Title: Harry Potter and the Ticket Backwards
Author: viciousmouse
Rating: General Audiences
Pairing: None (gen)
Length: 78,518 words, complete
Library category: General
Summary: When the most powerful magics collide due to Harry Potter's desperate, last sacrifice, he creates for himself a chance to fix up the wrongs in his world. Yet going back in time isn't everything that he expected: Voldemort is a threat, but it is Harry himself who no longer fits comfortably in the world. Time has changed him, he just hasn't yet figured out how.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23976052/chapters/57669997

This is the first story in a series which is currently in its 4th instalment (corresponding to Harry's 4th year at Hogwarts). It is a time-travel do-over fic using the "Harry's memories go back in time" mechanism - no physical time travel. The divergence point is DH when Harry goes into the forest to face Voldemort, so we have a Harry who is well ahead of his 11-year-old peers but who is far from the full package, magically speaking.

I have finished reading this first instalment but have not yet read the later entries.

The fic's virtues are: (i) competent and error-free technical writing, (ii) a realistic take on do-over time travel where Harry faces challenges due to making errors, unintentional changes, inability to remember how things went the first time around etc., and simply as a result of the fact that his 17-year-old self is different in character to his 11-year-old self, (iii) a largely canonical Harry who matches his 17-year-old self, rather than Auror Harry or similar, which is what you usually see in these fics.

The fic's flaws are: (i) sometimes the author is so committed to the idea of creating difficulties for Harry that it veers out of realism - Harry's future knowledge is so useless that the fic begins to resemble a 7-year AU retelling of Hogwarts with a more driven, talented Harry rather than a time travel story, (ii) AO3!Harry, which is to say he's a bit dumber than his canon counterpart (though the fic covers a character arc of him getting smarter), and less emotionally and mentally resilient than his canon counterpart.

My fuller review which I left on the fic, with some spoilers:

Spoiler

Moment to moment, I have enjoyed the fic for the way it undermines and deconstructs common time travel tropes. Harry doesn't remember every detail of his life and forgets things. He wants a pensieve to address that problem but can't get one off the shelf. He is more mature than his friends and their dynamic cannot be recreated. He makes mistakes which have consequences. All these are nice "Ha! Gotcha!" moments which mock bad fandom tropes and conventions and I do enjoy them.

As a fan of competent, talented Harry, I also enjoy the focus in the fic on Harry's magical progression. The struggle to find Occlumency teaching materials was well done and paid off nicely at the end with a real sense of accomplishment and a satisfying conclusion in Harry making progress (though it is still a bit odd that it was necessary at all in a fic which otherwise attempts to follow canon, given Harry's DH mastery of occlumency when digging Dobby's grave). I also enjoy, in principle, Harry realising he needs a deeper base in magical theory and seeking to address that on his second run.

However, it does feel like you have missed a trick slightly there by having the theory have no discernible connection to practical spellwork. In canon, I think it's fairly clear that the more a person understands the theory of magic, and of a particular spell, the better they become at casting that spell. It's not something you have to actively think about when casting, but if the knowledge is in your mind somewhere, it underpins spellcasting success. Hermione is consistently shown picking up spells quicker than Harry, and being able to cast advanced spells that he cannot, and the reason for her ability to do so is the fact that she has read and understood the theory. So it's strange that Harry's practical spellwork grades and his theory grades are so dramatically misaligned. Especially because if theory has so little impact on practical spellwork, it raises the question of why bother learning it at all, and why Harry feels so motivated to improve his.

Nonetheless, the magical progression stuff hits my guilty pleasure buttons and I have enjoyed it a lot. In particular I do enjoy the time travel deconstruction whereby Harry does not wipe the floor academically with all the 11-year-olds, because getting good grades is just as much about putting extra effort into essays etc. as it is having the knowledge in your head. If Harry has advanced knowledge but doesn't put the effort in to show it by going above and beyond in his written work, he won't get the top grades.

The one other comment I have regarding the moment-to-moment stuff is that Harry, as a 17-year-old, should probably find his 11-year-old friends a lot more annoying. This is the one area where the fic attempts a bit of deconstruction, by noting how mature Harry is in comparison, but ultimately just follows the fanon trope of the adult time traveller spending all their time hanging out with immature children. I think it is accurate that Harry would want to try to recreate his friendships, but I think there probably should have been an earlier failure point where it just doesn't work because he's so different to them mentally, and he would then have been drawn to spending more time with the older students.

