Concrit for perverse_idyll

[perverse_idyll]

I want to receive feedback by: Comment on my post here or email at perverseidyll1956@gmail.com

Here are the works I want feedback on: The Blood of Stars (approximate 10K word cut-off is in Chapter 2, the sentence "Merlin, he doesn't want to go in there.")

Impossible Without It (approximate 10K word cut-off is in Chapter 2, the sentence "Inquiries? About what?" Harry said, bewildered.)

I'll leave it up to the reader to decide how much of the proposed sections they decide to review.

ETA: If neither of those is a good fit for you, I'd be interested in concrit for Soft Touch, Warm, Elegy for a Goat, The Lost World, or In Infinite Remorse of Soul. My works on AO3

My works' fandoms and content notes are: Harry Potter fandom, Severus Snape/Harry Potter. No explicit content within the 10K excerpts themselves, although Blood of Stars gets sexually explicit further on and includes a noncon kiss between a 17-year-old and a 38-year-old. Blood of Stars is in Snape's 3rd-person POV, later Harry's 1st-person POV. Impossible Without It is Harry's 3rd-person POV. Blood of Stars is more heavily descriptive, Impossible Without It is an attempt to be more straightforward.

I have these questions for readers: Characterization and style are always important to me, so I'm happy to hear what readers think. Blood of Stars is the first time I've written a Snape POV so I suppose one question would be, how well do I pull it off? Also for Blood of Stars: is the opening too confusing? I don't outline, so I can sometimes use help with pacing. Questions of clarity or general reader investment also matter. Since both stories are still in the early stages, you won't be able to comment on the narrative arc, but any observations on the speed, continuity, and structure of what's there is welcome. Frankly, all feedback is welcome.

I would prefer gentle (5) or direct (1) feedback, or something in between: I'm fine with all levels as long as the feedback is offered with respect.

Comments are unscreened.

Comments

[impilii]

Hello! I read The Blood of Stars, and found it really intriguing and entertaining. I particularly liked the intensity of the relationship you're building between Harry and Severus, as well as the way you don't soften Snape's edges. The mysterious hints about the weird magic of the prison have also piqued my interest! I’ve included some thoughts on structure, style and characterization. I hope they are helpful, and I'd be happy to clarify any of them if you have questions, or just to discuss!

 

STRUCTURE:

Three chapters of Snape's 3rd POV covering just a few hours post-Battle, sequential timeline. (~22,000 words)
Three chapters of Harry's 1st POV covering many separate incidents, non-sequential timeline starting after several years and jumping around in flashback. (~22,000 words)

My understanding of the plot so far is:

• Snape encounters Albus and Lily (and James) in the afterlife, is unhappily resurrected, kisses Harry and forges a connection between them, while also somehow being unable or unwilling to speak to Harry (maybe only in certain ways/on certain topics?)
• Harry joins the Aurors, marries Ginny and has kids. The marriage is not harmonious.
• Harry (in flashback) has several near-death experiences, which somehow pulls Snape to him. They have mutual sexual tension.
• Harry (in the present) is intrigued by a prison that may or may not be designed by Snape possibly masquerading as someone else, and has something to do with stars and the ocean. Also a potion that can take away people’s magic?

 

There is clearly a lot of plot to come, but as it stands, the opening chapters with Snape feels a little long compared to the rest of it, especially given that they don’t cover very much time/action. The time skips and flashbacks were a little disorienting, though I expect that later chapters will fill in questions.

 

STYLE IMPRESSIONS:

You’ve got a very lyrical Snape here. I think it works well—Snape has that stifled creative genius thing going on, and it makes sense to me that his internal voice would have the same sort of poetic flair as his intro speech from the first book. I like so many of the descriptions, but just to pick a few: 


