Spoiler

Hmmmm. In terms of technical writing, I have absolutely nothing to remark on. Harry's in character, as far as I recall so is Aberforth. The hag (no name, presumably intentionally?) having a child is a simple but effective way to grab the reader's sympathy, even if "baby hag" is really quite the oxymoron.

But, in terms of tone, I think this rams into the grey zone that HP nonhumans exist in and doesn't come off unscathed. We feel sorry for the hag and her child, whereas later it is shown that we were wrong to feel pity for the hag - she cannot change her nature, and so she ate children. The possibility exists that it was not her who ate the children, admittedly, but the piece is too short to really make that much of a thing.

I think that what makes this weird for me is that Harry is an Auror - a police officer. He sees someone who is effectively a minority (the hag), decides to help the minority and not come down on them with all the harshness of the law that he is meant to apply, and he and the community are later punished for it because the minority reverts to their innate brutish nature. I am not saying that is the intended reading, but I can't help but read it that way and it leaves a rather bitter aftertaste.

I guess in the end 3/5? It's a hard one to rate.

 

Spoiler

Oh, come on, man. We wanted some authority abused!

That aside, this is very readable and has that bit of mixed morale, in the end, to make it stand out even more. I liked it all, except the fact of fighting one's own nature. Harry and Abe are both well done, and the whole hag thing is handled well, in my opinion, since if you had done anything else, you would've lost the story. So the story kinda wrote itself, and that's not the bad thing, but without Harry's reaction in the end we don't get a resolution of the whole ouch stuff. It's a good call, I think, but I'm still uncertain if this is good or really good.

 

Spoiler

A difficult one. The grammar and writing is fine. There's enough dialogue so I don't feel like there's just a wall of text. There's a twist at the end, though you see it coming. The problem with this story, I believe, is that it disregards the core of Harry Potter. Here, it is not the choices that define the characters, but their nature. In the end, the hag couldn't fight her nature, and that's why I believe this story leaves an unwelcome aftertaste in our mouths. Still, I would probably give it a 3.5/5.

 

Spoiler

I liked the general approach of the story. Harry’s mistrust transitions in sympathy, which is eventually revealed to possibly be wrongly placed. It’s a relatively well thought out way to portray the idea of an inescapable nature, with the hag, despite her sympathetic portrayal, reverting to eating children. The story’s ends pretty strangely, however, but that’s probably just the fault of the format.

3/5

 

Spoiler

I really liked it although I saw the twist coming. Writing was good and the characters were fine. Nothing at all bad to say really and the story was compelling and ideally suited for a short story.

A good example of if you had added any more it would have taken away from the story.

4.1/5

{/SPOILER]

 

Spoiler

This is a strange one. The technical writing is fine, and it starts exploring the concept of Auror Harry, and it does so well by having him on the side of the law. Even so, he's still Harry and decides against following the law to the letter, because it's our choices that define us, not Houses or family or nature.

And then the ending comes, and it's quite jarring. Probably an intentional effect, and I had to wrestle down my immediate dislike of it, because the story was competently written and accomplished what the author seemed to want. 3.5/5

 

Spoiler

A few random grammar typos, but nothing major to comment on. I really enjoyed reading this one and thought the premise was an interesting one. Aberforth felt a little weird to me personally but everything else was fine. The Harry you have written is in my opinion very close to the one in canon, and could see the canon counterpart doing the exact same thing. A little abrupt, but nice little twist at the end. Overall 4/5.

 

Spoiler

That was very well-done. Dark twist at the end. I thought the infant hag was the twist but you surprised me. 4/5. Felt true to canon!Harry as well.

 

Spoiler

This is one of my favourites! It feels close to HP which is a huge bonus for me. You do an excellent job of pulling the reader's feelings along, of course we need to live and let live with the hag, but then in the end we, just like Harry in witnessing Hagrid's fledglings in canon, see why we maybe can't, after all. In fact, this is my one issue with this: on the one hand I love Abe and think he should be included in every fanfic there is, on the other hand he is shown to be street smart and massively cynical in canon. So would he take in a hag, be blinded by its nature? Hagrid, yes. Hermione, yes. Harry, depends on his life experience but prob yes. Ron to impress Hermione, yes. Abe? No.

