Title: Resurrect the Living.
Author:: fascinationex.
Rating: M.
Genre: Horror.
Status: In-Progress.
Library Category: General or the Alternatives.
Pairings: Eventual Harry Potter/Voldemort.
Summary:
Need to have an AO3 account to view because the author placed the story on restricted.

Link: AO3.

Before you backspace at the slash, the fic is currently gen and will be for a long time as the slash hasn't come up yet. So when/if the slash shows up, feel free to peace out then.

I’ve been sitting on this fic for a couple months now, and while I was considering placing it for review, it’s only after the most recent chapter that I decided it should be here.

It’s an interesting premise for a time travel story due to the reason Harry does it. It’s not due to war, slaughter, or the world gone any way bad, but merely to cure the ‘sickness’ Harry has gained that threatens his sanity at the best case, and life at the worse.

It’s talked about in the second/third chapters, so it’s not much of a spoiler, but I’ll put it under spoiler tags anyways.

Spoiler

Because Harry is now the Master of Death, he can see ghosts, but not just any ghost, but every ghost of everyone who has ever died, all at once. These are not the typical ghosts where you can learn their life stories and they have sentience, but they’re truly echoes, caught in a loop of their last moments with mauled bodies, unable to learn or to think or do anything at all. This power can’t be turned off, and the more Harry pays attention to a ghost, the more it wanders towards him, and interacting with a ghost is physically unpleasant at best.

Ignoring them is hard too, because they’re everywhere, and even before Harry time travels, his power grows so much he has trouble telling ghosts apart from living people at sight, causing accidental interactions.

The only cure is an old potion that makes the sickness manageable, but the main ingredient is a pint of blood from a living Gaunt, who are all dead.

The cleverness of all this is that, as of yet, there are no benefits to Harry’s sickness when there could easily could be, making his time travel gambit understandable.

But what I really enjoy is how the writer presents the characters, as Harry is a nostalgic thirty-something-year-old man suddenly confronted on the way the people he knew really were rather than how he remembers them.

This holds true for Snape and Draco (and Dumbledore), all who seems very true to character on how they were presented in the books. There isn’t any bashing, but there’s no mercy either, just plain honesty.

The most recent chapter is unique on its handling of a specific situation, cutting through the bullshit so cleanly, I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before.

Spoiler

Situation: Harry gets to Hogwarts and realizes to his dismay that he forgot that Sirius was alive and in Azkaban. He’s thirty-something and he knew Sirius for like a year as a teenager, plus he’s been busy and productive on the reason he's here, so it’s honestly not surprising he forgot about Sirius.

But I was wary, because this sort of tired and familiar subplot could distract Harry from the interesting stuff for several chapters, but Harry seemed to think the same way.

Within one scene, he kills the sleeping Pettigrew in rat form, turns him human with his Dark Mark showing, then leaves him on the bedroom floor and goes to sleep for someone else to find and deal with.

That’s certainly one way to handle a situation, and thank god for that.

Of course, there are two downsides to this fic, which kind of tie into each other.

First thing, I don’t care about the slash, but it begs the question what the fic will turn into after the prologue and this deal with the devil sort of relationship begins. The fic has been so great so far, but I honestly don’t know what will happen after, so it makes the fic hard to predict. It could go in multiple ways and will basically be a turning point for the plot, so if it’s not handled well, I’m afraid it could make the fic less interesting. And really, despite all these events happening, I feel like I haven’t seen enough of the fic to have an accurate picture of it.

The second is that I don’t know when I’m going to have an accurate picture because the fic has an updating problem. This was the reason why I was hesitant to put it for review.

The fic was started in March 2018. Since then, the fic has grown to twenty-one chapters with 54k words, and let me say that every word has been relevant and none has been filler. Chronologically, it has progressed from the present time, to the zoo incident in the past, and is currently at the first couple days of Harry’s first year.

This update rate slightly scares me. It’s certainly been progressing and updating (and in fact the last couple chapters were posted about a week apart), but the prologue is a long ways down the timeline, and I’m not sure when it will reach it, not to mention anything after it.

It’s not a disservice to say the worst part about a fic is it’s update rate, but it’s certainly an uneasy one.

4/5.

I’ll up it to 4.5/5 if it gives me more.

Added info about how to view the story. -- Zombie

 

I just read the whole thing (21 chapters at time of reading) and that was, well, interesting. I don't think I've seen someone approach the whole business of titles in the magical world quite like this.

Spoiler

Especially that the title of Master of Death actually meaning something. I've seen conjecture that the Hallows are cursed objects, meant to lead the bearer towards death, or at least stop them from living a full life, but the extent this fic goes to is new.

It's a vivid, interesting read, taking canon in an interesting direction. I'm not sure how I'll feel about the story once it reaches the point where the stated pairing comes into play, but I'm at least interested enough to read that far. Time travel stories are a guilty pleasure for me, along with canon rehashes, so that's why I'm scoring this so highly.

Only saw one typo too, a refreshing change from the stuff I've been reading on alternatehistory recently. 4/5.

 

Honestly this story is so good that I'm convinced the author can find a good way to handle the ship.

I love how Harry's madness is handled. It gives him a proper justification for wanting to go to the new timeline. Harry's characterization is top notch as well. You feel his weariness and how just absolutely tired he is of all the stuff he has to deal with. It really matches with canon Harry's absolute refusal to engage with his fame, and now he has had to deal with both the annoyances of fame and the curse of the Master of Death title. I buy the melancholy that Harry feels in this story.

