HA! you just shot down over a million stories theories on conjuration. God I love this site...

Now after that totaly off topic outburst I'd like to say that you're doing a good job Jack. Thats all.

 

AH. i can't remember hbp, somehow , but in cos it looked like summoning to me, as the plate refillied itself constantly, without a respelll from mcgonagall.

On the othter hand, i think we can eat conjured food, and drink conjured whater, if the skill of the conjurer is tight enough: we have never seen the weasley go shopping for food, have we?

 

Wizards really shouldnt be poor. If they can conjure food left right and centre, then they wont need to make trips to Tesco and such

 

And if they can conjure food, they can certainly conjure clothes, so why do the Weasleys always buy second-hand? I think JKR messed up with this...

 

You know just because conjured tea can be drunk and appreciated, doesn't necessarily mean it's permanent. You can drink, it fills your belly and eventually disappears, who knows? Maybe food can be conjured and eaten. And tasted and swallowed and then eventually it's nutrients and bits also disappear.

Here's what CoS says (if I trust my odd text file):

You think all of that can be conjured that easily? That sounds closer to what Albus does to make food appear at the feast. A feat we more often attribute to the house elves than the idea he can conjure an entire meal for the whole school.

Naw... we still don't have much evidence either way on whether "conjured" food is real food you can live off of. It may just be a way to sate your appetite.

And conjured snake venom? It only has to stay real for as long as it takes to kill them. Because even if the conjuration disappears, Malfoy or whoever's heart has already stopped. Easy clean-up to hide evidence too. Conjured weapons that disappear before crime is discovered.

You can make arguments whichever way suits your fic.

 

Not to mention that both examples are accomplished by masters of transfiguration (Dumbledore and McGonagall). Who's to say that any average Joe can perform conjuration spells like that?

 

I like this explanation best. Conjuration by just anyone would make like way too easy

 

That's what i was trying to say, stepping over my feet... arf. Anyway, i do think it is possible to conjure, but not that easily (those plate are self serving once they are empty, so i think it is the house elf that do the job).

 

Ok, thanks to everyone who helped out, chapter 14 is up.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2869936/14/

It's kind of funny what happened with the original chapter. Basically, I was recently reading a manipulative Dumbledore fic, so when I started writing the chapter I was really pissed at Dumbledore for being such an idiot, so what do I do? I write a chapter where he's an idiot.

After ip's first post, I realized that all my scenes with Dumbledore were basically him saying something stupid so that Harry could tell him off. It was fun, but it didn't make any sense. I've been trying really hard to make Dumbledore a more complete, logical character, and he was all wrong in that chapter (as seen by the "respect" comment that everybody caught). Anyway, I basically took everybody's advice about how the chapter should go, and I tried to have Dumbledore present logical arguments to Harry in a much more controlled manner.

Another thing ip gave me the idea for was Harry's punishment. It makes perfect sense: Dumbledore isn't stupid enough to threaten Harry with regular punishment, but he's deathly afraid of creating another Tom Riddle, and the only way to prevent that is to encourage Harry to form friendships with other, more stable (and easily influenced) students. So again, big thanks to ip82.

I changed a couple other things, like the scene with Susan. I also partially agree with jbern that Harry should have been tired, so I put that in, but one of the things I'm trying to show with the Malfoy scene is that 1.) Harry has increased in power and 2.) He is more powerful now that he has a wand. So while he was tired, he wasn't exhausted like he was after fighting the basilisk.

Overall, I'm much happier with this version that the original, so thank you to everyone who helped out.

As for the conjuring debate, I'm still working out a complete theory, but I plan to make actual conjuring very hard to perform. However, I also think that there's another way to summon things that acts like conjuring, as long as you know where something is. For example, you can make a butterbeer appear in front of you if you know exactly where it is in the refrigerator. As for how long something that is actually conjured can last, it depends on the power of the wizard and how long they wanted it to last. I believe that in both regular transfiguration and conjuring, the amount of power you put into it determines how long it remains effective. So Dumbledore can probably conjure things that last for a long time, but Molly Weasley can't (in fact, she can barely anything conjure at all). Also, I think that size and complexity are very important to both transfiguration and conjuring, so nobody is going around conjuring houses.

-the Jack

 

New version of Dumbledore convo is great. It flows exactly like it should. Dumbledore's argument about Harry deciding about Row's involvement was very crafty and his punishment more than realistic than before. In the end, you made me almost agree with the old man and forgive him, which is saying something about the quality Dumbledore's arguments and convo in general.

All in all, good work on this chapter and even better work on fixing the Dumbledore scene.

