Julia, this story was beautiful, showing four very different pairings, and exploring their relationship in so few, but such evocative telling words, so briefly. It felt almost like a tableau, with you explaining the detail of these brief moments, while also managing to imply their past feelings towards each other.

The structure is beautiful. I love how each section is so distinctive in its own right, and the use of the present tense makes all the relationships incredibly immediate and independent of the time and place they exist. Also I think the use of short paragraphs is really powerful here, making the whole piece lack in actual detail, but heavy in emotion. I think it’s interesting, however, that amongst these deeply romantic couples, you have Daphne and Parvati, which is incredibly, heart-breakingly sad. However it adds a lot of depth in what could have seemed too positive a take on romantic relationships, which works really well.

These vignettes could so easily have made one-shots in their own right, but they work together here so beautifully, and this is mainly through your language. I love how you describe Ted as slightly heavy and wanting her so much, and the way in his love and lust, her problems cease to matter, even though they have existed throughout their relationship. Referring to her family as ghosts is such a powerful way of showing this.

And I think in this single paragraph you got Neville so perfectly, and also show the way he sees Harry. He associates Harry with heroism and doing the right thing, even though he showed himself capable of it when he was eleven as well. Neville does what he does because he has to, and while being an incredibly brave person, I think characterising him with the subtitle “blush” is an excellent way of showing how young and naive in some ways, he really is. With Daphne--oh, it’s so sad. I love how you describe them as marked by the war, and how Daphne lives through the hurt by just touching her, and the last line of that section feels incredibly sad. I love the idea of this relationship, about physical intimacy, is characterised not by that, but by the vast psychological distance between them. In the final section, I love the description of the map of the body, tying into the title, but also applicable to the previous vignettes, and so succinctly and beautifully phrased. Also your language is so sensual, that you cannot help but feel the intimacy between the couples. The final line is beautiful, again, applicable mainly to Hugo and Scorpius, but also to all the other couples you’ve mentioned, summarising relationships such as these incredibly well.

This story is beautiful, Julia, and I feel this review is inadequate, but it’s an amazing story, and once I’ve worked out where to put it, will nominate it for a QSQ (unless someone’s beaten me to it...) because it deserves recognition.

Alex.

Author's Response: Alex, thank you for such a wonderful review. I know you thought it was an inadequate review but, for me, it was perfection :) I'm glad you thought the structure worked and that they all linked in together despite being relatively separate in terms of narrative. I just felt like they were linked too much to separate them which is why I published it as a one-shot. It's great that you liked the dynamic between the couples, as well. Most of the characters, apart from Neville, are quite minor in canon so it was interesting building them up to make them as powerful as possible in few words. Again, thank you so much for this review. It made me squee and I'm sorry for taking a while in responding. It's always so difficult knowing how to respond to something which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Julia xoxo

Jess--I think (and hope) I told you how good I thought this was when you posted it and am finally here to review (sorry, not for SPEW). What I love about this is how much you show and imply, rather than have to tell . Everything about Draco's characterisation is there, but you just extrapolate from it, showing him dealing with his sexuality and desires in a way that does not damage the world's already damaged perceptions of him.

I love the contrast between the strangers meeting and sleeping together in the first scene, and the different sort of intimacy in the daylight of the second one. I love the way the line:Perhaps that was the hated thing about clean windows; they were forced to remember who they were. applies to them both. I also think it’s interesting that Draco’s initiated this change in their relationship, and an unusually brave act for him to say to Michael outright, which implies that he cares for him more than just fancying him. And Draco saying “the Dark Lord ruined everything” -- oh that line says so much, about how he denies his lack of agency and is so selfish in his approach to what happened. And I love Michael’s confession of love--which isn’t quite outright, and which he isn’t able to say to Draco’s face, but he does anyway, and is rejected by it.

I also love the light in this story. THat might sound odd, but the way it starts with intimacy in the dark, and ends in the darkness as well, whereas actually in the middle, where they are in cold daylight, they are in some ways at their most empty, at the point where what they had is broken by Draco. And the contrast between their conversations, in the first there’s the assumption of mutual attraction, the second likewise and the fear that this is something more, and in the last taut, formal, almost amusing how formal, given how intimate they’ve been. And then there’s Michael’s acceptance of Draco’s selfishness, at the moment when Draco is, suddenly, being selfless, and Draco’s declaration of love by Michael’s definition of it--And I loved the last line. That something can be changed by a place like that, that things which are repressed and put in a place out of the way, can get into you and change who you are--it’s so good.

I really love this story, and have missed reading your writing. It’s excellent though--Alex

Author's Response:

Yay, another review for this neglected little story!

