Title: boy with a scar by dirgewithoutmusic
Rating: G
Genre: AU Oneshots
Pairing: Various
Status: Complete (as much as a one-shot archive could be)
Wordcount: +185k
Links: https://archiveofourown.org/series/285498

"A series of "what if" rewrites of Harry Potter, books 1-7."

This is a series of one-shots and short stories (mostly the former) exploring a wide variety of plot points. Ideas ranging from different "Chosen Ones" to a complete absence of one. What if the Potters survived? What if the Dursleys were killed? The description for the series pretty much lists out all of the prompts with the fics themselves having slightly longer summaries.

Good:
There are over a dozen prompts contained here, ranging from a short 1k snippet to a multi-chaptered 30k piece. Odds are decent you might find at least one situation you'd enjoy reading and some of these are fairly interesting as well. Do you like WBWL? Do you like fem!Harry? Do you really just want the Dursleys to be removed from the story?

My personal favourite of the list is "the family evans" which is closer to the shorter side and actually makes Petunia an important role model. I feel like it has some of the best character building while keeping core parts of the main cast throughout the altered story.

That said, there's a reason why I'm posting this to Almost Recommended...

Bad:
By and large, the one-shots are less stories and more very detailed summaries. It is very heavy on the telling vs. showing and writes almost as an outline. The author details many of the changes they felt important to the plot... but what that also means is Stations of Canon very heavily referenced. Regardless of what happens, the Chosen One will always suffer the Chamber of Secrets. The TriWizard tournament always ends with a dead champion and a living Voldemort. A close parental figure will always stumble to their death trying to save a well-meaning Chosen One in the Department of Mysteries.

I might suggest reading these over a longer period of time than I did, because if you binge through it, it definitely gets somewhat annoying having to repeat the events over and over.

I give it a 3/5 as a whole. Maybe read through it once, find what you like, probably never touch it again.

 

https://forums.darklordpotter.net/threads/boy-with-a-scar-by-dirgewithoutmusic-k.30739/

Already discussed here - I largely thought the same as you, although I think I rated it higher.

 

Boring, uninspired exercises in railroading sprinkled with evil!dumbles.

And that is ignoring that they are not even plot outlines.

1/5 wish there would be a 0/5 because this truly deserves it.