I just did, and wow, it sort of blew me away.

The fic is picking up in tempo and getting all the more exciting. I don't think I have any complaints whatsoever for the last few chapters.

Needless to say, I need MOAR!

 

Agreed the newest chapters are pretty interesting.

 

I just read this fic, the way it was supposed to be read. I read all 17 chapters without pausing, completely glued to the computer screen. Not even a well placed Imperius could not have made me stop.

I really liked the fact that the author completely destroyed canon in the beginning, with no hesitation. Umbridge and the Goblet of Fire didn't even come close to enter my mind for a second. I really can't wait for the next chapter. 5/5 almost seems to be too low a rating, but I guess it'll have to do.

 

What Lies Beneath is amazing. No one can deny this. Well written, well though out. It avoids all the filler and dialogue that usually makes me quit a story because it wasn't written well enough. Voldemort bleeding into Harry is believable, overthrowing the Ministry for a new order is, unfortunatly, a plot device rarely used well, if even seen. The only complaint I have is the kill in the latest chapter. The victim might well become a Martyr. 5/5

 

Its good but its got to the point where Harry is just doing whatever the hell he wants and the whole while he thinks he can win against the Ministry and Dumbledore, and then he thinks he can hold off the Tom Riddle.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but Dumbledore probably knows what he is talking about and is fully capable of beating Harry's ass for killing Fudge

 

The story is not complete on fanfiction.net. The end makes me excited about the prospect of a sequel.

 

I think you meant "now complete", rather than "not complete".

It ended rather well too. The whole story was masterfully plotted and executed, and it really does feel like a real novel does: not trying to be an epic like LotR, but a neat, character-driven, highly focused plot (with a few subplots).

To all those that didn't read this because it was listed as H/Hr: you got suckered. You'll notice now that the pairing has been changed to H/OC. So if you didn't read it because you don't like Hermione, now's the time to read it.

Unfortunately, no sequel is planned, though MS says "never say never".

5/5

 

Never say never, indeed. And I'm hoping the never that we're referring to gets here really soon.

This was a very enjoyable story. Driven, different, and not stuffed to the brim with useless filler...although at times, I did feel like i was being rushed through it as a reader. The ending is what I liked the most. Harry is still pissed about the ministry, and I would be too. Fudge was just the tip of the iceberg, eh?

 

The ending felt rushed and was a little confusing to be but beyond that this is a classic MS fic. Excellent all the way through. Now if he could get the muse for Stained Future back to work.

 

I never noticed it being mentioned in the story, so I'm not sure what to make of it, but the Ministry must be even more useless than Harry thinks if they can't find him. I can't remember any mention of spells to obscure, misdirect tracking spells, or otherwise make it so the Ministry can't find Harry.
He just apparates around committing crimes and nobody actually looks for him. With Sirius there was at least an excuse (after the first year of failing, at least), the guy in charge of finding him was part of the Order. With Harry, who goes around shooting off powerful spells at whim I'm somewhere between completely baffled at the (admittedly fictional) Ministry's failures and disappointment at the lack of mention of this in the story.

 

It is explained. Harry was hiding at Privet Drive, and Dumbledore's charm made it so that the Ministry couldn't get at him there.

Remember: not all stories are stories in which Dumbledore's blood charm is useless.

 

My bad then. Assuming the wards at Hogwarts prevent the Ministry from noticing Unforgivables? Not out of the question, just asking to clarify.

But otherwise the Ministry can't think to have 2 interns half a city away form each other constantly casting "point me Harry Potter"? Of course Harry would likely try to subvert them, so it probably wouldn't work, but even if it fails the lack of action on their part annoys me.

 

I read the first chapter of your new story and searched for other works by you. This is how I stumbled upon this.
The story is no doubt well written. You managed to set a very quick pace at the end - especially with the horcrux hunt - which made for a suspenseful story that I enjoyed immensely.

What I missed in your story was the - I-should-have-known- effect, in the last chapter. I think you intended for the reader to experience it but it didn't feel that way.

If there is a sequel - the ending certainly implies so - then I'm really curious how much Harry has learend from his unwanted inhabitant.

Edit 5/5 from me for a great, finished story

 

I really enjoyed this story. The plot was gripping - it kept me interested throughout the entire story, especially after the fight in the Department of Mysteries. It's great that he manages to move past the first few years quickly and decisively and move on to the latter years, which is a problem many stories similar to this often face.
5/5

 

I was really shocked that Master Slytherin went ahead and updated until the end without any attention paid by DLP. I thought he'd abandoned this story.

Anyways, on to the review (been a long time since I've written one of these).



This story reminds me of Lori's Paradigm of Uncertainty series. The writing style is mostly beyond the standards of fanfiction I use to judge, as her's was. The first-person style is the best that I've ever read in fanfiction; it's true first-person, not Jbern's bastardized version in which first person is barely different from second-person (not that his stories are bad; they're practically the best that are updating nowadays).

It's touches like these that put the professional touch into this fanfiction, making it something beyond fanfiction. It's touches like the use of repetition whenever Harry is being possessed by Riddle. It's touches like the purely British tone thoughout the story. Simply put, this work is superior.

Master Slytherin also deserves a 6/5 for his use of tension and suspense to keep the reader reading for the vast majority of the novel, until last half of the last chapter. In the first part of the last chapter, the scene in which Dean Thomas faces his father is unparalleled in the history of fanfiction in terms of drama.

