So glad to see another chapter, William. I am enjoying your story immensely.

Author's Response: I'm glad to hear it.

William, I am enjoying your story very much. You write very well. Your premise of a convergence of Muggle technology and wizardly magic is an idea that has been flitting around in my mind also, and having lived through the entire Space Age, I enjoy your references to its history. It is a treat to read a story that is out of the ordinary.

Hi, Jenny. I see that Pooja has already written you a long review, but I have not read it yet because I want these comments to be all my own.

I think it is always a challenge to write a battle scene where so much is going on at a rapid pace, and you have to provide enough to give the feel of the battle without including so much that it becomes tedious, and you have to think of different details to include (such as the wooden pixies). (JRR Tolkien dodged this problem in [i]The Hobbit[/i] by having Bilbo knocked unconscious at the beginning of the Battle of Five Armies and not awakening until it was all over!) But you cannot dodge the challenge in this story; it [i]is[/i] the story, and you handle it very nicely. There is just the right amount of violent description to set the scene well, before you get into your main subject, which is the death of Tonks at the hands of Bellatrix.

I noticed that at first you have Tonks using non-lethal spells, stunning, stupefying, disarming, petrifying, but not killing. These spells are appropriate for Auror work in which the goal is to capture the suspects alive and bring them to trial, but not so appropriate for all-out life-or-death warfare, the situation in which she finds herself now. Her extensive Auror training has not really prepared her mentally for a free-for-all like this. She knows intellectually that “this situation was real and deadly,” but she does not change her approach until she sees her husband die. It was perceptive of you to see and write this mental change; I don’t think it was just grief or a desire for revenge, though you show her having those feelings also, but a realization that she [i]had[/i] to take this fight to its ultimate degree.

Bellatrix. It is easy to make her into a caricature or stereotype. There [i] are[/i] some behaviors that she often displays, but they have to be used judiciously. I would have used another word than “cackled”, but her speech about wanting to kill all the unworthy members of her family works well here, without being hackneyed, because in the midst of the battle she actually is counting off how many unworthy relatives are dead and how many are still left to kill. (Was she planning to kill Andromeda someday too, do you suppose?)

It is interesting that you have Bellatrix using [i]Sectumsempra.[/i] In book six Snape states that he invented that spell himself, and I had always assumed that he had never shared it with anyone, but maybe he did. It’s entirely believable that Bellatrix would be sufficiently sadistic to want to kill people slowly rather than instantly. For her, death is not always enough; she wants suffering too.

A couple of tiny observations: obviously Molly is a better dueler than Tonks (let’s hear it for the older generation!) and [i]episkey[/i] doesn’t work if you have lost too much blood.

The seven books don’t really get us inside the head of Tonks very well; why she fought and how she died were never spelled out in any detail. By opening in the midst of the action, this story does not address her decision to join the fight, but it does give a beautiful vision of her final minutes of life. In the end, it’s a sweet story; if she must die, it is nice to know that she drifted away peacefully and unafraid.

A good job on an important moment in the canon.

Vicki

Author's Response: Thanks for the review, and sorry it's taken me so long to respond! I'm glad you thought I did the battle well; I wanted to set the scene, but didn't want to burden the reader with too much action--not to mention that it would be difficult for me to do as a writer, since I don't like action very much (this is my main problem with part 2 of the 7th movie!) and thus don't like writing it. I like to concentrate on how people think and interact, and this story is pretty typical of my writing in that respect. Of course, I'm still working on writing more complexity into the thoughts and emotions of the characters; I hope Tonks seems fleshed out here. Bellatrix is a challenge, since it's so difficult to empathize with her. And I definitely agree on the suffering thing--Bella likes to play with her food before she eats it...:P I wanted the ending to carry a strong feeling hope, wanted her death not to feel meaningless and cruel, although in some ways I suppose all deaths are, no matter what they're for. At least it made the story a little less sad to read.

Hi, Alice. This is Vicki from Slytherin House. I read your other chapter-of-cheer We Happy Few, and decided to try this story also, since it is set in the same situation.

This is not the sort of thing I usually read, and I know that I would be utterly incapable of writing it, but I was curious to see what you were going to do with this low-action, antagonistic-banter situation and where it was going.

You have created 8,000+ words of Hermione’s thoughts interspersed with a little dialogue and descriptions of sitting outdoors in winter’s cold. At first I thought that her ruminations and little flashbacks of memory were digressions to the main line of the story, but I finally concluded that they were the story. And oddly enough, you have her thinking primarily about Draco, about his mood and his attitude, and very little about the guerrilla war that they’re all waging. And in the manner we have come to expect, Hermione over-thinks and over-analyzes everything.

In fact, the only place where her characterization is a little off for me is the sentence, “The base itself had taken her some time to put together due to her general abhorrence of instructions.” I would disagree that she abhorred instructions; in school she followed instructions closely, as in her Potions class. I think she would be more bothered by the absence of instructions, if the “Instructions For Assembly” leaflet that once accompanied the artificial Christmas tree had been lost long ago.

