Spoiler

Not sure if this qualifies as a story, but it's here and so it shall be commented upon.

As this barely has any words, the best way to sell them properly is to make them count. Your opening, in that light, is somewhat weak. Too many words where few would do, depicting what ought to be left to the readers' imagination. It lacks sharpness, and then it goes on for too long, killing its potency.

The same reason as above why I quote this. It's barely few words so all of them must be clear. This should've been two paragraphs instead of one, sliced at the very half. One for depicting, another to shift the screen towards the action.

Other than that there isn't much to say. I've read this, and I feel completely the same way I did before reading it. The story, in my humble opinion, must reach towards something, that something being described with the story's progression path, being set by its hook, and delivered in a fashion that ultimately makes it a story rather than a fraction of one.

I have a feeling that there's a joke here that I don't get but that's fine.

 

Spoiler

Short and sweet, I suppose. Charlie takes on a dragon that's killed an entire neighbourhood.

That said, though, it doesn't read like Charlie actually gives much of a shit about the dragon. He calls it a pity but the story skips over him trying every non-lethal alternative. The muggles, too, are mentioned as having been massacred by the dragon with roughly the same empathy you'd spare for a spilled bowl of soup. It's a neat action scene but maybe a little more would've been good.

Also, rein in the purple prose. The opening sentence is only barely saved by the mention of the dragon that's the focus of the story. The whole thing feels like you wrote something and then drowned it in adjectives.

Finally, maybe give the Horntail a motive to commit such an act of violence or to not just flee? It's an animal, not a American helicopter raining down molten death on a group of Iraqis. It's got feelings and reasons for doing that sort of thing, I'd imagine.

A 2/5.

 

Spoiler: Review

Not sure why this was left in, just leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions, did Hagrid personally breed these dragons? is that why they're so dumb? why are they attacking muggles randomly? and how come there are dozens of them? How will the wizards cover up this mass scale destruction?
This story doesn't answer any of the questions it poses.
It's not like the action is too interesting either, Charlie just teleports a bunch and shoots at the dragon.
Short and sweet but also too short. 1.5/5

 

Spoiler

It is well written. Some sections go overboard on detail, but by and large the prose is great.

There's also the fact that (and if I'm wrong about this, apologies) this was written last second to help the competition make up numbers, which is an effort that I definitely appreciate.

Unfortunately, that's about where the compliments have to end. There is a severe dearth of background information or motives. Why are there a shit ton of dragons? Why has this one decided to barbecue a suburb? Why did it stick around after getting skewered the first few times?

This is, effectively, a single fight scene, albeit a fairly creative one. Without context I don't know what's happening, nor do I particularly care. It could work as an introduction to a larger story, or the fight could be cut out of this and placed in the middle of something longer. Hell, even one or two more scenes tacked on around it, one to explain how the problem started and maybe another to show how it got all the way here, would be a vast improvement.

But as it is, with just what's here, I'm afraid there really isn't much to it.

 

Spoiler

There's more plot development in the title than in the story itself.

OK, let's take a step back. In and of itself, it's not badly written. A little overwrought, perhaps, but that doesn't feel like too bad a thing if you take the title out - given that we only know the cause of this because of the title, the slightly purple prose felt mostly appropriate for the piece itself, with dragons seemingly ravaging the land. A story about an apocalypse of dragon fire needs some weighty prose and imagery, which you do a decent job of...until the end, where Charlie snaps off his world-weary quip and vanishes. I feel like he's the wrong character for this, to be honest - I get it, because he's the obvious choice for a story focusing on dragons, but he's a dragon keeper, not a dragon slayer. More emotion at having to kill one of the creatures he loves so much, even in the defence of others, is needed.

As an action scene, it's not bad, but feels like an excerpt from a longer piece; if it were included in something longer, the almost summary like nature of it would work, but given that all we have is a battle with a dragon, it's hardly the most memorable thing in the world.

It's the tonal jarring that really spoils this for me, to be honest, largely because it's a dramatic scene bookended by two somewhat wry jokes. The title, at least, is easy enough to fix.

 

Spoiler

I love the title!! I also don’t mind a bit of purple prose or what have you when it’s brief and done for effect like here. I would imagine that Charlie would feel a lot worse about killing not just one dragon but multiple than he does here, so I would rewrite what he says to reflect a bit more sorrow and frustration, maybe anger. At the same time, it’s good that there’s some bleak humour in this too, it’s HP after all.

 

Spoiler

There's hardly anything here to comment on. It barely qualifies as a snippet, much less a short story. I'm not going to give you a hard time about it because I'm assuming you wrote it to pad out the submission numbers, which I appreciate, but the result is that I really don't know what to say about it. Good job, I guess? The title detracts from the rest of it? Your guess is as good as mine.

 

Spoiler

You had an opportunity for a good twist — at the very least, a fun quip — at the end of the story, but you squandered it in the title.

The fact that the first sentence is structured as a simile but is actually literal was confusing. But overall, the prose was strong, and this was fun to read.

 

Spoiler

I really don't know what to say here. Thanks for a breather entry after the last three behemoths? Its short to the point that I don't feel like much was really accomplished or done. The title feels like you decided to play a joke. I assume from that that Hagrid overbred a bunch of mean tempered dragons that, thus, slew him and escaped into the wild to wreak havoc? Its an Aftermath that hardly qualifies, even less than the entry for Walburga.

I'll parrot the others in why Charlie was chosen. You could have used any name at all, and you picked the one with a faint connection to dragons, but as a dragon killer? I don't see it.

 

Y'all skewered me like a blast ended skrewt shish kabob haha. And rightfully so.

I had a handful of ideas that drew no traction, so I hit on dragons running wild and ran with that, only I couldn't get the words out so sent something to pad out the entries.

I had wanted to have a better draft ready to roll out by this time that had pretty much nothing to do with this beyond the same basic idea of dragons, but I just haven't had it in me.