Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter/Shadowrun)

[Xanaris]

I'm a little suprised the writer's namesake didn't do another 'what was that noise' scene, but eh.

Also, on another note, was this forgotten? I think it was a holdover from the last version of the story, but unless I've lost track of time shouldn't this have happened/be happening soon? It was said in the first year, and we're in the second year now.

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I'm pretty sure that already happened, but it was just glossed over. I think there was one or two lines about the centaurs being in the middle of some conclave but he found it boring.

 

[Dunkelzahn]

Would those big packages be large chunks of basilisk? He better have that meat cured or in a preservation spell.

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They would be. It's Harry's go-to gift for the foreseeable future.

I'm a little suprised the writer's namesake didn't do another 'what was that noise' scene, but eh.

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This one was a lot quieter than Avebury, but there is something in the same vein already written in the next segment about someone who was a great deal closer.

I'm pretty sure that already happened, but it was just glossed over. I think there was one or two lines about the centaurs being in the middle of some conclave but he found it boring.

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It's in 1.9.0, second paragraph.

 

[Edmond G. Bertrand]

Couple of odd questions occurred to me. (1) Does Harry show up on radar when he's
a dragon? "Scottish Area Control Centre (ScACC), which controls aircraft over Scotland,
Northern Ireland, Northern England and the North Sea from 2,500 feet up to 66,000 feet."

What would they see? If Harry's metallic on the outside, would he reflect radar? What
kind of signal would he give off, since he's so big (and growing).

(2) What do you think about when you're writing Harry's character? You've kept him
young (and innocent) in so many ways (and it really does work for the story you've
created).

(3) Do you have plans for Hermione to manifest any other powers?

Regards,
Edmond

 

[ScarletFlames]

I am pretty sure he doesn't fly that high as he's trying to avoid being spotted by both mundanes AND magicals, add to that he usually only flies around the Black Forest which is a magical zone thus muggles avoid that area like it's the Bermuda Triangle without even noticing that they do so. Probably also has been given some simple charms to prevent accidental detection from muggle means.

 

[Doghead13]

Couple of odd questions occurred to me. (1) Does Harry show up on radar when he's
a dragon? "Scottish Area Control Centre (ScACC), which controls aircraft over Scotland,
Northern Ireland, Northern England and the North Sea from 2,500 feet up to 66,000 feet."

Click to shrink...

As I saw it absolutely he'd give a big old radar return - at this point probably larger than an aircraft his rough size due to his much rougher surface, the way he's built would really stand out on a search radar.

However - this is happening in the northwest of Scotland, in the middle of some of the roughest terrain anywhere on Earth - the peaks aren't nearly as high, but to find as much variance in altitude within the same horizontal distance you have to go to places such as the Himalayas.

I picked the location for Hogwarts for this fic - which I've since consistently used for all my subsequent fics - with a great deal of care. It had to be further down the railway between Mallaig and Fort William due to the prominent inclusion in the films of the incredibly visually distinctive Glenfinnan Viaduct: that curved bridge with the multiple arches. To a Scots railfan, it ties Hogwarts to the northwestern half of the Mallaig line as resoundingly as putting the Statue of Liberty in your establishing shots ties something to New York.

I settled on Loch Morar largely as there is an area of flat land at the northeast 'corner' of the loch sufficient to provide a location for Hogwarts itself. This is at an elevation of roughly 40 feet above sea level - I understand that the surface of the loch is about thirty feet above sea level. North and east of this area, the land rises up very steeply - about mile north of my chosen location for the castle there is a ridgeline standing at roughly 2,000 feet altitude with higher peaks such as Sgurr na ba Ruadh, and similar ridgelines surround the north end of the loch to the south and east, in places rising to peaks over 3,000 feet; meanwhile to the west there is only a very narrow corridor giving line of sight out to sea, and that's got a two-and-a-half-thousand-foot-tall island smack in front of it over just a few miles of water.

Here's a topographic map of the loch - you can click the map at any location to get an altitude, and zoom it and pan it around.

http://en-gb.topographic-map.com/places/Loch-Morar-785465/

There are some topographic differences between reality and the fic, most specifically the crack in the hills on the south side of the loch where first the goblins and later the Grangers pass through, and I believe that in the fic there is a low-laying area of flat land on the south shore close to the head of the loch containing Hogsmeade, but aside from that it is possible to pin down the locations of every event thus far in the entire fic to a specific gridref. The story describes real, findable, places throughout, a policy I'm delighted to see Dunkelzahn continuing - if you were to come to this part of the world and meet up, I could lead you to the exact location I established for Hogwart, and if we were to head down south to Avebury I could show you the exact stone at which Harry's original transformation occurred.