 

I liked the new chapter, was really an improvement character-wise over the last few chapters. I'm not saying they were bad, but it's a good solid step-up from the previous chapters portrayals. Can't wait for the next one.

 

Right now the characters seem to be going well enough, but improvements i guess need to be made. Jack seems to have filled his purpose and now seems like an empty character, Daphne is an unexplained character and doesn't off the reader much insight on what to suspect from her due to her brief mention. The idea of the detention with many students was kinda obvious due to Harry' normal next-to-none interactions with students outside his family. Other than these small cracks in the story the overall product is smooth. Good job so far and i hope to have good discussions here on DLP. let the good times roll

 

I liked the new chapter. Harry's discussion with Dumbledore was great and the confrontation with the other Slytherins too. I hope you update soon.

 

I'm probably just repeating myself from my review of the chapter, but comparing the rough draft to the posted one was a big difference. In the rough draft it was a sort of evil-manipulative!Dumbledore but in the finished posted chapter it was a very sympathetic, caring, understanding, but still manipulative!Dumbledore. To the point where we're almost glad he is the way he is. Two very different tones to the character. And agreed on the "punishment" feeling much more apt.

A very good chapter. Admittedly, there are still moments where I'm reminded this is the author's first real attempt at fanfic just in choices for wording and a sort of lack of flow or style to the writing. And there's no nice way to say this, but I think this fic is getting more attention than it deserves as compared to many other fics out there (no offense intended, I think the same of several of my own fics too).

But it's certainly still climbing higher and higher on my non-existent list, and I'm looking forward to updates more and more eagerly.

Keep it up, Jack. And don't be shy about using DLP whenever you need or want help. We'll point you in the right directions to make a much more DLP-approved style and tone for your fic. Though it's a bit of judgment call on whether that's better or even what you want to do.

 

That's just life isn't it? There are some wonderful singers who never become stars and multi-millionaires who have no talent whatsoever. The world of fanfiction is just as ruthless. However I only very partially agree. While luck does play a part, Jack is dedicated, willing to improve and cranks out chapters quicker than most. He does deserve attention for his endeavors.

The chapter is pretty good, much better than the draft. Well done.

Edit: Just remembered: 900 reviews 0.0 Wow.

Edit 2: Just saw my name on the list. Now I feel warm and fuzzy inside

 

Completely agree. I didn't mean he deserved any less attention. I'm saying his chapters pulling 80 reviews aren't 10 times better than person X's pulling 8 reviews. That's why I quantified my comment with "as compared to many other fics out there". I just don't want the author getting a big head from all the praise (while at the same time, I'm praising him as well deservedly so). I've seen good fics and writers lose their steam when their fics were attracting significant attention and part of me thinks the attention may be a cause of that.

(It's about encouraging him to do better next time, rather than letting him think another chapter as good as this one should be the goal. Which also should be tempered or else some authors take forever trying to make sure it's perfect and up to the standards of all the "Great!" responses he's bound to be receiving.)

 

Definitely. And then of course, the authors feels he/she MUST write to satisfy the truck-full of fans and ends up writing terrible forced writing. Then the thought of even writing the fic becomes unbearable so it becomes abandoned whereas otherwise they could have taken a peaceful beeak and just continued.

Naturally. The reason why he'll continue to get an exponential number of reviews is that ths doesn't fit into one little community like, say a dark!Harry or Harry/Draco story does. It can appeal to a much larger percentage of the fanfiction community than some stories can and ultimately, it will get a larger amount of reviews because of it.

 

Ok, I put the rough draft of chapter 15 in the work by author section.

http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=2210

I'm currently debating the merits of getting a beta versus just posting my chapters here first. I think a beta would help more with grammar and style, whereas posting here I get much more feedback on concepts, which I think is more important. I'm still thinking about it, though.

Also, I'd appreciate it if all comments about the rough draft went into the thread in the work by author section, that way nobody has to flip back and forth between threads. As always, all comments welcome.

-the Jack

 

Harry should be more angry about the boggart incident, IMO. He thought his 'sister' was tortured and dying, only to find out he unwittingly put himself through the same wounds and was out for three weeks due to a fucking prank. I'd like to see him threaten/beat up the Weasleys. Otherwise, I'd say you should probably take the scene out, as Harry seems like a really logical kid who can make sense of things under pressure, I think he would realize that his Uncle couldn't possible torture his sister at Hogwarts. And he should find it odd that they came out of a closet. Otherwise, another excellent chapter. Is the pairing going to be Harry/Tracy?

 

Completely agree with TheIllusiveOne apart from the Tracy part. It's pretty clear she has a crush on Zabini. I say it will be Daphne or Granger.
Let Harry close the Weasleys alone with hundreds of boggarts =)