The Prologue And Chapter One...

[Bob Schroeck]

...are now up on the website.  (As usual, forum members get to read it 24 hours ahead of release to any other outlet.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Pyeknu]

*double thumbs up*
Must be relieved, eh?

[Dartz]

You do manage to capture British/Scottish voices exceptionally well. It really adds a nice sparkle. I honestly doubt I could do it aswell and I live here. Or near enough to it.

As a minor addendum, I can remember that Heatwave, being all of 8 at the time. It got us here too. I remember the hosepipe ban, and being told I couldn't wash the car with the hose anymore, I had to use a bucket. It generated some mighty thunderstorms. It also caused the old family Passat to refuse to start, and only a few businesses had air conditioning because it's normally not needed.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Norgarth]

hmm, you know, it's possible that God's Toothpick might be mistaken for Doug's wand at some point.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Black Aeronaut]

(Oh yeah, there was tea, too. This was an English home, after
all. Given my druthers I'd've had tea steeping instead, but both
of us needed the caffeine.)

.... You've never had English Breakfast tea, have you?

[Jorlem]

I wonder, was Trelawny's new prophecy recorded? The Ministry apparently has some means of detecting them and producing the orbs, and a new prophecy in the aftermath of the fate alteration cascade would probably garner just as much interest as Harry's prophecy did for having survived.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[Honorbridge]

I am greatly enjoying this next new Walk story. Three things, however, jumped out at me and made me think, "Wait, what?"

The first thing, unfortunately, is the very first sentence. Not for its contents, but for what I feel is its clumsy structure, which I feel is atypical of your writing. "Although the moon was just past full, beneath the treetops little light penetrated; it was pitch dark." You've got an adverb phrase directly after a conjunctive clause (although I thought they were both prepositional phrases before I really analysized them.) Personally, I would make the second part of the sentence "little light penetrated beneath the treetops;". This is, of course, entirely stylistic on your part, but I had to re-read the sentence several times before I made sense of how it was intended to flow. I also thought the 'pitch dark' part was redundant, but again style. (Since I was so suddenly attuned to grammatical structure, I also noticed a missing comma after shadows in the second sentence. Once I got into the flow of the story, my mind auto-corrected any further errors of that type.)

The second thing to jump out at me was Harry's wondering about Charlie's identity. Harry met him, at least very briefly, getting Norbert out of Hogwarts in the first book didn't he? I will grant that it was a dark and hurried meeting though, so perhaps he didn't get a good look at him? Similarly, did Charlie not know who was involved in getting Norbert out? That would explain not connecting Harry's face with his name. I thought Hermione was there too, but I can't verify that, and I'm very much less sure of that. Am I just entirely mis-remembering the scene, and Charlie wasn't even there? I don't own any of the books and am depending on a several-year memory for this, so I can't check for myself. I am pretty sure that Charlie was at the very least the point of contact when they wrote him about getting rid of Norbert, but maybe it was just Charlie's co-workers making the pickup?

The third one involves Buckbeak, but is entirely irrelevant because I forgot the difference between a hippogryph and a griffin. My mistake on that one.

Also, one comment on the last item in the Concordance. Where Wizarding buildings are involved, space is extremely flexible. Just because there's a bunch of rooms on the first (second) floor, it doesn't mean there must be more than a front hall and dining room on the ground (first) floor to support them. That said, I have no problems with you adding a sitting room, I just wanted to point out this item for thought. Witness the Burrow!

[Jorlem]

Charlie wasn't one of the Wizards that picked up Norbert, it was just his co-workers. Charlie was the point of contact, but wasn't actually in Britain at the time.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[DHBirr]

several hypotheses — all of which stemmed from the simple fact that World War II ended with a nuclear punctuation mark.

The wand-wagglers are scared shitless by our nukes -- and our readiness to use them. "Avada Kedavra is an 'Unforgivable Curse'? We do that to entire cities!"
Good. Oderint dum metuant.
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Star Ranger4]

Well!

What strikes me the most at the moment is the new side of Doug we get to see here... the one that has studied everything he could about the way magic works in order to help understand his own abilities. Its so easy to overlook in the previous stories because the events there have been so much more action based, I suppose if someone from the pits of Voles could complain hey where did that come from, but that would be because they've not hung around here enough to know what you;ve explained to us.

