I am a huge Harry Potter fan, both the canon books and the fan fictions. If there's anything about my personal life you want to know just ask.

If anyone's interested, I have an Instagram account now, so if y'all wanna stalk me (or see pics of my daughter) it's under the same name as here but with underscores; power_of_erised.

For everyone wondering about progress on Hogwarts Helps, I have to re-read the whole series to get pivotal talking points for each chapter between the characters reading the books. After I get those seven chapters out I will be able to get to the meat of the story, however, finding the time and wherewithal to sit down and annotate each of the seven books is proving difficult. If you, my readers, would like me to just skip those chapters let me know in the new poll. Thanks, Power of Erised.

PoE. PoE. PoE. PoE. PoE. PoE.

I recently had a rather interesting review from The Warty Hogg about the first chapter (and currently Only chapter) of Hogwarts Helps:

I've got a great idea. When I was young, we had a thing called "fan fiction," where fans took the worlds and characters created by another author and wrote an original story, one that hadn't been told before. It was imaginative, creative, fun and a lot less boring that just reading the book over again. Try it!

To which I replied:

You are either trying (and failing) to be amusing while supporting the suggestion in the Authors Notes about me moving this straight into the TIME TRAVEL FIC that this story is going to be rather than have the principles discuss each book (and their involvement therein) in the first seven chapters, or you are a complete imbecile as to have missed the glaringly obvious mentions in said Notes stating that this is a TIME TRAVEL FIC and the copyrighted works of J. K. Rowling will Not be a part of my story.

Now, on this site alone, there are a great many time travel fics available, many of them following rather clichéd plot lines and story arcs. However, as far as I have been able to determine, my plot device of having the principles read their own story (without including said story verbatim), thus gaining insights and knowledge they otherwise wouldn't have had Before going back in time, is unique. If you had taken the time to actually Read the Authors Notes and discover for yourself that this it to be a TIME TRAVEL FIC, I wouldn't have to be penning this thoroughly enjoyable reply to your childish, ill informed review. Next time you decide to review to a WIP (that's Work In Progress, in case you were unaware) be sure you fully understand exactly what it is you're commenting on.

In layman's terms, if that was too difficult for you to follow, I am not having My readers "read the books over again" (the principles are doing so, behind the scenes) I fully intend to have this be "an original story, one that hadn't been told before" (I've certainly never read a similar story, and believe me, I've looked for one) and I greatly desire for it to be "imaginative, creative, and fun" (with a dash of heartbreaking, amusing, and scary thrown in)

However, should you still be disillusioned with my writing style and story premise, I am quite willing to give you a full refund of your purchase price ... i.e. You Get What You Pay For.

Finally, should you feel the need to saddle up your high horse and loudly claim that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, please allow me to reign you in by first stating that I emphatically agree with you; everyone Is entitled to any opinion they wish to have. However, I am also entitled to laugh in the face of said opinion and call it stupid. Especially when the opinion is posted on a public forum, where the subject matter is free, and the author is Not getting paid to write what the reader wants. I could send Harry to the moon if I so chose (and in fact I have read a wonderful fic on this very site where the author does just that) and no amount of whining from the peanut gallery can prevent me from doing it. Writing on this site is for Fun, though it appears you are not overly familiar with the term (Fun: noun. someone or something that is amusing or enjoyable: an enjoyable experience or person: an enjoyable or amusing time: the feeling of being amused or entertained) the many, Many, MANY authors who devote their free time to this craft make no monetary gain from it and have no one to answer to but themselves when the pen is down and the story is over.

I certainly channeled my inner Snape for that one, didn't I? To be fair, I'd been in a sour mood when I received it, though I detest being talked down to, at any time.

I then received this reply:

I have no idea what the plot of your story is. I am just trying to encourage users of FFN to try to write stories that are not just rewrites of the original material. If yours is not going to copy from the original text, I am pleased to hear that. I have seen 100s of those awful 'read the book' stories and am trying to encourage young people to expand their imagination beyond just yet another copy of the same story.

If your story is original and does not slavishly follow the original book, I am delighted.

When I started writing fan fiction, back in the 1960s, it didn't even have a name yet. And it never occurred to those of us who pioneered the art form to copy from the original. For one thing, copy and paste didn't exist. We had to type it all or--horror of horrors--write it out by hand. So when I first encountered 'fanmakes' and 'song fics' and 'character reads' on FFN, I was appalled. Copying defeats the whole purpose of writing, which is to do something new.

I wish you the best of luck in your creative endeavors. And as a fan of Doctor Who since the 1960s, I love a good time travel story.

Methinks someone aught to read the summary (or Merlin forbid, the story itself) before commenting on the blasted thing. I mean really, "I have no idea what the plot of your story is."? Really?? REALLY???? "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Next time Mr. Warty Hogg, you may want to gather actual knowledge of the Fic you have decided to lambaste and make an informed critique before jumping on your high horse of justice ... or one day that horse will kick you in the teeth. Perhaps then you can actually call yourself an "Editor and seeker of plagiarists and copyright infringers" without sounding like an absolute nutcase.

PoE. PoE. PoE. PoE. PoE. PoE.