I got the feeling that the satellite and the infra-red cameras were going to be pretty important actually, especially when they worked out how to find all the magical hotspots.

Anyway, I do enjoy the fic and you update very quickly (you're the only one at the minute ) so I'm gonna up mt vote to a 4/5. The muggle tech being involved is very cool, especially since you haven't overdone the whole 'muggles are just as capable as wizards at everything' because they're not. They know their weaknesses but they find ways around them.

Aekiel

 

Thanks for taking the time to write your thorough review. I thought it was cool to have a thread started for one of my fics in the first place, but to have the mod weigh in was very cool.

This is a seventh-year fic that at least pretends to follow "canon" (at least from the start). By its very nature, then, I had to go over ground that's been done 10,000x before. Bringing the story out into the muggle world was one way I tried to avoid cliche, but as you note, in a HHr fic there's no getting around "what does ron think," and "what does Ginny do when she finds out" bits (not to mention the kids figuring out who RAB was). I did tried to do some of this ground with a twist...mature!Ron was an example, and I'm glad you like that part.

I agree that this is, for the most part, cute and fluffy. It was intended to be such...something that I could let my kids read (or my mom, for that matter), and it's nice to think that readers with varied tastes are willing to place it on the not-so-dark-and-angsty side of their reading menus.

BTW the way I just looked up at your end-of-comment tag about Mr. Weasley and almost fell off my chair. Sure hope that's a live link, cause I'm clicking on it presently.

 

I won't read this. Sorry, I just can't.

Why?

Because the timeline has been pushed forward? What? Forward? What? Nope, sorry, I just can't do it.

 

I couldn't get far into the story (ch. 5) before I had to abandon it, mainly due to two reasons:

1. The Harry/Hermione 'development'. Not exactly the worst, but it seems to me like a mixture of typical H/G 'monster in the chest that suddenly appears' and R/Hr 'they are so deeply in love with each other, they just don't know it yet'.

2. Hermione's parents. I have a feeling they're going to come out and say "Go get a room you two and fuck each other's brains out while we smile knowing smiles at each other". What is this, Kinsfire?
Also, their stance on 'Hermione is in fatal danger from forces we don't know about and have no means to fight. So we hope and pray for the best'.

Doesn't sound like typical parental behaviour.

 

hermione's parents are actually the part of most hhr fanfiction i find the most baffling.
Seriously how many parents of 15 year olds would accept that their children are involved in a terrorist conflict they cannot even understand?
Some stories cover it well by constructing magical contracts so they can't back out, others resolve the conflict in some way (e.g. parents flee to XY, while leaving hermione behind since they cant understand her).
This story and quite a few others go a way i personally couldn't ever accept as realistic. Seriously how could ANY responsible parent accept that their daughter is suddenly in mortal danger without throwing at least a 10 days fit?
Aside from that problem i enjoy the story, it has a nice connection to the royal family which adds refreshingly new twists to the plot (though it is rather slow moving)

 

thanks for the review.

First, Hr is 17 in this story. Still not an adult, and still not a reason for parents to not care, but 17 is not 15. Thousands of 17 year old boys went off to war and died for their countries with parental permission. It's not like they're gung ho about her fighting, just a bit fatalistic.

Second, I think I used the best argument I've seen for why Hermione's parents could be okay with things playing out that way...yes, she is in mortal peril by Harry's side, but she'd be in danger anyway as a muggleborn witch and known friend of Harry Potter.

Third, who says the Grangers didn't throw more than a 10 day fit about the danger their daughter is in. This is end of year 6....an entire year after she was almost killed in the DoM.

But why stop at HHr fanfics with your opinions on baffling and unrealistic parental portrayals? What parent in their right mind would have let Hermione return to Hogwarts after the DoM injury? But she did in HBP, which only had a few parents pulling children (and that only after DD kicked it).

Magical contracts are an alternative, but seem just as unrealistic...it's supposed to be just like a muggle boarding school, just with magic, so how many boarding schools require this kind of committment? And if there was such a contract required to gain admission, what kind of responsible parent would sign it (particularly if they are muggles and only recently learned of their child's magical talents?).

