Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Reviews For Spiral of Trust
Title: Chapter 1 Postwar at the Burrow 12 Sep 2022 10:31 am
Reviewer: cavehack (Signed) [Report This]
    Great opening chapter! I saw your sequel posted and am delighted to be reading this story first.
Title: Chapter 1 Postwar at the Burrow 12 Sep 2022 1:42 am
Reviewer: cavehack (Signed) [Report This]
    Great opening chapter! I saw your sequel posted and am delighted to be reading this story first.
Title: Chapter 33 Angst, Oblivion and Regrets 25 Jan 2021 10:03 pm
Reviewer: ImUpToNoGood (Signed) [Report This]
    I really don’t like this Ginny. Her fear of experiencing anything but pleasure and joy makes her feel shallow, although I suspect it is due to the depths of pain she has experienced with Riddle’s diary. But her unwillingness to sort out her emotions, always repressing them or taking a shortcut, means she will never have the emotional maturity that Harry will develop. She will never be his equal.

    I also don’t see that she makes any compromises for Harry, it is always him making compromises for her.

    Even the fact that Harry has never taken her ambitions seriously is a mark against a successful relationship between them.

    I do hope that either she grows up, or he finds someone to be a true equal to him.

    Oh, and word note: to go mad is to go insane. To get mad is to get angry. (Very different!)
Title: Chapter 31 Dead wizards do not Apparate 25 Jan 2021 6:34 pm
Reviewer: ImUpToNoGood (Signed) [Report This]
    I don’t know how useful this is, years later, but I have some word choice notes.

    You’ve been using arrested to mean stop. (Definitely a false friend for French speakers!) While it can mean that when used as an adjective (arrested movement), as a verb it means to seize (someone) by legal authority and take into custody, so I keep thinking the person is being taken to a ministry cell.

    Also: Floo powder, not Flo powder. Flo is a woman’s name.

    The story continues to be compelling. Snape’s habit of jumping to conclusions does not help his interactions with Harry, that is certain.

    Thanks for writing!
Title: Chapter 24 In the poisonous trailings of a Blast-Ended Skrewt 24 Jan 2021 9:56 pm
Reviewer: ImUpToNoGood (Signed) [Report This]
    Poor Snape is falling apart!

    Note: Legilimency is the name of the discipline, not the verb. You can no more “legilimency” someone than you can “art” them. In practicing art, you might draw or paint someone. Snape, a Legilimens (the word for a practitioner of Legilimency), used legilimency on Harry.
Title: Chapter 23 Which father? 24 Jan 2021 9:25 pm
Reviewer: ImUpToNoGood (Signed) [Report This]
    Rita Skeeter’s maliciousness is truly heinous.

    Harry is stuck with what he can and cannot reveal, and it is harming him and Snape both.

    At this point, not even the fanon creation of a magical inheritance test would be enough to clear them.

    I am very curious how they will get out of this mess. Truth needs to come out, but safely.

    By the way, in canon, it was Myrtle’s death that fueled the diary horcrux creation.
Title: Chapter 20 Appeasing stars 24 Jan 2021 7:58 pm
Reviewer: ImUpToNoGood (Signed) [Report This]
    I’d been getting the feeling that I’d read this before, and indeed, I had started it in November 2015, when it was as yet unfinished.

    I’m so glad to be able to come back and finish reading the story!

    Love the appeasing stars... am curious how they affect Snape, and whether he gets angry at having his emotions manipulated.

    It was particularly painful when Snape sent Harry to bed without supper.

    One note: the killing curse is defined in the Harry Potter wiki: “When cast successfully on a living person or creature the curse causes instantaneous and painless death, without causing any injury to the body, and without any trace of violence.” So a near miss or an unsuccessful cast would not cause injury, and a hit on any part of the body would cause death. Part of Harry Potter’s fame is that he is the only person to survive the killing curse. So having an emergency room full of people who survived the killing curse is odd. Perhaps it was other deadly curses that were cast?

    A note on odd word usage, I think in chapter 19: mount. You mount a horse, you climb a mountain, and usually take the stairs up/down to whatever destination, although if the stairs are steep, you might climb them.

    Still loving the creative plot and world building.
Title: Chapter 16 The Spiral Case Knight´s Battle Move 24 Jan 2021 3:10 pm
Reviewer: ImUpToNoGood (Signed) [Report This]
    I’m fascinated by your storyline. You’ve got well-depicted characters that have the depth of their canon counterparts (or perhaps even more). I love Snape’s and Harry’s evolving interactions. Harry’s developing skills now that the Horcrux is gone are delightful, especially because they are unusual, but still feel authentic to the Wizarding world.

    I am curious, are you not a native speaker of English? Overall, you have a good grasp of spelling and grammar, but I keep seeing word choice errors that look like someone who is not a native speaker was using a thesaurus to vary their words. For example, febrile means feverish, but only in a medical sense, whereas you used it in the figurative sense (feverish work to repair Hogwarts.) I’m also seeing words where a similar word is the correct one: an illness would affect someone, not attain them, or words that were once common but now not the norm, such as using pupil to refer to schoolchildren (even in the UK, student has become more prevalent for both school age students and university students. Pupil feels dismissive and archaic.) I also notice you using the infinitive of a verb where a gerund would be used and sometimes visa versa. (Example: “we need to prevent him from going”, rather than “we need to prevent him to go”.)

    This is a delightful and engrossing story, despite the reader being occasionally jolted from the story by out of place words. I look forward to reading the rest!
Title: Chapter 47 Shortcomings confessed and Reassurances offered 04 Aug 2020 9:16 am
Reviewer: Lady Cascade (Signed) [Report This]
    I truly enjoyed reading your story. I especially liked the way Harry and Snape's relationship developed, in a way that felt realistic. Also liked the original characters you put in, as well as the invention of new entities and magic. They worked well in this story. Only thing I agree on with other reviewers are the lengthy descriptions throughout the story. Some of them could have been shortened or omitted completely. But great work on the whole!
Title: Chapter 29 An ordinary vacation trip 26 May 2020 4:17 am
Reviewer: Reticulated (Signed) [Report This]
    Hey!
    Seeing your new post, I started reading this story before. I do have a fear of spoilers...
    I LOVE the relationship between Harry and Snape! It avoids the typical pitfalls of him becoming all warm and fuzzy at some point in the story (beginning or end) and the other typical method of two downers in the relationship and then all perfectly good from thereon. I think the awesome factor is in the continuous see-saw in the relationship, with the sustained respect.
    Can't wait to finish it, and on my own time!
    Hope my ramble here is somewhat illuminating.

    Author's Response:

    Thank you! I’m glad that my new post led to Spiral of Trust earning another reader. And I do enjoy this kind of review which points out what things I might be doing right. The relationship between Snape and Harry is very complex on multiple levels. Departing from canon, it’s a huge challenge to explore what can become of their relationship, but one thing is certain: it will take time.


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