Title: The Reclamation of Black Magic
Author: ShayaLonnie
Rating: M
Genre: Romance, Drama, Adventure
Status: Work in Progress
Library Category: The Alternates
Pairings: Harry/Hermione, Sirius/Remus

Summary:

Harry Potter's family isn't only at Number 4 Privet Drive. Unaware to even Dumbledore, an upheaval is approaching. The Ancient and Noble House of Black is reclaiming their power and changing the future of the magical world.

Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8374798/chapters/19185319

I posted the "official" summary here, but I think it' better to put all the cards on the table: Dorea Potter (Harry's paternal grandmother) was put in some magical coma to survive Dragon Pox and is finally cured, around 1987. Being a Black as well as a Potter, she begins to plot a way to restore the Black Family, to free Sirius and to get Harry back.

There is A LOT of Original Characters, and some healthy speculation about the Black Family Tree, but the author goes to great lenghts to ease us to the characters and to give them different personalities (Cassiopeia being one of the readers' favorites, so far). The story intents to span all the seven books, with a good amount of prequel chapters.

So far, the fist 19 chapters were dedicated to lay the goundwork. They comprise the "first phase" of the story, and the second phase starts at chapter 20, timeskipping to 1991.

The writing is very fluid, the author uses a somewhat beige prose, focusing on dialogues and leaving descriptions out. There is a "fancast" (a list of actors and actresses who would "play" the roles of each character) but your experience with the story WILL be great impacted by it, for better or for worse. Personally, I hated most of the suggestions because the ages of the actors and their physical attributes clash heavily with my mental image of them. Nonetheless, it is there and can be a great asset when you want to gather more about the characters physically, as the writer is quite laconic about this kind of description.

I gave it a 4/5 and I'm still excited to see what the author will do next, even if the story is already 20 chapters in and barelly started.

Finally, the story has some HEAVY SLASH in some very short scenes. As the slash is not important to the main story (so far), and the scenes are quite short, I don't think it's Restricted Section material, but better to be forewarned.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

The story started well and than went down for me.

Didn't like the following points.

Spoiler

-Remus/Sirius relationship, especially, the all. I left you to rot in prison and forgot about her best friend son. ok lets forget about it.
-Apologists tendencies toward Death Eaters, especially Snape and Malfoy
-Dumbledore is portrayed as dumb.

 

Part of me hopes the coven just sticks it to Albus over and over, messing with his mind and day.

 

I also found the relationship a little bit forced, but I think there is still some for us to know about what happened. Or not, as the author is a heavy shipper of those two. Let's hope there is something somewhere to make the transition a little more credible.

The DE problem I quite agree. I can see how it could be motivated by more pragmatic concerns, as Dorea really need allies, but the author latelly tries to minimize the problem when she goes deeper about what both of them really did under the Dark Lord's orders.

I think she will go deeper into Dumbledore's character in the future, after the timeskip, because all the other characters are a lot more explored than him, maybe she is saving his true intentions/potencial for later. At least I dearly hope so, because his portrail is annoying the hell out of me so far.

If there is a more valid purpose for the Coven, I can't even imagine what it could be.

 

The first chapter was interesting enough. I only wondered why the author only did "use dragon's blood to heal dragon pox" instead of "use the blood of the dragon who recovered from dragon pox to heal dragon pox".

But then, in second chapter appeared two dreaded words: "magical core", and it all went downhill from there.

The story could probably used to fill some "sins of the fanon bingo" it has it all.

-Meddling, incompetent Dumbledore who does everything for the Greater Good. With the whole new twist at using Fidelius! Twist used of course to make Dumbledore worse person.
-But worry not, here arrives Dorea - aka generic fix-it-all character from those kind of fics. She is always right, her enemies are always wrong (and stupid) and she deals with everything with barest effort.
-Like getting Harry out of Dursleys. Of course Dursleys' abuse gets upgrade in viciousness from canon and Harry gets downgrade in having character. All the snark and back-talk are gone, we get generic meek and polite boy.
- She also quickly saves Sirius. Who is generic "I want to be a good parent figure", well this and have some sex to make up for the years in prison. At least he doesn't call Harry "pup".
- But how does she do all of this? Well, she creates family coven to beat/intimidate everyone into submission with barely an opposition. But what is family coven? It's group of 13+ witches that govern the family. They get special protective amulets, special rituals to cast and dispension to use blood magic. Cool things, right? Surely everybody have one. No, there wasn't one in 300 years (yet almost everybody respects how cool they are). Why? Because witches in coven can be killed to end it. I mean it's not like the patriarchs of the family could be dealt with. It's not like Dorea had one killed and his heir framed for it, to take over. And they don't even have cool protective amulet or boosted ward creation ability. Completely makes sense.
-Snape did nothing wrong, and Draco is cool too.
-Also we got Hermione in the last chapter. Is she the annoying know-it-all that we know from the beginning of the canon? For now she was just nice, bland girl though I can already feel incoming perfectness and insta-romance.
-But at least, it seems that we won't get any Ron bashing.

Anyway: 3/10, so 1/5 on DLP scale.

 

I enjoyed reading this - as a guilty pleasure.

The biggest red flag for me is Dumbledore. I hate manipulative!Dumbledore, at least when it's portrayed like that. He's all for the "greater good" - something we know he left behind after he and Grindelwald parted ways when they were teenagers or barely older than that. Even his victory over Grindelwald is portrayed as "you manipulated him to gain an edge with your history as lovers".
Canon Dumbledore cares for people. Sure, he has plans and he doesn't inform everyone of them, and he made mistakes, but he's not an asshole that thinks he's above others like this one is.

