This got updated and I have to say, I'm disappointed.

The author seems hell bent on getting manipulative evil dumbledore going which is ruining a perfectly good story. Say that dumbledore is more reactive than pro-active if you want to give Harry a reason to go out and do shit and leave it at that. God damn.

 

I honestly think that the author is going for canon Dumbledore, but harry is getting so corrupted with his rituals (and so paranoid/overly suspecious) that he is seeing conspiracies and shady plans where there aren't any. I'm also pretty sure that his "remove horcrux" plan backfiredand it fully merged with him, further fueling his paranoia and wierd mindtwists as he slowly becomes more and more like Voldemort. And I would not be surprised if the final is him realising this, and changing for the better by the power of love (as he unlike Voldemort is capable of love). Althought the author really needs to get better at romance if this is the plan, because I don't see the love. I only see a twisted mind being obsessed.

 

It could go both ways I guess. The author seems to have a bit of difficult in separating his own voice from Harry's, so either Dumbledore is twirling his evil moustache as he plots Harry's death or Harry is just an unreliable protagonist, blinded by both his and Salazar's prejudice against Dumbledore.

 

I seriously doubt this story is intended to have any kind of happy ending. It's called Cadmean Victory for a reason. It's one of the reasons I've mostly avoided it. It's a pretty obvious 'descent into darkness' story with no light at the end of the tunnel and that's not really my bag.

 

95% sure he put a horcrux in his wand, so at least he's immortal

 

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11446957/36/A-Cadmean-Victory

I'm not sure how to interpret this, but I'm hoping that the next one is not called the same.

As for the latest update, we're finally going to see whether Harry's perception of Dumbledore is true or not. I really hope it is not.

 

Harry will only truly lose if Fleur dies and I don´t see the author killing off Fleur.

Cadmean Victory or Pyrrhic victory means destruction, yes.

But Pyrrhus also went head to head, outnumbered and won against the Romans and Carthaginians(Voldemort and Dumbledor if you wish to do parallels xD). In the end he had to go back to Epirus since he hadn´t infinite manpower but he lived and took the kingship of Macedon.

In this case the kingship is what we see in the Mirror of Erised

Spoiler

a family with Fleur.

KrzaQ it was the same name but the story gets better. Fourth year was rushed by the author and he/she deleted some chapters.


And yes I am a fan of Pyrrhus .

 

RIP my favorite character.

 

Spoiler

Slytherin's portrait.

 

Well, Harry has already lost Dobby and now the Slytherin Portrait. A Cadmean Victory doesn't mean that he has to lose "everything." It just means a victory at a large personal cost. Harry is already starting to pay that.

My guess is that Katie might eventually get it too.

 

I haven't checked this thread in a while. Last time I looked it had drifted into a discussion about DLP rating standards.

About time I posted on it though.

I'm far enough through writing the first draft to consider going and back and smoothing out all the rough bits in the rewrite I mentioned I'd do a few months back. I was hoping you guys would let me know how you felt about the actual writing style itself. It's a brand new one for me and this story is its test run.

Of course any and all other concrit is appreciated too

KrzaQ If I split and rename them all it's going to cause confusion, so I decided against it.

 

I'm actually really enjoying this, the last chapter (70) especially was pretty good. The entire way Dumbledore is handled is a pretty big turn off but that plagues so much of fanfiction that I've learned to put up with it. Apart from that I'm pretty pleased with it as a whole though. It's a more than decently written rapidly updated, long, H/F fic though so it's pretty hard to go wrong for me.

It's not perfect but it was more than worth my time reading and I can see myself reading it again when it's finished.

Honestly if the whole Dumbledore thing slowly took a 180 I could quite seriously rate this a 5, for my own personal enjoyment anyway. It's definitely had some poor/cringey moments from memory but not enough to really hurt my enjoyment as a whole.

EDIT: Oh I do have to admit though that Katie gets on my nerves. Ever since she became childish and clingy I've wanted to gouge my eyes out, frankly I sort of hope she dies at this point. I don't know why she's mentally 12 while everyone else is 16. And the whole thing with bacon that took up like 8 paragraphs of text total, wow.

 

If you're looking for feedback on the writing, consider posting the next chapter in the wba forum before posting to FFN.

We mostly look at the story as a reader in these threads with minimal writing critique beyond whether it's good/readable enough.

 

With respect to the latest chapter, Harry's decision feels a bit odd. What is the actual value of the Chamber of Secrets, absent the portrait of Slytherin? It's just a big empty room, useful for practising spells and getting some privacy, but Hogwarts is full of spare rooms. Not to mention Harry also has the Room of Requirement.

It seems to me that the portrait's value far exceeds that of the Chamber, so it's odd for Harry to sacrifice the more valuable thing for the less valuable one.

I mean, if it's just about keeping Voldemort out of the castle, then the solution seems to be to take everything valuable out of the Chamber then collapse it.

Thematically it works because this is the right point in the story for Harry to lose his mentor. But I think it needs a bit more justification... maybe add some value to the Chamber that makes it worth it.

 

I assumed it was just this.

Well you can't really collapse something that big, wouldn't the school fall into a sink hole? But yeah maybe something like that could have worked. Tbh I don't understand why some kind of extra ward couldn't have been added on top of the existing one to block apparition entirely, surely not every anti apparition area has been built upon sacrifice.

Perhaps this is the main reason for it, I'm sure the author could come up with alternatives if they chose. But even if slightly forced I think it was a good thing for the story as a whole.

 

Got to remember that the chamber is also Slytherins legacy; I doubt he wants to see it destroyed. The portrait never seemed quite happy in his existence either. For all he knows Harry could die, and he gets woken up and bothered by Voldemort for all eternity.

Nothing left to teach Harry, his friends portraits don't seem to exist, and Harry could die at any moment.

It might have been a sacrifice for Harry, but it seemed to me that the portrait kind of wanted it.