Seventh Horcrux

by Emerald Ashes

Fandom: Harry Potter
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The presence of a foreign soul may have unexpected side effects on a growing child. I am Lord Volde...Harry Potter. I'm Harry Potter. In which Harry is insane, Hermione is a Dark Lady-in-training, Ginny is a minion, and Ron is confused.

Genres: Fan Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Harry Potter, Humor, Magic

417 pages, ebook

First published February 3, 2015

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Harry Potter fanfiction with a lot of Fridge Humour, and occasionally even wisdom:

Draco pulled six silver objects from his dragon hide pants. They glowed slightly where they touched each other. "The key still isn't complete."

"Right, yes, I almost forgot about that" – I rifled through my pockets – "Here you go, Draco."

Draco stared at the item in my hand. "You had the final piece."

"The whole time."

He snatched the rest of the key, glowering at the three of us. "Then it wasn't fair at all!"

"Sure it was. You could have learned a lesson about friendship or espionage or possibly seduction."

Ron asked, "Is that why he's not wearing a shirt?"

"But you weren't even in the castle this year," Draco said.

"Yet, when you needed the final piece, I was. Perhaps, I always would have been."

Draco growled at me and, with a burst of light, the pieces united into an ornate, silver key. He stomped towards the door and stuck it into the lock.

The key broke, its pieces disappearing, and the door remained closed.

The blond whirled around, glowering. "It broke."

I hurried forward. "Draco, don't you deserve to get in?"

Draco sneered. "Of course I do. I did all your stupid trials."

"And learned so many lessons," I mused. "If you truly deserve to go in, then why would you need a key?"

"You're kidding me," he said flatly.

I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Draco, open the door."

Young Malfoy turned the knob and the door smoothly opened.

"You see?" I said. "The true key was within you all along. All you had to do was believe in yourself!"

Draco gazed into the Room of Requirement, which was empty save for the pedestal holding Ravenclaw's Diadem. "I spent a year and a half tracking down the key pieces, all for a key that I didn't need."

I chuckled, pushing past him. "Just because the key doesn't open the door doesn't mean you don't need the key."

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky, nerdy, funny. The first five sentences are a fair indication of the rest:
"I am Lord Voldemort, and I was one step away from conquering Wizarding Britain.

October 31st, 1981 began as a fairly normal day – arranging raids, crucioing incompetents, lazing about on my throne – yet it seemed that everything my followers did irked me.

Bellatrix crouched at my feet, sneaking glances and occasionally emitting dreamy sighs – exactly the sort of behavior that caused me to turn myself into a nose-less snake. Rabastan Lestrange was playing a game called Curse the Recruits, the recruits were screaming, Nott was paging through one of my Dark tomes, and Lucius had disappeared to go brush his hair or something. There were worse ways to spend Halloween, I supposed."

The characters are not realistic, nor are they supposed to be. The book just is an entertaining mess, pointing fun at the story my generation grew up with.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've only read the 1st Harry Potter and have seen most of the movies in snippets, but I knew just about enough to enjoy this.

Sure, the characters are different and exaggerated, but this is just a fun "what if" scenario that's hilariously written. It's not meant to be taken seriously at all, and I don't know why anyone would expect it to be.

Things do get confusing at times (and this could either be me not knowing all of canon or just the fact that it's a fanfiction) but the dialogue alone atoned for that.

Harry-as-Voldemort is great, as the author put it:
"...I sometimes think that my Tom Riddle is merely a series of bad decisions executed well."

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What if" Harry's mind was replaced with Voldemort's as a baby, but Voldemort isn't actually genocidally evil, he's just kind of... a dick. Basically, Harry is Sterling Archer.

One of the funniest things I've ever read.

[Shayan Kh · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars really.

It was funny, but only mildly. The idea of this fanfiction was good, but I think it could have been used a lot more interestingly.

[Wee Lassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the funniest thing I have ever read 🤩😋

[Franz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant piece of work, and probably the most humorous Harry Potter story I've ever read. While this story is definitely absurdist, it is a cut above most absurdist stories in that its internal logic remains remarkably consistent, which is something that is usually abandoned (to their detriment) by most absurdist stories. This results in a cohesive narrative that actually has depth to it.

