I think it's only believable if you pretend that fleur as s triwizard champion wouldn't be on even the smallest of equal footing.
Read this recently for the first time, I get the appeal and understand that it created these tropes, but it doesn't hold up well now

 

I just wanted to post and say that I truly loved this story from top to bottom, and was looking forward to the sequel. Hat carries this piece of fiction.

 

Gotta agree with this, except for the whole 'best Harry/Fleur' bit

Whether you like the fic or or not, that we are still talking about it in 2016 is proof that jbern did something right.

Personally, I liked it just fine despite (some huge) flaws. It had that page-turner feeling and I think I finished my first read-through over the course of two days.

Aside from the aforementioned problems with sometimes two dimensional characters and the diffuse mechanism of the HarryJames-mindmelt, I didn't like the present tense narration, though that's just my personal preference. jbern's writing is solid, I'm just conditioned for past tense^^

I'd rate it 2.5/5, maybe 3/5, from today's perspective.

Btw: A lot of people in the ff net comment section seem to really like HJ's interactions with the sorting hat, anybody else think they are mostly over the top and sometimes downright annoying?

Though I would still happily read a sequel...

 

There aren't many decent Harry/Fleur fics, but this is most definitely one of them. Although I don't really like the way James' personality seems to overwhelm Harry. He seems more like an OC to me. Otherwise it's a very enjoyable read, and the hilarious Hat had me cracking up every time.

I'm very disappointed that the planned sequel the author hinted at seems to have been abandoned.

 

It seems it would only be natural when you merge a dominant, extroverted, more mature personality like James, with a rather introverted Harry, that the dominant personality would take control. If you think of it in terms of subconscious group dynamics playing out within Harry's head, it makes a lot of sense. That is not to say you don't see elements of Harry's personality within HJ, his resolve springs to mind.

Anyway for me this is a fantastic read. I along with most people it seems, loved the dialogue and interaction between HJ and Hat, and also the do-over of the Triwizard tournament, which had so much potential but was pretty weak and poorly thought out in canon.

 

4/5 I guess I am being generous but I enjoyed it. Maybe the fact that Harry doesn't falls for the first girl he sees made me rate it high. Or another reason perhaps could be the interaction between Fleur and Harry.
Also just to put it out there is the fact that the author doesn't simply just copy canon plot line. I've seen a lot of writers do that. There were actual changes made to the TriWizard tournament. I am honestly surprised how many authors keep it the same as canon.


There's a lot more but I am on my mobile and can't be bothered writing more. Something that bugged me was HJs interaction with the Gryffindors. The weasley brothers bashing did not really make sense.

 

At this point I think everything has been said about this story and though this post probably won't add anything meaningful to the thread I want to give my two cents about it.

I am a sorry sucker for Harry/Fleur stories and this one is well written, so this is an automatic 3/5 for me. I also really liked the changes to the tournament, something which I, like many people here, felt was underwhelming and misused in canon.

On the other hand, the twins' bashing and harry's OOC-ness, however justified, didn't sit well with me.

All in all, I found it to be a real page turner and didn't feel my time was wasted at all, something I cannot say of the majority of fics I had the misfortune to read, so it's an easy 4.5/5 for me

 

The story had a nice introduction with a decent plot, and Harry/Fleur was done quite well. A lot of characters were OOC though, which is why I'm not completely happy, and the way Dumbledore died was just meh. You don't just strike him down with a killing curse, it is simply not done and justified.
All in all, still good work, I'd give it a 4/5.

 

One criticism I'm seeing a lot is that HJ isn't really like Harry at all, just James in Harry's body. I think it's a little unfair to make that claim though, because canon barely gives us an idea of what James was like other than a from single (likely outlier) scene from Snape's pensieve. Jbern seems to imply that Harry's influence tones down the "glory-houndedness" of James and this seems pretty reasonable.

 

I've read the story three times total now, spread out over the last several years.

Every time I read it I like it a little less. I can't help but feel like the first third of the story is well done, but everything after that is boring and uninspired.

I think it just has to do with the story not aging well. I can't speak for how innovative the story was at the time of its publication, but GoF AU has been done to death so many times now I just can't muster up much enthusiasm for it anymore.

The romance between Harry and Fleur is boring, and I often find myself wanting to stop reading sometime after the Yule ball.

