Name: Arnel (Signed) · Date: 01/10/15 0:30 · For: The Skeletons' Tale

This is a great story. You've kept the pride of the original characters, but also added a bit of humility that rounds out their characters. Silvestre's enthusiasm made me smile because only the young have that deep, driving curiosity that makes them so enthusiastic for whatever interests them. Thank you for sharing this delightful story. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Author's Response: Thank you so much, Arnel, for reading my story and leaving such a lovely review. I am very glad that you enjoyed it.
Silvestre was a joy to write, at that age where he is half boy, half man, feeling his convictions so strongly and embracing his passions so vigorously. I wrote him also, in his persona as Scorpius, in my story of last summer, "Dark Enough To See The Stars," which you may enjoy also if you have not already read it.

Vicki

Name: Fynnsmom (Signed) · Date: 12/24/14 0:37 · For: The Skeletons' Tale

I expected something very different from this story. I don't understand why it was published on a Harry Potter website. It had nothing to do with magic. It was well written and I can see why your professor and class liked it. But, like I said I was waiting for the Harry Potter world to become obvious and it never happened.

Author's Response: Oh. Well, I guess the story came across as more subtle than I had expected, so thank you for letting me know that it wasn't as obvious as I had intended it to be. Some explanations are in order.

In the Beta Forum Drabble, the characters were, as I mentioned in the Summary, Draco, Astoria, and Scorpius Malfoy. They accidentally found buried skeletons on their land and, in trying to learn if the skeletons were members of the Malfoy family, inadvertently learned that they themselves were descendants of Icelandic usurpers who had taken over the Malfoy estate and stolen their identity many centuries ago.

When expanding the story from its drabble roots, I added the prologue of Haraldur leaving Iceland and taking his new birch wood wand with him, which he has only just learned to use. (This was adapted from a drabble I wrote for the Romance-writing class on the Beta Forum.) There is mention of the old, non-Christian practices still persisting in Iceland at this time, and a mention of a seer, to suggest that magic existed in that community. All of this was developed to give a name and face to the Icelander who eventually, at age 48, stole the Malfoys' identity and estate.

Qualities of mysticism that I put into the story included Haraldur's wand and his seeress friend, Denis' conviction that if he saw the Icelandic talisman he would immediately recognize it and that it would "speak" to him, and his gut knowledge, when he found it, that it was not just a toy or a random souvenir. The description of the thing that Denis found is the description of a wand.

It is true that no one is saying "Accio!" in this story or waving their own wands around, and their dealings with the Muggle archaeologists from English Heritage must necessarily be low-key, but my stories are often heavier on the human experience and interpersonal relationships, and lighter on the technical magic. Beloved Son would be the prime example of that, among my previous stories.

The germ of this whole story idea was my observation, long ago, that the Malfoys had a French name but did not look French. So I tried to capture the feelings of someone whose heritage and bloodline was so important to him but was being threatened by life-changing revelations. The notion of a deep, primal connection to family and place, going back many generations, is utterly foreign to most of us peripatetic, rootless Americans, and my classmates found the idea unfathomable.

Name: Dad (Signed) · Date: 12/21/14 13:07 · For: The Skeletons' Tale

I thought that was a very interesting bit of writing.

Author's Response: Thank you so much for reading my story during this busy holiday season, when most of us are less likely to have time for leisurely trolling through the new stories. I'm glad you thought it was interesting, and hopefully not too far off the usual path.

Vicki