Review for Living with Danger

Living with Danger

(#) Roo 2007-08-18

I added this story to my favorites... hope ya don't mind. ^_^

I won't say I have absolutely no problems with your Dangerverse stories (I've read this story, and the sequels, on FF.net), but for the most part, they're very good... and this, the not-so-humble beginning of things, is quite possibly the best of them. This is one of the stories you can just read again, and again, and again.

Most AUs I've read don't bother with showing the changes to the world beyond what happens to the main (and the author's favorite) characters, but that's not the case of this story... there seems to be something for every single character here... and they're all written brilliantly, with the utmost care and respect for their canon counterparts. Everyone acts exactly the way they should, and the people who have changed because of the altered universe are given plausible reasons for their change (i.e. Draco).

Even the Dursleys are mostly in-character here, and it's hard to find a story where that is the case (though I have discovered that the main reason is probably that they don't work if you take them too seriously; they are laughable caricatures in canon and don't hold up to much closer inspection).

The Pack is an interesting idea, and while it could easily have grown annoying with all the wolf-parables, it doesn't. I don't think the canon characters would have been anywhere near that touchy-feely, but again, the reasons for them ending up like that are fully plausible within the canon of that world.

Kudos for absolutely no Dumbledore-Bashing or Ron-bashing (you won't believe how sick I am of both these), and I just love you to death for the roles you gave Hagrid and McGonagall in the story -- far too often they are underminded and/or directly ignored in AU stories, Hagrid especially. Which always irks me because he's one of my favorite characters.

But any story that actually manages to make Hagrid's "coat-of-many-pockets" an important part of the plot is definitely okay in my book.

Not much to say about the OCs, really... they work pretty well, and mostly manage to stay away from being Mary Sues. Danger is probably the closest (Aletha doesn't really have the same problems there) but it helps that the story doesn't actually revolve around her. And Megan works well too.

All in all, it's a great story, and should rightfully be hailed as one of the better HP fanfics out there.