The only nit I'd pick may lie within myself... when Tom sees the Augmentors, I first read that as Barabbas telling Tom about them, not the correct way. Perhaps dropping a name into the dialogue (e.g., Tom explained...) to make it clearer would keep old fogies like me from being confused. Otherwise this was a perfect piece.
Author's Response: Hmm, you have a point there -- four lines into the dialogue before it's clear who is speaking to whom. Hopefully the edited version is clearer. Thanks!
Love the prophecy! Amazing how it fits Voldemort so well! How did you manage to write such a well written prophecy? It was perfect! Vague, intriguing, with little comprehension, and yet, from our vantage point, we know what it means! I love that it predicted his downfall on Hogwarts' ground, by Harry Potter, which would have a fragment of his soul.
I think you need to expand this prequel! It was highly interesting, and you left it so open-ended that you could write so many things after this! Just a thought.:) loved this story!!!
Author's Response: Thanks for such a flattering review. Yes, the prophecy is vague - even by the standards of prophecies, I suspect - because it has to admit three interpretations: what Dumbledore thinks it means, what Riddle thinks it means, and what it really means. Best of luck with your own stories - I'll keep an eye peeled for them.
I really thought that the characterisation of Tom Riddle was very good, and I really liked some of the small touches, especially mufti (a very British word), Henri de Mal-Fois (an ancestor of the Malfoys?) and the Aural Augmentors and the book on them (which I assume Fred and George found and then created their Extendable Ears). I also enjoyed the hints about Grindelwald which connected Dmitri and Dumbledore.
Really good story.
Author's Response: Thanks for being this story's inaugural reviewer. I found Tom Riddle harder to write than e.g. Draco Malfoy, because he has to be unfailingly polite and well-mannered, both to teachers and to his "friends". His innate nastiness has to be revealed mainly through his thoughts and actions. He doesn't just steal a library book (something even Hermione might have done, if she had a strong enough reason), he steals it for the explicit purpose of denying its knowledge to others. I never quite decided how Fred and George got onto the Ears: did they find the book, or just the page with the recipe that Tom tore out to keep, or the book minus that page (and they reinvented the recipe thmselves)?