I am perpetually surprised that anyone likes this story. Maybe it's because I still think of the drabble form of this rather than the one-shot form, so I sort of forget what I added/didn't add, hehe.

It makes me happy that I was able to tell more of a story than what is on the page. I was actually worried that I had skimmed over a bit too much, but you picked up on the things I wanted to show about both of them, but mostly Draco and his ambivalence about having what felt right rather than what was supposed to happen for him.

The motif of dark vs light was integral, I think, to what I wanted to portray. It's easier to be what you want to be when you can convince yourself that no one can see you. That was why their meeting in the light was so harsh: nowhere to hide, nowhere to convince them that the world wasn't looking.

Anyway, crap response to a great review, but suffice it to say that there was a lot of affirming nodding going on because you saw what I wanted to be seen in this, so yay for both of us, hehe. ♥

~Jess

Lovisa--when I validated this, I thought it was excellent. Pansy is such a hard character to get right, but I think you manage it so well, without whitewashing the --to put it frankly--b**** she is the books, but making the reasons behind that understandable.

I think this story is excellent in being characterisation focussed but also having a clear narrative. The moments you choose to show us, highlight exactly how Pansy feels about the situation, and why her world view is the depressing one it is. I also love the way that each section has it’s own distinctive character, without the transitions between those sections feeling awkward. I think the main way you’ve managed this is through the present tense, which you control brilliantly. It never feels forced, and gives us simultaneously Pansy’s thoughts, and her assessing her life at that stage. I think this works particularly well in that the first section provides the ground rules as to why she, at the age of eleven, had a rather Machiavellian mind-set in her approach to school society and Draco.

The dynamics between Daphne and Pansy are so well presented. That’s such a childish, school girl assertion of power--choosing the bed, and such a perfect way of encapsulating how Pansy got her position as the Slytherin queen. However the main relationship is the one with Draco, however you don’t make it about Draco. You manage to make it about Pansy and her relationship with him, without him dominating the narrative. That doesn’t really make sense, but with romantic narratives it’s so easy to make the focus on the man the main factor, whereas here it’s about Pansy dealing with her emotions. THe way she manages herself according to what he believes is so sad, when she says, “But she keeps her distance, because she believes that’s how he wants her - on his arm, not in his heart.” and then later finds him in her heart, but not her in his.

The way she’s been haunted by the life she might have had, and what her mother’s taught her about how to use men to manage a life, rather than be someone in her own right is so painfully sad. And that Pansy acknowledges that life at Hogwarts is not the same as life outside, and her domination over people will end.

She wants to ask him what’s wrong, but she can’t, because then, he’ll know that she still cares about him, and then she has lost. If only, if only he’d come to her… this line is so sad. I love how you don’t say she’s in love with him, but it’s obvious that she is at this point. I find it interesting the distinction between love and need, and when you take us into her thoughts about how obvious it is, and how he’s too self-obsessed at that moment to see it, and so they have sex and then that’s it. Your tone shows that she knows it’s ending--there’s a sombreness about it which is so sad. This line She’s the size of his feet on the floor. is so absolutely perfect.

I like her presentation of Astoria as being everything Pansy is not, and that in some ways she can see why he and Astoria fit more together than she and him can. I think it’s interesting that she can see that, but her love is selfish and she can’t let him be happy. I think these lines To be able to move on from the hurt, she has to convince herself that the day will come when he will be begging for anything that resembles the perfect life he has now. So that’s what she does. She can’t seem to find the energy to scheme, but she tells herself that, whenever an opportunity presents itself, she will be ready. exemplify her Slytherin-ness, even more so than before. She’s willing to wait, and take comfort in the knowledge that she WILL get revenge one day. And because you’ve made the reader (or at least, me) sympathise with Pansy so much, that I almost want her to have revenge, even though it’s wrong. In a way, she’s gone beyond help now, and the last, somewhat flawed, attempt to get Draco back, is doomed to fall on his feet, with such irony that in her attempt to break their relationship, she strengthens it.

The ending, I think, was interesting. I found it slightly rushed however. Pansy and Draco have been the focus, rather than Pansy and her mother, though you make it clear that it’s important that her relationship with her mother made her what she is. There’s no sense of where her mother is in relation to her throughout the story, and maybe mentioning that the knowledge that her mother isn’t there to help her, or what she was doing, would make this surprisingly, but realistic attempt at maturity, more supported by the rest of the story. I hope that makes sense. It just felt like it needed more detail and explanation.

But overall this is far too squeey. I loved this story, and am adding it to favourites immediately.

