incomprehensible ramble

Oh my Merlin, this poem is just so many fabulous things all in one. Each stanza, even the repeating ones, stands for a different emotion by the narrative voice, and they're so well-defined. Awareness. Terror. Wistfulness. Regret. Desolation. Hope. Confidence. Will. It really shows the darkness, coupled with the joy of having someone to stand next to against that darkness.

My only critique would be that, in order to better suit your set rhythm, perhaps the last stanza should be italicised as well, but other than that, it is utterly fabulous. I think my favourite part was the refrain, but that it only repeated the first two lines. It showed that continual fear, that neverending need to run, but it also allowed for the stanza to work with the changing emotions before and after, bridging them together very fluidly.

Such a beautiful poem, Minna, and it well deserved to win first place. Now I know what Julia meant when she squeed over it. I confess that I didn't properly read the other entries past skimming them to make sure we weren't using the same music or writing the same thing. Now I feel like a dunce, because I could've read this ages ago and enjoyed it then!

Gorgeous piece!

~Jess

This story is just stupidly good. How dare you write such an ultra-rare rarepair and make it so demmed sexy! I can't believe how much I just know about both characters, not only from their shared stories, but even in how they thought and how they shagged. Simply splendid.

I really wanted to strangle Charlie when he read Penelope's 'report' on the desk. I had a feeling of dread (as you likely recall), and when he turned all cold on her, I wanted to shout at him that she was just doing her job. I wasn't sure what was going to happen in the last part during the meeting, but I was hoping to hell that he was overreacting and that Penelope wouldn't do that. It made my day when she simply pointed out that Nico was hosing them. 

She's going back! Yes yes yes yes YES! Lots more Charlope smut just waiting to pepper the senses! Gah, what a fabulous story! Wow, what a lot of exclamation points!

~Jess

Aww, I love that there was one thing — besides the obvious — that Remus could share with Tonks that no one else could, not even his best mates. I think it gives them a really touching moment as a couple, and that's not even considering the baby being born. Pieces like these are what make me believe in ships like Remus/Tonks.

Lovely story!

~Jess

I love how beautiful and potent the imagery is. You write death and despair and angst so well, I may or may not  be jealous.

Heart, Twin. I truly heart this poem. :D

~Jess

Gah, the grass! I laughed for a solid five minutes. You are just supurb.

This story is gorgeous in many, many ways. First, it's got the hurt/comfort element that I love so much in post war fics, but then it's also got that easy camaraderie of characters, that believability that I crave in their interactions. It just felt like a slice of super!canon (what I call not quite canon, but it's better so nyah!). I will admit, I was rooting for a threesome, but you said there was no smut due to archive restraints. I guess I'm at your mercy that you'll post more on clickysmut at some point. :D

Btw, my favourite character in all of this was Seamus. Just the way he talked and acted... he was perfect.

Thank you so much for the gorgeous birthday gift, but I do demand that you tell me who the couple in the common room was. I need to knowwwwwwww, because I'm too thick to figure it out on my own. 

Very much lubs, 

~Jess

You know, I’m going to preface my review with a bit of honesty. I’ve recently read a story focused on Petunia and Harry’s interaction before Hogwarts and really didn’t like what was done with it. So much so, in fact, that I nearly didn’t read this story because of it. But now I’m here to admit to the entire planet that it was a good thing I did so anyway.

It is a fine line to walk when writing Petunia. There is such a temptation to either turn her into a fire-breathing monster or to make her out to be a carbon copy of that sad little girl who lost her best friend/sister in The Prince’s Tale, but you were able to use a bit of both and turn her into the Petunia we knew from the very early chapters of Sorcerer’s Stone. She still resented Harry’s presence but showed the signs of knowing what was happening and being spooked by the tell-tale signs of magic in Harry. The title in itself is evidence to that with the recurrence of ‘funny business’.

Harry well and truly had my sympathy in this story. You did so well in illustrating the subtle neglect that he had suffered but not making it sound so…it’s hard to pick a word, but I’ll go with demonic. It’s just a fact of life to him that when he is perceived to have misbehaved, he gets pent up in the cupboard and doesn’t get fed. Yet when he shows outrage at this, it’s not because of the treatment itself, it’s because he had honestly not done it. This shows the true mettle of Harry’s character as seen in the series, and it underscored his characterisation tidily.

I really like how Harry was able to work this out. We see in the series that, while Hermione is the major brain behind the Trio, he is not without powers of deduction himself. While his stealth left something to be desired, he knew that Dudley was a prime suspect in setting him up and that the necklace had to be connected to his mum in some way for Petunia to treat it with such disregard. I adore his fearlessness and his bravado in being willing to attack Dudley for screwing with him and getting him into trouble. That is just so indelibly Harry, charging into action with little regard for personal safety.

And as for Dudley, I think for the time period he was in the story, he was appropriately meat-headed and manipulative, so that makes a triad of wonderful characterisations on your part.

