Heh, reminds me of time when I was 6 and my cousin was 7 and we were playing around with metal sticks. We tried to be cautious but in the end I still wound up with a nastly cut and immediate need of medical care. Still, it was fun.
P.S. Just thought about it. Need some showy staff fighting? Darth Maul is your man.

 

Well this was a nice surprise, we got a TLL update instead of the expected TML update!

The chapter itself was as usual excellent.

Krum's character has developed very nice in this chapter. He is a character we now love to hate in this story. Of course Krum should have been an asshole in canon too, coming from Durmstrang and being a celebrity, instead we got lovesick Krum.

I liked the realistic aspect of HJ not winning the race, because the Slytherins and Krum cheated so he wouldn't. Besides it will only be sweeter when HJ fucking knocks the shit out of Krum in the duelling competition.

Fleur's role was to say the least unexpected. I liked the naked Fleur, but I find it sort of hard to believe that she would be naked in the Forbidden Forest, even with a magical enchantment, which reminded her of home.

The Turpin/Pucey situation is a nice little subplot. I really hope Pucey gets screwed the fuck over by HJ.

As for the upcoming tasks, the staffs do sound lame, but I have enough confidence in you that I don't believe you will disappoint us.

Last, but not least- Can we get moar of the Hat next chapter? I can't get enough of the fucking Hat, he is just that good. I really want to see the Hat as a commentator. I can just imagine the horrified reactions of the parents as they hear the Hat's various comments about Fleur's nubile body.

Homer

 

Reminds me of the time I threw a sharp stick from a tree and almost gouged my cousins eye out.

Staff Fighting physically would be intriguing for the simple fact that it would shock and surprise the pureblood contestant's possibly.

Spent their life swishing and flicking. And now they're getting slaughtered with wood.

"Got wood Fleur? Oh no...wait...that's me after seeing your little getaway"

*Evil laugh*

And you also have to take into account the length of said staves.

If they're 7-foot, they are quite unwieldy and likely to unbalance. If 4-6 foot, certainly easier but you have a smaller striking range.

And now for a Hat-Worthy Description of how Apparation feels.

"Well HJ, now you know how shit feels as it's exiting you!"

Mwahahahahaha.

The Puzzle Room is quite ingenious really.

Kinda pointless if you can do wandless magic >.>

Regards
Aerin

 

No one expects a 17 year old to have the ability to cast wandless spells, especially when most adults don't have the ability to do so.

 

I find this story confusing. I'm sure that I don't like... at all, but I can't seem to stop reading it. I don't like HJ that much and sometimes wile I'm reading a forget to root for him at all and that's bad. You gotta root for the hero.... don't you? Anyway, I'm going to keep sticking with it to see if I start to like HJ a little more. I hope so because I really want to...

Mac.

 

Heh, I hope Turpin gets screwed and fucked by HJ.

I dunno if by staff competition you meant Eastern Bo/Jo fighting, or medieval European quarterstaff fights, which would fit in just fine with the more-or-less backwards wizarding society.

Either way, it's all about the Hat's comments.

 

Truly enjoyed this chapter, the broom race was well written and I was content with the outcome. Shows that not everything goes HJ's way.

What I'm really looking forward to are the other tasks. Dueling sounds great and all but what really gets me going will be tasks like the Puzzle Room. It's extremely rare to find a decent fic where other types of magic are used, be it enchanting, warding, potions and the like.

 

Well Fleur's grotto couldn't exactly be summoned where it could be seen, so a couple of hundred yards into the forbidden forest was a good place.

Of course those were only the passive defenses HJ saw. Her parents created this for her. There may very well be active defenses that Fleur has at her disposal in that little piece of France. She describes it as a sanctuary where she can escape to. It may also be the magical equivalent of a safe room.

I actually mapped out all five rounds of the first round of dueling. HJ's first opponent is Fleur. His last is Krum. I don't have the doc in front of me, but I think HJ's rotation is Fleur, Aimee, Cedric, Athena, and Viktor.

Next chapter will discuss staves more. Most have been making the pistol versus rifle comparison for wands versus staves. The approach I am likely to take is more along the lines of pistol versus musket. Staves are probably going to be crude inefficient and what most used before wands became "affordable" to the masses, but still a part of the heritage.

Hope that makes sense, but whatever I end up doing, it won't be simple fighting with sticks.

In the Harry/Fleur community discussion thread, I made a post on how I've treated Fleur in my stories and why in Darkness she was a immature wench not really able to have a real relationship with Bill before dying versus the Fleur from Bungle who is confident, amorous and generally fun with the Fleur in this story who is 2 yrs less developed than the other 2 versions and coping by being cold, aloof and rude. She's somewhat on the fence and could go either way.