• [The voices] circle, squabbling like rooks. …Words start to peck at him, stabbing, shredding. This reminds him too much of life, in which he has no interest. If they’re birds, then, let them fly away. — The thread of bird imagery is nice, and I like that we get a callback to it when Fawkes resurrects him and fixes his shredded throat.
• He dredges up everything he’s salvaged from the stingy, slung-away references to school his mum drops in her rare confiding moods. Everything he’s hoarded up to remind himself that he won’t be stuck at Spinner’s End forever. He offers it to her in short, fumbling sentences. and After turning the pockets of his memory inside-out, he adds a few stray details he invented… — This series of description feels very coherent in terms of imagery, and really evokes the scarcity of Severus’ experiences with happiness as well as the depth of his regard for Lily.
• The darkness lifts from him like a broken glamour. — This felt like a very natural wizarding simile.
• Everything from The fierce pang of affection…  to She doesn’t speak, and he can’t. — Something I think you do really well in this segment is make each adjective distinct enough in meaning to hit powerfully, particularly the trio of “defeated, stripped, old.”
• The erratic golden snitch of redemption. —  Another very natural wizarding metaphor, and very in character with Snape’s cynicism.
• Memories pour down, blending, overlapping, as they had when Potter appeared above him, a last mercy, a scruffy angel of death, and Severus had forced all the shameful secrets out of himself. — I particularly liked “scruffy angel of death” <3. Also, this is an example where I think your tendency to repeat ideas with near synonyms works really well—the “pour down, blending, overlapping” verbally echoes the process you’re describing.

That said, much as I like them, there are a lot of descriptions piled up on top of each other, and I think giving them a little more room to breathe and paring down repetition might make them more impactful.

For instance, on the repetition front, in the first three chapters Snape’s heart does a lot— it gets “goaded,” it “stalls” and “stutters,” “sounds out the seconds,” “limps faster,” “flies open,” “swells to twice normal size,” “thunders like wings,” “rebels,” “rises up,” “splits open,” “chokes him,” is “blackened and inflamed,” is “thumping” and “booming,” “pumps,” “expands like an air-filled balloon,” has writing across it, “shakes [him] with hammer-blows, banging” and “sinks.”

Considered individually, many of these are really evocative and interesting descriptions. I particularly like He knows there’s only one means of escape… Die faster. But his stubborn heart sounds out the seconds. and Shakes with the hammer-blows of his banging heart, begging, I need this. However, the accumulation of instances comes across a little off to me. I think cutting some, or replacing them with physical sensations other than the heart would make things flow better.

In terms of ‘room to breathe’: in a lot of paragraphs you have details from all five senses, as well as emotion and action statements. I think picking fewer things to focus on would strengthen the writing overall.

For example, this paragraph:

"Great sopping quantities of blood cover his clothing, rigid as dragonhide by now. Severus wonders how long he's been lying there, then puts it from his mind. Cursing the boards that creak beneath his feet, he staggers to the door. Spelling it wide, he hangs back and listens, straining his eyes against the dark. A rush of night air envelops him in a steady breeze, smelling of trees and earth and sky. It's bracingly cold. Inhaling the fragrance of the world, he lifts his wand and Scourgifies himself three times in succession. Even with all the dried, flaking gore removed, all the grease from his hair, and what might be an outer layer of skin, he still feels steeped in blood."

We go from texture to emotion/reflection to sound, sound, sight, feel, smell, feel, smell, action, feel, feel-emotion. On the one hand, he’s recently been resurrected, so it might make sense to focus a lot on physical sensations. However, he’s been described as highly embodied with lots of physical sensation throughout the entirety of the narrative, so there’s not a big difference from the pre-resurrection narration to make all the details in this paragraph seem particularly meaningful.

Additionally, there’s quite a bit of back and forth, and a little bit of inconsistency. If the clothes are sopping, that implies that the blood is wet, but if the clothes are rigid, that implies that it’s dried. The boards start creaking before we know that he’s walking, and ‘cursing’ in this context was a little confusing because I initially thought he was literally spell-casting. We get a bunch of specific details on the ‘steady breeze, smelling of trees and earth and sky,’ move on to the bracing cold, and then retread for an abstract ‘inhaling the fragrance of the world,’ and then finally get back to the discomfort that was introduced in the first sentence with the bloody clothing. Because of that barrage of different sensory experiences, the impact of the regret in that last sentence, the physical and emotional resonance of “he still feels steeped in blood” doesn’t fully land for me. And I think that last sentence is really great, so I wish it were a little easier to get to.

