Title: Lucky
Author: napalmnacey
Rating: T
Status: Complete
Library Category: The Alternates? Romance?
Pairings: Harry/Hermione
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,174
Published: September 20, 2003
Summary: Harry loses faith and hope in all around him, and wonders if there is a reason for it all. Dumbledore consoles him and shows him the Pool of Possibilities, and Harry gets to see a world where Voldemort was never born.
Link: Portkey.org
Link (FA): http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/nacey/lucky.html

A five-chapter dimension travel novella written pre-HBP, Lucky is one of those rare stories that gets in, does its thing, and gets out before succumbing to bloat and lack of direction.

It is, in essence, a sweet and angst-driven Harry/Hermione vehicle . . . but it is also a damn good one, and surprisingly original despite (more likely, because of) its age. While grieving the death of Sirius, a Pensieve-like maguffin allows Harry to visit a world in which Voldemort was never born. To his horror, he quickly realizes that this world may be even darker than the one he left behind.

Napalmnacey's grip on characterization and character voice is stupendous. Harry's grief over Sirius's death, which we've all read ten hundred times before, is refreshingly human and genuine. So too are the interactions between Harry, Ron (who is favorably portrayed for the only time ever in an H/HR story), and Hermione. The characterization of Albus Dumbledore is pitch-perfect (he at once is compassionate, mysterious, and subtlety arrogant; and he seems to think of Harry in many ways as an equal). The alternate dimension versions of Ron, Draco, and others are at once drastically different and yet recognizably similar to their canon counterparts.

Otherwise, the alternate version of Wizarding Britain is compelling. The dialogue is organic and hits all the right beats. The prose is tight and the mechanics solid. In the loss column, the premise doesn't hold up to all that much scrutiny, sometimes the author is overly strong on the angst and the H/HR vibes, and there's at least one discomfiting moment w/r/t institutionalized power dynamics and consent that the author never really addresses.

To those who would (reasonably) expect that something published in 2004 on Portkey.org couldn't possibly be worth their time, at least consider reconsidering. In full disclosure . . . those allergic to wonky conceptions of determinism, beware. Those wont to think Harry is a "bitch" because he weeps once over the depth of a loved one, or those wont to think on general principal that Hermione should die in a fire, need not apply.

But those weary of the dread words "a certain bushy-haired witch," rejoice.



Edit by Minion: The Portkey link - or rather Portkey - is dead, but I found a copy in FictionAlley's Dark Arts library.
Please message me if you know of another copy of that story.

 

It's also not for anyone who doesn't like the "Harry's emotions control him to the point of being stupid". Even if that might be quite in character with canon.

3/5, because it's technically not bad, and it is tagged as angst, after all.

 

I had to check out about half way through the first chapter. Although the author somewhat has a handle on the mechanics of writing, the same isn't true for the art of writing. I felt like a third of the words could have been cut from the story without any loss. Then, there's the ton of participles and infinitives; it feels as though no one actually finishes doing anything (I know they do, there's past tense as well. But so many timeless verbs makes the piece I read unsettled).

On top of that, there's the authorial voice telling us things about the scene, rather than leaving us in it. "...glinting in his hair, for all the world trying to mak ehim look like some tragic and romantic hero. Of course it totally ruined such visions that the young man was splattered . . . " Maybe I am thrown by "of course" and "for all the world trying to make him" because I recognize a bit of my own writing in it (especially the phrase, of course). But the other problem is that the characters feel foreign and removed.

Last, sentences feel like their run-on, even when their not, and some of them don't read well do to a lack of commas.

I would have rated it a 2, but I didn't read far enough to see if the story could have gripped me and made me ignore everything above. So for that reason, I won't rate it.

 

So Portkey doesn't exist anymore, but here's the link through the Wayback Machine: accio. Not aware of its existence in any other fanfiction archive.

 

Sometime in October last year it seems. https://www.reddit.com/r/HPharmony/comments/58zd0z/portkeyorg_site_down/

Edit: This seems to be an archive of the stories. https://www.reddit.com/r/HPharmony/comments/5nee0z/i_come_bearing_gifts_over_6200_portkey_fics/