I love the way you took them both down, the fealty oath was original and brilliant, and in some ways a perfect screw you to Riddle and his dark mark. As far as Dumbledore, it's always the simple things that tend to get you and he had a tendency to overlook women.
The confrontation with McGonagall was great, and long over due. As much as I enjoyed cannon HP there is much that was wrong with it and the adults in the school is a major one.
Author's response
- Believe it or not, I came up with Riddle's defeat about a year ago after reading about half a bazillion fic with monumental battles that I knew I could never match. (the closest I came was the 'lets blow them up real good' ending of _The Power He Has Not_ which, lets face it, wasn't really a battle.) I asked myself if I could come up with a none battle way of disposing of Tommy and I read some fic somewhere that introduced me to the concept of Fealty Oaths, and the consequences of violating them... Turned out ok, but a lot of people didn't like it.
- With Dumbles, I knew I was up against a guy with a buttload of raw power and more than a century more experience than Harry could ever match, even with Neville (and Filius) helping... So I figured, why not cheat? I liked the idea of modifying a charm that is in common usage to an unusual use... and who better to do said innovative charm modification than Hermione? Besides, how many Wizards in the Victorian culture of the BWS would even recognize CO2 poisoning?
- I agree that much of the crap that went on at that school in canon would have been stopped almost instantly with a little competent adult supervision...