In general, Loch Morar is one of the best places in Scotland that I can think of to hide a large magic castle and related small town, particularly in the section of land between Glenfinnan and Mallaig - the location even comes with a set of RL ruins, and for the 'lake' hey presto, you've got this whacking great freshwater loch complete with its very own loch monster folklore. It is also conveniently in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere while being only a few miles from an extant real-life railway line, which conveniently features that exceedingly distinctive bridge. It's also conveniently placed with two thousand foot tall lumps of solid rock between it and every broadcast antenna in the world, certainly as of the mid-90s; Hermione's canon description of a radio set 'producing nothing but static' at Hogwarts is precisely what I'd expect a fully-operational commercial radio set to do there to this day and I don't believe anyone has ever got reception on a cellular phone out there. To get a radio (or mobile phone) signal in or out, you have to run it via a satellite; to get a radar sweep of the glen the loch lies in, you have to fly an aircraft fitted with that radar along the loch.

Long story short, anything below 2,000 feet above Loch Morar is behind the horizon for any military or civil aviation radar ground installation in Britain.

 

[Dunkelzahn]

Couple of odd questions occurred to me. (1) Does Harry show up on radar when he's
a dragon? "Scottish Area Control Centre (ScACC), which controls aircraft over Scotland,
Northern Ireland, Northern England and the North Sea from 2,500 feet up to 66,000 feet."

What would they see? If Harry's metallic on the outside, would he reflect radar? What
kind of signal would he give off, since he's so big (and growing).

(2) What do you think about when you're writing Harry's character? You've kept him
young (and innocent) in so many ways (and it really does work for the story you've
created).

(3) Do you have plans for Hermione to manifest any other powers?

Regards,
Edmond

Click to shrink...

1. That pretty well covers the radar situation, so thanks Doghead13.
   
   I will add that Harry's flights outside the Hogwarts area have been in the form of a pigeon, so even if he retains the radio signature of a metallic object --- entirely possible depending on how much he pays attention to the transfiguration --- he's still got the geometry of a pigeon, so that'd be weird but otherwise unremarkable.
2. I'm glad his character has continued to come across as intended. Mostly, I just try to keep in mind what he should or shouldn't have an intuitive understanding of at his level of maturity. He can handle purely intellectual and technical stuff with the best of them, but when he runs into something he doesn't have a feel for yet, I try to show him puzzled about it yet willing to rely on trusted people for their judgment on the situation. Basically, I've tried to write out the learning process as it goes. Between that and making sure to show wonder at simple things that are pretty cool when you think about them, it seems to have worked reasonably well so far.
3. Hermione is a smart witch with a near-perfect memory. She's not particularly powerful, nor is she particularly weak. That's about it.

Also, Doghead13, thanks for the topographical map. That is a great deal clearer on the topography of the area than the satellite maps (mostly Google and Bing) I'd been working with before.

 

[Edmond G. Bertrand]

THIS IS AWESOME. THANK YOU for providing such detail. Your positioning of Hogwarts at the northeastern end of that Lock makes incredible sense. I also love that you've put it in a spot where there is a RL rail-head that connects to the Glenfinnan Viaduct. VERY cool.

Now... question. Do you think that at some point the "bad guys" in magical society are going to get wind of the fact that Harry (or "someone") is using the rail-line for something more than moving students around? What does Harry or Abigail do if someone tries to... for instance... blow up the train? or sabotage the tracks? Would Snape, for instance, have cause to let his "inner evil" out in aid of Harry's cause and do a little pay-back himself?

Keep the awesomeness coming. This is the best story in the HP world that's currently being written.

As I saw it absolutely he'd give a big old radar return - at this point probably larger than an aircraft his rough size due to his much rougher surface, the way he's built would really stand out on a search radar.

However - this is happening in the northwest of Scotland, in the middle of some of the roughest terrain anywhere on Earth - the peaks aren't nearly as high, but to find as much variance in altitude within the same horizontal distance you have to go to places such as the Himalayas.

I picked the location for Hogwarts for this fic - which I've since consistently used for all my subsequent fics - with a great deal of care. It had to be further down the railway between Mallaig and Fort William due to the prominent inclusion in the films of the incredibly visually distinctive Glenfinnan Viaduct: that curved bridge with the multiple arches. To a Scots railfan, it ties Hogwarts to the northwestern half of the Mallaig line as resoundingly as putting the Statue of Liberty in your establishing shots ties something to New York.

