On one hand, this story pretty much avoids all the mocked pitfalls of 5th year fanfics. There's no bashing, characters are canon-like and sympathetic, no one is twisted into a dumb charicature and the new characters (new in the sense of taking a blank slate canon character and writing an OC under its name) neither replace nor trivilize the original cast. Neville and Ron take a level in badass. Ron is a steadfast friend. There's no trace of flat manipulative Dumbledore, he's a great mentor and guide. The protagonist is competent and powerful but without veering into ridiculous territory--just a very smoothly executed "young Dumbledore" arc.

The author has seemingly delivered a fic that could serve as a template gold standard for how all those tropes "should" be executed. This is the correct way to write Harry because whiny emo teenage lordlings are so 2005. This is the correct way to write Dumbledore because evil Dumbledore twinkling his manipulations at Harry has been done to death and no one wants to read it ever again. This is the correct way to write Ron because Ron the jealous git who throws bitchfits and betrays Harry because he wants to be famous too has been taken apart in a hundred threads on this website.

And yet... I'm left with the impression that in making the effort to toe every line, the author left themselves very little room to manouver, little room in which to write something a bit out there, something that brushes against those much-derided tropes, something that takes a risk in order to possibly deliver an interesting take on a particular idea. On a meta level, this is just a consequence of this being a Potterverse fanfic: every version worth reading has already been done. There is nothing in this story that hasn't shown up in another, because its strength lies in taking all those elements in their "correct" versions and putting them together into a single story. You might have read a fic before that had a great Dumbledore but bashed Ron. Or maybe Harry was awesome, but Dumbledore went full Greater Good. Or Ron was well-written but was brushed aside by the author's favored OCs.

The final product is a story that approaches all the tropes in the "correct", proscribed manner but as a result doesn't have the X factor that makes it stand out. It's a perfect recommendation for someone new to HP fanfic, but I was rather bored in the end. It should go without saying that this take is subjective in the extreme. Every element of this story is good. It's well-done. But I found little excitement in it. There are stories with highs and lows that stick with me. This story has no high or lows. Everything is perfectly even.

If I read it 10 years ago, I'd probably rate it 4.5 or 5. Today, I'm gonna go with 3.5 (rounded up to 4 for the purposes of DLP's rating system).

 

I want to preface this review by saying I didn’t realize this story was pre-finished and updating almost daily, and I had written most of this review by around chapter 35. I also did quit the story once at around chapter 10 or 12 because it was quite dull. I did eventually pick it back up after reading a few other stories, and by the time I was caught up, I only had to wait one day for the final 3 chapters to come out (which was today.) That being said, my feelings didn’t really change that much.

It’s a good story, but underwhelming and ultimately disappointing.

It starts off strong. The secret friend trope is one of my favorites, but it basically died right away. The story showed promise that it wasn’t just going to follow the stations of canon, like when the scarcrux got killed early. And it was very light on the usual cliches, which was good too, but it does falter a bit under the weight of its own ambition. It has severe pacing issues, which in turn affects the timeline, and more to the point, how old these characters actually are. There’s about 3 years worth of content in the first 4 months, and then the remainder of the horcrux hunt is arbitrarily extended to the end of the school year (and I think the final battle happened early anyways).

Ultimately, there felt like there was a lot of filler content, to the point where my praise about avoiding the stations of canon is rescinded. There’s some scenes early on that are unnecessary, like there’s scenes about occulency which are ultimately null because of the scarcrux getting killed, and Harry still somehow manages to get into the blood quill detention. But later on, like after chapter 20 or so, I think the author was starting to get burned out, and what felt like a fleshed out story felt more like a series of highlights, where the authors is just trying to get to the important scenes, but can’t think of anything to do for the connecting scenes (something I can relate to), so then were back to the stations, like you’ve got quidditch scenes that are completely irrelevant, the slug club, snapes backstory, stuff with nagini, an obviously imperiused minister. A lot of that felt very lazy, yet the chapters were still approaching 10k words despite the race to the finish. So despite approaching 400k words with 3 years worth of content, there's a lot of fat that could've been trimmed or streamlined.

