Title: Hermione Granger and the Paradigm Shift
Author: Petrificus Somewhatus
Genre: Romance
Status: Work in Progress
Library Category: Romance
Pairings: Hermione/Harry, minor Ron/Lavender
Summary: We all know that Hermione went to Slughorn's party with Cormac McLaggen to make Ron jealous. But what if she didn't? What if she came to her senses in time and invited Harry instead? As friends of course.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13405869/1/Hermione-Granger-and-the-Paradigm-Shift

I don't usually like romance stories, good start I know but after binge reading this story in a day that changed.

The Good:

• Good development: Everyone is very close to canon but more fleshed out, they're believable in their interactions with each other, the shift from friendship to budding love is subtly done and well executed.
  They're teenagers and they act and talk like teenagers, always a plus in HP fics.
• Small magic is good magic: The author peppers the story with small but very whimsical/amusing displays magic, very HP in nature. They're more pronounced in the earlier chapters as the later ones are are a bit darker.
• Tension between the characters: This falls under development but it was quite good so it deserves a mention. There are conflicts between the cast and their relationships aren't perfect, they fight and they make up and learn to grow from these conflicts.
• Good Writing: Some very minor mistakes aside the writing is good.

The Bad:

• Punctuation: The author overuses the three dotes (...) to indicate a pause in thoughts or speech, gets annoying after a while.
• Drop in quality: There is a somewhat progressive drop in quality, the later chapters are good but the first 5-6 were exhilarating, they're still very much worth reading but I thought it should be noted.
• Shift in love:
  Spoiler: Medium sized spoiler.

  The shift from budding love to love is abrupt, some of this can be excused by the fact that they're teenagers but it was still jarring hearing Harry and Hermione proclaim love to each other./SPOILER]

The Ugly:

Spoiler: Medium sized Spoiler:

• Patronus Change: Harry's Patronus changes to something close to an otter, I hate when stories do this, for me it's an integral part of Harry Potter and the most memorable part of PoA. Plus the explanation and reaction given by Harry and Hermione are terrible, Harry is very nonchalant about losing one of his only ties to his father.

Final thoughts: I think the bad parts are very easy to ignore and the good parts are a delight to read, it's a 4/5 for me.

 

Hard disagree with that. Not that it's bad, it's just kind of a ... pleasant read for a particular type of fanfic reader.
Want a H/Hr story with zero stakes and recycled story-lines from over 20 years of fanfic with a coat of polish? This is the story for you.

OP also says there's tension but I would disagree with that as well.
1. You know the outcome; they end up together.
2. You know the catalyst; it's in the description.

On the whole, I'd say the hierarchy of HP fanfic romance goes:

Shitty Misspelled Garbage < Robst < This Story < Jeconais < jon3776

3/5 a decent time waster.

 

This always catches my attention. It's what I like the most about the HP series, so I'll give this story a try when I can make time for it.

Throw in St Margarets at the top, if you are up for some HPFF meets Jane Austen. Not the usual DLP fare, but very skillfully written. Slice-of-life romance stories featuring some of the aforementioned delightful, whimsy snippets of ancillary magic, as you can find in JKR or FF authors like Taure.

 

Read the whole thing this morning and I really like it. It strikes a nice combination of early fluff with progressive plot with the latter really speeding up in the last few chapters.

Characterisations are excellent. I mean, the author did what JKR refused to do and gave Lavender a character that amounts to more than a batshit crazy trope.

Lavender has real insecurities and valid reasons to be upset at times but doesn't blow up and all this is accomplished without her becoming a major part of the story so far.

Ron is similarly well handled. He gets annoyed and petty and jealous but it doesn't linger and he sticks by his friends without causing a scene. It felt like book Ron at his best.

Harry is... Canon Harry really, if a tad more thoughtful and the same can be said for Hermione.

The plot revolving the group formed to stop Draco is a little overblown but not enough that it caused me to pause too much.

Overall, I don't really know how much more you could want from a HBP fic, especially one with Hermione as the MC.

And actually, for anyone worrying about Harry not being the protagonist... Weirdly he still very much is. It doesn't feel like a "Hermione" fic as much as it does a "Trio" fic with a shade less Ron.

I blasted through this and will be eagerly awaiting updates with very minimal complaints.

5/5

 

I disagree. Strongly disagree. This fic isn't as bad as other Harmony fics I've read, but it's not good either.

