Name: Oregonian (Signed) · Date: 18 Sep 2021 04:23 AM · For: Silver

Hi, Jade.I read this story earlier in the year during the reading period for the Golden Ink awards, but now I am reading it again for a review.

 

It was such a surprise to me to see the words 'The End' at the end of chapter one.  By the time I reached the end of the chapter, I had totally forgotten that it was a one-shot and was fully expecting a multi-chapter detective story.  But I see now that it was a detective-story-background for a character study.  Now that's a clever idea, to place one's character-study-story into the setting of a classic trope.

 

I wonder if James Sirius has learned anything from this odd and unfortunate incident.  He was the 'rising star' until suddenly his world came crashing down, he was sacked from his job, and his celebrity status vanished.  He doesn't furnish any reason about why this sudden reversal of fortunes happened.  But now we meet Hartley Whittington, who was apparently younger than James and followed him in school.  Hartley seems envious/jealous of James; he uses the words "The Potter Problem, thinking the world revolves around you," and "there is nothing more infuriating than hearing how you were not as good as James Potter, rising star."

 

Hartley himself doesn't seem to have accomplished much -- a job writing horoscopes for the Daily Prophet and living off his family's money -- but he is getting his revenge on James for being James by rigging this elaborate but childish scheme to humiliate and insult James.  I don't doubt that James's sudden job loss was engineered by Whittington.  And you know what?  The papparazzi are still not following Whittington around and taking pictures of him!

 

Does James understand what this was all about?  Or will he internalize Whittington's insults and begin to doubt himself?  People plotting behind your back to bring you down -- sometimes it happens and it's always hard to understand.

 

A very interesting story.  Thank you for writing.

 

Vicki

Name: grumpy cat (Signed) · Date: 30 Jan 2021 11:02 PM · For: Silver

oh god this has such a delicious noir feel to it, right from the start - and i love that james sirius potter is a private investigator! of course there's a beautiful woman on his door, dressed in fur and of course she has no one else to turn to, classic. i especially love the line about how james is the sort of person who runs at people like that, women like her, the ones that would burn him, with matches - it just says a lot about him with that one sentence, and it's magnificent. i do wonder what exactly james did, what he means by taking things into his own hands? and how that caused him to sort of...fall from grace i suppose. and the prophet has a habit of losing its employees? intriguing! and i love that exchange about when's the wedding/yesterday, it made me laugh. but what a mystery - james searching for hartley, who now works where james used to work, lives at the building where james used to live and then james finds a wedding invitation for himself to the wedding of people he doesn't seem to know lol this is getting better and better! ...and then random neighbours mistake james for hartley what the fuck?? lol and he finds hartley in his childhood home so obviously, the man isn't really missing. but it seems james is really oblivious or just too self absorbed to have noticed hartley and they do know each other wow this is wild. and i loove the circular way this ends, with the same line as the one it started with! but wow, this was just such a cool story, basically a character analysis of your version of james potter and it was a really interesting one, with him acting like he's the mystery, not really caring about other people, his friends...hella cool, i loved reading it!

(for foxy glory! - over the bridge task)