Title: Different Together
Author: Hippothestrowl
Rating: T
Genre: Romance/Drama
DLP-Category: General (?)
Pairing: Harry/Luna
Status: Work in Progress
Link: ff.net
Story Summary: Canon fourth year (GoF) until an event in Divinations changes Harry's life forever. Harry/Luna seriously fluffy romance – with a little drama and danger of course!

A short work in progress, currently sitting at four (of six planned) chapters and 23,000 words. The author promises the conclusion of the tale within the next two weeks.

If you have ever desired a believable romantic relationship between canon Luna and canon Harry, this may be the closest you'll ever get.

It is a fresh take on the Harry-tries-to-avoid-Triwizard-participation genre, one not at all motivated by Harry uncovering Dumbledore's evil machinations and biding his time until he scamper off to America. While the story is structured around the larger events of The Goblet of Fire, it avoids feeling like a canon rehash with Luna shoe-horned in—the divergence causes actual ripples and tensions with regards to the larger plot.

It's not labelled as a humor story, but it is quite funny regardless. It doesn't rely on one-liners; rather, Harry plays the role of the Ben-Wyatt-in-Pawnee straight man, and the humor is derived from the author's skill with comedic beats and character voice. In the latter regard, the story has an almost Rowling-like feel. The characterization of Luna is more or less on point, and avoids all of the pitfalls laid out by Wordhammer in this post (I'm not even sure his last category is totally applicable here). And unlike a lot of humor or romance stories, secondary characters aren't completely shunted to the side in favor of our love-struck heroes. Snape, Flitwick, Neville, and Ginny all have some nice character moments, and they shine from the margins of the work.

But before you exclaim, "Gee, this sounds like the greatest story ever," and rush away to read it, let me tick off some of the flaws you may find:

• Harry is, if possible, even thicker than in canon, and also less skilled at magic
• There are stylistic issues—abuse of all caps, ellipses, and em dashes (that are rendered as hyphens and not actual em dashes)
• The ratio of dialogue to non-dialogue is high
• Tonks is over-sexualized
• Because the author's grasp on character voice is so strong, his occasional stumbles are all the more jarring
• The method of Luna's mother's death doesn't seem to mesh well with more sophisticated interpretations of canon magic (and is also kind of dumb)
• This is one of those stories where you find out what kind of music the author likes, and the answer to that mystery is Elvis

I hesitate to provide a rating until the last chapters are published, and while my tastes oft clash with those of this community, I reckon it will be worthy of wider consideration outside of this thread.


EDIT by Minion:
As this will soon be finished, and as it might "be worthy of wider consideration outside of [Almost Recommended]" I moved this post to the review board.

 

I've just started the fic and Harry is apparently just stupid for no reason. It's a shame, because so far the writing is not bad at all. I will trudge on and edit.

Edit: Read on. 2/5 would not read again- check out Drisful's comments.

 

I moved it to the review board.

 

This, and unfortunately a few more things. Not only is this Harry a massive moron, he's literally so stupid that he feels almost unrecognizable.

I'd like to think that the reason Harry didn't drop divination in third year, or at least the reason Rowling would give other than for the plot, is despite how terrible it allegedly was, it was an easy class and the worst he'd have to deal with is theatrics from a drunken hippie.

This line of thinking makes sense, and is the kind of decision a 13 year old of average intelligence can make. For 14 year old Harry Potter to decide that no, this class is not worth it, I'm going to switch to a subject I know nothing about during the term and a year late? What the fuck.

Not to mention the horribly out of character moment when Harry is 'so done' and yells and walks out. Some could argue this is in character, but I think that most of Harry's outbursts have either been completely private or about Voldemort, so I think that if you argue that point you're a moron.

The following conversation is even worse, as McGonagall is subjected to a whole new side of the Boy Who Lived, the one that can't fucking figure out where a room is in the castle he's been in for three years and some fucking change.

I don't know if the author thinks this is cute, but it really ruins what is otherwise a pretty quality chapter and I'm not ashamed to admit I didn't continue.

Not going to give this a star rating, but I figured I'd leave these words of caution so some other idiot doesn't think that Agravaine probably just thinks canon!Harry is an idiot.

 

First, thanks for the feedback, Agravaine, much appreciated. No offence taken for you guys pointing out the flaws; hope likewise you don't mind me explaining here why some of it is bad or unappealing.

First, to address the issue of Harry being thick – that kind of came out as I began writing this and I went along with it. Maybe call it post-intentional as I felt it fitted what I wanted him to be as an inexperienced 14-year-old boy raised in a cupboard and mentally abused into some measure of insecurity and confusion in his relationships! What I don't understand is why OOC without a given reason is regarded as a flaw. It's legit to be out of character. So do the comments mean, 'it's wrong because no fanfic author should ever write out of character without explanation even in humour' (I can stick 'Dudley thumped him once too often in the head' at the start if that helps,) or 'it's wrong because I personally don't like the character this way?' But, I yield the point. He's dozy as sloth dung, and perhaps that's a literary error.