One of my long-held complaints in fanfiction is that too often an author starts a story without finding a plot. While at times in the first half of the story (before Harry left Hogwarts) it seemed as if Master Slytherin didn't have a plot - although the sheer number of Chekhov's guns puts doubt upon this - the latter half of the story was literally driven by plot instead of the other way around (as in Fayr Warning's Reign of Power). Moreover, I highly commend Master Slytherin for originality in his fic. He did not follow canon at all, practically throwing away the entire series after Book 2 and only carrying concepts. I also applaud the author for doing unpopular, shocking things in the fandom such as killing Sirius and exploring the effect this would have upon canon. Killing Fudge was a great action of Harry's too (funny how so many stories in our fandom get Harry to belittle the man but never quite kill him). In addition, Master Slytherin's maturity as an author is shown by his ability to control the word length of the story and do a fantastic job in only 100k, in contrast to the better writers of the fandom who too often take a story and make it in the millions of words (*cough* LightningontheWave *cough*). Finally, the ending, in which Harry promises to annihilate the Ministry, is a very nice summarization of the entire story and Harry's character, which is not accustomed to a happily ever after ending.

I find no problems with his characterization of Harry Potter. His description of an amoral, truly Slytherin man is perfect (as when he rationalized that Tracy would understand that his torture of her father was perfectly ethical), comparable to the standard set by bigdonadiet in his story What Would Slytherin Harry Do?. It's good enough that I have a large amount of dislike for Harry Potter; an author who writes an anti-hero so that the audience does not love him deserves much praise. And even better, Harry is flawed, as when he frequently behaves irrationally despite all the cunning he possesses, making him more a human that a Super!Harry. Hermione is characterized effectively as caring and worried, as is Dean with his fanaticism. Dumbledore is simply awesome; he's written as the powerful sorcerer he is in canon - Master Slytherin does not dilute him one bit. Each time Harry met Dumbledore in the story, he was afraid of the man - and rightly so.



Problems: Unfortunately, Tracy's characterization is not as superb as that of the other people in the story. She's that damsel-in-distress who loves her father and Harry very much, and we know little more. And Tracy links to all the other problems within Master Slytherin's story that prevent me from giving the story a 5/5.

The first one is that the author seems a bit too attached to Tracy as a character. While he was brave enough to kill Sirius, this was one instance in which the personal feelings of the author led to the weakening of the story. There were not just one, but two times when Master Slytherin should have killed Tracy but did not. The first occurred in the end of chapter ten, when Harry shot a killing curse at Tracy that turned out not to be one. The story would have been far more interesting if it had explored the consequences of this act and its effect on Harry. The second occurred at the final chapter, when once again Master Slytherin withdrew from killing Tracy just to make Harry happy, to the detriment of the story.

There's another problem in the final chapter - the cranking up of a second climax after Dean's father has been defeated, which utterly destroys the flow of the story. Master Slytherin's scene shift to the true Voldemort's possession of Dean's father was a massive failure. As I read the scene, it reeked of a last-minute insertion by the author to add even more tension - even though it probably wasn't. I mean, Voldemort's last soul seemed to have already been defeated in the previous chapter, and his "come-back" merely confused me instead of making me afraid. The story would have flowed 100 times better without this scene.

Not to mention the practical problems with Voldemort's plan. Master Slytherin fell into JKR's trap of making the villain completely incompetent. So Voldemort's plan all along was to possess Harry, knowing that Harry had six times more a soul than he had, knowing that Harry had already resisted him, knowing that Harry, having more of a soul, probably could resist him. Why the fuck didn't Voldemort simply get Dean's father to kill Harry after he shot Sirius? It's JKR's fourth year all over again - instead of getting Crouch to simply make Harry's broom a Portkey, Voldemort has to make a mind-numblingly complex plan to get Harry to win the Tri-Wizard Tournmanet and make the prize at the end a tournament. In this case, it's a massive deception involving Mad-Eye Moody and Harry's grandfather and the Knights of Walpurgis and a labyrinth and who knows what else.

But the final scene gets worse. Instead of using will or a lack of fear of death (as in Rowling's case) to resist Voldemort, Harry uses love. Master Slytherin seems to have a pattern of this problem, which is best explained in nonjon's critique of The Other Side of Hell

Finally, I would really have liked to see at least one battle scene. Master Slytherin's one of the best writers of fighting out there, and it was very disappointing not to see Harry actually fight. Instead, we see him blank out and wake up with bodies all around.



Still, this story, as I've said before, is superior. It deserves far more than the 250ish reviews it's gotten so far. I highly recommend it as a read.

4.6/5 (The climax really hurt the rating.)

 

Awesome story, always been a fan of your work though, so I'm slightly biased.

 

What a masterpiece. Another amazing story from Master Slytherin like Ruin. This is by far the best Dark!Harry fic I have read. The writing is exceptional. One of the best 1st person I have read. Absolutely brilliant. The plot is superb from first to last. One of the most original HP fic's I have read. This is the best HP fic ever written. 5/5.

 

An interesting tale throughout, and it kept me guessing right up until the last moments, and hell, even beyond that. With the revelation of the Knights of Walpurgis being an elaborate lie on Voldemort's part, I can't help but think of the irony in its fabrication - it would probably lead to Harry, Terry, Hermione, Tracey and Dean going out and using that false idea and destroying the Ministry as they knew it, which was probably what Voldemort had in mind, though in a different direction.

Very well done overall, with no glaring issues to speak off and the writing being technically sound. Lots of food for thought, and lots of unsettling moments that'll stick with me for some time yet. Good work; this story is well deserving of its praise.

5/5.

 

A very solid story. It got just a little darker than I prefer in the earlier parts, but I felt like Harry's pseudo-possession was more realistic for it. Oddly enough, I feel like the story stayed very true to the original series, with love conquering all as the message. It's very nice to read a story with a powerful, intelligent main character which still manages to maintain that. 5 stars.

 

This story has brilliant dialogue and writing with and interesting take on Dark!Harry and how it would realistically happen. The fic really keeps you guessing throughout about what is happening and I would definitely read it again. 5/5