Stephan Sokolow's Blog

Updated 2020-08-25: Added “Pack”

Well, I’ve already done a list of the best fics where Moses comes to the mountain, so now let’s do ones where the mountain discovers Moses. In other words, a list of stories where characters from sci-fi settings discover the Harry Potter setting. (I like these because they tend to result in interesting reactions to the unexpected on both sides.)

The big difference here being that these tend to have more of a focus on worldview-challenging and characters. (In a “Harry in sci-fi” story, bigger-scale events already in motion in the setting tend to demand attention while, in a “sci-fi discovers Harry”, the meeting of two very different worlds tends to be the whole point of the plot.)

Best of the Best

Culture Shock by Ruskbyte

Length: 72,186 Words
Crossover: The Culture series by Iain M. Banks
Status: Incomplete (and not updated since 2008)

I’m going to start with a warning that, despite its length, this story is little more than a first act and hasn’t been updated since 2008. That said, the fact that I’m still recommending it should say a lot.

This is the story which started my interest in sci-fi crossovers and, at the same time, introduced me to Mr. Banks’s Culture novels.

As the story opens, Diziet Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw are responding to a report that a 15-month-old boy somehow linked into the hyperspace grid in a place which local records call “Godric’s Hollow”. After investigating what became of the child, they decide, both for his own well-being, and to satisfying their curiosity, they will raise him in The Culture. Things then skip to shortly before Dumbledore and 12 others unexpectedly drain themselves to near death when performing a ritual to turn Harry’s Hogwarts letter into a portkey capable of reaching through the powerful wards which, after all, must be the reason Harry cannot be tracked to any point on Earth.

What makes this story so delightful is how entertainingly it blindsides both sides with challenges to their worldviews once things get going. By the time Harry’s Hogwarts letter arrives, his hyperspatial abilities (eg. apparation) are well-understood by those who raised him (though they have failed to produce clones which reproduce them)… yet they are completely puzzled when they encounter aspects of this “supersitition” and “nonsense” which are a full-blown Outside Context Problem.

I love stories where people where highly-intelligent, rational, scientifically-minded, mature adults (ie. Star Trek: TNG or better) have to come to terms with magic not just being some biological expression of an aspect of physics they already know… and it’s not just the author’s excuse to work out their frustrations at science not taking their faith as seriously as they do. There’s just something deeply satisfying about watching professional researchers (or equivalent) react to having their worldview turned on its ear by an author who truly understands that science is a method of inquiry, not a belief system, but doesn’t get so caught up in it that they cast all examples of magic as new expressions of known scientific phenomena.

(I think it’s at least partly for the same reasons Sherlock Holmes is so fascinating: It’s a challenge despite how visibly competent the characters are and how much the author reveals to the reader, rather than just being a case of the author implicitly saying “take my word for it”.)

As far as the feel of the story goes, it’s unarguably intended to feel like a Culture story first and foremost and, while it’s been a while since I read a Culture novel, what I do remember is a pretty good match: A delightful blend of light-feeling fiction, mostly serious, but with a dash of humour her and there, which works beautifully for this kind of “challenged worldviews” story.

If you’ve never read a Culture novel, let me give you one example to whet your appetite: The A.I.s (called Minds) which run the ships and space stations choose their own names… and they choose names like “Artificial Stupidity”, “Just Passing Through”, “Your Mother”, and “Stood Far Back When The Gravitas Was Handed Out”. (The last being one of a series of names chosen in response to complaints that names of Culture ships should have more gravitas.)

I’ve re-read it multiple times and my only complaint is how little of the story arc Ruskbyte wrote out within the 72,186 words he gave us. Nonetheless, if you don’t mind reading fics incomplete enough to tease like this, I still highly recommend it.

Blue Magic by Tellur

Length: 219,849 Words
Crossover: Mass Effect
Status: Incomplete

If I had to pick a single “sci-fi discovers Harry Potter fic” to take first place, I’d pick this one in a heartbeat.

The initial setup for the story goes as follows:

When a 90-year-old Liara T’Soni suggests to her mother that their stealth technology is advanced enough that it could be used to more effectively ease new species into Galactic Society, she never expects to be given a top-secret assignment to study the species of the recently-discovered GT89534 (A.K.A. Earth), nor to serendipitously observe young Harry Potter’s use accidental magic to apparate onto the school roof. Oh, sorry, his display of biotics on a planet without eezo.

Being still young and inexperienced as Asari go, Liara’s resolve to follow instructions doesn’t last long when her increased scrutiny forces her to witness the actions of Dudley’s gang. The result? One scared-off gang, one Harry Potter who’s jumped to the conclusion that he’s met a Jedi, and one slightly overwhelmed Liara revealing far more than she should about the real state of things, just in time for Benezia to discover what has happened.

Well, with Harry befriending Liara and medical scans showing that he does indeed possess Element Zero (which is actually magic condensed into physical form), despite there being none in Earth’s environment, events start to unfold and Harry winds up secretly and unofficially adopted by the T’Soni family.

With this setup done, the story can be thought of as having two parts: Before and after Harry’s Hogwarts letter… and both the off-Earth and “during Hogwarts” parts feel like they could carry the story alone.

Before Harry receives his letter, the story follows the T’Soni cast, occasionally checking in with a young Hermione or a member of the wizarding world (eg. Dumbledore, Ginny, etc.) to tell an engaging narrative of three groups who will then meet and start to interact when Harry reaches Hogwarts age.

In addition to presenting interesting hints about the greater narrative, such as Harry discovering a mural with a phoenix and a dragon hidden in a Prothean dig site, it also introduces entertaining OCs such as the passing mention of one of young Harry’s acquaintances being a Volus obsessed with extranet gaming, and the introduction of an enjoyable Quarian OC as a friend of Liara’s, originally brought in to design an efficient solution for digitizing books borrowed from Earth libraries.

Once Harry receives his letter, things start to change, with Harry befriending Fawkes during the trip back to Earth and it being revealed that Dumbledore, acting as executor of the Potter will, has gone ahead with his plans to restore Potter Hall in anticipation of Harry’s return. I love the shape things settle into here, with Liara (and others) spending time at Potter Hall while they try to investigate the nature and history of magic, while Harry meets Hermione on the train and sets up another interesting dynamic.

This is another one of those stories which does a great job of knowing when and how to flesh out its characters and its world and, once the scenes which follow Harry, Liara, and Benezia away from Earth get going, it actually makes a better “Mass Effect side-story” fic than any of the pure Mass Effect stories I’ve yet tried.

In fact, I’m having trouble coming up with good examples of any type which do this nice a job of making me enjoy just following the characters around.

That said, while I don’t want to spoil too much, I also love amount of effort that’s been put into reconciling Harry Potter magic with Mass Effect biotics. It’s a delightfully elegant interpretation, the storytelling used to reveal it is satisfying, and “biotics is to magic as crude walking robots are to animal locomotion” is a satisfyingly way of explaining the relationship between magic and biotics and why magic can do so much more.

