Title: Second Life
Author: Nia River
Rating: T
Genre: General
DLP Category: Time Travel....Or Alternates (It's a little of both)
Pairings: None so far
Status: WIP
Summary: After the disastrous end to fifth year, Harry is alone at Privet Drive contemplating the losses in his life. When he discovers a timeturner he decides to go back to the beginning of it all to set things right. Naturally, things don’t go according to plan.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3548816/1/

This fic is pretty good. A different twist on the usual time travel stories. Instead of inhabiting is younger self, he keeps his older body and adopts his younger self.

However, there are some things are annoy me in this fic. I think Harry is even more annoying that Canon Harry in some aspects. Harry forgets stupid shit like covering up his younger selfs scar in public, to buy new clothing for themselves, etc. He just seems so...forgetful.

So for now I give it a 4/5. I just hope that Harry starts to change.

 

It is pretty good story except couple of points. Most of the story, is dedicated so far to the problems reising Harry and such, not to the actual plot. I'm for one not interested in reading about a behaviour of a young boy and it seems it will take many more chapters until he gets to Hogwarts.
I'd say 3.5/5

 

It makes sense that he is focusing on Harry raising his younger self first. We wouldn't want to read a fic where it just skips 3-4 years. We wouldn't know anything about them. The author is trying to be realistic, showing us how hard it is to raise a kid and yourself.

As I see it, the author is laying down the ground work, first he is building up the younger Harry, making changes to his character. I don't like the whole prankster angle, but it could be worse.

The author has assured me that older Harry will start to prepare himself for when Voldemort comes back. When that happens, he/she didn't specify.

P.S. I like you Avatar

 

I didn't like that story at all, because, in my opinion, it has so many plot holes that it annoys the hell out of me.

Spoiler

Potter conveniently finds some freaky time-turner in his robes (it must have jumped to his pocket!), after travelling to the past he's admitted to St. Mungo's and is treated by his own godmother, who is an empath (I can't recall anything in the cannon, which would justify existence of such talent - if you want experience people's emotions you use legillimency), aurors, who were supposed to interrogate Potter, stops trying to do so, because some healer used healer-patient confidentiality as an excuse. Unfortunately, an actual list is much longer.

Potter characterisation is annoying, if not even bad. He forgets a basic stuff, can't lie to save his stupid ass, his younger counterpart proves to be much smarter than him (after all the kid points to him that werewolves have heightened senses), needs to have everything handed to him by someone (Goblins in the bank - when Gringotts begun keeping people's wills? It's just a bank, not a solicitor's office - or House-elves).

Dumbledore is of course a manipulative retard, who's plans are destroyed by a teenager, who doesn't have a clue about what is happening.

Author's style of writing made me bored- no matter what I tried, I just couldn't imagine Potter Manor and couldn't get into descriptions (they irritated me instead of drawing deeper into the story) - it could have been caused by my rather poor English skills, but still.

2/5

 

Well. This story has a lot of faults. For one, Harry always finds exactly what he needs every single time, without fail. It detracts from the...er realism. Or how realistic a fanfiction about a fantasy world can get, at any rate.

The second, and one that perhaps annoys me the most, is the cliché answer of the spill-everything syndrome. They are not the first author I have seen do it, nor are they the worst. But Harry Potter does not need to reiterate his secret life story (even the abridged or off stage versions) to anyone. Perhaps in a moment of weakness, he could tell a close friend, or as a last resort .

Harry has told his Illegal Secret Time Traveling Dimension Hoping Wacky Adventures™ to practically everyone he has had contact with in this story. For no other reason than they say 'Ah ah ah, I know your lying!' once or twice. For once, I would like to see a time traveler in any series reply ambiguously when confronted. Or lie outright, but that option is currently taken from us. Who knows, maybe Harry/Evan will find a spell to fix that too? Better-ius Lie-ios?

Which brings me to my third point. Perhaps I'm just imagining things, but is this authors grasp of Latin somewhat questionable? I don't know for sure, as all I am relying on is a poor translation program and my gut instinct, but I don't believe 'Odor Mutatio’ is Latin. I might be mistaken, but it sounds like they've tried to just fake it. Perhaps I'm incorrect, and its proper Latin. There are other instances I didn't bother to test with my horrible translator. Either way, it was still a idiotic spell.

Fourthly, the only plot point they seemed to have accomplished in 19 chapters is have Harry adopt himself. and it seems to have stuck there. Perhaps its the short chapter lengths, but all the past few chapters have amounted to are literary masturbation. Nothing seems to have happened. At all. Five odd chapters to send Remus a letter, get a response, and set up a lunch meeting. Awww. look at Harry wearing the funny clothes. Oh, now he's reading! Fucking sqeee.

Something needs to happen. I don't care what. Dumbledore's meddling gets to close to the truth. One of the house elf's go insane. Nevile gets cancer. But for gods sake, this story doesn't even have an illusion of conflict! It's fine, if the author wants to use filler, but filler is a diversion from the main plot-line, not the absence of one!

Lastly, the characterization is somewhat... shoddy. I won't go into extraneous detail, but half of the emotions the characters are experiencing are conveyed with with the subtlety of a drunken rhinoceros. "Harry destroys table. Because Harry was angry. Yeah. Rawr. Watch out Tokyo."


This story, for all its faults, was at the very least, readable, and did not force me to alt-F4 my way to safety. The authors grasp of English grammar at least, was acceptable, even if the prose was sub par.

2.25/5