The first few chapters are just a Hermione POV rendition of why she's always right and not-so-subtle Ron-criticism (not quite bashing...yet). I'm also getting strong Tsundere/"I'm not like other girls" vibes from Hermione towards Ron ("He's a git but I miss him") and Lavender ("Apparently being so focused on one's appearance did have a practical use.") Ron is acting more mature than Hermione in this fic which is a very pleasant surprise. Maybe because it's in her POV, but I don't feel sympathetic to Hermione's character at all. Harry just seems to go along with whatever Hermione wants (his Patronus turning into an otter? Seriously?). Then there's the constant peppering of "OMG YOU TWO ARE SO PERFECT TOGETHER" circlejerk by all the minor characters. Not subtle at all.

And the way Hermione's apology to Ron was handled, after she and Harry began dating, when Ron's been poisoned in chapter 11:

Spoiler

Wow. Just wow.

Then we have this oh-so-clever remark from chapter 11:

Spoiler

*facepalm*

Someone on Reddit said that "the flaws you pointed out about her character are things that Hermione, throughout the story, realizes about herself and really tries to fix." Really? This is trying? Believable if this was set in 3rd or 4th year. Stretching my SoD in 6th.

2.5/5 at best rounding down, and that's because the technical writing is (mostly) there.

 

To be fair that remark is out of the history in a "fun" author note

As others have said it's a good fluffy fic, it manages a good characterization of the cast with a believable progression of the plot.

It has it's flaws, I remember more than one time of Hermione being insecure about her new relationship which I personally do not like to read. I also did not like the whole I loved him from the start I just settled with Ron which for me overly criticizes a believable canon pairing.

3/5 a decent time waster and I think it can improve, will be looking for updates[/QUOTE]

 

So, I'll admit I read this last week and I wasn't immediately repulsed. I found the few few chapters (before Harry and Hermione actually got together) to be a fairly nice and generally uninsulting to the senses. Nothing much happened, though. I enjoyed it mostly as a 'and here's what could have happened if teenagers could actually deal with emotions' kinda way, but there was no way it was ever going to have legs.

I enjoyed the bits about it what weren't romance focused, like the guy at the party who had something to do with House Elves, and his advice for dealing with Kreacher. It was a nice departure from the black and white 'Horrible Slavery/Stupid Muggleborn' dichotomy you usually see in fanfic. I also generally appreciated the discussion of why otherwise good people might try and keep their heads down, again mostly because of how it contrasts the Indy!Harry bollocks I'm usually forced to read. I also liked the little mentions of how the Ministry's internal politics was going, and how even a suggestion of Harry talking to someone could cause a change in it. Similarly, the characterisation of Ron and Lavender was okay too. The perception of them is coloured by Hermione's PoV, but underneath that they seem to be acting like believable people.

Really, it was the little background details that I enjoyed most, the actual story was always going to be a bit of a snooze.

Also, on a re-check of the first chapter to remind myself, I noted the following:

That's literally every speech tag and beat in the first scene, and laid out like this it's pretty egregious. The author needs to stop fearing 'said', it's a beautiful word that really allows the rest of the speech and description their chance to shine. I don't have anything against saidisms and adverbs in themselves, used sparingly, but they're both crutch and hobble.

What about the next scene? This time we'll look at the first word of each non-speech paragraph (rest assured, the saidisms are possibly even more rampant here):

Only four or the paragraphs do not begin with a pronoun or proper noun. Neither of these make the writing terrible or anything, but the author really needs to work on their variation if they want to make the writing feel less mechanical. It's a strange one too, as they expended so much wasted effort on finding alternatives to 'said', and yet we have this level of homogeneity in how the actual prose is handled.

The result is that the story itself is fairly bland, but it has interesting background ideas, and a refreshing approach to nuance that is rarely seen in fan-fiction. The quality of the writing itself is functional, but tedious due to the earlier mentioned issues. The good news is that if the author chose to address those issues, it's actually fairly easy to do, and doesn't require major work to remodel the story, on the other hand, it is still pretty amateurish as it stands.

So I'm gonna go with a 3/5. Readable but bland, with some things I like and wish i could see more of.

 

I can agree that my 5/5 was probably a bit rushed but I'm putting that down to the fact that it's been a while since I enjoyed a Harry Potter fic like this.

 

It's the first HP/HG fic I've read in a long time that fits with canon, refrains from bashing the Weasleys and manages to be good. I'm a huge fan of the ship, but unfortunately it's been captained by some pretty weird folks of late (RobSt, Jesus Christ). I think the story does a good job of finding a reasonable divergence point, and does justice to both Hermione and Harry's character without giving them a weird personality transplant.