Definitely a story I’d recommend and, while the wait since the last chapter means it’s unlikely to be completed, I find that I don’t mind so much. “It’s just enjoyable to hang out with the characters” is a very powerful thing for an author to achieve and, given the hints of the direction it might have intended to go, that might have suffered had it gone on longer anyway.

Runners-up

Potter Trek by stephenopolos

Length: 24,423 Words
Crossover: Star Trek (post-TNG/VOY)
Status: Incomplete

An unspecified amount of time after the end of Star Trek: Voyager, the crew of the U.S.S. Skyforge fail to disable a damaged Iconian facility which is tearing its planet apart, setting off a sequence of events involving a subspace rift and Section 31 tampering with their computer core. As a result 53 crew members wind up using the pattern buffers as a lifeboat and the ship winds up in orbit around Harry Potter’s Earth, with the ship’s designated ECH unexpectedly having his command access limited by a control program hard-coded to “Return to Earth. If necessary, find a captain who can rebuild the Federation.”

Arriving just in time to observe the “high-energy emanations” of the fight at Godric’s Hollow, Sky (the A.I.) beams Lily’s body onboard for study and, upon discovering that there is still suppressed neural activity, decides to place her in stasis and tag young Harry with a nanite-based transponder in case revival can be achieved.

The story then time-skips seven years forward to Harry, in his cupboard, engaging in one of his favourite past-times: Listening to Star Trek: The Next Generation when Petunia forgets to turn off the TV. It is now that the story really gets started, as, wWith a wishful thought to prime his magic, and the phrase “Emergency beam out” from the show, the transponder switches out of surveillance mode. A dozen quick risk calculations on Sky’s part, and Harry finds himself on the Skyforge where he soon passes out and wakes up under the care of an EMH modelled after Dr. Leonard McCoy.

The story then alternates between two casts: Harry, as he’s raised by Sky, Bones, and various other holograms on the ship, and the aftermath of his “running away”, which follows people such as the child welfare workers who smell something fishy about the Dursleys’ story, and Dudley after his parents dig a deep enough hole for themselves for him to be sent to St. Brutus’ Secure Home For At Risk Children.

First, let me say right out that this story has its flaws. That’s why it’s a runner-up. For example, it calls Section 31’s control program a V.I. despite this not being a Mass Effect crossover. Also, it tends to err on the side of exposition and contrivance at times and the use of a holodeck full of OCs does feel a bit like the overuse of the holodeck as a storytelling device in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

That said, it’s a novel concept and I enjoyed reading it, so I think it deserves a mention. I hope I’m not giving it too much benefit of the doubt, but we’ll see.

The story arc hasn’t progressed very far yet, but judging by by the way the two narratives have been flowing so far, I’m hoping to eventually see the two groups start to interact.

Rediscovery by Argonaut57

Length: 23,482 Words
Crossover: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Status: Complete

This interesting little oneshot explores a different kind of Star Trek – Harry Potter crossover, where first contact and the arrival of alien species so soon after World War 3 spooked the Wizarding World enough to flee from Earth.

The story aims to be like a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode and the setup is that the Enterprise is bringing a batch of state of the art sensors and probes to study an impenetrable region of space called the Pyrrhus Anomaly, which has remained unchanged since it swallowed up four star star systems (including a Vulcan separatist colony) in the year of the Federation’s birth.

Given that this is the Enterprise, I think you can guess that unexpected things happen.

This is another story that, while flawed, is worthwhile for its novelty.

Looking at the positives, It’s got some interesting world-building ideas and I’ve never seen another “contact fic” which is written as a oneshot akin to a Star Trek episode.

The negatives are less nebulous, so I can go into more detail: First, it’s a bit too fond of its information dumps. Second, there’s the occasional bit of the author’s headcanon that isn’t ideal. It also has a few minor technical faults, such as missing scene dividers and the use of abbreviations for ranks like “Cmdr”, but I saved the biggest fault for last…

This is a story that hurts itself by being too desperate to tie things back to events in the canon time period. It incorporates far too many characters with familiar family names, and there’s no way I can imagine to incorporate a subplot where descendants of Death Eaters steal a cloning device to try to bring back Voldemort without it harming the story overall.

In conclusion, despite its many flaws, the setting is unique enough that I’m happy to have read it for that… I’d just be happier if someone would read it, wait five or ten years, and write a superior version inspired by the faded memories of the bits that work.

Pack by mjimeyg

Length: 97,331 words
Crossover: Jurassic Park
Status: Complete

This one is sort of the opposite of The Perils on Innocence. While it’s contemporary, it is technically sci-fi and Harry is technically “discovered” by scientifically-minded people… it meets the threshold purely based on “Where do I feel I’d be most likely to look if I wanted to rediscover this in my notes?”

The gist is that an accident while Harry’s being portkeyed away from the third task of the Triwizard Tournament lands him in Jurassic Park, just in time to help the canon group survive more effectively, breaking the Statute of Secrecy in the process.

Then, when they get to the mainland, Harry does not react well to the idea of being taken back to Britain, manages to get the jump on the wizards and solicit help in keeping his new friends from being obliviated… but, since he managed to apply his Care of Magical Creatures training to get the velociraptors to see him as alpha, he winds up returning to the park to help with the cleanup and accidentally becomes the world’s first dinosaur animagus.

While the author doesn’t explicitly list The Scaly Raptor as inspiration, it covers a lot of the same ground, aside from not being quite as good at the heartwarming or comic moments, and ends with the Statute of Secrecy having fallen, even if it doesn’t make that the focus of the story.

Definitely an enjoyable story and it’s very rare to see a muggle groups forcing magicals to not simply dictate terms. 4.5 out of 5.

Honourable Mentions

This time, I’d like to also spotlight a couple of stories which don’t fit the literal theme of the list, being contemporary non-crossovers rather than sci-fi, but which do fit the more abstract theme of discovery and rational inquiry that helps to make the best of these sci-fi crossovers so good.

Harry Potter and the Golden Needle by xenocidender

Length: 97,849 Words

When the Dursleys leave Harry home alone for a week during the summer after the Triwizard Tournament, he is left alone with his thoughts and his summer Transfiguration homework: An essay requiring that he provide and defend an explanation for Gamp’s Fifth Principle, which states that one cannot transfigure gold. As luck would have it, just after having concluded that no two theories about the principle agree, Harry is reminded of the atomic theory of matter by the TV he forgot to turn off.

The story does have very enjoyable and witty character interactions, as well as some novel plot elements such as encountering Susan and Amelia Bones after fleeing Dudley’s gang and it does spend a fair bit of time on a subplot with Amelia investigating how Harry wound up with the Dursleys, but it’s Harry’s essay and its implications which give the story its title and earn it a place on this list.

When Harry arrives back at Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall reveals that, ten years earlier, Professor Vector turned in a very similar conclusion while still a student and asks Harry if he’d be interested in helping her with a research project on the topic, as belief that something can be done is an essential component.

