Title: Fortune Favors the Bold
Author: koria27
Rating: T
Genre:
Status: WIP
Library Category: Alternates
Pairings: None so far
Summary: On Halloween, Voldemort chooses to attack the Longbottoms instead of the Potters, marking Neville as the Boy-Who-Lived. A world where everyone cares a lot less about what happens to Harry Potter. Everything is different, except not really. T for language, though it's not too bad.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11357426/1/Fortune-Favors-the-Bold

This is a story where Neville is the BWL and Harry grows up in an orphanage. It's an interesting take on it as Harry isn't the BWL nor some kind of sociopathic prodigy here (he doesn't even know his birth name and assumes he's muggleborn.) His character is actually much more believable for someone raised in an orphanage. He's a troublemaker, acts aloof but struggles to make friends and still retains the cores of his canon character (saving people thing etc).

I think it's a little bit more interesting than my summary sounds. There's originality and Harry is mentored in part by Pomfrey and progressing as a Healer which I haven't seen for a while.

 

So why exactly doesn't McGonagall or Dumbledore tell him his actual name?

Why do they let him believe his name is "Hadrian Kasinger"?

Given how often everyone told him he looked like James, canon-wise, with Lily's eyes, it should have been brought up at one point, yet I just finished the third chapter and no one's said anything thus far.

 

I saw this story the other day, but hesitated to click on it because of the "everything is different, except not really" part. The author is telling the truth. :facepalm

This is the A/N atop of chapter 5. I feel like the author is trying to push the Hadrian stuff but at the same time railroad canon to the point that the fic doesn't make sense. Lily wasn't killed in the same way and even if she was I don't think the protection would have been enacted as Harry wasn't hit with a killing curse.

The fact that no one has recognized Harry is kind of ridiculous. Ollivander had no problem doing so in canon. Granted, he could have seen the scar, but for the most part that was hidden by Harry's fringe.

Pet peeve: every chapter someone is yelling in caps.

The author mentions life debts and magical cores.

A bunch of first years can produce a bunch of spells they shouldn't be able to.

This story feels like it's trying not to be generic/cliche but it is anyway. 2/5

 

That sounds incredibly stupid.

Combined with what I've read so far (fifth chapter now), I'm gonna rate this fic a 2/5.

I mean, it's more than just that author's note. The life debt thing, him being so casual when addressing teachers at the age of 11. Really, at times I have to remind myself that this is still an eleven year old Harry Potter I'm reading about, because he sounds like a snarky 16-17 year old teenager. It's not just about him pissing off Snape in the beginning to get some sort of reputation, it's like how he's also hell-bent on spotting and naming (and I presume later on trying to right) all the wrongs with the wizarding world, as if no one else before him acknowledged it or tried to do anything about it.

Edit:

Also, what the fuck is up with Harry using "shitlord", albeit in an attempt at humor, and saying "Siri, find unicorn killer"?

 

I'm not even going to rate this, that A/N was more than enough. Ugh.

 

You know what? I actually kind of liked it. Yeah there are a lot of stupid bits (Hadrian, interactions with teachers, Harry not speaking live an eleven year old, Hadrian, Slytherin politics in the background, set up for Dumbledore bashing in the future, HADRIAN) - however the interactions between Harry and others in his year make up for it.

Admittedly, for the first two chapters I wasn't a huge fan of the story. But chapter three changed my opinion a bit. Up until that point Harry had come across as just another boring indie!Harry - with the usual attitude issues, distrust of Dumbledore, and acting out in potions. The last two scenes in chapter three challenged that notion. Harry acts like an actual kid. He moves past his dislike of Malfoy in order to get at a member of the staff they both hate, and he has a sort of touching moment with his dorm mates.

It's sort of an awkward scene, but in a good way. For me, it was just the beginning of me liking Harry in this story. A lot of fics rely on the fact that the reader is already attached to Harry - this is not the case here. There are a lot of moments that actually make me really like him.

Specifically

Spoiler

when he hits himself with the slug vomiting jinx to let Neville go to the Hospital Wing without being embarrassed.

Overall, there are a lot of elements to this story that I dislike - however a lot of the character interactions are really well done, and make up for it. 3/5 for now - if the story improves in later chapters I'll probably change that to a 4.

 

I think it's interesting you view the life debt thing the way you do. In canon life debts are serious business, forcing Pettigrew to literally kill himself and being used as a partial explanation for Snape trying so hard to keep Harry alive. Daphne taking it seriously therefore isn't that eyebrow-raising. If your issue is with Harry dismissing it for so little, then I mean, he's 11 years old and has no idea what the value of it really is as an outsider to their society. He didn't save her life to incur a debt and views it as something anyone would/should have done, so it would be retarded if he did make a big deal out of it.

As for no one recognizing him I mean... it's fanfiction. Adjusting things so people don't instantly recognize a child based off similarities to their father that's been dead for a decade is hardly the biggest thing anyone's done. The notion that he either looks different or canon overstated their similarities and people just saw what they were looking for are both perfectly believable.

I've seen similarities in a lot of my friends and their parents, but there's still not a chance I'd ever have connected a single one of them if I didn't know they were related. I definitely wouldn't be able to connect someone to a person I taught 20 years ago, and even if a teacher did notice a resemblance they'd just look like a moron if they claimed it to be a definite family relationship. Most of them likely don't even know he's an orphan.

