It’s almost done, actually. Here’s a sneak preview of the next chapter:
Dumbledore peered over his desk at young Harry, twinkling in a kindly sort of way. The boy had come to him with a terribly intense look on his childish face—Dumbledore hoped that whatever this matter was, it wasn’t too serious. Harry was far too young for his life trials to be starting already. “What was it you wished to speak to me about, Harry?”
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres leaned forward in his chair, looking bleak. “Headmaster, I got a sharp pain in my scar during the Sorting Feast. Considering how and where I got this scar, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing I should just ignore. I thought at first it was because of Professor Snape, but I followed the Baconian experimental method which is to find the conditions for both the presence and the absence of the phenomenon, and I’ve determined that my scar hurts if and only if I’m facing the back of Professor Quirrell’s head, whatever’s under his turban. Now it could be that my scar is sensitive to something else, like Dark Arts in general, but I think we should provisionally assume the worst—You-Know-Who.”
“Great heavens, Harry!” gasped Dumbledore. He sat there with his head whirling. The boy was right that this was nothing to ignore. He dared not confront Professor Quirrell within the halls of Hogwarts, around the other students—he would have to figure out some way to lure Quirrell out of the castle -
But the grim young boy was still speaking. “Now, if the worst is true, then we know exactly where You-Know-Who is right now. And I don’t think that’s an opportunity we should pass up. Destroying his body didn’t work last time, so I asked Hermione if she’d ever heard of anything that would destroy a soul, and she mentioned a method of executing criminals called the Dementor’s Kiss...”
How proud of myself should I feel for figuring out how Comed-Tea works before Harry did? (Keeping in mind that it’s been years since I internalized the facts that in the Harry Potter universe, prophecies work and Time-Turners don’t create alternate time-lines, information not available to rational!Harry.)
How proud of myself should I feel for figuring out how Comed-Tea works before Harry did?
Not very. Tons of commentators glommed onto the non-time-warping explanation, and the fic all but tells us that this is a possibility, especially with the experiment vignette with Hermione on the train.
(Personally, I don’t like the idea that the Comed-Tea affects only Harry; that mechanism leaves Luna Lovegood as an ethically depraved libeller.)
I was looking over the old chapters and I found this:
One alert reviewer asked whether, if Luna is a seer, that means this is going to be an HPDM bottom!Draco mpreg fic. I regret that FFN does not allow me any larger font size in which to say NO. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that Luna might be a real seer—I’ll have to decide whether to run with that or not—but I think we can all safely assume that if Luna is a seer, she said something about “light planting a seed in darkness”, and Xenophilius, as always, interpreted this in rather the wrong way.
This Harry is so much more potentially powerful than canon Harry, therefore having canon Voldemort be the final boss would be a let-down. Eliezer’s author description explicitly says that anything which strengthens the hero must be accompanied by a corresponding increase in the difficulties he will face, so I think we can be pretty confident that things are going to be much more awesome than just defeating Voldemort with the Potterverse equivalent of RPG rules exploitation.
Besides, even you had that happen in your story and had a dementor munching on the back of Quirrell’s head, wouldn’t the result be the equivalent of destroying only a single horcrux? (unless the bits of soul are linked in such a way that the dementor can suck them all up at a distance through the one...)
You can’t escape writing the rest of this that easily! ;)
Also, hrm… would your comment here then count as you doing a parody fanfic of your own fanfic?
It could be one chapter where they debate whether or not to sic the dementor on Quirell without even confronting him, then one chapter where they figure out how to magically triangulate and destroy all of the Horcruxes at once.
Shhhh… Stop trying to make it easy for him to end the story sooner than later. ;)
(Nevermind some of the grayer ethical aspects of, in a world with potentially eternal afterlife, Moldy Voldy’s crimes may not stack up to that. (That is, “destroying a soul” >>> “killing someone” in the potter verse. Probably even “killing many someones” (otoh, IIRC the Dementor’s were to a large extent his creatures, so we can probably safely assume that he was involved with or arranged for (or, more to the point, would in the future arrange for) plenty of soul consuming/destroying))
Well, by way of contrast, this point in the original book took us up to page 121 of 309. The story is currently 44,000 words which is approximately half the length of the average novel. However, we still haven’t seen any deviation from the original story which suggests that Harry’s opposition will be much harder, so I’m inclined to go with the first estimate, which gives us about 1⁄3 of total length so far. Not counting any sequels, of course.
What proportion of the whole story are the current ten (nine) chapters likely to be?
(There is going to be more, right? Right?!)
It’s almost done, actually. Here’s a sneak preview of the next chapter:
just kidding
that that is an excerpt or that you are almost done?
How proud of myself should I feel for figuring out how Comed-Tea works before Harry did? (Keeping in mind that it’s been years since I internalized the facts that in the Harry Potter universe, prophecies work and Time-Turners don’t create alternate time-lines, information not available to rational!Harry.)
Not very. Tons of commentators glommed onto the non-time-warping explanation, and the fic all but tells us that this is a possibility, especially with the experiment vignette with Hermione on the train.
(Personally, I don’t like the idea that the Comed-Tea affects only Harry; that mechanism leaves Luna Lovegood as an ethically depraved libeller.)
Or her father, at least. (I think there was an author’s note about this—she says vague things and he turns them into ridiculous headlines.)
Well, that’s just great—how am I supposed to know that now with Eliezer’s little erasure system?
I suppose better Xenophilius being a depraved libeller than Luna… although as an adult it’s even more inexcusable.
I was looking over the old chapters and I found this:
Or just charmingly nutty.
Good to know.
And what does Voldemort have to do with anything?
He’s not Harry’s target, he’s just a stumbling block in the middle. You’re not fooling me that easily. :P
This Harry is so much more potentially powerful than canon Harry, therefore having canon Voldemort be the final boss would be a let-down. Eliezer’s author description explicitly says that anything which strengthens the hero must be accompanied by a corresponding increase in the difficulties he will face, so I think we can be pretty confident that things are going to be much more awesome than just defeating Voldemort with the Potterverse equivalent of RPG rules exploitation.
Besides, even you had that happen in your story and had a dementor munching on the back of Quirrell’s head, wouldn’t the result be the equivalent of destroying only a single horcrux? (unless the bits of soul are linked in such a way that the dementor can suck them all up at a distance through the one...)
You can’t escape writing the rest of this that easily! ;)
Also, hrm… would your comment here then count as you doing a parody fanfic of your own fanfic?
It could be one chapter where they debate whether or not to sic the dementor on Quirell without even confronting him, then one chapter where they figure out how to magically triangulate and destroy all of the Horcruxes at once.
Shhhh… Stop trying to make it easy for him to end the story sooner than later. ;)
(Nevermind some of the grayer ethical aspects of, in a world with potentially eternal afterlife, Moldy Voldy’s crimes may not stack up to that. (That is, “destroying a soul” >>> “killing someone” in the potter verse. Probably even “killing many someones” (otoh, IIRC the Dementor’s were to a large extent his creatures, so we can probably safely assume that he was involved with or arranged for (or, more to the point, would in the future arrange for) plenty of soul consuming/destroying))
Well, by way of contrast, this point in the original book took us up to page 121 of 309. The story is currently 44,000 words which is approximately half the length of the average novel. However, we still haven’t seen any deviation from the original story which suggests that Harry’s opposition will be much harder, so I’m inclined to go with the first estimate, which gives us about 1⁄3 of total length so far. Not counting any sequels, of course.