The rest of the story is split between Amelia Bones investigating Harry’s home situation and focusing heavily on the aforementioned research project, with a backdrop of Dolores Umbridge… and I quite like how the author has clearly put a fair bit of work into world-building. (Especially the scene when Professor Vector engages in world-building expostion disguised as a rant at Umbridge.)

When the three sides of the story start to converge, it’s because Harry was inspired to think about his Umbridge problem differently due to his interactions with Vector. When Fudge tries to get him up before the Wizengamot, Amelia Bones is ready to interfere because of her pre-existing interest in Harry’s circumstances.

On the Amelia Bones side, you get to see things like Amelia contacting a friend who works in muggle law enforcement after Harry’s file on the wizarding side is unnaturally sparse. On the project side, the story goes into detail on the mechanics of why previous attempts have failed so disastrously. For example, it actually provides a plausible sequence of arithmantic properties for Gold, based on the relationship between its atomic and molecular structures and various prime numbers. I like that a lot. On the Umbridge side, we get to see the exchanges between Umbridge and Fudge, Fudge and Malfoy, and Malfoy and Riddle which are behind the whole effort, as well as the satisfyingly escalated circumstances that result from Harry being inspired by his interactions with Professor Vector.

It’s clear that, had the story been completed, skills gained in seeking to manipulate gold would have been The Power He Knows Not, and this is another one of those stories which could have been amazing were it completed, but is still quite a worthwhile read in its incomplete state. It’s also another one of those “I’ve never read anything else quite like it” stories that everyone should at least sample.

The Perils of Innocence by avidbeader

Length: 101,526 words

This is a story that shouts its intent to be distinctive from the very first scene. It begins at a live-in facility for children with psychological issues, with one of the staff interacting with a young child who isn’t confirmed to be Harry Potter until the second half of the prologue.

Chapter 1 then time-skips to four years later, when nine-year-old Harry meets Hermione Granger, whose parents are seeking help with her bouts of accidental magic. Thanks to a conveniently inveterate bully, they almost immediately discover that they have a certain often-inconvenient ability in common.

What follows is a charming first act where two (later three) prepubescent children build a friendship as they work with the staff at the facility to understand and control the mysterious ability they share.

However, variety is to be had because, a dozen chapters in, their Hogwarts letters arrive and we actually do get to see what I was hoping for when I first found this: A really unique “worldview challenge” moment. In this case, Professor McGonagall getting set up for an interrogation of sorts with some psychology professionals and three pre-Hogwarts students whose skill in wandless magic rivals or surpasses most adults who attempt it.

…but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s rushing them to Hogwarts. It takes just shy of another dozen chapters to get beyond their introduction to the wizarding world and their carefully considered decision to choose Hogwarts over one of the other, smaller schools and their experiences in Diagon Alley.

All in all, that makes for a story that’s split into equal thirds: Pre-letter, post-letter but pre-Hogwarts, and Hogwarts… and each segment has a subtly different feel, but also a consistently satisfying feel of un-hurried attention to character interaction and unfaltering pragmatism among the cast.

Like Harry Potter and the Golden Needle, this is another one of those stories where the only bad thing I can say about it is that it’s unfinished… and that, despite it being unfinished, I still found what did get written worthwhile enough to have  re-read.

Last Updated: 2019-04-18

For those who are unaware, a “fukufic” is a Ranma ½ – Sailor Moon crossover where Ranma Saotome, macho, intermittently-female martial artist extraordinaire, winds up acting in the role of a Sailor Senshi.

Now, keep in mind that Ranma resents having a curse which turns him into a girl whenever narrative convenience throws some cold water at him, and the quest for a cure is one of the recurring driving elements of more significant story arcs in the Ranma ½ manga and anime, getting him to become a magical girl typically happens either under protest, due to bad writing, or both.

That means that, whenever I find a well-written story where Ranma takes on such a role and it doesn’t feel like some kind of variation on the theme of “we’ll give Ranma the opportunity to be a magical girl, then throw trouble at him until he’s forced to accept the job”, it’s a pretty damn noteworthy event. Hobson’s choices to bring about what’s often the author’s non-sexual kink get old very quickly when it’s not yours too.

So far, I’ve only run across three fics like this which I enjoyed enough to consider mentioning:

Best of the Best

The Best of Times by Ozzallos

Length: 104,987 Words
Status: Complete

If I had to choose a first-place winner for best voluntary Fukufic, it’s almost guaranteed to be this.

The basic plot is that, because the chaos surrounding Ranma prevents Sailor Pluto from keeping an eye on him normally, she has to make use of alternative means to keep him from interfering with her plans …until the day when Ranma, in a fit of frustration, wishes he knew why he couldn’t get a moment’s peace… out loud… in the presence of a convenient magical item.

Armed with the magically-granted knowledge of Pluto’s civilian identity and actions against him, Ranma decides that the best way to take the fight to her is to infiltrate the Senshi. In typical form for his comedically-convenient luck, he happens to incorporate a mark of office for the Silver Millennium elite guard into his disguise, and then ad-lib the mannerisms. (It helps the act that elite guard were blocked from viewing with the gate to protect the queen from indirect tracking.) Given that Pluto’s degraded ability to spy on him kept her from discovering the curse, it fools them quite readily.

I don’t want to spoil any more of the plot twists, but what follows is a story that’s got a great funny thread to it and a fun character piece where Ranma ends up serving as a valuable member of the team. It’s complete, I enjoy it enough to have read it several times, and it’s got a great character arc for Setsuna which took me by surprise when I realized what was it had been building up to.

Relatively Absent by Togashii Gaijin

Length: Prologue, 11 chapters, and 2 side-story chapters
Status: Incomplete

Unfortunately, you’ll have to find someone who can e-mail you a copy of this if you want to read it, because the author has attempted to expunge it from the ‘net. That said, while it didn’t progress very far into its story arc, it’s not bad enough to merit removal …the author just felt it was somehow shameful that he’d once written fanfiction.

That said, this is a very special case because it’s the only example I can remember running into where the choice is quite literally “take the job or die”, but it works!

The basic setup is that, in the aftermath of his fight with Prince Herb, Ranma winds up buried under the collapsing mountain. At the same time, Sailor Pluto has used Time Stop and the Gates, bearing an intelligence that Pluto hasn’t talked to in a millennium, decide that a new guardian is warranted. Ranma is the only suitable candidate without looking outside the Sol system.

What makes this work is how the author combines a bunch of smaller details so that it feels real rather than just railroading Ranma into a convenient position. Yes, it’s a Hobson’s choice. Ranma flat out says “some choice” while his life is ebbing away. It works because Ranma making the best of the situation is a central element of what’s going on. Because Ranma took the job to save his own life, there’s no immediate threat to steal the spotlight and the conflict can focus on Ranma dealing with the changed circumstances.

It especially helps that, despite being forced to take up the mantle of being “Guardian Khronos”, the story clearly shows that Ranma’s Ranma-ness isn’t going to be worn down by the job, as he pounces on every opportunity to make it less about being a magical girl and more about being a martial artist in a stupid outfit with some useful new abilities.

