On one hand, this story pretty much avoids all the mocked pitfalls of 5th year fanfics. There's no bashing, characters are canon-like and sympathetic, no one is twisted into a dumb charicature and the new characters (new in the sense of taking a blank slate canon character and writing an OC under its name) neither replace nor trivilize the original cast. Neville and Ron take a level in badass. Ron is a steadfast friend. There's no trace of flat manipulative Dumbledore, he's a great mentor and guide. The protagonist is competent and powerful but without veering into ridiculous territory--just a very smoothly executed "young Dumbledore" arc.

The author has seemingly delivered a fic that could serve as a template gold standard for how all those tropes "should" be executed. This is the correct way to write Harry because whiny emo teenage lordlings are so 2005. This is the correct way to write Dumbledore because evil Dumbledore twinkling his manipulations at Harry has been done to death and no one wants to read it ever again. This is the correct way to write Ron because Ron the jealous git who throws bitchfits and betrays Harry because he wants to be famous too has been taken apart in a hundred threads on this website.

And yet... I'm left with the impression that in making the effort to toe every line, the author left themselves very little room to manouver, little room in which to write something a bit out there, something that brushes against those much-derided tropes, something that takes a risk in order to possibly deliver an interesting take on a particular idea. On a meta level, this is just a consequence of this being a Potterverse fanfic: every version worth reading has already been done. There is nothing in this story that hasn't shown up in another, because its strength lies in taking all those elements in their "correct" versions and putting them together into a single story. You might have read a fic before that had a great Dumbledore but bashed Ron. Or maybe Harry was awesome, but Dumbledore went full Greater Good. Or Ron was well-written but was brushed aside by the author's favored OCs.

The final product is a story that approaches all the tropes in the "correct", proscribed manner but as a result doesn't have the X factor that makes it stand out. It's a perfect recommendation for someone new to HP fanfic, but I was rather bored in the end. It should go without saying that this take is subjective in the extreme. Every element of this story is good. It's well-done. But I found little excitement in it. There are stories with highs and lows that stick with me. This story has no high or lows. Everything is perfectly even.

If I read it 10 years ago, I'd probably rate it 4.5 or 5. Today, I'm gonna go with 3.5 (rounded up to 4 for the purposes of DLP's rating system).

 

I want to preface this review by saying I didn’t realize this story was pre-finished and updating almost daily, and I had written most of this review by around chapter 35. I also did quit the story once at around chapter 10 or 12 because it was quite dull. I did eventually pick it back up after reading a few other stories, and by the time I was caught up, I only had to wait one day for the final 3 chapters to come out (which was today.) That being said, my feelings didn’t really change that much.

It’s a good story, but underwhelming and ultimately disappointing.

It starts off strong. The secret friend trope is one of my favorites, but it basically died right away. The story showed promise that it wasn’t just going to follow the stations of canon, like when the scarcrux got killed early. And it was very light on the usual cliches, which was good too, but it does falter a bit under the weight of its own ambition. It has severe pacing issues, which in turn affects the timeline, and more to the point, how old these characters actually are. There’s about 3 years worth of content in the first 4 months, and then the remainder of the horcrux hunt is arbitrarily extended to the end of the school year (and I think the final battle happened early anyways).

Ultimately, there felt like there was a lot of filler content, to the point where my praise about avoiding the stations of canon is rescinded. There’s some scenes early on that are unnecessary, like there’s scenes about occulency which are ultimately null because of the scarcrux getting killed, and Harry still somehow manages to get into the blood quill detention. But later on, like after chapter 20 or so, I think the author was starting to get burned out, and what felt like a fleshed out story felt more like a series of highlights, where the authors is just trying to get to the important scenes, but can’t think of anything to do for the connecting scenes (something I can relate to), so then were back to the stations, like you’ve got quidditch scenes that are completely irrelevant, the slug club, snapes backstory, stuff with nagini, an obviously imperiused minister. A lot of that felt very lazy, yet the chapters were still approaching 10k words despite the race to the finish. So despite approaching 400k words with 3 years worth of content, there's a lot of fat that could've been trimmed or streamlined.

The best part of the story, by far, is Dumbledore. With the scarcrux dealt with, that leaves a whole year of working together, and I really liked most of their scenes. I think my favorite is probably Godric’s Hollow. But I will say that I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Deathly Hallows plot (other than Harry was actually going to fight Voldemort with all 3 which I haven’t seen often, but was ultimately pointless). It felt like the author did the bare minimum, like we get the tale of the three brothers and like 2 seconds later Dumbledore gets disarmed, and there really wasn’t an attempt to subvert that at all and the reader realizes we’re going to be going through the motions for awhile to get to that inevitable conclusion which is mostly a nothingburger. Remember that time in the ancient past where Astoria wasn't default cursed in every other story?

