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There's something abrupt to writing. It also has this problem where you start telling one story, and up starting another. Like you got confused half the way in and just decided to toss the coin for it. So which one should I focus on? A sad one, or the adventure one. There's not enough words available for what you tried to convey here, I'm afraid. A little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and at the end, not enough.

 

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What I noticed first of all when reading is that your prose is sometimes very oddly stilted:

This is not a grammatically correct sentence. 'he said, knowing the fancy word made him sound like a ponce' could perhaps work, I suppose. There are many such examples in the piece: "A dozen Aurors the minister had sent his way were an overkill.", "They’ve had no place in the world the New Order had planned."

The murder of Hagrid was a good choice, I think. (In a narrative sense.) Hagrid was Harry's intro into the Wizarding World and possibly his oldest friend, who manages to make it through the books when even Hedwig didn't, a memory of better times. In that sense him relighting the flame of longing for a better time makes narrative sense. However, the fact that it was an accident, and that Hagrid tries to protect Fang who winds up killing himself five seconds later anyway rob it of a little impact.

I do appreciate that you go for the utter gutpunch of Hagrid's burial site, but I think your somewhat stilted wording detracts from the effect. "Whose heart was gianter", much as it is both literally and metaphorically true, does not an amazing epitaph make, I think.

2.5/5.

 

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The way you describe things in the story is very strange. Your prose feels a little bit too matter-of-fact, like a child struggling to explain something. That style works if the story is grounded on being whimsical, but in this case it just makes your writing feel disjointed. The story struggles to convey a consistent tone – it should be gritty and serious or something but it’s just not. It’s a weird blend of wacky adventure and grim horror that just doesn’t fit.


2/5

 

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There are a few grammar problems. Apart from that...I don't know if I believe the whole Harry-enforcer characterization. Harry always tried to do the right thing. That he would back this new world order just like that...there aren't really hints in the story about his justification for his actions or that he has any doubts before Hagrid dies. So...this breaks my SOD too much for it to work. 2/5

 

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I had to read that line several times to get its meaning, others commented on the prose and flow of the story, and that line for me was the most jarring.

Being a short story is hard, you can't set the scene of Enforcer Harry, yet with out it the character is jarring.

I think because this Harry feels like out Canon Harry, but doing terrible things its unbelievable. Harry would never do this. Not the way we know him, which is the way you wrote him.

For Harry to do this he would need to have changed, and only have hints of the older Harry left, maybe sparked by running into Hagrid. I think you needed to have hinted at Harry going through some shit, like Kingsley Ministry only lasting a year before being toppled by remaining Death Eaters, and when the Order retook the ministry they had to be far more brutal.

Very hard to do in a short story probably, but it would explain Harry changing so much from Canon.

1.9/5

 

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This story had a problem with its tone. It starts out militaristic and gritty, but it gets stretched too thin by the drama, and feeling like we're jumping from scene to scene instead of being an organic transition. In the last moments, when the gut-punch of Hagrid's burial site comes, what should've been an impactful scene ends up something mechanical, filling a blank instead of making me empathize with Harry's pain and mourning of his old friend.

2,5/5

 

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I liked the hints of worldbuilding though a bit more thoughts of rebellion before the ending would have been nice. The twist was well done, though Fang's ending was a tad melodramatic tbh. 3.5/5

 

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I enjoyed that we're straight into the action in this one and you're good at explaining a rather complicated au in few words so that the reader finds their bearings from the get-go. I liked the way you write Ron's and Harry's interactions. I like that they're on brooms and the analogy to bludgers.

I enjoy tragi-comedies and don't mind flipping between genres and emotions at all. However, this ending feels a bit like a drunk person telling a sad story, if you know what I mean? like it goes on for too long, drips in emotion but the word choices and length makes it less impactful than it should be. It does hit, however, I did get genuinely sad at the end.

The other issue is that I don't buy Harry ever going along with this new world order, he also wouldn't just let Hagrid die. But then show me a fanfic where Harry actually feels in character? They're few and far between.

Also, would giants screech when they die? I'm thinking maybe rumble like a mountainside caving in on itself, or something like that would be more gianty.

Anyway, well done, this did make me feel things and I did want to find out the ending all the way from the beginning.

 

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I respect the ambition, but this is probably a bit too ambitious given the confines of the prompt. Selling Harry as the enforcer for a tyrannical regime is a tough prospect in 1500 words, and you don't quite pull it off well enough to keep focus on the story itself, rather than speculation about what has happened off page. There's a couple of stilted phrases scattered around, but - allowing for the clear changes - the characterisation feels believable. Once Hagrid shows up, there's a decent emotional grip, although I could have lived without the rather cliche bit with Fang.

