*snerk*  A difficult subject, indeed.  But I admit, I thoroughly enjoyed the end.

Author's Response: Thank you!  I'm glad you liked it.  Personally, I'm fond of the image of Harry and Ron all in black :)

*sigh*  This came recommended to me and looked so promising.  I really quite liked the initial section, but then I got to the very second scene with Hermione reading about "Peloponnesian monarchs." And while this may sound like the most petty critique ever, it's important because this is how you throw readers out of your story.  I almost never leave negative reviews, and I'm tempted to apologize for doing so, but I stand behind the rebuke I'm giving (which is why I'm using my name, not anonymous).

Do you know where the Peloponnese is -- more importantly WHAT it is?  I suspect not.  The Peloponnese is the very large almost-island off the SW of the Greek peninsula and has historically belonged to Greece.  It hasn't had "monarchs" since the Mycenaean Bronze Age unless you count the Spartan kings (in which case I assume you'd have said "Spartan kings" as Sparta had a unique, peculiar mixed constitution).  Ancient Greece had independent city-states ... among the more famous in the Peloponnese were Sparta, Corinth, Argos, Tiryns and Ellis near ancient Olympia (site of the Greek Olympics).  These city-states were largely oligarchies, with later a few democracies.  No "monarchies."  It all eventually fell to Rome, then was bequeathed to Byzantium -- who had emperors, not kings -- then to the Ottoman Empire, who had sultans over the area.  And if Greece had a king for a while directly after Greek Independence in the mid 1800s, it was just one at a time, and he was king of Greece, not the Peloponnese.

We won't even go into the fact the Greeks had contractual marriages, not marriage "vows" until Greek Orthodoxy.  Nor the fact that any spells they cast would surely have been in GREEK, not Latin.

What's the point of all this?  It looks like you  blindly pointed your finger at a map and used whatever landmass it landed on without looking it up.  And given the ease of narrative style in the writing up to that point, I don't think you're an inexperienced writer. But such an easily avoidable mistake suggests you didn't care enough to check your facts, which in turn means I don't care enough to finish your story, however highly recommended.

And I'm frustrated because after the first scene, I was prepared to like it.  I thought it a very clever opening.  Then I hit that huge historical blunder, which told me this is "just fanfic" to you, not worth your time to double-check.  I prefer to read fiction, not "just fanfic."

And that's how you throw a reader out of your story -- fail to check your facts when it would be really easy to do so.