WOW This fic is really amazing. I actually read it a while ago but only recently made an account so I've only got to review it now. I'd say it's the best chaptered fic I've ever read - the story was captivating from the start and Emmeline was a great character. Your idea of the maze and the running and all that was really creative and the way you revealed what actually happened through those memory sequences was really engaging (I always had to keep reading). I liked the way every time things got too good for the characters, something bad happened, especially with Ted turning out to be a Death Eater. I also loved how you put humour in there - like Lily and Sirius stuck in the broom cupboard at the beginning. I can't pick a favourite bit because the whole thing was amazing!!

Author's Response: Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked everything Lily was faced with and found it engaging -- I was afraid some people would find the memories uninteresting in favour of events in the present. :) And I'm so happy you liked Emmeline; I ended up becoming very endeared to her, so I like to hear that readers like her, too! Thanks again for coming back to review when you got an account :)

Hi Grace has Victory,

So, having been extremely impressed with "Magic in my Tree", I thought I'd have a look at some of your other stuff.

Firstly - great characterisation. I think your take on Ginny is very interesting, as we see her more as the popular girl in canon, but for the whole diary fiasco to happen, she must have been quite shy when she started at school. I see her as the kind of person who takes a while to feel comfortable in her own skin around new people, and I think you did a great job of her. Also a great idea that she feels guilty about the people who were Petrified.

Now to Hermione - spot on with her. Her tactlessness at the beginning was great, and I loved how she'd read up books on boys and when they'd notice girls (in actual fact she was about 6 months or so out with Ron). The only thing is, I'm not so sure if she'd by so secure about Ron - I think that kind of thing might be the sort of thing that undoes her. But I guess that's up for interpretation. I did like the point you made that she would probably lose him at some point - which sort of happened, because I'd say he figured out that he liked her around fourth year and later there was the whole Lavender thing... Also I loved how she beat herself up so much for misjudging Lockhart, after all, Hermione hates making a mistake. This line - “Yes, but I like being irritated by Ron. If you like men who go quiet and moody when they’re supposed to be talking, you’re welcome to Harry!” was so perfect!!! I saw in some of your responses to reviews that you said you were quite like Hermione - I think I'm a bit the same lol (my penname is such for a reason).

Chapter 3 was the kind of comedy slightly reminiscent of Shakespeare with the dramatic irony and misconceptions, because it's so obvious to the reader that Hermione's talking about Ron, but Ginny just plays in to her fears so easily. Also I loved the Molly/Arthur story and the last line was great, as that's what happens with Ginny and Harry in the end.

So, all in all, a perfect missing moment which shows the beginning of this friendship. Great idea!!

~Katrina

Author's Response: Dear Katrina, ~ Yes, I'm sure Ginny does come out of her shell, and fast, once she has shed Tom Riddle, but critics have complained that her reaction at the end of CoS was self-centred and irresponsible. I don't think JKR meant to portray her that way, so I decided to give her some sense of morality. As you've noticed yourself, she wasn't comfortable around Harry, so perhaps she was vulnerable to RIddle in the first place because she wasn't comfortable around her peers at school. ~ Hermione, at not quite 14, would be a girl who didn't know her own naivety. I think at that early stage she just took it for granted that she and Ron would end up together, because it was common sense, and it was a huge shock later on when he didn't invite her to the Yule Ball. Whatever mistakes Ron made, Hermione needed to accept that people do make mistakes (even champion chess-players may have trouble with real life!) and perhaps face up to why Ron would think twice about committing himself to a woman with her claws out. ~ Thank you for taking so much interest in this old story. I am so flattered that anyone is still reading it! GhV

Nice story once again! The song lyrics were really fitting, especially the last line of the second one "What have I become?" - really fits Sirius' situation. It was nicely written (although I have to say I liked your descriptions/imagery in Seedling better) and explored Sirius' character and his guilt really well. It showed how the jokey Marauder Sirius became the Sirius of the books (if you take it that he didn't die) really clearly. Personally I'm not much of a fan of James/Sirius, but it was well-written and enjoyable anyway. Also, the fact that James had an on-the-side affair with Sirius seemed a little unbelievable to me... I'd always imagined James so desperately in love with Lily that he'd do nothing to jeopardise their relationship, but I guess you've just got a different interpretation... after all not that much is known about James and Lily from the books. So yeah, very enjoyable and dark read.