The story is very slow-moving, as if the freezing weather had made everything sluggish, their bodies, their minds, even the pace of the story. And given that they are in a war, there is surprisingly little action; one would have expected more. Even the recounting of the attacks on the four Mugggle villages was just Hermione’s brief recollection in her mind, and it occupied only one paragraph.

After reading your story three or four times and getting the framework (the skeleton of the plot, over which is laid the blanket of Hermione’s thoughts and minute observations of the moment) solidly in mind, I could perceive that the story made more sense. But neither character is attractive. Hermione is so depressed and discouraged, and Draco is so cynical. He seems to be taking out his frustrations about the war by verbally harassing and needling Hermione. By choice he had no friends, preferring to consider that everyone on his side of the conflict was a moron, including, we presume, Hermione. And that is why his sudden change of mood/attitude/behavior at the end seems inexplicable. The last half-dozen paragraphs outline Draco’s apparent change of mood, as perceived by Hermione, but I still don’t see why. Yes, Hermione has told him the story about the Christmas Truce during World War One, but until this point his preference is to reject all her ideas, even to the point of saying that “agreeing to disagree” is the sign of losing an argument. This is what makes the ending not completely satisfying for me.

Still, your story is skillfully written, with sentences that work well and good word choices. I will have to read some of your other stories also, to see if this talent has also produced something more lighthearted.

Congratulations on starting a new story, and I'll bet that Laird Gastrell will figure in the story somehow later on, since he is a completely new element. I am curious to see what this story will be about, and I will follow your chapters eagerly. Has the Hogwarts Express become updated to be a Bullet Train since the days when Harry rode back and forth? It seems to have arrived at Hogwarts rather quickly. :)

Author's Response: Hi, Vicki!! Thanks so much for being my first reviewer! Laird Gastrell is someone I made up who will play a small part in the story later, but I'll say no more here. I'm glad to hear that you'll be keeping up with the story. About the Hogwarts Express... well, I've always thought that since we're in a magical world, shouldn't the train be magical? If wizards can apparate from one place to each other instantly, then a train could at least go a little faster than a normal muggle train. Just my head canon... Thanks!

I enjoyed this story, a canon-compliant expansion of a tense part of the Harry Potter saga. The writing is good; it flows well, without the straining-for-effect word choice that one often sees. I am looking forward to the rest of this story.

Author's Response: Thank you! This was my first attempt at Remus and Tonks, so your praise means more than you know. Part two is in the queue as we speak, so it shouldn't be long until you get to read it. Thanks for reading and reviewing and so happy you enjoyed it! :)

Yes, I do read through to the end; as you know, I have an interest in developing the character of Arabella Figg (if you read my story through to the end). The last two paragraphs were not completely clear to me. Who is Edward? Another name for M. Fletcher? I am sure it will become clear as the story proceeds.

Author's Response: Yes, I did read your story through to the end! And I loved what you did with Arabella in the Epilogue. I love the characters that are fairly well defined withing a very small window, like Arabella, and Dung, and Moody - they are very real, there is a personality you have to respect, but they can be expanded in logical directions outside of the small angle we get on their lives. You'll find out a bit about Edward in the next chapter.The earlier two stories show them interacting before things get so terribly tense in the Wizarding World, and I think I am keeping true to my elaborations of their characters. The two of them are outsiders in two different ways - I like to think that at least gives them some point of commonality to work from... I see Dung very much as he is in the books and the illustrations, rather than in the Movie - I think that Dung has some things in common with Book!Dung, but has way too much energy, and is way way too clean...

Hi, Elle. This is Vicki, of your own House, here to give you a hearty pat on the back for this very nice story. If you have read my recent poem Narcissa In The Forest you already know that I too have a positive opinion of Narcissa.

Although Narcissa is sometimes dismissed as a weak character, mainly because she doesn’t go to outrageous extremes like Bellatrix or defy her family’s values like Andromeda, Narcissa doesn’t deserve such a tepid assessment. In canon she exhibits strength, initiative, and great love for her son. It is reasonable that she exhibits great love for her husband also.

The family’s strong sense of elitism and class prejudice is, alas, reflected widely in the real world, and it shows itself in a dismissive, uncaring attitude toward people (or beings like house-elves) who are supposedly inferior to themselves, but within their own class, these elitists can be very loving.

By beginning the story with some paragraphs about Narcissa’s concern for Draco, you establish her loving nature, and it is significant that her rage toward Voldemort is triggered not by what he is doing to the lower classes, but by what he is doing to Narcissa’s own family. For her it is all intensely personal. And although she is capable of strong emotion, such as love and rage, you show her ingrained habit of self-control in the lines ”…she realized her emotions were swirling out of control. Taking a deep breath she attempted to calm herself.” This tight self-control is what later allows her to deceive Lord Voldemort in the forest and save, not only her family, but the wizarding world. For this reason, I think your line ”She fled towards the sound in full panic,” might be a little overstated; she probably acted less panicky than someone else might have done, given the same amount of fear.

