Review of To All the Wizards I've Considered Before by FullofWrackspurts

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+Drawn too long
+##############
+
+:date: 2020-01-04T10:31:09
+:category: faith
+:tags: review, harryPotter
+
+(Major spoilers follow, I am sorry, but I cannot explain my 
+opinion on the story without revealing most of the plot; if you 
+haven’t read the story, finish it first.)
+
+I have followed `To All the Wizards I’ve Considered Before by 
+FullofWrackspurts`_ first with excitement. It seemed like 
+refreshingly “normal” story different from the pervasive cliches 
+of most Harmony or Romione stories. Hermione which is as confused 
+by the intricacies of love as we all are, who is not 
+a super-heroine, not super-confident, and … well, the word is 
+“normal”.
+
+It starts as a classical comedy of errors: letters are sent to 
+number of Hermione’s male classmates making an impression that 
+they are some kind of her love letters to them. Farcical 
+dialogues with those affected happen and in the end, she agrees 
+with Dean to pretend to be dating so that they may evoke jealousy 
+in Ginny and Ron, and persuade them to renew (or ignite) romantic 
+relationship. Obviously what follows is that the pretended 
+relationship between Hermione and Dean starts to change into 
+something real and both of them are too bound by the pretence to 
+reveal their true feelings to each other. So far so good, 
+certainly not worse than three quarters of all successful 
+Hollywood romantic comedies.
+
+The obvious problem is the end game. Whole charade about purely 
+contractual and pretence nature of their relationship started to 
+break down around the Christmas, when Hermione visited her 
+“boyfriend’s” family, and all Dean’s siblings are quite not 
+believing their pretence. Since that moment, the clocks started 
+ticking for some final showdown to happen. Two chapters or so of 
+them resolving their problem and it would be a sweet romcom.
+
+Unfortunately, that is the sixth chapter of the story, and it 
+seems like just half of the story (in case the chapter fourteen 
+is the last one). I guess, the author read somewhere in one of 
+those “How to write a novel” guides on the Internet (or perhaps 
+even in a book), that unresolved tension can keep readers 
+attention for longer time, so she went with it. The problem with 
+this advice is in my opinion, that it can keep such attention 
+just for so long and it creates a debt to the readers. Longer you 
+keep their attention with this artificial gimmick, bigger return 
+on their investment they expect. With more than half of the story 
+spent on observing how our two heroes behave like idiots, we 
+expect something super profound to happen. May in the end the 
+author go AU and Dean returning to Ginny letting Hermione hang 
+out dry with the morale being “If you don’t snap them, they may 
+go away forever”? Will they agree to be together and go for 
+liberation of house-elves together (or whatever, Dean with his 
+Black American heritage may have a unique opinion on that)? Will 
+be there some super dramatic scene with for example Dean dying 
+after The Battle of the Astronomy Tower (kind of equivalent of 
+the Bill-Fleur scene, or perhaps really dying)?
+
+The result was that the author haven’t managed to do anything. In 
+the chapter sixteen our heroes kiss (again, the previous tease 
+was completely useless in the story development) and they still 
+haven’t said a word about the nature of their relationship. 
+Perhaps it is assumed they are boyfriend/girlfriend now, but it 
+seems like after the betrayal of our expectations the author has 
+left us hang out dry on the top of everything else.
+
+After so perfect start the end is a huge disappointment.
+
+.. _`To All the Wizards I’ve Considered Before by FullofWrackspurts`:
+    https://archiveofourown.org/works/17777138