I sometimes felt that you were sort of chewing your way to the phrase or moment you wanted, but leaving earlier versions in. On the small scale, an example like the above paragraph, but on a larger scale, the two Fawkes interactions were a place where this struck me—very similar emotional beats, very similar descriptions, repeated with about a 500 word break in between. As another example, the two meetings with Catesby and the house-elf seemed to tread the same territory—‘someone’s happy to see Snape and he has mixed feelings.’ When we saw Catesby (and maybe the house-elf?) come back in the main plot’s mystery, I understood that there’s probably a plot-related point to her early introduction, but the two scenes together were a little bit of a drag on the pacing. I think in both the Fawkes and the OC-interaction scenes, either condensing those moments into one scene, cutting one of them, or making them more distinct in terms of physical or emotional description would do a lot of good for the pacing. 


There’s also some repetition of unique imagery across both POVs which popped out at me—one example, Snape: “his throat’s volcanic crater”; Harry: “my heart was like a hot, aching crater”— maybe something to be on the lookout for in terms of distinguishing narrative voice. 


I think you’re very good at action sequences, and your descriptive style works really well for them—the werewolf fight and Harry being swept down the river are both dynamic and exciting. The barrage-of-details really shines when Harry is under threat or attack—it makes sense both contextually and emotionally that everything is heightened, immediate and overwhelming.

I especially liked the sequence from “Cursed rigid, I couldn’t yell for help. Couldn’t see where I was going, couldn’t stay afloat…” all the way through “The world kept changing, a spinning kaleidoscope of water and sky.” I could really feel the buffeting waves, dizzying nausea, and terrified helplessness.

 

POINT OF VIEW AND CHARACTERIZATION

I found Snape’s narration compelling. Snape’s point of view felt close to canon—he’s intense and volatile, twisted and pained by history. I struggled a little more to connect to your Harry characterization. Obviously, Harry’s POV is coming to us several years out from canon and into adulthood, which requires some changes, but I sometimes found myself wondering who this character was, particularly in an internal voice that seemed to be full of negative self-talk in a way that seemed unlike Harry. It kind of seemed like the Snape perspective might be bleeding over. 

Major characterization points coming across to me:

• SNAPE: resentment, cynicism, sense of loss, suffering, self-pity (and also denial of that self-pity and dislike of it in others), unfairness, entitlement, "I didn't get my just deserts." The essence of these all felt very in character for Snape to me. He came across as capable of both extremely brave actions and immense emotional cowardice, and as someone who covers his vulnerabilities with aggression.
• HARRY: sex obsessed, insecure, self-doubting, self-critical, survivor's guilt, regret, secretive, interested? in mysteries. Some of these felt like logical extensions of canon/shortly post-canon Harry, while others made me wonder.

Things that stuck out as peculiar about Harry’s narration:

• Me and Ginny, we had it all sorted: she’d be like her mum, only more athletic, and, what’s the word, ornamental. I’d be like Arthur, only—I don’t know, more of a celebrity — I think you’re trying to convey that both Harry and Ginny are trying to live up to a (possibly imaginary) standard of what ‘husband and wife’ looks like, but the particular aspects you’ve chosen—ornamental and celebrity—don’t seem like things that either Ginny or Harry would aspire to, even in their most unrealistic/stereotypical dreams.
• The times Harry refers to himself as a prat, thin-skinned, stupid, selfish, oversensitive, etc. over very small or even just imagined interpersonal interactions. It spoke to a certain level of social anxiety that I didn't recognize from canon.
• Perhaps there are moments we haven’t seen yet in the narrative, but Harry doesn’t seem to have spent much (any?) time actively searching out Snape, which makes me a little curious, because he’s frequently a dog-with-a-bone type when it comes to mysteries. There’s a certain level of passivity from his side for, presumably, at least four or five years that I’m wondering if we’ll get an explanation for.
• This is both a plot point and a characterization thing, but: I personally found Ginny’s Obliviation really off-putting. It didn’t bug me overmuch for Snape’s characterization, since he seems very bogged down in his feelings of rage and entitlement, but it made me wonder why Harry and Ginny went on to get married, and was the first big thing that made me wonder about the Harry characterization. It seemed like a really big deal, and not the kind of thing he would do—especially when he later referred to not telling her as the "honourable thing."

