Title: Fighting From the Shadows
Author: bachau
Rating: M
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Status: Complete
Library Category: The Alternates
Pairings: Harry/Fleur, Ron/Daphne, Hermione/V. Krum, Neville/Harry’s OC sister, Dahlia
Summary: When Sirius Black falls through the Veil, Harry Potter follows. Rather than death, he is greeted with a chance to start over fresh and live the life he always dreamed of: with a loving family and no scar on his forehead. But trouble always finds a way to disrupt Harry's goals of peace. (A time-travel/AU fic.)
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14283514/1/Fighting-From-the-Shadows

First off, I want to say that I’m very surprised that I cannot find any mention of this fic or “bachau” on using the site’s search function, so if this has been posted before, then I apologize for doing a bad job of not finding it.

At 121 chapters and over 1 million words, this fic has been a hell of a journey, and I’ve enjoyed nearly every update that popped up in my notifications.

bachau’s writing also improved phenomenally from his or her initial chapters throughout and have come to a masterful end. Although I did not go back and re-read the earlier chapters, bachau said that he or she went back and re-wrote much of it, so the lackluster areas might have disappeared.

Fair warning, Harry’s first few years see him do a lot of stupid things because he is flawed, and impulsive, working on incorrect information but believing that he knows that is going on. It ends up costing him a lot throughout the fic, but he does get better. Harry was very frustrating to read in the early chapters for this reason, but as he grew up, that frustration faded and it became a joy to read. In fact, my initial suspicion was that this fic had been posted but due to these exasperating character flaws, the fic was flamed off the site back in 2023, when it was published. (And again, bachau said that he or she re-wrote a good portion of the fic, so I can imagine that it is a lot easier to stomach than it had been).

One of the things I liked is that bachau consistently turns a lot of traditional fanfic tropes on their head. Ron ending up with Daphne is just one of many. The OC, Dahlia is a very enjoyable character and her interactions with Harry are fun to read.

In this fic, Harry has to learn about the horcruxes by himself and Dumbledore is not the all-knowing wiseman many think he is. The stakes get higher and higher, as the world gets bleaker and bleaker.

In a way, I kind of like the fact that Harry’s meddling, lack of information and impulsiveness have resulted in an objectively, craptastically worse situation than the original books, that he had to pull himself and the rest of the wizarding world out of.

The pairings are organic and I honestly thought that Harry and Fleur weren’t going to get together. Close friends, confidants, coconspirators? Sure. Lovers? That was one hell of a slow burn. Don’t read this fic looking for a Harry/Fleur fic just for the pairing, because nearly a million words to get to it . . . but yeah, it’s a really nice, sweet icing on a very delicious, if enormous, cake.

Here’s hoping you enjoy this completed, well-written time-travel/au fic as much as I did. I personally give it 5/5.

 

I dislike this fic immensely.

Harry is an utter dumbass who manages to get away with everything. There are no real consequences for any action he does. Moreover, he is vastly overpowered and it doesn't feel earned.

Spoiler

He kills Dumbledore, Grindelwald AND duels Voldemort to a stand-still while being one of the dumbest Harry's I've ever come across.

In my eyes, he isn't flawed because his mistakes don't hurt him in any long meaningful way. He should be dead 100x over because of his actions. The only reason he is not is that the author had to make everyone else EVEN dumber around Harry. For example, Voldemort. Oh my god, the whole seventh book was straight up unbelievable and not in a good way. It goes beyond the point of believability on his actions.

What makes me so angry about this fic is I followed it since the beginning. I was waiting for the day Harry kicked himself in the ass with his dumbassary and would learn. He did not. He just became more unbearable. From books six onward, I have been skimming each chapter just to see if it has improved at all. It has not.

This story is a 1-star for me in how much I dislike Harry in it. However, I will give it 2 stars because it isn't horribly written (like technical skills), and because it will be complete. A million words in three years is no easy feat.

 

I'm in compete agreement. It's an extremely frustrating read. Besides the shitty prose and constant repetition as to why he refuses to get to get involved, it simply is a rather stupid premise. Why write a time travel fic where the primary motivation of the protagonist is not go get involved so that you can write a shitty canon rehash. It is beyond stupid. I understand that this doesn't apply to the whole story but at some point it simply became unbearable to hear Harry justify his inaction over and over and over.

1/5.

 

Putting aside the impressive nature of an author writing over 1.5 million words in 4 years (when you add all of their fics together), they also have three announced books on their website for release next year. I'm sure that it's possible for people to write as much as this guy writes, (Brandon Sanderson comes to mind as an example of someone who does) but it surely isn't possible to maintain a high level of quality while doing so (see Brandon Sanderson again), and it's implausible that it was done without heavy AI use in this day and age.

The comments are also interesting, ranging from 'this is the best fanfiction I've read after 10 years in the fandom', to 'your Harry is a retard', which is a lovely to see, but rarely indicative of actual quality.

@Lindsey you review made it unlikely that I would read this fic, but having tried the first chapter, and immediately running into a personification of Death who thinks that horcruxes are an abomination, I'm not going to continue, or leave a rating. That trope always makes me close the tab.

 

Prose is pretty dry and the writing is extremely repetitive, but it's whatever. Still readable enough.

The problem, as Lindsey said, is that this Harry is a teenaged dumbass who never redeems his consistently dogshit decision making.

The first four or five years are just a shitty canon rehash with the author themselves acknowledging they had to bend over backwards to make all of the same events land. (Just why?) Now, shit is finally hitting the fan with Voldemort, and Harry has the gall to be surprised that sitting on his ass for six years didn't work out for him. The amount of time this motherfucker spent fucking off and playing quidditch...

Most other characters are comically useless, choosing the wait and see approach every single time about every single thing. None of the adults are written as competent human beings. They exist to rage-bait Harry with incessant, unrelenting condescension so he can justify his anger and his decision to not utilize his future knowledge in any meaningful way.

I've read nearly a million words of this shit and there's been little to no payoff. Harry remains dumb as a brick. Shit keeps going bad in laughably predictable ways and at the worst possible times (Murphy's law, but annoyingly contrived.) Voldemort is comic book villain levels of stupid, but so is everyone else.

I don't know, man. I'm just... frustrated. This fic is frustration porn.