I have to admit that the pointing out flaws in the wizarding world thing is actually really grating on me too, I wish authors wouldn't do it, or at least have Harry get some things wrong rather than just point out apparently obvious flaws and be correct about there being no good reason for them all the time. Aside from that his attitude and general disrespect for adults aren't that much of a stretch to believe for me. Kids respect consequences more than rules, and so far he hasn't really found any.

 

I was thinking more about how easily they dealt with the life debt rather than the concept of life debts in general.

My bad, I should have been clearer on that.

 

I refuse to read a story which gives Harry the name Hadrian. If he needs a fake name, that's okay, but not Hadrian.

No rating.

 

To be fair, the story itself still refers to him as Harry. Pretty much everyone calls him Harry. The only one who doesn't is Daphne Greengrass and, while annoying, it isn't incredibly intrusive on the story.

 

That is exactly the kind of response that isn't welcome. Either post something with merit or don't bother. Whether or not it's a steaming pile of shit is irrelevant, somebody sat down and took the time to write this so if you're going to review it, read it and leave a review, don't just shitpost.

Back on topic.

Harry's attempts at humour did nothing for me and need to be tones down if this fic is going to be taken seriously. The naming choice, as people have pointed out, is questionable. It just doesn't add anything to he story

It's got a lot of flaws but many of them can be fixed an overall, I don't think the author's style is actually terrible.

2/5 for now.

 

Reviewing as I read.

First scene - Harry is a massive attention whore who wants to get in trouble for no reason. Snape is apparently the only member of staff familiar enough with James Potter to recognize Harry as Potter. We are also told that he befriends several prominent students, but we don't actually see him do it.

Despite a different upbringing, Neville still makes the arbitrary broom fuckup and has his original insecurity. Author seems to have the notion that a punch to the jaw from an eleven year-old breaks teeth and causes pools of blood to flow out. Harry apparently really wants to be expelled. Neville is described as having dark hair; the foreboding sign of a moviefag. Also, I didn't know that girls on their period require painkillers.

The broom racing thing seems like a bad plot device go get Harry to learn some spells. And it's completely uninteresting. If there's something more boring than quidditch scenes, it's broom racing scenes.

I'm kind of peeved that Harry has all that interest in the third corridor and Neville's scar - what's the point of having a non-BWL-Harry story if he's just going to butt into the Voldemort business?

The Filch prank is the highlight of this fic right now.

Oh no, a long scene of Harry and the Gryffindors learning to play quidditch, as if there wasn't enough boring flying in this story already. And then he goes off talking about being an orphan and lacking friends, as if he's been hit with a babbling curse. I cringed so hard. "My parents died before I was born" - wtf.

The author continues making a big deal out of Harry being noble and selfless and refusing to play quidditch in the team. For an edgy little turd he sure is concerned about everyone's well being.

Branches don't impale people. Not even if they fly at high speed in a forest. Author fails at physics again. It gets even more ridiculous because just a few paragraphs earlier, the twins talked of how the uniforms have Impervious charms on them to prevent injury.

Well, those were the first four chapters. Writing is generally good, but small details ruin the suspension of disbelief, and it feels like the author didn't bother thinking things through very thoroughly. Plot is uninteresting and fragmented, but I'll put that down to the author's lack of planning, which he admits to. <strike>Overall, a decent, mildly fun time waster, nothing more for now. Tentative 3/5.</strike>

EDIT: Scratch that. Just read chapter 7.

Spoiler

Harry, Blaise and Daphne figure Quirrell out because reasons, go out to the forest at night where they catch him drinking unicorn blood, they wrestle him and Harry sees the back of face, he escapes, the morning after he still teaches and they tell no one about it.

Stopped reading. This fic is now officially retarded and the author has no idea what he's doing. 1/5.

 

"My parents died before I was born" . . .

That statement is all you really need to know about how much thought is put into the ideas in this fic. Where Neville is the boy who lived and yet still behaves the same as in canon. There is a secret broom racing league that involves what seems to be more than a quarter of the school population and yet it's somehow still a secret. Add in the fact that sometimes you have to stop and figure out who is speaking in a conversation I cannot in good conscience give this story more than a 2/5.

I wanted to get more than 4 chapters into the story before I reviewed, but it's giving me a headache.

 

Okay up until chapter 7 I personally thought, that the fic was acceptable. Fairly interesting, fine paced, and not to cliché packed (for my tastes at least). But holy fuck things went downhill fast in chapter 8. Right off the bat he wins 3 races in a sport that apparently don't have any rules. But people still don't gang up on him. He finds Hagrids dragon (why???) even though there have been zero interaction between the two.
He makes the most retarded stand, that no eleven year old would ever do, and gets away with it.

But I could possibly have lived with all off this, but for the final sin.

He has somehow already figured out that it is Voldemort in the back of Quirrells head. W. T. F..... This conclusion makes no sense - Voldemort, a far as everybody is know, is dead. But this eleven year old little fucker just pulls this conclusion out of his ass, and when his "friends" contradict him, he just rages about the backwards way the wizard society is.
The world he has been in for 4(?) months...

2/5

 

Wait, seriously?

If this harry isn't the reincarnation of Henry Kissinger I'm going to be incredibly disappointed, because that's where my mind immediately went to.

on the other hand the number of people who immediately jump to "Henry Kissinger" every time they see a name remotely similar is probably fairly low.


Anyways, the fic's shit, the name Hadrian has literally never been used in anything remotely decent that I've seen, Harry's simultaneously a shithead and annoyingly fucking noble to the point where I found the fact I got through a half dozen chapters a miracle. Seriously, if there was ever a kid asking for a punch, it'd be him.

A solid 1.5/5, rounded up to 2.