The fic is good so far, but will almost certainly turn to shit. The author openly declared that he has no plan and is just making it up as he goes along. That never ends up well.

 

The fic is good so far, as others have already said, but Taure raises a good point: the author did basically outright say he had no real plot and will be making up shit on the fly. It makes me wary in how it'll proceed.

 

I like it so far. However now I really want Gravesong: Requiem to update!

 

I did read it, and was unimpressed. It wasn't bad... but I wouldn't say it rates a reaction of "you don't deserve entertainment like this". It's nowhere near *that* sort of quality, IMHO.

And that's fine... this is Almost Recommended after all. If it ultimately goes into Review, I'd be 50/50 on whether or not to continue past this point (I haven't marked it to follow).

 

Something about the story seems off to me. I think it's the pacing; Harry's transformation into a monster seems too fast.

 

He isn't a monster though? Even right now, he's a scared little boy in over his head.

 

Here is the full conversation. There may be some spoilers, but there really aren't.



The Author: I suppose I did not say this explicitly, but the knowledge behind necromancy in this story isn't very common, and is passed orally from wizard to wizard. Therefore it ought not to be in many books. Where did Petri learn how? From his own teacher, and not any book. I put the horcrux under the category of necromancy because I based this story's particular necromancy on the powers of the Deathly Hallows, which seem to have giant implications about souls and death.

Also, from canon, I did not get the impression that it was completely unheard of, among the set of educated dark wizards, to have a horcrux. Voldemort was radical in that he made seven, which had never been done before. But if people like Slughorn have heard of horcruxes, and the first horcrux was made by Herpo the Foul like a couple thousand years ago, that means mention of them remains current. If mention of them remains current, it only stands to reason it's because there are people who have one and know how to make one.

I hope that this argument puts the situation into the realm of possibility for you. Obviously fanfiction is often made up of speculation and invention, and not everyone's speculation agrees with everyone else's, so I understand if it still seems far-fetched to you.


My Response: Yes, I understand your point of view. I believe a little bit of your reasoning is flawed, such as the information being current, but nonetheless reasonable. Slughorn is not only a very old wizard, but personal friends with Albus Dumbledore. There aren't exactly many "people like" him. However, I believe if you put in a few more subtle clues - perhaps you did put in a few I missed - that Petri is indeed a powerful wizard from a rare line of necromancers - or whatever, I'm not telling you how to right your story, just suggestions to improve it - I think the Horcruxes would come off as a little less... jarring perhaps. I happen to be reminded of some certain stories where Harry is sorted into Slyrtherin and the first years happen to know about Occlumency, an esoteric and difficult art. However, this is obviously not on the same scale.

My point of view is ultimately this - to reinforce to the reader that Horcruxes are incredibly rare and dangerous magic. I believe that, as the reader, dangerous came across well. Rare, not so much - he is indeed teaching this ritual to a young child he has only apprenticed for a short while. I will admit that I lied a little, I think that Harry is far to young to be creating a Horcrux, but as I said before it is ultimately your story. Perhaps something else can be given as to why Petri would actually care as to why Harry would die. He obviously cares little for the well being of his apprentices, given the three dead before him. Perhaps you will explain such a thing better with time - the 50,000 galleon job is what brought the Horcrux deal on in the first place. Perhaps I missed something you already explained.

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to reply to my review, and I hope that my criticism and input will improve your story. Thank you again, and have a good day.


The Author: The identity of Petri's teacher does come up in a later chapter, and should adequately explain how he could have got that kind of information, though I freely admit it does not adequately explain how this person coincidentally ended up meeting Harry instead of some other kid. It's spoiler-ish, so I'm hedging around it, unless you really want to know. Sorry. I've formulated necromancy not as something that requires one to be "powerful," whatever that means, but simply informed on a specialised topic, if you will. It's like how you don't have to be "powerful" in real life to be a bridge engineer, but if you aren't one you can't just pick up a copy of AutoCAD and suddenly be able to design functional bridges. Even if you are already some other kind of civil engineer it would take some effort to become good at bridge engineering.

You're right that I need to put more explicit emphasis on the rarity of the magic. It remains rare; you'll note that Harry still doesn't know any more about how to make a horcrux than we do. I do feel that the dangerousness is not in the magic itself, but in the obvious character-damage it causes and the depravity it demands. It certainly will not be happy and consequence-free. I hope the motivation for Petri to want Harry to have a horcrux, in particular to let him do the related magic for him, becomes clear soon. It has nothing to do with wanting Harry not to die; that was just a bold-faced lie, as Harry suspects. In fact, many things that Petri says are untrue, and many things that Harry assumes are also incorrect. He's just a kid and doesn't know that much about magic. I will always provide a hint about the truth, but as I am not a particularly good writer, my foreshadowing is a complete flop about half the time. I doubt you've missed anything; it's more likely I failed to explain it.

Thank you for your criticism! It's very helpful, and I only hope I'll be able to translate it to actual improvement. I'm rather forgetful, so sometimes I will just make a mistake while writing and miss an important part. This is bad in fanfiction, where I publish as I write, but I'll try my best. I hope you have a good day as well.