The best part of the story, by far, is Dumbledore. With the scarcrux dealt with, that leaves a whole year of working together, and I really liked most of their scenes. I think my favorite is probably Godric’s Hollow. But I will say that I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Deathly Hallows plot (other than Harry was actually going to fight Voldemort with all 3 which I haven’t seen often, but was ultimately pointless). It felt like the author did the bare minimum, like we get the tale of the three brothers and like 2 seconds later Dumbledore gets disarmed, and there really wasn’t an attempt to subvert that at all and the reader realizes we’re going to be going through the motions for awhile to get to that inevitable conclusion which is mostly a nothingburger. Remember that time in the ancient past where Astoria wasn't default cursed in every other story?

Onto my least favorite part of the fic, and that’s Astoria. I liked her at the start, but it felt like Daphne was getting a lot more screentime, and therefore was more interesting, at least for what, the first 15-20 chapters? I guess the author realized that, because suddenly Harry stopped wanting to learn dark magic, and that was that.

The issue with Astoria is that she’s a third year. She doesn’t know any magic, and predictably, with 5th year Harry being the #1 target, that makes her a gigantic target and a massive liability. So her main purpose, I feel, is to be Harry’s “rock” When the world’s going to shit, she’s there for him. Except, it doesn’t really work for me. She’s not a rock, she’s an anchor, dragging the story down. If she was his beacon while he’s delving too deep into dark magic and stopping him from becoming evil, it’d be something else, but it’s not. Instead we have a third year declaring her undying love for a fifth year, and that’s cringe. In American terms, thats an 8th grader and a 10th grader. Now I know it’s fanfiction and young pairings are kinda standard, but something about the way it’s portrayed here kinda bothers me whereas it didn’t with that other Astoria story. And don't get me started on the most obvious chekhov’s gun of all time. Predictability isn’t necessarily bad, but a story needs suspense, and when the only question is “how many characters is the author going to kill off at the end,” it lacks punch.

The stuff with Daphne and her death felt very anticlimatic. She’s probably my favorite character in HPFF, I’ve written hundreds of ideas with her, yet it didn’t even phase me here. Like, it happens, and that’s basically it. It didn’t seem like the author gave any fucks about it, to the point where I was wondering if she actually made a Horcrux (from Umbridge, perhaps), and why bother making something emotional when she was just going to come back? The funeral scene was alright I guess. I had sort of the same opinion when Dumbledore died, like he’s the greatest wizard in the world, yet basically the only casualty in the final fight, it felt flat for me. I would’ve liked to see a story where Dumbledore actually makes it to the epilogue for once, but not this time (I don’t consider Dumbledore’s death one of those immutable laws of HP fanfiction). I will say that the scene where they used the Stone on Daphne was nice.

Besides all that, the dialogue isn’t particularly good. So many generic filler phrases. “I guess…” “I suppose…” “Makes sense to me…” “Fine by me…”

Overall, it’s still a good story, but I don’t think it’s any better than a ⅘.

 

Overall a really good story but like others I felt like it was just going through it's paces. What were suppose to be high impact scenes lacked a certain gravitas and felt dull, there was always something missing to make a scene truly great.

There was definitely a lot of fat that could of been trimmed, including the entire cursed Greengrass plotline. Why was it even there? I thought the author was going to have the Elder wand get stolen or have Voldemort attack just before they performed the ritual, or something go pear shaped to make it more interesting, but in the end it was 'Hey we got the wand in an easy manner, lets do the ritual, oh hey that plotline is done' with no conflict to it at all beyond where is the wand. Which we as a reader knew exactly where it was all the time.

The whole Hogwarts underground being trained to such a high extent was a bit rushed for story that only covers one year. Prodigies like Harry aside, when school children are killing and defeating inner circle death eaters after less than one year of training it kind of makes a mockery of death eaters and aurors by diminishing their threat level. Big bad death eaters aren't so big and bad when a bunch of school children who only really started training in combat less than a year ago are suddenly defeating/killing you. I kind of felt like the order and aurors took a background to a bunch of school children fighting people who should of been way more powerful than themselves but weren't.