My impression is that the purpose of the Obliviation is to set up an early precedent of Harry picking Snape and his secrets over his relationship with Ginny and to create fault lines in their relationship. As it stands, it comes across as a really aggressive way of doing that. If aggressive is what you’re going for, then it hits for sure, but if it isn’t, then I think you could keep that theme but tone down the awfulness of it by altering the confrontation a little bit—moving Snape and Harry elsewhere (maybe either at Snape’s instigation or by having Harry chase Snape) and Ginny wakes up alone and can’t get a straight explanation from Harry as to why he left her. In that scenario, Harry still has secrets and the disturbing fact that a kiss from Snape was more exciting than losing his virginity with the girl he thinks he’s in love with. On Ginny’s side, it’s a smaller seed of discontent, maybe, but one rooted in the base conflict of Ginny getting left behind by Harry (whether that’s leaving to hunt Horcruxes or leaving her with the children while he goes off to his ‘dream job’ and she’s had to give up hers), and in the “this isn’t how the storybook romance goes” feeling.

[impilii]

Sorry, this went a little long, splitting things up here!

Characterization moments I liked for Harry:

• Either they're doing something right or something really, really wrong there. And I want to be the one to find out. — This felt like Harry’s tendency to investigate mysteries.
• Bloody fucking hell, I refused to die now. Snape was there. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. — This felt very like Harry; determined, a little bloody-minded.
• I was used to being one-third of a life-saving friendship, sort of a—a three-part rune that spelled loyalty, and no Dark Lord or Death Eater in the world could divide us. Now I had to let that go and learn to be half of a couple. — This felt like a very logical extension of the difficulties of transitioning to adulthood and romantic relationships after everything the trio went through together.

Characterization moments I liked in Snape’s narration:

• What a gullible little bastard he'd been. — This feels really true to Snape's self-pity/self-hatred and his longer perspective on himself.
• Let me be, you old tyrant. … Bugger off to your next bloody adventure. For God's sake. Haven't I paid enough? — This feels really true to Snape's sense of suffering and general done-ness with being beholden to vows and masters. 
• Though he'd rather spit blood than admit it, he's grateful for that reassuring hand.  — This feels really true to Snape's buried need for kindness.
• That's better," Albus says, with the barefaced cheek he sometimes passes off as kindness. It confirms Severus' suspicion that there's something he wants.  — This feels really true to Snape's suspicious and cynical nature, and is a nice view of his perspective on Dumbledore. 
• Serves you right. The old, vicious gloating is the barest wisp of smoke.— This is a nice view on the emotions that have sustained Snape for so long no longer being something he can rely on in the post-War world.
• Severus sits in the window seat like a ruffled crow, affronted by her concern. — This again feels really true to Snape's buried need for kindness, and also the way that he finds it insulting/isn't really capable of accepting it. 

THE HARRY/SNAPE RELATIONSHIP:

I think you’ve done a great job of establishing the magnetic connection they have. They’re both attracted to each other and feel ashamed/compelled to keep it secret. I liked the hints we got of Snape’s feelings before his resurrection, his shame in front of Lily, and I thought that the broken dam moment of Snape fully acknowledging his desire for Harry was particularly well done.

The theme of life-affirming sexual encounters also plays out really well, in my opinion. It makes sense that those moments of discontinuity and exhilaration are the ones where Harry and Severus can let themselves be swept away by urges that they otherwise would try to keep locked down.

 

THINGS I'M WONDERING ABOUT:

• Whether it was actually Lily who silenced Snape, or he did it to himself out of complicated emotions/guilt.
• How Snape is involved in the prison, and what it has to do with his newfound appreciation for the stars.
• How the Harry and Snape relationship will progress—I hope they get to actually talk somehow!

Overall, I think this is a really interesting piece—ambitious and dramatic, with tons of beautiful prose. I look forward to seeing where you go with it!

[perverse_idyll]

I'm just racing in here to say I'm bowled over and very excited! Your feedback is fantastic, and your willingness to read the whole thing is far more generous than I expected. The sum total produces exactly the kind of spark I'll need to help kick aside my writer's block and get back into writing this fic.

I'm currently at work and still have hours to go, but I'll pop back in later this evening after I've had a chance to re-read your thoughtful critique without work-related distractions. (That is, if the local gas and electric company doesn't impose another power outage on us tonight.) But first I had to burst in and say thank you!