I don't mind the brutality of the ending, but I will say I was expecting Harry to find out that the hag has taken to killing all the Hogsmeade pets to eat their livers instead of children, because hag's can change their nature, after all. But yeah, your ending's great, middle is great, beginning is great. Well done!

 

Spoiler

I like this quite a bit, although it ends a touch too abruptly in my opinion; it could have done with another line or two at least just to show Harry's reaction to the news. Beyond that though, not bad at all. The confrontation between Harry and Abe felt frustrating in the right way, with it being easy to see both sides of the argument once the situation becomes clear. I like the attempt at ambiguity regarding the hags and their nature/choices, although it's hampered a little by the nature of the competition - fitting that satisfactorily into 1500 words would have been a challenge even if it was the only thing you wrote about, but as it takes up a relatively small amount of the actual text, it comes across a little clumsily.

 

Spoiler

This story is simple in premise and plot. The execution was handled brilliantly. The way you handled Auror Harry was very much in character. Aberforth was in character as well. The hags sounded human, but having them eat children was a good touch. I like this entry for taking a realistic look at beings and not treating them as races of wizards.

 

Spoiler: Hog's Head's Haggling Hags, Hexes, and Hegemony making things Hairy for Harry.

What a fantastic story. Was it only 1500 words? Bloody hell.

I'll admit, I was poised to be a bit dubious. If you've seen me review anything before you'll know that I'm pretty often churning out something about the opening line being important, you've got to get them to carry a lot of work, and at the same time make them simple, try and not make it too much visual imagery. It was fine, but I feel it didn't pop, particularly that second sentence. The prose was competent, but not particularly super and I wasn't sold by Harry's voice at the early portion of the story, and that's more a problem with reading this as a competition entry. I wouldn't be looking at each word the way I do here, and most of the time I can't sink into the story.

Once the meaningful and actual obstacle is established, once Abe starts fighting for his Hag friend, I was in. The degree of conflict was a surprise just as much to me as it was to Harry but the dynamism of it did completely hook me. After the conflict is in full swing I stopped really paying attention to the language so I can't comment on the voice. Still, it's probably something you're aware of. For example, Harry's quite wordy response to Abe hexing him is just a little wooden, and it's that sort of quality that I was noticing until I was pulled in by events.

The ending was fantastic. While it was a shock, I loved that you had the expected twist of 'Hag is sympathetic'. It's very Potter, sometimes, but then you went further and made sure that the Ministry wasn't heartlessly wrong, just heartlessly right. It's a fantastic and considered conceit. Let us see the shape, the archetype of the 'surprise' and let us be right, so that we're not looking for the next one, that's less commonplace in content. It's a great lesson for us, to see it in action, so well, in such a short piece.

The actual concept landed very well, too. Harry fucked up. The ministry was right, but would this have happened if they treated hags a little better and things were less difficult for them to be safe? There's no easy answer here, it's why perhaps I think your last line fell just a smidge short of really giving us that definitive perspective from your Harry. That final core kernel, the important emotion, the thing that was supposed to encapsulate the story felt like you turned away from me very sharply mid-conversation. Just a smidge noticeably jarring.

I think that this story needed a 1525, or a 1535 word cap. However long the next line would've been. You give us the heart sink, you give us the moment of 'no, the danger wasn't imagined' but that's it. You only give us the fact of the tragedy. This is a story about Harry's saving people thing, and the choices that he makes to do that. I think that for this line to be the strong ending that you want (not that it's not strong, but to be strong strong) you needed to give us Harry's emotional reaction to the fact. Fact and reaction. It'd have contextualised the whole theme. It'd have been your way of telling us the final feeling, the final take-away of it.

Even if you can't quite find that exact sentence for after this, I think that you could make this line even more impactful, by focusing the consequence on Harry, rather than this brusque approach to the length of time they'll be there sorting this out. A focus on emotional consequence rather than logistical consequence is what would make the line stronger if that makes sense? Take out the last sentence and make it something like 'And Potter, I'm going to be right at your shoulder as you tell those parents what's happened to their kids', or what have you.

But to make it quite clear, I really love the depth of thought with which you approached Harry, Abe and every other significant part of this story. Lines like this show it sharply. It works to characterise Harry the auror and his relationship with his colleagues, it's a nod to Harry we know, and it foreshadows amazingly Harry's 'doing things' which bite him. Just before it bites him.

