Title: A Long Journey Home
Author: Rakeesh
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Chapters: 12
Words: 172,429
Updated: Sep 4, 2015
Published: Nov 20, 2013
Status: Work-in-progress.
Pairing: Not important.
Summary: A trip to Egypt, an attempt to find new purpose for their friend results in Ron and Hermione losing her entirely, and gaining back something new... and something very, very old.

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9860311/1/A-Long-Journey-Home

As a warning, the author uses a female Harry (by the name of Jasmine) as the main character. If this for some reason is very against your preferences just stop now.

The premise of this piece isn't entirely unique; it's reminiscent of The Wizard From Earth by Roarion which is a crossover with a movie called The Man From Earth, and I am reasonably sure that this piece is at least derived from the aforementioned movie, though I can't be sure. It is a well researched piece of fiction wherein Harry, (hereafter known as Jasmine) is sent back in time by her older self to ancient Egypt. She then discovers her immortality and lives through history as a variety of female personae, including the goddess Wadjet, Antheia, and Morgan la Fey, before sending herself back in time and having to re-integrate herself with her old life.

The story is very well written, immersive, and the author manages to entirely avoid most of the 'female harry' pitfalls and tropes.

Overall 5/5

Sorry for my horrible summary and post.


Checked by Minion, October 3, 2015

 

I read some of this a while ago.

The characters never sat right with me, the angst is too heavy, the writing is overly dramatic, Harry is overly mysterious, and it just isn't an enjoyable read.

2/5

edit: pbluekan: To rate a fic, go to "Rating:" just above your first post and select the number of stars to give it.

 

Read only chapter 1 so far and it's kinda boring. The characterisation for Jasmine makes no sense. And after 5000 years her patronus is still the same? Also. Sily things like using camels because they don't know the destination to apparate. What happened to broomsticks and flying carpets ? And why do they have burnt skin in the desert? They are wizards. It's like the author had a scene in mind from some movie and just added a few magic traps to accommodate the magical aspect, while leaving the rest alone.

I will try to read a bit more later, but so far it has not been good.

 

I started reading this one and got a reasonable way through before boredom killed it.

Good stories have characters with goals and desires - this one just felt flat. Jasmine doesn't set out to achieve or do anything.

The lack of conflict took an interesting premise and did nothing with it.

2/5

 

Very good. This is probably the best Fem!Harry out there , though there's really not much competition. I loved the evolution of Myrddin(Merlin) from a kid who desperately wanted to learn magic to one of the greatest wizards of all time. The legend of Arthur is very well incorporated . The middle chapters are a bit slow , but the chapter where Dumbledore stalks Jasmine ( Ch 8 , I think) is hilarious.

4/5.Definitely deserves a place in the library - there are much worse fics in there.

 

Well, it just updated. Not much happened in the chapter, although the mental image of Ron giving Merlin the Big Brother "If you hurt her" speech was hilarious.

 

I had actually been considering putting this up for review in the library before I noticed that it was here. Personally, this is one of the better femHarry stories out there. 5/5

 

This story has received far less attention than I feel it deserves. The story is slow to start, but once it gets going, its very good. The 'Forging a Legend' chapters (ch 4 to 7) are great, and the Dumbledore chapter (chapter 8) is one of my favorite chapters in all of fanfiction.

Newcomb has said it all much better than I ever could in his favorite stories list.

 

Well, what am I suppose to use as a review now?

I'll just say, yes, I stand by that. A Long Journey Home is one of my all-time favorites, though from my limited experience I wouldn't expect it to find much of an audience here. (That's nothing against DLP, by the way, it just seems like stories without much of an external conflict aren't favored, here.) The story is not, strictly speaking, a story - it's more like a tapestry, a "how did we get here / what kind of day has it been" character study. (Although, taken as an individual arc, the "Forging a Legend" 4-chapter section is a brilliantly executed story.)

Has some of my favorite individual lines in the fandom.

Has some of my favorite Ron/Hermione/Harry character beats and interactions in the fandom, right up there with Forging the Sword.

An easy 5/5 here.

 

My original review was posted before this latest update, and before I go further, I do want to say this fic is still in my own top ten and is definitely a 5/5.

However, I did find this latest chapter to be fairly fluffy and mostly devoid of anything that really sparked my interest. Nevertheless, I did still enjoy the quality writing, style, and storytelling that Rakeesh employs. As Newcomb said, the piece as a whole is more of a tapestry than anything else, and the latest installment does a fair job of illustrating how Jasmine is readjusting to her new(old) life.

The author is just a really slow updater(I hope). There were about three months between the previous update and this most recent one.

 

I forgive the last chapter its fluffiness (and some parts, especially the "Jasmine as hairdresser" part, are really fluffy) because the last 700 words are absolutely brilliant.

Spoiler

Bracketing an emotional gut-punch moment like Merlin's tomb ("All my heart and all my soul are with you, though I am far away") with two superb bits of humor ("We are never talking about the snorkak" and Ron's "shovel speech") just knocked it out of the park.

One of the most remarkable things this fic has done is that, after the Merlin arc, there are 3 chapters, and each one has ended on a note where the story could end there, and yes, you'd want more, but you'd feel good about it. And yet, there's so much more that's been hinted at - what Jasmine did during WWII, what she did in Egypt, etc. - that you could easily see another 100K words.

