Soul Searching/End Game
EG Chapter 20a - Living in Harmony
By Chem Prof
Reviews
computer5450 posted a comment on Monday 20th June 2011 8:26pm for EG Chapter 20a - Living in Harmony
Thank you for a very good story. And this is better than the books too.
Daily Prophet Reporting posted a comment on Wednesday 15th June 2011 3:17am for EG Chapter 20a - Living in Harmony
Just wanted to send along a quick thank you for your hard work on this. I enjoyed the crisp, clean writing, and I can definitely can appreciate the amount of planning and effort that must have gone into this.
That's especially obvious in the way you absolutely nailed the final battle scenes. Given the number of tepid such scenes there are around the fandom where the good guys' chapters and chapters of preparation are follow by cakewalk victories, I appreciated that you came up with original tactics for the Death Eaters and made them, at least to an extent, work. I also really liked how well you showed us Voldemort's power, that it took everything Harry, Ron and Hermione could muster together -- and then some -- to score a razor-thin victory.
And I loved that you came up with such a great way to show us the depth of Hermione's love, that she would literally give anything for Harry. I thought that sacrifice was the perfect way to illustrate that your Harry and Hermione belong together.
Then you took that away.
I'm not going to lie: I hated you giving Hermione her magic back. Maybe I'm hung up on the idea that such a hard-won victory should cost something and that you don't have to have a perfect ending to have a happy ending. But I thought that decision detracted from the most poignant moment of your story and took away an opportunity for significant character growth at the end of this.
I'm just venturing a guess here, but was that decision made to keep the H/G angle open? As I got to the end of Chapter 17, going that direction just didn't seem feasible to me anymore. I certainly thought you built up H/H relationship skillfully enough -- and I say this a one-time diehard H/G shipper -- that I didn't even consider reading 20B or 20C.
That said, I thought you did a lot of things well here, especially in the first half of the story when you gave yourself the freedom to take us to some new and interesting places. The pool jumps to mind first and foremost! And I think you did an excellent job subtly developing your characters' relationships, even if that aspect took over the second half of the story a bit too much for my tastes.
Anyway, again I think you for your hard work. You've definitely caught my attention and I expect I'll be giving a Hermione's Plan a read before too long.
-KC
HWLLHP posted a comment on Saturday 7th May 2011 9:06pm for EG Chapter 20a - Living in Harmony
On the whole, this was a good story. I had a few quibbles here and there, which I'd have posted if you were still working on it, but really quite good. However, it seems, shall we say, more Slytherin than Gryffindor to write three endings so as to accommodate all ships. Pick one! Offering the reader his choice means denying him the satisfaction of seeing how the story "really" ends. Also, when you've been setting up for so long the idea that Harry needs to choose, it's anticlimactic to have Ginny take the choice away from him -- not to mention, out of character.
Wolff posted a comment on Saturday 23rd April 2011 11:38pm for EG Chapter 20a - Living in Harmony
Three days later, this one's been a fun ride. I've laughed, I've cried, I've come within a hair's breadth of missing work to read some more, and I have to say, I like this ending best. I'm a proud harmonian, and this one just feels the most right to me.
The battle scene between the trio and voldemonkey gave me chills, because I kept expecting Hermione to make that final sacrifice. I was very pleased that she didn't have to.
-W
Shadowdog posted a comment on Thursday 25th February 2016 7:44pm for EG Chapter 20a - Living in Harmony