Title: Harry Potter & The Wizarding World
Author: Seprith Li Castia
Rating: M
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Chapters: 19
Words: 129,135
Updated: January 2, 2017
Published: August 28, 2016
Status: Complete
Library Category: The Alternates
Pairings: None so far, but probably Harry/Lisa T
Summary: Harry Potter, a first year student at Hogwarts School, is caught up with his studies and school rivalries as he begins his first journey into true magic with the aid of his Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Quirinus Quirrell. Meanwhile Neville Longbottom, the Boy-Who-Lived, faces a remnant of his past.
Link: HP and the Wizarding World

This story hits on a lot of the things I currently crave in Harry Potter fanfiction; nonBWL Harry, a Harry that is driven to be the best, his disdain for muggles, etc. I think I can sorta see a bit of influence from The Santi's story with the mentor Quirrell who gives Harry a book of magic, and a Harry who is trending Dark despite up in a loving household. It's written decent enough, and I found it enjoyable.

A few weaknesses imo

Spoiler

While I get his dislike of Hermione, I don't understand the knee jerk hatred he has for her. I like the idea of them being academic rivals, but in the most recent chapter he challenges her to a duel to prove he's better than her. Wasn't a fan of that writing decision. Also, the author uses the intent and power version of magic. But these are small issues and minor nitpicks.

All in all I think it's a 4/5.

Edit: lmao, can a mod fix the title? Harry Pooter...



Edit by Minion, Jan. 9, 2017:
The story is complete and the author announced a sequel.

 

Lol, your title.

 

Haven't read it, but decided I'll rate it a 5/5 for that title.

 

Is there a reason for Harry hatred toward Muggle ? especially for a kid who isn't 11?
I don't see James and Lily raising him that way, so from where he gained it.
He has a muggle grandfather and grandmother.
Base on what Lily decided it will be good thing for Harry to go to the same school as Dudley, she doesn't know her sister/husband/nephew?

I droped the story in the middle of ch. 2.

Any one can direct me to a discussion on HP magic system, Will and Intent alone sound to simple.

Edit: forgot to vote, 2/5.

 

I am 5 chapters in, and am finding it interesting enough, but I am confused. It just seems irrational for Harry to hate/be prejudiced towards muggleborns when his mother is one. I'm going to keep reading to see how this develops, but right now I'm not digging that angle.

 

I'm surprised that you posted this now instead of waiting for the first year to end (3-4 weeks I think).

Anyway, I followed the fic from some time, and while it has some cool stuff, it also have quite a few problems.

Good:
- Flawed Harry.
- Stuff from outside of the books: "I assert our inalienable right to party", Robert Hilliard or the secret passage which comes from PC version of Philoshopher's Stone game.
- Making some bad characters more sympathetic without going "They did nothing wrong" exemplified especially well in the Dawlish Vs. Macnair duel.

What I disliked:
- Yet another socially stunted Harry who is much less confident than his canon self, despite having much better circumstances.
- Experienced auror James using fist year spells and non-silently at that.
- Lily doing basically nothing despite knowing that Harry is bullied.
- The constant focus on intent behind the spells, despite making Harry studious.
- Some bad writing quirks. Constant mentioning of Harry's eyes, and using bizarre alternatives to Harry to avoid repeating
- Screwed up difficulty tiers for spells. Summoning birds is the first year spell, but leg-locking jinx is something super hard, etc.

I'm also surprised at all your complaints about Harry's not fully rational and hypocritical dislike of muggleborns. Adults can be irrational and hipocrytical, eleven years kids even more so.

For now it's 5/10, so 3/5 in DLP scale.

I think that you might want to check out Black Luminary by YakAge. Rather good fic, though the pacing is terrible.

 

Really mixed feelings about this.

There are three things I dislike about it.

The first is the magical system. In summary, my problem with the "intent based" idea of HP magic is twofold. Firstly, it fails to explain why academic study is necessary to cast advanced magic and why magical ability correlates with understanding of the way magic words. In doing so it devalues the whole point of Hogwarts being a school of magic with classes and libraries. Secondly, it completely fails to explain the disparity in magical ability displayed. If wanting something really badly was all it took for magic to work then there would be a much flatter scale of magical ability, since "wanting something really hard" isn't exactly a "skill" that scales much (nor is it really a laudable one).

