Title: Lift Not the Painted Veil
Author: Whimsy FF
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Mystery
Status: In-Progress
Library Category:
Pairings:
Summary: After desperately chasing Sirius through the veil, Harry finds himself thrust back in time, standing in the body of his 11-year-old self but armed with the knowledge of the last 5 years. Now bound by a looming prophecy, Harry must find a way to amass strength to equal a Dark Lord. However, each choice leads to unforeseen and deadly consequences.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14200590/1/Lift-Not-the-Painted-Veil

This is a time travel story which I found today, and the first Harry Potter story I genuinely enjoyed in a long time. Typically, time travel stories dumb down Harry (and other characters) because defeating Voldemort should be trivial for Dumbledore if he had all the information from DH, but this fic avoids this by having Harry and Sirius travel back in time from the DOM, which means that they don't know about the Horcruxes.

The short of it:
- Good characterizations of most characters (though the author seems a bit too soft on Snape), especially the teachers. Good Dumbledore that does not have some kind of insidious plan for Harry, but is just trying to do his best.
- Nice handling of Sirius' escape from Azkaban, and the aftermath.
- The first fic I read which has an interesting Professor Quirrel. In general, I found the first year plot actually gripping - and I don't remember the last time I was genuinely excited about the mystery in an HP fic
- Decent writing
- Interesting world building
- Has a (realistically) poweful Harry

Year One just finished today, and I'm looking forward to more. While this is not perfect, I give this a 4/5, with the potential to go up.

 

Just a few chapters in right now, but it seems pretty novel take on an old trope so far, and the writing is more than decent. Leaving this so I remember to expand on it.

Edit: Now that I've read through it, I can tell that it wasn't what I had expected it to be. I thought the body of the first year was a little bit flat, but luckily author didn't linger in the wrong places, and pushed the plot forward steadily, with nice bits of world-building and random scenes that will probably come back into the future of this fic. The ending of the first year came unsuspecting as well, and honestly I'm not sure I love it, but I like well enough that it promises even more divergence in the continuation of the fic.

Harry is as powerful as he should be, that part is done fine, as are the side characters, even though I don't like all of it but that's expected. He's still a bit single-minded but that's just Harry so I guess it's good that author did this sort of canon Harry if that's the chosen way, although I'm more in love with hints he will progress into a more powerful one.

Writing is rather good, if a bit stretched at times. The worst thing, I feel, is that there's too much action as the dialogue goes on. I mean it's fine if the characters are doing something plot-forwarding like fighting or running away or surviving, and talking at the same time, but when the reason of having characters talk is to build characterisation or flat out say information to readers, you should just let them talk, and not have so much more words surrounding it. A bit annoying, and I skimmed some, focusing on the dialogue alone, but I've come to the end of the year one so it's far from the deal-breaker.

All in all, it's good, and I feel like the coming years have potential to be way better than what we've got so far. I'd put it as is at 3.5 but rounding up to 4 in sheer hope it becomes that and more.

 

Ok. I read this through in just one sitting.

At 19 chapters it feels like a long way to retell the first year story. A few things happen in the story that really builds Harry up in the eyes of his peers that I like.

Harry also doesn't automatically win everything. I quite like the basics of Harry and his characterization throughout the story. There are two characters I'd quibble over, but understand the differences in this story.

I haven't decided how much I dislike the last two chapters. It's mostly the difference in one character that really through me off. It's not terrible or anything, but until I get more of the story I'll be questioning the way everything went down.

I'd give this a 4/5 if you like a solid Time Travel story. I found it easy to read and Harry feels adequately powerful throughout.

 

I wanted to like this, but the writing just felt a bit too stilted. There were too many instances of unnatural dialogue, odd turns of phrase and people acting ooc for me to get properly invested in it at all. In addition to that the premise and plot seems to be a bit uninspired.

I don't really think that I could go higher than 2/5.

With that being said, I couldn't get past the first three chapters. The writing might improve drastically as the fic goes on, but I didn't see anything in the first three chapters that made me want to find out.

 

Not terrible so far, the overall plot structure in particular seems above average, a lot less irritating to read than the majority of other time travel stories.

Unfortunately, the dialogue is a bit stiff/unnatural, and I agree with Drachna that several of the characters are OOC. This might improve in later chapters, but I'm not certain what to rate this story at the moment. Will edit in a score when I decide.

As an aside, FF.net seems to be making chapters randomly inaccessible for me, so I've included the AO3 link for anyone else running into this problem.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/45349381/chapters/114095314

 

I think it's definitely a great job ! 5/5