Author's Response: Yes, I do love Breaking Benjamin. :) Since this story was written about two years before Seedling, my writing style wasn't the same and so the description would seem different; but I'm glad that you still liked it despite the simplicity. I have to agree with you about the believability of James and Sirius... I don't think it would happen either, but I do think it would be interesting, and I'm just a sucker for slash. ;) Thanks again!

This is just simply beautiful. You write humour fantastically (eg "In your underwear drawer") and yet at the same time, this piece was poignant and thought-provoking. I imagine that it would be like this for Fred if he were in heaven and able to watch George grow up and mature and not really be able to understand him anymore, when they've always completely understood each other. I liked your ideas about how the dead shouldn't communicate with the living, and how Fred tried to have the best of both worlds, as in communicate with George and yet be able to be in heaven as well.

Another point on the humour - I just loved this line “God,” he muttered, wide-eyed.
“What about him?” chirped Fred. “I can talk to him right now for you, if you like.” That really made me smile. I also loved all your references to Muggles (eg John Lennon, Martin Luther King), it added to the humour.

Interesting that you chose Horatio as George's middle name - as he is the one who stays alive at the end of Hamlet. (I also loved Diptheria and Nazi as middle names.)

A little nitpick - in this line His voice was absolutely infested with sarcasm, and there were little grains of sarcasm threatening to crawl over the edge. you seem to repeat yourself a bit.

Also, I suppose you know now that George married Angelina and had two children: Fred and Roxanne. I'm interested - did you purposefully change this or didn't you know at the time you wrote the story? Because I could understand you choosing not to, particularly with your references about George not marrying Fred's ex and not calling his son Fred because he could communicate with him in his head... Anyway, I'm rambling.

Also, Albus Severs is the middle Potter child, not the youngest (Lily Luna is two years younger).

Anyway, once again your creativity and humour amazes me. Even just this idea by itself is intriguing and so creative. Your characters were interesting, and your characterisation of canon characters spot on. I think you did a good job of showing a mature George, who was still the George we knew in canon.

Anyway, absolutely loved this fic, you are really a fantastic writer!

~Katrina

Author's Response: Oh wow, Katrina, thank you so much! This is one of the most detailed reviews I've had in a long time. It's funny, I never thought about that with the name 'Horatio,' but that's so true. And really interesting. 'Horatio' is kind of my go-to middle name for slightly quirky characters... I wrote a play about cross-dressing pirates where the main character's name is Aubrey Horatio Love. And interestingly enough, I wrote this story only two days after DH came out, so JK Rowling hadn't said yet who George ended up marrying... it's funny that he DID end up marrying Fred's ex. Though it never actually says Fred and Angelina dated, just that they went to the ball together... And I have no idea why I thought Al was the youngest. You're right, that clearly makes no sense!

*Sigh* Severus/Lily fics are always so sad. I reallly liked your concept - it was really original to use Amortentia like that. All the sensory imagery really added to the settings as well... I could almost smell those things. I also liked how the three memories were nicely spaced out and captured their relationship really well.

I thought it was an interesting idea, to have Lily forgive Snape, but perhaps something you could have explored a little more. It does seem unlikely to me that Lily would be fighting in the order and still talking to Severus, even if only occasionally, when she knew (or could guess fairly accurately) that he was a Death Eater.

The song added beautifully as well - and it's such an amazing and powerful song too. It really added to your fic.

The last line of the story was really great too... it sort of summed everything up really well.

Author's Response: Thanks for the review! I've actually considered editing the part where Lily forgives Snape, since I agree with you on that point. We'll see, though. Part of me really does like the idea of her at least being civil, although it's unlikely, given canon and all. Anyway, thanks again!

Wow! Now this was something I wasn't expecting at all...

I think you really managed to stay true to their characters as much as you could within the parameters of the story. As in, personally I can't see this scene occurring (and since DH came out we know it doesn't), but I think you made it work. Just how Ron acted - his attempt at humour and trying to talk to her normally at the beginning was so in character.