Moment-to-moment stuff aside, I feel like where the fic falls down is in the bigger picture stuff. In particular, the fic rather fails to answer the question of why any of this moment-to-moment stuff is happening at all. Why is Harry just going through his Hogwarts years again? Why is he focusing so heavily on school grades and making friends with 11-year-olds? In short, why is Harry so passive? He is an adult, not a child, and he came back in time not to give himself a better life but to destroy Voldemort and save lives. The King's Cross scene showed a Harry on a mission, but the moment he arrived back in time, your Harry seems to have just defaulted to the idea of going through Hogwarts and recreating his life, without ever thinking about just skipping all that and using his adult knowledge and abilities to just take Voldemort down early. This is an odd, immediate 180 degree turn in his reason for coming back in time.

Really, although I do enjoy the deconstruction of making things more difficult, all this should be a lot easier for him. I think you have gone so far into deconstruction of the ease of time-travel victories, that you have come out the other side and into a different set of time travel tropes: going back in time and just forgetting about doing anything using your future knowledge and just doing "Hogwarts only better this time". Basically it's less of a time travel fic and more of a retelling of Hogwarts with a more competent, ambitious Harry.

But it should not really be anywhere near as difficult to get stuff done as the fic has made it. He knows where most of the horcruxes are and should be able to retrieve a good number of them (and it is odd that the only one you have him attempt to get is the Gaunt ring, when that is the one he had no involvement in, the first time around). He knows where the basilisk is and he knows that a cock's crow kills them instantly, so he should be able to obtain basilisk venom easily enough. A lot of victories are quite achievable at this stage but instead Harry is just sitting around. He seems to have defaulted to the idea of letting Voldemort regain a body and restart the war, which is a very strange decision indeed, as if the horcruxes can all be destroyed before Voldemort regains a body then that's game over, Voldemort is dead without any war.

The most strange decision of all, however, is his not once even considering the concept of just telling Dumbledore everything and letting Dumbledore do the heavy lifting. This is what all time travel fics must address. Armed with Harry's future knowledge, Dumbledore could have Voldemort dead within 24 hours. That is such a powerful, efficient, and obvious means of victory that it really does need to be explained why the time travelling character insists on going alone. Most fics do it by having Dumbledore be evil, and therefore another antagonist to be defeated rather than a source of aid. But your fic has kept the canonically good Dumbledore, and not only that, but kept Harry's fundamental good will, faith and trust in his character. So Harry's failure to seek out his help is a massive hole.

Ultimately, the obvious, out-of-story answer to all this is "If Harry did those things, there would be no story, or at least nothing more than a one-shot speed run victory". But I think there needs to be better in-story reasons for why that speed run victory is not possible. Because at the moment the only reason seems to be that Harry is so dumb that it hasn't occurred to him, which really does a great disservice to his character.

 

I've read the first three, and part of the fourth, but I stopped reading the updates. It's not bad at all, but I just lost interest. I remember liking how the author portrayed some canon characters, but nothing else in particular stands out. I'd have to do a reread to come up with any specific criticism or compliments, so I won't be giving it a score. Still, I'd recommend that any fans of time travel give it a read, because it's definitely better than a lot of its competition.

 

I am only 5 chapters in and might drop it, if it doesn't get better in the next 5. My English isn't exactly perfect so I can't comment on the technical quality, besides that I didn't notice anything wrong. I can say however that the whole thing is Very descriptive. Most things are explained and told rather than shown. Harry also seems very out of character. For example the fic goes into great detail how harry can't recreate his last live and how he can't be sure that Sirius will get the daily prophet that will lead to him escaping, but at the same time seems resolved to do nothing about it besides trying not to change the events to much?
But at least it's not a complete canon rehash.

My biggest problem so far is that the fic goes all in on the magical trunk trope. By the end of chapter five he builds himself a bedroom inside of it.

Will rate it later, once I have read another couple of chapters. currently it's not looking very promising.

