"No Mouth But Some Serpent's" - Lightning on the Wave

Title: No Mouth But Some Serpent's
Author: Lightning on the Wave
About the Book: Pure Awesome, Fiction, Fanfiction, Adventure, Alternate Universe, Psychological (I don't know what else to call it)
My rating: 10/10.
Fandom: Harry Potter

This is of course a continuation of "Saving Connor". It is an Alternate Universe of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". It retains some of the elements there, though deliciously twisted.

Unfortunately, to say too much about it would spoil the first part. Let me see if I can find some intrguing things that aren't spoilers.

For the first part, it contains one of my favorite characters in the series, Sylarana. She is... well, she would probably like anybody to say that she is the prettiest, most astonishing, most amazing snake in the entire world. Her desire to be admired probably surpasses Lochkart's own, although hers can be forgiven because she's not a blind idiot. If given a choice, she'd probably be a Mary Sue. She isn't, of course, because the world doesn't agree with her being quite that astonishing, but I've enjoyed many a bout of narcissism from her. And many of her threats to bite people.

"I require someone to care for me, to burnish my scales and tell me I am beautiful and feed me the choicest bits of their food. I like eggs. And milk. And the flesh of birds. And sweets. And—"

"I am not going to take care of you!" Harry hissed back at her, and for a moment, he thought he heard his voice the way she must be hearing it, full of intricate twists and turns and soft sibilants. It was certainly not speaking English.

He blocked the thought from his mind. He was not evil. He would not let himself be.

"Yes, you are," said the Locusta. "I've watched you. Your dearest possession is that lump of a boy who shares your nest. If you do not take care of me, I will bite him."

She becomes one of the closest creatures to Harry, so much so that she actually twines inside his mind. As far as familiars go, she's one of the best. I wonder if she lampshades Mary Sues.

This is also the book where, if you haven't realized that there's something very wrong with Harry, you do realize it now. His psychology is messed up beyond the point where if there was a nagging feeling before that somehow the author had messed up and exaggerated things, you realize that it's Harry who is messed up and has exaggerated psychology - for a very good reason, too, that looms darker and darker over the horizon.

And other people notice.

But it's also a book in which the main characters are still children. There are pranks involved, and Lockhart is at the butt of a very satisfying one concerning his most prized possession.

At the same time, one of the things I really appreciate in Lightning's writing is that threats are actually threats. In the canon series there are periods of time when problems seem far off, when studies are the biggest issues. When the attacks upon students happen, the threat seems controlled. Here?... You get the feeling, and for a good reason, that things are much more dangerous than in Rowling's "Chamber of Secrets".

Oh, and Dumbledore?... He gets to be much, much worse than Voldemort at times.