With the explanation of why the fukufic aspect words handled, let’s focus on the story itself. Most of it focuses around Ranma meeting the rest of his family on his mother’s side, who had been keeping an eye on him but not interfering as a result of a big falling-out between Nodoka and her mother. It features quite a few OCs and original locales, and is paced in a way which suggests that it was meant to be just the beginning of quite a long-running fic. (Basically, think of it as just the beginning of a multi-way crossover with one of the series being the author’s original work.)

Given the reveal that the Silver Crystal and Silence Glaive also have minds of their own, plus the associated Senshi scenes, it’s pretty clear that the Sailor Moon cast was intended to play a bigger role as the story would have unfolded. However, the set of chapters that actually got written are skewed fairly heavily in the direction of the author’s original elements.

…at the same time, I also think it’s a fairly clear case of “the author was on a course to gunk things up”. First, the events which occur when it cuts back to Nerima in the later chapters feel like the author started a “close that chapter of Ranma’s life” fix-fic and then got carried away with those parts rather than using them to close down Nerima quickly. Second, Genma is portrayed in a way which makes it clear he would have come back later, and to the story’s detriment. Third, there’s a foreshadowed antagonist that I sense would come back in a way which stole too much of the spotlight in the wrong way. Fourth, there’s a scene involving D.C. Comics characters which feels like it would have been better for the story as a whole if it were done with original characters instead. Finally, there’s an excuse to send Ranma to the U.S. and the last chapter that got written has Ranma on the plane.

All in all, it feels like it would have developed into one of those messy multi-crosses between Ranma ½, Sailor Moon, D.C. Comics, and an original vision with enough development and focus behind it to be a source unto itself. However, what actually got written for the Ranma side is surprisingly self-contained and could be easily pruned to form the beginning of a working “Ranma in a Sailor Moon – Original crossover”.

It’s certainly not your typical fukufic by any means, but, if you can find a copy, it’s something I’d suggest reading at least once. It’s one of those interesting and somewhat unique artifacts of the era before Fanfiction.net, when fanfiction was centred around the FFML, the rec.arts.anime.creative Usenet group, and private websites, and fics often had varying degrees of influence from that “Usenet college writing” flavour that showed up in works from the period. (For example, the Spells R Us series, Siaru’s The Virus: Interpersonal Effects (available in the VFFA bundle for The Virus), and various text-parser-driven adventure games from the 80s and 90s, both text-only and graphical.)

Runners-up

Just a plan by Poly

Length: 46,440 Words
Status: Complete

In this fic, Nodoka decides that Ranma needs a break from Nerima and takes him to spend some time in Juuban, at the house of a friend who is travelling abroad.

She makes it very clear that Ranma is not to get into martial arts fights while in Juuban… but then fangirls out when they observe the Senshi fighting the latest monster.

A few spur-of-the moment attacks that “nobody without magic could pull off”, and Pluto out of contact after being caught by surprise at the Time Gates, and they’re convinced that Ranma is a new senshi, even before they meet “her”.

I was only introduced to this fic recently, but it was an enjoyable read.

My main problem with it is how, once it’s gotten the setup over with, there’s a span of about half a dozen chapters where the writing gets sloppy and some of the scenes a bit dull. For example, rather than producing a well-flowing narrative centered around what makes the story distinctive, it spends too much time cutting away to secondary scenes of questionable entertainment value and the mini-arc which uses Happosai and Pantyhose Taro as a plot device feels contrived.

At the same time, it feels like it’s trying to be a loose cross between The Best of Times and a “Ranma living with Nodoka in girl form” story like Girl’s School by Miko2 without doing either as well as it could have.

In the end, the story earns its place as a runner-up but a little too much of that relies on how scarce the competition is. If you want another story where Ranma dons the fuku truly of his own free will, give it a try. If you don’t mind the more traditional Hobson’s choice fukufic plots, there are more engaging stories you could be reading instead… though I will admit that seeing all that build-up to Ranma revealing the curse dispersed with a simple “Wow! I didn’t know you were a Starlight!” is a refreshingly novel thing to do.

Sailor Ecdysiast by Crescent Pulsar

Length: 7,724 Words
Status: Complete

This story is a runner-up because it’s just a silly little oneshot.

The basic concept is that there’s a sailor crystal that nobody wants in circulation because the senshi in question fights crime in the nude. It got sealed away eons ago, but the seal failed and it started getting passed from person to person.

Eventually, it comes into Ranma’s possession and the author comes up with a surprisingly acceptable sequence of events and rationale to get Ranma to power up of his own volition. (Though I’ll leave it to you to read what those are.)

There’s not really much else to say, and I definitely enjoyed the chuckle I got out of it.

Last Updated: 2021-05-21 (Added two fics to the temporary “Magical-Muggle Cooperation” section)

Today, I’m rounding up the Harry Potter fics which I think do the best job of making Wizarding politics and/or governance a major focus of the story.

…and when I say a “major focus”, I don’t mean “very important to the plot” or “Harry Potter uses some tricks to win emancipation” or some other recurring trope. I mean stories where the politics, nature, or history of wizarding governance are a significant portion of what the story is “about” rather than just being a well-developed means to an end.

Bear in mind that I don’t actively seek out these sorts of fics, so I welcome suggestions for stories I might have missed. Also, I’m not particularly pleased with how this post came out, stylistically, but I don’t want to give this the whole “essay that you’re being marked on” treatment, so please excuse any writing that doesn’t flow as naturally as usual.

That said, let’s get to it…

Long Live The Queen by offsides

Length: 174,577 words
Status: Complete

Have you ever wanted to read a “Harry Potter lays the legal smackdown on the wizarding government” fic that was actually good? If so, this is the fic for you.

The story begins when, on the train ride home after Voldemort’s return, Harry’s frustration with the ministry draws an off-handed “There’s not a lot you can do about it mate, not unless someone dies and makes you King,” from Ron. This prompts Harry and Hermione to realize that there might actually be an authority higher than the corrupt wizarding government to appeal to.

Realizing that it might be possible to get Sirius a royal pardon that must be obeyed by the wizarding government, they try to acquire the Ministry of Magic’s founding documents and make a rewarding discovery: The Ministry is magically bound to obey British law at the time of its founding, including the Magna Carta and the Habeas Corpus act.

Given that the slight change in events allowed Harry to get advance warning of his upcoming trial, it’s very clear that the only reason the wizarding government isn’t in danger of corrective actions for “gross violations” up to and including complete dissolution of the Ministry of Magic is that the Crown has been unaware of the violations.

What follows is a completed story broken into two acts:

Act 1 has Harry and Hermione seeking a solution to the problem the Ministry presents, making an appeal to Queen Elizabeth, and making plans for how to deal with things.

Act 2 follows the aftermath of the Ministry of Magic being dissolved by order of Queen Elizabeth, and the resulting reconstruction of the institutions of wizarding society.