I don't use hyphens as dashes at all, nor do I use em dashes. I use en dashes which are more compact. Perhaps this is absent from the viewed font or the user font en dash is almost as small as a hyphen? As a learner, my first fics had hyphens because that is what is commonly used in e-text because some devices have nothing else. Then I started using double hyphens but FFN strip them down to one. Then I went to em dashes. Finally, after researching on the net that en dashes were acceptable and, I think, neater, I started using those. The spaces either side are the British style. The American style is no spacing, which, to me as a Brit, look like it is huge-hyphenating two words which should not really be connected. No apologies for that. But if I over-use them, yes, I'll take a look at that in future, though I do find 'em very useful. Ditto all that for ellipses. I researched them more than once and think I'm doing them correctly. CAPS, I dunno where that's wrong. To me it means a raised voice or a headline in the Daily Prophet.

The ratio of dialogue to non-dialogue is high – yes, I've tried to avoid excesses of narrative but I'll look into the balance in my future fics.

Tonks is over-sexualized – again OOC. I never saw her as crudely flirting but as being a cheeky and fun character, I see her behaviour in my story as merely teasing Harry. Actually, after reading your comments, I tried to imagine a reversal of sexes and it sound outrageous to imagine a 20-year-old bloke rubbing up against a 14-year-old girl while resizing himself, so maybe I was wrong to make Tonks the equivalent of that (wrong in the sense that I did not intend it so it was a mistake.)

Luna's mother's death sounded dumb? Well, spell creation is an unknown AFAIK. I could imagine having to pour out huge amounts of one's magic to create the equivalent of Newton's law of gravity. Plenty of fics have characters collapse after over-expending their magic just to sustain a shield for ten minutes.

The Elvis comment makes it sound like I was using part of the story to promote some idolisation of a rock star (like so many fics.) The reverse is true. You cannot tell at all what kind of music I prefer by reading this story. I wanted the dance class and researched suitable music. I looked at the classic waltzes, I ended up on websites listing 'good romantic music for weddings' where that song was cited. I hadn't thought of lyrics before that but it fitted well. I chose those particular lines because: 1. They fitted what I wanted Harry to say. 2. Proportionally few people actually hate Elvis. 3. The lyrics are well known and not only clear but one can quickly hear the tune in one's head (imo.) That's not true of all lyrics, even moderately well-known ones.

By sheer coincidence, another fic I am developing has a line or two from two other pop songs, and again, they are chosen for purpose in the fiction. It's part of life, and life is what we write about, yeah?

So, anyway, I think the main objection is Harry's character. Sorry about that. Hope some of you can enjoy the fic as a fun story anyway.

---------- Post automerged at 01:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:06 PM ----------

First, thanks for the feedback, Agravaine, much appreciated. No offence taken for you guys pointing out the flaws; hope likewise you don't mind me explaining here why some of it is bad or unappealing.

First, to address the issue of Harry being thick – that kind of came out as I began writing this and I went along with it. Maybe call it post-intentional as I felt it fitted what I wanted him to be as an inexperienced 14-year-old boy raised in a cupboard and mentally abused into some measure of insecurity and confusion in his relationships! What I don't understand is why OOC without a given reason is regarded as a flaw. It's legit to be out of character. So do the comments mean, 'it's wrong because no fanfic author should ever write out of character without explanation even in humour' (I can stick 'Dudley thumped him once too often in the head' at the start if that helps,) or 'it's wrong because I personally don't like the character this way?' But, I yield the point. He's dozy as sloth dung, and perhaps that's a literary error.

I don't use hyphens as dashes at all, nor do I use em dashes. I use en dashes which are more compact. Perhaps this is absent from the viewed font or the user font en dash is almost as small as a hyphen? As a learner, my first fics had hyphens because that is what is commonly used in e-text because some devices have nothing else. Then I started using double hyphens but FFN strip them down to one. Then I went to em dashes. Finally, after researching on the net that en dashes were acceptable and, I think, neater, I started using those. The spaces either side are the British style. The American style is no spacing, which, to me as a Brit, look like it is huge-hyphenating two words which should not really be connected. No apologies for that. But if I over-use them, yes, I'll take a look at that in future, though I do find 'em very useful. Ditto all that for ellipses. I researched them more than once and think I'm doing them correctly. CAPS, I dunno where that's wrong. To me it means a raised voice or a headline in the Daily Prophet.

The ratio of dialogue to non-dialogue is high – yes, I've tried to avoid excesses of narrative but I'll look into the balance in my future fics.

