Title: Rogue's Bet
Author: Hufflepunk
Rating: M
Genre: Humor/Friendship
Status: WIP
Library Category: Romance
Pairings: Harry/Daphne (unconfirmed), Ron/Hermione (unconfirmed), Seamus/Lavender, Ginny/Michael Corner
Summary: AU In Seventh year, Harry and Ron make a stupid bet about a couple girls. Fairly light-hearted, fairly explicit, fairly slow paced coming of age story. No bashing, pairings TBD.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12240216/1/Rogue-s-Bet

Thanks to BTT for recommending this in IRC.

In essence, this is a very classic coming-of-age story. It doesn't do anything spectacularly new, but I can count the number of readable fics in this subgenre on one hand, and what it does do it does competently (and occasionally even better than just competently).

While the main pairings are technically unconfirmed, it seems clear where the story is heading (and it's not exactly a spoiler - the premise was laid out in the first chapter).

Characters are basically archtypes, but have depth despite that. There are even a couple really pleasant surprises and laugh-out-loud moments (Vince & Greg's first dialogue, Filch).

Solid, entertaining, good update rate - 4/5.

 

Read the first chapter. The writing is good, I'm definitely sticking with it.

 

Exhibit A:
"Malfoy, you fucking asshole! I'm going to make you pay for my new broom! Then I'm going to shove it up your gaping vagina!"

Exhibit B:
"Captain Planet here decided to smuggle in Devil's Snare!"
"Well, it's safe under the right conditions!"
"Like being 5 miles away, and on fire!"

5/5 right there, folks. Two chapters in, and if not fucked up, rating stays.

 

It's fine for what it is, and is up-front with what it's trying to sell you. Lot of OOC but it warned me right on the tin.

Solid time waster, I've had a few sensible chuckles. This style of fic usually grates on my nerves because the dialogue is nothing but the same relationship gossip or status or people trying to make one another blush, but this story has dodged most of the damage and just kinda flies.

The only thing that I find annoying is there'll be some crass or crude comment or w/e and then someone steps in to remind everyone that it's just a joke and some things if taken literally are NOT OK. Guh. I'm reading fantasy fanfiction to get away from that...

All in all though, I'd say it's more almost recommended than library because it's... not Harry Potter. It's not bad and I've got no beef with alternate version of characters... but for all that I'm enjoying it I'm basically reading about a magical school where everyone just happens to have names from the cast of Harry Potter.

Final verdict: 3/5. Fun, fairly well written... but falls short.

 

I'll give it a 4/5. I think the characterization is good. A realistic approach to what could've been while maintaining the core of their canon selves. The animagus stuff is shit, as per usual. The Daphne stuff is shit, as per usual. The Ron/Hermione is interesting except for the inflated drama. And I find myself liking the idea of Harry and Ginny in this. Which isn't too surprising for a fic that is actually building up her character. All in all it's good at what it is.

Spoiler: I was actually excited at first that Daphne was going to be a werewolf, that would've been interesting. Really feels like the author blew that.

Edit: Also the joke about a diary eating Ginny's soul made me laugh very hard.

 

Read it a month or so back, liked it. The story is pretty much the high school version of Harry Potter, and it works well for what it tries to be. The characters are all more teenager-ified versions of themselves; except for Harry, Voldemort and Crabbe/Goyle, they're all mostly in line with their canon character. Ron, Seamus, Ginny and Draco are the best characterised. I'm also really surprised by how much I liked Michael Corner. I don't remember caring for Corner before, ever.

The story falls flat when it tries for more serious stuff, like whatever the Tom Riddle/Harry memory stuff is supposed to be. The two main romances aren't too bad, but they aren't super great either. Ron/Hermione is a bit too trope-y, and Harry/Daphne has the whole "Harry is intrigued by standoff-ish and unfriendly Daphne because reasons" thing going on. I like Seamus/Lavender and Ginny/Michael better. But the humor is great, the quidditch is fun and the romance is (mostly) fun, so I'll give this a 4/5.

 

I'd probably give this a 3/5, most of the story is quite average with a few interesting moments.

I agree with vlad on this

Not the biggest fan of Harry's characterisation or the scenes with Daphne (even though I love harryxdaphne). Dean, Seamus, Neville, Draco and Susan are all done very well.

In the end, I kinda just want to read about Tom Riddles defence class.

 

What;s wrong with that? I have friends for whom something's a sore point. Maybe an ex, maybe some failure of some sort that is very personal. Why wouldn't I apologize for that? That isn't PC; it's just showing some respect for someone.

Nothing wrong with telling your friends they're retarded, unless they ARE retarded AND sensitive about it. Then you become an ass for not caring.

Or do you have a different idea?

 

There is a difference between a character or two coming into conflict in their reactions to X, and an author hijacking the microphone to let the reader know that he isn't really a bad thinker who believes what character Y just said.

This story leaned more towards the latter from time to time, and I found it off-putting.

 

^That's fair - yes, they did.

Further addition:
IDGAF about Daphne. Fuck her she's dumb, annoying as fuck, and fortunately that's in character for teenagers (do anything to get laid).
Harry/Ginny seems like a much better idea. I hate sappy characters like how Michael Corner is written. One month anniversaries are really really gay.

