Hi, Emma. I enjoyed coming across this sweet little story of yours, which, although short, packs a lot into its limited word-count.

I like the structure of the story, alternating the present time (after Luna has been taken by the Death Eaters) and past time (the events of her mother’s death). It had not occurred to me before that these two losses are parallels for her father Xenophilus. Your writing style is spare, with no extra verbiage, but every sentence does its duty. The old story, printed in italic type, is all narrative, and thus it contrasts with the present-day story, in Roman type, which is mostly his thoughts, but presented very matter-of-factly. The simple presentation makes this gentle story shine.

Your detailed, lively, imaginative description of the fatal accident that took Mrs. Lovegood’s life is vivid, and even though it’s tragic, it’s charming too, up to the moment of the tragedy, and appears to reflect her light-hearted spirit, which Luna seems to have inherited, in lines like “Luna’s bare feet scampered outside…

It makes sense now how Xenophilus is affected so strongly by the loss of his daughter because he has already experienced the loss of his wife. I had not realized until I read your story, how tightly these two events are related for him, to the point of his being willing to betray Harry, Ron, and Hermione in order to get Luna back again. But it struck me a little odd that he had burned all the memorabilia and photos of his late wife; I am mystified as to why he thought that this was the best way of dealing with grief. I liked your explanation of how he came to realize that all this destruction was a bad idea after all. In general, your characterization of Xenophilus is good; he seems a bit more human, not just the eccentric wedding guest and the nervous would-be betrayer of our Horcrux-hunting friends.

The use of tenses in writing this story, present, past, and past perfect, is sometimes inconsistent, and this distracts the reader’s attention just a little bit, not much; a beta reader who is a good grammarian could help polish this up.

I liked this little missing-moment story very much. Xenophilus had a small but important role to play in the larger story, so it is good to be able to understand him a little better. Nice job.

Hi, Nagini,

Here I am to review an excellent poem that does not deserve to have no reviews, so I will fill that gap.

Some of your poems are short, compact little gems encompassing a little moment, and some, like this one, are longer and have a much broader scope.

I see that each verse has a theme — squalor of her family home, abuse, useless memories of family pride, hopeless infatuation, twisted family culture, negation of her slightest dreams. The last, long verse has five lines (no more) of her hopeful action and eleven lines of its tragic aftermath. It’s interesting that you lump these two topics together into one verse; “hopeful action” does not merit a verse of its own. It was a brief, very atypical span of time within the scope of her entire life.

I love the apt imagery of your word choices. You are truly showing us, not telling us, what Merope’s life was like. A favorite line: “But dead snakes with a slight writhe found savage shelter on the door.” Wonderful image.

Canon tells us that Merope delivered her baby on December 31, so she was pregnant from April to December. The crickets were “berating the night” during the warm summer months, and the “frozen rain” was falling in December; she was on the streets for a long time, and no wonder that she wished for death at the end, having no hope of something better any more. When she is “wishing on one title star to finally die,” I can envision a little break in the rain clouds during December, revealing the one little star that she wishes on.

Your word-processing program has gremlinized you, as mine often does to me. Near the bottom of the poem you wrote “Squalor and filth still following me,” and your program, which thinks it’s so smart but which really is stupid, changed “squalor” to “squander”. This happens to me all the time. Usually it’s just stupid, but occasionally funny, as when I recently wrote “…he said, shaking his head,” and the computer changed it to “…he said, shrinking his head.” Reminded me of the Death Eater in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries who got his head stuck in a time-turner.

Jokes aside, let me say that whenever I want to read something fresh and original, I know that I can always turn to your poems. Good job. Thank you for writing.

