The more I think of it, the more I'm getting convinced that *both* gardenpaths are enchanted. It just makes such sense; the house has limited groundspace (and wasn't there mention of a wall?) so I would gather that the paths would give the occupants a choice between a leisurely walk round the house (gravel) or a very long amble through hills and wood (bark) but the walker would essentially stay on house-ground. The house was after all once owned by timeturner inventor Thaddeus Snarpley, Master of Time and Space... Am I right? Am I right? (jumping up and down like a certain insufferable Gryffindor know-it-all :-)

Everytime I reread the chapters, something new catches my eye. This sentence for instance just took my breath away: "Holding onto the edge of the covers, Harry waited for anger to sweep over him. He liked the feeling at times – it drove him forward and gave him something to care about instead of feeling empty." That is just so true... Just because I'm into tough love doesn't mean I don't feel sorry for the obnoxious brat :-)

hi

first of all I want you to know how much I love your  story.i found your fic today and it really made my day.I missed one of my afternoon classes(thanks to u!).cause i didn’t have much time i skipped the author's notes and while reading I realized some similarities between this one and dina's Painful Guardianship (which is also one of my favorite stories).somehow this story reminded me of that one. i was wondering which one of these two stories was inspired by the other one?now that i've come back to reread this fic I got my answer.

your story has it's own special characteristics...the characters are more IC.:)(this is what everybody has said in his/her review!)and your harry is older(he is 16 here)and he acts more like his age,exactly like a teen which i appreciate!! he himself managed to escape from Dursleys.nobody came to save him. he isn’t an abused depressed child who follows every rule his guardian sets 'cause he has never had a family or an adult to really care for him and now he's found one! And about having a daily schedule for the summer ..well I saw nothing wrong in Harry’s reaction (I think snape expects too much from harry)every healthy teenager would react that way!

I also loved the fireplace curse idea!and how snape kept things from harry not to worry him and the potion he made…!that was all very creative well thought and well written!

And something else… I’m so glad that I first found this story here in this site cause I went and searched for this story in fanfiction.net .I noticed you have posted only 4 chapters there!Is there anyother site you have this fic on with more chapters? J I  really want to see what will happen to harry !well I think  you said  you had a ”well deserved and well delivered” punishment in store for harry Wow..I’m really LookinG FORWARD to IT!

u know it’s hard to write a review in a language that isn’t your native one! well..I tried my best.

Please update soon

love u

I can't tell you how much I am enjoying this story.   You are keeping Snape and Harry remarkably in character, and their dynamics that you have woven into the story works quite nicely!

 This is one of my favorite wips at the moment. 

I'm looking forward to the next chapter! 

Sorry I haven't written a review for the past few chapters; Real Life reared it's ugly head and I had barely time to read your fic, let alone review it. But now I've gotten a breather and I just *have* to rave about the past three chapters!

At first I thought that the reason that Harry got different food from Snape was due to Harry being a child (not so dreadfully long ago children of well-to-do families ate in the nursery and their food was different from the adults'. Old men today will wax poetically about 'nanny's ricepudding') But then Harry's temperature went up and I got worried. What was happening. Then came the Harry-is-on-fire chapter and I was delighted! How clever of you! This is an example of Good Writing. Most fanficcers will throw all their eggs in one basket, spilling all plot-beans in one chapter. You build up suspension. Well done! No doubt the timeturnerthingie (ol' Thaddeus' invention) will turn up again somewhere in the plotline, and perhaps other, different plotlines will develop but you will space them naturally throughout the story and I just can't wait for the next chapter.

I love your Snape and Harry. They are so very IC. Snape being proficient in calming down hysterical teenagers, wiping down their tears with cool professionalism (hey, the man's been Head of House for sixteen years after all) and I love his timetable. Very reasonable timetable too. Harry probably never had so much 'free time' in his life than alloted to him by Snape's timetable. But of course Harry doesn't see it that way :-) Harry does a classic 'you're not the boss of me'.

The main reason I don't like the books is the illogical and contrary way the Wizarding world works. Justice is near absent; people get thrown into prison without a trial. Power is everything. Breaking rules gets rewarded. Children might get bullied (at school), mistreated (at home), even killed (squibicide, Sirius murderattempt-by-werewolf) with impunity as long as the purpetraitor is powerful/important enough. Harry might be a Nobody at the Dursleys, he is a Messiah in the Wizarding world. And both roles are detrimental. What I so love about canon-Snape (and your Snape) is that he will have nothing to do with the Harry-worshipping. To him Harry is just a boy, and a rather lazy, arrogant, rude, disrespectful and dishonest boy at that (yes Harry-fans, he is all that) In fact, it is just this grounding attitude that Harry needs. What Harry *wants* is a different thing alltogether. Harry wants to sleep 'till noon, eat when he wants and mope around 'till after midnight and during the night he wants to don his invisibility cloak and snoop around, poking his nose into (dangerous) things and probably get another person killed. After which he will no doubt blame Snape ("if only Snape had just *given* me that timetable it wouldn't have happened")

I laughed so hard at Snape's thoughts about Dumbledore making a timetable. Yes, that's exactly how Dumb would present a timetable to his precious Harry. Dumbledore shouldn't be in charge over children, he's abyssmally bad at it, with his 'I'm a loony old but affable granddaddy' routine, his sherbert lemons and his favouritism.

About the last chapter: Harry still can't follow instructions, can he? Snape says "stay on the gravel" and what does he do? He turns of the gravel path and follows the bark path. I bet that path is enchanted. Of course, Harry didn't deliberatly disobey Snape but, and this is typical Harry, thought he knew better than Snape how Snape's own home works: "Maybe if Snape got out of his potions lab once in a while, he would know how to navigate around his own property, Harry snidely thought as he meandered down the bark path. He grinned at the thought of Snape wandering aimlessly and lost over his own property, wondering how to get back to the house." Thinking he knows better than others (especially adults) is a typical Harry trait. Granted, living with the Dursleys can't have given Harry much trust in adults, and the Wizarding world is... weird (and the authority figures there - cough*Dumbledore*cough - encourage Harry in thinking he knows better than the adults/teachers/ministry employers) but it is this one trait that gets him in the most and worst of troubles and he never seems to get a slap on the wrist for yet *again* making the wrong assumption (and endangering people's lives with it) Another typical Harry trait is saying and doing things without thinking. Harry yells, Harry runs after werewolves and trolls, Harry insults, won't sit still in class without making comments or rolling his eyes at what Snape has to teach. Harry needs to learn control. Corner time was very effective ;-)

As you see, I'm not of the 'Harry is a poor, abused waif who needs to be coddled' school. I think Harry needs a Reality Check. And look, Harry, a Reality Check cometh. And his name is Severus Snape. Wahooh!