In short, you've proven to me that Doug really does have the Magic! skill at the intelectual level, despite his personal casting limitation and its good to see the proof of that here.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Disruptor]

I can see Doug not knowing who Fred and George are at first. However, Doug will evetually be able to tell them apart via body language, since Doug is a master of some martial arts. Of course if you go by the Quincy show(A TV show about a foresic scientist) twins are actually mirrior images of each other. One is left handed, the other right.
--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor

[Norgarth]

I can see Doug not knowing who Fred and George are at first. However, Doug will evetually be able to tell them apart via body language, since Doug is a master of some martial arts. Of course if you go by the Quincy show(A TV show about a foresic scientist) twins are actually mirrior images of each other. One is left handed, the other right.

Correction: some sets of identical twins are actually mirrored twins, not all of them.  Actually that concept came up in the most recent chapter of the Potter fic, Palimpest (sp?).
There the author stated 1 in 4 'identical' twins actually being mirrored.
 
  
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Disruptor]

Didn't know that. It might have stated that in the show, but it has been YEARS since I saw that episode of Quincy.
--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor

[robkelk]

Or maybe Hollywood got the science wrong.

(Yes, I know, what are the chances of that happening...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm not ignoring everyone here, I was just waiting for a critical mass of comments to reply to all at once.

Must be relieved, eh?

Only a little, Fred. I'm never completely relieved until I finish the last chapter.

You do manage to capture British/Scottish voices exceptionally well. It really adds a nice sparkle. I honestly doubt I could do it aswell and I live here. Or near enough to it.

Thanks, Dartz. I worked especially hard on that, as I pride myself on dialogue. Part of it comes from lots of British TV I've watched over the years. Part of it comes from internalizing the characters' voices from the books. And part of it comes from my prereaders, although it was Helen, who's not British, who caught most of my Britspeak errors. (Helen, I should note, watches almost as much British TV as she does Japanese. The potential intersections are... strange.) In general I feel comfortable enough about my Britspeak to actually have written a section on it in my fic writer's guide.

hmm, you know, it's possible that God's Toothpick might be mistaken for Doug's wand at some point.

Wait for chapter two, Timote. I already have the mandatory Ollivander scene written. (BTW, have I made it clear enough in the concordance that I'm trying to whack most of the HP fanfic cliches about the head and shoulders? About the only ones so far which I haven't figured out how to shoehorn in are the mandatory marriage contracts and the wongfully-imprisoned-in-Azkaban plots.)

.... You've never had English Breakfast tea, have you?

Oh, lots of times, BA. It never seemed all that much more powerful than orange pekoe to me.

I wonder, was Trelawny's new prophecy recorded? The Ministry apparently has some means of detecting them and producing the orbs, and a new prophecy in the aftermath of the fate alteration cascade would probably garner just as much interest as Harry's prophecy did for having survived.

Actually, how prophecies get recorded and stored in the Hall is never explained in canon. For the purposes of my story I'm assuming a much simpler process -- at least one hearer reports the prophecy to the Department of Mysteries and gives them a memory copy. Otherwise they would have had warning of Wormtail's flight to Voldemort back in POA.

Since I was so suddenly attuned to grammatical structure, I also noticed a missing comma after shadows in the second sentence.

Heh. Usually I overdo the commas; it's one of my systematic problems as a writer. I think this is the first time anyone's ever suggested I was lacking one anywhere. As for the first sentence, yes, I suppose that on the technical level you are exactly right, but it still says what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it. Except "pitch dark", which was supposed to be "pitch black". How that got past all 13 of the prereaders on my ML plus Peggy during live readings, I don't know.

Where Wizarding buildings are involved, space is extremely flexible. Just because there's a bunch of rooms on the first (second) floor, it doesn't mean there must be more than a front hall and dining room on the ground (first) floor to support them.

True enough. It's just that 12 Grim seems to be more into the "rational architecture" thing than the Burrow.

What strikes me the most at the moment is the new side of Doug we get to see here... the one that has studied everything he could about the way magic works in order to help understand his own abilities. Its so easy to overlook in the previous stories because the events there have been so much more action based, I suppose if someone from the pits of Voles could complain hey where did that come from, but that would be because they've not hung around here enough to know what you;ve explained to us.

While some of that will appear in DW1 (and thus, technically, establishing this trait of Doug's well before DW8), yes, this and (to a far lesser degree) the Sailor Moon Step are places where you see it really come to the fore. (And in DW13, too, but it's much more practical than academic there -- he's not teaching or guiding, but using that knowledge to build the tools to build the tools to... etc.)