Vicki

Author's Response: Goodness, yes! I hate my ipod programming. It changes even words like "of" to something else, which drives me nuts, and I yell at my ipod and tell it that it needs to stop changing it! That is the word processing program that gremlinizes me... So I usually use my laptop now, since it doesn't do that kind of auto-correcting. :) And thank you so much for your review! I don't even remember writing that line about the snake and when I read your words, I thought, "Wow, that is a good line! I didn't write that. There's no way I wrote that!" That happens to me on occasion, and sometimes, I won't even remember writing an entire poem. That might be why I sometimes have lines in one poem that show up in another... But I am so glad that you enjoyed my spoken word poem. And if you enjoy reading fresh and original, perhaps I should get cracking on some more poems! ~Nagini *winks*

Hi, Megs. This is Vicki of Slytherin House, commenting on your well-written story, with its interesting premise.

I would like to say that your story has a sparkle due to your fresh use of language with many good and original turns of phrase, such as “..offering food to anyone who dared linger in the kitchen,” and “You peck them good and hard until they answer my questions.” You strike that pleasing balance between dull cliche on one hand and excessive striving for effect on the other hand. There were a very few places where the word you really wanted was not the word you actually used (change “incredibility” to “incredulity”, “taunt” to “taut”, and “flicked” to “flickered”). But that is a minor point. Your scenes are easy to visualize because of the vivid and appropriate details.

Your treatment of the wizarding government echoes much of what we saw in the seven Harry Potter books: it can be clueless and heavy-handed. One is left wondering if they can do anything right. Hermione expresses the problem succinctly when she says, “They never think before passing these horrible discriminating laws.” Requiring werewolves to find spouses within two weeks is unreasonable, and I am wondering if a further plot development will be that the Ministry is setting up the werewolves to fail, in order to have an excuse to snap their wands and send them to Azkaban. (Does anyone believe Diggory’s denial?)

But your treatment of anti-discrimination measures in the workplace reminded me strongly of the civil rights measures that were undertaken here in the United States in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The extending of civil rights to minorities and women was met with strong resistance by a certain segment of the population, and the individuals who dared to claim those rights had to face a mountain of prejudice and resentment; their bravery, dignity, and persistence is legendary. But as the decades go by, and the people who cannot accept the changing times die off, and the new generation grows up with the experience of seeing women and minorities in positions of influence, change slowly comes about.

But in your story Remus cannot see himself as a courageous soldier in the vanguard of werewolf rights. He says, “Just because I can get a job doesn’t make the prejudice any less real Now they’ll just hire me because the Ministry is forcing them or they’ll be written up. I’d rather not have that hanging over my head every day.” No James Meredith or Jackie Robinson is he. He’s not even acting like a Gryffindor at this point.

I also liked your discussion of the interface between the Muggle and wizarding worlds. Remus states that he has moved back and forth between the two worlds for employment. And yet the general wizarding opinion seems to be that living in the Muggle world is some kind of catastrophe, as Hermione expresses when she says, “They’re still going to take your life away when they force you to live as a Muggle…” Funny, we don’t seem to mind living here.

I hesitated over your characterization of Hermione at first; she seemed to be very atypically emotional, still crying two years after the Battle of Hogwarts, a bit overwrought compared to the Hermione we know. But by Chapter Two you had her back in rare form again, coming up with a perfectly easy solution, reminding Remus that he can’t buy Wolfsbane in Muggle grocery stores, and ultimately browbeating Remus into co-operating.

Your characterization of Remus is very good. He always did have a certain element of self-pity and moments of refusing to strive hard, along with all his virtues and good points. I can see him being willing to acquiesce with a force that seems stronger than himself and seems to know where it is going.

The timeline of Chapters Three and Four threw me off a little bit, until I realized that Chapter Three was the marriage scene from Remus’ point of view, and then Chapter Four backed up in time a little and replayed events from Hermione’s point of view. Once I figured that out and re-read the chapters, everything was fine.

I appreciated the amusing points in your story—the multiple marriage proposals, the horde of reporters and their shouted questions as Hermione tried to get into the lift.

This is an intriguingly original story with lots of well-developed scenes, especially at the Ministry, with the long lines of werewolves and fiancées. Hermione, true to form, studies up on wizarding marriage ceremonies beforehand and is irritated that the imperfect textbook did not prepare her perfectly for the rite. But where will the story go from here? Why does the thought of kissing her new husband turn her head around? Why is her stomach liquefied with fear and “some other emotion”? Maybe this solution is not so “perfectly easy” after all.

