Harry is badass and Hermione is a bitch. I like it. :awesome
The thing I noticed, especially in the beginning, was the style it was written in. You mentioned you were trying something new based on what a colleague told you and it showed. It flowed pretty well but I thought it was a bit, over the top. It was really evident in some areas, then not so much in others.

In my opinion this is better than your last one-shot. The crossover one with Highlander I mean.

 

This is the kind of stuff that gives me hope for fanfiction. Stories like this are why I still, even after all the slash and abandoned and fangirls, continue to wade through fanfiction.net.

Amazing.

 

Title: And In the Darkness, Bind Them
Author: Obsessive Child
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Suspense
DLP Category: Time Travel
Pairing: None
Status: WIP
Summary: It's all gone wrong. Nagini wasn't Voldemort's last Horcrux, and the war has continued for too long. Trying to salvage it all, Harry Potter suddenly finds himself in 1942, in the midst of the Dark Lord ascending and a petrified Hogwarts.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6909579/1/And_In_the_Darkness_Bind_Them

A Harry travels to Riddle's school years fic that fits this thread nicely. It's 11 chapters and 49k words in and it doesn't look like it's going to devolve into stupidity or have Harry and Riddle end up as butt-buddies which is a plus. On the other hand it hasn't been particularly remarkable either and Harry's Master of Death powers seem contrived and stupid.

So far characterizations haven't been mangled except for Dumbledore in some scenes. The author seems to try to hard to make Dumbledore's dialogue sound right and it just feels off. Then again, Dumbledore is one of the hardest characters to get right and his role so far has been rather minor dialogue wise.

 

It reads like a 15-16 year old wrote it: limited vocabulary, bad characterization. Dumbledore was awful, there was no attempt at trying to sound like him. Definitely on the lower end of the scale.

And maybe it's just a nitpick on my part but do any of the HP books mention the word "spell", which was seriously overused in the first chapter. I always saw charm, hex, jinx, curse, enchantment, protection, et al., but never "spell". Of course it's been years since I've read any of them.

 

I couldn't help but think of Godwin's Law Of Time Travel (WARNING: TVTropes Link!).

 

They call Stupefy the Stunning Spell and I'm pretty sure some schoolbooks (possibly Lockhart's) have the word "spell" in them. Your point still stands though, its use is fairly limited.

 

God damn it. I couldn't even stop myself from clicking.

 

I just wordsearched "Spell" in GOF. Apparently I'm fucking blind or something. It's all over the place. Ignore my idiocy.

 

Skipping Stones has been updated; chapter 6 is up.

The divergence isn't what I expected but it's a pretty common one despite that. As it is, I'm interested in seeing if there's going to be anything but interpersonal conflict. I don't think I'd actually mind a good drama, but it's harder to pull off well without veering off into angst-land.

 

Tom Riddle never becoming Lord Voldemort was exactly where I thought the fic was going. Everything was pointing towards there having been no war.

What remains to be seen is whether Voldemort still exists underneath Professor Riddle's charming exterior and he's just playing the waiting game, or if he truly is one of the good guys.

 

Surprisingly good Voldemort-centric fic, but pretty short so far. Still, the characterization is excellent and I have relatively high hopes for this fic.

 

EDIT: My bad. Stupid mistake

As for the story itself, the writing's pretty good. I just couldn't wrap my head around Voldemort as a doting grandfather, especially after he didn't give a shit about his daughter. I just couldn't buy it.

 

Err, I never thought for one second that Harry Potter was his grandson, but I suppose I can see why you might have confused. Even though the characters were pretty clearly Voldemort/OC.

And he's not exactly easy on the kid, either - it's obvious that the only reason Voldemort likes him at all is because he's enough of a genius to satisfy Voldemort's ego.

 

Nvm. My bad. When I first saw the quoted summary in your post, I though it said "Voldemort raises his grandson, Harry Potter. Didn't realize that the "Harry Potter" was actually the FFN category tag.

And yeah while the kid may be a genius, the fact that the bothered to take care of him at all seemed odd. I mean when he visited his daughter that once she seemed pretty bright, but he didn't give a shit.

I get what the author was going for with the father abandoning the kid and his mother dying. The similarity and the symbolism is supposed to be enough to make Voldemort care. For me, though, that doesn't ring true. If anything I think it should make Voldemort distance himself from the kid as much as possible. He's spent his entire life running from his background and his weak, broken family. I don't buy that he'd basically adopt and raise someone who is a living, breathing reminder of that beginning.

 

The formatting makes it look like "Voldemort raises his grandson Harry Potter" rather than "Voldemort raises his grandson. Fandom: Harry Potter". I made the same mistake , tbh.

Aside from that, looks like an interesting fic, although not very long. It's also a bit blocky in places, could do with some spacing.

 

Oh, oops. Sorry about that.

 

As it looks right now I don't get the impression that this story will go anywhere.

 

I'm sure he isn't stupid enough to not have a real plot.

Also, why is it that Tom Riddle always has glowing red eyes? And, why is he always so charming with the glowing red eyes? I don't care how witty, personable, and appealing a person you are, if your eyes glow red, I'm staying away.

 

I always got the impression that in his more human-like form, his eyes were simply colored red the same way Harry's eyes are green, but I may have skimmed over the specific description in this story because I normally can't be fucked with extraneous information like that.

 

I think it's based entirely on the scene where Tom shows up in Dumbledore's office applying for the DADA job. Unless I'm mistaken, his eyes are red there too. He wasn't born that way, tho, if I remember the Dumbledore-orphanage scene. It would seem to be implied that the eyes thing happened due to his regular experimentation with magic.