Title: Precocious Witches and Where to Find Them
Author: Vernerama
Genre: Gen
Rating: Mature
Pairing: None so far
Length: 260k
Status: WIP
Library category: The Alternates
Link AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50506063/chapters/127594417
Link FFN: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14281945/1/Precocious-Witches-and-Where-to-Find-Them

AO3 Summary: It wasn't enough that she was reborn an orphan with adult memories. No, Sylvia also had to be reborn into the bloody Wizarding World. Now a witch on her way to Hogwarts she'll have to decide whether or not to put her knowledge to the use. But really, what did she owe these people, anyway?

Yes I'm recommending a SI on DLP, but fuck it, it's 2025, the fandom is basically dead and this is an actual good story that is not abandoned. Granted, I do have a soft spot for self-inserts. I think most fan fiction is barely disguised self inserts so I appreciate the people who don't bother hiding the ball. That said all but like 3 HP SI fanfics are unreadably bad and 2 of them are abandoned.

In this story, our SI OC reacts to growing up with the memories of another life by acting out. She is moved from foster family to foster family before ending up in an orphanage. It is not made explicit to us until much later but the effect on Dumbledore of delivering a Hogwarts letter to a precocious and troubled child at an orphanage causes some PTSD that is the first flap of the butterfly's wings that keeps this from being a complete canon rehash. As of the current chapter we're at the end of the summer between 2nd and 3rd year and most of the tent pole events from canon have occurred but in almost every case made just different enough to be novel and directly traceable to the existence of the SI in the universe who, despite trying not to get involved in the plot, manages to push things slightly off course by the mere fact of her existence. In addition to the on-going cannon storyline which we see from the perspective of someone who is not in the Trio and is mostly involved from the sidelines, there is an extremely interesting developing plot line about how exactly the OC arrived in the universe.

What this story has going for it above and beyond everything else is that it's very well written from a technical perspective. There are some occasional obvious typos that indicate the Author's native language probably does not included gendered pronouns but fortunately they're not too frequently. In addition to the quality of the writing, it shines above most fanfics and, even more so other SI fics, by what it doesn't include: The kids are not written as small adults, except for the one who literally is one, they're fairly believable as 12 year olds. There isn't any bashing. The cannon characters are not wildly OC. The SI does not miraculously come into a bunch of wealth or rare magic abilities or heritages. The SI is not some mopey emo teenager who is as insufferable at Hogwarts as the author probably is in real life. It's just a good fun read, 260k words of it and counting.

5/5