Your story shows that, even without Voldemort on the scene, life is still difficult. I will enjoy reading the upcoming chapters. Good job.

Hi, wildiris. This is Vicki, saying Congratulations on your first story published on MNFF. It is a nice, surprisingly gentle and reflective piece, even though it is written about a crisis situation. And it follows canon well; your story is exactly how it could have occurred. Although you say you're taking creative license, that is what we all do when we fill in these missing moments without violating anything JKR wrote.

You have written a very good description of Marietta's mental confusion about Cho's un-understandable accusations and the gradually dawning realization of both girls concerning what must have happened.

You have brought out well the ambiguities in Marietta's position in the months while the DA was holding its training meetings. Her loyalty to the Ministry shows in sentences such as "Marietta didn't think her mother would ever yell at anyone so close to the Minister," "Dumbledore had knocked the Minister out! Her mother had been right about him!", "On any other day, she would have thought about knocking on that door and asking Umbridge's advice," and "Potter and his friends are such a bunch of blithering idiots."

Your story concentrates on the magical aftermath of the crisis situation (Marietta's face being disfigured by Hermione's jinx, her memory being modified by Kingsley's actions); I would love to read another story written by you as a prequel to this one, where you focus on Marietta's conscious, non-magical decision to tell Umbridge about the DA and the agonizing thought processes that led up to that moment.

You have developed Marietta's character nicely (it was pretty undeveloped in the book) and have expanded her relationship with Cho far beyond "Cho's giggling friend". I was glad that you depicted them as still being friends in the end, able to talk about what happened. It was good that even in the hospital wing they did not get too angry to continue a constructive conversation, seeking understanding rather than mutual destruction.

Your story exhibits good writing that flows well, with graceful sentences and details that contribute a lot. If I wanted to make this review even longer, I could cite many different sentences that work extremely well.

The vignettes at the end were well chosen. Marietta's brief encounter with Umbridge in the hall, illustrating that their relationship was irremediably damaged now, is not, I think, mentioned in the book, but it certainly could have happened and could have inclined her toward beginning to doubt her previously unquestioning support of the Ministry. Her moments on the train going home, as she reflects on the year just completed and how complicated and imperfect their lives were, grow nicely from the few words in the book recording this encounter. I loved the observation that she couldn't understand why Harry and Draco loathed each other and that perhaps it was because they were actually similar.

Thank you for not giving this story a Happy Ending, with everything wrapped up all neat and tidy. As is often true in real life, there was no real resolution; she just had to learn to live with the scarves, the makeup, and the scars, as the days and weeks went by and nothing was changed or ameliorated. No one lives Happily Ever After, and therefore we can all identify with it.

So let me say again Congratulations on your budding career as a fanfiction writer. It was a pleasure to read your story, and I hope that we will be reading a lot more of your work in the future.

Hi, Ellie. It is an honor to be the first person to write a review for this fine story by a member of my House. After I had read about a quarter of the way down the page, I had to scroll back to the top and make sure I wasn't dreaming -- the story is that good! Did I see the author's name correctly? Is this really Ellie? Your writing has improved astonishingly from the days of your very first stories. I always enjoyed them, lively and imaginative, but your skill in writing is improving by leaps and bounds.

What do I like about this story? The writing is so smooth and fluid. The narrative just flows, the sentences are well crafted, and nothing seems awkward or juvenile. With my editorial blue pencil in hand, I can't see any places to circle or underline.

The story is very tight. There's no wayward straying into off-the-topic matters, no bantering dialogue that serves no purpose, nothing that dilutes the focus or makes us doubt what the point is.

Thank you, thank you for treating Teddy, James, and the other students with as much seriousness and respect as you did. No hunky heart-throb with kaleidoscopic hair colors here! No wisecracking teaser here! You have rejected the tiresome stereotypes to show us characters with depth, wisdom, and real challenges, people who learn and grow and change.

