Title: The Darkness Within
Author: clen3k
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Romance
Pairing: H/Hr
Status: WIP, with three chapters to go.
Summary: Post-OotP. The Golden Trio sit together laughing, all of them happy at the moment. A blink of an eye and the innocence is lost, destroyed from within by jealousy, distrust and above all - a destiny, undeniable in its darkness...
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2372109/1/

I think my reviewers can describe this story better than I can:

And my favourite reviewer -Lucullus -

 

reliwing on reviwers how... pathetic but still it is a veyr good story even if it is h/hr but its written well enough i can look past that

 

I actually have been following and enjoying this one for awhile. It's one of the very few Harry/Hermione fics out there that I can tolerate, though that has nothing to do with the pairing itself.

 

Holy shit! It's hard to take a post that has 2 of its first 3 words spelled wrong serious.

 

well... fuck ok you have a point since I can't come up with any excuses other than i was tired (over used by people on this board) and the truth is they were typoes. I don't usually spell that bad.

 

Just finished reading this.

PROS
Reasonable and entertaining progression into the Dark for both Harry and {spoilerperson}
Interesting, if brief, look at how one actually hides a Dark Mark at a school
Fun look at a not!entirely!psychotic Voldemort

CONS
Draco bought in waaaaaaaay too easily
(could just be me but) Resolution left too open
Came together at the end a tad too neatly

Personal Comment: Overall a good story, a solid 8/10 IMhO. My only real beefs are both the shortness (I likes me some long fic) and the way I would have gone with the end (been more explicit about what was coming).

 

Very VERY good. One the best I've ever seen.

 

*Waits for the inevitable flood of negreps and waspish comments about necrobumping, twiddling his thumbs all the while*

Seriously, don't bump old topics to make pointless as shit observations. It's against the rules and will make you no friends among the forum regulars.

 

Do people not read the rules when they join? It should be impossible not to. Go and read them before you do something that makes me doubt you are a competent human being again. They are stickies in the announcements thread. Read them NOW Sandono.

 

Indeed. This is a truly refreshing work in the Dark Arts category.

Even four years on this deserves a high rating. 4/5 I say. There were some pretty big grammatical errors and the Harry/Hermione pairing was working against full marks. I bring up the pairing because Hermione needed a bit more feminine-izatation to make the pairing work well.

Over all the characterizations were good, and the story had a good hook. I didn't want to stop reading it.

And before anyone says shit about necro-posting. Necro-posting is permitted in the Library section provided that it is a real review.

 

I dunno. I thought this one started strongly and then became implausible in a hurry.

Spoiler

The premise is that Harry joins the Death Eaters in an effort to get close to Voldemort and assassinate him. But things don't go exactly to plan, and he almost(?) succumbs to the lure of the Dark Arts.

The trouble is that none of this was emotionally realistic. Harry's plan arrived out of the blue in the form of a flashback, and there was nothing in his characterization that hinted at what was to come. Likewise, the relationship angst between him, Ron, and Hermione was off-putting and unrealistic. Nobody behaves plausibly.

The plot itself unfolds rapidly, and the few action scenes are just bad. This story could have been good, but the real trouble is that it needed 100k words, not 50k, to do it right.

3/5 - it's well-written, but the characterizations are just off

 

Agreed on the last point. This fic had potential, and I think the author was capable enough stylistically to write something truly excellent here, but instead of fully fleshing out everything (thus creating abortive characterization and some extremely bad dialogue), he rushed it. The fic's ending, I think, is where the true problems are evident - the sense of anticlimax is palpable, and that irked me to no end. It doesn't help that the plot seems to meander, leaving the fic with a rather purposelessness feel to it.

I'm sorry, but while this fic managed to keep me interested, I found it sorely lacking across the board, and the ending was a disappointment.

2/5, and not a point higher.