I'd say a 4/5 for now. It can certainly go up depending on how to confrontation and ensuing relationship with Voldemort is handled. If the story catches up to the prologue I think I'll reevaluate the score.

 

I really like what's been written so far, but the extremely slow pace is infuriating. Regardless, aside from one or two spelling mistakes and grammatical errors the writing is excellent.

5/5

 

Well, this is my jam. I like it so much that I'm kind of annoyed that I found it while it's still only 50k words long. I read it all in one sitting and it kept me engrossed, so after a bit of consideration, I'll give this a 5/5 for now.

The pacing wouldn't be a problem for me if the fic was already complete and way longer, so I won't complain about that.

And the apparent pairing doesn't matter to me at all, especially since it's not in the story right now, and probably won't be for a long time.

 

I mean, the writing is certainly good, the plot serves a purpose, but I was tired of the dead by the time he was ready for Hogwarts, and the pace just killed it for me. I stopped actively reading and just began skimming large parts to catch up with the current chapter.

Maybe if I read it properly it would get better after the school year begins, but based off of where it was when I gave up, I don't see how Harry is expected to survive like this the rest of the school year until he meets with Voldemort in the opening. And being frank, with how far away that is right now, I can't find it in me to care.

 

I think it's good but the pacing is too slow. Unfortunately there is very little of the story that could conceivably be cut. The pacing, while glacial, is necessary to give harry an actual reason to do something as insane as resurrect Lord Voldemort, he absolutely needs to have exhausted every other option and be in truly dire straits before it would make sense for his character. I imagine that for an actual HP/LV pairing to make sense we'll need another 500k words after Voldemort is resurrected as well so this will be an insanely long fic if it is intended to make sense. I do have the sneaking suspicion that the HP/LV tag may be just to take advantage of AO3s audiences personal biases rather than any actual intention of writing the pairing since it seems on track to be an entire series of books before anything of the sort shows up.

Edit: Realized I forgot to put a score in text, I give it a 3/5, the pacing is bad but it's necessary, the writing is of good quality and it shows a real dedication to minutiae of the books. I can't really score it higher however due to the pacing and the obsession with a pairing that I cannot see actually being realized anytime this century.

 

Wtf is this 3 day waiting queue to join this website

 

Yeah, looks like the writer placed the story as "Restricted", so only people with an Ao3 account can view it. I don't recall it being like that before because otherwise there would be complaints. I'm wondering if the writer found this thread and got scared, but we've been pretty nice, so I don't get what's going on. :/

I wouldn't have put it up for review if I knew it was going to lock itself.

 

This updated.

It baffles me that the story went with the most logical and obvious conclusion to this scenario, and I didn't see it coming at all.

Spoiler

Harry: *kills a guy in his dormroom*
Guy: *haunts the dormroom*
Harry: Hm, didn't think this through :/

It kills me I didn't see it coming, but it also works so well because of this. Harry wasn't thinking of the consequences of killing someone, and neither was I, so we're both surprised when we realize there's now a ghost where Harry sleeps. It is also a devastating consequence because Harry can't sleep anywhere else without someone noticing. The only way for him not to get ruined by this is if by chance killing someone himself causes that ghost to act different than the others, like obeying him so Harry can get him to leave the tower.

I'm just really impressed. We still haven't gotten a week into first year, but I'm enjoying this for what it is.

 

>“I can get you the Elixir of Life,” Harry says. “But I need your help with something else.”

bow chika wow wow

i don't know if i'm mature enough to continue

 

Another update. Snape's first potions class is finally here, and while I was looking forward to see how Snape was handled, I was not disappointed in the slightest.

This story, unlike every other time travel fic I've seen, has great awareness of how these events and people would be perceived by an adult, who has the context and perspective of the real world. There's always been this disconnect between what happens and how Harry perceives and reacts to them. He doesn't have an emotional attachment to them, and while every other fic would drown itself in nostalgia and the love Harry has for these people he has not seen in a long time, or even a determination to change the past, Harry isn't interested in it. The world worked out fine in his original timeline, and he's here for one thing only. He's an adult and is no longer drawn to childish things or the children around him who are certainly not his friends.

Spoiler

His reaction to Snape is gold, and so it Snape's reaction to him because it's so canon. Harry answers every question and more correctly, and it just makes Snape hates him more. What sort of person is Snape is bully children in his own classroom with no guilt or regret? Harry as an adult perceives this and passes judgement. It's just so perfect.

 

I absolutely love this story. It's the first time travel story that feels like it's written by an actual adult. It's so rare to see this level of emotional maturity in fanfic, I just absolutely adore it.

Easy 5/5

 

This is a wonderful fic.

 

I think the biggest problem with the fic, aside from where it is inevitably heading, is the premise itself. I'm not a fan of the Master of Death/see ghosts mechanic at all - it feels too contrived - and on top of that, I don't buy the time travel as the obvious solution. The obvious solution for a wizard is to just go live in a hut in Antarctica.

 

The most concerning part of this story are that the prologue reveals where it is heading (end of the Hogwarts year), but the pacing feels too slow. It is now up to chapter 33 and is up to the Christmas holidays. Plot elements like the troll and quidditch has changed. The interesting part is that they are the result of actions that Harry has or hasn't thought through. The concept is quite novel and the writing is clear.

Overall a great read, though it feels like the pacing is slow at times. 4/5

Spoiler

It is hilarious that Draco dies in the latest chapter