Yes it would! It would be SO much better to slaughter it in a slaughterhouse! (A small one that is. Not a factory) because there is no one gawking or cheering for your death! Plus think about how confused and scared the poor thing must be!

I was kind of expecting Sirius to go along with the story of having sent boots without mention, he'd assume he'd forgotten about buying them because of his memory problems and Harry would assume Sirius was lying about presents like Quirrel had. Add a nice little bit of tension and complication.

There was a mention a while ago (first year maybe) about muggleborn encroachment nearly bankrupting Hogwarts, I don't remember it exactly. Budget cuts could make a good tie in for some arguments/conspiracies about why some classes like ghoul studies are getting cut from the curriculum, help build up some more plausible cause for resentment. Also why there is still a substandard history teacher, you don't need to pay a ghost.

This is a perfect sort of ending. It ensures readers are curious about the next entry in the series, without creating so much tension that it feels unresolved.

I don't know if this will help you, since I've heard some people hated doing this, but I found sentence diagramming very fun, and very helpful in gaining an instinctual grasp of grammar and sentence structure in general (and therefore the "who and whom" thing sticks easier). It's not something that is taught in many grammar lessons anymore, which is a shame.

I wouldn't go with formal lessons, if you can help it, though. Just learn the basic rules, then find a bunch of increasingly complex sentences from books and see if you can diagram them. Then make sentences of your own, while trying to make interesting diagrams. Sometimes running into a sentence that you have no idea how to interpret in a diagram (and then figuring it out) can teach you a lot. It did for me, and it's a habit I need to get back into.

(It does help that I'm a more visual type of learner. It might not work for everyone.)

You definitely caught me out. While it is common (ish) to have Harry meet Merlin, or some sort of thing connected with him, it could easily be the case that you found some other significant historical figure.

And I absolutely love that Merlin was not (necessarily) extraordinarily powerful, and modern magic has better tools (even if magic in general might be diluting).

Everything you have done with Ambrosius/Myrddin/Merlin makes him seem more like a real person, rather than some sort of platonic ideal of a wizard.

I haven't said this yet, but I have yet to see another fic that has included so much real-world magic in Harry Potter for the traditions. It is incredibly well-researched. (Though I do have to point out that I haven't exactly researched any of this myself, so I'm not the best opinion on the subject.)

I'd expect the trail would be even easier to follow, considering Pettigrew's fur would be directly against the ground, rather than semi-concealed by something like shoes/boots.

Absolutely love these decisions. (I was actually surprised the first time I read the series that his patronus was James' animagus, since Harry was indeed so much different than his father, and Harry didn't seem to overly idolize his father even before he learned some of the less nice things he did.)

And your fic is definitely going to help me when I write my own HP fanfiction. (Not in the sense that I will be lifting any particular concepts, but as your is one of the few ones that diverges greatly from canon while retaining a "vanilla" HP feel, it gives me more stylistic examples for my own divergent ideas.)

The movies have diluted Hermione's flaws so much that it makes a lot of HP fanfiction worse.

Not that movie Hermione is terrible or anything, but I like a good, flawed character, and I liked book-Hermione, because I could relate with her. (It took me a long time to realize the real reason teachers asked questions, and while I was polite enough not to blurt out answers, I was very annoying for my teachers by raising my hand for literally every question asked.)

Giving more limitations to Time Turners is a good thing. Magical things should always be conceptually stress-tested against your worldbuilding.

For example, while a deterministic type of time travel is a good start, the unlimited turn backs would mean that any wizard could become an instant army with repeated use. (Since the time-travelling future selves would be there from the first time the wizard used it.)

Yeah larger dogs and the larger cats in the wild can digest bones.

Well, even smaller cats too, but it depends on the size of the bone. It's how anyone eats fish, with all their sharp, fiddly bones.

But it's still not a good idea to give them cooked chicken bones, just in case. (It's worse because they will WANT to chew the bones more to get at the bone marrow, which has a lot of good nutrients, and increase the chance of breaking it into splinters, etc.)

Seriously, why would fanfiction/net edit out *asterisks*? They are literally the most common line break used in actual published books.

Harry Potter uses them, if I remember right.

Whoever actually manages this site is idiotic in the extreme.

Hi,

This segment of your tale seemed to work very well. I enjoyed the diversion of the storyline and your Harry's growing sophistication.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Old-Crow

Hi,

That was an interesting letter from Lockhart.

cheers

O-C