St 28 srpna 2019

(my comments on “The Augurey” by La Matrona, originally published on Reddit)

What is my pet-peeve is when the characters behave like idiots just to keep the plot together. Let’s see. I have just deleted “The Augurey” from my computer.

First of all, just let me state, I have nothing serious against Harmony. I probably prefer Hinny, just because I don’t feel like going against canon when not necessary, and because Northumbrian and “Inner Demons by serendipity_50” have shown me it can be done well, but otherwise, it doesn’t bother me. For example, “Escape by SingularOddities” is a rather decent story (I wrote a review of it). So, it is not that.

SPOILERS AHEAD, so please skip if it bothers you (and it doesn’t make sense to mark everything as a spoiler, not much will make sense without them).

It is not even the original premise of the story. The Trio while still hiding in the Grimmauld Place finds out through the Family Black Tree wallpaper (finally somebody found some good use for it!) that Delphini happened (after all, Bellatrix was Black originally). Harry, having a soft heart for orphans, finds her after the war (completely neglected and abused), saves her and brings her as his own. I have never heard about it before, and it could lead to a nice story. So, it is not the basic plot either.

What bothers me, is how it is done. Harry for reasons nobody ever explained (and which don’t make sense either) decides to hide his wish to look for Delphini from everybody (including and especially from Ginny; it looks like the only reason is to make the tension between them, which could lead to their breakup). Then he asks (only!) Hermione for help, and finally he breaks in in the middle of the night to the house where Delphini lives hidden, takes her away, and presumably kills her neglectful foster mother (he “takes care of her” in a rage after finding out how horribly Delphini was neglected). Then he brings her to Grimmauld Place, where Hermione finds a book on the paediatric care and cures her. So, to summarize, Harry (who still planned to be an officer of the law at that point) just committed completely useless breaking and entering, abduction of a baby, possibly murder, and non-reporting of crime, and I wonder whether not-bringing her to St. Mungo for professional help does not constitute criminal neglect as well. What’s Hermione’s reaction? She doesn’t report him to the law officers, but she gushes about his big heart and how great a man he is. Sorry, I threw the story away at that moment, so I don’t know how it continued.

There are zillion other things he can do (even if the existence of Delphini should stay hidden from the wizarding world), just to mention the first idea which came to my mind, he can ask for help his buddy The Minister for Magic, there are zero reasons to keep this whole thing hidden from Ginny and other Weasleys.

There are many decent ways how to break up with your girlfriend decently, and there are many possible reasons which could be found. I can happily imagine that after Ginny hasn’t heard about him for a year fallen apart for the biggest hero of them all, Neville. I can imagine Hermione deciding that after all her affection towards Ron was more curiosity or wish to have her first crush completed than true love. And no, Hermione not forgiving Ron his leave after being cursed by the locket makes as much sense as anybody accusing Ginny of bringing the basilisk to the castle, i.e. none at all. So, I believe even post-War Harmony can be written in a reasonable manner (I tried to make a suggested talk between Hermione and Ron in “Late Morning Talks” to show how I would do it). And after reading “Inner Demons” (mentioned above) I very firmly believe in Harry taking care of orphans. However, the author was lazy and he just wanted to to get to the Harmony cooing over the small baby as easily as possible, so he went straight ahead. Grrr.

[added on 2020-04-13]

However, I still cannot get rid of the basic premise of this story, because I truly believe this is so good idea. It is just such pity that the execution was so horrible. So, let me suggest this as a prompt for somebody to write it better (in the same manner the author of “The Accidental Animagus” admitted that it was based on the idea from “The Natural Animagus by wsbenge”).

The start of the story could be exactly the same: The Trio in the Grimmauld Place found on the Black Family tapestry, that Bellatrix has a daughter with Tom Riddle. Then switch to the moment immediately after the Battle of Hogwarts and you can switch to search for the lost baby, which could make a foundation for a good plot (although not very long one). I could happily envision it as something similar to “Hunters and Prey by Northumbrian”: the first large case of young Trainee Auror Harry Potter. This one could be probably even better than that one because you don’t have to play in rather unrealistic hidden werewolf village, but in the real world with realistically crushed but bitter and hateful former Death Eaters and pureblood supremacists. And it is even more fun because the whole investigation is done amongst them, but they cannot have even a shadow of suspicion of who that lost girl truly is.

Then you can have the next part of taking care of an abused orphan, and Harry with his past would be very interested in caring for orphans (an idea which seems to be very underdeveloped, the only exception I can think of is above mentioned “Inner Demons by serendipity_50” and also the brilliant “Dudley's Memories” and “Snape’s Memories” by paganaidd). I generally don’t care about the shipping of Harry in all this, I don’t think it matters that much for the story, just if you want to break up Harry and Ginny, PLEASE, do a better job than the author of this story.

Of course, the premise of the story is based on the idea that Tom Riddle could father a baby in the first place. Yes, I don’t believe this story (and the Cursed Child, one of many disasters of that fanfiction story), that he would be capable of falling in love with anybody, and I have deep suspicion even about his ability to commit the deed. After all, he truly doesn’t have the human body, what he has is the alchemist construct, created by two sexually rather inept most likely still virgins; I wonder whether his body truly has all bits in the right places. Much more appealing (or much disgusting, that’s the same thing) would be if Delphini was either just by-product of some dark magic ritual (which would nicely lead to her being neglected and abandoned) or even intended object (produced by artificial insemination or its magical equivalent) of some ritual. What about the ultimate Horcrux created by sacrificing your own child? It would be an opportunity to create truly disgusting dark magic, which would eliminate all those jabbers about grey magic and acceptability of the Dark Magic.

[one more update on 2021-02-15]

I saw a week or so ago this comment on the riots in Charlottesville by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The thing which particularly impressed me was his memory of growing up amongst bitter and depressed former Nazis, who knew they were fighting for the horrible cause, and what’s even worse, they’ve lost. “They lived the rest of their lives in shame. And now they're resting in hell.”

I would love to read some novel about this environment, but I would love to see the parallel in the Harry Potter world as well. That’s the world where this Delphini would grew up, and where Harry would be searching for her.

And yes, of course, I have to mention this clip.

Category: literature Tagged: review storyPrompt harryPotter blogComment fromReddit