One thing I mentioned to Syaoran is that it does an admirable job of addressing Hermione's horrible behavior in HBP, without the usual weirdo Harmony shit where Harry has to bend-over backwards to make sure Hermione's feelings aren't hurt. Harry was right about the book's value and Malfoy, plain and simple, and Hermione has to come to terms with that.

The Patronus thing was weird, but only because I wish it was to something else that fit his character. Unfortunately Harry Everyman is a difficult lad.

4/5 or 5/5, for managing to hew close to canon in an interesting way.

 

Falls into the same trap of a lot of stories written by Hermione fanatics-- she's the most amazing, brilliant, wonderful, caring, beautiful person in the history of the universe, and Harry ends up being dragged along as her sidekick. His Patronus even changes to match hers because everything has to revolve around Hermione-- including the fucking prophecy for fuck's sake.

The wrap up final chapter is horrible as well, rushing what would have been 7th year into an outline of a plot and Hermione saving the day.

I enjoyed the writer's first story, but this is garbage.

 

Thank you. HHr lovers are sucking the author off for doing the bare minimum of not bashing Ron and Ginny and middle-school level prose. Though I guess after reading Robst anything is good.

 

I honestly think the Hermione worship is beyond Robst bad here.

 

Th at’s disappointing. I’ve read this fic when it was just six chapters, and I had high hopes - first few chapters were… palatable even for me as a fanon!Hermione hater.

just knowing it’ll devolve into standard bestest hermione saves me the trouble reading it.

 

Just finished this one, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. I'm also surprised at the differences in tone between the reviews for this story and the author's Harry/Daphne story. Both are romances, both are a bit fluffy, and both are written mostly from the female character's POV. That apparently warrants a 4/5 when Daphne is involved, but a 2/5 or 3/5 when it's Hermione.

This fic does *exactly* what H/Hr haters claim they want to see in a decent H/Hr fic. There is an acknowledgment, by Hermione herself, that her behavior has been self-righteous and sometimes cruel. She isn't perfect, and Harry calls her on it. Part of the story involves her getting over herself and apologizing to Harry and Ron for her behavior. So when people say that the Hermione-wank is worse than robst, it's flat-out disingenuous.

What's remarkable about the story is the total lack of bashing. Harry and Ron are in character, and the H/Hr romance is managed without Ron exploding and leaving the trio. It even adds some much-needed depth to Lavender.

The plot is secondary to the romance, just as it was in the Harry/Daphne fic. It says 'Romance' on the tin. So complaining that the story focuses more on the burgeoning relationship than the canon plot of sixth year is, again, disingenuous.

That said, the plot remains interesting. It's not a canon rehash. The H/Hr relationship has a ripple effect that produces a very different ending in sixth year, one that could easily have become canon if Harry had chosen to continue the DA. They force Dumbledore's hand in a satisfying way, and it has tragic consequences for a few characters.

The fic isn't perfect. It needed another 30k words. It's rushed at the end; the move from potential romance to love happens pretty quickly; and, as others have pointed out, it could use some polish in terms of style. But calling it 'middle-school level prose' is ludicrous. It's better written than many works in the library.

Objectively, I'd give it a strong 4/5. But I'm voting 5/5 just to counter the people who have no business voting on a Harry/Hermione romance fic because they're predisposed to hate it and don't even bother finishing it.

 

it’s almost as if the qualities of the main character were the defining difference between two books in the same genre, amazing, isn’t it. The difference is that the first few chapter in the Intent are about Harry’s initiative and Daphne’s reactions, while in this one, it’s all about Hermione, her initiative and her reactions. In the genre, that makes a massive difference.

She is downright insufferable, even realizing how horrible she is, the result is lukewarm at best, and in the first 6 chapters - which is as far as I could stomach it - she’s wrong maybe four or five times and Harry calls her on it once, and even that is tempered by acknowledging that Ron also did something wrong by not realizing Hermione has a crush on him. Otherwise, he reacts by not realizing he’s right, hoping that Hermione came around, and even being gobsmacked that Hermione came around after being insufferable for half a year.

so, yeah, I didn’t even bother finishing it - I won’t rate it, since it’s clearly not my cup of tea, but saying that these two stories are the same is just not true - how different the girls are makes all the difference in the story, not to mention the subtle “about harry and daphne” vs “about hermione and hermione” difference in tone.