The dialogue between Ron and Hermione was perfectly written and paced, in fact all your writing was vivid and really showed all the emotions the characters experienced.

His deed done, Ron pocketed his wand and raised his hood once more. Before departing, however, he glanced over his shoulder and whispered three words to the settling dust and lifeless wreckage in the sitting room behind him.

“I love you.” Wow, what a beautiful way to end a story. Very impressive.

So even though I think the scene is a little unbelievable, I think you wrote this so well that you made it work.

~Katrina

WOOOOOWW!! I think this might be one of the most creative and funny things I've ever read... ever. I'm a massive Wicked fan, so I was singing along with all the songs in my head, I even listened to a few, and your lyrics just fit so perfectly. The other impressive thing is how you've managed to stick so well to canon and fit Voldy's whole story into the songs... I also like how some of the songs have some of the original lyrics in them, it brings it back to the songs.

The whole thing was funny, but I think "Dancing with Death" and "Voldemort" might be my favourite songs. Absolute hilarity.

Another thing that made me laugh - at the beginning, you've put Kingsley in Glinda's position, which is quite funny if you listen to the actual recording and imagine Kingsley and her Glinda's voice. Anyway, I'm rambling.

So usually in a review I would give a bit of constructive criticism and suggest things that could be improved... but I have nothing to say about this. It's just absolutely amazing. I'm heading off very soon to read some of your other fics. I expect you'll hear from me soon haha.

~Katrina

Once again, this was fantastic. I really do love your writing!! It's quite ironic that I like this fic so much, as I said that these characters were my least favourite in "Magic in my Tree", but I think you gave them so much more depth here and it was very interesting.

I loved how all three girls dealt with - and avoided - their situation in different ways - Sally-Anne just found a job which needed doing, or rather which made her feel like she was needed, Ella-Jane avoided going home and still pretended to be rebellious and Molly-Rose read. I really loved it when Sally-Anne has her realisation that a lot of this has been about here - after all, there's something strange in human nature that we want to be needed, particularly if there's a situation where we can hold a family together or something.

In the earlier chapters, you spend a lot of time describing Sally-Anne's hardships at home and her difficulties at her father's house - I wondered if perhaps you could include her having fun with her friends at school or something to provide contrast. Also I was interested in the relationships between the five of them, and I know you developed them a bit with the DA and all that, but I sitll felt like they could have had more presence.

I loved Terry, and I think it's very interesting and fitting that he and Sally don't have a "happily ever after" or even become friends again. You made him a really interesting character in this, and I really liked him.

Coming to Cressida and Flavian - it seems that Flavian is lazy and prefers to pretend that reality doesn't exist because it's more comfortable for him, but I do wonder why he married Cressida. Was it her money? And why did Cressida marry him? After all, he wasn't rich and had to associate with Muggles in his profession... As for Cressida, I wonder why she is so mean to the Perks' - I understand her forcing Sally-Anne to do all the housework/cooking/looking after Xavier, as she's too lazy to do it herself, but why all the extra? She seemed a little like the Dursley's, but I'd always assumed that they treated Harry the way they did out of previous spite towards Lily, fear of magic, fear of a loss of their reputation etc. Anyway, just wondered about those things.

I was very intrigued by the character of Jeremy. I know one of the chapters in "Magic in my Tree" is from his perspective, but I'd love it if you had time to write a whole story about him and how he assimilates with the magical world and the kind of feelings that that brings.

I think one of the most interesting things about your writing is perspective, as all your fics seem to be compliant with each other. For example, in "Dagger of Doubt", we see a different side of Cecilia - lazy and gossipy, yes, but caring in the end.

I think it is so fitting that Sally-Anne ended up working in cleaning products!! So appropriate.

Another question - Ella-Jane was in Gryffindor and seemed like the rebellious type - why didn't she join the DA? She was in the same year as Dennis Creevey, wasn't she?, and he was a member (though there is the canon error that he went to Hogsmeade for the first meeting despite his being a second-year...).

I love the detail you give to minor characters, such as Aunt Odette, and also how in this chapter you explained everyone's futures. You're very creative at coming up with jobs! Often people, when talking about professions, say Auror, Healer, or vaguely 'working at the Ministry', and I loved how you expanded on the other things which would be required by the wizarding world to make it self-sufficient.

