[Harry Potter] The End of Time

[Please read all 10 warnings before deciding whether to continue. If you skip them and jump straight in, any unpleasant surprises are your own responsibility. The author assumes that anyone who reads this and still complains about the warnings below has a weird-food fetish.] (For certain readers of *HP: Gilded Years*: If you love that plagiarized story but find that some of this story's settings hit your triggers, or you can't keep reading, that's perfectly normal. Don't force yourself. Just remember: without this story, that plagiarized knockoff with the characters' heads swapped wouldn't exist. If you ship Daisy/Sirius or Daisy/Regulus in that story, then what you're really shipping is my fake-dog Lily/fake-puppy Lily, and a shoddy imitation at that.) It feels like the year of Bing Fire has arrived, and karma is coming faster and faster. So here's the deal: starting in the year of Bing Fire, anyone who knows my work has been plagiarized yet compares it with the plagiarized work to put down the original will automatically give me one of their lucky breaks. In return, they will receive a voucher for the experience of having their hard-earned work or labor stolen outright without permission, while having no way to complain and no one willing to help them defend their rights. The more times you put down the original, the more vouchers you get. These vouchers are valid for life and guaranteed to work ☺️. [If you're polite, open-minded, love melodramatic drama, and enjoy reading a bit of everything, go ahead and start reading. Otherwise, I strongly recommend reading all the warnings below before deciding whether to dive in.] [A quick heads-up first: If you think only smart people can earn PhDs, if your stereotype of PhD holders is that they're brilliant, amazing, and good at everything, if you think PhD students are generally mentally healthy, sunny, and positive, if you can't accept that people make mistakes, or if the mere title of PhD makes you expect too much of someone, and then, when they fail to meet the standards you've set based on your stereotypes, you start calling them stupid, useless, incompetent, or saying “how can someone with a PhD still do that?”, if any of the many “ifs” above describe you, I don't really recommend reading this. This is sincere advice based on the sort of reader reflected in some past comments on this story. The female lead is a delayed-graduation PhD who transmigrates, and whose mental state is truly something else. She doesn't fit the stereotype of a PhD; she's more like a real-life research workhorse who's been exploited and ground down. If you feel that my tone in these warnings is too blunt, impolite, or arrogant, I'm sorry. I write free fanfiction and don't want to be treated badly. Adults filter rather than trying to change other people's minds. If this doesn't feel right to you, please leave in time. We'll all be better off. Thank you.] Here are the 10 warnings: Disclaimer: ① The idea I started with has changed somewhat over the course of writing. At first, I never expected it to get this long. I just wanted to write a funny, short-to-medium-length situational comedy for people in the fandom to enjoy. But once I got going, I couldn't stop... So the first 15 chapters lean toward comedic roasts and gag writing, while the story gradually shifts toward a more serious tone, with occasional comedic moments mixed in. Overall, the writing style is 70% serious, 25% comedic, and 5% angst (these proportions may keep changing as the story progresses). The female lead has an unusual train of thought and can be a bit flighty. Sometimes she makes snarky comments, and sometimes she swears. Read with caution if that bothers you. ② The female lead transmigrates into Lily Evans's body, starting in her sixth year, and gets caught up in some entertaining, melodramatic, and cliche stories with various members of the Marauders' generation. Sirius is her main love interest, but as I kept writing, the story developed a sort of pseudo-everyone-loves-Lily vibe. There are plenty of love triangles, quadrangles, and pentagons, as well as a double-sister-in-law story involving the Marauders and the Black brothers. Sirius will remain the male lead. The early story is told mainly in the first person from the female lead's perspective, with occasional POV sections from other characters. I also play around with narrative tricks. This story is probably best suited to people who have read the original *Harry Potter* books, because the female lead has an excellent memory. She's read the books and remembers many small details, even lines of dialogue. If you haven't read them, you may keep wondering how she knows this or that. Snape barely appears so far, almost not at all. If you're reading specifically for him, you can click the X now… ③ Because the female lead knows the original story so well, at first she doesn't fully immerse herself in this world. She treats it as a fun live-action game, a dream she could wake from at any moment. She's exploring and observing the magical world, starting out with the mindset of a player and onlooker. You may already be immersed in the story while she's still wondering how to get back. When things first happen to her, she doesn't take them too seriously or dwell on them, because at the beginning she thinks it's all unreal: this isn't really her, this isn't really her body, and perhaps it's all just a dream. She participates with one foot in and one foot out. At the start of the story, she has some difficulty accepting her identity. She doesn't want Lily Evans's body, identity, or name. She was forced into becoming a player, and subconsciously resists it. She wants to leave, and it takes her a long time to get into character. But as time passes and her relationships deepen, certain events gradually make her take it seriously. ④ The romance in this story is mainly between men and women, but there are BL and GL pairings among NPCs, with no effect on the main plot so far. The characters are mostly British or European, and I've tried to portray them as faithfully as possible. Since Eastern and Western cultures differ in their ways of life, moral values, and views on love, there's a chance this story may bother you if you rarely watch Western films or TV beyond *Harry Potter*. These differences are more about mindset than sexual purity, though, of course, I respect canon, so the main male characters are all virgins. ⑤ The characters sometimes make British gay jokes. Quidditch matches include elements of British football culture, especially the rivalry between fans, and those scenes are written realistically. As everyone knows, Britain produces plenty