Green With Envy by Bardic Magic

I stumbled across this little gem in a dusty corner of the archives, unvisited for about three years, during the Race Across the Galazy review drive, when I was searching for old stories to review as well as the most recent releases.

Green With Envy is a 6881-word one-shot, a sequel to a series of two novels by Bardic Magic, but it can be easily read as a stand-alone, whimsical action/adventure story of Ron and Harry as Junior Aurors, trying to track down the source of a leak in the Auror Department and bring about the capture of a cell of Death Eaters in the years following the end of the Second Wizarding War.

A unique premise in Kevin's concept of their postwar lives is that Harry and Ron have been taking training in Japanese martial arts.  Sounds crazy, I know, but in the first novel of the series it follows quite logically from Ron's Quidditch playing (trust me on this), so we readers accept that Ron and Harry have acquired these skills.

By now you can see that the combination of Junior Aurors, Death Eaters, and Japanese martial arts is a winning recipe for a story like no other.  It's well-written with a lively pace, a non-stop plot, and moments of humor.  In secondary roles are the reporter we love to hate, Rita Skeeter, the gruff and unsympathetic Head of Aurors, Gawain Robards, and the martial arts teacher, Master Wu.

Green With Envy is a delightful example of how an atypical element can be introduced into the standard canon without violating it, providing a fresh, new concept against which the scenes play out. It is a treat to see our very familiar boys doing something new and different.