I don’t want to spoil too much, but I’ll end by saying that I like how this story develops Percy Weasley’s character, I like one of the little touches involving Professor McGonagall, and I like how much effort offsides put into researching the British government and building a reasonable-seeming view of how much Queen Elizabeth knows about her more secretive subjects.

As a final note, I enjoyed this story enough that I’ve re-read it.

The Queen Who Fell To Earth by Bobmin356

Length: 302,411 words
Crossover: Dragonriders of Pern
Status: Complete, with two sequels of similar length

When a suicidal Harry Potter enters the first Triwizard task, intending to let the horntail kill him, he instead becomes the first human to impress a dragon hatchling since a gravid, suicidal Pernese queen accidentally set the record for time-jumping uncounted millennia ago …in doing so, burning away Voldemort’s shade and touching off a psychic chain-reaction, sparking a resurgence of draconic sapience across the world.

The story then follows Harry and company as the narrative divides its “Harry finding a place to belong” theme between growing into being the leader of a new political faction (as the dragons will accept none other) and working to develop an analogue to the Pernese system of weyrs which is appropriate to the changed setting.

This series is an interesting case because of how it combines wizarding and mundane politics and how the non-magical politicians are used to add a thread of “believable non-drama” to the political interactions which makes it feel more like reality. (Contrary to what soap operas would have you believe, everything doesn’t have to be drama and intrigue all the time. Sometimes, trying to honestly earn the loyalty of a potential political ally makes for a good story too.)

As is sadly the case with many stories, the author is in a rush to set up for the story, so the first chapter is unarguably contrived. However, if you can overlook that, this is one of only three cases I can remember where a story or series over half a million words long was something I ended up coming back to re-read.

If you can accept the initial contrivances, the series has a feel to it that I can’t remember seeing anywhere else in the world of Harry Potter fanfiction, the tone is an interesting mix of Harry Potter, Pern, and generic “contemporary” elements, and I enjoy reading about the world that Bobmin356 has built.

Give it two or three chapters and see what you think.

Sympathetic Properties by Mr Norrell

Length: 493,451 words
Status: Incomplete

The plot to this story begins when, at the beginning of Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter is a bit more sympathetic to Dobby’s plight, and tries to find a way to buy him from whoever his current family is. (Thus, the title.) That leads to a letter inquiring about one who might be able to deal on his behalf, which, in turn, touches off an informal sting operation, resulting in an audit of Harry’s account manager after he tries to give Harry the brush-off.

Harry is quickly introduced to Lester Lichfield, his family’s old bailiff, and the politics and intrigue ensue. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say that it results in some very tense relations between the Goblins and the Ministry of Magic, and the uncommonly early-in-the-plot (but satisfyingly in-depth) investigation and political neutering of a manipulative Dumbledore so that the political scheming of multiple people can serve collectively as the antagonist, rather than any one person. (Something we see far too little of in fanfiction. The real world is complicated!)

As a character, Lichfield deserves a shout-out, because I enjoy scenes which show what he’s up to and that’s not an easy accomplishment for an original character. I also enjoy seeing the actual details of how Gringotts employees are exploiting loopholes in the laws/bylaws/etc. to accomplish goals. That kind of effort on the part of an author is always fun and Mr Norrell is particularly focused on world-building here.

That said, the story also features a Harry-Hermione pairing touched off by Dobby not provoking the Dursleys, which gives Harry a proper opportunity to read his letters. To his surprise, in one of Hermione’s, she admits she’d like to get to know him better. (A twist elegantly reconciled with canon via her response to his brief apology for not getting their letters, where she has clearly lost her nerve.)

While the story isn’t especially focused on humour, it does incorporate the occasional bit, with one of the more quotable examples being Harry’s opinion that his hand-me-downs from Dudley make him look “like a deflated rhinoceros”.

This story is also noteworthy in that Mr Norrell is intentionally aiming to avoid the existing “Harry goes to Gringotts and everything becomes better” tropes. If you want an exploration of goblin society and Gringotts company politics, intrigue both within Gringotts and between Gringotts and the Ministry, as well as world-building for the greater environment of European wizarding politics, this is the story for you.

However, as a final caution, keep in mind that this is a bit of a slow-burning fic at times and the chapters can get pretty long. If you find yourself putting it down, try coming back later and reading a little more. Just because you’re not riveted from start to finish, doesn’t automatically mean the fic isn’t for you.

Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches: Revenge is Best Served Raw by LeadVonE

Length: 480,646 words
Status: Incomplete (active as of 2018-07-15)
NOTE: I didn’t have time to re-read this to ensure the perfect accuracy of my impressions.

At its most basic, this is a do-over fic set in a “Harry is not the boy who lived” setting. However, it does two things that are much more interesting and unusual:

First, the plot begins in a timeline where Harry’s famous brother already got a do-over and still failed. Not only will Dumbledore be meddling to keep things on the track he believes is right, Harry’s do-over will be complicated by his brother thinking this is his do-over, jumping to conclusions about Harry, and generally getting very concerned by Harry not behaving as expected. However, most of the story’s focus is elsewhere, which brings us to the reason it earned a place on this list:

Second, when Harry is granted a do-over, Fate tells him about the lordships he can claim in order to gain influence and, with the help of an aging potion, a mask, and magic’s ability to anonymously confirm his credentials, he becomes the mysterious Lord Slytherin… and it is the political manoeuvring surrounding Lord Slytherin which takes up the lion’s share of the story’s focus.

As an example, the most recent few chapters, as of this writing, focus on a well-intentioned muggle-protection bill and the political manoeuvring surrounding it. For example, Arthur Weasley gets tricked into proposing amendments with terrible non-obvious implications for an important supporter. Later, The Minister’s Humble Hag (and isn’t that a clever title in the vein of “Party Whip” or “Lord Privy Seal”), acting in his duty to preserve the stability of magical British society, reaches across the aisle to Lucius Malfoy in the hope that the Dark can craft a competing bill which will prove more appealing to Lord Slytherin and his Grey faction. If that level of attention to political detail doesn’t earn it a place on this list, I don’t know what does.

UPDATE: A recent anonymous reviewer on the fic also pointed out something I neglected to mention. The story is a noteworthy example of taking a ton of bad Harry Potter fanfic tropes and using them in a way that actually works. Most memorably, the reviewer likened his relationship to the “harem” he picked up to that of a CEO and his board of directors.)

Hermione Granger and the Marriage Law Revolution by Starfox5

Length: 127,718 words
Status: Complete

This is an unusually vehement anti-marriage law fix-fic, but it becomes relevant to this list in chapter 9 when Minister of Magic Hermione Granger and Chief Warlock Harry Potter receive notice that the Prime Minister wants to talk to them.

