MetaFic

I see no issues with technical skills, you followed the rules, and you didn’t skirt around the spirit of the challenge. On my first read through I did not know which character you had chosen. After you pointed me to the author’s notes I read the story again.

I love choice of character, but I’m still confused as to the second good reason for death. I’m guessing food from the ending, but I don’t get how that would come from “He was young and he was one.” Given my forehead slapping oversight of the AN that’s probably me and not the writing.

“In his hand was a shiny object, the one he had been looking for. The one she would have brought him if he had asked.” That’s my favourite line of the challenge. Overall I liked how concise and to the point it was while still exploring some interesting territory.

Cheers,
Joel

The simplification of thought process was done on purpose. As were the jumps. The process of progression from one topic to another indicates a higher level of intelligence. One that I didn't think owls posses (even magical ones). I know the flow suffered because of that, but with my choice of PoV, I thought it was far more important to keep the though process of an owl as realistic as possible (whatever that really means), than writing something that may have been easier to read, but in my mind, quite inappropriate.

I think you've done enough beta work on my stories to know that the language awkwardness is my constant companion. I can't say I have a solution for that issue. I hardly think I can change that overnight, but at the same time, I do hope such issues are becoming less often in my writing. I rely heavily on my betas to smooth out the language wrinkles. With time, I'm confident I can get rid of that problem.

I'm happy to hear that people find the PoV apt. While writing this story, that was my main objective. Everything else wasn't so important.

It might have been a bit awkward, but I've seen much worse done by native speakers. And I've seen that exact phrase used by native speakers as well. As long as everyone managed to understand me, I won't be sending my comments to beta any time soon.

The first time I read through the story, I actually did not like it. Although I felt the perspective of Hedwig was original and intriguing, I felt the story was too philosophical from the viewpoint of an owl, no matter how magical that owl was. The story slipped from what were acceptable thoughts for an owl:

"Death happened for two good reasons, as far as she was concerned."

Which were followed closely by lines that I felt detracted from the immediacy of an owl's thought process:

"Even if she had not been present when the less important one died, she knew that it was not caused by either of those two reasons."

I was comfortable with an owl being smart and having an empathic connection with her master, and even having a sense of instinctual right and wrong. Few predators kill just for sport. However, the assumption of an unseen action and the motive for that action was a bit too much to accept for an owl.

Whether or not an owl would think like that, it kept throwing me out of the POV and thus I had trouble really involving myself in Hedwig's thoughts and emotions so that by the end of the scene I was less than satisfied with what I had read.

So I went back after a few days and read it again, and then a third time as I wanted to understand what the perspective of death that you were portraying. The idea of death as natural, either through age/disease or the need for food did come through much more clearly as I was expecting the lines that threw me offtrack.

In general the story does present and novel and insightful perspective of death, however, I think it could have been done much better. Some of the fault is due to the awkwardness of some of your phrasing:

"His other hand rounded another one like him, this one much less important."

"He was young and he was one. "

The first sentence is just awkward in the phrasing of "rounded". Encircled or clutched or grasped would have communicated the desperation and grief more accurately.

The second started okay, but I could not figure out what you meant by "and he was one." Are you saying that his death would be more acceptable if there were more of him, or was it because there was only one dead person and so it was minor in Hedwig's eyes?

These are only two examples, but there are a good half-dozen more in the story. Unfortunately, in a short selection like these those technical issues tend to become more prominent and cause more problems as it leaves your theme and intent open to many interpretations.

However, in the long run, your submission is good and the theme does come across clearly in the last few paragraphs. There are areas that can be improved, such as word choice, removing terms of indecisiveness, such as seemed, interpreted, and appeared, and adding a bit more visual imagery and metaphor to strengthen the them throughout the story, especially in the beginning. You ended well, but the beginning struggled at times.

good job,

Jonathan

- A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.
Ayn Rand - The Romantic Manifesto p. 74 (pb 93)

“Yet, it was not dark; a peaceful night.” This strikes me strongly of poor Snoopy's inevitable attempts at fame by that first line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Here, it was not a dark and stormy night by nature, but was a dark and stormy night by artifice. Random tangential thought processes that I find amusing.

Technically, I suppose, the very start of this story precedes the challenge stated time of Harry's return. I'm not aggressively Type-A, however, so it doesn't bother me much. I do think that a bit of tweaking would make it fully compliant, however, so that's a minor detail to be aware of in the future.

Canon is such a wonderfully obscure thing, with a definite black-hole in the plot regarding owls and how they handle mail issues. At times, JKR has implied an empathic mental link; at other times, a telepathic link; and yet at other times, no link at all. Here, Hedwig seems to be empathic to some degree, but the strength of it is 'reinforced with magic' in some manner. That of itself is an interesting statement.

The postal owls are clearly somewhat more intelligent than the garden variety equivalent, although the full measure of an alien intellect will never be fully understood by us. That said, her shift from patient waiting to concern to intrigue, of all things, amuses me. Yes, he's hurt; yes, he appears to be suffering; but oh, how did he get that way? That's far more interesting to Hedwig than the outcome of the acts themselves. Rather cat-like in nature, one might even speculate.

