Death Eater Takes a Holiday

by Lee Lee Potter

Fandom: Harry Potter
Relationship: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
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Albus spells a few Order members back to their seventh year age, and sends them to spend time at Hogwarts for a holiday. The Headmaster’s intent is for them to learn that Harry is indeed mature for his age, so that he will be accepted as a full member. What will happen when Severus returns from his time as a teen, to find he has spent the better part of the week entwined with a certain Gryffindor? And, how do their lives change afterwards?

Genres: Fan Fiction

2158 pages, ebook

Published November 17, 2003

Reviews

[Barbara K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had good potential at the start, interesting ideas, even if the romantic matches felt very weird at the start. However, after about 1/3 the story became one big smut paragraph after another. I skipped whole chapters, the characters lost all their depth, and the story flattened to pancake standards. That was a real shame.

[PointyEars42 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The initial premise of this fanfic (the title rather says it all) is why this is my 2nd or 3rd rereading. I wish I could rate it higher, but I find myself having 4 issues with it this time around, probably because I am now familiar with the story - and please do not let this dissuade you from reading it yourself even I think I'm being a bit over critical:

1. POV: What I would give for this story to have stuck to being about our beloved Death Eater. If this had even just been from his POV, it would have been amazing. As it is, it quickly becomes entirely about Harry, from Harry's POV. I'd much rather read about this from the perspective of a complicated, dangerous, experienced adult man than from the perspective of a boy thrust into adulthood too fast. I read the JK Rowlings for that. Missed opportunity!
2. Sex Scenes: As the above might lead you to suspect... Harry's libido is essentially a character on its own. Yeh, I'd be all over Snape every chance I got too, but there are so many sex scenes that this could have been 100-200k words shorter without them. That's a novel or two, btw. Mention they're at it like rabbits, give us a few fade-away abbreviated scenes, but why do we have to have one detailed scene a chapter? As the author says, not even as a chapter note, but within the text itself:

"***End of Flashback and blatant excuse to sneak a little smut into this chapter***"

3. Editing fails: "Manor" instead of "manner", "temped" instead of "tempted", etc, etc. You can never have too many beta read throughs, especially when there are 566,682 words to check.
4. 566,682 words: That is a huge commitment from a reader's standpoint. It is a labour of love in the case of RE-readers. All of the above issues that I could gloss over the first time seem to catch my attention in a negative way as I wade through it now.

It's long and dark, but if that's your thing, you'll love it.