Suddenly, the story swings to a scene with Hermione worrying, in detail, about the implications of various potential legal relationships between Wizarding Britain’s and The Crown. It then moves on to the actual meeting, which ends with the Prime Minister sticking with his plans to “see this rebellious province brought to heel” but, before he can do anything, one Antoine Malfoy of France convinces the other ICW nations to “bring those rebellious mudbloods back in line”. The latter two thirds of the story is then a war fic shown through the eyes of the various factions… I especially like the “and the dominoes fall” feel to how the purebloods, in their willful ignorance, wind up causing the escalations they feared Britain would cause if not stopped.

I’d give it a 4.5 out of 5… partly because it’s so satisfying to see a story that knows how to use a mixture of details, human nature, and time-skipping to believably portray a few heroic people literally changing the world.

Honourable Mentions

Poison Pen by GenkaiFan

Length: 74,506
Status: Complete

This story is like a less drastic version of Long Live The Queen… but also one that has a weaker “feel of politics”. In fact, I haven’t gone back to check its author’s notes but, given the periods during which they were written, I suspect this was one of the inspirations for Long Live The Queen.

The essence of the plot is that, after his family lawyer finally manages to make contact with Harry in the wake of the Ministry’s attempt to get him expelled from Hogwarts for defending himself from Dementors, Harry tries writing a letter to the editor to the Daily Prophet under the alias “Oliver Twist”… and a sympathetic employee passes it on to the Quibbler, where it gets published and receives quite a bit of attention.

Combined with help from Dobby and other interested parties, Harry begins a campaign of public letters through which he manages to get Umbridge sent to Azkaban and stir up resistance to the Ministry’s overreach.

At the same time, it mixes in a rift between Harry and Ron and Hermione for their decision to trust Dumbledore over him. Initially, this is made worse by Hermione’s loyalty to her trust in authority but, eventually, her efforts to prove his alter ego wrong start to open her eyes.

It’s a reasonably satisfying fic, but there is always a certain aspect of inherent shallowness to a story where the whole point is for the hero to curb-stomp all the way to the finish line in some sense or other and the interest comes from a mixture of the novel ways in which they curb-stomp and the satisfaction of seeing the powerful opponents taken down a peg for a change.

I definitely wouldn’t want to change that (many many stories have been ruined by trying to “fix” this kind of plot by crudely grafting some “tension” onto them), but it is something to keep in mind. It’s like criticizing Tetris for the shallowness of the emotions it evokes. That’s just part of what that kind of game is.

That said, it does have its flaws. First, the Prophet articles not written by Harry could have been written in a more journalistic style. Second, the sheer amount of stuff Harry manages to curb-stomp his way to solving wears thin in the last third of the story. Also, dealing with Voldemort did feel contrived and I’d have either come up with a more creative solution or made the story more narrow in scope. The ending already takes the “let the readers imagine the epilogue” approach anyway, so it’s not as if’s trying to tie up every last loose end within the scope of what was written.

Overall, I’d probably give it a 4.0 out of 5 for a rating. It starts out a 4.5 and ends at maybe a 3.7.

Harry’s Loophole by ThinkingSpeck

Length: 60,394
Status: Complete

For the most part, this is a typical “Harry Potter decides not to play along with being shoved into the Triwizard Tournament” fic. However, it becomes noteworthy when Crouch and Voldemort decide that, if Harry won’t cooperate, they’ll kidnap him early.

The politics come in after Voldemort is successfully killed, and the Death Eaters are captured. The perspective ThinkingSpeck assigns to Harry left me wondering why I can’t remember any other fics going in this direction.

I may not have studied political science, but I keep up on things enough that I recognize the influence of things like Mahatma Gandhi’s “an eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s desire to save racists from themselves in the philosophy underpinning what Harry accomplishes.

Aside from the politics, what makes this story noteworthy for me is the various situations where ThinkingSpeck takes something that authors typically assign a ton of significance and build-up to, and unapologetically gets it out of the way quickly so the story can stay focused on what matters. (eg. Decapitating the newly resurrected Voldemort in the graveyard by catching him by surprise) That “make an unexpected thing work by acting as if it’s no big deal” technique is a skill many authors lack.

Now, for the story’s main flaw. It went on too long in an unusual way.

A story’s arc is defined by its driving conflict, and Harry resolved the driving conflict quite solidly in the third-last chapter. If anything, what follows should be an epilogue, not two more chapters of normal writing which give plenty of time for the triumphant ending note to fade… and an epilogue isn’t even really necessary here.

That said, a short epilogue could still work. It’s just that the last two chapters aren’t what’s needed.

The purpose of an epilogue is to ensure the readers are satisfied by letting them share in any bits of resolution which don’t come immediately after resolving the arc’s conflict… typically, letting them experience the reward the protagonist got for resolving the conflict when it doesn’t come as part of the final pre-epilogue chapter. (Not two whole chapters written in typical form.)

Basically, an epilogue is a vignette from after the “happily ever after” has begun.

All in all, I think the best solution for the overall quality of the story would have been to omit the last two chapters… which brings me to Gringotts. The second issue.

I’m not opposed to Goblins being friendly characters (see, for example, Effects and Side-Effects) but it needs to be justifiable. In this story, the block of scenes when Harry goes to Gringotts do have room for the Goblins to be receptive. Harry approaches them in a respectful manner, establishes himself as his own man, politically, and it’s established beforehand that they share his desire to eliminate horcruxes. The problem is that the goblin leader is a little too willing to welcome Harry as an ally and share apparently privileged information with a guy he’s only just met before asking him to keep it secret.

If the last two chapters were removed, that would become even more obvious as something that should be reworked… but, again, it can work. It just needs tweaking. (eg. All the key exposition details result from Harry seeing things on the path to the ritual chamber used for cleansing the horcruxes. It’s just the manner in which Harry’s questions are answered that needs to be tweaked.)

All in all, if you’re in the mood for an alt-Triwizard fic and want a novel approach to defeating Voldemort and company, give this a whirl. 4.3 out of 5.

The Lawyers Against the Cup by Tangerine-Alert

Length: 39,247
Status: Complete

Not really a politics fic in the traditional sense, but this alt-Triwizard fic has a unique and interesting feel to it.

The basic premise is that, instead of exploiting the loophole in the Triwizard Tournament in the usual way (compete, but gain concessions like legal adulthood), Harry researches Wizarding law and discovers that there *is* an avenue available to dispute the contract if he seeks sanctuary with a wizarding law firm.

Since the story is primarily about the journey, I think it’s reasonable to explain what makes this special by spoiling the final chapter or two to give a sense of how the story approached things.

Several years after his graduation, Harry has found peace, living in New Zealand, when a settlement agreement is finally reached. As a result of a political manoeuvring with Lucius Malfoy, he has given Draco a second chance in the wake of Voldemort being taken care of by those acting on Harry’s behalf, and, having both grown up, they are friends of a sort.

In exchange for a large cash settlement, Harry continues to be barred from entering Hogwarts grounds until the day Dumbledore dies, and the suit is dismissed without prejudice, but Harry negotiates with the Hogwarts staff to give a talk in Hogsmeade about what options you have when you feel like you’re backed into a corner.