The tokens of Lily ate at me a little for a couple of reasons — one good and one not so much. When Harry was musing over his prior adventures in the attic, I wanted to mother him so badly. No child should have to wonder about their parents in such ways, hardly knowing their names, let alone what their hobbies were. Sure, we all know that it wasn’t a knitting needle he was holding, but for him not to realise, it’s truly heart-breaking to contemplate.

On the same vein, though, Harry playing around with the wand did sort of seem strange to me. We know from Ollivander’s that one swish of the wrong wand could decimate a room, so it strikes me as a bit odd that he could fiddle around with a wand and not have anything of note happen. Also, I do hesitate a bit at the idea of Petunia storing an envelope from the magical world without the letter it came with, if at all. If, because she subliminally misses her sister, she is hanging onto this missive, it makes sense that it would actually be in the envelope. I’m definitely not saying that your version is wrong, but it is something to think about.

The plot! You’ve managed to spin a tale of intrigue without even setting foot outdoors or having to involve police to find the culprit. And what a culprit! You genuinely had me wondering what awful git was lurking in the house, nicking jewellery, and then blaming Dudley for being an awful, awful brat for framing Harry. But you managed to throw a neat little kink into the works by having the necklace in essence steal itself when it sensed that it was about to be taken away from its rightful place.

In terms of the story being a mystery, I think it was suitably so. I think it was a proper mystery in that Harry, the main character, was still trying to figure out what had just happened and never quite did, but as an audience, readers are satisfactorily informed of important events and facts. The most notable instance of this was the end. I understood what the necklace was, and I wanted to badly to tell Harry about his mother and about how she and Petunia used to be friends and that the necklace had likely been Lily’s attempt at an olive branch between them. But this is part of the wonderful way you told the story, the way you spun your mystery. The fun was almost more in Harry’s personal exploration than it was in figuring out the whodunit aspect.

Your writing style is very clean and easy to read. I appreciate how you use clear, concise language to depict two different stories in the necklace’s history and the current events in the search for it, yet I was never lost or wondering which subject you were on. The duality of the tale was so well done, and I felt satisfied at the end with both the results of the story and how I got there as a reader.

If I were to offer one piece of advice, it would be to do something about the way you add dashes. The way they currently read, they look like plain old hyphens. It does present a minor challenge when reading to discern whether it is a strange hyphenated word or a dash. This isn’t hard to fix, especially if you use Microsoft Word (in any edition from 97 and newer). You can either add a space after a word, type out your dash, and then add another space, which makes work out like this – a clear and legible dash. Or you can type your word, add two dashes, and just type the next word. It auto-connects the dashes and elongates it—which is also easy to see and tidy (whether to add spaces before and after is up to you). It’s by no means a flaw in the story, but I think fixing this would greatly add to the flow of your story and take away the chance of the minor hiccups I had while reading.

Overall, this is one fabulous story, especially for a first-timer. I seriously cannot believe that this is your first fic. I lurked your author page and was gobsmacked to find that you’d never published anything here before. There is such good quality in your work that I would expect from someone whose page is a bit more lengthy, so hurray for you! That just tells me that, if you stick with it and keep writing, you can easily become one of the better authors in MNFF. Definitely one with the best usernames (unlike my obnoxious one, lol).

Thank you for reading my thoughts on your story, and I hope that I was able to encourage and help you today. You’ve written a lovely fic, and I sincerely hope that you continue to publish on the site. You’re a decent storyteller, and with any luck, I hope to see you again soon on the most recent list.

Cheers!

~Jess

At this point, it's almost ridiculous for me to review, as I have nothing coherent to say that hasn't already been said. Suffice it to say that you make my monitor weep for joy every time something you've written comes on it. Simply gorgeous.

~Jess

At the best of times, one may rely on words to nurse one’s way through periods of incoherence, despite not having a single orderly thought. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is one of those times.

Theo. Parvati. Padma. Death. Could this be any more sickeningly gorgeous? I don’t think so, because my mind = kablooey! I’m not sure how you’ve done it, but you managed to take everything I thought I knew about post-battle minor characters and topple it. Just the way it was written and formed with such certainty, it had to have happened. There couldn’t be any other possible outcome.

I think what struck me right away about the story was that, save for the memory lapses, Theo reminded me a lot of myself. He was quiet, didn’t talk to many people, and worked a job generally considered a waste of his talent. Whether you did so intentionally or not, it immediately wrapped me up in the story and made me care about Theo. I felt the need to know what he was missing in his memory just as much as he did, and I was trying to work out who both the ‘Healer’ and the dark-haired mystery girl were from the get-go.

