Catabute and Pezella's Fan Fiction Reviews, from The Two Old Hags Options

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For the past few months, McGonagall's Cat and I have been collaborating on something outside of Project Ferret. We write a monthy fan fiction review column for our affiliate, The Quibbler, on behalf of our alter egos, The Two Old Hags.

We've decided to share our articles with you and invite everyone to share links to other Harry Potter Fan Fiction (not sites, stories) you've come across and enjoyed.

When providing a link, please give us the story's title, author name and a brief review. Let us know a bit about the story why you liked it or disliked it.

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JANUARY, 2005 review of Truth and Consequences by InFabula at The Sugar Quill

Witches' Cauldron Stirring and Writing Review
by Catabute and Pezella (aka The Two Old Hags)

Our liaisons with the muggle world have reported a strange phenomenon occurring amongst their numbers. For some reason they seem fascinated with the everyday goings on in our world and have created vast amounts of fictionalized stories about us. Some of these stories are quite accurate and deserving of your perusal should you have a spare moment between chopping your desiccated dragon livers and de-gnoming your gardens. Some attempts at what they call “Fan Fiction”, however, should be avoided like plague-carrying fleas.

We have taken it upon ourselves to sift through the morass of stories out there, and discuss the various merits of certain ones in each issue of the Quibbler until someone overcomes the Entrancing Enchantment spell we've cast upon them, kicks us out and removes our brilliant literary discourse.

We proudly present The Quibbler's January Witches' Cauldron Stirring and Writing Review by Catabute and Pezella:

There are a few muggle fan fiction writers who appear to know some of the people from our world. One who seems to be on very good terms with the young James Potter, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin is InFabula. She has two stories posted at www.SugarQuill.net. Her story, Truth and Consequences is well worth putting your Lacewing Flies back into their jar and reading.

Truth and Consequences is a fictional account of that unfortunate night Severus Snape was told by Sirius Black how to get past the Whomping Willow on Hogwarts' grounds. InFabula has taken what we know about that full moon night and told the full story with clarity and detail, continuing the tale a little.

Excerpt, with permission:

(Snape) gave James a look of pure loathing. “I understand you came in to rescue me. Did you get cold feet, Potter? Decide somewhat reluctantly that my death wouldn’t be worth getting expelled?”
He turned to Remus, his lip curled in a sneer of triumph. “The one, tiny gratification I have is that you will be out of this school faster than Potter can fly.”

Like a fine wand, the plot is well crafted, with plausible story lines to support various as yet unexplained canon details. Twists and turns will have the astute witch or wizard enthralled, while keeping with the story as we already know it.

James and Remus come alive through her deft story-telling. Rather than writing Peter as the traitor of his later years, he is portrayed as the fourth Marauder in a quite acceptable way. Sirius seems true to character for most of the three chapters posted, though at the very end he is slightly out of character. Her intuitive portraits of the characters are so plausible that it may be said she knows these men better than she lets on. She may not even be the muggle fan fiction writer she claims to be, but a witch adept at scrying and possibly a seer of great talent.

There are a few punctuation errors (someone obliviated many of her commas), but on the whole, this is a very satisfying read with a great feel for the characters. We give this story four out of five doxies and encourage fans of Sirius and of Remus to apparate over to www.SugarQuill.net to have a peek.