Alex

Author's Response:

Wow, my first SPEW-review. I'm honoured. This is definitely the most in-depth review I've ever received and, of course, you know as well as I how happy it makes us to know that someone's not only read but actually understood what we were trying to say. Thank you.

Minna, this poem took my breath away. I’d missed it when you posted it in Who Arted? and so when it appeared in the queue I was amazed. What I love about it is how sensual and romantic it is, and while it is Fleur and Hermione, the emotions felt could be applicable to any couple who feel thrown into a relationship they do not understand and were not prepared for.

Also you have the prose poem form written beautifully. This is particularly impressive since I know how you usually have a set structure for your poetry, and your prose (at least the ones I’ve read, but may be wrong) tends to be quite elegantly, rather than poetically, written, and so the fact you’ve pulled that off in prose, is incredibly impressive.

The central metaphor of love or lust being in the ocean is such a powerful one, and I’ve never seen it developed the way you have here. I love that they go from being in the sea, and you describe the breakers “splintering the last remnant of sense they’d been floating on”, after you’ve described them as adrift, because they are already falling in the reader’s mind’s eye, but here you describe the act of that falling apart.

What I love most is the tone. The sensations you describe are so passionate, and so exciting, and yet it’s always with love and attention to detail and such a positive attitude, even when they have no control as “they’re pulled into its uncharted waters.” I also love the fact that they are in this together, and neither is leading the other on, but they are both a victim of their own emotions and lusts. I also love the way you conflate the imagery of sexual passion and the sea in the last paragraph, with the phrase “as the sun rises over the storm-tossed sheets” which is such a succinct and beautiful image.

I also love the structure. The poem has rhythm, and flows so elegantly, and I think as two single sentences works absolutely perfectly. The first sentence carrying over to the second paragraph means that there’s a sensation of it building up towards something, paralleling Fleur and Hermione having sex, and when it’s over, I love how although bewildered, there is no doubt that they cannot go back, and yet there are no regrets.

I love that this is optimistic at the end. The idea of falling in love being as going through the ocean, and then finding itself in a place it never expected to be, but loved, is such a beautiful one, and the perfect ending to a beautiful poem.

Alex

Author's Response: I'm glad you liked it. :D Honestly prose poems = basically the sort of really flowery prose I have indulged in on occasion but never been able to carry into full fic form, plus a little extra imagery through in cos why not. It's hard to sustain for more than a few paragraphs, I think. Also, I cannot respond coherently to all the praise in this. Suffice to say this is a lovely review and made me melt into a puddle of squee. <33

Yes, I said I was going to stop reading fanfic. But I was craving some impeccably written D/A and this fulfilled that need perfectly. I love how Adrian is characterised--his intelligence, the way he manages being a Slytherin, his humanity and perception in knowing something is wrong with Miles, but Miles not wanting, and possibly it wouldn't have done any good, to get help except for that one heart-breaking moment with the 'Oh', the full reason for which Adrian felt so bad is only revealed in that last line. How you make them all come to life, and make me sympathise with htem, so quickly, I do not know. One tiny nitpick-I think the tense is wrong in this sentence: 'People I love wouldn’t get hurt anymore' and it should be 'loved.'

For some reason, I thought this was a one-shot. I was so, so delighted to rush back to the summary and see the 'No' next to the Complete box. I await the rest, and the answers to all my questions, eagerly. Alex



Author's Response:

Yayyyyyy, you came!

Let's preface this with some explanations and apologies. This was started as a birthday present for you, but as I was in the midst of moving and the plotline rapidly spun out of control, I had to give that up for a bit. Then I was like *flail* when parents were a topic for the CCT minor character section, but by then, I realised that this wouldn't make the maximum word count limit. Well, bugger. Then I stuffed it away for a month, not happy with where it was going, until I mentioned I had some bastard child fic stagnating in my folders, and Soraya offered to take a look. She is the reason this story is here right now. :P

Now, onto the story. Adrian is the embodiment of what most writers steal from Slytherins: a strong moral compass, a sense of fair play (note that Adrian is the only canon Slytherin Quidditch player not shown playing dirty or cheating at any point), and someone with a heavy sense of responsibility.

As for Miles, I think he does want help. It's why he reached out to Adrian in the changing room, because Adrian is, recognisably, the only one of his peers who won't mock him for his weakness or spread salacious rumours about him. But that little 'oh' was more when it dawned on Miles that Adrian didn't understand where this was going. You'll see where this was going in the next chapter.

I will check up on the little tense thingy. Overall, though, I'm glad you appreciate this story, and I hope you continue to do so in further instalments should you choose to continue. <3

~Jess