I settled on Loch Morar largely as there is an area of flat land at the northeast 'corner' of the loch sufficient to provide a location for Hogwarts itself. This is at an elevation of roughly 40 feet above sea level - I understand that the surface of the loch is about thirty feet above sea level. North and east of this area, the land rises up very steeply - about mile north of my chosen location for the castle there is a ridge-line standing at roughly 2,000 feet altitude with higher peaks such as Sgurr na ba Ruadh, and similar ridgelines surround the north end of the loch to the south and east, in places rising to peaks over 3,000 feet; meanwhile to the west there is only a very narrow corridor giving line of sight out to sea, and that's got a two-and-a-half-thousand-foot-tall island smack in front of it over just a few miles of water.

Here's a topographic map of the loch - you can click the map at any location to get an altitude, and zoom it and pan it around.

http://en-gb.topographic-map.com/places/Loch-Morar-785465/

There are some topographic differences between reality and the fic, most specifically the crack in the hills on the south side of the loch where first the goblins and later the Grangers pass through, and I believe that in the fic there is a low-laying area of flat land on the south shore close to the head of the loch containing Hogsmeade, but aside from that it is possible to pin down the locations of every event thus far in the entire fic to a specific grid-reference. The story describes real, findable, places throughout, a policy I'm delighted to see Dunkelzahn continuing - if you were to come to this part of the world and meet up, I could lead you to the exact location I established for Hogwart, and if we were to head down south to Avebury I could show you the exact stone at which Harry's original transformation occurred.

In general, Loch Morar is one of the best places in Scotland that I can think of to hide a large magic castle and related small town, particularly in the section of land between Glenfinnan and Mallaig - the location even comes with a set of RL ruins, and for the 'lake' hey presto, you've got this whacking great freshwater loch complete with its very own loch monster folklore. It is also conveniently in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere while being only a few miles from an extant real-life railway line, which conveniently features that exceedingly distinctive bridge. It's also conveniently placed with two thousand foot tall lumps of solid rock between it and every broadcast antenna in the world, certainly as of the mid-90s; Hermione's canon description of a radio set 'producing nothing but static' at Hogwarts is precisely what I'd expect a fully-operational commercial radio set to do there to this day and I don't believe anyone has ever got reception on a cellular phone out there. To get a radio (or mobile phone) signal in or out, you have to run it via a satellite; to get a radar sweep of the glen the loch lies in, you have to fly an aircraft fitted with that radar along the loch."



Long story short, anything below 2,000 feet above Loch Morar is behind the horizon for any military or civil aviation radar ground installation in Britain.

Click to shrink...

 

[Doghead13]

THIS IS AWESOME. THANK YOU for providing such detail. Your positioning of Hogwarts at the northeastern end of that Lock makes incredible sense. I also love that you've put it in a spot where there is a RL rail-head that connects to the Glenfinnan Viaduct. VERY cool.

Now... question. Do you think that at some point the "bad guys" in magical society are going to get wind of the fact that Harry (or "someone") is using the rail-line for something more than moving students around? What does Harry or Abigail do if someone tries to... for instance... blow up the train? or sabotage the tracks? Would Snape, for instance, have cause to let his "inner evil" out in aid of Harry's cause and do a little pay-back himself?

Keep the awesomeness coming. This is the best story in the HP world that's currently being written.

Click to shrink...

Not my work at this point, I'm just explaining parts I'd built that Dunkelzahn is now elaborating and improving upon.

As far as the expanded use of the rail line goes - old news is old in this fic, have a reread over the scenes around the usage of the railway, The limitations I established for other means of moving goods around in the Wizarding World went into place due to a lengthy conversation on Caer Azkaban about how little sense the Express itself made - why not just Portkey or Floo the students up? Obvious answer: limit Portkeys and the Floo. This then resulted in Hogsmeade (which I had already decided to expand) needing a supply line, and thus the daily return-journey train came to be - which needless to say proved extremely useful to the fic.

Basically, the majority of Hogsmeade's supplies - mostly meaning household fuel and food, though including pretty much everything else, travels north by rail, as does anyone either unwilling or unable to Apparate.

it's been public knowledge since the beginning and that was years before even Voldemort was born. As of the fic's current day there's been a daily mixed-traffic (that's passenger and freight in the same train) working between London and Hogsmeade for decades, long enough for characters like Jim Coates and Mac to have spent their entire working lives on the railway.

The fic's Hogsmeade is a good deal larger a town than what was seen in canon, largely due to part of my early development having heavily increased the size of the Wizarding World's population from what Rowling stated in an interview to the point it's big enough to actually support the infrastructure, complexity of government, and sporting establishments we see in canon, again in reaction to discussions on Caer Azkaban.

