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Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter/Shadowrun)

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Dunkelzahn said:
A second-year student had reached the front of the line of dueling volunteers, and, upon ascending the platform, he brushed back his already perfectly-coiffed blond hair, raised his wand in the standard gesture of challenge, and called out, loud enough for the rest of the room to hear over the general din."
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Delete the stray quotation mark at the end of the sentence.
 
Love this story! I'm, of course, really, REALLY looking forward to whatever comes next. The line about his "perfectly coiffured head" was awesome and reading the fall-out from Draco's unbelievably stupid challenge to Harry is going to be SO MUCH FUN!!! Oh... and of course, LUNA! and Su Li... Gotta wonder which one of them will be the next damsel carried off to Harry's lair.

Anyway - thanks, as always, for this story.

Edmond
 
As a rail fan myself, I love the attention to detail given to that area of the story. Also looking forward to Harry meeting Smaugey. I hope he learns to speak to him, seeing as they share so many similar characteristics with the Drake Dog.
 
At one point in the story, just before Harry eats the Troll, you wrote:

""But you've not got any better chance of fighting a troll than we do," Hannah insisted. "The more people we have, the better…" she trailed off as Harry reached out grabbed a carving knife from a nearby platter — eight inches of tempered carbon-steel blade and a four-inch tang wrapped up in a well-seasoned oak handle — and proceeded to wad it up with one hand as easily as if it were made of tissue paper. Even when he squeezed down on the edge, the steel gave way before his skin so much as took a nick. When she examined it after he dropped the mess of twisted steel and splintered oak on the table, Hannah could even see the boy's fingerprints impressed into the metal."

One of the things that I wonder is how does this bit affect how Harry is perceived later on? I would have thought that maybe, just maybe, one of the students would have picked up that twisted bit of metal and taken it around
to show all the other students - and that quietly, a belief would begin to circulate that annoying Harry was a very, very, very, very bad idea and that by the time the "duel" between Harry and Draco happened, the rest of the students would have come to see that and would be taking side-bets as to how long Draco was going to live or how bad his wounds would be, once Harry finished with him.

Your thoughts??? Nothing that I know of moves faster than light, other than gossip.

Regards,
Edmond
 
Edmond G. Bertrand said:
Your thoughts??? Nothing that I know of moves faster than light, other than gossip.
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1)The different houses in hogwarts seem pretty isolated from one another socially(not as much in this story as in canon, but still), something that would limit the spread of gossip.
2)Unless one the students thinks to grab that knife within seconds of that scene, and keep it hidden from the teachers there's not going to be any evidence, so such rumors will probably be dismissed.
3)It's a magical dual, the fact that Harry is super strong and physically tough doesn't matter to that, that's down to magical power and resistance. Not that the students would completely ignore physical strength, but they'd consider it much less important than children in RL would.
 
Edmond G. Bertrand said:
At one point in the story, just before Harry eats the Troll, you wrote:

""But you've not got any better chance of fighting a troll than we do," Hannah insisted. "The more people we have, the better…" she trailed off as Harry reached out grabbed a carving knife from a nearby platter — eight inches of tempered carbon-steel blade and a four-inch tang wrapped up in a well-seasoned oak handle — and proceeded to wad it up with one hand as easily as if it were made of tissue paper. Even when he squeezed down on the edge, the steel gave way before his skin so much as took a nick. When she examined it after he dropped the mess of twisted steel and splintered oak on the table, Hannah could even see the boy's fingerprints impressed into the metal."

One of the things that I wonder is how does this bit affect how Harry is perceived later on? I would have thought that maybe, just maybe, one of the students would have picked up that twisted bit of metal and taken it around
to show all the other students - and that quietly, a belief would begin to circulate that annoying Harry was a very, very, very, very bad idea and that by the time the "duel" between Harry and Draco happened, the rest of the students would have come to see that and would be taking side-bets as to how long Draco was going to live or how bad his wounds would be, once Harry finished with him.

Your thoughts??? Nothing that I know of moves faster than light, other than gossip.

Regards,
Edmond
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Among the Hufflepuffs, the knife certainly had that sort of effect; though, the rumors about him punching out a troll and destroying a couple of castle walls were a tad more prevalent in the rest of the school.

As for rumors about him being rather formidable... wait for 3.12. Both the knife incident and the troll will be rather overshadowed at that point.
 
This just makes me laugh so damn much.... Hehehehhee....
 