 

I really, really hope that the author is not done with the story. I would kill for another 3 or 4 chapter arc like the Merlin arc - as you said, Jasmine's journey is quite long and the author has already hinted that there's more to her story than what has been revealed. Another one-off chapter from her past like the Dumbledore chapter would be welcome too. Hell, any chapter with Dumbledore would be welcome. Rakeesh's Dumbledore is amazing.

Also, we may yet see another plot in the present. I don't think all the author would have spent all that time characterizing Ron and Hermione if he didn't have a plot involving them. May be a final goblin rebellion? I can't think of too many plausible opponents for present day Jasmine, and the goblin storyline is unresolved. Either way, the story is by no means finished. I just wish that the author would update faster.

 

I hope not. The story itself is watching how an immortal adjusts to returning to her previously mortal life and how she's come to be where she is now. There's already plenty of possible stories surrounding Egypt, World War 2, The Founding of Hogwarts, that dead Nazi in the tomb, the nature of her immortality, her relationship with the phoenixes, etc. Not that I would mind a little conflict in the 'present day' if only to see how she deals with being able to interact in the world, rather than being increasingly constrained by history as she approached the present day.

What I would really like to see is her interaction with Teddy Lupin, assuming he exists in this AU(I assume he does, everything else is the same, but he hasn't been mentioned). I feel it would be a bit of an interesting look into her personality. So far the only interaction we've seen with something approaching a child was Merlin, and he was a teenager when they met. Though there have been some mentions of her mentoring Nicholas Flamel, that was a mentor relationship, rather than a parental figure that a godmother would be.

 

Ok I read the whole thing after being a bit wary because of the name change. To my surprise I liked it quite a lot. The modern day stuff I wasn't too fond of, it was technically good like the rest of the fic but it just didn't interest me. I found myself skimming most of the wedding stuff, particularly chapter 8. These parts I would rate a solid 3/5.

Now the best part of the whole story is the Merlin arc. I thought the growth of Merlin and his travels was well done. Along with that the relationship between him and Jasmine was brilliant. I'd give this part 5/5 all on it's own.

Together I'd round down to 4/5.

 

The story is all about Jasmine and she doesn't feel right at all. It's the classic problem of fanfic writers being relatively young and so being terrible at writing adults. Jasmine doesn't read like she's even 30 years old, never mind thousands of years old.

The fic also feels rather artificial. Jasmine's motives are entirely opaque to the point that it just reads like the author moving her around on puppet strings for the sole purpose of creating drama (as yak said, she's overly mysterious). Jasmine doesn't read like a person, she reads like a plot device. The author clearly has a few scenes in mind that s/he wants to write and is manoeuvring everything else around to arrive at those scenes.

 

Updated.

It seems to about Jasmine's time in Egypt as Wadjet. This should be good.

 

The update was a fairly good opener to another multi-part vignette, and the section as a whole, similarly to 'Forging a Legend,' seems destined to be a story about a major shift in the character, rather than a story about who she is at that very moment.

As usual, Rakeesh does an excellent job of vividly portraying the mental and emotional state of a character, and evoking sympathetic reactions in the reader.

Spoiler

In particular, Rakeesh managed to show Jasmines extraordinary confusion, sorrow, and, most remarkably, fear, while maintaining the character's arrogance and sense of age.

-

In 'most' of this chapter we have a Jasmine that is wildly different from who she was as a younger woman and what she returned to/became at some other point down the line.

During the early portion where we see her first death and rebirth, we still have the sense that, even after a few hundred years, she is still the canon character of Jasmine(which should essentially be Harry). I have a feeling that this is the actual revelation of her immortality, and is also the start of her decent into what ends up becoming the character we see very prominently at the end of 'Forging a Legend' and during the scene with Nicholas Flamel.

For the latter portions of the chapter, I feel we are seeing the end result. The Jasmine who has 'killed and conquered' and is setting that aside because of her horror at her own failing memory and loss of sense of self.

It is, however, not the casual mention of murder that really stands out, but it is the line, 'I not hurt you forerver' that makes it very apparent that the character whom we are reading is very different from its origins.

I left most of my analysis of the chapter in spoiler tags until later so I don't ruin anything for anyone.

 

Enjoyed it a lot.

One thing that stuck out, is that it gives new, sober meaning to a line from an earlier chapter:

I've always been fascinated with the mechanics of immortality, and in this version, it seems Jasmine has basically taken on the properties of a phoenix - witness the charred ground and how she feels "weak as a newborn kitten" after her death in the beginning of the chapter.

Cool stuff.

Really enjoyed some of the various beats and character interactions. I cannot get enough of Jasmine casually blowing people away with magic. It's just set up so well in this fic, neither overdone or anticlimactic.

Anyone else get real familiar vibe from the boy learning magic in this chapter? I think "Rahji" might be Indus for "Hermione."

Hahahahaha, awesome. Jasmine brings the quips even when she doesn't really speak the language.

Final thoughts: I guess the one thing I didn't like (well, I didn't hate it, I just wished it was a bit different) was how, at this relatively advanced stage in the fic, we're going this far back, to a time when Jasmine feels at her most un-Jasmine-like. It does mesh rather well with the "endless time" motif, how things aren't presented in order, but at the same time I feel like this would have been better as an earlier chapter. Of course, that would have brought up a whole host of new problems. Basically, I'm really glad this was listed as "Part 1," because it does feel a bit lacking in terms of impact.

Anyway. This fic is amazing, this chapter was good.

 

At this point, I just wish the whole fic was Jasmine dicking around in Ancient Egypt. I could honestly have done without the Merlin and modern time stuff.

Also, I'm pretty sure it's Abedju, but who knows.