Onto my least favorite part of the fic, and that’s Astoria. I liked her at the start, but it felt like Daphne was getting a lot more screentime, and therefore was more interesting, at least for what, the first 15-20 chapters? I guess the author realized that, because suddenly Harry stopped wanting to learn dark magic, and that was that.

The issue with Astoria is that she’s a third year. She doesn’t know any magic, and predictably, with 5th year Harry being the #1 target, that makes her a gigantic target and a massive liability. So her main purpose, I feel, is to be Harry’s “rock” When the world’s going to shit, she’s there for him. Except, it doesn’t really work for me. She’s not a rock, she’s an anchor, dragging the story down. If she was his beacon while he’s delving too deep into dark magic and stopping him from becoming evil, it’d be something else, but it’s not. Instead we have a third year declaring her undying love for a fifth year, and that’s cringe. In American terms, thats an 8th grader and a 10th grader. Now I know it’s fanfiction and young pairings are kinda standard, but something about the way it’s portrayed here kinda bothers me whereas it didn’t with that other Astoria story. And don't get me started on the most obvious chekhov’s gun of all time. Predictability isn’t necessarily bad, but a story needs suspense, and when the only question is “how many characters is the author going to kill off at the end,” it lacks punch.

The stuff with Daphne and her death felt very anticlimatic. She’s probably my favorite character in HPFF, I’ve written hundreds of ideas with her, yet it didn’t even phase me here. Like, it happens, and that’s basically it. It didn’t seem like the author gave any fucks about it, to the point where I was wondering if she actually made a Horcrux (from Umbridge, perhaps), and why bother making something emotional when she was just going to come back? The funeral scene was alright I guess. I had sort of the same opinion when Dumbledore died, like he’s the greatest wizard in the world, yet basically the only casualty in the final fight, it felt flat for me. I would’ve liked to see a story where Dumbledore actually makes it to the epilogue for once, but not this time (I don’t consider Dumbledore’s death one of those immutable laws of HP fanfiction). I will say that the scene where they used the Stone on Daphne was nice.

Besides all that, the dialogue isn’t particularly good. So many generic filler phrases. “I guess…” “I suppose…” “Makes sense to me…” “Fine by me…”

Overall, it’s still a good story, but I don’t think it’s any better than a ⅘.

 

Overall a really good story but like others I felt like it was just going through it's paces. What were suppose to be high impact scenes lacked a certain gravitas and felt dull, there was always something missing to make a scene truly great.

There was definitely a lot of fat that could of been trimmed, including the entire cursed Greengrass plotline. Why was it even there? I thought the author was going to have the Elder wand get stolen or have Voldemort attack just before they performed the ritual, or something go pear shaped to make it more interesting, but in the end it was 'Hey we got the wand in an easy manner, lets do the ritual, oh hey that plotline is done' with no conflict to it at all beyond where is the wand. Which we as a reader knew exactly where it was all the time.

The whole Hogwarts underground being trained to such a high extent was a bit rushed for story that only covers one year. Prodigies like Harry aside, when school children are killing and defeating inner circle death eaters after less than one year of training it kind of makes a mockery of death eaters and aurors by diminishing their threat level. Big bad death eaters aren't so big and bad when a bunch of school children who only really started training in combat less than a year ago are suddenly defeating/killing you. I kind of felt like the order and aurors took a background to a bunch of school children fighting people who should of been way more powerful than themselves but weren't.

I did overall really enjoy it and it's a breath of fresh air in the current fanfic environment. I'm kind of the opposite of Scott I would of rated this story 3.5 10 years ago but because of the lack of decent stories being released now it's an easy 4/5 for me. A good story that just never quite nailed the impact of certain scenes and ignoring its 390k word count, felt kind of rushed.

 

I also think it's about a 4/5.

One aspect I was disappointed in was the lack of repercussions for Daphne murdering Umbridge. Harry doesn't really seem to struggle with what happened all that much, never really has to face up to being an accomplice to murder.

Same happens with other plot points in the story, too. Okay, Astoria got cured, that really had little to no relevance to the story: Harry didn't have to go to any great lengths to cure her.

I was also disappointed with the school kids apparently being more competent than Aurors and Death Eaters. That trope never fails to irritate me. Aurors are highly trained law enforcement officials, yet they apparently crumble way faster than 15 year olds and take orders from them, too. Always takes me out of a story - in real life, you can hardly get army reservist privates to take orders from younger NCOs, saying anyone gives a shit about a 15 year old kid's orders is ludicrous. Ah well, minor pet peeve.