I also think it's interesting that you cover religion in this fic, without presenting a biased opinion about it at all. I think that's very clever, as our own opinions often come through in our writing, and I wouldn't be able to tell at the end of this what you personally believe, just that you are open-minde to others' beliefs.

One last comment - I love that Sally-Anne and her family chose to fight in the end, it was a great end to the story.

~Katrina

P.S. By the way, how did Cecilia end up with Stan?

Author's Response: Dear Katrina, ~ Thanks for such a staggeringly long and detailed review of this old story. I’m so flattered that you’ve thought up so many and such pertinent questions. It’s a sure sign of your involvement and identification. ~ It’s interesting that you’ve suggested padding out the early chapters. Although I wanted to explore the relationships among the Hufflepuffs, I thought most readers wouldn’t be interested in that, and I deliberately raced ahead to the Yule Ball. But several people have commented that I raced too fast and that they would have been interested. So perhaps I will go back and write those chapters after all. I began a vignette from Sally-Anne’s second year in which the Hufflepuffs all send valentines to Gilderoy Lockhart. The other Puffs do indeed deserve more presence. ~ And a whole story about Jeremy? I hadn’t thought of that, although his wife is such an interesting character that the story of their courtship might well be worth telling. It sounds as if the MimT episode makes most sense to someone who already knows the characters from Hearthlinks. I’ll bear that in mind: perhaps the MimT setting was too complicated to translate well to a short story. ~ Sally-Anne never really found out why her father married Cressida, but I do know the backstory. Albert found out about Cressida’s Squib grandfather (Marius Black) and made her home-life unbearable. Cressida didn’t have the courage to leave without having somewhere to go, so she was pretty well looking for an affair, and Flavian was easy to seduce. She would have liked to marry money, but of course there aren’t so many wealthy wizards around, so she had to settle for a man who was good-looking and weak-willed. Albert (whose father is the Diagon Alley fishmonger – quite a working-class family before Albert is promoted at the Ministry) found out and threw her out. Her parents made sympathetic noises but made it clear they had no spare money to help her, so Cressida’s only hope was to work hard on Flavian to abandon his family. He recognised that Cressida would be a vindictive and implacable ex-lover, while Julia would be a relatively compliant one, and that marriage to Julia would become somewhat uncomfortable once she knew about the affair, so being phenomenally lazy, he decided to move in with Cressida. She didn’t have money or similar to tempt him, but he probably was attracted to the dramatic temperament, and she took more care with her looks than Julia did. ~ Why, apart from plot requirements, is Cressida such a wicked stepmother? She is a person who generally lacks empathy; she is very insecure and she feels better about the world when she has made some weaker person feel even worse than she does. Over and above this, I think her stepdaughters are a particular threat because they are possible rivals for Flavian’s love. She has to make sure they don’t become too close to their father, so she carries tales about them before they can carry tales about her. She can usually set it up so that the tales are more or less true, e.g. SOMEONE painted those walls on their first evening together, and of course the guilty parties are going to lie. ~ Yes, I’m afraid I played the birth-order stereotypes with a vengeance: the firstborns are hyper-responsible (except Ursula, who is simply bossy); the second-borns are rebels; the thirdborn withdraws from the cruel world. ~ Cecilia is always somewhat in Ursula’s shadow. She is shallow and spiteful but she probably doesn’t hate Sally-Anne as much as she seems to – she’s just absorbing the general atmosphere of the family because she doesn’t bother thinking for herself. The fact that in her final scene she wants to confide in Sally-Anne rather than in Ursula is rather telling. (She has already chewed off Tracey’s ears about it, of course.) To be honest, I haven’t yet asked Cecilia how she met Stan; I suppose anyone who rides the Knight Bus can meet him easily enough. I’ve always seen him as a pure-blood, and I thought she’d be happier with someone without too many brains. ~ I think Ella-Jane would have liked to join the D.A. but she had no-one to invite her. She wasn’t close friends with Ginny or Colin (who were a year older) or Dennis (who was actually a year younger). I did once write a short about how he sneaked out to Hogsmeade to attend that meeting illegally. I couldn’t post it here, though, because its effect depended on complex formatting that Mugglenet won’t do. ~ Sally-Anne had to fight in the end, otherwise she wouldn’t truly have repented of her limited approach to life. She had made “family first” an excuse for “family only” – even when the family had problems she couldn’t possibly fix, when the family didn’t need her time and the D.A. did, when “helping” the family was a disguise for the need to be needed, and when her basic motive was her utter terror of having anything to do with Voldemort. Once she had recognised all this, it was only natural that she should take action (she certainly isn’t lazy!), and that her mother, having similar faults, should improve herself in a similar way. ~ I’m very interested in your remark that the religious themes weren’t “biased” because I actually thought I told the story rather blatantly from my own perspective of right and wrong. For the record, my personal beliefs are in my user-name, and they are rather clearly propagated in the other story by Lucy Boot. Of course, being respectful of other people’s beliefs is a part of my own belief, but I think it’s possible to respect people and still say they are wrong. Sally-Anne’s mistake (from my point of view) is to assume that she’s pretty good and can be proud of herself, and therefore God ought to be proud of her too. She’s completely blind to the reality that nobody is good by God’s standards, not even people who are obviously better than their stepmothers, and we all ought to spend a little time saying sorry. Notice that when Anthony reads the Bible, she’s very uncomfortable with the subject of personal sin; she only likes the “nice” passages. Terry, on the other hand, laps it up; he doesn’t mind being reminded that he’s done things that need forgiving because he is so confident that God has already forgiven him. He said as much to Blaise at the Yule Ball, but of course neither Blaise nor Sally-Anne could process that remark at the time. ~ Some readers have criticised Terry for not telling Sally-Anne why he was breaking up with her; but, of course, he was under a magically-binding contract not to mention the D.A. to anyone. An older boy might have managed it more tactfully; Terry is only fifteen. I’m glad you liked him anyway! ~ Yes, I do try to be realistic about wizarding careers. There needs to be enough secondary industry to support the economy. Hogwarts, St Mungo’s and the Ministry are all supported by the wizarding taxpayer, and while Gringotts is probably a primary source of capital, there needs to be trade and industry too. So if my characters are entering the tertiary sector, they need to have a very good reason. ~ Thanks for reading and thanks for writing, ~ GhV