 

Spoiler

I'm pretty undecided as to whether I like the opening line haha. On one hand it conjures a very specific image anyone whose seen a Christmas card is familiar, a cottage festooned in fairy lights, a wreath of holly, snow like glitter, maybe even a snowman. Nice, friendly imagery at the start that belies the ending of this short.

Harry feels like an extension of what he might have become after canon ends, but I mostly didn't care much for Aberforth. His defense of the hag felt stubborn and not empathetic, seemingly buoyed more by the fact that he's anti-Ministry meddling and less pro-hag.

Economy of words hurts the story a bit here, because I'd have liked to see some stronger reasoning for his protection of a child-eater, a protection especially reckless in light of the possible interpretation of the ending. Likewise, Harry is particularly negligent, his own strong sense of empathy notwithstanding.

We have here a mother hag with a baby hag. If hags are true to nature, the mother hag had to have eaten a child or three in its lifetime. The presence of a baby ups the sympathy factor a bit, but Harry gives in too easily, and makes no attempt to vouchsafe the safety of any potential victims.

It's why I don't really like the ending. If the hag indeed went true to nature and ate the two kids, I really really dislike both Harry and Aberforth. If it's a too-easy setup from a frame-job and a larger mystery, then some of my critique still applies, but is mollified a bit by the implications after - a setup for Harry and Aberforth trying to shield the innocent hag from the glare of a justice system that would be inclined to call this an open-and-shut case and toss the hag in Azkaban or worse.

However the ambiguity of the end detracts for me because there isn't much pointing to the latter of the two possible interpretations a reader might take.

Looks like most reviewers assumed the hag went true to nature and ate the kids. I settled on this as my final takeaway too, which means I greatly dislike both Harry and Aberforth in this story. If this was OP's intention, congratulations are definitely in order. However two fatally negligent characters means this story is docked points.

Outside of the plot, this short is strong grammatically and flows well enough. 3.5/5 (rounded down to 3/5 if whole number ratings are needed).

 

Spoiler

Nice twist, it worked well. I’d been thinking Harry was a bit shitty in the beginning, then he’s right actually. And the characterization of all of them are on point. Aberforth being dumb about dangerous creatures, and Harry getting swayed over by guilt.

'The only people seated at the tables were two witches, making slow, quiet progress on a couple of grey-looking pies.'

-I really liked this line, it’s what caught my eye and when I started liking the fic.

The first line doesn’t really hook you in. And I think I caught an inconsistency 'He was glad he’d told the law enforcement wizard that he’d take care of this, even though the assignment hardly rose to Auror-level work.' Law enforcement wizard as in another auror? Because at the end we see that Smith is an auror too.

 

Spoiler: spoiler

Hmm. I have mixed feelings on this one. So far it is the best of all the stories I have read in terms of writing quality. It is probably the first fic of the contest where I got into a "reading zone" so to speak and was transported into the world by the quality of the writing.

But I found the actual plot and some of the characterization (as opposed to the quality of the writing) a bit off. Aberforth didn't quite feel right... he is gruff yes but his unwillingness to talk or work with Harry didn't seem right.

I think, I suppose, the root of the problem though is the story feels like it's trying to do a few things at once. It is trying to keep true to the 'theme' of the original harry potter stories, it is trying to do a "is Harry changed by being in authority" theme, and then it is doing a dark "OMG doing the fair thing per canon backfired with real world consequences" theme. Any of those themes by themselves would work fine. But in such a short story, it didn't feel right all jumbled together like this. They sort of tripped over their own feet so to speak. I think a story of this length would be better focusing on ONE 'theme'' That could be harry's struggle to stay true to his friends/not become part of the system. It could be an examination of the prejudices that still exist in wizarding society. It could be harry's understanding nature backfiring and sometimes the stereotypes are there for a reason.

 

Spoiler

Ouh yes, I liked this one a lot. The prose is solid, the dialog stellar. I particularly enjoyed the back and forth between Abe and Harry, since they both had well-reasoned if different positions. The hag combined with the whole area of gray morality gave me some heavy Witcher vibes, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Just as I did the twist at the end. It is a nice echo of the old fable with the frog and the scorpion.

5/5