 

So, I read this a while back, forgot it, then read it again over the last few days.

over all it’s fine, probably on par with the perfectly normal series. It’s readable but has moments where you just think to yourself ‘really?’ It’s in fourth year now (just passed the Yule ball) and without spoiling too much this might be the last part. In typical time-travel fashion Harry is speed running the Horcruxes and getting more OP as time passes. 3/5 decent time waster.

 

This is pretty mediocre. Not much happening conflict-wise. Leaving you all with this gem:

 

You've got to love it when an 11 year old can make a grown dark wizard feel insecure just by existing.

 

Still in first year with this, but I'm really struggling to enjoy it even as a whore for Peggy Sue fics. (There were *two* diagon alley shopping trips. Heresy! )

The majority of the word count is just Harry rationalising his own behaviour as an obvious authorial mouthpiece. Lots of time saying what he's going to do and why, very little focus on actually showing the events unfolding.

Pivotal moments like the first classes are being slipped over, and the approach to every canon scene so far has been to avoid it or immediately cut in to de-escalate.

Which is accurate to how a character in this situation would probably behave irl, but this is a story. Neutering every conflict does not entertainment make.

3/5 so far. Could potentially go either way.

 

More a personal grape than the real reflection of the story but I just couldn't get into it. For starters, I find Harry's thought process bizarre and childish at times, at others, autistic. Everything in it seems to be there for the sole purpose to prospectively make audience be okay with plot-making scenes not being as plot and rather being as Harry which makes no sense to me because of the lack of the growth - he is this one steady spine of thoughts and whatever.

Harry's speech patters annoy me to the point it took me over a week to get done with it, and I don't think I will ever be picking it up again. I cannot pinpoint exactly what it is that make only him speaking turn these few hairs I've left up, but whatever the author is trying, it doesn't work for me.

Were I to retell someone this story, it would sound a perfectly fine piece of driven and dedicated Harry sort of power fic but as far as I am concerned the writing just isn't catching up with ideas, no matter it's technically perfectly fine.

All in all, very skimmable, and when you arrive at scenes where you'd want something to happen, you end up disappointed. Or at least I did.

I give it 2/5 but I can see it mostly reflects inner disagreements, and I feel the objective score would rather be 3/5 but no more.

 

It’s not bad. I’m at the Harry - Sirius meeting and it has the fandom cliches Sirius calling HP, ‘James’, ‘pup’. The author isn’t great at emo scenes. I’m skimming past it. It does feel like I’m still waiting for something to happen.

 

Just caught up to the most recent update and... the fic is a lot.

I think a reasonable amount of the wordbuilding is fairly clever, and the plot is likewise presented in a light that twists what is essentially a canon rehash into something that is surprisingly engaging. The prose is unobtrusive enough as well, and while the characterisation can be frustrating at times, I've sat through far worse.

Harry's attempts at machinations would be fun if they weren't such a slow work in progress, which I appreciate on some level, and it helps ease the reader from canon post-DH!Harry into something more akin to a fanon Slytherin!Harry. I just wish the process wasn't so goddamned long.

A lot of the internal struggle (esp in 3rd year) felt a bit... melodramatic, but looking back it makes enough sense that I can't really complain. The most glaring weakness to me is probably the glacial pace at which things move, which imho is largely caused by a gratuitous inclusion of various details that probably aren't super relevant. (I've yet to figure out why Crow exists at all, for example.)

Would like to point out that this fic handled romance in a same-body time-travel context very well. Reading the hints at the background schoolyard crushes through Harry's rather oblivious pov was a breath of fresh air as compared to other fics that try to pretend that 14 yr olds can experience actual romantic sentiments.

All in all, I liked it quite a bit. 3.5/5, rounding down for now, but I might round up depending on how things resolve later in the story.

 

I'm going to be generous and give this 4/5 rather than 3/5 as I am tempted to.

Part of my reasoning for this is that I have been reading it since the first part came out and now three completed parts later I've grown fond of it over time due to the weekly updates making it a part of my weekend (though it's no longer updating regularly as of the fifth part that's not such a problem because the fourth part kind of resolves... everything, so I don't blame the author for being a little stuck on where to take Harry from here).

