Title: Prince of the Dark Kingdom
Author: Mizuni-sama
Rating: M
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Pairing: None so far
Status: WIP
Author's summary: Ten years ago, Voldemort created his kingdom. Now a confused young wizard stumbles into it, and carves out a destiny. AU. Nondark Harry. Mentor Voldemort.
link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3766574/1/Prince_of_the_Dark_Kingdom


My thoughts: I was very skeptical about this fic at first, as this is definitely not your usual DLP standard fare. I've seen it on the top of FF.net for quite some time, but I was leery of reading it because I thought it was going to be your standard Harry/Voldemort (slash) fic, which turned out to be false. In fact, the 'mentor voldemort' part in the authors summary is actually false. I don't know why the author put that in the description (possibly to attract potential readers), but there is no Voldemort mentoring Harry (nor any slash). I took the plunge, and ended up glued to my screen to the point where I passed up studying for an exam in order to read this story. I will explain the basic plot in further detail with my own little summary (bear with me here, this will be tl;dr):

Voldemort has won the first war, and his enemies, for the most part, were exiled or killed. He reshaped Wizarding Britain according to his ideals. Now what makes this Voldemort-run society different from DH canon, is that people aren't living in poverty and dying on the streets. Everything is actually neat and clean, and the citizens are relatively happy under Voldemort's dictatorship, even muggleborns and halfbloods. It is a very Orwellian society however. Taboo's are in place, and questioning or criticizing the establishment could get you arrested or killed. Instead of muggleborn wizards and witches being slaughtered en masse, young muggleborn wizards and witches are kidnapped from their muggle parents by a special branch of the ministry, partially obliviated to ease their entry into the wizarding world (and to make them forget about their parents so they are compliant), and then adopted into pureblood families where they undergo reeducation so that they have a chance to attend the most prestigious school in Britain (which is obviously Hogwarts. And this is significant, as in this story there are lesser institutions where less able wizards are taught, say, to make candles and clothes en masse).

Harry is one such child. His parents, Lily and James, fled to Germany when it became clear that Voldemort was winning and the resistance was failing. Harry grows up as a muggle unaware of his heritage, as his parents pose as muggle artists to avoid attention. They are however, unfortunately killed by a muggle robber. He is sent to live with the Dursleys where eventually he performs a powerful bit of accidental magic, attracting the attention of the WYRA (the Wizarding Reclamation Agency), who kidnap him and take him to their facility. However, Harry is smarter than the other children and manages to avoid the partial obliviation that all muggleborns go through. He fails to be adopted, making him a ward of the state.

Harry is not your average wizard though, and ends up attracting attention to himself when it is revealed that he possesses the Dark Lord's brother wand, as well as his parsletongue ability. The Dark Lord takes an interest in young Harry Potter (again, not sexual), and Potter is in a precarious position, where he struggles to reconcile what the history books (and Voldemort) say(s) with what he knows about Voldemort's true nature, and the cruelty of the Wizard Reclamation Program.

End Summary. Even though that was long, there were no important spoilers in it.

What I like about this story is the plot, which is very intriguing, and the characterization. Voldemort is characterized particularly well. I might even go as far as saying that Voldemort's characterization in this story is one of the best I've seen in fanfiction. He is still cruel, power hungry, ambitious, etc., but he is humanized and you can sympathize with his ideals and positions (which is a stark contrast to canon Voldemort where he is basically pure evil). He also lacks the destructive massive ego of canon!Voldemort, and is overall more intelligent.

The writing and dialogue is well above the FF.net average, and easily meets DLP standards. There might be one or two spelling errors every few chapters, but there are no reoccuring or consistent errors which tends to annoy the reader. This story is AU (obviously), but contains some plot elements from canon, particularly when it gets to the Chamber of Secrets and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

This is one my favorite stories in recent memory. I literally ploughed through the 200k+ words in two days.

4.8/5

 

The story is already in the library.
http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=7398&

 

bah. I did a search and didn't find it in the library.

oh well.

 

To be fair, that thread hasn't been replied in for a while. Even though the author has updated several times.