Edit - MacMar's comment are part of the story that's fun for me to write. HJ isn't a fully likeable hero. He's still blending the James and Harry parts. Several of the reviews state that he seemed more Harry than James this chapter or in previous ones there was more James and little Harry. He is struggling with his duality. Initially, his personality defaulted to James who was clearly more worldly and wise - right? He managed to bungle (no pun intended) his personal relations with just about everyone in his own house by playing fast and loose with Katie and somewhat indulging Ginny's fascination with him. In recent chapter's he's tried to balance himself and naturally near death experiences have a way of humbling him. In this chapter, Cedric in need of a new advisor gets his fellow 6th and 7th years to be teacher's aides in Astronomy grading the 1-3rd yr papers and helping setup so the teacher will have extra time to advise Diggory. It gave HJ a slight pause as he realized how few Gryffs would line up to do that for him.

 

I liked it and still say the hat needs a tommy gun. The race was excellent and cant wait for the dueling.

 

Oh yes, I liked that very much. Only makes revenge sweeter, besides, it's nice for a change that Harry isn't the only powerful person in this fic.

And staves sure sound interesting, at first I thought maybe they were going to fight with school staff, heh.

 

Random thought - since James is a southpaw, could HJ use two wands? Whatever happened to James' wand, anyway?

 

*Dead-pans*

James used his "wand" on Lily after "polishing" it.

*Runs*

 

Why not give Harry three wands?

Flogs, if you will-

When flacid.

 

Since JKR really let us down with her interpretation of "power he knows not," and "marked as his equal," maybe being able to use two wands would be a way of making Harry, y'know, unique and interesting.
I can't remember - do James or the Hat have a theory about Harry being a Parselmouth?

 

*Ponders*

What if the "Power he knows not" was being able to cast a few select spells in Parseltongue?

We never hear of Moldyshorts using Parseltongue spells so maybe the magical transferrance of the skills grants him such a power?

One spell to bind the soul to the body so when Voldemort dies, his soul passes on.

Another to kill. The "prototype" AK spell.

This one would stop the heart.

On AK, I've been wondering. Why does an Unforgivable kill painlessly? The other two are designed to inflict great harm, to others or to the subject, yet the "worst" is quick, painless and clean.

Just ideas

Regards
Aerin

 

The impression I got was that Dark spells actually damage or shadow the soul of the caster, and have an effect like addiction. By that logic, the Unforgiveables would cause the most damage to the caster's soul, and perhaps cause damage that couldn't be healed.

 

My theory always was that AK actually "captures" the soul of the victim and prevents him or her from moving on into the afterlife or even becoming a ghost. I base it on the facts that the soul came out of Thin Nose nostrils wand during his fight with Harry and that we have never seen a ghost of a person that was killed by AK.

 

Yeah, but I don't believe, that these reflections (for a lack of a better word) were the actual souls of the victims. And we don't know how any of the known ghosts were killed, with the exception of Myrtle. Additionally Dumbledore was killed by the killing curse and he spoke to Harry, proving that the soul was not captured by the wand. (At least I think it was his soul)

 

All the suggestions about using two wands and casting in parseltongue, or skills transferal...people... these have been done to death in other fics. I'm pretty sure Jim'll give that a resounding no. Hell, I can probably name 3 other fics where I know that parseltongue trick was used and a dozen with the skills transfer thing.

There are plenty of other... less obvious and less totally trite... ways for Harry to get one up on the voldemeister.

On the topic that CGB and liansk brought up... theres something that just doesn't make sense to me in the HP fics.

Okay... check me on this. Voldemort is now pretty much a fragment of a soul now, right?. He's fractured his soul multiple times and put chunks of it into horcruxes afterall.

That said... we know that there is magic of sufficient quality in the series to place soul fragments into objects.

So... why hasn't anyone ever thought about using the horcrux ceremony or something like it to grab old Tom's soul when he's around... and shove it into something so he can't incarnate anymore?

Why not trap his palid immaterial ass and shove him into something... a bedpan or a chamber pot being a likely candidate for his prison.

Of course... it'd just be a matter of time before someone fucks it up and lets him out again...likely by using said chamberpot... but the pure LULZ of such a situation would be worth it.

 

Umm... I don't remember any stories with Harry using two wands. Handedness is usually pretty hard to overcome - it would take LOTS of training to retrain a natural right-handed person to be ambidextrous. Really, the only fast way would be some sort of spell, or (more likely) a potion to change Harry's brain development permanently. James's off-hand ability could be a real tactical advantage.


If it's possible that the James-Voice in Harry's head is James's Horcrux, then could Harry have TWO independent soul fragments on his forehead? We talked about exchanging Horcruxes over at http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=8226&highlight=horcruxes
It might be fun if Harry had picked up other abilities as well as James's memories.


Edited because I didn't think it through...