Title: Slippery People
Author: neymovirne
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Mystery
Status: Complete
Library Category: General Fics
Pairings: none
Summary: Just when Harry stopped wishing for his parents to magically come back from the dead and whisk him away from the Dursleys, they did. Sort of. If only things were as simple as in his daydreams.
A Harry in Slytherin story.

Link: FanFiction.Net /AO3

Review: I saw a recommendation for this, and I gave it a chance despite the overtagging (on AO3) and the very awkward introduction. And I'm glad, because it was ultimately a really good fic. Really unfortunate that it's hidden behind such red flags.

While the author doesn't tag it as a mystery, I think it's a good category for it, a significant part of this fic is about how we ended in the pretty absurd WBWL situation with Potters living well, cocky brother and Harry dumped at Duresley's. The author manages to do what I rarely see among fic writers and shows the ability to layer hints and make things progressively more obvious for the reader so that they can catch up to answers at different points until they are spoonfed an answer if they failed to guess it to this point.

Another strong point is the character writing, the characters have clear voices and the dialogues are engaging. Which is very important, because this fic is very dialogue heavy. There isn't that much in terms of action and magic, which is for some parts unfortunate (when we see glimpses at the word they are pretty good), and on some fortunate (to which I will get in a moment).

Despite being branded as canon divergence, the fic generally falls into some fanon pitfalls. Generalising of "Dark Lord" title and blood quills, cheapening of shield charm, and when we actually see Harry learn a spell it's all willpower. On the other hand, in avoidance of clichés we have a nice part about progress in magic and how artefacts are often valuable because of their history and not their magical potency, modern magicians being potentially able to create much more skilful enchantments.

Another thing that annoyed me was reusing canon phrases/situations out of their original context. Like Pettigrew dropping "You are a wizard, Harry" or Harry doing accidental B&B floo-in because of mispronouncing and overhearing important plot points.

As can be seen in tags, the fic covers only the first year, but it's a complete story, though to finish it off nicely they author needed to resort to a bit of a plot device.

The review looks a bit complain-y on my part, but that's just my personality. Ultimately it's an engaging story, and one I feel is worth recommending. 7/10 for me, so four stars by the DLP metrics.

 

I'm really liking this so far. Harry is the straight man, and Adam is the quintessential Dark Lord Potter in miniature, viewed from another perspective. It's great. The foreshadowing is about as subtle as a mallet to the face, but it's a lot of fun regardless. I'm only a few chapters in, so I'll hold off on a number for now, but I'm leaning towards 4/5 or so.