Hello, it's me again... So now I've finished this story, and I really enjoyed it. It was perfect that Arthur was the first person he visited, and Molly the last. There was a nice fluidity. I liked how each scene was different and original and how you really picked up on each of their characters. Particularly Harry - he always does tend to think that everything's his fault. You wrote Fred really well, and I loved that he used a different tactic to help each of his family move on. I liked that you included Hermione, too, because their relationship was less developed than the rest, even Harry, because Fred and George had more to do with Harry I think than Hermione. I really liked that chapter.

The penultimate chapter was also lovely - I smiled at all the family announcements coming out at the same time, and it was nice that Fred could sort of be with the family.

And this chapter was great - I loved that you picked up on the gnome thing and used that. And I enjoyed reading who each of the grandchildren "take after". I'd never thought about the fact that there's the right number...

Anyway, this was a great read. Oh one last thing - I thought it was interesting too that you explored Fred's feelings of unhappiness about being separated from his fmaily, too.

~Katrina

This was really fantastic - it's always interesting reading different interpretations of the Next Generation, as everyone interprets them differently. I really enjoyed your interpretation of Dominique and Victoire and their relationship as sisters. I think it must have been hard being Dominique particularly as she looked so much like Victoire, but was so different in personality, because everyone expected her to be another Victoire. If she had looked a bit different then it might not have been so hard.

I loved the references to her being an author and her having a good imagination, and how you tied it in with the title and the last line, but I thought it was such a good idea and would have liked to have seen it come up more throughout the story.

I loved the idea that Bill knew what was going on in Dominique's mind - in the little we see of him in canon, he did always seem perceptive.

The conversation between Teddy and Dominique was beautiful, and I was really glad that she was finally able to let go of him after that.

Just out of curiosity, have you written a fic about what happens in Paris?

~Katrina