Title: Slippery People
Author: neymovirne
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Mystery
Status: Complete
Library Category: General Fics
Pairings: none
Summary: Just when Harry stopped wishing for his parents to magically come back from the dead and whisk him away from the Dursleys, they did. Sort of. If only things were as simple as in his daydreams.
A Harry in Slytherin story.

Link: FanFiction.Net /AO3

Review: I saw a recommendation for this, and I gave it a chance despite the overtagging (on AO3) and the very awkward introduction. And I'm glad, because it was ultimately a really good fic. Really unfortunate that it's hidden behind such red flags.

While the author doesn't tag it as a mystery, I think it's a good category for it, a significant part of this fic is about how we ended in the pretty absurd WBWL situation with Potters living well, cocky brother and Harry dumped at Duresley's. The author manages to do what I rarely see among fic writers and shows the ability to layer hints and make things progressively more obvious for the reader so that they can catch up to answers at different points until they are spoonfed an answer if they failed to guess it to this point.

Another strong point is the character writing, the characters have clear voices and the dialogues are engaging. Which is very important, because this fic is very dialogue heavy. There isn't that much in terms of action and magic, which is for some parts unfortunate (when we see glimpses at the word they are pretty good), and on some fortunate (to which I will get in a moment).

Despite being branded as canon divergence, the fic generally falls into some fanon pitfalls. Generalising of "Dark Lord" title and blood quills, cheapening of shield charm, and when we actually see Harry learn a spell it's all willpower. On the other hand, in avoidance of clichés we have a nice part about progress in magic and how artefacts are often valuable because of their history and not their magical potency, modern magicians being potentially able to create much more skilful enchantments.

Another thing that annoyed me was reusing canon phrases/situations out of their original context. Like Pettigrew dropping "You are a wizard, Harry" or Harry doing accidental B&B floo-in because of mispronouncing and overhearing important plot points.

As can be seen in tags, the fic covers only the first year, but it's a complete story, though to finish it off nicely they author needed to resort to a bit of a plot device.

The review looks a bit complain-y on my part, but that's just my personality. Ultimately it's an engaging story, and one I feel is worth recommending. 7/10 for me, so four stars by the DLP metrics.

 

I'm really liking this so far. Harry is the straight man, and Adam is the quintessential Dark Lord Potter in miniature, viewed from another perspective. It's great. The foreshadowing is about as subtle as a mallet to the face, but it's a lot of fun regardless. I'm only a few chapters in, so I'll hold off on a number for now, but I'm leaning towards 4/5 or so.

 

If I didn't read this thread and came across the story naturally I would of crossed out because of Lilys character alone, however because of the above recommendations I gave it a shot with the knowledge not is all as it seems and it ended up being a worthwhile read.

It is obvious within the first chapters what is happening. I think the author could of been more subtle in certain ways, one of which would of been to not have:

Spoiler

Adam standing over the bed constantly or at least have the figure be more ambiguous. Tone down Adams character a little and ramp up Peters presence and it would of removed the slap to the face that Adam is Voldemort and the author could of spun it more heavily towards Peter Pettigrew having cursed James and Lily instead of Adam literally being the Dark Lord.

There is enough clues throughout the story for the reader to discover the truth that it would of been a better read to tone down the start and not have 'Adam is Voldemort' shoved in your face from the get go.

Not a fan of Dumbledores characterisation at the end but it's a minor part of the story.

Overall pretty decent. 3.5 rounded up.

 

Having finished the fic, my opinion on it has changed. I still think that the premise is unique, and at times the execution was good, but unfortunately after the big twist reveal, the whole thing starts to unravel. It's all wrapped up too quickly and neatly, and worst of all, boringly.

Spoiler

For example, Harry is obliviated at one point. He's handed a rememberall. The rememberall doesn't just let him know that he's forgetting something, it instantly breaks the memory charm, and the dominos all fall without any delay after that. The happy(ish) ending feels completely unearned, because without the main antagonist suddenly becoming incredibly sloppy and incompetent, and without deus ex machinas being able to undo pieces of magic that put people in hospital indefinitely in canon, it wouldn't have worked out.

Adam Potter is easily the best part of this fic, and if the author had wanted to write a sprawling multiseries AU with his character as one of the main centerpieces, I would have been very enthusiastic about that. Unfortunately, it feels like they ran out of steam instead and felt compelled to rush an ending.

I'll give it 3/5. It had a lot of potential, but it shouldn't be in the library.

 

I thought that the potion making part could have been done a bit better. The concept is good, and it being a solution to Harry's and Adam's problems was nice. But how it came about seemed a bit hamfisted, especially Snape going from it being impossible to make to suddenly being able to make it.

On the other hand I did enjoy Millie's character and the interactions with her. Hagrid had some moments to shine as well. And really, all the young children really did seem to act their age which was a nice change of pace from the Hyper-competent Political 11 year olds you usually see in these sorts of fics.

3.5/5 for me.

 

Same.

I'm wondering if I missed some exposition somewhere, since

Spoiler

I'm not really sure the timeline adds up. Lestrange and Crouch went to Azkaban for years, but they're the ones that impersonated Lily and James. Was Pettigrew just carting around baby Adam/Voldemort on his own for years? Why would people think Lily and James were still alive if that was the case? Were their corpses controlled by Voldemort?

Everything in this story that gets set up gets payed off in some fashion, even if it's not always for the good of the story.

Spoiler

The Longbottom's getting cured did not really add to the story. It lets them have their moment confronting Lestrange and Crouch, but that's not really adding to the story.

Decent story. 3.5 sounds right, rounding up.