Beautiful, moving, poignant - perfect.
| Title: Breaking Down Walls
| 22 Jan 2017 8:15 pm
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| Reviewer: Fmh (Signed)
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Very good chapter with a nice little twist at the end, thank you
Even if Kieren is annoying and needy and a pest I feel like Severus is ignoring him to the point of just being plain neglectful. It seems unrealistic to me and gives a lot of his mother's concerns merit. As a 'villain' his mother isn't all that bad considering her concerns for her son are so real. I could see her disliking Harry, and even trying to plot to get rid of him so he doesn't interfere(and I can see Kieren doing the same trying to get his parents back together), but the two don't seem that bad when you look at how Snape is treating Kieren. Also, if Clarise is such an annoyance, why hasn't Snape told her she's no longer welcome to visit... several chapters ago? Any adult I know, including me, would have said that. I wouldn't tolerate any visitor in my home putting down my children or family. Just my thoughts as I've been reading for what little they're worth. I want to see Snape treating Harry and Kieren equally. Snape will never teach Kieren to act appropriately without showing him the same love and affection, and giving him the same time as he does to Harry and not treating Kieren like a burden. Kieren and Clarice seem like flat characters. All their mystery is gone because they act the same scene after scene chapter after chapter. I've never seen a parent (one that knows both children and has lived with both for a while) treat one with such love and the other with such complete disdain. Parents usually try to include all children in an activity. Such as Harry's potions lessons... Kieren could have sat and watched or done his homework in the lab while Harry was learning. Or Snape could have had Kieren working on one potion while Harry works on another. Or if Snape was busy in his study with work and Kieren wanted attention, Snape could have given the kid five minutes of conversation and then invited him to sit quietly in the study with him and read while Severus worked. I'm not trying to be mean, I really do mean this to be constructive. I'm sorry if it seems bad or is unwanted.
Author's Response: I understand what you're saying, and I appreciate the constructive feedback. It wasn't my intention to give off the impression that Snape was neglecting Kieran. I'm sorry if it came off that way in this chapter. I do plan on editing and rewriting parts of the last few chapters. Thanks for the feedback.
I like this chapter and am happy for the update :)
| Title: Breaking Down Walls
| 16 Jan 2017 8:37 am
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| Reviewer: Mae19 (Anonymous)
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Great chapter. Can't wait to read the next one
Whew! A lot of emotional upheaval for Harry in this chapter. Some positive but mostly negative. Poor Kid. Vernon showing up in the Library during the nightmare was the thing that really hit me the most. He fledgling sense of safety being violated. Voldemort really is good at psychological games isn't he?
Snape isn't perfect by any means so I can't really criticize, but if I were him, I'd put a kibosh on the "burden" language that is being bandied about and letting the implication that Harry is imposing on the "family" stand. Especially when Harry is sitting right there! Sure, Snape was more focused on the person speaking but I sort of think he should be thinking more about how these words affect Harry, not on the demands of the shrew. Snape sort of lent agreement with her sentiments by not disavowing them. He was just arguing that he decided not to go. It was a battle of wills when he should have seen her attempts to hurt Harry with her words. Finally, the last thing that really set's Harry apart is referring to him as "the boy" and not by his name along with Snape being "sir" to Harry and "dad" to Kieran.
I'm actually surprised that harry has even considered extending trust towards Severus. It's sort of a good sign, but also sort of a bad sign. Harry must be more broken than we thought for that to happen so quickly. It "helps" that he's in crisis right now and Snape is the only one there. But forcing trust can sometimes backfire since a lot of the reasons that distrust was present are skipped over. But again, bonds forged in crisis can be very strong. Time will tell.
Also the absence of anger when thinking about how Snape treated him in the past vs now is a bit surprising. Both in Potions and Occulemency. In five years, he never taught Harry how to properly dice an ingredient? He didn't give Harry instructions on what to do or how to do Occulmency? If Harry wasn't so exhausted, I think he might have the thought "why didn't you give me this book before? Why didn't you teach me how to properly prepare ingredients before?" Harry doesn't deliberately ignore instructions in his schoolwork in canon so my personal conclusion is that he wasn't taught...on purpose.
Reading between the lines, Snape set Harry up for failure in both by literally not teaching him, then condemning him for his failure.
That Harry doesn't even have a second of anger over this makes me believe Harry is worse off than depicted.
But then again, it's been quite a while since I read the beginning of this story, so I'm probably forgetting quite a bit of the ups and downs that have already played out. Forgive me if I have and ignore my comments.
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