Spoiler

Well, this is certainly a novelty. An exposition piece made true through a dialogue. Dialogue only. There is a start and there is a conclusion.

Now, as I wrote this four previous sentences I thought of how jarring they were to read since they lack a certain rhythm anything written must have in order to make reading easy, to make people read because they want to and not to turn it into a chore. Since we're already exposed to the characters in question, that part was taken care of with simple usage of names, and there, at the beginning and at the end, it works perfectly fine. I even had some fun reading through a little abrupt sentences between a father and a daughter.

The problem starts when the exposition starts - middle towards the end - where you had to use longer sentences to explain, hint, on what in the Merlin's name is going on. The rhythm broke there and it suddenly became that much harder to read - almost to the point where I stopped caring about hows and whys and just focused on the ending.

The big plus is that the dialogue is well written, on point, and believable. The story itself, even though grim, hits all the right spots to be included in HP world and it was a correct choice not to go too deep into it since that would have only killed the story.

As always, there's a but. But with removing speech tags and actions that usually follows them, you removed a certain stop in rhythm one makes while reading, a slight shift in readers' mind where we consciously noticed one character stopped talking, and the second one started. The skip of line visibly takes care of that, but in reality, not always. Since you had no words around dialogue, you had project certain things through tools you had available such as ... , - , ! , -- and with one-word lines they simple weren't enough for me to achieve the same shift as dialogue tag would have brought to me.

This part, for example, in my mind reads like Gollum whispering nonsense to himself. And it's not the only one.

That said, I really enjoyed the novelty of it, and the parts that were 100% clear in my mind.

 

Spoiler

First off, kudos for going for a dialogue-only story. I'm a sucker for an interesting format, and this checks that box.


But not only that, you do what you set out to very well. You manage to work in an actual end, a lot of background information, and solid characterization through nothing but a single, two-party conversation. That's impressive work.


Rose’s dialogue sounds like a child her age, and the believability of the dialogue is in general very good. The only really unusual part is how commonly Ron says Rosie’s name (or a nickname for her) and vice versa, but that’s a necessary sacrifice for the sake of clarity, and changing it would only create a new, much worse problem.


But now I get to the part that bugs me about it, which is admittedly quite large. There’s not really a plot here to engage with. It reads like an information dump to set the scene. A well-crafted, cleverly designed information dump, but an information dump all the same.


It feels like I read a prologue, the hook to a larger story. I’m curious about the world, curious about the characters, but not gripped because all the important events seem to have already occurred or are yet to come. If it were the first installment in a series of chapters I would be excited for what was to come, but as a standalone I came away with a feeling of ‘that’s it?’ and nothing more.

 

Spoiler

"Did you use to". Not "did you used to". Goddamn that bugged me.

The dialogue format is a difficult one to make work, and to be perfectly honest I don't think you managed to. The dialogue is either fairly clunky exposition about things 'Rosie' already ought to know by dint of living in this setting for six years now, and neither of the characters have a very distinctive voice beyond just "is a dad" and "is a child".

Ron doesn't seem particularly Ron-like or even all that openly emotive about the loss of the entire world to Voldemist, whereas I would think he might consider it rather troubling. The conclusion rests on this accidental discovery of Rosie being able to read the solution to Hermione's runes or whatever, but I'm never all that convinced by Hermione being this supergenius She-Merlin. Ron having sacrificed his own child to try and appease the mists is also oddly understated on his part, possibly as a consequence of the dialogue format. I'd expect him to try and shut it down more forcefully than actually happens.

As a result the whole thing feels rather undercooked to me. 2/5.

 

Spoiler: Review

For something that's all dialogue, well it's really clunky and stilted.
Here's an example:
> “… Merlin. Merlin, Rosie. Most of them come back. Almost all. They-- most of them come back. Merlin.”
Merlin is the magical equivalent of a muggle saying God, people don't use the lord's name in vain God as an expletive that many times in the same sentence.

The idea is novel, I don't think I've seen anything like it in a while, and while I like the tragedy of them sacrificing young children just for a chance to get their magic back, the way it's portrayed doesn't carry any of the significance and dreadfulness of such an act.
Rosie being the one to figure it out is huh? Bit sudden since the story just ends there plus it's weird that a child understands what countless others didn't.
2/5 for a good idea but a not so good implementation.

 

Spoiler

Intriguing concept, intriguing format. I'm prone to writing much more dialogue than anything else in my own fiction, but I'm not sure I'd want to risk cutting everything else out - it's all well and good offering the advice that tone etc ought to be obvious from the dialogue without needing, for example, things like "he said angrily", but it's all too easy for it to feel stilted without at least a bit of that.

Impressively, you don't fall into that trap too much with this, although there are moments; this bit, for example “…Merlin, Rosie, yes she… she died." In and of itself, I don't think it's too bad - I'd maybe write something like it myself - but devoid of anything other than dialogue, it does feel a little clunky. Overall though, good job on that front; there's a decent emotional heft to most of it, even as stripped down as it is.

Elsewhere, as I say, it's an intriguing concept, and one I wouldn't mind seeing more of - what's going on with Voldemort now, purebloods struggling to cope without magic, how Harry and co get to the point of stealing babies magic in futile attempts to fix the world and, of course, how they fix it.