As I have described elsewhere, I much prefer the idea that one has to understand a spell's workings to be able to cast it, and that the deeper the understanding, the better the spell will come out. That understanding is primarily arrived at by study but can also be arrived at by sheer intuition, and through practice and experimentation. At a more general level, a wizard's success with and potential with magic is determined by their "magicalness", i.e. their power. A wizards magicalness is determined by the sum of their nature, including their character, attitude, knowledge and understanding of magic, etc. Essentially all these things contribute to how "close" a wizard is to magic: the more immersed a wizard is in magic, the more magical they are, and therefore the more powerful they are, capable of understanding magic better and thus casting better spells. And of course this is not a single sliding scale but multi-polar, in that a wizard's magicalness varies depending on the area of magic in question. Some wizards are closer to some aspects of magic than others. Rare wizards like Dumbledore and Voldemort are highly magical in essentially all respects.

The second is the extent to which the first years have deeply held beliefs and opinions on a wide range of subjects. Now, I do appreciate how the author reflects their childlike nature by having them generally unable to justify and articulate those beliefs, but nonetheless he writes the children as holding them very strongly, to the point where we have seen multiple instances of children breaking up their friendships over what are essentially political disagreements. Far more likely is that social pressure would lead the children to change their beliefs to whatever their friends espoused/the leader of their social group espoused.

The third was the exhibition duel we saw. It was well written from a technical standpoint, but I felt like the magic itself was slightly uninspired compared to some of the duels we saw in canon like Dumbledore vs Voldemort and Snape vs McGonagall. It lacked the elegance of those duels, that focused so much on manoeuvring and turning the opponent's attacks back at them. This feeds into my other dislike of the duel, which is that it lasted too long with the participants incurring far too many injuries. It seems to me that with two roughly equal opponents, the first wizard to gain even a slight advantage by impeding their opponent even by a minor amount should win the duel extremely soon after. A duel should really only take a single spell making contact with the enemy to end. Even if that spell doesn't take them out, having to deal with its effects should put them on the back foot so much that they lose soon after. And that's why the high level canon duels focus so much on manoeuvring and inventive countering: it's because they're all just trying to put themselves into a position where they can create an opening to land a single, decisive, duel-ending hit. I just feel like the canon way is much more elegant and clever, so much more about outwitting the enemy than overpowering them.

Now for the stuff I do like.

One thing I like is Harry. I like his dislike of Muggles; I feel like it's "logically irrational" i.e. you can understand how he has arrived at this point through various incidental events and resentments that have built up over the years. And I also like that as he gets older he's beginning to articulate it in new ways. Though I do have a concern that the author may take too much of a "Muggles are a real threat to wizards" angle, which would be disappointing.

Another thing I like are the friendship dynamics. I said I dislike the way they hold beliefs, but in general I appreciate the way in which Harry's social circle is dynamic - it's rare that kids will be long term friends with the first friends they make at secondary school. In particular I liked the events of the latest chapter, which had Harry's friends essentially betray him publicly, which I think is going to be something of a turning point in his social interactions.

I also have enjoyed the little subplot with Rookwood's book and, despite the magical theory I dislike contained within that book, I like the furtive nature of it, with Harry seeking out forbidden knowledge out of curiosity. It's a trope I enjoy.

The rivalry with Hermione is good too. I think Harry's skill level is generally well placed, in that it's making him powerful without making him super. However, as the story progresses I would like to see a few hints that Harry has the edge on Hermione, seeking to understand magic at perhaps a deeper level than her (it always struck me that Hermione's approach to magic was broad rather than deep, with her preferring to rush on to magic covered in later years rather than truly mastering the magic she was learning in class).

I think the real test for the story will be what happens when it is revealed that Quirrel is the villain and Harry has to face up to the fact that he has been wrong about a few things. Hopefully the fic steers itself down a path of moderation. I would not like to see Harry completely turn around and reassess his entire belief system and character, because that would essentially undo the entire fic's characterisation work so far. But equally I think it would be unsatisfying for him to brush it off and retrench himself with further irrationality. I'm happy for him to find more rational alternative arguments for dislike of Muggles, however. Ultimately his dislike of Muggles is instinctive not intellectual, a value he holds not knowledge he learnt. That means it should not really be up for "refutation" by any piece of information. But what new information should force him to do is reformulate the intellectual basis for his instinctive values to make it more sophisticated.