I had it that there were about two hundred thousand magical humans in Wizarding Britain - Dunkelzahn may have changed this, of course - with significant Diagon-like population centres in most of the UK's major cities.

BTW, Dunkelzahn - just thought I'd mention, I caught the names Wardale and Porta on the spot and started giggling like an idiot. Dream team!

 

[Mashadarof402]

1. That pretty well covers the radar situation, so thanks Doghead13.

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I will note that there is one exception though.

When the phoenix (Fawkes? I forget) was teaching him to use his flight organs and he put them into full throttle, he ended up above cloud cover. His estimation of better than half a mile means a minimum of +800 meters, though it's probably higher due to being above cloud cover (around 6000 feet for lowest types). Let's put it at 1km for a nice round number. Since it took 5 seconds to get there, that's a velocity of 200m/s or 720km/h, with a potential for increase. Incidentally, that also subjected Fawkes to 20gs pushing down due to the sudden acceleration.

A few more seconds of continued flight, say another 3, and he'd be 1.6km in the air. Well above the concealing geography for military radar to pick up.

Given his presumably largely vertical trajectory, rapid ascent rate and radar cross section, it would look like someone had set up a secret launch facility in the boonies of Scotland.

 

[Doghead13]

I will note that there is one exception though.

When the phoenix (Fawkes? I forget) was teaching him to use his flight organs and he put them into full throttle, he ended up above cloud cover. His estimation of better than half a mile means a minimum of +800 meters, though it's probably higher due to being above cloud cover (around 6000 feet for lowest types). Let's put it at 1km for a nice round number. Since it took 5 seconds to get there, that's a velocity of 200m/s or 720km/h, with a potential for increase. Incidentally, that also subjected Fawkes to 20gs pushing down due to the sudden acceleration.

A few more seconds of continued flight, say another 3, and he'd be 1.6km in the air. Well above the concealing geography for military radar to pick up.

Given his presumably largely vertical trajectory, rapid ascent rate and radar cross section, it would look like someone had set up a secret launch facility in the boonies of Scotland.

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As far as the top of the clouds goes, you'd be surprised - particularly when there's a large patch of open water around, which aren't exactly unheard of in that part of the country.

I have very clear memories of my first time over the pass south out of Applecross (which reaches a touch over 2,000 feet; it's the third-highest road in Scotland) which I first went up with a friend's family probably roundabout the time I was ten or eleven - next time I went across there was the day the fucking crab boat sank on Dad and me about seven or eight years later. Any rate we started out on an overcast day at sea level, drove up into a cloud bank, and not far from the top of the pass came up out of it. The view south and east looked like a fantasy flying islands sky painting. Sort of sight that sticks with you.

Dad was on Torridon MRT for the best part of twenty years and mentioned looking down at clouds from places like the ridge of Beinn Eigh a few times. That time was the only time I've done it from the ground myself.

 

[user71s2]

I loved this story the first time I read it, BUT now its like love x99!!! I hope your muse continues to be cooperative!

 

[Mashadarof402]

As far as the top of the clouds goes, you'd be surprised - particularly when there's a large patch of open water around, which aren't exactly unheard of in that part of the country.

I have very clear memories of my first time over the pass south out of Applecross (which reaches a touch over 2,000 feet; it's the third-highest road in Scotland) which I first went up with a friend's family probably roundabout the time I was ten or eleven - next time I went across there was the day the fucking crab boat sank on Dad and me about seven or eight years later. Any rate we started out on an overcast day at sea level, drove up into a cloud bank, and not far from the top of the pass came up out of it. The view south and east looked like a fantasy flying islands sky painting. Sort of sight that sticks with you.

Dad was on Torridon MRT for the best part of twenty years and mentioned looking down at clouds from places like the ridge of Beinn Eigh a few times. That time was the only time I've done it from the ground myself.

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*shrug*

If it was just the clouds, that'd be some wiggle room. But better than half a mile sets a lower limit of +800 meters, which is higher than the ridges you mentioned. That's not accounting for the remaining acceleration putting him above that number.

 

[Dunkelzahn]

*shrug*

If it was just the clouds, that'd be some wiggle room. But better than half a mile sets a lower limit of +800 meters, which is higher than the ridges you mentioned. That's not accounting for the remaining acceleration putting him above that number.

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Yeah, the scene as written takes him pretty high. I wasn't thinking about the radar signatures at the time.

