That was fantastic. There are so many highly-rated fics here and on Ao3 that don't live up to their popularity at all, your fic on the other hand is well thought out and beautifully written. It's really in a class of its own.

I know it's been nearly 14 years, but maybe you'll still read this. :)

Ps.: Btw, did you really only write this masterpiece and then never touched fanfiction again or do you have a new account?

One of the most incredible fics I’ve ever read. Wow.

Excellent story, good writing, thank you for reading! How difficult it is to find well-told stories like this! I go through many before I find them and actually stop to read them. I hope to see more of your work. Happy 2024!

so good!

To The Writer,
I don't know if you will read this, but I want you to know that this is most favourite time travel fanfiction if not Harry Potter fanfiction. Your story telling, character interaction, plot everything is just fantastic. Whenever I feel bored, I reread this story, which I don't do with any other story. I wish you had continued writing.

I just realized that you have no other works and would like to say it is a shame. I hope someday you see this and get back into writing on this site, but I realize that this is unlikely. Hello to those who see this in future, I hope your days are going well.

Hey, I know that you're probably not still reading these reviews after 13 years, but I just finished the story and decided that this story was good enough to earn a review from me anyways. As I was reading this story, it came to me that this was written as if this had been an official novella written over many months by a professional full time author. It was very well done and as each mystery was slowly unwrapped I felt myself feeling satisfied at every conclusion. Every character seemed to perfectly act how they should, and as a side note, I was pleased that you valued all the characters enough to not fall to the common Weasley/Dumbledore bashing that is unfortunately in a lot of H/Hr focused fanfiction. You seemed to follow most of the Harry Potter lore and rules, except for the time travel rules which you changed slightly so the story to work out. I am extremely pleased that I chose to read this fic, and would recommend anyone reading this review to do the same. I hope that you continued to write long after this was posted as you are a brilliant writer and Potter fan(presumably of course). I hope your life goes well and will enjoy reading more of your work in future.

One of the best "epilogue compliant" H/Hr stories ever written, at least in its highlights. The opening half of the story is exceptionally good, with a clever mystery that is no less satisfying for being fully guessable. I can quibble somewhat with the second half for staying a bit too close to canon and to fanon, but even at its most formulaic plotting there is enough vigor in the writing and the characterization (Hermione's paen to ornithology, for example) to carry the narrative to its conclusion. The rules of time travel are probably a bit wishy-washy but I can't find it in myself to truly care, because they give a satisfying structure to the beginning and a satisfying closure to the loop by the ending. Excellent work, highly recommended.

The second revision is Hermione's fate. The plotting is elegant in its simplicity, although of course time travel requires its usual handwaving. Personally, I try not to think too much about the exact rigorous details. The intent is clear: future-Harry's sacrifice to Bellatrix at Malfoy Manor instates the same anti-AK love magic within Hermione that his mother protected him with as a child. Again, the canon beats (especially Neville's incredible last stand) provide useful scaffolding – and when it's used to support the obviously right ending, the reunion of Harry and Hermione, it's all the better.

Pettigrew is the first of two notable plot revisions in this climax. Even if it's realistically a bit cheap and a bit unearned, it's a simple pleasure to see the Marauders reunited. Peter is served quite badly by canon and almost all fan fiction, so despite whatever shortcuts and handwaves are taken here, it's still satisfying to see this chosen arc play out. JKR didn't really know how to get there, but her ending really is quite powerful. A few well chosen changes such as these only make it better.

I adore this story for many reasons but I think there is a strange divergence between the early chapters and the reunited chapters with respect to Harry's feelings. Here, the line "He'd put his arm around Hermione loads of times, but not in what seemed like ages. Not since he'd come to recognize the true depth of his feelings for her." corresponds with the more or less obligatory "sudden dawning of realization" version of Harry's romantic interest in Hermione. I say "more or less obligatory" in the sense of what has to be the case for a story to be consistent with canon through HBP and into DH (where the hints of *Harry's* interest in Hermione are faint and/or overtaken by the romances that JKR actually chose).

But what's ill-fitting here is the combination with Hermione's trip through the Hogwarts years, where we're shown off-screen moments of Harry's explicit romantic intention toward her. So it feels as if this tent scene is skimming over this internally established basis of interest in favor of more traditional canon characterization. There is little clear payoff for this move, which instead introduces a variety of ignored complications (why does Harry pursue Cho and Ginny? why say nothing to Hermione?) and confuses the emotional stakes of these crucial moments in the tent.

I find it's easy to read these chapters in the "traditionally canon adjacent" scenario, which perfectly serves these moments of desperate confession – which in turn are written exceptionally well. I suppose this is mostly reader preference, but I personally prefer to reduce deviations to canon when possible, and I think the story would be more solidly constructed if these romantic inklings had been removed. I recognize there is appeal in the red herring esque "what you think is canon is the narrative of the memory charmed Harry" going all the way down to second year – but for me I don't think the tradeoff is worth it.

This is killing ’s so painful to read. My stomach hurts, i want to smack Harry. I want to smack (a little) Hermione.

I want to cry for the poor abused boy with no sense of self worth. For the poor girl who only had two friends and one of them constantly put her down to feel a little better about his worth-questionable lazy mediocre self, and the other friend who never stood up for her.

I really, truly wish I could claim this writing was wrong, but it’s exactly how they would think and behave without serious external influences.

Sigh

Omg my heart shattered in a million pieces.

Excellent work

Obviously with all the foreshadowing I kinda thought this could be the case. I WANTED to believe it was a greater good Dumbledore, once more convincing Harry it was for the best, or at worse, Harry asking Dumbles to do it after the DoM fiasco.

I have no words. This is soul crushing.

Btw, I’m not going to dilute the epicness of your story by going on a long diatribe about our differing views re : dumbledore but I’ll just say this: someone evil doesn’t have to plan world domination or kill puppies for fun. He can be a loving father, a caring neighbour, rescue puppies … and drop a bomb on an innocent family because of X. (Religious fanatic, duty, oppressed terrorist a la IRA,whatever)

The moment you take an orphan son of the people who loved and trusted you and routinely put their lives in danger for you, and your master plan is to crush him and abuse him so he is malleable and so he doesn’t stand a chance against a dark lord you know he’ll have to fight to the death, the moment you can cross that line? You are evil. A good person would rather let the world burn if that was truly the only way. But it really wasn’t. There were dozens of other ways that might have worked and were even far more likely to work. This was like a 5% chance to work an a 95% for Harry to turn suicidal or apathetic or a greater dark lord. Or simply get killed a dozen times over.

Anyway, great story. Sorry about the rant.

Omg … I’m going to get indigestion again, sigh.

This is very exciting, but I think I need to learn to not read it while having lunch/dinner/brunch or something sigh/lol

Thanks for writing,