A nice idea, but I just want to know more, I think.

 

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This story makes a fine read, but I take issue with the characterization. The similarities of Death Eaters and this Ministry are far too much for Harry and Ron to take in stride. I don't agree with the premise that a dozen aurors can slaughter a clan of giants. I didn't like Hagrid's apparently cordial relation with Harry. I'd rate this at a 2/5.

 

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Ron would never react this way. Ron is not the kind of person who cracks weak jokes while he's standing over a close friend who he has just killed. Glib lines like this speak more to the author’s inability to handle this grim tone than anything else.

I don't care how jaded Harry is. If he is responsible for the death of a lifelong friend, he would not just quietly bury him. No matter how broken Harry is, this needs to break him more.

The line "he coughed half a gallon of blood" was another example of the author going too far with this grim tone while also being way too blasé about it.

I'd like to see this author write a completely different tone, because I suspect that a different entry from them would've been much better. The story is well-structured, the exposition is good, and the dialogue is, technically, solid. But the characters' reactions are so muted and unrealistic that the whole thing just feels hollow. I recognize that Harry and Ron are war-torn here. But you're just dropping me into this moment, and it just felt bizarre.

I'd like to see you continue to write, specifically to explore a story outside the grimdark genre.

 

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Prose feels dry and stilted in quite a few places, which is either a half-hearted commitment to the style the writer is going for, or someone still finding their style.

Story-wise, both Harry and Ron feel out of character, without the benefit of a backstory to explain their actions. Despite how much the writer might want us to think they regret the carnage they just fostered, it doesn't quite translate in the actual writing, robbing the story of the emotional weight of Hagrid's death. Fang's death was a cliche aimed to tug on the heartstrings, but which barely rings a note.

2/5

 

Spoiler: ooo-ooooH! I really want to like it! Rock the Haz-brawl! Rock the Haz-brawl!

A very interesting concept, I think that your ending was stronger than your beginning. I think the majority of this review is mostly going to be little quotes, because I think that this exact same scene rewritten with a view to improving the language and the odd phrasings would make it twice as strong, I think that just a focus on slightly different details, and on slightly different words and actions by these characters could make the vision you were trying to execute that much clearer: this Harry is in Voldemort's ministry in form if not in figurehead.

Lots of this story falls on the side of cart before horse. By not carefully considering the way you want to tell us events you put something first that should be second and so change our perception, and when we reach the statement that makes everything clear, the reader has to mentally apply the brakes and then reimagine the scene correctly. This is a big problem because you can't maintain effective pacing, imaging, or characterisation if the reader can't subsume themselves in your story.

Here, in this quote, "Harry thought muggles had it before the battle" to me, implies that 'the battle' is a big one (probably Hogwarts) and that things before and after this event have gone differently to expected. I'm expecting a meditation on this, instead what we get is that Harry thinks muggles have it better before battles. Instead of a 'the' it should be a 'a'. Then we get to the actions Harry is doing, or rather not doing. As an opening line itself, Harry awkwardly stood there at the front, might have been a better opening line, in terms of confusion and establishing where we are from the get go.

Overkill isn't a noun, so it should be "The dozen Aurors the minister had sent his way were overkill."

Here you slip into a direct interjection for a split moment which isn't its own sentence and so is jarring, but also is a question which you then don't end with a question mark.

This is just a peculiar way to describe Ron, both before and after the 'and'. It just made me quirk an eyebrow. How AU is this AU, I wondered. Then you've got 'he said the words of the ministry and snorted', and generally speaking if you can get away with doing only a dialogue tag, or an action beat, rather than both it generally works better (and best of all is when you can manage a few lines where there's neither and their strength of character is enough that you can read all of it in the line itself).

Then the final part of Harry's dialogue I just don't understand. Is this a reference to Ron as his oldest shadow again?

"They had no place in the world the New Order planned". Your "'ve had" borked your sentence here, cus you were stuck into adding two hads you didn't need, and then that makes the sentence mean something entirely different. If that was what the New Order had plannned, what are they planning now?

Oh I quoted this twice, because the next sentence doesn't stand. The second sentence is relying on place not plan, and it's unusual to use a noun in that technique of carrying forward a verb so you can use the same verb in multiple places without actually saying it and people will just read what is omitted, because it's not a verb. You need to rephrase this second sentence. "ones" should probably be "few" for better dramatic effect, too.