1 sentence pitch - Voldemort!Harry is the asexual insane version of Sterling Archer. It's great.

"To be honest, I hadn't planned on the whole Dark Lord thing. It just sort of happened. I'd always wanted to be a professor, either of Defense Against the Dark Arts or just of the Dark Arts. The latter wasn't exactly taught at Hogwarts, however, and Hogwarts was my first true home. My
greatest desire was to return to it and live there. Forever.

With my original Horcruxes created and hidden away, I might have
become as much a fixture of the school as poor, idiotic Binns."

Emerald Ashes has the rare capacity to be both hilarious and insightful in the same breath. While Harry is obviously insane (as a result of his addiction to self-imperiousing and horcruxes) this also allows him to point out things that are missed by the other characters. This is particularly poignant with regards to Hermione's less than virtuous actions in both the canon and this retelling.

This is a feature of the author's writing, as the similarly humorous but sadly less well-known story Sasuke Uchiha and the Power of Lies, follows the same formula.

[Tushar Thakur · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know it then but apparently, there's a whole genre of absurdist fiction and this would be a textbook case of that. It is completely bizarre and weird and ludicrous but in a good way.
The overall writing quality is surprisingly good, better than almost all of the self-published books, which admittedly is not a high bar but still, it reads like it was professionally written.
I can see that this specific type of humour may not work for everyone but to me it was amazing. The same running gag of Harry being obnoxiously evil always tickled me. Harry utterly accepts the worldview anyone he's talking to, which leads to hilarious shenanigans.
In terms of characters, almost everyone besides Hermione is written like a caricature of their canon counterpart.
One of the things I especially loved was the way the narrative is structured - everything is explained through dialogues, plot happens in the background and we only see Harry's ridiculous monologue and other characters' reaction to it.
I can't impress enough how hilarious this is. It is definitely up there amongst my favourite fanfics.

[Bar · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the hype this fic gets is absolutely deserved. It was amazing, and despite the crack facade... I found more


Also, imagine how beautiful it would be for the last line of canon to be Harry looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing only his reflection!?

[Lazy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect

[Asviloka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely hilarious from start to finish, definitely in my HP fanfic top-10.

[Sundararaman R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious and a lot of fun. Just some silly light reading, don't expect too much logic or deep messages in it.

[Janani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I'm reading but it's ridiculous and funny.

[Charlize · Rating 5 out of 5]

HILARIOUS

[I Read A Lot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! Amazing! Beautiful!

[mirabilos · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot of laughs and giggles when reading this.

But it was tedious in the end, and it dragged on and on especially near the end.

Then there was the end, and a crapilogue (where it totally lost me), and then another >10% of the story just comprised of author’s ramblings.

So 2½ stars, but I’m feeling generous, and at least this was a good humour/crack fic, not one of the way too many horrible ones, even if it was a bit over the top at times.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laugh out loud funny, but purely a humor fic lacking plot for the most part. It's really good because the author puts so much focus on characterization, the logic behind the absurdity, writing quality, and consistency.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was intended to be a comedy and it succeeded, though I would have liked it to be a little less over the top.

[Cas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty decent

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very funny

[Ann-Kathrin Spahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny, it is a good storry for a laugh.

[Richard Kemp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun trashy nonsense.

[Alex Beals · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crackfic, which isn’t really my thing. Okay absurdism, but overstayed its welcome in length.

[Marge Flemming · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious. I loved this!

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

harry potter on crack, the number of times I choked cannot be counted with the fingers of my hands

[Ann_Nyaruai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adorable insane chaos. Very fun to read👏🏾👏🏾

[aila ✧.* · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) hilarious

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first couple of chapters were some of the funniest I've ever read but then it was just wayyyy too long, ultimately a DNF

[Allison Henle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hilarious, inventive, and so so good. It's all about the narrative voice for this one.