[perverse_idyll]

This is really excellent feedback. I haven't looked at this story in a very long time and probably won't until I'm actually ready to sit down for a serious read-through, but this is going to give me a standard to strive for. I've forgotten a lot of the phrases and imagery I used - except I know I leaned heavily on description because I always do - but I remember at the time I was in the mood to write something self-indulgent. On a prose level, that's bound to clog the fic with overwritten and repetitive moments. So I'll keep that in mind when I revisit it and start making notes to continue.

I had also deluded myself into thinking that writing and posting each installment as I finished would help spur me on. This works for some people, but it was fairly idiotic for me to believe I could keep it up. I'm too overloaded in real life and too slow a writer to stick to a regular posting schedule. I also don't have a beta, someone who might have pushed me to curb my excesses and would have noticed the descriptive dissonance, such as sopping vs. rigid. I burst out laughing at the vast and dramatic variety of things I've assigned to Snape's heart. It's a wonder it didn't just give out on him, poor bastard. I will definitely be weeding out a bunch of those, and I'll try to stay alert for similar abuses of defenseless words (and body parts).

I want Catesby and the house elf to both be witnesses to Snape's "resurrection," but I'll see if there's some way to differentiate their encounters and liven up the pacing. Snape's whole section leans heavily on interiority and very little on dialogue or action, and I remember worrying about readers getting bogged down in all those words and Snape's stew of depression and sense of persecution.

The Problem of Harry is an interesting one, and I can tell it's going to take work. I like your suggestion about getting Ginny out of the room, and I think that can be accomplished by having her slip out to rejoin her family in grieving over Fred and leaving Harry behind to sleep off the exhaustion of his fight with Voldemort. But there's a small (or maybe not so small) clot of issues surrounding the two of them. I'm not that invested in Ginny, but I don't want to be unfair to her character. Which doesn't change the fact that she's an obstacle, and once Harry is married to her, getting him to leave her for Snape requires either turning Harry into an asshole (which many readers will reject as OOC) or creating a marriage unhappy enough that it fractures under the pressure of Snape's reappearance in Harry's life. It's even harder once children are on the scene.

So in creating cracks in their relationship, I suspect I overdid Harry's dissatisfaction and self-blame to prevent the narrative from making it Ginny's fault. I want there to be a sense on both their parts that they rushed into marriage, and it's not living up to what they actually want out of life. In my view, Harry's not the sort to talk about it, but Ginny probably would. I wanted some of Harry's guilt to come from his immense need to have a family and his bewilderment when this doesn't actually lay his demons to rest. (One of my characterization notes here is that grown-up Harry isn't nearly as Teflon in his response to trauma as teenage Harry seems to be, but that doesn't mean he actually deals with it.)

So in a sense I made Harry the fall guy for the mess their relationship is in. On top of that, I wanted (God knows why) to try my hand at first-person POV, then started doubting myself because I kept running smack into fannish scorn or downright refusal to even consider reading first-person narratives. That took some of the wind out of my sails.

Okay, I hope you don't mind me nattering on at you, but I'm going to break off now and resume sometime later. It's four in the morning, and I'm not able to sleep due to a blasted heat wave that makes the whole concept of sleep feel futile. But I have to try, because I'll be back at work in about five hours.

Many, many thanks, and I'll pick up the thread again as soon as I have a free moment. Don't feel obliged to respond unless you feel like it, but discussing this here is helping me figure out a priority list of problems I need to fix.

(Oh shit. I'm hearing thunder outside. And the wind just came up out of nowhere, and now lightning is flickering. Welp, there goes any chance of sleep tonight. Please, no dry lightning strikes. I don't want to be evacuated due to wildfires again.)

[impilii]

I'm so glad that this was helpful! I totally understand the siren call of posting a WIP for accountability purposes--it’s so tempting to believe that that will be hugely motivating!!! And then…

Re: Catesby and the house-elf, I see that there's a strong reason to keep both. Something that occurred to me as potentially an interesting option after I posted would be seeing how it feels to move the house-elf interaction to after Snape and Harry’s confrontation. I think the two encounters plus all the wandering he does works against the urgency of finding Harry, but if you moved one of them it might help? The house elf interaction seems like it could be a good one because it also has a bit of a “goodbye to Hogwarts” feel about it, and you could ramp that up a little too to increase the differentiation.

I definitely have some discussion thoughts on Harry (and Harry and Ginny), but my upcoming week is quite busy so it may take me some time to come back and put them in coherent order. Wishing you luck with the weather!

