And, it ends with a whimper. A shame. It started off so well, but once it went back into the future it took a nosedive. It managed to level off, but never really got back to where it had been before the time skip.

 

Well, finished the chapter, took me a bit, because I currently have Pink Eye and had to rest my eyes every now and then, but w/e. Anyway, definitely not the best ending. The-fight-with-Voldemort-that-wasn't (As I'm calling it in my head and now here) was totally underwhelming. The talk with Harry's family about Harry being a Potter was completely horrible and basically relegated to three lines of dialogue.

All in all, the best part of this chapter was James complaining about Bellatrix's cooking, and only because the end of the scene made me give a brief chuckle.

 

A disappointingly bland end. Harry running low on magic and then magic being measured like a quantity of fuel just made me want to cry.

 

That was one of the most thoroughly anticlimactic endings I've ever read.

 

5 stars for ending the fic; -4 stars for what was actually written.

While harping on the back to the future is easy, the fic really did just stop being good at that point. While a bit uneven, the part in the past was interesting with quite a bit of tension. When we get to the future, most of that is gone. Voldermort seems to almost be a side plot, but after everyone discovers Harry is alive there seems to be only side-plots in the story. The kids, which we spent so much time with just disappear, minus Sidra. And like others have said, the last chapter epilogue read more like a outline of a screenplay and a bad one at that.

 

Well, people who can write good opening doesn't necessary mean they have the ability to plot a good story. It's stories like this that makes you realise a good story requires the author to edit and re-write his story countless times.

 

That really depends on the author.

 

Most good published stories went through countless amount of revision.

 

The author started a continuation of sorts to this with an unbelievably convoluted plot. The summery makes the story so specific with little wiggle room that I'll be surprized if it comes to a conclusion. And the quality of the writing itself hasn't improved. Its still soulless, bland and just a touch pretentious. Hopefully at least the plot will be semi interesting. Heres the link:

Para Bellum

 

Your link was broken. This was all I had to read from the story's summary to know this was something to avoid:

 

I literally regret taking ten seconds to read that summary. Talk about convoluted.

 

I was going into it with an open mind, but now my head hurts. What the hell is that?

EDIT: Just read it. At best it's lackluster, and the problems with the plot being convoluted isn't made better in full. Also the "infamous Black triplets" are annoying and, frankly, more than a little creepy.

 

Read the story recently and I have to say, I enjoyed myself for most of it. From skimming the last page of this thread, yeah, I kinda concur that the story kinda went downhill after the time skip. However, it never stopped being fun for me.

Things that I enjoyed:

That Harry wasn't too big initially. He was just one guy, albeit a competent one. He was important and had agency, yeah, but he also wasn't all-powerful or all-knowing. Instead we see competence from others, be it the Lords Black and Malfoy or actually the Dumbledore faction. The zero bashing was actually a huge surprise and I loved that.

Something that I enjoyed in the later chapters is that even characters like Molly, Snape, Ron and so were portrayed as actual people. Harry being drawn to Ron and Hermione was actually really endearing, the way he was talking so casually with them and had really no qualms trusting them in general.

The OCs, I'm kinda on the fence about. I'm open to OCs, if done right, they can really enrich a story and I can see that there was effort and thought put into the Potter and Black children. On one hand, the premise of the two Potter girls having this rivalry based on prophecy is actually really interesting. One of them was propped as the prophecy girl and the other half resented it and half knew that was wrong due to her own gift of seeing. The prophecy girl in question resented her for raining on her parade. It's actually a really natural conflict that makes a lot of sense.

I just feel it was really wasted in this story. It wasn't explored to the extend it deserved in this story. We never saw Sidra's reaction to Rose being proven right, or Rose's feelings on that. Like, was Rose just vindicated that Sidra wasn't special after all? Hardly Sidra's fault to think that if people like Dumbledore told her she could be. Any empathy for her sister? Or how about Sidra. Now she knows her sister was right all along. Does she feel bad for treating her like she did? How does she feel about herself?

So many things to look into but it was mostly ignored.

Leo was kinda bland and I never got a feeling for his personality, nor did I understand why Harry was so fond of him. He was nice, I guess? Felt a bit weird that there was still this male succession thing going on, as to why it was said at the end that Leo would be the next Lord Black or his son would instead one of Harry and Bella's daughters. Seems so arbitrary that gender doesn't seem to play a role otherwise,a nd we are told that it's perfectly normal for men who marry into older families to take their wives family name even but suddenly it's male succession only.

The time travel aspects themselves were decent enough, not the best but they were refreshing mainly because of Harry being not the top player initially but rather somewhere in the middle in terms of skill and influence, although that would change later on.

