Of all the people to tell, Dumbledore is absolutely the best choice. In fact not telling him, is stupid.

 

My pet peeve is time travel stories starting out year one, and then having the time traveller plan to change as little as possible until year 4 or so. Why not just start the damn story at year 4?

 

That's the whole point of time travel. If you don't want a curbstomp, use another premise. What fucked 'Trust' up for me was all the manufactured shit the author came up with to create conflict. That story should have been about three or four chapters long.

Of course, if more than one person is doing the time travel thing, then it's a completely different ballgame

Then Harry can't spend three years angsting and torturing himself.

 

It does make sense if you think about it for a moment- coming after a long war would you not want a few years of peace before you start fighting again?

Of course, The pre-4th year chapters should be shorter or some other interesting shit should happen, or else the story fails. For instance, The Weasley family shenanigans in BWP were quite entertaining.

 

While it makes sense, it usually makes sense for a shit story.

Has anyone else come across these shitty Peggy Sue stories where they so desperately try to preserve the time line that they don't off Voldemort in the graveyard? Fucking dumb, but people still write it.

I would like to see a story where they plan to kill Voldemort in the graveyard and fuck everything up,

 

You know another thing I really am not a fan of. Freeing Sirius. Sure it sounds good, but in my experience nothing kills a story quicker than "I'm going to live with Sirius!". There's probably some out there that are pretty good though.

 

A possible solution for that is to have Harry free Sirius only for the man to somehow die.

 

Personally I've always thought that the biggest obstacle in freeing Sirius was Lucius Malfoy.

Malfoy without a doubt knew Sirius was inncocent and at the same time knew that on Sirius' death his son or his wife (depending on how inheritance works in the Black family) would get the money. If there was an issue of a will it wouldn't have been hard to see a law passed that made it so Azkaban inmates' wills are invalidated.

Given that Malfoy didn't arrange for Sirius to have an unfortunate accident in Azkaban to me says his son would inherit and that he couldn't inherit while he was a child. Why risk an assassination when Azkaban will probably kill him for you?

On the other hand, if Malfoy found out that Sirius was about to get a trial he would most likely go ahead with assassination and Sirius would die.

 

Unless getting him exonerated serves a purpose that makes sense plot-wise.

 

Why would he know? Why would anyone but Peter know of Sirius' innocence?*

Snape didn't even know Sirius wasn't the spy else he wouldn't have been as angry and unreasonable in the shack during the third year - he thought they were letting Lily's killer get away or something. (I'm sure their meeting would still have been a mess, I just believe it could have gone slightly different.)

*Mind, he was convicted for blowing up 13 muggles and Peter Pettigrew, not for betraying James and Lily.

 

Snape was Voldemort's potion maker, Malfoy was either his right hand man, or his chief financial backer. I doubt Snape knew very much, really.

 

Sure. But that's almost never the case. It's just because YAY HAPPINESS.

 

The death eaters war masks, and din't always know eachothers identities. They probably thought Sirius was a deep cover death eater who reported only to Voldemort, which makes perfect sense.

 

When an author changes the entire storyline (putting harry in a different house, making him super powered, TWL etc etc) but still keeps some scenes exactly the same.
The most common one is where Malfoy sees the baby dragon in Philosophers Stone. For example, when Harry is in Slytherin, and they just have Ron see the dragon instead of Malfoy.
Please, people, make up something new!

Is this just another word for Mary Sue or...

 

I completely agree. I read this story (I think it was called 'Butterfly') where Quirrel is not at school in Harry's first year but the troll is there never the less. And Harry and the Weasleys aren't friends but they come to rescue Harry with a flying car anyway. Just stupid.

One of my pet peeves: When injuries that should be easily healed with magic are permanent. As far as I understood only injuries caused by dark magic can't be healed properly. A car crash where Harry broke his legs shouldn't be a reason for him to have a limp from then on. They can simply regrow his bones, problem solved.

And the almighty google revealed:

 

Thank you.This is my favorite post today. What is the point in writing a new story if every fucking incident in canon takes place in the same fucking order every time? I fail to understand why Harry feels a sudden heroic need to fight a troll to save Hermione in every Slytherin Harry story after the author finds some half-arsed reason to put Harry in the same situation as in canon.

If you are doing First year fics, remake it completely like Taure did in Alexandra Potter or make it short and sweet like Mira Mirth in On the Way to Greatness.

 

Ugh, that's what Red and Black by MegaKitty did. In hindsight I'm not sure why I read the story but once the author got to Hogwarts they had the plot go exactly the fucking same as canon. I ended up skipping a few chapters to see if that changed but they ended up having the encounter with Sirius exactly the same as canon but with Sirius' daughter replacing a few lines of Ron and Hermione's dialogue.

I sent the review to the author telling them it's boring to read a story that reads exactly like canon with one extra character not to mention how unrealistic it is. The author blocked me but not before sending me a PM saying that she 'had no interest in AUs'.

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Oh Jesus. I just looked that story up again for the first time and damn, that writing is awful. I must have read that when I first got into fanfic or something. I think I must have been looking for a 'Sirius has a daughter' fic at the time.

 

Try As Black as Night by Roses and Lavender. It is the best Sirius-has-a-daughter story out there. It focuses on the House of Black and never drastically alters from canon, but it is well written and I am a sucker for good political games without the Lord and Lady crap.

 

My newest pet peeve: when absolutely everyone knows about really obscure magic. The most common culprits here are Horcruxes, Occlumency, and the Fidelius Charm. The other day, I was reading a Slytherin Harry fic, where literally everyone in Slytherin knew Occlumency. Majorly annoying.

Edit: Oh, and Pensieves. My take has always been that Dumbledore's Pensieve is unique, most likely of his own creation. But in a ton of fics, it seems like you'd be able to find one at a yard sale.

 

Peeve: when "Harry spends a summer doing physical exercise" somehow translates into "Harry is a master duelist". If you want to make Harry a better duelist, you need him to practise dueling.

And expanding on silentclock's post above, I'm equally pissed when pensieves are common knowledge. If it's an AU OotP fic, expect someone to explain that while Sirius could provide his memories of the night he caught Pettigrew, memories are not admissable in court due to possibility of manipulation.