[kanadka]

Hi!! So I'm glad the other reviewer took The Blood of Stars, because I went with Impossible Without It. :D

Structurally speaking: The first chapter presents and sets up a casefic mystery; the second chapter gives us our first few clues, and the third chapter gives us a first meeting between our two main characters.

I think the third chapter accomplishes its goals the strongest; the other two, I feel as though I can see what you're doing, but the chapters don't quite hit the marks as strong as they could - I can still see some places where a little bit of restructuring would help ground what you're trying to do better. Once the chapter is read, of course, it starts to makes sense, but through a first read, there are some pieces that aren't quite in the right places yet.

Here's a microcosm example of what I mean: In chapter 3: A heavy stamping sound echoed from the open trap, and bit by bit the whiskery gent, neck and ears red, lurched into view, swearing as he shouldered a rattling cardboard box out onto the floor. Now Harry's been very wonderfully observant in the pub this whole time, but this is the first time we've seen the whiskery gent, so he should really be "a" whiskery gent; saying 'the' is a presupposition that tells the reader he's already been introduced. And he technically has, but also not like this: From the corner of his eye Harry counted probably a dozen patrons, a waiter, a bearded bloke stooping to heave a trapdoor up and over. The floor boomed. Yes, he could Obliviate them all, but—. It's just enough difference to make a reader backtrack and wonder whether they've been paying attention.

Similarly with 'Hugh', whose first appearance is: A bird-boned, weatherbeaten gent with bouffant blond hair left his table and went to lounge inside the order station. and next appearance is: Snape gave a ghost of his old condescending snort and turned away. "It's on me, Mr. Black. Go back to your table. I'll sure Hugh won't mind delivering your pint." Harry noticed that the small blond man had come up alongside him and was waiting with bright-eyed interest to place his order. The only thing linking the small blond man to the introduced description of before is the blond hair, so it grabs me, thinking that 'the small blond man' has already been introduced, but also this is the first I've seen him? And it takes some backtracking to realise he's also the bird-boned weatherbeaten bouffant man and that was his introduction.

That's an easy fix. But I also see this sort of aborted presupposition playing out on a more holistic, logical structure sense. In chapter 1, for example, Harry asks who went to the funeral. (This gives a strong presupposition to the reader that there was in fact a funeral. Okay, thinks the reader, this is the kind of casefic where there was a funeral but nobody checked that there was someone in the coffin, so to speak.) Then Kingsley elaborates that there was no funeral. Now this starts to feel like a garden path sentence again, on a structural level. Did we know that there was no funeral or is this the first time we're learning this? Why did Harry not know this until now? We then find out there was no burial and no body, either. So if there wasn't any funeral, and no body, there no longer seems to be a reason why everyone (including Harry) is so thoroughly convinced that Snape is in fact dead. But the rest of the scene in the pub with Harry and his friends has been setting up that they all think Harry is a little bit mad for wondering why Snape might not be dead. This is a bit of a logic puzzle, here. And at this point I can no longer tell whether Harry has been obsessing about Snape's death since McGonagall's meeting with him, or whether it's been plaguing him since the fallout after Voldemort's death (because as we shortly find out at the end of Chapter 1, Harry doesn't remember what happened, but he still has nightmares about it).

Put simply, if it's casefic, and it feels like it is, the reader will want to follow along with our proverbial detective, but I feel yanked around instead. To follow along, I need to have the pieces set up in exposition so that I can start looking at what might be clues, not glean possible clues and then have to backtrack and/or have the rug swept under me. (This is a different position than looking at what might be clues but actually are red herrings - in that case, it's more, this was set up to be a clue but actually it has no bearing on the mystery/is a dead-end in the labyrinth.) Like this, I have to constantly backtrack to make sure that "the Unspeakable" wasn't someone who has already been introduced and mentioned as an Unspeakable - I think, oh shit, did I just miss that the first time around? So I go back, only to find she never was introduced as an Unspeakable in the first place, so I'm lacking that establishment and introduction with the character. Same thing with 'the blond man' vs 'a blond man', or 'who went to Snape's funeral?' vs 'there was no funeral and also no burial and maybe not even a body?' There comes a lot of back and forth for one who's trying to pay attention to the casefic.