Your story is meaty, the way I like stories, because the topics are serious -- an in-depth analysis of an historic era (clever how you meld Muggle and magical history) and a crisis of life choices, well couched in a lot of supporting details and giving us a vivid look into the prime function of Hogwarts -- the teaching (easy to forget about amongst endless scenes of people sneaking around the castle at night, hidden under an invisibility cloak and seeking adventures!)

My only suggestion: look back at the line "It crashed through Headmaster Sprout's window," and consider changing Headmaster to Headmistress. (We are talking about Pomona Sprout, aren't we?)

I really don't know how you find the time to do all you do and still manage to produce such great writing. It is a pleasure to read it.

Author's Response: Vicki!!!! It has taken far too long to respond to this, but I keep blushing and not finding words every time I try. If I'm being honest, this fic was going to remain a plot bunny at the back of my head forever, but Maple convinced me to write it. I didn't know that you read my first works, but I am beyond the point of blushing right now; it's amazing to hear that some of my work may have payed off. I definitely tried to keep it on focus, but there were certain things I had to squish in there for my own benefit (the 'if you're f**ked and you know it clap your hands' bit, to be specific).

On Teddy and James: I have found that the more I think about those characters, the more I wish J.K. elaborated on the epilogue. I feel like James would be under so much pressure (being the first born of 'The Chosen One' and all), and I think the prank thing would taper off rather quickly. Teddy, well, I think with the combination of Remus and Tonks in him, he'd be one sassy, but extremely intelligent person. I am so glad that you liked them.

Last year in school I had quite a different history class. We only covered from the big bang through the Black Plague, and we honestly did most of the teaching ourselves. Rome was a major topic, and as I'm a total math and architecture geek, I was drawn to the Pantheon. And then I thought about including it with wizardry - what if all the amazing architecture was aided by magic? I also kind of wanted to include normal, human things that every student goes through, especially if they're applying places.

Basically, I am beyond thrilled you enjoyed it and thank you for pointing out that niggle!

Ellie

Hi, Leah,

This is Vicki of Slytherin House commenting on your crazily marvelous poem. It’s clever, flippant, tongue-in-cheek. I loved it. It reminded me of Peeves’ silly doggerel after Voldemort was defeated in the last chapter of Deathly Hallows. We could say that your poem is the Cliff’s Notes version of Deathly Hallows in six hundred words.

You have many good lines in this piece. My favorite is ”Neville slices up the snake, this is Chosen One’s big break”. Sometimes your poem rhymes, or sort-of rhymes, or doesn’t rhyme at all. The rhymes pop up at unpredictable intervals, at ends of lines or within a single line. I find myself thinking that maybe you have a future in rap. I would have liked to see even a few more rhymes, in the usual custom of rappers, but it was lots of fun just the way it was.

In case we were ever inclined to take the Harry Potter series more seriously than we should, as if it were some sort of profound pronouncement, your poem will bring us all back to our senses. I hope you will continue to write because I’m sure we will all enjoy whatever you produce.

Good job :)

Hi, Jenny. I remember reading this story when it was just a 500-word drabble in TTB, dealing with Muriel in her youthful days and including a half-dozen specific nouns that were required to be worked into the story somewhere. (It was kind of fun to try to remember what those nouns were and hunt through the story for them.)

In canon, Aunt Muriel is represented in Deathly Hallows as a 107-year-old lady who is outspoken, opinionated, and insensitive to people’s feelings, and I see that you conceive of her as having the seeds of those qualities from her youth. Your dialogue efficiently builds up from Muriel’s first casual remark to the shouting and insulting match, which progresses surprisingly quickly, with no evidence of any attempt to prevent the escalation. Your vivid descriptive words of her appearance and actions during this argument make the scene easy to envision. Armando was lucky that this scene occurred before the wedding, not after.

You depict Muriel’s self-centeredness and immaturity well. And even though you depict Armando as “shocked” at her refusal to embrace the effort and inconvenience of motherhood, you give a hint that today is not the first time he has seen this side of her, when he thinks must she always be so indifferent, so unsympathetic?