Also yes everything is very easy for the Coven but honestly? I'm in the mood to read things like that. So I enjoyed it.
The reasons for no coven in 300 years seem kinda filmsy : the witches in it can get killed yes but as Sataniel said a patriarch could too. And "not enough daughters", when you can have a woman whose blood relation is "my grandmother or great grandmother was a Black" and nothing more - I don't buy it. You could find thirteen witches like that more often.

I didn't mind Remus and Sirius forgiving themselves quickly and jumping in bed together, because honestly in canon they forgave themselves that quickly too (okay they didn't sleep together in canon, but I don't mind slash anyway, and there's a warning for that in the first post).

All the snark and back-talk are gone for Harry, yes, but in canon we see him when he's eleven. Here he is five (eleven in the last chapter, but we didn't see much yet). I don't know if at five we should expect snark and back-talk like at eleven.

Lots of OCs, but I liked them. They seem to have a personality, and I want to read more.

I will keep following it and hope that, either the portrayal of Dumbledore gets better (from what we have seen, I really doubt it) or that we don't see much of him.

I enjoyed reading it so I will give it 3/5, at least for what's there (the parts before Hogwarts).
I expect it to be disappointing but who knows. I want to try following it and see what happens.

 

I stopped reading this when Sirius was treated like a child. This whole comfort genre with a Mary Sue taking over wasn't worth my time.

 

Every time Dorea Potter calls Sirius Black her son! Every time she mentions her boys! Every time she declares she raised twins! These are sore notes that jar me out of the story.

I did skim through the entire thing, so it is at least that good. . .but there really are only three scenes with interesting magic, and it never is all that interesting.

2/5

Edit: If it was 2006, I'd give it 3/5

 

Ok, the author updated it yesterday, and she also "kinda" addressed some issues that were raised here:

Dorea Black created some sort of organization to help the Muggleborns, with extra classes during summer and such, so Hermione has been attending it for almost a year now. Probably her awkward edges have already been polished off, as we gather neither canon!Hermione nor this!Hermione had many friends during childhood. As I think it's impossible for, in the whole world, only Harry and Ron being able to break her out of her shell (and we saw how fast she was "corrupted" into a somewhat normal girl by them), I think it's very plausible for her to already be a little less annoying in her first scene.

Nonetheless, the bossy and glare-full girl is there, as in the end of the chapter she is very demanding about some answers.

While the problem about Dorea forgiving the Death Eaters too fast, it seems the author retconned the story so Lucius was only a financial backer to Voldemort's cause while his father was the rape-and-murder follower. The same with Snape, being only a Potions provider. While it is a very heavy handed approach, at least it helps the story make some sense. Draco is not Harry's friend, and hasn't lost most of his personallity with the change.

Seems the only character that really changed was Neville, not so meek anymore. The ever-so-helpful Harry is still there, as is his childlike behavior in this first installment, like the scene he hides behind his friends to avoid Hagrid, as is his ever present skill to understate and minimize bad things.

All in all, I'm still enjoying it, and hoping for the author to fix most of the awkward issues soon. She is very responsive to reviews, and contacted me lots of time about my comments, I think she is willing to hear people out insted of guiding her writing boat alone.

 

She might have forgiven a lot of death eaters, but from their questioning so, they could have gained a lot of background information. So they would know what yo target to undermine potential allies and assets of tom.

 

Its been a really enjoyable read so far. Particularly liked the moment where Hermione perks up at Harry's name not to say you are the boy who lived but to say you are Dorea Potter's grandson. Made the whole series seem sane.

I am looking forward to seeing Harry end up in Slytherin and remain loved and good. Could make for a nice Slytherin bonding with other houses context.

 

I started out enjoying this fic, but I'm finding things kind of slow. The BS about Dumbledore setting up Lily and James kind of turned me off as well. At this point I'd only read this fic if there was nothing else interesting to read. 2/5 from me.

 

Honestly, for a fic that blatantly uses an almost Mary Sue canon oc to fix quite literally everything, this fic is fairly enjoyable. Even taking into account the male/male slash (and DLP''s dislike thereof), this should fit quite nicely into the "guilty pleasures" category of things, meaning a 2-3 star rating. I'd go with 3 mostly because it has an ecellent grasp of the prtagonists' characters, as well as enjoyable writing.

 

Another chapter is up, but the author keeps giving nice twists and then destroying them with her strange obsession with Dumbledore-bashing.

Highlights:

Spoiler

- Hermione is sorted in Slytherin, but Harry goes to Griffyindor. It's a strangely nice change of pace, and the author has said she wants them to develop their own personalities and social circles instead of being an one-package-deal.
- Draco is such a little shit, but in a very funny way.
- By now I think Dumbledore is (hopefully) holding on to his image, there cannot be other explanation for why he puts up with the other character's behaviour.
- The "mops" slang is very funny, I think it was one of the most brilliant tid-bits of this story, as most characters couldn't be spewing "mudblood" all around after so many changes to the world.

Also, the author quoted lenghtly the original text, including the characters Rowling created and promptly forgot. With the author's love for sidecharacters, I hope we will finally see some personality in Lily Moon, Sally-Ann Perks, Sophie Roper and others.

Finally, I think this new "story phase" will tone down quite a bit the Mary-Sue-Fix-It-All Trope, as we can see Dorea's influence at Hogwarts is limited. Harry will probably try (or will have to) to fix his own messes by himself.