5113: The Slytherin Gem - Ruby

[pottersues]

Today’s entry features Harry falling head over heals for a complete stranger.
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Title: The Slytherin Gem

Perpetrator: kaitlynwrites03

Sue-O-Meter: Toxic

Cover/Banner Art: The cover is a picture of a girl with red hair tied in a green bow.

Summary: “…in which a girl with memory issues is given letters instructing her how to defeat the dark lord and

Comments

[anonymous]

At least someone out there is trying for redemption for Peter instead of just writing OCs who instinctively know he's a bad person and just circumvent the plot by kicking him out of the group early on.

Why would that bracelet provide complete immunity to unforgivable curses but only some for lesser spells? That isn't logical. And if those can be made, doesn't it seem like Dumbledore should be putting those together for everyone in the Order? They sound dead useful for a group of people who don't want to be tortured, mind controlled, or killed.

I don't like that there's an easy fix for her memory problem either. Maybe I'm misconstruing the non-existent foreshadowing, but that just screams that later on she's going to lose her bracelet so Harry can angst about how the love of his life doesn't remember him anymore. Not that that's necessarily a bad plot point (I love a good amnesia romance, personally), but I don't like how the story seems to be getting there.

Or maybe that won't happen at all. But that begs the question: Why give her the flaw of short-term memory loss if you're going to fix it before it becomes an actual problem to overcome in the plot?

She doesn't seem very Slytherin to me. Not that I think a childlike character needs to be in any particular house, just that...well, where's her ambition? Or anything else? I assume she's a pure-blood, but that's not the whole of being a Slytherin.

I really don't understand the plot of this story. So I guess this is the summer before third year? Some random OC shows up to kick start the plot. But how is he involved in this? How does he know where to send her? Did he leave her the note and the bag, and if not, who did? And why? Why this random girl? Again, some questions that might be answered later on, but at this point, it feels like random events got us to this point. And now we're just going to get Harry and Ruby snuggling? If all the writer wants to do is write fluff featuring her OC and a canon character, write a one shot! At this point, I am way more curious about other things going on than whether or not she and Harry are going to play tonsil hockey--and you've already answered the last questions, so why should I care to continue focusing on it??

[pottersues]

"Or maybe that won't happen at all. But that begs the question: Why give her the flaw of short-term memory loss if you're going to fix it before it becomes an actual problem to overcome in the plot?"

The special needs characters I've come across and featured here always leave me feeling the character is special needs perhaps to make the character flawed and thus there is the hope they'll avoid their character being called out as a Mary Sue, or the writer is wanting their OC to have an interesting backstory, yet being special needs is only there superficially.

Yet, I've also seen special needs characters done right as well.