I got into the Harry Potter books after the first one had gotten into paperback, but all the rest are hardcover. I've been writing since I was in seventh grade, which makes about seven or eight years now. I'm currently in college studying history and Japanese, hoping to develop my writing skills enough to deserve the title "writer."
I do beta-read. Please see my thread on the beta forums {where I'm known as Rushia}.
I love your take on this. Very unique, portraying Remus as Snape's friend. I immediately liked the feeling that you set up with the attack on Remus by someone that we all expect to be his friend: James. You seemed very in character with everyone, and I liked how we don't get to see Snape happy all that much in the books {except when something bad happens to Harry, heh}, but you made his friendship with Remus very believeable. However, at times, your dialogue seemed rather awkward. You need to work on it, maybe read it aloud? I know that always helps me figure out if something sounds awkward. Especially in dialogue. If you can't see that it's strange, you should be able to hear it. The "Poor you" line in particular rather bothered me. That seems more like a sarcastic line than a genuinely sympathetic thing to say. Overall, however, beautiful. Great job, and keep up the good work!
Not too shabby, but it definitely has room for improvement. I think that you rushed through a lot of this, just sort of skipping over his whole birthday sequence. Everything happened rather suddenly, not leaving us much time to wonder at what was going to happen next before it was just happening. The dialogue and actions seemed rather forced at times, and occasionally OOC. I don't really like how they just stayed at Privet Drive while having his birthday party because everyone knew that Harry's protection would expire on his 17th birthday: today. It seems more IC to me that they would have taken him directly to the Burrow once they got there, and had his party there. A very interesting beginning, I'm curious to see what you're going to do with it. However, your descriptions are rather bare where you give any at all, and your sentences need a larger variety. I noticed this particularly in the paragraph where you describe Harry's birthday presents: every sentence had the same structure it seemed. I gave you a 7/10, though I will read and review the other chapters. Keep working at it.
I'm really glad you showed Remus getting rejected by a girl because of being a werewolf, but it felt a bit rushed. You could expand it out a bit. Plus, many people would probably want to deny that their friend is a werewolf. After all, Remus was friends with the other three his whole time at Hogwarts, but it took them about two years to figure it out and admit it because Remus said they became Animagi in their fifty year after trying for three years. Only having this happen twice seems a bit quick for her to suddenly jump to the conclusion he's a werewolf and then confront him.
On that same note, if she's a Ravenclaw, then how would she know that he left at sunset? That's about the time everyone's back in their common rooms, isn't it? So, she really wouldn't have any idea that he had left at sunset on the full moon, just that he'd been getting sick overnight and ended up in the hospital wing the next morning.
I would've liked more dialogue tags to show who's speaking. You give us some clues occasionally, but aside from that, the dialogue just sort of floats around without being very grounded, and it's a little hard to follow especially in the long sections of dialogue.
Good job and keep working.
Very well written--I'm not usually one for second person, but it didn't feel like it got in the way, and you didn't get preachy that I noticed.
You were also creative with your interpretations of the characters, though I found it hard to find in there why Remus was friends with all of them. You said a lot of awful things about all three of his friends, but not much about why he liked them. I would've liked to hear about that. Even if it's because he's being cynical because he's depressed by the war, it would've been nice if he had some thoughts about the way he remembered them from school, the good things about them that he wished he saw more.
However, it's a bit out of canon for James to distrust Remus because he's a werewolf. Remus himself tells us that his friends didn't care. None of the three are mentioned as exceptions, and so I find it hard to believe that they would feel that way. What would be better is if they were the only ones who didn't feel that way. That would make the sorrow at the end that much more poignant: Peter and James are dead, Sirius is in Azkaban, who is left to remember that Remus is a person cursed not a monster?
Also, you have a contradiction in there. You first say that he was afraid of everything, and then later mention that it was because he preferred peace. It seems a bit contradictory to me, but I doubt that was the way you meant it. I know that "cowardice" is not the same as "fear," but if you could phrase one or the other differently, it might lose the feeling of contradiction that I get.
I also loved your use of fairy tale imagery and tools. It was well woven-in and made the whole thing more tragic because fairy tales are supposed to be happy.
Author's Response: Hi! Thanks for your critique, it\'s always nice to get some constructive criticism.\r\n\r\nAs far as Remus\'s relationship with the other three goes, I always saw this as the last legs of their friendship - I figured it was vaguely implicit that they were friends before in school, and this is just when things started to fall apart. Sirius says at the end of PoA that they didn\'t tell Remus they had switched Secret Keepers because they thought he was the traitor, and this was the most obvious reason I could think of that they would start to mistrust him. It\'s one thing to forget your friends\' flaws when you\'re happy in high school, but I\'m thinking in wartime when you know someone\'s out to destroy your whole family it\'s a lot easier to let prejudice affect you. But yes, it would\'ve made sense to include some of the fun times they had in there too. \r\n\r\nI see where you get the feeling of contradiction - I\'ve never read it like that so I don\'t know what to say really. I always saw it that he was scared of things but the fact that he can go on living despite his fears is part of his bravery; when I said he was scared of things I was thinking more of when he was younger. Now he\'s a bit more grown up he\'s learnt more from life and even though there\'s little things in the back of his mind in general he\'s fine. I don\'t know if that makes sense, but there you go.\r\n\r\nThanks very much for the comments though, it\'s always nice when someone takes the time to reply thoroughly to what you\'ve written :)\r\n\r\n~*Lady*~
I'm part of bertibott12's Writing Methods class, and we were assigned your story to review this week. I felt like trying to restructure my review to fit into the format on the Archives would be a little difficult to understand, especially since I can't preview the review first to see if the formatting worked or not, so here is the link to my review posted in my assignment thread: http://fanfiction.mugglenet.com/forum/showthread.php?p=248578#post248578