I did overall really enjoy it and it's a breath of fresh air in the current fanfic environment. I'm kind of the opposite of Scott I would of rated this story 3.5 10 years ago but because of the lack of decent stories being released now it's an easy 4/5 for me. A good story that just never quite nailed the impact of certain scenes and ignoring its 390k word count, felt kind of rushed.

 

I also think it's about a 4/5.

One aspect I was disappointed in was the lack of repercussions for Daphne murdering Umbridge. Harry doesn't really seem to struggle with what happened all that much, never really has to face up to being an accomplice to murder.

Same happens with other plot points in the story, too. Okay, Astoria got cured, that really had little to no relevance to the story: Harry didn't have to go to any great lengths to cure her.

I was also disappointed with the school kids apparently being more competent than Aurors and Death Eaters. That trope never fails to irritate me. Aurors are highly trained law enforcement officials, yet they apparently crumble way faster than 15 year olds and take orders from them, too. Always takes me out of a story - in real life, you can hardly get army reservist privates to take orders from younger NCOs, saying anyone gives a shit about a 15 year old kid's orders is ludicrous. Ah well, minor pet peeve.

 

Mostly agree with everyone's opinion.

On the positive, it's complete and very well written. There's no bashing, most cliches are avoided, only one indy rant to the Order members (which doesn't come from Harry himself, to boot), excellent support characters as a whole, and the magic in this is extremely interesting. It might be one of the best Dumbledores I've read, actually, from his voice to his skill to his role to even the magic he described. Definitely the best part of the fic, I think every scene he was in was a boon to the story.

On the negative, there are quite a few annoying contrivances from the start, with Dementors passing Privet Drive's defenses and Order behaving the same despite it and the perfect helper writing him coming from nowhere. They continue with the Scarcrux, Harry 'just so happening' to be present every time a random, pointless attack happens, Astoria's curse 'just so happening' to be caused by a Gaunt, and then it culminates with Voldemort and Bellatrix talking about the cup in front of Harry in barely-veiled words.

Another negative, that ties into and expands upon the first, is how everything goes perfectly for Harry: whatever he does works, whatever his friends do work, everyone relevant becomes a top-tier fighter in a few months time, the romance is as fairy-tale-like as any I've read, and everyone (except Umbridge and Fudge) just naturally comes to follow his line of thinking without any real hiccup. The only exception is Daphne's death, and it has its own issues, since Harry was shown to intercept AKs for other people all the time except this one, and her death conveniently removes the potential conflict of her being into Dark Arts, as well as any issue her mother could have caused. Everything that comes after is so flat and predictable you could say the story itself died with her.

I also object to calling the romance 'slow burn': it's just as smooth as the rest, and it's very obvious from their first time meeting that Astoria is special to him, what with him trusting her from nowhere with everything (which is really ironic considering the first chapter is called Paranoia). He never feels any attraction for anyone else, loses the one he had for Cho, and more generally they behave like a perfect couple from the start even before they are one. It might not be love-at-first-sight per se, but it's close.

There's also quite a few plotlines that are dropped or go nowhere as if the author forgot about them (which usually would be removed when a fic is completely written before being published). Like the Snape/Petunia early reveal, and especially when Harry speaks of it in front of the mini-DEs and even mentions how that would hurt his standing... except it doesn't. Or the many mentions of how he needs to talk to Ginny about the Chamber, only for it to fall flat. Occlumency is another, and I'm probably forgetting many.

All in all, and despite the size of the respective parts, I'd say the bad parts don't outweigh the good ones. It's true that it reminds of the great olds: basically a powerwank where Harry wins the day and gets the girl, with next to no hiccups on the road, but a well-written one that avoids most pitfalls. Solid 4/5, but I can't give 5 to a Romance/Adventure fic where neither romance nor adventure has any real bumps on the way. It's a good story and I think it deserves its place in the library, but it's not thrilling enough to be amazing.