While the emotional characterisation/relationships were very dry and clinical at the start, the author took on board the concrit in the comments and managed to make a very believable friendship/brotherhood between Harry and Percy as well as Fred and George, he's unfortunately more distant from Hermione and especially Ron later on in the series even if they still remain friends, but that's to be expected considering he was 17 before he came back.
I think the bond with Sirius was lacking in places, especially at the start, but it kind of grew on me, especially during the section where Harry is trying to figure out how to cast the Fidelius charm on grimmauld place and Sirius is giving him tips (the secret won't stay in Sirius' soul because he's too close to it/too much a part of it), the explanation of magic and the cuteness of Sirius and Harry awkwardly trying to learn how to be family to each other was really nice.
I also found the subplot with Sirius' mental health being initially worse in this world due to not having a goal for a long time (harry has pettigrew-as-scabbers captured and is waiting for reasons he won't tell Sirius - he wants Pettigrew to revive Voldemort so he can kill the main soul piece in 4th year) and then Harry has to deal with the fallout for that choice and try and care for his very mentally ill godfather, which in a way works out better for the long term because Sirius actually gets to be damaged instead of repressing it as he did in canon, which helps him heal more I think.

Regarding the - I'm taking voldemort down in 4th year - part of the plan.
- I can understand wanting him to solve everything earlier at 11. But realistically, 11 year old harry was not a magical match for Voldemort and couldn't keep him contained after killing Quirrell.
- His plan in second year was to take the diary from Ginny's bag before it possessed anyone and that was a really clever plan! It was the only easy non-suspect way of getting the diary from Lucius at a time when he knew where it would be and if it had worked no one would've been possessed that year, the fact it goes wrong on him despite how much forethought he put into getting that horcruxe is part of what made the plot interesting! And later, the reason he doesn't kill the basilisk when it's roaming around is because even with the basilisk dead the possessed person would still be possessed and he couldn't have an unknown body run by a teenage Tom Riddle left free to do whatever.
- 3rd year a lot of things go wrong because he's planning too far ahead, taking too much on at once and not letting anyone help him.
His work and study obsession in the previous two years believably lets him secure the use of a timeturner, he gets in contact with Sirius early and squirrels him away to safety, he's planning to become close to Remus, he captures pettigrew/scabbers so he can't do any harm, he's getting great grades and he stays on schedule destroying the locket horcruxe now he has access to grimmauld place and his plan is a good one, a solid one. But third year is also the year where he hits his limits, the changes he's made to keep Sirius safe end up leaving him free to brood on his trauma and stay as a dog all the time and the choice to keep him ignorant for his own good causes them to start arguing more and more until they're completely in conflict at the end of the year, Remus doesn't accept his overtures or attempts to form a relationship and Harry is both hurt and confused by this apparent indifference, and the reality is being made clear by the writing that people aren't just pawns in Harry's plan and just because he has a vision of how to make things work out for the best doesn't mean everyone else will be on board or act like he'd expect based their versions from the first timeline, and it's really clever actually because in 4th year he starts accepting help and support much more as a result of the realisations he comes to at the end of third year after literally collapsing from stress in front of the weasley twins.
-4th year is honestly really satisfying because it's finally all coming together, the last three years of work culminating and he's coping and adapting to the changes that are happening as a result of the butterfly effect much better. While relationship writing isn't the authors' strong point, it's written in a way that makes sense, of course his friendships are taking a backseat he's trying to get ready to face off with a dark lord so they never have to, but even then, the support from the weasley twins and Percy and his lawyer, his godfather, crookshanks, Kreacher and crow, all feel really fulfilling especially because that support was Earned through the previous parts of the story. The ending was very dramatic, very cathartic and very fun.
Harry deals with everything himself, and he shouldn't have had to, he never should've had to, but he did because it was better than risking anybody else and he's happy with it. It's both bittersweet and not.

