Title: Someone to Love
Author: The Ferryman
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Hurt/Comfort
Status: WIP
Pairings: Honks
Summary: Honks. what if Ginny died at the Battle of Hogwarts and Tonks lived? Riddle is dead, the battle won, but the war is not yet over. Two grieving people have one chance to clean up the MoM for good, the clock's ticking, while caring for a baby half-werewolf.
Link:link

Ignore the title. It's Political!Harry to the core. The story picks up straight from the end of book 7 with minor adjustments. Harry decides he wants to fix everything wrong with the magical government, and there's a hell of a lot wrong. The prose is a little dry to my tastes, and will never be completed, but it's worth a look.

Edit [Sesc]: Pairing tags are to be added, as well as the correct prefix. FIXED.

 

This was already in the almost recommendable thread and there are some comments on it there if you are looking for some reviews before diving in.

The writing in this story is DLP-worthy, and I personally enjoyed reading it. However, Harry is OOC to the point that it comes across as if he is suddenly a slytherin or ravenclaw Harry, but there are no cannon divergences to explain it except for Ginny dying. That's fine, but that doesn't change who you are this quickly.

Spoiler

He moves into Snape's quarters (who he refers to as Severus) and recruits Draco Malfoy as an auror. Since Snape is dead and Malfoy seems to be characterized decently, it works in a non-cringe-worthy manner if you can get over how OOC Harry is for doing these things.

Right now, I'd say this is treading the dangerous line of being a story where Harry fixes everything in the world with minimal resistance. If the author avoids that and adds some conflict, it could be great. The Honks is rather slow, as in, nearly nonexistent. If you were looking at this for some Honks on the side, I recommend you avoid this until it's quite a bit farther along, which will be likely never because of the update rate.

3.5/5 overall but it could go either way. The general story is intriguing but lines like

Spoiler

"You and I are going to have a long talk, Old Man," I added over my shoulder as I reached the door of the office.

spawn doubts.
Also:

Spoiler

Harry is immune to the cruciatus curse entirely

 

The largest problem with this story is that it's boring. It lacks suspense, or conflict, or any real forward momentum. It's basically 130k words of padded dialogue and dry conversations. The writing itself isn't terrible, but considering the lack of anything that isn't a list of actions or dialogue, it shouldn't be praised.

Plus the Harry Potter in this story has been swapped with some disgruntled middle-aged bureaucrat. The story is about an eighteen year old kid in the days immediately following a war and the death of a bunch of people he loved, he shouldn't read like an unfeeling stoic or a mildly frustrated office worker. This is where some introspection or look into Harry's internal thoughts or feelings would be useful, instead the author just has him repeat long-winded conversations ad-nauseum.

I think this story would have worked a lot better if it had been set 10 years in the future with a jaded Harry trying to reform the ministry. There's just way too much hand-waiving and out of characterness needed to make this scenario work right after book 7.

 

I think that the story has potential, a more lively tone could make easier to follow. "baseless777" has a point, the story would better with an older harry, jaded with the ministries crap.

 

Not bad, but I'm not sure it's library worthy. Only at chapter 4 though (with a nice DF reference a bit past halfway through).

---------- Post automerged at 01:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:22 AM ----------

Just finished reading. Liked it overall.

The Luna bit was good until the redo and half-whole thing got brought up - if it's not her being insane, it's an awful plot point, and if it is her being insane, it needlessly slapped me in the face.

 

I admit I enjoyed it, but only after I stopped trying to make sense of having a 17 years old right out of cannon Harry as Chief Auror. It doesn’t make any sense and it ruins the story. As Basileus777 already said, it would make much more sense if it started with an older Harry, mainly because by then we would have forgotten what a waste of space he is in DH.

Right now, after 129,398 words it seems the story is going to continue the same way and will be an entertaining story that doesn’t deserve more than 3/5 until chapter 8.

Spoiler

However, there are some very worrying aspects that I must point, mainly after reading (more like skimming because I didn’t really care for it) the conversation with Luna:

-“A soul-mate is a galleon split down the middle…” mention of soul mate, this indicates that I’ll probably stop reading this story soon.