 

Finally finished with this one, and mostly agree with everyone. There's Contrivances, fairy-tale romance, and weird pacing. There are plot lines that might as well be cut out, for all the impact they have. Yet the fabulous harry/Albus relationship, and enjoyable arcs of secondary characters is what kept me engaged, and ultimately, even with all its warts, this is stull my favourite hp ff of 2024.

 

So, after reading that other fic, I had the urge to read another, and went with this one.

At the start, I really enjoyed it, would call it a 4.5/5. But about mid way through that went to a 3.5/5, and by the end more like a 2.5/5. I actually ended up skimming the last 8-10 chapters because I wanted to see what exactly happened, but it was also pretty clear how things would play out.

I wanna echo what all the others have said here. There are a lot of good points about this story, I enjoyed the early interactions with Daphne and Astoria, Harry's relationship with Dumbledore was fantastic. I loved how magic was described, especially dark magic as a negative feedback loop. But as others said, about half way through it just starts feeling like the author is going through the motions. After all the interesting setup, we kinda just end up in standard OOTP with a slight spin about how things are going. There were no real 'surprises'. If there was one way I'd describe it, it's that all the conflict which made the original story tense and interesting was resolved in a 'perfect' way. And everyone was always on the same page and really happy. No one really had an opinion different to the prevailing narrative of the story. Everything they did 'worked'.

I feel like the lesson they learned from HP OOTP was that conflict was dumb and frustrating, and you needed to resolve everything perfectly. Rather, the lessons should have been that dumb illogical conflict is bad, and realistic conflict is good. Ideally stuff that doesn't hinge on characters acting like complete idiots all the time. Like there were some really interesting events like with Daphne and/or Umbridge that had some fascinating moral dimensions which were basically never explored. Or just hand waved away.

 

4/5. Good writing if not anything exceptional, a complete story that has a beginning middle and end, an end that we got to. It’s not a high bar but this is fan fiction.

I don’t regret the time put into reading it, it was an enjoyable ride, that said it lacked greatness.

I feel like this entire story would have been made better if the incredibly contrived romance between 15 year old Harry and 13 year old Astoria had been omitted entirely. Make Daphne’s the deus ex machina that starts the canon divergence.

also if you read it, just stop at the last chapter. The epilogue is the worst most self indulgent epilogue since rowlings book 7. Left a sour taste in my mouth.


But again, all that said I’m giving it a 4/5, worth reading and should be in the library

 

After following the story from the very beginning, I couldn't help but feel more and more disappointed with it as it progressed. So much so that I had to convince myself, after having dropped it, to try to finish it, knowing fully how it would end.

The fic had good qualities, especially ones that are lacking in fics these days. This story had a lot of promise. The writing is consistently good (nothing spectacular, though) in a technical way and the canon tone has been refreshing. Also, it was genuinely engaging at its first stages—although the start was a bit contrived, there were interesting themes going on. Namely, there seemed to be a focus on Harry becoming better at magic, and the exploration of dark magic was something I think was done well. Another point in its favour is that it is complete.

Despite its merits, my opinion of the story diminished considerably because its execution was disappointing at every turn (perhaps because my expectations were high after the first chapters), so I will focus on the causes that made me want to stop reading, that is, what I found the most annoying.

The most annoying thing for me, by far, was the dialogue. It wasn't terribly written, but I remember it getting on my nerves as soon as chapter 4 or 5, because the narration constantly (and very unnecessarily) clarified every emotion or state of mind the characters were going through while talking when it was perfectly clear, and also because the characters said too much. Granted, the author note at the start mentioned there was a lot of dialogue, but the characters either had completely skippable dialogue or overexplained their own dialogue. I do have to say that I think these issues got better as the story progressed. Unfortunately, this gave way to another problem: sometimes the dialogue seemed to take away from what it felt should have been the important parts of a chapter. If Harry was going to Hogsmeade to meet with someone there, I would expect that meeting to be the focal point of the scene, but instead we got the inconsequential yapping of Astoria's friends (whom I'm pretty sure no one cared about) all the way to the meeting, only for said meeting to get handwaved in a single paragraph.