 

Read the entirety of what is posted so far, and I'm cautiously optimistic that the story will end up being one of my favorites.

The writing is pretty solid technically, I caught a couple of typos and weird syntax/conventions issues, but nothing that broke my immersion. The author seems to also have a weekly update rate, which gives me hope that this story will be finished.

As others have noticed above, the muggle school subplot seems out of place, or at least the lack of adult reaction to Harry's plights. I do like the dislike of muggles gleaned from this, as it complicates Harry's character and gives him flaws, something often overlooked in "Harry's parents survive!" stories that turn him into a god or James clone. Also, I feel the relationship dynamic between Lily and James to be quite believable as a result of the tragedy that took place within the family. James being unable to cope with his perceived failure of duty, causing him to obsess over his work and catch Peter, while Lily deals with the lack of a husband figure comes off as real. Furthermore, the fact that Harry grows up close to Lily, and distant from James, as is noted specifically when he confesses to James about his feelings about muggles, as James was surprised that Harry wanted to talk to him, remarking how they weren't very close due to his lack of being physically there. These little details build up into a Harry who is close to his mother, yet acts and thinks like a pureblood, both from experiences and possibly out of a desire to connect with his father.

I find it a little bit hard to believe his instant hatred towards Hermione, because of his relationship with Lily, but children often behave irrationally, and make sweeping judgments on little evidence. Furthermore, I find the Lisa Turpin character to be intriguing, though I am a little disappointed in how little we know about her, despite her prominence in the important moments so far of the fic. I know this is intentional on the part of the author, in order to draw focus to Harry and Lisa, but without any information so far, Lisa's character seems a bit one dimensional and not worthy of the time given. However, I am shocked to see a fic that even features Lisa Turpin as a character, given the lack of canon information on her as a person.

The main meat of the story, so far at least, is the mentor/student relationship between Harry and Quirrell. I am hopeful to see how this pans out, especially with the confrontation and end of first year looming. The author does an excellent job of setting up two possible paths, at least by chapter 13. Path one has a Harry is paranoid about his reaction to Rookwood's book and the fact that he agrees with a large portion of the content, despite the contents being illegal and dangerous, who may, when Quirrell is revealed, attempt to distance himself from all of these ideas and return to the societal norm. However, he has, by the end of Chapter 13, lost all of his friends in Ravenclaw, save Lisa, who appears to agree with his feelings towards muggles and magic in general, and this may push him further along the path to a Dark wizard, as he rationalizes Quirrell in his 11 year old head.

So far 4/5

 

I actually tried to read this story a couple of weeks back and gave up halfway through Ch.2. I'd forgotten all about it when I saw this thread so I tried it again and got to Ch. 4 this time. I left a passionate review on FFnet the first time because I was so disappointed that a story with potential like this one was unreadable for me.

It's all about the little things; first year spells galore in the fight scene, Harry being bullied as bad as he is and his parents not noticing/trying to do anything about it, Harry not knowing about electricity even though he's going to a muggle school, Harry citing that the potion knowledge he has came from Hogwarts: A History (really!?), and the nail in the coffin for my 2nd try at reading this fic: "mustn't forget the wand either".

It's sad because the first scene was original and gave me hope that the author could spin an interesting plot within canon boundaries. What I gather from the thread is that the story is indeed going in a nice direction with Lisa Turpin involved and Quirrell mentoring and such, but my SoD is broken time and time again by things like my list above (why does Harry suddenly hate Quidditch? For a boy who sees his father as little as he does, bonding over quidditch is arguably MORE important than quidditch was for canon Harry, and there's no reasoning given as to why Harry doesn't like quidditch in this universe (up to where I've read anyways)).

I can't really score a fic I've read this little of, but I don't know what I'd rate it if I tried either. On the one hand I wan't to score it 3/4 out of 5 for originality and decent technical writing, while on the other hand it makes no sense to rate a fic I've abandoned twice (after only a couple of 1000 words) anything higher than 2/5.