of football hooligans, so be prepared. Read cautiously if that's not your thing. ⑥ My writing skills are limited, so the dialogue may sometimes sound a little like a translation. When I'm excited about writing, I may spontaneously include wordplay in English, soccer jokes, F1 jokes, rock-music jokes, or WWII jokes. If you know a little about these things, you'll get more out of the story. If not, that's fine. I don't use them often, and they don't affect the main plot. ⑦ The female lead generally seems pretty normal, but sometimes her brain suddenly short-circuits and she does, says, or thinks things that are baffling enough to make you question her real age. If you've been put through the wringer during graduate school, you probably understand. Some readers may consider this initial characterization OOC, but to me, a mature, rational, mentally sound female lead who handles everything flawlessly would be another kind of OOC. I won't ignore the effects and pain of her past experiences just to create a perfect wish-fulfillment character who fits the stereotypes associated with her title. [In short, the female lead's PhD took longer than expected. Studying for it in a foreign country left her with psychological scars and trauma, so she isn't a perfectly healthy, normal person. At certain moments, she's in a quantum superposition of childishness, maturity, and madness.] So please don't use stereotypes to assume how the female lead must react to a given situation. Treat her like an ordinary person who makes mistakes. She will make mistakes, so don't put PhDs on a pedestal. [The female lead doesn't live according to other people's stereotypes and expectations. She just lives her own life.] When she doesn't act as you expect, you can click the X and leave, or patiently keep reading to see what she does. Her dueling skills are limited at first, but improve over time, with help from more than one person. (If you can't understand why a PhD who transmigrates into the *Harry Potter* world isn't good at dueling, think of the sitcom *The Big Bang Theory*, and ask yourself whether its main characters are good at getting into physical fights or duels.) ⑧ This story is pretty dramatic, immoral, and chaotic. Every character has their own secrets and ideas. I love writing about the dark, obscure depths of human nature, unspoken desires that hover just out of reach, and the drama and uncertainty that come with them. If you like twists and turns and tangled relationships, you might enjoy this story. But that also means frequent surprises, dangerous and exciting situations for the characters, one mini-climax after another, and one melodramatic mess after another. There will be blood, injuries, tears, regret, and arguments, but the characters will also keep growing, and growth always comes with pain. If you prefer sweet, peaceful daily life at Hogwarts, this story isn't for you. [If you like mindless wish fulfillment, with the female lead steamrolling everything without a single obstacle, this story also isn't for you. She has a character-growth arc and will definitely face difficulties and setbacks. If you have no patience or empathy for characters and just want nonstop wish fulfillment, don't open this story.] ⑨ Reading this story may well take you on an emotional roller coaster. If you're not good at handling that, don't open it. If you still decide to read, stay alert and pay attention to the warnings placed at the beginning of some chapters, whether they're in Chinese or English. If I post a warning in English without a Chinese translation, that means adding one might get the warning censored, so be especially careful. ⑩ The author has no plans to sign a contract and has never considered making money from writing. I write mainly to please myself and fellow fans with similar interests. Friendly or neutral comments and suggestions are welcome, and if anything is unclear, feel free to ask in the comments. If reading this makes you feel unhappy or gives you other strong negative feelings, click the X immediately. Don't take free fanfiction so seriously. [Remember, I share my writing for free. I owe you nothing. Please don't vent your negative feelings in the comments. Be civil.] I've already written this long list of warnings. If you don't like the story but open it anyway, that's your problem. If you're the sort who nitpicks while reading and can't resist telling the author how to write, go find a paid story and leave your criticism there. Thank you. This story is absolutely not for: rude people, people who can't think flexibly, people with little empathy, people whose thinking is extremely shallow and one-sided, people with no sense of humor who love to split hairs, people who think the world is strictly black and white with no shades of gray, people with almost no life or relationship experience who nevertheless love telling everyone else what to do, people who want anything they dislike to disappear, people who don't respect others' labor, and young Slytherin fans who've only watched the movies. (Thank you to everyone listed above for contributing so much to the length and content of these warnings.) [I write and share this for free, just for fun. I have no desire to cater to the people listed above. If you accidentally recognized yourself here, basic politeness and respect are fine, okay? Otherwise, just f**k off.] Warnings over. Here's the actual blurb: If someone had told him two months ago that he'd fall for the girl his best friend had been chasing for five years, he probably would have taken it as the biggest joke in the world, then gripped his wand and told that person to shut up. But now, less than a month into the school year, it had really happened. If you asked people in this castle whether Lily Evans from last term or this term was more likable, nine out of ten would say last term. Sirius Black was the tenth. He would say this term. Why Lily Evans? Why not any other girl? Why did it have to be Lily Evans? (P.S. If you find yourself thinking while reading that this story is bashing the original Lily, think back to this actual blurb. I assume anyone reading this has the intelligence and common sense of someone over five years old, and knows that 9 is greater than 1.) Finally, to anyone who plagiarizes, rips off ideas, or uses my work as a content farm: from now on, you're automatically agreeing to take all my bad luck for the rest of your life. Life is long, so if you suddenly have a run of terrible luck someday, don't cry. [This agreement is valid forever, regardless of when the plagiarism happens. It takes effect automatically whenever the plagiarism is deliberate.] Theme: Exploring the existence of friendship and love