Spoiler

I remember there was a Wizard King thing in a previous competition. I wasn't a fan of that one, IIRC, because it just didn't feel like HP. At least in comparison to that there's no more no-maj nomenclature.

One issue here is the inherent dissonance between an old man recollecting and a child actually experiencing the events. At one point you have "Like, ..." - an unmistakably teenage expression - contrasted with "For our children" - an (overwrought) old man sort of thing to say. It takes already not stellar writing and compounds the issue.

"Will was the first to die. As we went deeper, there were these... people? I guess." That just doesn't really work. You want to do horror but the writing style doesn't seem suited. It didn't really keep my attention too well.

I guess this is Harry caught by Voldemort, imprisoned in some of bizarre cave as his final Horcrux, and by accidentally killing him they allowed Voldemort to be killed? I don't really get what the visions meant either and I didn't find myself being too curious either. I think it might've been more hard-hitting if Harry'd been imprisoned in Dread Hogwarts instead, but that might be difficult to get across in as many words.

2/5 for decent concept and mediocre execution.

 

Spoiler

Hmm. You are a good writer, but I have to admit I think this was just a bit too obscure for me. I had to read it 2-3 times to get a grasp at what you were hinting at. Which may say something about me as the reader lol. You set the tone very well...sort of dread mystery... but it was just a bit TOO opaque. Maybe if it was a first opening chapter to a longer story it would fit well.

 

Spoiler

I think I can boil down my issues with this piece into 3 main categories. Pacing, consistency, and engagement.

I like the tone that you’re going for, that kind of surrealist, far future dystopian feeling. You’re doling out information about the setting slowly, leaving the specifics of what happened 70 years ago vague. But it makes it difficult to read. Did Voldemort win 70 years ago, or did the dreams start 70 years ago, or are those the same things? I would think not, considering that people thought Voldemort was a good ruler. But I felt lost on my first (and second) read through of this. The introduction is made more difficult because it's being repetitive. You focus more on the dreams that came and went, which is a really cool idea, and less on establishing exactly what’s going on. You’ve set up that the visions come and go and people were surprised by it, and then you say “How do I know?” and continue to explain that he knows because he’s personally experienced everything he just explained. It’s repetitive, and a jarring switch from third person to first person which doesn’t help. We get a brief glimpse of some kind of Emperor, but where we are in time is not firmly established and that makes the rest of the story hard to follow for me.

Then it’s consistency. You start with “Dreams haunt us and they show us terrible sights of our overlord and we all just have accepted it for 70 years, but now I’m fed up with it, it’s too emotionally straining for me.” Then you go to “No one goes to this creepy hill by the lake and everone speaks badly of it, but I don’t believe it’s actually a threat, and maybe I should have listened.” If he is personally experiencing these weird nightmares and has experience with his grandfather telling the truth about the nightmares, why doesn’t he listen? This seems like a contrived reason to get the main character to that cavern. Also, why does his father or grandfather need to tell him about the dreams at all if he’s experiencing them? Additionally, you set up the two as being connected, the dreams and the Nightmare Vault, but then explain how no one has ever been to the cave? So how or why does anyone think they’re connected?

Lastly, engagement. You introduce three new characters, and I have no idea who they are and no reason to care about them. I have their first names, and that’s it. And we’re 70 years in the future, I get these are characters that wouldn’t have been in canon. But they die and it has no emotional impact for me. The characters feel less like characters and more like a literary device to show how dangerous the cave is.

Overall, this is a really cool idea. Harry and friends destroy all the Horcruxes but at the Battle of Hogwarts Voldemort discovers he’s a Horcrux and spirits him away to keep him alive for ever. Implied that he’s maybe put under Fidelius or forgotten as part of a massive memory charm, not sure. But either way, we then get to see a story of how the world changes under Voldemort’s reign, and then there’s the dreams that are likely being broadcast by Harry to try and get people to realize or remember the truth. You drop some really great bits and pieces of worldbuilding here and there, like the Enforcers. I think that this would have done much better as a short story, rather than flash fiction, with more room to let the setting breath and slowly unfurl in a much neater and more streamlined way.

2/5 – no glaring technical issues, awesome idea, could use some work on the execution.

 

Spoiler

So I like the grand feel of it, I like the concept. It lends a grandness to Voldemort's victory that comes across quite well and is suitably aggrandising for him.

However, there're few bits that I felt let it down a little.

Firstly, the second person/first person question bits. It felt like it was being told to someone, but it wasn't. It was just being told to the reader. I think if you're using the second person as a framing device then it should be framing. Let us know why the narrator is telling us this. Even if it's just bookend sentences in the end. There has to be a goal in a story that is presented as someone telling a story. A motive.

Secondly, for a flash fic, the substance should surely be their going into the cave. But you spend a long time expositing (and it's nice, but it doesn't serve such a short story), and it means that the events that should shine don't shine. What I'm imagining is this story, but you keep the very beginning and far more quickly progress to the caves. You use more on-the-body description, and you focus on physicalising the psychic system, so that in as short a story as this it doesn't feel rushed. And so that, with very few sentences, we can feel it.

This is a nitpick, but when I see Patty it really feels like a name that shouldn't be in HP. That may vary from person to person, but it seems really American to me. I guess she could be American, but yeah, I noticed it. Does she contribute anything to be named? Is he telling this to someone who cares about Patty? No idea.

This is a nice sorta classic fantasy feel, but it's so quick and so passing, and the dialogue is in the middle of the sentence, with a comma outside the quotation marks, and there's a sentence that can be summed as 'he said' and then you still use the tag 'he said', which I am not a fan of. I just think any story lives or dies by its ending, and you could've put more here, by taking more of the exposition out at the start. We know it's Harry. But it's not punchy, it's a cameo. It doesn't truly mean anything to the narrator (except that 'everyone remembered Harry Potter'. But you're just telling us. I don't believe you. I don't see why they would.

This confused me a little. At first I thought we were dealing with a teen listening to their grandfather, but then this makes it feel like they were there and are a grandfatherly figure who saw the battle, but then Patty tucks (?)their kids in. I don't have a firm grip on the MC. I get the tone, I get the setting.

Character and endings should be your jam. Concrete scene-setting and quickly building intensity (you can't do slow build in 1000 words) not grandiosity. A good concept, poorly executed.

 

Spoiler

I feel like this should have been your first sentence:

Harry as a Horcrux whose continued existence breaks through Voldemort’s enchantments and causes nightmares was interesting (reminded me of Bobika’s story) but I feel like there is too much going on in this piece. The 70 years mark itself is confusing for me—why do the nightmares start on Halloween? how soon after Voldemort’s victory does Harry exert this power? there are a lot of throwaway bits that are too vague for the length of this piece, eg: The name of the vault, the grandfather (whose experience you don’t discuss or return too), & the introduction of the narrator’s friends who don’t add anything to the plot.

 

Spoiler: Thoughts

He said only one thing to me before he passed. ‘And so ends the last’, he said. His final breath.
Great line, unfortunately the only thing that gripped me in an otherwise average story.
A lot of it is just too vague, it didn't interest me.
A strong 2 to a light 3.

 

Spoiler

Hmm... this is totally "telling instead of showing", which can be done well, but this story has so many original elements (I assume, or if there's crossover bits, I'm not knowledgeable on where they're from). Instead of giving us a short story, you're giving us a full on story compressed into 1k words, which is where I think it falls short. I did enjoy the concept. I would just like to see it written with a larger budget.