The ending too isn't particularly strong. Everything comes out of left field, like it was suddenly rushed out to print. Dumbledore suddenly being killed, Remus suddenly being killed. It's just lazy.

Furthermore, the subplot with Snape and Sarah Underhill never gets resolved. The author creates an incredibly stomach churning subplot (Snape polyjuicing himself as Sirius and impregnating witches while pretending to be him) and then never resolves it. It's actually insane to me that it's never addressed again, especially after Harry changes the buttons to say "Who is Sarah Underhill?"

The sections with Pronghorn is fairly amusing, and I think that's the biggest issue with the story. Nothing ever really gets more than fairly assuming.

Overall, there are some elements I like but I can't bring myself to rate this higher than a 3/5.

 

I think this fic has actually aged quite well. It's well written, no cringe worth tropes and the romance still seems well done. It's been one of my favorites since i first read it and still is.

 

No cringe-worthy tropes? The story is filled with nothing but cringe-worthy tropes.

 

The romance has not been, in any way, well done.

It isn't even romance for me. It's lust. Two very different things. It's okay to have a few flings here and there, but this just seems too... forced for me to follow.

Not only this, but the plot itself seems to be far too much abrupt and rushed at the end. Perhaps the author didn't have enough time. Or perhaps it was just that he was trying to make up for the chapters before hand filled with dry humor and bland dialogues and scenes.

Okay, I may be rambling now, but there are some somewhat amusing points in the story. But, as someone a post above me mentioned, their just that, somewhat amusing and nothing more. And even those scenes are far and few in between.

Once you look beyond the hat and it's nonsense, there lies a story so horribly filled with over-used and abused plot-devices.

But, I have to admit that after some 7 years after the final publishing of the story, there are tropes that we consider cringe-worthy, and some that are blatantly puke-worthy; like Harry going to Gringotts *eugh*. But in the time that the story was published, it may just be that this story introduced many of the cliches we now hate and loath.

TL;DR: If you're new to the fandom, check it out. It won't hurt as at-least the now cliches have been done better than most other stories out there. If you've already read a couple of fics in the Harry Potter fandom, and thought they were almost exactly ditto-copies of one another, then don't. You won't like the content of the story, but you may just like the writing style.

3/5 for the fact that there is a possibility that lies within the story that the tropes now hated were actually started by it some time ago.

 

Why are we still talking about this practically ancient fic? I mean, there are dozens of other fics that were "good" a decade ago, and we all get it, it's not the fucking amazing gift of God people were begging a sequel for so many years ago. It already has over a hundred pages of people talking about it. Any productive criticism for the fic has probably been said a dozen times by now.

It's aged, it was a thing, get over it.

 

Because people are either just finding it or have something to say about it. Just because something is old doesn't mean people should stop talking about it.

 

What's the time limit on when we should never review a piece of writing again?

 

I've read this a few times since I first discovered my inner H/F seeker.

Likes:
First person is not badly done, so I can let it pass.
Innovative new tasks, I like them all. Especially the Marauder way and how Harry discovers himself as Harry and not HJ.
Harry is enough James to be a player but enough Harry to do things differently, so in all, I like HJ.
Dumbledore is NOT evil, he's flawed, and isn't super manipulative.
Hat, ofc. Politically incorrect, no filters, no holds barred straighttalk like I have with my boys. What's not to love? In fact, if the Hat said 'faggot' a few more times, i'd probably buy it a beer.

Dislikes:
Aimee seems like a plot-filler rather than a legit Champion. She serves as a decent OC in terms of working out the H/F but is meh otherwise.
No fleur in a french maid outfit. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
The whole Weasley arc was confusing to me, how Fred and George went from manipulative pranksters to angsty autistic teen obsessed with revenge. They seemed to get the usual Ron-treatment that HHr shipper-authors go for.
Cedric. Short straw yet again. The hell is he selected for, ffs? He's always shit on as a champion, I think a Champion should be much better,

 

People on FF.net and on DLP have said how innovative TLIL has been. Could anyone tell me what was innovative about it though since I first read it in 2012 after reading copious amounts of H/F and GoF AU's? Thanks

 

Aren't you kind of answering that yourself? You say you read it in 2012 and how you'd already read a bunch like it.

Buuut this was published in in 2007. The reason you've read stories like it is because this one led to those being written in the first place. That'd be why some people call it innovative.