Stories up on Patronus Charm, added in a few things, a little more description here and there. Next chapter should be up tomorrow or the next day.

 

The descriptions you put in really add a lot of depth to the story, even when they're subtle. Big improvement.

But, I noticed when I was reading through it that you get you're tenses mixed up, like you can't decide between present or past tense.

For example, in chapter 2, you have

which is in past tense. I tried, he did, etc. A few paragraphs later you have this

"I wave," "The kid nods," "I pull" all in present tense, then "I popped"- back to past tense.


See what I mean?

 

Yeah, I do. I didn't catch that on my read through. I'll try to fix that in the next chapter.

 

Damn you and that tiny bit of filler! I skimmed it but it seems to be well written, hurry up and update so we can read about kickass!harry again

 

What you wrote seemed alright to me.

Though I have to admit, the hotel scene was bare minimum. you could probably expand that one a bit to add in some details.

I have to compliment you on your characterization though. Morgan and Mac seemed like their cannon counterparts.

A vast improvement over the first attempt.

What specifically about the fight scenes do you find difficult to transition...?

 

Well, I'm not the best at writing filler like this. I didn't have a problem until I got to the actual hotel scene, and then the conversation was just a bitch to write. I can do one on one conversation fine, it's just when you get multiple people in the room, I'm kind of at a loss.

It's not the fight scenes, just the scenes in between.

 

Well, that was decent work for filler. Like Quazi said, your characterizations for Morgan and Mac were pretty much spot on. When you get the chance and patience, you might want to add to parts of this with more description, like you did the first couple of chapters. Other than that, I just thought it was really sudden for Harry to go from Britain to Chicago like that. Looking forward to more.

 

The new hotel scene was a lot nicer. You have all of the characterizations down pretty well, especially Ramirez his few lines were absolutely perfect. Keep it up.

 

What fuubar said. Much nicer than the bare-bones hotel scene was.

 

Sorry to rain on your parade but Harry getting a sword that dispels magic that quick is bullshit. Especially since Luccio stated that she didn't want to use too much magic so it will only last until dawn.

In the Dresdenverse to dispel something it takes an equal amount of magic or more than it did to cast the spell. So to make something that could stop multiple mid-range spells (much lower than what Dresden usually uses) would take a lot of power. This bullshit is further compounded by the fact that Luccio made it really quickly and without materials.

For reference see the end of White Night.

 

Luccio is what 2 centuries older than Dresden, much better at magic, and is no slob when it comes power apparently she is Captain of the Wardens. Its entirely possible that she is capable of it. Its done from Harry's point of view and he gives Luccio space to work, so we dont know what she might have done.

 

Yeah... I wasn't to sure what to do there. I needed him to have a Warden's sword, at least temporarily for reasons you'll find out later.

My logic was that if Luccio is the only person who can make Warden's swords, especially permanently enchanting them, it can't take that long for her to do it. Hence, even only a temporary enchantment that'll break when the sun rises wouldn't take near as long. Remember, it's after sunset in Chicago already, so it'll last for less then ten hours at the most.

And the sword doesn't stop mid-level spells. It does what a Warden's sword does. Break enchantments. IIRC, in Dead Beat there was a scene where Ramirez or maybe Luccio lightly cut a zombies neck, and the sword severed the magical connection animating the zombie. Harry won't be able to hold this sword up and have spells swerve around it, not even close.

 

There are only a couple hundred Wardens currently so your idea that it doesn't take that long to make is a false assumption based on all of what we know about making magic items and the fact that she could have (and probably did) spread making those swords over multiple years.

I think you need to reread my post but to save you the effort here's the specific part you clearly didn't read closely.

 

But does it take much power to animate corpses? We know that the majority of Sue's power came from the fact that it was really, really old so there is at least a portion of the magic that comes from the corpse. Add in the fact that there are so damn many zombies walking about under Grevane and that he still had power enough to possibly fight Cowl/Corpsetaker for the Darkhallow.

Thus we can derive that creating zombies is not such a magically difficult task (especially considering Harry animated Sue after only reading the book). This means that there doesn't need to be much magic pumped into the blade for it to sever the connection between corpse and necromancer, thus Luccio doesn't need to use much magic in this situation. Against the necromancers themselves I could still see it working against Grevane, and possibly Corpsetaker, but not Cowl.

Then again, he's at the centre of the Darkhallow by the point anyone gets close to him so that's kind of a moot point. I wonder if it would effect apparation much...

 

You are right that animating normal zombies doesn't take that much power, however you are wrong that animating Sue only took a little power. To animate Sue Dresden had to use a lay line. This is because the older the corpse the more magic it can hold.

Also he didn't suddenly get the power from reading the book. Necromancy is an entirely different kind of magic than what Harry normally uses and is not even connected to it. Harry got the power from when he unleashed Bob's memories.

You might not need a lot of magic to dispel one zombie but to dispel multiple zombies you need just as much magic as the sum of all the magic in all the zombies. So yes the sword would still need considerable amounts of magic.

Not to mention the fact that in this fic Luccio stated that it would dispel all magic and to do that you need either a contract with a really, really powerful demon like Lord Raith had or more magic in the sword than could possibly be put into a spell by the strongest wizard out there. The Warden swords might dispel quite a bit of magic but they don't stop all magic.

 

Yeah, the dispel all enchantments was a bad choice of words. I'll change it sometime.

 

Dresden learned how to do necromancy from the book. He learned other things as well that I bet we will see later on.

 

If he remembers it that is. Don't forget, he just flipped through the pages, Lash was the one who did the remembering.

 

I am willing to bet money he read it before he gave it to the Black Court. He said he knew how to do the stuff in the book when he gave it to her.

 

What? He was going to tell Mavra he had a Fallen Angel in his head (or at least the shadow of one)? I don't think so.

I think that if he did have super necromancy powa, we'd have heard about it by now. (I mean, it has been three, books).

Besides, if Harry does any necromancy, the Council will smite his ass. Further more, if anyone found out that he'd used magic he learned from the Word (which would lead to the obvious conclusion that he'd read the book), they will smite his ass.

Granted, I'm not sure how they'd find out, but if they did...

Well, not even Harry has enough Plot Armor to survive the Senior Council. Or most of the high level Warden's.