flat.

 

Excellent story, THE BEST Harry/Fleur I have ever read, which isn't saying much given the utter lack of good, readable, within reason, single pairing HPFD out there, but still a great story.
What I liked the most is the flow of the story, the almost unbreakable immersion and the utter lack of overpowered imaginary magical abillities that pollute the fiction of HP.
What I didn't like is how Krum was portrayed, I rather liked him in canon. Fleur is also somewhat of a pretty girl-reward-for-awesome-Harry instead of a clearly defined character. Mind you, it ain't all that bad when you skip the whole "Harry as an animagus spys on Fleur bathing" scenes, but it could be better in my opinion.
The magic got a slight tune up, too. Nothing ridiculous like soul bonding, shadow mages and such, more of a face lift to make the duels more interesting and i quite like it.
The rather dark finale and the whole Harry/James mind meld did leave a weird taste on my reading buds, but it was well worth it.

P.S. The hat was awesome.

 

The dark finale was the best fucking part of the fanfic. I really wanted to see more of this Harry against Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

 

Well, to each his own, right.
I just prefer my reading to be a bit lighter, no fluffy unicorns and rainbows, but no sudden clusterfucks where people die like flies.
Regardless, I would totally love to see some Harry dish out some damage on the Death eaters and big V. If I recall corectly, a sequel was planned once, right? Guess that got scrapped, huh? Well, still my favourite HPFD piece by far.

 

This fic was a breath of fresh air for me the first time I had read it. The great humor and the characterisation of Harry as an actual teenager was something done well in this fic that I wish i could see more of.

 

It's a great fanfic that I enjoyed and had harry have characteristics I'd expect his father to have. It is also slightly confusing and crude. 4/5 from me.

 

What worries me in comments made against this story, by several people, is what I perceive to be a complete failure to differentiate between, 1) stuff disliked, and 2) stuff that's bad.

Taure did this constantly in... her?... post, but Nemrut did too and he's closer so I'm picking on him. (Sorry for that).

I'm not sure why this is a problem. Fanservice is pretty much unnecessary by definition, as you point out. But sometimes "fanservice" isn't actually fanservice. Specifically, I found that the scene with Daphne was a good bit of end-characterization. Harry's going to use not just fear but also sexual humilitation to win his war. He's not like Dumbledore and isn't fighting the war like Dumbledore. That's what the whole scene is about. And it's not exactly a stretch to say that a woman/girl might sleep mostly in the nude.

But even if it were fanservice, who cares? The point of the novel is that there are digressions and events and appearances and jokes and dialogue that are unnecessary. That's often what story telling is. If it weren't, then all our stories would be like Babylonian chronicles: 'In the year XXXX, the armies of the great General YYYY, charged upon the field against thrice-old empire of ZZZZ. There was a great battle. Many died. General YYYY claimed the field and there was much rejoicing.'

The Arabian Tales has more "fanservice" than any story I know and yet it's considered one of History's indispensable tales (or series of tales, more accurately) and perhaps the best bit of literature to ever come out of the Middle East. Fanservice is simply not a problem.

That you dislike it is fine. But calling it a flaw with the book as a work of (I don't quite want to say literature, so how about) fiction is unjust.

I think you shoot yourself in the foot here. You're fine with Bern changing Krum's character completely because you think it worked well in the story but then dis him for changes in the characters of Fred, George, and Snape. That seems wrong. I'd like to know a reason you don't think Fred, George, or Snape work as characters in this story.

Even if you were right in taking him to task on changing characters, I'm not sure it applies to Fred and George. His take on Fred and George I've seen elsewhere, and is usually proposed by people who hate pranking. Some people think pranking is bullying and have no patience for bullying. (In point of admission of bias, I do not thinking pranking is by itself bullying and I have great patience with bullying, although none with bullies). JBern seems to follow the pranking-bullying-bad line of thinking and gives Fred and George good reasons for going after Harry. They're pissed he played with their sister, then pissed that he seemed to be playing with their friend, then pissed that he wouldn't react to them, and then finally pissed when he flat-out insults them. It works for me.

I think that you're right in saying canon Snape wouldn't act the way he does in this fic, but neither would canon Krum. You liked this Krum. Why don't you like Snape? I'm willing to hear why he's a bad character, but your argument was just that he wasn't canon Snape.

Thank you for proving my point. Just because you don't like him doesn't mean he's a bad character or this a bad fic. I liked him.

Again, I liked him. (Also, he any sort of womanizer, but more on this later).

This argument falls into the same basic hole as the others: failing to differentiate between what you dislike and what is bad storytelling.

Fleur explains why she's okay with Harry, despite his peeping-Tom-ness. She says something like, 'You were the one to comfort me, you were the one to warn me of the dragons, we both know what it's like to have others only care about beauty/fame, and you saved the life of my best friend at great personal risk. I should be angry at you, but I'm just not.' Now, maybe you think she still should be. That's fair, but it's also and more importantly true that sometimes people don't act the way one thinks they ought to act. In real life, I've seen a good friend's partner radically violate his privacy and he wasn't happy but he dealt with it. They're still together, though I still don't like her. I've seen the faces of friends when I've told them something a partner of mine has done, seen the look of 'you should end it.' It's not unreal, and as far as I can tell, reality is the strongest test of fiction.

Forgiveness in the case of Aimee makes even more sense. Harry only spied on her, he didn't peep at her. More importantly, and as referenced back with Fleur, he saved her life! Of course she finds the fact that Fleur is frustrated by him and comforted by his animagus form funnier than she finds his spying on them creepy. It would seem unnatural to me, unless done right, if she didn't.

Where did it do this? That question isn't to say you're wrong. I just don't know to what events you refer and, if you respond, would like to know. Thanks.

Again, I think you're confusing dislike with bad. People do actually talk like this, and the Hat, as described in the fic, absolutely would.

See, the problem is everything you just wrote is wrong. While he has a Trust Fund, he's mostly using it to help out friends (Neville) or prepare for Voldemort. He doesn't chase skirts. In fact, he's given a whole slew of opportunities to do just that and he refuses. And calling him misogynistic is silly, it seems, when the three people in the fic he likes best are Fleur, Aimee, and Hermione. Not only are his favorite people girls (except for maybe Ollie, but then you'd have to include Penelope, which means that the people closest to Harry are four women and Ollie. Plus, Ollie is Penelope's bitch). So, not only are all of Harry's favorite people female, but the reason he likes them is because they're strong and smart and capable.

This is not a perfect Fic. It has some clunky dialogue and some of the Tasks (like the broom race and the apparating aim thingie) don't quite hold one's attention. But even those tasks are used by Bern not as stop-the-story, here's-some-action filler but as set pieces on which to play out characterizations, like using the duels to build up the grudge match between Harry and Krum, or using the Broom race to open up dialogue and background for Fleur's even increasing respect for Harry.

4.5 (since I haven't voted on it yet), which I would bump up to a 5 well before I would bump it down to a 4.

Cheers!