A little dry at times, but a story I’m glad to have read. 4 out of 5.

Related: Magical-Muggle Cooperation

For lack of a better place, I’ve decided to start accumulating fics here in which Harry’s people work with the muggle government against Voldemort in some capacity. I’ll probably move these to their own post eventually but, since they’re stories I’ve already reviewed, brief mentions and links to my reviews will do for now.

• Effects and Side Effects by Pheonix Dawn (MI-5 and MI-6, starting in chapter 27)
• Harry Potter and the Curse’s Cure by Dragon-Raptor (Amelia Bones’s squib brother who went into the military gathers a small army of relatives of wizards in chapter 38)
• Magic Online by Mrs.InsaneOne (While not a perfect match, act 3 involves Harry going to live with Kazuto in Japan, where the immigration process and the aftermath of Sword Art Online are used to show the Japanese magical government being less disconnected from all things muggle.)

Last Updated: 2017-08-13 (Added “Harry’s Trek”)
See Also: Recommended “Sci-Fi Discovers Harry Potter” fics

So many things happen “yesterday” that we don’t act on. “Yesterday”, I re-read a Harry Potter fanfic… it took two yesterdays to finish. So “yesterday”, when I realized that it would make a good seed for another themed collection of fanfic recommendations, I acted on it… but ereyesterday, I had already made a blog post (and I wanted to use “ereyesterday”), so I decided to delay this by a couple of days.

Enough silly word-play. Today’s list is my favourite “Harry Potter dumped into some crossover future world” fics.

In most of these, the general plot will be “Harry winds up in a future without wizards and, as one of his goals, tries to bring magic back.”

As before, this mix of quality and following a theme means that each entry will epitomize some specific combination, so more than one entry per fandom will be the exception in this list. (To be fair, often because finding any good fics is difficult.)

Best of the Best

Browncoat, Green Eyes by nonjon

Length: 298,538 Words
Status: Complete
Crossover: Firefly/Serenity

This time, I decided to put the best first.

Having defeated multiple dark lords over the course of his life, when Harry Potter outlived his wife and decided to alleviate his boredom by putting himself into stasis, bound to the Weasley family line, he never expected to awake to a world where Earth has been abandoned, and a muggle descendant who would make Percy Weasley proud inherited the ring.

He promptly escapes from the government that thought he could be a useful tool to seek out this River Tam, discover the truth for himself, and determine what became of the wizarding world.

This is a nonjon fic, so it’s got some really fun and creative stuff to it, both in the world-building and the wit, I’d recommend it to anyone.

Harry Potter: Geth by mjimeyg

Length: 276,717 Words
Status: Complete
Crossover: Mass Effect

This fic is a bit hard to classify. It’s got a bit of fix-fic to it, in that the introduction of Harry makes the Mass Effect series play out in a more favourable way, but it doesn’t really have that limited appeal for me that most fix-fics have.

That said, I still enjoy it enough that I’ve re-read it a couple of times… the appeal is just too diffuse to put my finger on a single thing I like about it.

The basic premise is that, during the final battle with Voldemort, Hermione hit Harry with an obscure luck spell, only to later discover that it doesn’t necessarily bring good luck for the one it applies to. As a result, an interaction between Voldemort and Harry’s spells sends him to a point 400 meters above the surface of Rannoch. The Geth proceed to pull their own Lazarus Project and recruit him as their emissary.

Entertaining character interactions, some enjoyable OCs, and Harry’s “saving people thing” ensue.

Gods Among Us by arturus

Length: 189,956 Words
Status: Incomplete
Crossover: Battlestar Galactica (2003) with Stargate: SG-1 coming in very late

The first chapter of this post-Hogwarts fic begins with Hermione Granger, apprentice curse-breaker, asking Harry to help excavate a tomb where, true to his luck, Harry reveals an undiscovered passage by accidentally speaking parseltongue when he flippantly says “Typical, eh lads?” to a couple of snake carvings.

What follows is the discovery of a mothballed Furling ship, the accidental awakening of the onboard A.I., a startled attempt to apparate out, an emergency jump calculation by the A.I. to prevent resonances in the jump drive from causing a catastrophic explosion, the resulting failure the geriatric components in many key systems, and a Harry and Hermione, left unconscious but alive by life support failure, being picked up by a patrol from one of the surviving ships outside Galactica’s refuge fleet.

As with any well-structured fic, this setup doesn’t extend beyond the first chapter and Harry and Hermione wake to find themselves stranded with humans not of Earth and a ship nobody knows how to repair.

After a peaceful resolution to an initial misunderstanding, it is decided that they will be given a place on the ship and keep a low profile while they try to find a way home… a plan that goes out the window when an emergency forces them to use their magic in plain sight to save three people’s lives.

I really like the rather unique feel of how it integrates Harry and Hermione into things, but I love how, rather than being a story where Harry and Hermione take front and centre stage in the colonial drama, they merely serve an important role in a much deeper narrative where the cylons and figures from a deeper lore are the main characters for once.

I’d highly recommend this to anyone who’s OK with reading unfinished stories. (With the caveat that the first chapter needlessly uses bad Harry Potter clichés so, if don’t like those, you may want to just start reading from chapter 2 and treat the synopsis I wrote as chapter 1. You won’t miss anything important.)

The Voyage Home by Kinsfire

Length: 56,505
Status: Complete
Fandom: Star Trek (pre-Voyager and Voyager)

During the battle in the Department of Mysteries, Harry breathes in a load of dust from shattered time turners. He wakes up in 2358, where he discovers that muggles have replicated various magical effects via technology, prompting the statute of secrecy to finally fall, and that wizards and witches have even founded their own colony, New Londinium.

However, despite all that, there is still hope that he will be reunited with his friends. Records show that he somehow returned to the past… a future past which he decides is best brought about by completing his education on New Londinium, then joining Starfleet Academy.

…he winds up serving on Voyager when it gets pulled into the Delta Quadrant.

This is another story like Harry Potter: Geth in that there aren’t really any scenes or aspects I can point to as being amazing… it’s just a worthwhile read with an interesting idea for the romance subplot. (The ongoing “benign Moriarty incident” with the Hermione hologram from his re-creation of Hogwarts.)

That said, it does have two significant flaws that need to be mentioned:

First, in the early parts of Harry’s time on Voyager, it’s too eager to use “Harry induces canon characters to do canon things” or “Harry prevents a canon story arc” as a lazy way to hurry to the meat of the story and that gets irritating.

Second, Kinsfire’s ability to write a high-quality Star Trek story seem directly proportional to how far the plot distances itself from canon events.

(In fact, given how quality dips when Voyager comes into the picture, then slowly climbs back up, I get the impression that Kinsfire underestimated the effort required to keep recycled elements interesting.)

Also, the story spent enough time on the setup between “Harry arrives in the future” and “Harry is stationed on Voyager” for me to get a feel for what it would have been like if the whole fic followed that “generalized Star Trek story, not intersecting with canon events” pattern …and I’d have liked to see how that introduction could have done as a complete, Voyager-free fic.

