Title: The Catalyst
Author: lorien829
Rating: T
Genre: Romance/Angst
Status: WIP
Library Category: Romance
Pairings: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Harry/Hermione
Summary: A little girl of mysterious origins will become the driving force that will change the very nature of Harry and Hermione's relationship with each other. Moves from canon, disregards epilogue.
Link:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9753533/1/The-Catalyst


Well, I stumbled upon this story and thought it worth recommending here. It focuses mostly on how our heroes have grown after the war and their character development. There is no bashing as far as I can see and the motivations of the characters are believable. Nobody is the villain and everyone's justified in feeling the way they do - which is a rarity in the fandom, when authors go for a particular pairing. And the pairing here becomes quite obvious early on.

The little girl is an OC thrown into the story. Perhaps a bit too mature for her age, though that could be explained by the circumstances surrounding her. The story around her builds some tension that compliments the focus on the character development of the canon cast.

It's written well, has good grammar and flows smoothly. That said, it might be a bit slow for those of you who like action more - there's not a lot of it here.

I'm giving it a 4/5. The solid characterization, lack of bashing and believable motivations are the main things that appeal to a reader.

 

It looks intreasting

 

Lorien829 is a dependable writer whose Harry Potter stories tend toward long, slow-to-develop, H/Hr romances set in a post-Hogwarts world. This story is cut from the same cloth. Overall, it's technically competent writing, though it spends far more time with the love-triangle(s) conflict than the mystery and I found myself getting rather bored by the end. There's just not enough intrigue with the mystery of the child storyline and the predictable H/Hr romance storyline isn't interesting enough to carry the rest of the story. In the end, too much time is spent rehashing Hermione's feelings and their obvious turns of direction that the story comes off feeling sappy and slow.

Another minor quibble is that the OC child is written inconsistently. She is five, yet her speech alternates between "Hermione at eleven" and "mangling simple words," coming off unauthentic.

I don't think this story belongs in the DLP Library, though a few might find it readable as a "post-Hogwarts H/Hr best-friends-discover-they're-in-love" guilty pleasure.

3/5

 

3.5/5 for me. The major issues in the story were:

-Horrible, and I mean horrible characterization of the little girl. It feels like the author has never met a five year old before.
-Too much time spent of Hermione's feelings and not enough spent of the mystery of the little girl.
-Ending is extremely predictable.
-The tempo of the story is ruined because of the unnecessary amount of time spent in the 'love-triangle' part of the story.
-Ron's character seems like he just time-travelled from fourth year.

The story can get better depending on what happens in the end, if it turns out to be 'Harry/Hermione fall in love and adopt said child' then it definitely doesn't belong in the library, but, if it turns out to be a good one then it does have a place in the library.

So, might as well move it for now.