My Response: Well, I wouldn't say you are a bad writer. I would wager that you are probably more inexperienced than any lack of talent. The best way to correct that is to write, and to read from good authors as well. And your writing style itself is entertaining, but perhaps a little contrite. Longer chapters and a little more detail would be helpful. But you do something that many fiction writers don't, and that will take you very far: update. You are remarkably quick compared to most authors. Perhaps that has a little to do with the size of the chapters, but truly, I doubt size has much to do with it. More like the motivation to get down and actually start writing.

Anyways, keep writing, and have fun with what you write! I will send you another review once I notice something substantial.


The Author: Ah, about that; I think I'm giving you the wrong impression. I am not prolific at all on a long term, single project. Rather, I write a lot at once and then do not work on that same story for a long while. The other fanfiction I am actively working on accurately reflects this truth, with much longer chapters and rather terrible update times. Everything you see in this story so far was written in a single day, on a whim. I refrained from publishing it all at once so I could revise it a little and give myself time to write more of it. Since writing is not even my primary hobby and I mostly write original fiction, I find it difficult to focus sufficiently on fanfiction. Sometimes, I think I have too much fun and should be more concerned about the quality... Anyway, thank you for looking out for problems. I appreciate it.

 

So... this is probably the only full-length HP/DG story I've ever been able to read. It starts out pretty light-hearted but the author isn't kidding when they say that it gets darker. Honestly I can't quite pinpoint why I like this story so much - the characterizations are pretty decent, but I think it's mostly how the author doesn't feel the need to stick to familiar territory when writing. There's a bit of canon-rehash but only in terms of circumstantial events, and things really go off the rails near the end. I do have a few minor quibbles with the story, but even those elements are handled better than usual. There's a censored version on FFN but obviously I'd recommend reading the real thing.

 

Why is that though? I've seen far worse things still up on FFN in comparison to what the author wrote for "Duality".

 

No reason to take risks, I suppose.

 

What I meant, you fuck, was thst stories that feature Lucius as an important character 99% of the time either completely retcon Lucius' character and motives, and go insanely over the line in trying to convince us that he is, in fact, a classic aristocrat instead of, you know, the canon Lucius that is a pretentious, bigoted, homocidal douchebag.

The fact that your mind immediately went to slash is worrying.

 

Actually, pretty sure they are slash 90% of the time, and those that aren't are what you suggested - so slash will be what most people assume the complaint is about.


Given all we have seen of Lucius thus far has been him visiting a necromancer to place an order for something, we can probably safely say he hasn't been retconned into a classy nice-guy.

That said, still plenty of time for the story to go to shit.

 

The Slyhterin fap is strong in this one. They are the 'rebel' (aka look at us we don't give a fuck) kids. They have all the answers for canon events that everyone else was too stupid to think of, with less information provided.

Ron is again a Slytherin hating stupid cunt. Original.

I gave up after 5 chapters or so. Writing quality is good, characters are not. Tweak here and there and this could have been noteworthy, that is unless you like Slytherin fap, then this is right up your alley.

 

I'm at chapter 17, and it's not great. Passable, at most - this is Almost Recommended though. You'd probably find Daphne kind of interesting, Sesc - she's kind of unstable, has a troubled past. There are some really cringy things though - the smoking is constantly going on throughout the story, and she has a DARK MAGIC!! potion she made with some of Dumbledore's hair to get through the wards and visit her mother in London :facepalm (this premise sounds really familiar for some reason by the way - has this been used before?).

Her ex's are also Draco Malfoy and Zacharias Smith, which is a bit gross. Harry is getting the sloppy seconds of the two biggest douches in Hogwarts. Harry also has some issues with their relationship, but instead of directly talking to her about them he dances around the issue a lot.

I don't know, it's technically written alright but kind of bad apart from that. Daphne and Harry's relationship (if it can really be called that, from what I've seen so far it's mostly sex and Harry being insecure) is kind of interesting, and it's far from the worst take on Daphne I've ever seen. Don't read it if you're trying to kick a smoking habit though.

Edit: Also, Fardeki is spot on about the Slytherins. They act like little 40 year old politican wannabes. Classic fanon ideas are in play - everything needs to be a deal ("what's in it for me?" is included in almost every conversation with a Slytherin whose name isn't Daphne), they're all super edgy and manipulative. Ron gets a bit better from what I've seen though, but it would literally be impossibly for his characterisation to get worse from how it starts off.

 

Harry starts smoking after having sex with her.

Does that answer your question?

Oh and while Ron is a Slytherin-hater at first, DG arranges one of the Slytherin witches to have sex with him, while Hermione is apparently drawn to Zabini.

I asked the author about that. I mean, if they're so fucking smart at their tender age of 16, what kind of level are Dumbledore and Voldemort on? She said something about showing off that in one of the upcoming chapters, but so far I've seen nothing.

 

I didn't make it past the "I got hold of some of Dumbledore's DNA and copied his magical signature".
I blame Taure.
It's decent enough if you ignore the Slytherin wank and the dubious magic, I guess.

 

This sounds strangely familiar, I remember some shit involving slughorn? Its been along time since I've read it