I suppose the radar technicians had an interesting night. Big radar signature appears in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, moving like a missile. Check with launch detection satellites reveals no heat signature to speak of (not compared to a rocket, anyway), and it levels off to travel horizontally, so a plane is scrambled to investigate, but whatever it was it's gone entirely before anyone can put eyes on it. They spend a few days doing frequent overflights of the area trying to find something, but they find nothing but untouched moor and loch --- no facilities, no runways, not even any burned spots in the heather. Harry is either in Hogwarts or holed up working on assembling his new machine shop the whole time. Eventually, everyone gives up, and it becomes fodder for UFO enthusiasts.

Maybe I'll reference such an incident in the future if I find the opportunity.

 

[Edmond G. Bertrand]

SEE: for reference. I imagine that they see a HUGE object that doesn't respond to radio calls and they see it moving
across Scottish territory, they're going to send up several somebodies to have a look-see.

Yeah, the scene as written takes him pretty high. I wasn't thinking about the radar signatures at the time.

I suppose the radar technicians had an interesting night. Big radar signature appears in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, moving like a missile. Check with launch detection satellites reveals no heat signature to speak of (not compared to a rocket, anyway), and it levels off to travel horizontally, so a plane is scrambled to investigate, but whatever it was it's gone entirely before anyone can put eyes on it. They spend a few days doing frequent overflights of the area trying to find something, but they find nothing but untouched moor and loch --- no facilities, no runways, not even any burned spots in the heather. Harry is either in Hogwarts or holed up working on assembling his new machine shop the whole time. Eventually, everyone gives up, and it becomes fodder for UFO enthusiasts.

Maybe I'll reference such an incident in the future if I find the opportunity.

Click to shrink...

 

[ScarletFlames]

SEE: *videosnip* for reference. I imagine that they see a HUGE object that doesn't respond to radio calls and they see it moving
across Scottish territory, they're going to send up several somebodies to have a look-see.

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Yeah but as the quote said, the one time that he flew and was undoubtedly captured by radar was inordinately short. Also, his flight pattern was more similar to some sort of extremely agile rocket, there's a good chance they'd scramble jets to make sure it's not some super powerful aircraft as well as contact higher ups to make sure it's not a secret Anti-Missile-Missile project.

There's ways to project a false radar signature so it's not out of reason/screams magic, and if higher up contact was made there's a chance that someone is aware of that area being magical if they'd had contact with the goblins and cover it up as "classified, shut up". I do remember correctly that the local governments are secretly slightly aware of the magical community through goblin involvement, right?

 

[Doghead13]

SEE: (snipvid) for reference. I imagine that they see a HUGE object that doesn't respond to radio calls and they see it moving
across Scottish territory, they're going to send up several somebodies to have a look-see.

Click to shrink...

Oh yeah, there WILL have been follow-on overflight of the area - probably Tornadoes from RAF Lossiemouth - but here's the thing: from the ground, the result wouldn't be even remotely unusual and are certainly close enough to routine for Harry, absorbed by his discovery around his own capabilities, not to really register it - particularly if the result was keeping up out of a low-laying cloud bank over the east end of Loch Morar.

RAF training flights are a regular sight on the west coast, as are military aircraft flying low enough you can look down on them from places such as a neighbour's house two hundred feet up the side of the glen back in Diabaig, and there can't be many fishing boats in the northwest that have never been buzzed by some clever bugger practising a ground attack run; the RAF has some of the tightest terrain in the world right on their back door, of course they use it to practise flying in dense terrain.

What happens is, a few minutes after Harry comes back down below the hilltops and into the area of the muggle-repelling wards a couple of jets overfly the glen, likely keeping above the murk - wouldn't do to fly into a cloud stuffed with rocks now, would it - and noting the usual anomalous terrain-following radar returns from the section of restricted low-level airspace where this version of the muggle government understands that the magicals have a large structure believed to be Hogwarts, which are incidentally covered under the aircrew's signing of the Official Secrets Act. As this is happening a watch officer in Vauxhall Cross in London notifies his colleagues that the RAF's picked up and is investigating a low-altitude radar anomaly over one of the places of interest on his list, and an obvious conclusion is drawn: bloody wizards up to their usual tricks. Down in Morar at the west end of the loch of the same name some old teuchters grumble about the racket, though not as loudly as they might since the boys are keeping the skids out the dirt for once. Then MI5 step up in reaction to that watch officer's alert, the RAF aircrews are called back to Lossie, the contact goes into the MI5 files on the so-called 'wizarding world' probably with a note to look into the possibility that the magicals are developing flying devices larger than a carpet, and everyone gets on with their lives.

The population of Hogsmeade shrug. Muggles must've decided to make noises with their flying contraptions on Tuesday this week. Meh.