You have shown her tender side very realistically in the scene where she finds her husband lying on the floor, but also her tough side, in the lines “She needed to see his wounds…” and “…she knew she couldn’t give in to her urges…; she needed to heal him.” When she describes his physical state as “Nothing we can’t fix,” it is really “Nothing Narcissa can’t fix.”

Given the seriousness of the situation and the wretched physical state of her newly-escaped husband, I didn’t think that there would be giggling, a mischievous grin, or a shower a deux. Those don’t seem to be Narcissa’s style; they sound more like things that Ginny would do.

I was struck by the lines of conversation where Lucius said, “This is all my fault. I failed, and you and Draco paid the price,” and Narcissa answered, “None of this was your fault.” I re-read the pertinent chapters of Order of the Phoenix to see how much at fault he was, and he certainly did seem guilty, so Narcissa’s words suggest either that she didn’t know the details of his behavior, or that love is blind.

This story is smoothly written, with a good balance between introspection, description, dialogue, and action. The details give a vivid image of the events of the story, and the introspection does not go needlessly into topics not closely related to the plot. All the elements of this story serve to further the plot, and that is good.

I enjoy reading well-written Missing Moments. The seven books are necessarily all written from Harry’s point of view; nothing is presented that Harry does not witness, but the Missing Moments enrich the whole saga immensely. All the characters are valuable, and all their stories deserve to be told. Thank you for a good job.

A wonderful idea, and well done. One suggestion: in line 4, you want to say "tarriest", not "tarrieth", because the verb ending for the second person singular is -est. The ending -eth is for the third person singular. You have it correctly further on in that line, where you say "thou dost" (instead of "thou doth" which would be a mistake), and in the second line where you say "thou hast" (rather than "thou hath", which would be a mistake).

Author's Response: Thanks for catching that! I don't actually know how to write medieval English; I just winged it, lol. I'm glad you liked the poem!

Hi, H.S. This is Vicki from Slytherin House again. I always enjoy reading your missing moments, as you already know, because they are so skillfully written and fit so neatly into canon.

My initial reaction to this story was that I liked the first half, in which Draco is alone on the balcony reflecting on his recent past, better than the second half, because the first half is such a comprehensive analysis of the the emotions and reactions that Draco must have been experiencing at that moment: a lifetime of angers, fears, negative outlooks on life (looking down on people cannot be as enjoyable as appreciating them), negative experiences (bullying people cannot be as enjoyable as having friends), frightening real-life nightmares, disappointments, isolation, abandonment, resentment… You explore this lifetime of bottled-up hurts and wrongs in fascinating detail, even to the gallows humor of the golden casket with the mirror inside the lid.


There are significant hints in a few phrases: “…the vacuum of emotion..” and “It didn’t affect him…” Draco tells himself that he feels nothing and doesn’t care, when it is painfully obvious that he feels a lot and does care, not in grief for a loving father whom he lost a few days ago, but in grief for an entire loving childhood that he lost on the day he was born. You have him think of his father as “The man who had been dead to him for years…” Twenty-one years, by my count. In this, he is like Harry, who also grew up without a loving father. To Draco, his father was like the walking dead, not present in any sense that matters.

And still, as he reviews his father’s sins and shortcomings, you show hints that Draco blames himself as well: “Who the hell cared that little about [their father] that they could spend his funeral counting the panes of glass…” “…no progress had been made…” in building himself back up, and “Just how fucked up was he anyway?” These are not the thoughts of someone who doesn’t care.

At first reading, the half of the story featuring Astoria was less attractive to me. Her speech seemed affected, but to try to understand what you were doing here I re-read this section, skipping all the narrative and just focusing on her statements, and some points began to stand out, particularly “…he is both pleased and horrified to discover that his father’s death hasn’t affected him?…But doesn’t that make him as cold and unfeeling as his father was?” My take-away message here is that how we are raised will affect how we think and behave for the rest of our lives, and I saw an unexpected parallel with my own story, The Baby In The Closet, about how Harry was affected by his own upbringing. (Don’t know if you have read that or not.) I’m not sure Astoria was thinking about anything like that; she was just having fun freaking Draco out.

It was not clear to me how Astoria could pinpoint so accurately what Draco’s state of mind was—a lucky guess?—or why she accosted him out on the balcony. Why does she want to tease, torment, tantalize him? And why, in the end, does he seem to be attracted to her? Because she is the one person for whom he does not have to play a false role? It is for me a pretty ambiguous ending.

I enjoyed this story, and writing a review for it forced me to think more deeply about it instead of just skimming over it and on to the next. Thanks for writing.