All in all, at times, it was difficult deciding whether to put this at the bottom of the “best” or the top of the “runners-up” but the deciding factor was how transient the parts I object to are and how unfair it would be to penalize a story for my attachment to another story that could have sprung from the same beginning.

Harry’s Trek by kb0

Length: 66,125 Words
Status: Complete
Crossover: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Here’s the story to read if you want a “Harry on the Enterprise” story that’s just generally good. No brilliant bits of philosophical insight or genius bits of world-building… just a good fic.

The setup is simple. A wormhole dumps Harry and a bisected Voldemort’s body on the bridge of the Enterprise, fresh from the battle for Hogwarts, just in time for Harry to express relief at Voldemort’s state and pass out.

What happens next proceeds in a fairly Star Trek fashion. Medical scans and later conversation reveal that, in this story, wizards’ and witches’ bodies are saturated with anaphasic radiation and expect to replenish their supplies from Earth’s ambient field. Harry keeps magic secret but, with the OK from Troi, the crew and some enjoyably-done OCs start to befriend him.

The story then can be seen in two phases: Revealing Harry’s magic to others, and finding him a new norm to settle into.

The former is begun when the Borg show up to try to reclaim Picard and, rather than simply let Picard self-destruct the Enterprise to prevent its assimilation, Harry chooses to break secrecy by apparating over and catching the Borg by surprise by firing the strongest curse he can at some parts which look sort of like the ones Geordi showed him in engineering.

The latter, when Harry starts to form a relationship forming with a half-Klingon, half-Romulan girl after he saves her life when a damaged emergency forcefield generator gives out.

My memories of the details of Star Trek characterization have had close to 20 years to fade and I never saw many episodes of The Next Generation to begin with, so I can’t judge how in-character people are, but I found this an enjoyable read, so I’d suggest that you give this a try and draw your own conclusions if this summary interests you.

Runners-up

The Forever Mage by Darth Marrs

Length: 102,957 Words
Status: Complete
Crossover: Star Trek: The Next Generation

This is a story you’ll either love or hate.

On the one hand, it’s the only Star Trek fic I can remember which acknowledges the macro-level social commentary inherent in the historical progression of the Star Trek universe… but, on the other hand, it’s a rather heavy-handed polygamous shipfic with some Harry Potter clichés in it.

The basic plot is that, in the years following the ST:TNG movies, a young lady and her three friends are left a last request by her adoptive grandmother, a woman so ancient that nobody knows how old she really was. That request? Please go to a remote location in Scotland which was bombed during the Eugenics wars and perform a ritual to “memorialize the passing of the last of a bloodline”.

“Naturally”, what results upon calling forth “The Lord of the Light” is a young, naked, amnesiac Harry Potter who must try to discover his identity and the nature of the strange abilities he knows how to use, but not why.

In the process, he will start awakening the magic within five young women and Beverly Crusher, help the Federation rediscover and memorialize a lost chapter in the story of the Eugenics wars (that Colonel Green was actually a squib of the Greengrass line and wizarding genocide was his goal), and begin the long, hard task of bringing a forgotten branch of humanity’s evolution back from extinction.

Flawed as it is, I appreciate the author’s world-building and I especially love the artistry of the scene at the war memorial. There’s a spark to this story that feels like, with help from the right authors, it might have grown into another Browncoat, Green Eyes.

The Next Lord of Kobol by jbern

Length: 104,608 Words
Status: Incomplete
Crossover: Battlestar Galactica (2003)

This is a story with a lot of potential, but both its flawed pacing and how little progress has been made on the story arc prevent it from being considered for anything but runner-up.

The basic plot is “Harry wastes 6 chapters on what should have been one, then he gets thrown through the veil and finds himself on Caprica where the actual story starts and he has to build a life for himself while trying to also prepare for a vague threat he was warned about.”

My advice is to read the scene where Harry summons Athena via the resurrection stone at the end of chapter 4 (for context), then start reading from the latter half of chapter 6 onward. That way, you get what a professional editor would have cut down to a prologue and first chapter. (It’s simply not acceptable to waste an entire first act worth of text before the driving conflict shows up and things finally take on the form the rest of the story will follow.)

If you skip all of the needlessly verbose setup, this is an engaging fic about Harry living in the Colonies in the decade up to when canon would have the cylons attack. As a “decent fic focusing on pre-annihilation colonies” life blended with “Harry Potter in a sci-fi setting”, I quite enjoy it.

…and, in case anyone’s still wondering, here’s why I didn’t include these fics which represent or contain memorable HP crosses for their respective fandoms…

• Is Your Great-Aunt an AI?!: Portal is too contemporary.
• The Wizard Ashikabi: Sekirei is too contemporary and has its own list.
• Magic Online: Sword Art Online is too contemporary.
• dunuelos‘s Lone Traveler series: They’re theme-based fix-fic drabble anthologies.
  • Stories of the Lone Traveller, ch. 25-26 (Star Trek: TNG)
  • Stories of the Lone Traveller, ch. 64 (Battlestar Galactica (2003))
  • Further Adventures of the Lone Traveller, ch. 6-9 (Star Trek)
  • etc.

…not to mention, none of them really have the feel I was going for.

Title: Truths Revealed Lies Exposed by VFSNAKE
Fandom: Star Wars
Status: Complete
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

I don’t normally read Star Wars fanfiction, since I never really got into the extended universe as a kid, but every fandom can produce at least one thing I might be interested in.

This story is built around a simple premise: What if young Leia had overheard her adopted parents talking about her biological father and brother, then took a calculated risk when faced with interrogation by Darth Vader.

It is also one of the small number of stories that I’ve read a second time.

While the need to keep Palpatine and the moffs in the dark results in this story following the rough details of the original trilogy canon, it does its best to be original in every other way possible.

Motivations are changed or built upon, many many new scenes are added, focusing much more on the rebels who got no significant screen time in the original roles, and it incorporates characters who were retconned into the timeline, such as Qui-Gon’s force ghost, Mara Jade, and Ahsoka Tano.

In general, It makes for an engaging blend of the expected and the unexpected which serves as a backdrop while the drama and intrigue take centre stage.

However, while all of that is just “a good read”, there are two elements which manage to go beyond that and their elegance is what prompted me to write this review, despite it occupying relatively little “screen time”:

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Once Anakin’s plans are revealed to the reader, it sets up a poetic “For want of a nail, the republic was lost. Given that nail, the destroyer will restore it.” symmetry to close off the unaltered canon events:

For fear of losing his family, Anakin Skywalker destroyed the republic. Given his family, he will rebuild it.

I find that especially clever when paired with Mon Mothma’s descent into a Palpatine-like role in the story at the hands of her own flawed convictions.

Just as the Jedi council’s refusal to see their own faults spelled their downfall. Mon Mothma’s refusal to reconsider her preconceptions about Vader and his role in Padme’s death leaves her the leader of the withering terrorist organization that the Rebel Alliance becomes.