Why he didn't tell Dumbledore:
It's true that this is a bit of a plot hole, but I think this is kind of covered by the two main characteristics of this Harry.
- Dumbledore died in front of Harry in the last timeline, Harry watched this man he respected torture himself to tears with a potion that didn't actually earn them a horcruxe and then watched while hidden under his invisibility cloak as he let himself be killed. That's traumatic and it's a trauma Harry of the first timeline got used to, Cedric died, Sirius died, Dobby died, Dumbledore died, Remus died, Moody died, people Harry never met died, Hermione lost her parents and Ron lost two brothers, Hermione had the word mudblood carved into her skin and Ron had scars from brain tentacles. And then Harry died. Like he was always supposed to.
Harry doesn't want to let anybody else risk themselves fighting Voldemort, it's always going to be down to the two of them in the end and that means anyone getting hurt before that is unnecessary collateral that Harry feels a duty to prevent. And maybe that's not right but it's clearly illustrated that that's how this Harry thinks of the conflict.
- Harry has trust issues. These aren't resolved until the end of third year when he finally decides to let people help and be there for him in his quest. Even going so far as to tell the twins about the future he knows. I think he especially has trust issues with adults, maybe because he was kept in the dark for so long with the order and then later with the fact he's a horcruxe, maybe because Dumbledore made him watch as he was murdered without telling him before the mission that he was going to be tagging along for Dumbledore's suicide. I think he wanted to be in control of things and he didn't trust Dumbledore not to try and protect or shelter him as he did in the last timeline, I think he didn't trust Dumbledore to let him have input in the decisions or to let him make the big decisions for how this would go.

This fic has its flaws but the plot isn't one of them.

 

The "Keeping It A Secret" trope for the time-traveling premise is the necessary brown paper bag over the Firewhisky. This fic is basically a Cathartic Fix-It wearing the trench coat of a Peggy Sue. The driving motivation of the first couple of parts of the story to keep everything the same to recreate the Graveyard scene, and it seems like lunacy until you accept the meta-purpose, which is to get Harry to school to redo every thing he did in the original timeline, but optimized.

This is where I see the appeal of the story, where it bothers other people with the unscratchable itch.

The character choices are illogical from the greater picture of "fixing canon", but makes sense from the perspective that the story wants to fix the character relationships, within reasonable bounds of feasible personality/character divergence. That's the "Fix It" of this Fix It fic.

Harry builds a less antagonistic relationship with Aunt Petunia, who doesn't love Harry like Petunia Evans-Verres () of HPMOR, but isn't the obstacle to getting on with his life like she is in the OG timeline. He expands his friend group, sympathizes with Kreacher, spends more time with Sirius, avoids relationship defining confrontation moments that create negative impressions of him in potentially hostile characters. Up to and including Bellatrix Lestrange.

As it's already been pointed out, if Harry did the Truly Optimal thing, this story wouldn't exist.

This story exists as emotional decompression. It has some low moments but you know Harry's going to level up in power in the end and beat the baddie, with the friends he made along the way standing by his side when he hits the high point.

The writing was above average - good mix of prose and dialogue that put in the work to set the scene with imagery instead of going the typical fanfic shortcutting route of "Harry went to the dungeons" for each new scene change. I enjoyed how the initial chapter set the scene and retained the feel and mood of the King's Cross chapter from the book. There were small drops like that showed the author read the book, which is a rarer gift than you'd think. (Read too many fics where authors quote movie dialogue word for word, including Kloves!Hermione and Kloves!DumbRon and you develop an aversion to it.)

The characters were slightly off-model, as necessary for writing the "old relationships but better" version for this story. Everyone was slightly more reasonable and rational, which you will either love or hate. It certainly leads to Harry spending a long time rationalizing why he needs to repeat the stations of canon and stressing so hard he gives himself an ulcer.

Your mileage may vary on how much entertainment value you place on main aspects of this fic: emotional catharsis and slow but steady power grinding.

3.5/5.

 

I made it as far as chapter 7 before giving up. Large sections were just getting skimmed over leading up to that. I didn't find this Harry enjoyable, let alone his Uber magical trunk and studying sessions when he wasn't obsessing over a pensive.

3/5 to be generous but in actuality I'm leaning closer to a 2/5.

 

I’ll probably write a longer review later, but this will do for now.
In terms of the niche it fills, this is probably the best fix-it story I’ve read. There’s unique character growth across the whole series, Harry is at no point drastically overpowered or omniscient, and the author does a great job of creating new problems that would arise when trying to mess with the timeline. Giving Harry a deadline of the third task has been done before, but I’ve never read a fox that really addresses the pressure that only having 3 and a half years would allow. I’ve re-read this series multiple times, and think it’s certainly worthy of the library.
4.5/5 rounded down as a general fic, and 5/5 as a time travel/fix-it story.