Spoiler

Well written and flowed well, technically very good. Lockhart felt close to his canon self, he is very hard to get down pat. Filch didn’t, which is odd as he has so little actual character rather than bitter squib, but this didn’t read as him.

Story was fine, flash is so hard to do any sort of plot. [\spoiler]

 

Spoiler

It's fine, I suppose? The setup of Filch's one lazy day being disrupted by something is obvious from the getgo. The only question I had was who was going to be the one who disrupted it. Lockhart's as good a choice as any, I suppose.

I dunno. There's very little to say here. You attempt some physical comedy with Filch being attacked by a book, and then attacked by more books later. It was, again, an obvious gag. Gilderoy is his resplendent self. I have to be honest, though: it didn't really land. It feels like you've handed me the ingredients to a cake and waggled your eyebrows suggestively.

Technical writing-wise it's fine. No real complaints there.

3/5

 

Spoiler

I hate that the biggest thing I've got to say about this one is that I don't have much to say about this one so I'll try anyway.

Filch fell a little in my eyes everytimes I saw the word damn, and it might have happened 3-4 times tops. Something about the word really don't work in tandem with Filch and HP world. I somewhat liked intro to the story, the way Filch likes to have a single day for himself, in his not at all enjoyable life. It built some character that it usually lacks.

Lockhart, on the other hand, was his usually self, yet I feel he was delivered with a bit of a heavy hand. It was as good character as any to introduce distruptance to his day, but I feel some kid would work better in the setup. It would have been a way to build up his character even more.

The thing is I'm a sucker for deepened characters, and when I saw Lockhart I knew this would be an attempt at humor which I'm not really a fan of. Perhaps I'm humorless bastard and this is really an entertaining story, but for me it simply wasn't. Both characters are rather close to canon, I feel, and both writing and pace were on spot, the story delivered in a believable maner.

Not a fan of a type of ending that you chose. Especially since you did it in like fifty words. A simple, nice sentence would work better in my opinion. I'm not angry that I've read this but it's not something that I'd ever consider reading again. Good effort.

 

Spoiler

On a technical level, it's fine. The writing's solid, no spelling or grammar errors that leapt out. The concept is thin but efficient, and fits very well with Lockhart as established, at least; Filch I'm not sure feels quite right, but equally, it's not like we see him interacting with non-students (and especially, people he's not disciplining) very often, and it's not wildly out of character, if at all.

Beyond that, there's not a huge amount to say, to be honest. It raised a chuckle, and that's that. Feels like it delivered everything it set out to do, and with nothing significant to critique. Not bad!

 

Spoiler

The idea is cute.

It's fun that Lockhart leaves no stone unturned as he spreads his good work throughout the community.

There's something lacking with Filch's character, though. His thoughts and manner are off.

Personally, I expect more surly behavior from the caretaker.

The physical humor is a bit too slapstick.

And one line broke my suspension of disbelief entirely:

Those things aside, I liked it.

 

Spoiler

Your characterization of Filch is off. It isn't exactly wild, but it doesn't feel like the character we see in canon. Lockheart, by contrast, is very well done. Altogether this is a clean entry, good technically, but a bit, well, dull. The humor is flat, and other than mild senses of amusement the story does very little, which isn't a good thing. You spend a lot of words in description, especially early on, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but does limit you toward the end. The ending, in particular, feels very abrupt and sparse, especially since the prose is so different from the rest of the piece. 1500 words came up faster than you were expecting, huh?

I usually like to do line-by-line edits, things that were off or needed correcting, but honestly I'm a bit of a loss here. Everything is executed solid and consistently, you just don't do much premise-wise. Well crafted meh, in summary.

 

Spoiler

My biggest problem with this is that your narrative voice clashes horribly with the character whose POV you are narrating from. Argus Filch should not read like a 19th century dandy, and yet with things like this —

— he does. It's just jarring tbh. Now maybe you were leaning into that difference (between the tone of the narration and the character you were depicting) for comedic effect, but if so you should have made your narrator a clearly distinct entity — a character in himself, instead of the extension of one.

That's why his Filch's character reads wrong, in my opinion, and thus also why the story just kinda leaves you bemused, more than amused (I am very funny I know). On the flipside, I liked Lockhart's voice, even though I can't fully commit the idea that he would care about Filch enough to gift him a book. On the subject of physical comedy – well, it's not my thing, really, but it's executed competently enough, as is the story from a purely technical perspective.

So all in all, a bit of an inbetween entry. Certainly not bad, but it's more remarkable for being slightly jarring than for what it's trying to do.

Spoiler

I also noticed this on a second reading.

Basically the second part of the sentence is redundant. If it's late December, then close to the changing of the year, no need to say it twice.
[/Quote]

 

Spoiler

First off, I love that this is a light, humorous entry. I think that’s perfect for a holiday flash competition. It was a nice read in many ways.

Secondly, I don’t buy that Filch has ever had a decent cup of tea in his life. He seems like the type who, whatever he does, however near he might occasionally get, he never actually gets something good/perfect/the way he wants it. I think the only time he’s made a perfect cuppa, he’s poured a dash of soured milk in by mistake.

Second point ties in with the general Filch problem in this, character voices aside, your language in the beginning has a specific quality to it, my ESL makes it difficult to find the exact words for this, not quite pompous but there’s both humour and a certain elegance about it that clashes wildly with who Filch is. That type of language could suit other HP characters, say Slughorn or Dumbledore, but it doesn’t scream Filch to me. That said, the beginning is quite lovely and could (to great effect I’m sure) be tweaked and reused for a character better suited to it. I think it’s also the funniest bit of your fic, and I did enjoy reading it a lot.

Lockhart’s good fun as well, made me smile. His wink as he enters is gold, the slow accio was really good as well. Incidentally, I wonder if your mind was already busy on Lockhart’s entrance when you wrote the beginning? Because the language in those beginning paragraphs suit him, too. Well done for utilizing Lockhart and Filch by the way, I think it’s great to read about side characters!

The ending has too much build-up. If you’d actually had a killer punchline at the end, you would’ve gotten away with it, but as it is it just stumbles at the finish line and spoils some of the atmosphere and good quips you had earlier on. I bet you’re quite capable of thinking up a snappier, more satisfying way to end it than this, but since it feels a bit shitty of me to just go that’s bad, why not change it, I’ll say that if this was my story I’d try to get Mrs Norris more involved, maybe one of Lockhart’ spells going wrong and hitting her, say they end up with a three metre tall tea-drenched cat that tries to claw its way out of the room or something like that. Spell backfiring on her is more canonically likely to upset Filch, too. But yeah, I have full faith in your abilities to come up with a better climax for this, and of course humour is so subjective that you’re unlikely to please everyone anyway. But I did find the ending the least fun.

 

Spoiler

Great choice of characters for the oneshot, and they were wonderfully written. Perfect Filch, and perfect Lockhart.

Lockhart's excuses were hilarious:

Even the goofy slapstick choice to have the books whizz over Lockhart's head and hit Filch one by one was great.

I feel like the author didn't quite stick the landing, though.

Why was Lockhart in Filch's office in the first place? It was distracting to me that we never find out. Even if Lockhart's only motive was to find a willing ear to listen to him talk about himself, it would've been nice if the author had made that clearer.

Americanism aside, I found the "mooooommmyyyy!” too goofy to be a good punchline.

 

Spoiler

Alright so, neither Filch or Lockhart feel fully in character but that doesn't really matter that much since this is fanfic. This was some classic slapstick type of humor, not really my taste personally, but I think you did it pretty well here. I really liked Filch's characterization here and overall this was just a nice light hearted enjoyable oneshot.