 

[Erik Phantom]

Something that I noticed while reading 3.13.2 was this section

He sighed, blowing out a plume of fragrant smoke as the memories rose unbidden. Back then he'd been bright-eyed and optimistic. Betty, his sweetheart from Hogwarts, had just given him the most important 'yes' of his life, and Frank had been over the moon. Then not even two weeks later, she'd disappeared overnight without a word, leaving behind nothing but an engagement ring and unanswered questions — questions Frank had been desperate to answer.

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Which says that this 'Betty' was his fiancee. Now, 'Betty' rang a bell so I went back to 3.2.6 where Abigail talks about her childhood friend Betty who vanished and her family home was burnt down (See below)

Her daughter fell silent for a moment considering her response. "Do you remember what happened to Betty?" Abigail asked. "From back after my first year?"

Her mother winced; Abigail never talked about Betty anymore, not since… Betty had been one of her daughter's childhood friends, a muggle-born witch who had once lived two blocks over. During the summer between Abigail's first and second year, she had disappeared, and her family home had burned to the ground. The official investigation never went anywhere — they never did — but everyone knew how that sort of thing went.

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Now, the implication I got from 3.2.6 was that her friend, who was also 11-12 years old, was taken during the summer due to her mudblood status and... broken... shall be we say, like Snape says happens when illustrating how disgusting the Wizarding World is. This hits particularly strongly as it is a literal prepubescent child taken from her home to be mind-raped into eternal servitude and/or sexual slavery with what is essentially the complete complicity of the government.

In 3.13.2 though, 'Frank' seems to have been engaged to a Betty who suffered identical circumstances, when the implication I got from Abigail's side of things was that Betty was her friend and peer of a similar age, not a fully grown witch.

It could just be a case of using the same name for two different but similar characters of course, but in that case one or the other should probably be changed to avoid confusion. Otherwise, the term 'childhood friend' strongly implies a social peer that is either the same age (or close enough to count. About +/- 1-3 years difference between them generally) that are raised at the same time and play together, if Betty was a adult or a much older teenager who was on the cusp of becoming an adult another term would likely be more suited.


Oh, right, also, this is probably the best HP fanfic I've ever read, damn good job. (Realized I probably shouldn't and didn't want to just dump critique for my 'introductory' first post to the thread, but I'm naturally a lurker who generally only pipes up when I have something to add, and generally that's typos and the like. So have a resounding kudos too boot!) (<--- That "too" right there is bugging me, it looks and feels deeply wrong but I know it shouldn't be since I'm using it correctly as "as well"... urge to change it to "to" is insistent though, must be the "boot" following it... Gah, gotta hit post before I cave.)

PS: Something I was just curious about. Not 100% sure if I'm I misremembering the Harry Potter books, if it's a authorial quirk, or if it's something in Harry's character that has been changed from canon deliberately due to him being a dragon and all, but he uses a lot more informal language that is 'technically' incorrect (truncations such as "bein'" or contractions such as "ain't") than I ever remember seeing from anyone in the books. Not an issue, just curious as that sort of change in mentality in a character is pretty significant. Given it seems to affect almost solely Harry, and he's been turned into a dragon, I'm inclined to say it's a deliberate character shift rather than, say, your own mannerisms and way of speaking leaking through to a character.

 

[Doghead13]

PS: Something I was just curious about. Not 100% sure if I'm I misremembering the Harry Potter books, if it's a authorial quirk, or if it's something in Harry's character that has been changed from canon deliberately due to him being a dragon and all, but he uses a lot more informal language that is 'technically' incorrect (truncations such as "bein'" or contractions such as "ain't") than I ever remember seeing from anyone in the books. Not an issue, just curious as that sort of change in mentality in a character is pretty significant. Given it seems to affect almost solely Harry, and he's been turned into a dragon, I'm inclined to say it's a deliberate character shift rather than, say, your own mannerisms and way of speaking leaking through to a character.

Click to shrink...

Deliberate design choice on my part back when this was my fic. I decided very early on to make the character speak in a more childlike manner than he does in canon as part of the process of turning him into a Calvin expy, and his mangling of English is a part of that.

Think of it as, it takes a very special sort of nutter to dare tell an overexcited phenomenally powerful dragon he's saying something wrong.

 

[Dunkelzahn]

Something that I noticed while reading 3.13.2 was this section



Which says that this 'Betty' was his fiancee. Now, 'Betty' rang a bell so I went back to 3.2.6 where Abigail talks about her childhood friend Betty who vanished and her family home was burnt down (See below)


Now, the implication I got from 3.2.6 was that her friend, who was also 11-12 years old, was taken during the summer due to her mudblood status and... broken... shall be we say, like Snape says happens when illustrating how disgusting the Wizarding World is. This hits particularly strongly as it is a literal prepubescent child taken from her home to be mind-raped into eternal servitude and/or sexual slavery with what is essentially the complete complicity of the government.