I suppose the most realistic reaction for the Grangers would be to have pulled her from Hogwarts after Book Five and move out of the country. They have the means. Maybe she'd refuse to leave Harry's side and you'd still have HHr. But bottom line is that I'm writing a story centered around the muggle world and muggles that know about magic. Hard for me to imagine doing so without Hermione's parents involved in the story.

I agree that my story is slow, and unfolds at glacial-like speeds. Plate tectonic-speeds, even. Perhaps there'll be a not-so-phantom edit once I finish it the first time. I will say that I think I picked up the pace somewhere around Ch 30.

Glad you liked it otherwise.

 

Actually, it being a long story is what's keeping me hooked. I've read so many 10,000 word stories in the past few months they've just lost their appeal. Its good to see a story that takes its time to unfold, especially if its updated once or twice a day (how much spare time do you bloody well have?!?).

The parents' reaction, in my mind, is kinda strange but that's not what I'm reading the fic for. Besides, the age of consent is 16 in Britain, so the parents aren't likely to throw a fit if Harry/Hermione have it off in a broom closet.

On a side note, Wally would be able to pinpoint them to the inch with his satellite (or have the anti-apparition wards blocked that?), which would give the parents some kind of comfort. Or maybe Wally's a pervert , you never know .

Aekiel

 

I recently tried to read this.

The story sucked near the beginning. It wasn't really that anything was wrong or so bad that I automatically closed the window, but it was more the boring writing style and lack of interesting events happening. The fluff was around 100% of the story, and it just wasn't done that well. I quickly found myself skimming through the story, checking to see if things got better. After fifteen chapters of the same weaknesses, they hadn't, and so I just stopped reading.

But today I checked out the last two chapters (49-50) since she had updated pretty recently. And the difference between the beginning and the end of the novel is so large as to be inexpressible with words. It was as if I was looking at a completely different fic. The prose had become brilliant and the humour was well-done. I was especially entertained by her story of Rookwood and his experiences attempting to train Death Eaters in the ways of muggles, due to necessity. I don't know how canoncansodoff improved that much, but she definitely caught my interest with the last two chapters. I guess I'm going to start reading backwards until it gets boring.

 

One thing jumps out at me. Boring. That being said:

I LIKE the muggle technology stuff, I like advancing the timeline, I like the Royals.

However, he overdoes it with all the titles, and where I am now at chapter 48, has spent at least 100,000 words giving Harry titles, a Love Tent, and 3 or 4 minor, very heavily glossed over, battles.

There just isn't enough meat to the fic. We all don't expect superpowered, bad ass Dark Harry here, but there's just nothing really going on. Harry comes off like a middle management gimp instead of the Chosen One.

The Digicams being able to see the wizarding world is just too much as well, with the sheer number of sat pictures, phone cams, video cams, hell traffic cameras, you name it, there would be nonstop accidental sightings of the magical world.

A for effort and a few ideas, I really liked and laughed over MI 5 3/4's but there's just so much story, with so little to fill it. The fluff is painful to read, but after recently getting back into reading fics, and finding like damned 80% of it at least slash, I'm going to finish this today.


In short, too much glossing over stuff that should of been expanded on, way, way too much fluff, Hermione's parents make me cringe to read their sections, and Harry's doing nothing worth even reading about really. If I didn't like some of the hinted at political scheming, I'd of stopped reading an hour ago.

Edit: If chapter 50 and on where written in the same manner as the rest of the story I'd 5/5 it. Got a good writing style all of a sudden.

Edit 2: Chapter 55 is so confusing it's retarded. On top of all these titles, Harry suddenly might gain rulership of the whole magical UK. It's just too much. Him in the army, good, him as QW, great, him and his other 8 titles or so + being the overall ruler just hurts. I'm still waiting for more interesting things to happen.

 

I must agree with most of what has been said. I really like this story but think alot of it is very unrealistic. I am not sure having the Prime Minister getting so involved in the Magical world is good and the queen might have to reacert her authority. I really like this story and give it 4/5.