The biggest offender was how every 'disagreement' was treated. Every conflict, whether big or small, follows the same formula, where one character asks something like "Why did you do this [bad thing]" for the other to reply "Actually, I did this because of [reasons]" and, somehow, always get the same reaction: "That's fair/I see your point". Everyone in this story is extremely agreeable, no one is stubborn or uncompromising with their own ideas or actions, with the sole exception of Daphne (or the villains of the story, but for different reasons). At times, it made me wonder if the rest of the characters even had a personality. Apart from agreeableness, everyone except Daphne and the villains also shared a common trait: the irresistible urge to wax poetic about Harry in every dialogue.

Before moving on, I should really give a mention to the worst piece of dialogue in the whole story: Draco's interrogation which, apart from being straight-up terrible, probably suffers from everything mentioned above.

Whatever little conflict there was—since everything else always went right with no complications—always seemed to get resolved in the most boring way possible. Umbridge's murder could have had some interesting consequences, psychological if nothing else, but everyone got over it really quickly. In particular, I expected Harry to struggle with guilt, maybe when talking to Dumbledore, but he never wavered and the whole subplot got forgotten just as quickly (save for one single mention much later on). In fact, Daphne (apparently the only character with a real personality) was the one struggling the most with the issue—not surprisingly, considering the role she played—, to the point where she was starting to act erratically. One had to wonder how she was going to fare, despite the whole Fidelius business. Quite naturally, then, the author decided to eliminate all possible sources of conflict by killing her off. Harry’s own struggles with dark magic were also resolved in the span of a single conversation.

On another note, reading the story on AO3 probably wasn't for the best: since we could see the total number of chapters, it soon became clear that the pacing was going to be an issue. I thought things would progress decently quickly at first, but by chapter 10 I was convinced it was definitely going to be a 5th year story, and thus I was dubious about how Harry's purported growth was going to be handled. My concerns were warranted, I believe. His initial growth basically amounts to two facts: firstly, Voldemort’s soul was blocking Harry’s ability to perform magic correctly, so the story does not quite avoid the "Dumbledore has blocked Harry's power" trope and instead redirects it to the bad guy. Secondly, unlike every other wizard, Harry was not “feeling his magic”, so he was basically sandbagging. Then, when he starts learning from Dumbledore, Harry opens a grand total of zero books to learn complex magic, because it is all about feeling and imagination anyway. It turns out the secret to advanced transfiguration, for instance, is just imagining clearly the end product and guiding one’s magic (which Harry has only just learned to do), something apparently impossible to accomplish for anyone else. Of course, the same is true for every other piece of complex magic Harry learns. Harry’s friends are awed at his skills, shockingly all coming to the very logical conclusion that, despite Harry’s complete inability to explain the secrets behind what he's learning, they wouldn’t be able to do it. The fact that wizards go to school and actually study magic seems lost in this story.

Everyone from the supporting cast had to have their very convenient 'moment', most notably during the final fight (Ron with McLaggen, Neville with Bellatrix, etc.). As pointed out by many, the story is really predictable, but holy was this bad.

The villains were cartoonish and deliberately made stupid (Bellatrix overexplaining her own dialogue when talking about the horcrux was just... surreal). Draco and Nott were especially bad, their motivation for the kidnapping apparently being sexual assault.

The narration was unable to convey emotions. At no point did it make me feel any tension during the rescue mission, and whatever it managed to do when Voldemort arrived on a cliffhanger quickly went away when the Underground members showed no reaction and Fred and George started cracking jokes at him. Speaking of a lack of reaction, it didn't feel like anyone cared all that much about Daphne's death.

The subplot about curing Astoria was all levels of bad. Of course, since at that point you would expect everything to go swimmingly, there is no surprise when saying a random phrase in Parseltongue under the full moon does the job. I guess cursing a whole bloodline was equally as complex, from the looks of it. Astoria recovers really quickly as well, and since remaining frail or not very powerful with magic would be a handicap, she gets the full package recovery. Honorable mention to how the pieces needed were just falling into place without Harry having to do much, including the ability to still speak Parseltongue because of plot reasons.

The rating could have been a 4/5 in the (very) early stages, but after the chore that finishing this was, I can't give it more than a 3/5.