Absolutely loved it. :3

Dudley calling his dad by his first name is weird.

This story starts off well. The premise of a mature Dudley is intriguing, and it is nice to see his sneaky plans for helping Harry without making his parents angry. Dudley, Vernon, and Petunia are well-characterized, and I find Petunia’s decision and Vernon’s reaction very believable.

All those good things end when Dudley goes to Hogwarts in Chapter 4. After that, Dudley becomes bewilderingly passive.

Dudley seems to lack the adult agency that he should have at his age. He just goes with the flow. He realizes that he has problems with flashbacks, but the story inexplicably fails to let him do anything about it. He keeps planning to talk to Dumbledore, and then the story skips ahead a month, and Dudley isn’t thinking about Dumbledore at all. And at the end of this book, we don’t have any explanation for why Dudley would randomly forget about important plans. Even if Dudley tried to talk to Dumbledore and then decided he was to scared to, that scene should be shown, not ignored.

As another example of passivity, Dudley accepts going to Hogwarts without making any other long-term plans using the experience from his adult life. He studies for classes but only seems to be trying to pass end-of-term exams. Since he already entered the workforce, and has experience working at a job he doesn’t particularly like, shouldn’t he be wise enough to think about what job he would like in the future? To think what kind of life he would like in the future, and how it should be similar to or different from his previous one?

Another part of Dudley’s future life that is ignored is his wife, Padma. From Dudley’s flashbacks and mirror-visions of his wife and daughter, he clearly loves Padma. So after Dudley sees her being sorted, why is Padma never mentioned again in the story? Dudley shares some classes with Ravenclaws – he couldn’t ignore her for the whole year. At some point, he should have thought about Padma in some way. We should have seen Dudley being confronted with how different she is from her future self, or Dudley trying to become friends with her, or Dudley deciding to ignore her because he thinks he has changed events enough that she will never become the woman she loves.

Dudley has so little character and will of his own that the story is largely the same – not just the plot, but even the little scenes. Many chunks of scenes are copied directly from the books. This is not realistic – the butterfly effect should have changed how the characters act.

There are even scenes where characters in this story have exactly the same conversations as in canon, except the new characters take some of the lines of the canon characters. But people are different enough that they would have different opinions in the same conversations, or at least different wordings of their ideas from each other. This lackluster inclusion of the new characters fails to use their potential to make new stories.

The author came close to using characters well when Dudley made Malfoy question himself. But after a brief period of absence, Malfoy returned to his canon behavior. That would be fine if it were explained why Malfoy was missing and why he decided to continue with his previous behavior – it could be a demonstration of the complexity of people. But since it is never explained, it just looks like the author wanted everything to be the same as canon, and couldn’t be bothered to justify it.

In the end, Dudley feel like an amnesiac who is repeatedly inserted into each chapter of the canon book. Instead of changing the course of the story with his continued presence, he just adds extra inconsequential sentences to the same plot. By next chapter, nothing has changed. Dudley has no more impact on the story than the commentators do in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Fanfiction is better when it’s different from the canon books. I already read canon – if you write it again, I will already know everything that is going to happen, and I will be bored. Instead, give me your unique twist on the world or the characters, so that I am constantly amazed by how significant little changes turn out to be. Let me marvel at the capacity for different stories that a single fandom has – the potential for many different experiences that life itself has.

Just out of pure curiosity: why do Americans insist on using the phrase 'sorcerer's stone' instead of 'philosopher's stone', when it has been made explicit that scholastic chose the former title, just because they felt kids would be hesitant to pick up a book with the word 'philosopher' in it, especially keeping in mind the historical alchemical history that actually exists...

An enjoyable read, and nice to see things from Dudley's point of view (plus I'm a sucker for time travel).

On a reread of your Harry Potter Dudley series. So nice to have a Dudley point of view.

Wow, that was legitimately creepy. I was just nodding along and suddenly - wait, that doesn't make any sense.

That was enjoyable to read. I don't see many Dudley fics, especially involving time travel so this is a treat. My only complaint is that Dudley doesn't seem his age (his real age). I feel like he hasn't really struggled with fitting in with children besides his nightmares and blackouts. Anyway, it is enjoyable regardless and I will continue to read!

You do a great job balancing Dudley between competency and idiocy, so far.

I love this idea

London Knight .
Yep a good Fic . 7.5/10 at least . I hope it diverges more in 2nd year though ?
LK out .

London Knight .
So the plot thickens . Poor Dudley - those visions of Past , Present , Future & Alternate Realities must be doing hell to his brain ...
This is a good easy going Fic - which I like . Sometimes you need a rest from those 400K worded , highly complex ones ;-)
LK out .

LK ... broken record ...
NEVER Jell-O in the UK ! IT'S JELLY - and don't confuse that to what they call jelly in North America ... you really need a British Beta to correct these mistakes ...

LK on repeat .
NO British kids are called 'Pumpkin' - particularly in front of other people !
Any kid that was called Pumpkin , would never here the end of it - even after 7 years of Secondary Schooling ...
Thrust me on this ...

LK again .
Slight quibble : it's Summer HOLIDAYS in the UK , rather than Summer Break ...