-“Brother, you've always been a bit slow but you always figure it out eventually, you will again this time … … the story always has a better ending when you figure it out in …” mention of possible time travel or, more probably, multi-dimensional seer Luna.

-Also, Voldemort may or may not be dead, so this seems like a way to make it interesting without to much though.

In any case, some parts of the story seem good, but until I know for sure that Luna is really crazy and that there won’t be any soul bound, I wouldn’t give it more than 2/5 (which is why I won’t vote)

 

This right here is my main problem with this story; I mean when I read through I had to constantly stop and remind myself that Harry was 17 not 27.

3/5 mainly because I like the premise of the story and hope to find a more well thought out version of it somewhere in the future.

 

130 thousand words that cover just three days. This thing is just too damn long-winded. Harry is constantly giving out long-winded orders, or long-winded spiels about his plans. It gives an impressing that he likes the sound of his voice.

The dialogues, or rather, monologues, are repetitive. I mean, literally: first, Harry starts voicing his plans to one person, then a few scenes later, he repeats the same plans to another, and then to another, and so on. This is a horrible trend throughout the story.

One whole chapter was dedicated to retelling all seven books with the audience commenting on it.

Many, many, many thousand words were dedicated to robe designs to outfit the Aurors. This is insane.

Too many words were dedicated to England's political geography in magical and Muggle worlds. It was too damn boring to sort through all the useless information. Were I an englishman, I probably would have appreciated it better. But I am not, and so this stuff about magical borders, and kings, and MoM's fealty to whomever, and German feodal states with their non-existent barons... Fuck it all, were I an englishman I would not have appreciated it at all. Hah!

Harry/Tonks (for which I am a shipper) is non-existent at this stage. And she has a child, how the fuck will that play out? Still, I want to see how the author will handle it.

One redeeming quality is that whatever Harry tries to idealistically fix, it ultimately fails due to real-life issues. So, thankfully, this is not a story "where Harry fixes everything in the world with minimal resistance". Death Eaters are at large and organized, money problem does not resolve itself, pureblood views are not shed overnight, and it looks like Harry will become really unpopular after his recruitment spree.

The grammar is good. A few passages are unintelligible due to editing mishaps. House-elf speech is accented but not quite canon-esque (tbh it rarely is in fanfiction). Harry acted out of character I think only once when he submitted his Death Stick to weighing at the Ministry Atrium. I mean out of character in relation to how he is throughout the story.

Overall 3/5.

 

The update rate for this story has been really slow, so there's no hope of it being finished.

Really have to agree on this. There are far too many words to cover such a little period of time, and a great amount of unnecessary dialogue. The most annoying parts are when Harry says "I didn't suffer through extremely-long-sentence-on-canon-event so you could do this". Not library worthy, just something to pass the time. 2/5.

Spoiler

Luna is telling Harry that divination points to the two of them being two sides of the same coin, and then asks Harry if he remembers that they were brother and sister in past lives. Harry is understandably confused. Not pointing towards soul bonds, time travel or multiple dimensions.

 

Aa bit better than just ok.

It's a constant problem in the fics. All Harry's converge to Ender just because.
There are Harry's aged six, who behave like they are 27, so why not 17 that is a bit too smart? (Not that I allow it to be unnoticed.) It's a problem, people must already be aware of it, and perhaps trying to fix it as much as possible.
In this case, it's the basis of the concept. At least this harry looks consistent with his 27 year old behavior.

This is awesome. ;D
Mind that I'm only saying that as I started reading, and read it all quickly, so the size of the text wasn't an obstacle it was a blessing. Too many things are too fast paced. This is a bit on a ridiculous scale, but all in all at least something is moving forward.
On dialogues. Yes, there is too much repetition. Sometimes it might be a good thing, but here it's one of the few flaws that ought to have been fixed. Only a little bit less repeating the same idea to everyone you are trying to recrut and it would even work.