 

Just started to read this but it reminds mo of something I saw before, here;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hynaL4K0Ods


Fits no?

 

Well, it killed a few quiet hours at work pleasantly enough. Mostly sits at gently entertaining, but occasionally veers off into something tedious, obnoxious*, or both, but there's also just enough moments of genuine, laugh out loud hilarity to compensate. I did get to the end and experience a flash of disappointment that there was no more to read, so it clearly achieved something, but I doubt it's going to be anything more than a solid time waster.

*I'm not even talking about the occasional crass humour - I'm talking about moments like Harry getting up on the table to lead the quidditch chant, or the fact that the Gryffindor boys call themselves the Rogues, or the cringe worthy scene where Ron embarrasses himself over music.

Oh, and the whole thing with Riddle is a potentially interesting plot strand, but it belongs in a completely different story.

 

The writing here is really good, I felt myself drawn into the story, and looking forward to what comes next.

But this doesn't feel like Harry Potter.

Certainly, there's magic and the magical world - Harry is the quidditch captain (even if the game has been turned into rugby), he's learning how be an animagus (although the classes all focus on conversations, not learning), and there's gryphons in the woods (but they're basically dogs)... But it feels like the magicalness of the story is badly grafted onto the characters. Oh, and Ron wants to learn the guitar. Because he played one on holiday.

This could be an original story, if Harry were the football captain and working on his gourmet cooking skills.

I get that the focus of the story is on the relationships between everyone, not on the magical world, but it doesn't feel like a Harry Potter story.


Also, everything's quite AU. Some of it works nicely, but it means we have a story that doesn't look into the magic, with most of the major characters being significantly different.

I want to give this a 4/5, but I don't think it belongs in the HP Library, so I'm going to have to drop it to a 3.

 

Honestly, this story makes me want to do a proper preppy harry potter story with all the entitled nature of private school, but try to keep at least some seperation from the muggle world.

 

It's called The Shoebox Project, and it's pretty good (definitely better than this).

 

Being neither British or American, this very much felt like something written by the latter and nothing like the former. I cringe the most at the Marine Corps-esque nature of the Quidditch team.

Again, maybe that's how they actually are in Britain, but I'm a football fan. This feels more like a Gridiron thing - then again, maybe that's what the Rugby (ew) culture is like?

Then there's my personal pet peeves that are largely irrelevant - weed/cigarettes/ridiculous levels of alcohol consumption (you were a god in my highschool if you could even score a six-pack).

It reads like what I imagine American colleges are like, not British boarding schools.

I haven't been to highschool in fifteen years though, so maybe I'm just out of touch.

Edit: that probably sounds overly negative. Around half the jokes really landed with me. I think capturing the aimlessness of Harry is very high school, and, as mentioned, Riddle.

 

I gave it a shot, but it read too much like a bad teen romantic comedy. Not one character was recognizable, and the apologetic backpedaling that Vlad mentioned made me cringe physically. The actual writing isn't terrible, but it is so far from something that I'd enjoy, and so far from Harry Potter period, that I can't give it anything higher than a 2/5.

 

Overall I'm not sure if the author fully decides on what they want to make this story. It starts off as a charming high school bromance fic thats somewhat funny, then we get some decent side plot which could actually be interesting but doesn't really fit into this story (Riddle), and then the fic goes from a fun bromance to an angst fest towards the end with a little bromance thrown in.

Things like the Harry/Justin confrontation were way overdone and hamfisted, and served to get Harry kicked off the quidditch team for plot reasons.

The whole Daphne sideline turned into one long string of angst and took all the light-hearted fun out of it.

Saw Crabbe and Goyle coming from a mile away, not 100% sure if the author expected this to be a revelation to the reader or not. They weren't exactly subtle in their foreshadowing.

Overall it is a time waster which I enjoyed. But it's just another attempt at a bromance/school fic that turned into a mostly angst fic towards the end. Everyone glaring and being unhappy with each other. With glares.

3/5 angsty teens towards the end, but the slices of bromance still make it worth a read.

 

It's a decent fic, but it doesn't really tread into fabulous territory.

I think that the fic tries too hard to make the story a unique AU that it winds up completely changing canon to the point that it's essentially a coming of age story except with magic thrown in. And it's not even like magic is a big part of the story, I think spells are used like five times in the fic.

There's also annoying stuff like the way Parvati's name is spelled that bugs me.

I also think the author did the fic a disservice. What I mean to say is that he wrote an AU fic except readers assume that canon still holds true in all things magical that are not explicitly changed in the story. So we assume that canon things like the House Cup remains the same. It's like a half-born AU. There are elements of a completely reenvisioned Hogwarts but there are also elements of assumed canon that blend together into... whatever this is.

It's fun to read and as a Harry/Daphne fan I probably enjoyed it more than I should've, but I'm gonna have to give it a 3/5.

I don't think it did enough to make it into the library.

 

I find the fic somewhat confusing in its AU elements and the characters are quite OOC (because of AU reasons?).

At times it feels like a crackfic and then swings around trying to be serious. I'm not sure what to make of it really. However, for some reason I find it fun to read and it doesn't feel sluggish. The story and characters have lots of flaws, but all in all it's a decent read.

5/10 ~= 3/5