The kicker for me about Theo is when his St Mungo’s record was shown. I couldn’t help but think that someone like him couldn’t possibly be capable of stuff like this. He just seemed so level-headed and mellow. Ironically, the only part of his ‘rap sheet’ I found plausible as you portrayed him was the killing in self-defence, since he was considered on the side of bad by many and could easily have been attacked. It also ended up being the worst thing he’d ever done in his life, which ends up a giant plot twist in the end. How fabulous. :D

What you did with Parvati-come-Padma was so subtle. I was so sure that she was the mystery girl. So sure! And Padma had to be the ‘Healer’, who was studying her sister’s supposedly unbalanced boyfriend. Normally, when I have an inkling of plot lines, I end up being right, so I can’t tell you how refreshing it is that I was completely wrong. It was a mystery of different proportions, unlike the gumchew stories typically associated with the genre. This mystery was about people and about loss and about wondering whether certain things are better left unexplored.

I think one of the most interesting parts about this story is the lack of other surrounding characters. There were a couple here and there, but the story was strictly focused on Theo and Padma/Parvati and their points of view. It really adds to the myopia of both of them. Theo really isn’t bothered to know or care about other people until he meets this girl he feels like he should know, and Padma is so attuned to her mission of getting back at him for what he ‘did’. Without the distraction of a supporting cast, I could really get into the main characters’ points of view and what they were feeling.

But the most victorious part of the story is the end. I mean… I am gobsmacked. I knew from the end of the second chapter that the Healer character was plotting to kill Theo, likely over the events that he can’t remember, but holy hell, what it was and how it happened was breath-taking. By then, I just KNEW that Theo couldn’t have done anything so terrible, despite what his medical history said. It didn’t feel right at all, but when I saw what all those things actually meant, I wanted to hex Padma. She never bothered asking him what happened, at the very least to see if he was willing to lie to her. Being a Ravenclaw doesn’t in the slightest mean that she is either fair-minded or into justice in the sense of the law. However, being distraught as she was, I can forgive her for not wanting to know more about what happened in favour of making him as miserable as she was until it was time to strike.

And then she killed him! Oh my ever-loving Prongs, she killed him! I almost thought he’d get through to her, explain to her what happened, but he didn’t. He just dared her to kill him and be done with it. It seemed like he was so sickened by what he remembered that he didn’t want to remember anymore, and her bloodlust was a quick means to that end. But then how will she know what she’s done? Gah, this will drive me mad, I swear. I feel this intense need to find her, shake her violently, and tell her what she’s done to an innocent man. You rob me of my sanity, Natalie, you really do! I love how I can be so worked up over the end of a story.

Overall, I have concluded that you are positively genius and that I will love you even more than I already do forever. I know how hard you slaved on this (in hindsight), so that you did it for me will always be a monument of the sort of person you are: genius writer, master plotter, rarepair aficionado, and above all, stellar friend.

I heart you so much!

~Jess

Awww, thank you. :)

This story is so warm and fuzzy. Well, to me it is, since this is my cup of tea. I adore Hermione's voice, the one that chatters on in her head and occasionally out loud, trying to reason everything, as Harry mentioned. You just put so much of what we know about her into this, even the part where she decides that she wants to go out right away and test the dating waters. Not because she's desperate for contact, but because she needs to prove to herself that the end of her relationship with Ron wasn't just her not having enough to offer someone else.

You made Harry very huggable, in that he was so sad. But also, I could feel him deflect and keep the focus on Hermione's issues instead of bringing his own to the forefront. It felt in-character that he only admitted it when he would've had to lie to Hermione directly to keep it out of the open. Both of them together felt right for me.

And yayyyyyyy, they kissed! I have to admit that I was a bit giddy when they did. I sort of felt the 'we can't' moment coming, but part of the enjoyment was the waiting to see if things might be different and the borderline enjoyment of sadness when it doesn't work. It's probably sadistic of me to enjoy being saddened by what I read, yet I do. 

Thank you so, so much for this story. I know how hard you worked on it, and I feel not only rewarded as the recipient, but on your behalf as well for the pleasure of a job completed. You are lovely, and I'm glad that I've got the chance to get to know you. Thank you so very much.

~Jess

Hahahaha, now who's writing villanelles without being required to do so?

At any rate, mickey-taking aside, this really is a gorgeous poem. Not only is the villainous villanelle most suited to the subject matter — four boys-come-men who all met their end one by one — it also aptly shows that each man died in different ways. 

The way you captured the essence of each Marauder's death was so good. James stood up to an impossible enemy unarmed because he couldn't NOT. Sirius just kind of... poof. Peter died like a traitorous coward who realised that he had erred on several accounts. And Remus died like a BAMF in battle. Worf would be proud.

Really, though, the last stanza is melt-worthy, and the imagery of an unravelling knot is so apt and perfect. I get the mental visual of a plait that first gets a few flyaways, the a few larger chunks fall out, and then it's just a ball of frizz/no more. That probably sounds ridiculous, but it fits in my head. 

Great poem, Croll, and congrats on doing well in the challenge!

~StormRose98