You start with a conjuction here that you don't need. You do stand with Ands and Buts and Evens a fair bit, so try and be cognizant of that, as they rarely make writing better when they can be avoided (though we're all guilty of it). "Though blood had come to mean little to the New Order, purity prowled, still, behind legislation, and sharpened its dagger under Prophet headlines, its appetites changed but its red stare as baleful as ever." Look how fun that was. It's super extra, but you can make these sort of things fun and clear and memorable if you try and avoid phrases you've heard before. Orwell in his political language essay says something to this effect, let me see if I can find it:

Pals is super odd here. Just really strange.

Similarly 'deeds of the night were done'. In another story, with another character, in another world of a different time, it's a perfectly fine phrase. Not for HP is 'the deeds of the night', not for Harry himself, at the very least.

Took me a couple of goes to read this sentence.

Similarly to your opening line, we lose our 'continuity' in time here. It reads like an abstract, a description of what the plan *will* be, but the next line makes it clear that this is the plan happening. It's hard to put my finger on why, exactly, this is my impression every time I read this, but I suspect it's the "The drill was simple." and "Rinse and repeat, and voila."

dived under/over/to the side of, then, "a rock" because you've established that there are multiple boulders being flung about, at this point.

"would give a dragon a run for its money" or something similar.

You're slipping into narrator voice rather than limited voice, I think, similarly to our problem with the 'drill' section. This doesn't read like an event happening, but an event being described in some post-hoc chronicle, but then we go back to the 'now'.

Slowly makes this sentence weaker than not having it. It's the sort of thing that people go hard with that 'no adverbs, no adjectives' advice for. Here, in this sentence, no adverb would be better.

1) Why does Harry care for fame?
2) Why is Harry not famous, how AU is this AU?
3) What right to what? You've misused a formulaic phrase again here, I feel.

Previously, his force was 'overkill', which is it?

Interestingly, I didn't read Ron's comment as joking, and you're telling us it is. Why isn't Ron trying to be sentimental? It doesn't seem very Ron like that he wouldn't be. In some things he's dense, but in love and grief, he's the most sanguine and warm of the three.

Did...

Did they bury Fang alive? Surely not.

 

Spoiler: spoiler

Interesting. As some others indicated, I wish this was longer. I think you have an interesting world here which intruiges me, but I want to see more. How they got here and why. I had a hard time connecting to Harry since I couldnt place or understand why they were doing what they were. I will say you handled Hagrid really well though, it was kind of touching!

 

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Interesting premise, but the start of it with the dialogue seemed a bit contrived. Besides that, this is pretty good. And on second read through I found it even better. I think just polishing up the piece is enough to make it a 5/5 for a one shot. Maybe a few more words to make their heel turn a little less abrupt with more introspection at the start.

Overall, I find it a nice short story, and the characters were definitely the strong point.

 

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A few technical aspects up front:

a) “Harry thought muggles had it better before the battle.” I suspect you mean to imply a generality. In that case I’d use the plural of battle. Muggles had it better before battles. ‘The battle’ implies that there is a specific battle they have it easier before.

b) “Here lies Hagrid, whose heart was gianter.” I know what you’re trying here but this line just falls flat. It has me face palming more than feeling honest emotion for Hagrid’s end.

As for the story itself: the start felt a bit off, but I think you found your groove towards the middle in terms of writing. The subject matter is a different thing, though. I like to read about a Harry having to find his way in a more dystopian post-Riddle world. However, in no universe would Harry consent to flying (and leading) an attack on giants ordered by the Ministry. That’s so antithetical to everything he is and stands for, the mere thought should repulse him. When they began the attack I actually thought for a moment this is a deeply cynical piece and he’ll kill himself at the end, given that there is no explanation at all for why Harry’s core traits suddenly matter less than Ministry orders.

2/5

 

Well, this was my go at detached Harry [who failed at it because of who he is (which I failed at because of stuff)]

The word count limit and lack of proper editing made it this way.

The thing is I had another scene that took place before this back in the ministry. It was some 800 words long of what ministry had become through the dialogue and depiction of ministry. As I had to cut it down to fit 1500 words, it all went away, and I've tried to work the general idea in by hinting at details and such, alas... I appreciate the reviews and understand where most of you are coming from. Nonetheless, I'm happy with it, as it seemed impossible to make it work in so few words available, and I'm happy with a couple of votes that went my way