Title: Crazy Like a Snake
Author: Sacred Dust
Rating: T
Genre: Humor/Friendship
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Luna Lovegood
Length: 171,860 words, abandoned.
Library Category: General Fics
Summary: Destiny goes flying out the window when dotty, eccentric Luna Lovegood is sorted into Slytherin. Draco thinks it's an outrage. Snape thinks fate is punishing him. Harry and his friends don't know what to think. Luna suspects the nargles. [Chamber of Secrets AU - grey Luna, smart Draco]

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12798550/1/Crazy-Like-a-Snake

When I first clicked on this fic, I did not expect to read the best fanfic in my life. I've read hundreds of stories on multiple sites, and this one tops all of them. It explores how simply sorting a single student into a different House can completely change Hogwarts, and it details the entire second year of Hogwarts with the changes brought about by a Slytherin Luna Lovegood.

Every single little thing that happens in this fic feels like something that could've happened in canon if things were just a little bit different. My advice? Stop here to not get any small spoiler whatsoever, and read the first chapter. If you don't fall in love with it by that point, come back here.

The Virtues: Luna Lovegood being sneaky Luna Lovegood. The BEST Ginny, Hermione, and Draco I've ever read. Realistic noble-ish children, with pride and rules and etiquette but still behaving like children. Simply phenomenal character development on all sides. Outside of one small moment, every character behaves as they should, never feeling OOC. Impressive attention to detail. In every single chapter, you will always feel like this could've happened.

The Sins: There is one plot point that seems to go nowhere, but because the fic is incomplete, I will be generous and assume we would learn more about it later. There is a small Harry Potter POV in one of the chapters that fails to pass the message the author wanted the reader to get. But outside of that, this fic has no other problem.

I could go on for fifty paragraphs about how much I love this fic, its plot points, its characters, and just everything in it. But I will try to be brief about my favorite moments, below are my full thoughts on the fic(really spoiler-heavy).

Spoiler

I love it. There are no other verbs that can encapsulate just how much this fic pulled me into it.

The "nargles" stealing things in Slytherin and Luna selling butterbeer corks to her fellow students to protect themselves, the House presenting an united front, helping each other, but constantly debating and fighting on political points, and the moment Dumbledore's Hogwarts of Cards starting falling apart. Everything is marvelous.

This fic is God's Gift to Earth, and I am not exaggerating.

The Slytherin Scrawl was probably one of the most interesting ways to create tension I've ever seen in fanfic and literature, and I loved how Snape reacted to it being banned, as that was the moment he started turning on Dumbledore. And, God, that moment in the Chamber of Secrets? When Ginny tortures the Diary to death... that shit was GREAT! I love it all!

The way Hermione developed into a completely different character from what we usually see in fandom. How Luna keeps a grudge against Hermione for bad mouthing her father's newspaper. God, how can I forget the Quidditch game?! Normally I don't care a bit for Quidditch, but the author went beyond my expectations to write the best Quidditch game I've ever read.

The constant doubts Harry Potter feels towards Dumbledore, the man who is meant to be the end all of evil, everything is just great. GREAT. Why are you still here?! Go read it!

 

I gave the first chapter a go, and I'm not really sold. Malfoy et al seem to be even more cartoonishly elitist than they are in canon, and it all just feels a bit contrived. I don't think that this fic is for me, so it wouldn't be fair for me to rate it, but I do encourage everyone else to give it a go because it is well written on a technical level, and the idea behind it is novel.