In 3.13.2 though, 'Frank' seems to have been engaged to a Betty who suffered identical circumstances, when the implication I got from Abigail's side of things was that Betty was her friend and peer of a similar age, not a fully grown witch.

It could just be a case of using the same name for two different but similar characters of course, but in that case one or the other should probably be changed to avoid confusion. Otherwise, the term 'childhood friend' strongly implies a social peer that is either the same age (or close enough to count. About +/- 1-3 years difference between them generally) that are raised at the same time and play together, if Betty was a adult or a much older teenager who was on the cusp of becoming an adult another term would likely be more suited.


Oh, right, also, this is probably the best HP fanfic I've ever read, damn good job. (Realized I probably shouldn't and didn't want to just dump critique for my 'introductory' first post to the thread, but I'm naturally a lurker who generally only pipes up when I have something to add, and generally that's typos and the like. So have a resounding kudos too boot!) (<--- That "too" right there is bugging me, it looks and feels deeply wrong but I know it shouldn't be since I'm using it correctly as "as well"... urge to change it to "to" is insistent though, must be the "boot" following it... Gah, gotta hit post before I cave.)

PS: Something I was just curious about. Not 100% sure if I'm I misremembering the Harry Potter books, if it's a authorial quirk, or if it's something in Harry's character that has been changed from canon deliberately due to him being a dragon and all, but he uses a lot more informal language that is 'technically' incorrect (truncations such as "bein'" or contractions such as "ain't") than I ever remember seeing from anyone in the books. Not an issue, just curious as that sort of change in mentality in a character is pretty significant. Given it seems to affect almost solely Harry, and he's been turned into a dragon, I'm inclined to say it's a deliberate character shift rather than, say, your own mannerisms and way of speaking leaking through to a character.

Click to shrink...

Wow, I had completely failed to notice that shared name. Strange coincidence, that.

I should go back and change one or the other to avoid giving that impression --- probably Abigail's friend, since her name was a complete throwaway. Though, to be honest, so were Frank and Betty before I overthought things --- again --- and the 'hire a private eye who'll report back later' scene grew into a film noir detective miniseries.

And, yeah, as Doghead mentioned, Harry's way of speaking was a deliberate design choice on his part which I decided to run with.

EDIT: Abigail's childhood friend is now named Alice.

 

[Erik Phantom]

Wow, I had completely failed to notice that shared name. Strange coincidence, that.

I should go back and change one or the other to avoid giving that impression --- probably Abigail's friend, since her name was a complete throwaway. Though, to be honest, so were Frank and Betty before I overthought things --- again --- and the 'hire a private eye who'll report back later' scene grew into a film noir detective miniseries.

And, yeah, as Doghead mentioned, Harry's way of speaking was a deliberate design choice on his part which I decided to run with.

EDIT: Abigail's childhood friend is now named Alice.

Click to shrink...

Sounds good, was a tad confusing but I likely only noticed because I'm reading my way through in a very short time-frame. I thought it was probably a plot-hook for later finding Betty later with Abigail and 'Frank' but the apparent discrepancy in the ages seemed odd enough to inquire further.

And yeah, the informal language for Harry works well, just the difference between canon Harry's proper 'Queens English" and what he uses here was noteworthy and I was curious.

 

[Mashadarof402]

EDIT: Abigail's childhood friend is now named Alice.

Click to shrink...

And is definitely not enjoying her trip to 'Wonderland'. Her best companion, Toto, was in truth a werewolf, and now looks for its lost mistress and to gain vengeance on a wicked witch.

 

[ScarletFlames]

You mean Toto is an animagus, a werewolf would hardly look like a small dog..

 

[Doghead13]

You mean Toto is an animagus, a werewolf would hardly look like a small dog..

Click to shrink...

Depends how bad a case of dwarfism the werewolf has.

 

[128Hunter]

And is definitely not enjoying her trip to 'Wonderland'. Her best companion, Toto, was in truth a werewolf, and now looks for its lost mistress and to gain vengeance on a wicked witch.

Click to shrink...

Your thinking of Dorthy and The land of Oz, Alice is the one who followed a white rabbit down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

 

[Gaming Geek]

Alice is also the one in England. Todo's from the mid west US.

 

[Edmond G. Bertrand]

Wow, I had completely failed to notice that shared name. Strange coincidence, that.