Keeping the 'continuity' of an owl perspective while yet rendering the mental imagery into something comprehensible to humans is an interesting challenge in and of itself. You did well, but there are points that don't quite match expectations at times. For example. I rather doubt that Hedwig has a notion of 'school grounds' . . . perhaps instead it might be 'the area occupied by so many earth-bound misfits', if I might borrow a bit of Pink Floyd.

In another detracting point, the over-use of 'one' leads to some stack-popping parsing of the prose. Within one paragraph, 'one' may refer to any of a multitude of things. This isn't a problem per se, but if you tend to re-read a line or two from a prior paragraph to verify your prior understanding while reading a line from the current paragraph, well, the splicing gets a bit twisty.

Would Cedric have an expression of fear on his face? He was struck down without warning, while thinking he was possibly in another part of the Cup challenge, was he not? I may be remembering it wrong, but I never felt that he had time enough to be afraid.

To the owl, a natural predator, why would death bring fear? (“Death always brought fear with it. She knew that.”) Fear of death is a human concept; desire not to be eaten is the best anthropomorphism I would be willing to speculate on for animals of any kind (predator or prey). This is a spot where it's not the terminology (school grounds) being dubious but rather the supposed ramen thinking brought to framling (re-using Card's Hierarchy of Alienness) for expression in prose. Here, I'm assuming the ramen connection via magic (empathic or telepathic). But then, who am I to judge what an owl may or may not think of death, part of the natural order of things?

The later speculation over the risks of fear (fear is the mind-killer, Mr Atreides) in triggering wasteful death does not clash as the first instance does. Here, it's clear that Hedwig is speculating about human foibles, when the brain fears the irrational, for death is only rational and inevitable. In that context, it makes sense with the prose.

I would like to see a variant of the Tri-Wizard tournament where Cup challenge is defeated by asking an owl to fetch it promptly. That would be quite entertaining, compared to the blind rehashing so many others engage in.

As a final note, it amuses me to realize that this passage could be talking about any number of winged candidates that happen to be female. Fawkes, Hedwig, and so on. That's something to think about as well, isn't it just?

I glanced at your other reviews, and I’m happy to say that I have a different perspective than to say that your phrasing is a distraction. I’ve been thinking about voice a lot and how, in HP fanfiction, voice does not vary much very often. As authors and betas, we agonize over precision, trying to be somewhat true to canon and JKR’s tone (but perhaps not her exact voice), but it makes most fanfiction rather monotone. One of my favorite books for appreciating what an author can do with different voices and POVs is Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Grammar, punctuation, and linear narrative are out the window, and it is arguably one of the greatest novels in the English language, certainly of the last century. So, writers can do wonderful things when we do stray from correct form and structure when it is appropriate to the character’s voice.

For me, Hedwig’s occasional imprecision in her phrasing was downright accurate to what I think Hedwig’s voice should be. She does not speak English, after all. Since her thoughts must have some sort of coherence for us as readers to follow, you must express her perspective in English, but for it to sound perfectly British would not work for me. Jonathan didn’t like your use of “rounded” but wanted “clutched” or “grasped.” Perhaps grasped, but clutched would have conveyed Harry’s human urgency/ protectiveness, which might not be something Hedwig could appreciate. Your less conventional rounded was accurate to what Hedwig would have seen: Harry’s hand curved around Cedric. Rather than perfecting the English, I would have preferred more instances like this, where you could have deliberately used her imprecision at our tongue to accentuate that she does not completely grasp English. This stylistic choice would’ve been very welcome to me.

In terms of the challenge, this is certainly an interesting POV. Hedwig would not have occurred to me, as I thought only of students, staff, and family members in attendance. I enjoy the idea of Hedwig as a sentry, of sorts, sitting watch and waiting to be needed. Of course, as a predator and as a non-human, she would have a very different take on life, death, and what it means. I particularly liked the moment where Hedwig overcame her instinct to help eliminate the fear because she knew fear caused mistakes, but, in this case, she understood that fear would make them cautious. You could say that her understanding of death was her response to the event (Cedric’s death/ Harry’s return), but that was already in place. For her, she understood that this death was of a greater import than what she dealt with because it indicated Harry (in particular) was threatened, and that caution was something needed by the humans.

Good job giving us something non-standard. I always appreciate a novel approach to a challenge. Thanks, Dino.

There would be no way to dodge a spell travelling at the speed of light: as soon as you saw it, it would have struck. Think of the fight between V and DD at the MOM: there was time for each of them to see a spell coming and prepare a counter. In at least one case the latter consisted of moving a physical object into the path of the spell: simple inertia would dictate that this could not be instantaneous.

To drag in a SciFi-type reference here, I think of spells as looking like those plasma weapons some authors are so fond of: a blob of coloured light whipping across the room or wherever.

Having said which, why are some spells coloured and some not? I mean, we all know by now that Avada Kedavra is green and Stupefy is red, but why does Wingardium Leviosa have no coloured light associated with it? What governs what colour any given spell is, or even if it's visible? (Maybe some of them are ultra-violent or infra-dead?)

This always reminds me of a song by Richard Stilgoe about a dog who describes himself as being "thick as more-than-one short planks".