That said, I do have some issues. Hermione writing her research in her own language that no-one else can understand seems very stupid, given how intelligent she clearly is, and while I understand it needs to happen for plot purposes, there's other ways this could be achieved - maybe Rosie's the only one who remembers where the notes might have been hidden, for example, given that the implication seems to be that Hermione died saving her and Hugo from...something? The timeline seems off as well; I get that Rosie is presumably pretty intelligent, but if she's only six now, how old was she when she learned this super secret language that no-one else has been able to decipher? Finally, 'dear heart'. Can't really see Ron calling anyone that, to be honest. Honestly, it wasn't really until the final couple of lines that he felt like Ron.

 

Spoiler

This was easy to read and engaging, kept my interest from start to finish. I like that you’re introducing the Mist already in the first sentence. The idea that they’ve lost their magic is chilling, I can’t imagine a worse disaster scenario for witches and wizards.


Considering the length of this, I think you do a good job of setting up what’s happened, but to make it great you would need a bit more detail and create a bit more atmosphere as well. There are some loose ends in this story, too. I want to know what usually happens by the lake that makes Rose say that everyone was acting weird not just there but also in the library and great hall. I like that Rose has the potential to solve her mother’s notes because they used to play like that, but I think it would have needed setting up a bit more. I realize this is difficult when there’s only dialogue, but you are asking your readers to suspend their disbelief a bit too far. If this was my story, I’d try and add a throwaway reference by Rose in the beginning, some sort of riddle she’s proud of knowing and Ron sounding exasperated because he doesn’t get it. Then we get the explanation that the riddle is something she and Hermione used to do together and the reveal just like you wrote it.


Nailing character voices is everything in a story like this. I think Rosie is skilfully written, believable child asking one thing then going off on a tangent. I particularly enjoyed the with back and forth about drunk adults, because that’s something I remember asking my parents about too when I was that age. I rather enjoyed the pet name ‘dear heart’ for her, that’s not one I’ve come across before but it sounds nice.


I’m not convinced by Ron’s reaction to the memory of sacrificing Hugo, that would need more emotion to ring true. I also think you might benefit from flicking through the books a bit before writing Ron’s dialogue, because he does have a specific voice, vocabulary etc, and most HP fans will be more familiar with his voice than with, say, Professor Sprout, so it’s easy to spot if it doesn’t sound like him. You’re also using a few Americanisms, which of course I don’t know how much that bothers people in general, but to me that tends to take me out of the HP world faster than almost anything else. I’m probably over-sensitive, and I’m also neither American nor British, so it’d be completely fair to tell me to fuck off and quit giving advice to anyone on this. Anyway, to me, “it’s real small” and “ignorant ass—jerks” sound 100% American and I’d swap them for something else.


Small pet peeve, Merlin is always used in expressions like Merlin’s beard, Merlin’s left, saggy tit/testicle etc in the books and not on its own. My god or oh god is used in the books, though. I know a lot of fanfic writers change this on purpose, though.

 

Spoiler

I liked this one. I have only encountered one other story that was written in the same style, and in this case I think that you sell it much better than the last one. There are a few necessities here and there to keep it clear which of the two is speaking, but overall I think that you sold the drama of it and gave us a legitimate "aftermath" to haunt the wizarding world. That they sacrificed Hugo, and seem to use others for that, in a vain attempt to understand and reverse this lasting problem, could be driven in more deeply but for what it is, I think that you gave us a decent look at a tragic "for the greater good" sort of reasoning. But damn.

As for the reveal at the end that Rosie could actually understand Hermione's cryptic language, I think you can nail that down with a fuller narrative, which would assist this piece overall.

In closing, good job.

 

Spoiler

Nice story. It does its job I think, given the limitations of the chosen style. Although I assume making the story dialogue only was more due to the limited extension time, rather than a desire to be avant garde. That in mind, I don't think there's much in the way of constructive criticism I could give you, other than perhaps to try and make your character voices more distinct. Given that you can't use speech tags (he shouted, he whispered, he choked, etc.) or action beats (he shook, he ran his fingers through his hair, he bobbed his knee, etc.) to help with characterising the conversation, it might behoove you to go over the top with what you can use, i.e., pure dialogue.

For instance, you could - a bit like how theater actors exaggerate their facial expressions so people at the back can see it - exaggerate Ron's canonical voice. Stereotype him to hell and back. Really make it sound like a parody of himself. You won't be able to, with only pure dialogue, no matter how hard you try (I've tested it), so the only result will be to make him sound much closer to himself.

Spoiler: A few tings you might try

Blimeys, contractions (d’you , instead of do you, etc.), Er —, gits and a long list of etceteras. Just re-read some of his dialogue in the original books and go from there. I would also cut out expressions which he never uses in the og books (i.e. 'fuck' or 'dear heart') towards the same end.

Other than that a solid 3/5. What's there is alright, but it's just lacking some meat to be considered a proper short story, in my book.

 

Spoiler

This was really fun! You subtly set up a little arc here that I didn't even see coming. I didn't have high hopes that a dialogue-only, brief entry like this would have any plot, and so I was pleasantly surprised to find that you'd crafted a little ending reminiscent of Chamber of Secrets. The exposition about the babies made me think this story was going to be extremely grimdark, which ultimately served as a great distraction for the climax at the end.

You really pulled off your experiment of a flash fiction dialogue-only story here. Great Ron voice, great Rosie voice. There were only a few moments that took me out of it. I'm not sure Ron would call his daughter "dear heart" — it feels a little formal for him, no? Seems like you could accomplish as much affection and a more Ron-ish voice with "Rosie love."