The Unicorn said:
Not native to the British Isles, or anywhere in Europe, I doubt many of the students would have heard of them...the Patil twins might have.
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Regular badgers, which are sufficiently common in the British Isles that they get culled from time to time (they shouldn't be, but there's this superstition about them being an infection reservoir for Bovine Tuberculosis), are quite ferocious. Badger-baiting - setting a pack of dogs on a badger and betting on how long it lasts and how many dogs it'll take down before it dies - used to be quite the sport before it was banned.
 
AndrewWolfe said:
Regular badgers, which are sufficiently common in the British Isles that they get culled from time to time (they shouldn't be, but there's this superstition about them being an infection reservoir for Bovine Tuberculosis), are quite ferocious. Badger-baiting - setting a pack of dogs on a badger and betting on how long it lasts and how many dogs it'll take down before it dies - used to be quite the sport before it was banned.
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Sure, and why Huffelpuffs have them as their animal, I was replying to the suggestion about Honey Badgers specifically.
 
The Unicorn said:
Sure, and why Huffelpuffs have them as their animal, I was replying to the suggestion about Honey Badgers specifically.
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Yes, and the fic's set in the early 1990 in Britain.

Ergo, and having been born in Britain two years before Harry's canon DOB I can assure you of this, honey badger references from an average muggleborn kid in that timeframe would be a flat-out anachronism. Hardly anyone had heard of the bloody things until that noxious 'honey badger don't give a shit' meme a few years ago, and if you had it was something you saw on a nature documentary once and didn't remember.
 
Doghead13 said:
Yes, and the fic's set in the early 1990 in Britain.

Ergo, and having been born in Britain two years before Harry's canon DOB I can assure you of this, honey badger references from an average muggleborn kid in that timeframe would be a flat-out anachronism. Hardly anyone had heard of the bloody things until that noxious 'honey badger don't give a shit' meme a few years ago, and if you had it was something you saw on a nature documentary once and didn't remember.
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Pretty much what I figured. As I said the only students I can think of a resonable explanation to have them come up with a reference to Honey badgers are the Patils
 
Doghead13 said:
Yes, and the fic's set in the early 1990 in Britain.

Ergo, and having been born in Britain two years before Harry's canon DOB I can assure you of this, honey badger references from an average muggleborn kid in that timeframe would be a flat-out anachronism. Hardly anyone had heard of the bloody things until that noxious 'honey badger don't give a shit' meme a few years ago, and if you had it was something you saw on a nature documentary once and didn't remember.
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Welp, digital foot into pixelated mouth.

If I'm being honest I both did not know or care if honey badgers existed there in that time. Though glad for the knowledge otherwise, learning new stuff is always a plus for forums like this.

My point however, is that for every animal in the animal kingdom exists one that took a few lvls of badass.

Some... more than others.
 
Just finished reading this. Took two days.

im in love. Please sir, Please. Give us more.

hell, I even have a subscription to CaerAzkaban, had it for Years now, should probably actually Read those emails one of these days...
 
Another great chapter, cant wait for more. I would also like to see Luna added to harrys collection, that girls needs much affection ( I also wouldn't mind seeing fleur or gabriel added to that mix :D ).
 
hwjumeau said:
Another great chapter, cant wait for more. I would also like to see Luna added to harrys collection, that girls needs much affection ( I also wouldn't mind seeing fleur or gabriel added to that mix :D ).
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We're still in the 2nd year, wait at least 2 years until the triwizard thingy happens. Though they'll probably want to change out the dragons from the event, even if they think he'll just be in the audience that sounds like a recipe for disaster...
 
Man, Luna is speaking some serious BS. "He didn't promise..." he did, Luna, or else he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to hide the transgression. And furthermore, getting cute with wording when you have a verbal agreement to not be eaten seems like a pre-eminently dumb move. Not the cute-insanity, or the appealing cryptids thing, but straight up darwin-award winning, remove from the genepool levels of dumb moves. It's on par with Malfoy's things, because both of those are trying to convince the multi-ton magical creature to shed part of it's humanity. Teaching the lizard that your word isn't a bond, is to invite genocide. And now, instead of going "Hmm, he didn't want my dad to tell all and sundry that he was a dragon, so clearly I am completely exempt from anything resembling common sense, and shall blather on to anyone that he is, in fact, a dragon. The Nargles tell me so." And no-one listens, but that's not important. By this example alone, she is not to be trusted, not to be stolen, not to have any positive reaction with Harry at all without some sort of resolution. Even her initial meeting proved that Harry had a point to be cross with her, because quite clearly her dad has taught her to lie to get her way, and that when dealing person to person you have free reign to manipulate and do whatever becuse I didn't say I wouldn't, after all. At least this Lockhart has the good sense to not even promise things he can't deliver on, and even seems to be actually trying at being a teacher.

