Title: A Time for Changeling
Author: Bloodpage-Alchemist
Rating: K
Genre: General
Status: Complete
Library Category: General
Pairings: Gen
Summary: Two Dementors showed up in Little Whinging and changed Harry Potter's world forever. Now he's on the hunt for family he's never known plus entangled in a web of political intrigue and subterfuge. Why does everything happen to him?
Link: FanFiction.Net

I was quite shocked when I realized that this story had never been recommended. It's a pretty good story involving a runaway Harry with little of the usual cliches. It's quite fun to read. Easily a 5/5.

 

First chapter:
Harold Potter.
Harry gets new glasses cliché.
Harry gets a haircut (??)
Harry plays soccer with some muggles for some reason.
Harry goes to Knockturn to get a second wand.

Chapter 2
Harry meets an insane Bathilda Bagshot who thinks Harry is Grindlewald.
Harry meets the muggle soccer players again despite the fact he met them in London and is now in Godric's Hollow.

Chapter 3
More soccer. Boring.
Muggles turn out to be wizards who go to a magical day school.
Some convoluted werewolf pack thing. Something to do with Dudley.

The story is a shitfest.

 

Not really.
Harry is trying to disguise himself. Changing how you look is in the basics of that. Even though Harry gets a second wand, it's not because the new wand is better than his old wand. It's more that he can't use the other one. Harry meeting the footballers again is because he went back to the place he met them. He didn't meet them in Godric's Hollow. Bathilda being insane is pretty much canon. Him being mistaken for Grindelwald is not that surprising considering that he was alluded to having similar features after his makeover.

 

Okay so I opened the fic to give it a shot and the first thing I see is that it opens with a quote from Wikipedia. Not from the dictionary or anything, but the actual wiki page for changelings. What am I in for?

Ch.1 Harry decides to start calling himself Harold Porter as an alias, and still tells people to call him Harry. So now instead of being Harry Potter, he's Harry Porter. He changed one letter and thinks it was a good idea. Also Harry, an outer-london local, has trouble remembering the existence of Leicester Square.

Ch.2 Harry is given the nickname Light because it's apparently a reasonable alternative to calling him Lightning, so now he tells everyone to call him light. 2 bad aliases in 2 chapters, I'm loving it.

Ch.3 Download had it right, it's a convoluted shitfest of werewolves, Fudge and Umbridge, and talking about why state school is better than hogwarts.

I'm calling it quits halfway through chapter 5. Dudley turns out to be a changeling, and nothing is made of it yet. Harry befriends someone who also happens to be the real Dudley, who's name is quickly changed in the narration into Dudley, and he's been raised as Umbridge's nephew or something. Harry has had several meetings with Fudge who STILL doesn't recognise him, because he has a haircut, new glasses, and a redundant name change.
1/5.

 

Someone actually recommended this? Lol.

Anyways, review. Yeah, Download clinched it. This is chock-full of cliched ideas that have been taken in every direction imaginable many times before. There is some amount of originality, but it doesn't make up for all the other issues that this story has. The characterization is skewed awfully, the writing is like soggy noodles and the plot is nothing special.

1/5 at absolute best. And only because I'm feeling merciful.

 

I never could get very far in this. Now one of the author's other stories All Through the Night is decent and the only reason I even tried to get into it.