I should go back and change one or the other to avoid giving that impression --- probably Abigail's friend, since her name was a complete throwaway. Though, to be honest, so were Frank and Betty before I overthought things --- again --- and the 'hire a private eye who'll report back later' scene grew into a film noir detective miniseries.

And, yeah, as Doghead mentioned, Harry's way of speaking was a deliberate design choice on his part which I decided to run with.

EDIT: Abigail's childhood friend is now named Alice.

Click to shrink...

When's the next part getting posted, do you think?

 

[wichajster]

Probably after it is finished. Given recent update it will likely take a long time. Feel free to request refund of what you paid if you are unsatisfied.

 

[The Unicorn]

Couple of odd questions occurred to me. (1) Does Harry show up on radar when he's
a dragon? "Scottish Area Control Centre (ScACC), which controls aircraft over Scotland,
Northern Ireland, Northern England and the North Sea from 2,500 feet up to 66,000 feet."

Click to shrink...

While they might control, in the sense of having the authority to tell people where they're allowed to go and what they're allowed to do, they do not actually have observation, much less control of a lot of that area, and Hogwarts (even before you start adding unplotability and other magic) is almost definitely in a radar shadow

I suppose the radar technicians had an interesting night. Big radar signature appears in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, moving like a missile.

Click to shrink...

No, It's unlikely there is any radar coverage of that area, but assuming there is Harry would look nothing like a missile.
1)Much too large.
2)Much too slow.
3)Has a LOT of secondary returns suggesting it's a collection of a lot of small objects in loose formation.
4)Maneuvers, very much unlike a missile.
5)No corresponding thermal signature from satellite imagery.

Most likely conclusion is a momentary glitch in the signal processing circuits aka "There's nothing wrong, I'm going back to bed, log it and don't call me unless you have a real fault".
You don't scramble aircraft for every anomalous radar return in the middle of nowhere.

I imagine that they see a HUGE object that doesn't respond to radio calls and they see it moving
across Scottish territory, they're going to send up several somebodies to have a look-see.

Click to shrink...

This assumes they have full radar coverage of their own land, something NO ONE has. Unlike the impression you may get from some fiction it's actually fairly easy to avoid being detected by radar as long as you avoid:
1)Crossing national borders.
2)Keep your distance from any cities or airfields.

If anything I'd think the scene where he was most at risk of being detected would have been when he flew out to sea to swim with the Dolphins, then flew back, however given how he flies (by flapping his wings) and his relatively low speed I figure he has a good chance of getting filtered out of the signal an actual human would look at, and no way they'd spend several hundred thousand pounds to get an aircraft in the air and look at the anomalous radar return that is probably nothing, unless it was near something sensitive or they had reason to believe it was something more than that.

 

[ScarletFlames]

While they might control, in the sense of having the authority to tell people where they're allowed to go and what they're allowed to do, they do not actually have observation, much less control of a lot of that area, and Hogwarts (even before you start adding unplotability and other magic) is almost definitely in a radar shadow

No, It's unlikely there is any radar coverage of that area, but assuming there is Harry would look nothing like a missile.
1)Much too large.
2)Much too slow.
3)Has a LOT of secondary returns suggesting it's a collection of a lot of small objects in loose formation.
4)Maneuvers, very much unlike a missile.
5)No corresponding thermal signature from satellite imagery.

Most likely conclusion is a momentary glitch in the signal processing circuits aka "There's nothing wrong, I'm going back to bed, log it and don't call me unless you have a real fault".
You don't scramble aircraft for every anomalous radar return in the middle of nowhere.


This assumes they have full radar coverage of their own land, something NO ONE has. Unlike the impression you may get from some fiction it's actually fairly easy to avoid being detected by radar as long as you avoid:
1)Crossing national borders.
2)Keep your distance from any cities or airfields.

If anything I'd think the scene where he was most at risk of being detected would have been when he flew out to sea to swim with the Dolphins, then flew back, however given how he flies (by flapping his wings) and his relatively low speed I figure he has a good chance of getting filtered out of the signal an actual human would look at, and no way they'd spend several hundred thousand pounds to get an aircraft in the air and look at the anomalous radar return that is probably nothing, unless it was near something sensitive or they had reason to believe it was something more than that.

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure there's almost 100% coverage of "low quality" (slow scanning speed in exchance for larger range, also reduced resolution for the same) radar of almost the entirety of any country that isn't covered in rain forests or other difficult terrain.
But even if you consider the area around hogwarts as difficult, it's highly likely that it still has some radar coverage as it's rather near the sea, as in, one of those borders you mentioned

 

[Ted009]

The Unicorn
ScarletFlames
You do remember the author said when he needs to fly to those types areas he takes a form of a pigeon right?