Do I understand this was a while ago? Yes, I just finished reading the story though (didn't know it had been adopted so well! Really, aside from this (and I have issues stemming from my childhood with people promising and then weasling out of it) I have no complaints, and quite enjoy how you've kept the style)
Do I care that she's eleven? No, I learned that implying a promise counts when I was seven. Trying to get cute with shit just leads to people not trusting you, at least at the interpersonal level.

I hope she gets some repercussions, and it's not just waved away as a "Lovegood" thing. At least so Harry doesn't learn any bad habits.

Hermione apologized when she realized sleep deprivation was making her rude, after all.

Fuck. I hate the story-telling tropes where chicks get free-reign. Or any-one, but at least when dudes do it, there's either a power-trip, or we're shown it's the bad guy, not the "Oh, you," response fiction females get. Again, rest of the story is amazing, and I'm not going to stop reading, I'll just silently (from now on) grumble.
 
Profipfreely said:
Man, Luna is speaking some serious BS.
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This fic's version of Luna - at least the Luna who exists in the fragmented rough form of it that I wrote - came to be due to my becoming utterly sick of the rash of Seer!Lunas who'd been cropping up in seemingly every second fanfic at the time I was working on EtD; as a result I decided to write a gently stark staring insane Luna who really rather desperately needs someone to take care of her because she's functionally incapable of doing so herself, and the way that developed in the writing she turned out to have inherited it from her dad.

As such the chance that Luna actually knows what (if anything) went through her dad's head in composing that article are slim to nonexistent with what she told Harry being what she believed at the time she said it, and what she believes at the current moment in the fic is most likely completely unrelated as her perception of (and ability to perceive) reality wanders from one day to the next. About the only consistent thing is her inability to perceive how the varied strangeness that comes out of her mouth could somehow be harmful to someone; I'd hazard a guess that she currently believes Harry's nature is common knowledge, with referring to him as a dragon no more a breach of confidence than saying 'It's raining!' is spilling some sort of secret, and telling her otherwise is most likely to get a reaction of total incomprehension out of the poor girl; she knows what all those words mean but can't make any sense of them in that order. She is, at the end of the day, quite mad.

As for her dad, he's the sort of person who thinks that writing your name backwards would be enough to make your identity impossible to unravel: a very clever, in some regards quite intelligent, well-meaning, and honestly harmless so long as you don't try to get him to keep a secret, messily insane idiot.

Both of them are nonmalevolent but their grip on reality died along with Luna's mother.
 
In the original snippet I read, years and years ago, I probably didn't pick up on that. Xeno being a dick and breaking a promise was okay, not because he was an adult, but because it was straightforward. It was still a horrible thing to do to a child (which it's been pointed out that at that point Harry still sounded quite young), but it didn't reach the manipulative mental contortions because it was straightforward. People lie, the end. It is interesting to note that you had intended Luna to be unable to really function, though I'm fairly uncertain that most of the wizards could really function without being able to magic things, so she's not really alone. Likewise, the lack of logic isn't that big of a difference, unless it's a complete lack instead of the flawed base assumption that most of the other people have.

To that end, I still say that even if she's actually crazy and can't see the connection that is quite clear, there still should be some kind of resolution before there's pleasant interactions, because someone being actually crazy isn't something most people would think from the small sample size. (Three total meetings with Lovegoods, and nothing pleasant.)

Also, Doghead, good to know you're still alive! Also, the seer!Luna has not really gone down in recent times, and it's up there with annoying tropes. Right along with Dumbledore ending every sentence with "My boy", and people who think Canon!Snape wasn't a hundred times worse than James Potter ever was and/or have him bang Harry. If it's a kink, all cool, but it's 50 shades level of abusive relationship. He's an interesting character, but then, so is Voldemort.
 
Na, I think Canon!Snape wanted James due to his Patronus being a female Doe. Lily didn't magically become Female!James just because she married him, she was still her own person.

For Snape to have that as his image of all that was perfect, makes me think that the relationship was FAR more than just Enemies from his side.


But this is my own view. Doesn't make Snape some good person, or better than James.
 
On the subject of Luna:

Despite being an interesting take on the character, that version of Luna is actually one of the elements I left behind with the original. This version is much less tragic, less so even than the Luna in canon. In this version, she's a fairly well-adjusted little girl who idolizes her father.

As for why I made the change, as she was she would have been a major complication to the overall plot of the story I'm trying to write --- an almost insurmountable one, as a matter of fact. There's no way this Harry would have left the original version to her own devices after finding out about her situation, so she either had to pass under his radar completely or her situation had to change. I went with changing her backstory, most of which I don't plan to directly showcase in the story. After the backstory changed, so did her behavior, and eventually she arrived at the version I've written.