(Now, all that said: I have my suspicions about why this goes back and forth, and how it ties in to the mystery, but I'm not convinced that the reason why is why you've structured it as a back and forth, and I'm also not convinced that it justifies the back and forth. I don't know whether you want me to keep my guesses about the overall whodunit to myself though!)

On the upside, though, this is really easily remedied by setting up the casefic a little better by planting that grounding information, mostly in Chapter 1. I think it would probably only take the addition of a few sentences here and there. First, it would be helpful to establish where exactly the point of canon divergence lies for the reader: we discover a little too late that there was a fight with Voldemort and Snape and Harry shot Expelliarmus but that he doesn't actually remember anything about this fight. So we want to know about the moment that yields the canon divergence, relative to the canon, or (since we find out that Harry doesn't remember) at least know what lead up to it and who were the players going in, and what the outcome was. You also might bring that information - i.e., that Harry can't actually remember - up front (not where it currently is, almost at the end of chapter 1). Next, keep the mystery that Snape is in fact dead very firm in everybody's heads including Harry's. This lets you keep the wonderful (!! so wonderful!) shock in Chapter 3 of seeing him in the flesh, and also lets you contrast Dumbledore's portrait's words with Harry's current (firm!) worldview better. (So, you might tweak Dobby's words of 'He won't be happy if you is disturbing his peace' - make it a little clearer that Dobby means a man resting in peace - as well as Theo's reasons for scouting around Snape's home where Theo very strongly alludes to Snape being alive - that should shock Harry a little more, to the point that I think he'd call Theo out on it. Instead Harry says "Fine. I'm sorry. Tell the bastard cheers for me." - this seems to imply Harry also thinks Snape is alive? But then he has his utter shock in Chapter 3, so...)

It's also possible the reason for being clear about the canon divergence is specific to Snape - because he receives a redemption of sorts in Book 7, it's difficult for the reader to unknow all that information (because it shapes so much of Snape's previous actions, and attempts to justify at least some of them) - so we need might to be that much more clear about what Harry does and doesn't know about Snape, and knowing where the junction is where we veer AU, is a little more critical. (Maybe this wouldn't be quite so necessary for a pairing of Harry/someone less pivotal!)

Last but not least I do want to add about chapter 3: that meeting at the pub was wonderfully intense. Excellent, excellent work on that whole scene. I really do get the feeling that it upends Harry's entire foundation to have found Snape alive, so I do get the sense that making the belief of Snape's death stronger will only help make that scene more shocking. Your pacing throughout that whole scene? Perfection.

Characterisation: I really dig your Harry POV. Like, really really. The voice works so well, the narration sounds a lot like him, and the dialogue does too. You seem very at home here with his POV and it shows, it's very natural. I can't comment much on Snape as we've hardly seen anything of him, but I cheered!!! when Theo Nott arrived on the scene. (I have a special passion for the Slytherins we don't see often.) I thought he was just fabulous.

McGonagall was also a really great voice: the dialogue between her and Harry is equally natural. It's clear she no longer can see Harry as a child, a student, but at the same time there's an element of cautious patronising that remains there, possibly as though she knows something she doesn't want him to find out. This feels really McGonagall to me, as she was one of the main secret keepers throughout the series (e.g., in Book 3 never telling Harry about Sirius but talking about the situation with Rosmerta et al, in Book 1 the reveal that she's not going to punish Harry for flying up to retrieve Neville's Remembrall but rather offer him a spot on the Quidditch team - Harry is used to knowing that she plays her cards close to her chest). McGonagall feels like an early clue to the mystery, or if not one then she's set up as a very good red herring. You also get the sense that she's trying to talk to him as an adult, and kind of failing. Kingsley is more a peer for Harry than McGonagall probably ever will be, and her dialogue makes that clear.

I loved what we saw of the Unspeakable, though I think the dialogue goes a bit back and forth unnecessarily at times. It's possible this is from moving things around during editing and not realising something was moved without deleting its trace, but it's also possible that that was entirely intended. (In which case, I very much like!) I like her schtick very much, and I like how she has a sort of Doctor Who/Douglas Adams approach - it lends her a certain amount of surreality/madness/on another plane of understanding that Harry simply doesn't get. Like Luna, except a more adult version.

