Drawn too long
##############

:date: 2020-01-04T10:31:09
:category: literature
: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 an unique opinion on that)? Will 
be there some super dramatic scene with for example Dean being 
seriously hurt 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