When this Luna lost her mother, rather than breaking down, Odd kept his wits about him and stayed strong for his daughter, leading to a fairly happy and well-adjusted family life. Luna appreciated that a great deal and latched onto her father in the wake of the tragedy as a result. Now she is quite dedicated to being just like him when she grows up, which in her estimation, means that she wants to be the best investigative journalist in the world. It also means that her father can do no wrong in her eyes, hence her vehement defense of his actions on the train even in the face of their rather shady character.

On the topic of odd creatures that no one else can see, those are still a thing, but in this setting, they're quite real and the Lovegoods know why they can see them but other people can't (the critters are minor fae, and the Lovegood family has a slight tinge of fae ancestry allowing them to partially see through the fae methods of concealment). There's no divination involved in the situation at all. That knowledge also means that Luna knows why her assertions about unseen critters are met with disbelief, hence she's not particularly bothered by it.

As for the canon bullying, well, Luna is an aspiring investigative journalist whose notions of privacy and decorum are rather situational and whose father owns the largest privately-controlled printing press and distribution network in the wizarding world (the ones that are larger are government-operated propaganda engines, like the Prophet). Her prospective bullies are self-conscious teenage girls who live in the same dorm as she does. Luna has a fairly strong position from which to negotiate a detente.

All told, Luna is a fairly normal girl who will eventually grow into the hard-nosed, pushy, reporter archetype who is almost religiously dedicated to the idea that 'the public has a right to know' and for whom no story is too outlandish. I've been toying with the idea of using her as a recurrent character in the future in that capacity, possibly as a means of forcing Harry to interact with someone he doesn't like very much in order to illustrate that side of his character.

In response to the original comment about hoping Luna faces some consequences for the steaming pile of... justification she delivered in 3.5.5, those already came home to roost in that same section --- Harry now doesn't like her or her father very much --- a dislike which is reasonable and justified and which is thus unlikely to change in the future. He accepted Luna's justification because he had to acknowledge it held to the letter of the agreement (even though it completely violated the spirit), taking it as an admonishment to be more careful with contracts and agreements in the future; however, he was certainly not happy about the situation, nor will he be eager to trust or, for that matter, to interact with either of the Lovegoods in the future.

It was intended as more of a learning experience for Harry than anything else, and Harry is nothing if not a quick study.
 
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Dunkelzahn said:
On the subject of Luna:

Despite being an interesting take on the character, that version of Luna is actually one of the elements I left behind with the original. This version is much less tragic, less so even than the Luna in canon. In this version, she's a fairly well-adjusted little girl who idolizes her father in this take.
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Aye, fair go mate.

Much of what I had was a series of loose, semi-connected, ideas halfway through being pieces into an actual cohesive narrative, with a high probability of many of them being dropped or altered almost beyond recognition. Luna I'd vaguely thought of using to push Harry past being stuck in the mindset of a nine-year-old via dropping what amounts to a surrogate daughter on him. Not something I'd ever developed beyond that initial 'Hey, I could use this idea I've vaguely been thinking about like this' thought.

It's really very interesting to watch where you're taking the story - at this point you've already used a lot of good ideas that simply didn't occur to me. Straight off the bat, I'd been planning to have Quirrel endrun the goblins by going through the wall into the chess room.

Profipfreely said:
Also, Doghead, good to know you're still alive! Also, the seer!Luna has not really gone down in recent times, and it's up there with annoying tropes. Right along with Dumbledore ending every sentence with "My boy", and people who think Canon!Snape wasn't a hundred times worse than James Potter ever was and/or have him bang Harry. If it's a kink, all cool, but it's 50 shades level of abusive relationship. He's an interesting character, but then, so is Voldemort.
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Aye, still ain't dead yet. I'm mostly active on Caer Azkaban at the moment - I've had it with the Pit of Voles for a number of reasons, let's not go into that in the middle of Dunkelzahn's thread - but am planning to start crossposting to these forums more in the not so distant future.
 
Dunkelzahn you are a bastard, you made me read this in one go, it's 2 20 am where I am from!!
Anyway excellent fic, can't wait to see the reactions to Harry's duel, specially if we take into account Molly's Insinuations and the accident from last year, now it won't be only lucius' masculinity called in question, but even his magic :)
 
So what does Harry's flame consist of? Based on upon the description of his flame being a blue-white and the fact that he vaporized a suit of armor with a blast of flame I'd guess it to be Dicyanoacetylene as it produces a bright blue-white flame and burns at a temperature of 4,990 degrees celsius in oxygen. Iron boils at 2,862 degrees celsius.
 
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