I bet we won't see any Harry and Tonks any time soon ;D.

I'd like to disagree with that point. The fic of this scale (everything is being done but in a few days) is paying everything to the details. Everything starting from the wardrobe and ending with the queen is shown, nothing is skipped. So when it call's for an explanation, giving something shorter would have been out of the established pace. Perhaps it wouln't kill to speed up or skip something, but if you just spent showing every minute of the hour Harry spent talking with Levander, saying "so we will talk to the queen" and leave it at that would really be inappropriate.

Furthermore, the whole ideas in that front were quite good. The situation we are presented makes sense. The boundaries are not the same in the wizarding and muggle worlds. That is an idea we will probably see used later on (or just the monarhy). The problem presented,

is solid and might be a valuable plot point. Besides, I haven't seen anyone play with the idea before. (To be more exact there have been mentions of oaths to the queen and such, but there hasn't been a problem presented with monarchy as a possible obstacle not the aid.) Also, different boundaries make sense when you think about it, wizardry world IS really behind. Would you expect the wizarding ministry to suddenly stop holding India as part of Britain?
(Of course, if you take the closer muggle-wizard relations angle, it also start to make sense that when a country detaches itself from some political cluster in the muggle world something is happening in the wizardring one as well.)

That's the best part. The author gets points for suggesting the usual plan to goblins "let's divide the funds of death eaters" to get an unusal "no, we are neutral"
And it's full of such cases.
Harry is held as a figurehead by everyone untill he proves otherwhise.
And the whole mess with Travers and kidnapping.
It works.

The whole thing with the Queen is nicely done so far, I'm waiting for the next chapter to see how it continues. (I wanted to write ends, but thats highly unlikely with the pace)
And the White Shield of Garter Knighs drive a good point on the Wizarding World.
(I was never one for brittish history or royaly. My quick search gave no results. There are many things on Knights of the Garter, but are there any white shields of treason or equivalent? I'm guessing real world muggles do strike out the traitors and try to forget them. Anybody know anything?)


So - a good read on 27 year old Harry, becoming an Chief Auror and trying to change everything in 7 days. For each question if he is a figurehead or an Auror, Kingsley has to pay. For something completely unrelated, but expensive.
Read it if you don't want to rush and relax.


When I started writing this, I though of 3.3/5 and writing 3. Now, after thinging and geeting my chaos organized, I think its more of a 3.75, so 4/5


Nauro.

 

The ideas will have merit, on condition that the the author incorporate them into the plot. Otherwise, they're just useless trivia. I'm interested what others think about the ideas of boundaries, oaths, et al.?

 

Someone to Love By: The Ferryman Honks. what if Ginny died at the Battle of Hogwarts and Tonks lived? Riddle is dead, the battle won, but the war is not yet over. Two grieving people have one chance to clean up the MoM for good, the clock's ticking, while caring for a baby half-werewolf.
Rated: Fiction T - English - Adventure/Hurt/Comfort - Harry P., N. Tonks - Chapters: 9 - Words: 138,383 - Reviews: 257 - Favs: 594 - Follows: 856 - Updated: Feb 2, 2013 - Published: Oct 3, 2009 - id: 5419713

Almost certainly abandoned, but still a good read IMO. It's a fairly fast-paced fic -- or at least it feels that way -- where Harry is made Chief Auror literally hours after Voldemort dies. He takes his duty seriously and starts kicking things into gear, so it involves a fair bit of office politics and some nice action. The author does a nice job exploring the structure of the DMLE and Harry quickly realizes that many of his problems will involve use of more than just a wand.

Main divergence here is that Ginny and Remus died, but Tonks lived -- so there's a set-up for a Honks pairing... which doesn't happen given that the fic is now abandoned.

First-person POV. Harry's voice is somewhat OOC, but I found it compelling enough to be worth reading. Also has mild strains of 'Master of Death' -- the Hallows keep finding a way to return to Harry.

Unfortunately, it's abandoned just as things start getting really interesting and divergent from what you'd expect.