Now to the big thing, Bellatrix. Bella was a lot of fun in part 1. She felt like a teenager with ambition. She was fun and the dynamic between her and Harry was actually really sweet. Pushing each other and Bella developing a crush was really endearing. The dynamic where Harry had trouble keeping this Bella and future Bella separate was interesting because we understood where Harry was coming from but we also felt how unfair it was to Bella herself and why she felt so frustrated. For a lot of part 1, Harry was actually a huge jerk to her and she put up with a lot of his shit.

The thing that made it work though is that we exactly knew why Harry was like that. Yes, it was super unfair of him and a dick move but this was the woman who had killed and tortured so many people, people he loved. That's rough for anyone.

However, in part 2, it's not that she isn't fun anymore or that I resent her getting some solo action. In fact, I enjoyed her vying for ministry control, interacting with various people. The complicated relationship with Lily I found had a lot of promise but similar to the Rose and Sidra thing was never truly followed up with. In part 1, it was a jealousy for Harry's interest in her but I had hoped that in part 2, upon learning who Lily was I had a bit hoped for Bella to reach out a bit more.

This is what gets me to my biggest problem though. Bella was 17 throughout most of the story though until the epilogue I mean. This was absolutely fine for part 1, being a student and all. Although I'm a bit confused on how she was 17 when she was in sixth year. She started late or something? However, the Bella is skilled thing got completely out of control in part 2.

Growing up with dark arts kinda became the Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook and Reservoir of Inexhaustible Knowledge where she suddenly had any and all knowledge, experience and skills to do basically anything she damn wanted. Conveniently, she knew everything necessary at any moment regarding to the dark arts.

She could out-duel most people, politically outmaneuver most people, match wits with most people and had zero qualms about anything.

16 year old Bella had the edge compared to 14 year old Sirius and James? Sure. Accepting the fact that all of them are geniuses and immensely talented as such, yeah, Bella with 2 years of more experience and a better relationship with her father and uncle and thus getting a slightly better education, sure, I can run with it. 17 year old Bella being better than 35 year old James who was active as an auror for 15 years? Yeah no. Sorry.

We got told again and again that even Harry, with his years of fighting in a war was good because of his quick thinking and experience, but actually subpar in terms of knowing spells and actual fighting abilities. Now suddenly that doesn't matter and Harry and Bella are suddenly better than anyone because they learned like two spells they found in random books was a bit bullshit.

In part 2, the established rules were thrown out of the window. Skill and strength became whack and that hurt the story for me.

Another big thing for me at least was that I didn't fully understood what exactly went wrong in Harry's original timeline. Why didn't he know anything about Horcruxes? Why didn't Dumbledore know anything about Horcruxes? Heck, Why didn't Dumbledore know anything about Voldemort, especially in part 2? What did they do since book five in this story? 7 years of guerrilla fighting Voldemort with not much to show for it? Seemed weird.

Similarly, I guess the ministry mobilizing made some changes but I didn't understand what exactly? Were the Ministry and the Death Eaters locked into a 20 year old war? Were they fighting the whole time? 20 years in active war? And Lily had three children? No one died? The kids went to school, had relatively normal childhoods?

Molly's brothers died but when was that? Did Voldemort ever die and came back? If so, how? I never got the feeling that he did die and I just don't understand how things essentially stayed the same for 20 years. I guess the no Malfoy money and a ready Ministry slowed things down immensely for Voldemort but honestly, that just doesn't seem believable. Feel like a 20 year active/cold war against Voldemort would lead to more than some casualties.

Speaking of which, the death of Sirius wife was rather cheap. We never really got to know her and Leo barely reacted.

So yeah. While I did enjoy myself, part 2 was significantly weaker and less coherent than part.

Part 1: 4/5
Part 2: 2.5/5

Giving this a 3/5

 

I had high hopes for this story, but it seemed to have the wheels fall off around the time H & Bellatrix joined. Someday I'd like to see that pairing done well without replacing Bellatrix with Betty Sue.

 

It really is disappointing to see where this story ended up narratively. I genuinely believe it had a very promising start but by the time of the time-skip, it had derailed.

Generally, timeskips are something that are difficult to pull off and as a general rule I hold it that the longer the time skip the harder it is to write without alienating your readers or giving them narrative whiplash.

I do have to say regardless of my opinion on the story, I would say it takes courage to attempt to dramatically change your story half-in so I do respect the attempt.

 

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14075365/7/Delenda-Est-Rebooted

Hmmm. Hmmmmmm....

Yeah, it's a reboot of Delenda Est. Enough said.

(It does seem quite promising so far, of course.)

 

Do you reckon that the reboot has a decent shot at entering the library proper?

 

I read the first couple of rebooted chapters, and the prognosis does not look good to me. Very unnatural dialogue throughout. I'll let those willing to slog through the whole thing give proper reviews though.

 

I gave the first chapter a go a few months ago and had similar thoughts, but we'll see ig. I might pick it up again.

 

Eh, we'll see.

I liked it, but I can see why others might not.