Tonks is over-sexualized – again OOC. I never saw her as crudely flirting but as being a cheeky and fun character, I see her behaviour in my story as merely teasing Harry. Actually, after reading your comments, I tried to imagine a reversal of sexes and it sound outrageous to imagine a 20-year-old bloke rubbing up against a 14-year-old girl while resizing himself, so maybe I was wrong to make Tonks the equivalent of that (wrong in the sense that I did not intend it so it was a mistake.)

Luna's mother's death sounded dumb? Well, spell creation is an unknown AFAIK. I could imagine having to pour out huge amounts of one's magic to create the equivalent of Newton's law of gravity. Plenty of fics have characters collapse after over-expending their magic just to sustain a shield for ten minutes.

The Elvis comment makes it sound like I was using part of the story to promote some idolisation of a rock star (like so many fics.) The reverse is true. You cannot tell at all what kind of music I prefer by reading this story. I wanted the dance class and researched suitable music. I looked at the classic waltzes, I ended up on websites listing 'good romantic music for weddings' where that song was cited. I hadn't thought of lyrics before that but it fitted well. I chose those particular lines because: 1. They fitted what I wanted Harry to say. 2. Proportionally few people actually hate Elvis. 3. The lyrics are well known and not only clear but one can quickly hear the tune in one's head (imo.) That's not true of all lyrics, even moderately well-known ones.

By sheer coincidence, another fic I am developing has a line or two from two other pop songs, and again, they are chosen for purpose in the fiction. It's part of life, and life is what we write about, yeah?

So, anyway, I think the main objection is Harry's character. Sorry about that. Hope some of you can enjoy the fic as a fun story anyway.

 

That's fine, but I said it was ooc for a reason. That's exactly what Harry is, wanting to capture that means that your setup for the rest of the fic is flawed. Harry would never yell at a teacher because he's been treated like shit for the vast majority of his life (unless it was Umbridge lying about Voldemort). I'd say behaving out of character for no reason could perhaps be my own personal pet peeve, but behaving OOC to create a PoD is lazy as fuck and never makes retroactive sense.*

Ultimately though, one OOC decision wouldn't be a problem if he still acted like Harry instead of a t̶o̶t̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶v̶e̶r̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶e̶n̶a̶g̶e̶r̶.̶ Moron.

*Courtesy asterisk, I don't have a problem with Harry being OOC at all, the problem is that PoDs are meant to facilitate that change and having Trelawney just predict his death again has already been proven to change Harry very little. The way it stands now is some sort of cart and horse designed by this Harry to go as fast as possible by rolling it down a hill with the horse inside the cart.

 

First off, Harry is already mentally stupid in the books, which is what made me dislike reading them the most after I realised it well into the 4th or 5th book. Dont get me wrong, the story up until book 4 is great, but I just can no longer read the books due to him being an idiot. I dont like reading fictional stories of him on FFN that's even dumber than the books. Not being disrespectful, but just letting you know most here feel the same. Its why we're all here in the first place.

 

Hippothestrowl, thanks for sharing your thoughts. As to not clutter up this thread with discussion about punctuation, I may send a PM with my thoughts re: dashes when I have the time.

I read Harry "forgetting" Luna's name as Harry trying (and failing) to play it cool—it's a teenager's clumsy attempt to hide a spark of romantic interest in front of his friends.

It's almost as if Hogwarts is notoriously difficult to navigate. Or as if Harry lived in the Wizarding World for three years and never got around to learning the name of the organization he was world-famous for defeating until Arthur Weasley works it into the exposition.

Well, for the record, I'm here because I like reading stories that make me think about the source material in new ways, or that inspire the same sense of intrigue that the source material did, or that I find to be otherwise entertaining or well-written. Not everything needs to be a half-million-word power fantasy. (Moreover, for motives I won't explore, I think that some people in this thread are equating "I think Harry is wildly out of character" with "I don't like this particular characterization of Harry.")

 

I like this story, because it offers something different to the usual Harry-wank we all love. It's not perfect but it is plausible and all the characters really feel natural, which I think is a big achievement. Not making Luna an otherworld fairy but a living, breathing teenage girl is a plus in my opinion.

It's a very well done attempt at a different Harry and a different Hogwarts. Hogwarts that's less forgiving and more realistic. I like that.

4/5 because of all the hate

 

I'm really not trying to harp on about a story I have no interest in finishing, but McGonagall even states that it's right down the hall from the Gryffindor Dormitories, not locked behind a magical wall with four founders keys and a blood sacrifice.
Also nobody wanted to talk to Harry at all about Death Eaters because they thought they were gone, and the history book we hear from in canon just states that he was responsible for the fall of Voldemort.

 

Well i liked it but Harry was a bit daft easy to look over though

 

The story just ended. I was disappointed, the ending was, I think, meant to be a twist, but it only came as contrived. Tonks was an accessory and suddenly she is the focus, that's strange to say the least.