Speaking of Luna, I also want to have a shoutout here to your Luna and your Hermione characterisations. We hardly saw these characters in Chapter 1, but what I saw of them I really thought was true to form.

There's only one criticism I might have about the characterisation and that's less Harry's voice and internal narration and more his motivation. What is it that makes him want to solve this mystery, why has Snape's death become his white whale? After all it seems as though he hasn't ever even questioned it until a few words with Dumbledore's portrait. I get the sense that he wants to solve this mystery simply because the plot needs him to, but as we go along we do pick up reasons for why he might be so obsessed - being plagued by nightmares, not knowing what really happened because he can't remember, meeting an Unspeakable that gives him very strange clues, Ministry coverup, etc. The meeting with the Unspeakable is more solid motivation than anything Dumbledore's portrait says, but that's not til Chapter 3. I think some motivation needs to come sooner, in Chapter 1, that would probably be enough to really hook Harry of his own volition. Failing that, acknowledgement on Harry's part that nothing is wrong and everything is fine and every time he walks into a clue he starts to question more and more. (But this would then make his harping on Snape's death in Chapter 1 in the pub reunion night a bit anachronistic.)

Prose Style: My god, you have a gift here. Your descriptive passages are wonderfully visual - they're in a similar enough vein of the canon to feel recognisable, but in no way pastiche - you're a lot more adult than JKR's prose was. Your vocabulary game is on-point - I think the right words are in the right places enough times that I didn't notice if they aren't. The imagery is really leaping off the page, and moreover it's really fun and engaging to read. Description is 10000% your forte and it shines. I couldn't quote you the passages I liked best because there are so many and I'm already rambling, but for a start I find the introduction of the Bull's Eye pub is just excellent:

The pub straddled a turning, grilleworked windows on each red-brick flank, on the near side a greengrocer's with overpriced fruit and veg piled in wooden stalls under a torn awning. Untrimmed ivy trailed up the tidy frontage, the upper storey like the prow of a ship with the entrance recessed below. A wooden shingle creaked in the breeze; above it, speared on a pike, the bull's head from a carousel ride flourished its horns. [...]

Eyes adjusting, he sized up the amber-lit room. Tables, a third of them occupied, were scattered around several timber posts. Just inside the door, two leather-cushioned carved-oak booths like choir stalls created a sense of rustic intimacy. An unlit brick fireplace was built into the west wall, reminding Harry of the Gryffindor common room. Art-nouveau curlicues of potted ivy, far more manicured than the shaggy mess outside, tinted the sunlight slanting through latticed panes. A swinging door with a porthole window slapped onto what must be the kitchen. Behind the glossy stretch of bar, fitted with brass rails at the order station, squat decanters and slender bottles wrapped in fancy paper labels glinted on shelves.

Yes, there are a lot of words, but their function is more to be precise than purple, and it is extremely precise: the whole scene is very well-painted. Outstanding work!

I hope that wasn't too direct. All in all, I think this is a really great piece, and I really (really!!!) dig your writing style (on which I've made some notes for myself - thanks!). If I weren't reviewing it with the explicit intent to analyse it to give concrit on this piece, I don't think I'd've at all minded being dragged along for the casefic ride instead of getting to anticipate and solve along with Harry, and would have left a comment being very keen to read more, because, well, I am keen to read more! Let me know if there's any other way I can be of assistance, or if you have any further questions! And thanks for a really interesting read :D

[perverse_idyll]

Hello! I'm dashing in and dashing out to let you know your excellent and thought-provoking feedback hasn't gone to waste! I've had to catch up on some work and then finish my overdue crit for another participant, so every bit of my time has been spoken for. But rest assured I've read your comments, and they've provided a whole new fascinating perspective on certain aspects of the fic. I'm way overdue for bed right now, but I'll be back to mull things over later. One point that stands out: it never occurred to me before to view this story in the light of a casefic! I experienced a brief head slap moment, because of course there are elements of mystery here that might benefit from a different framework. I'm not actually writing a straight-up casefic, but applying that sense of structure or approaching the opening chapters as the soil in which to plant clues might give me a few insights into how to lure the reader deeper.

Anyway, I can tell my ability to string words together is about to unravel, so I'll save any further response for later. But for starters, thank you so much for your careful and specific examples and observations!