In short, you've proven to me that Doug really does have the Magic! skill at the intelectual level, despite his personal casting limitation and its good to see the proof of that here.

You ain't seen nothin' yet!

I can see Doug not knowing who Fred and George are at first. However, Doug will evetually be able to tell them apart via body language, since Doug is a master of some martial arts.

Ah, but there's another way to tell them apart.  Fred writes fanfic with Nendo-kata.  George doesn't.  
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Pyeknu]

Ah, but there's another way to tell them apart.  Fred writes fanfic with Nendo-kata.  George doesn't.  

Yeah, right . . .
BTW, Bob, I don't know if you got my message, buy part 1 of L&LFA is ready for posting.

[Bob Schroeck]

Ah, that must be the new message in my Yuku inbox. I haven't been in there since Saturday (?). Thanks for the heads-up.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Pyeknu]

No problem

[drakensis]

Minor quibble: there's a double 'and' early in the meeting with McGonnagall
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[DHBirr]

Another minor grammar quibble in the Prologue, when Hermione says:

Especially with the Minister turning against Harry after the Third Task — I'm sure he'd would love to have an excuse to arrest us and use us to discredit him.

-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Jorlem]

So, the new prophecy that Trelawney made is only for the benefit of the reader, as no one was present, and she doesn't remember her own prophecies? Unless a painting heard it, as they are fairly ubiquitous in Hogwarts.

(Incidentally, you appear to have misspelled her last name, assuming that the spelling on the Harry Potter wiki is accurate.)
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[Sofaspud]

First off, I'm not into the Harry Potter franchise... pretty much at all.  I've seen two of the movies, by way of family time obligations (my wife and son like them); I've tried reading the first book and became word-weary about halfway through.  It's a sad thing when I like the movies more than the books of a given universe.

So I have very limited references to draw on on this, and it's well outside my normal sphere of interest; but, Bob, if you write it, I will read it, by gum.

At the end, I found myself wanting more.  It's hard to ask for more than that, I think.  Doug feels a little different -- a little less keen on going off half-cocked, perhaps? -- and at the same time seems amazingly willing to take things at face value.  It's hard to reconcile these two viewpoints, but that's the impression I got from the piece so far.  I'm not sure if that's deliberate or if it's my misinterpretation.

I noticed one typo, in the section beginning:

The Burrow, Thursday, August 12, 1995, 7:30 AM

The first paragraph following that is missing the period between the first and second sentences.

Also: I think I've mentioned this before, but if not, I love the concordances.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Bob Schroeck]

there's a double 'and' early in the meeting with McGonnagall

Another minor grammar quibble

Fixed now, but the online copy won't be updated until I get home tonight.

So, the new prophecy that Trelawney made is only for the benefit of the reader, as no one was present, and she doesn't remember her own prophecies?

Correct. I actually left a note to that effect in the Concordance.

you appear to have misspelled her last name

Argh. I went out of my way to make sure I got it right in chapter two (as she's about to appear in the scene I'm currently writing), but forgot to check chapter one. Grrrrrrr.

The first paragraph following that is missing the period between the first and second sentences.

Grr. You're not the first to notice that. And I thought I'd fixed it. Turns out I did in the text version of the chapter, but not the HTML. Argh.

Also: I think I've mentioned this before, but if not, I love the concordances.

They're terribly fun to write, too. I'm doing things a bit differently this time, btw -- previously I've waited until I'm done writing a chapter and then go over it looking for things to gloss. This time I'm writing the concordance in parallel with the text. Which of course means that every time I edit something that had a gloss I have to go to the concordance and edit the gloss, too. But the upshot is I don't forget anything that I was thinking of when I wrote any particular passage. So it ends up a bit more detailed and dense than the previous stories' concordances.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Pyeknu]

Your concordances have always been very nice, Bob.  I just wonder if I need to write one for my own story.  I do get pretty detailed with the writer's notes at the end of each chapter these days.

[ECSNorway]

It would also be nice to have a "selected highlights from TSY" to refer to. It's a HUGE chunk of story to look at, that 1.4 megaword size count is pretty intimidating, but since it's 90% of the foundation for the rest of your stories... well, I for one would appreciate an index of "this is where we first set things up for Moroboshi Negako", "this is where the Avalonians come into it", etc...
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.