Muriel is eighteen years old in this story, and Armando has loved her since he was sixteen. That’s only how long? Two to four years (depending on his age)? He’ll get over it, even if he thinks his heart is breaking now. (From your description of her dramatic exit, I doubt that her heart was breaking.)

As is your custom, you write smoothy and gracefully, with variety in your sentence structures and a rich vocabulary. There is good balance between dialogue, action and description, not too embellished, not too spare, no pointless digressions that divert the focus from the plot. This story is a good example of how a drabble, which is always necessarily spare because of the word limitation, can be expanded into a satisfying little slice of life. Nice job.

Vicki

Hi, Julia. I am always happy to see something new by you, be it a drabble or a story, because I know it will be enjoyable.

You have chosen a thorny character as your main actor, establishing her personality from the very first sentence. It is easy to see why Nell has isolated herself from the other children on the playground in the first half of the chapter, given the verbal taunting that they torment her with, but in the second half of the chapter, when she is several years out of Hogwarts, she is still just as thorny and unfriendly, believing that most human beings are vile, and I am not sure why. Is it a protective personality shield that she put up around herself at an early age and has never learned to let go of? An attempt to wound other people first before they wound her? Her thought that she should stop being surprised at the lengths people would go to for a few extra Sickles gives us a hint that some particularly unpleasant thing has happened to her recently; perhaps we will learn about it via a flashback later. Meanwhile, I wonder why cheerful Patrick has chosen to stick with this perpetual sourpuss.

So far in the story, there’s not much plot. The section of the story dated 1982 establishes Nell’s personality and status as a Muggle-born witch, and the section dated 1997 establishes that she, like other Muggle-borns, is on the run from the Snatchers and the corrupt Ministry. The story summary doesn’t let slip much: two Muggle-borns (warning for sex) trying to survive (warning for violence). My impression from reading Deathly Hallows is that people on the run didn’t have any concrete plans (Harry, Ron, and Hermione being the exception as they hunted for Horcruxes), and that seems to be the case for Nell and Patrick also. So I wonder if the plot of the story will be what happens to them, rather than what they make happen.

Despite Carole’s earlier opinion that the idea of a Muggle-born Slytherin is preposterous, I would not say that it is too illogical to be a part of your story. Of course, if the members of Slytherin House could vote, they would never vote her into their House, but the fact is they have no vote, only the Sorting Hat has a vote, and it can be as arbitrary as it wishes.

But I agree with Carole about the gorgeous details in the first part of the chapter, the wonderful observations about the behavior of the children in the playground and the venom of the “mean girls” who torment Nell for fun. So true, even when all the children are Muggles, as we all know from our childhood memories.

Like all your work, stories or drabbles, the writing is smooth and graceful, easy to read, and leading us on to find out what happens next. Many authors whose chaptered fics I review abandon their very promising stories after writing only a few chapters, to the disappointment of all their readers, but I know we can count on you to carry us with you to the end.

Author's Response: Hi, Vicki! Sorry for taking so long to respond to this review. I love and dread getting reviews like this because it makes me feel great to receive one but also intimidated as to how to reply to such a well-thought response! Since I've recently got back into Nell's head, I finally feel adequate to reply. Yes, Nell is thorny but some people are, and I wanted to write a character who isn't particularly likeable. It irritates me that so many female characters must be amiable and optimistic to be considered likeable or worthy of being liked. Some people don't find it easy to get along with others or make friends and I think it's important to write those characters and to write them as MAIN characters too. Of course, this is only the beginning of the story. She has a lot of character development to go through! And I think she already has some likeable and relateable traits: she fiercely loves her family and wants to protect them at all costs, she also wants to save her own skin which is an entirely plausible thing to want. I don't think we can underestimate the impact loneliness and bullying can have on a child, so just because she's now an adult doesn't mean the way she was treated by her peers at primary and secondary school haven't shaped the way she continues to see the world. She has every right to think people are horrible in general - she was bullied as a Muggle and then she was sorted into a house that is not traditionally welcoming to Muggle-borns. Now she is being hunted by Death Eaters and the vile Snatchers for sport (the people who will do anything for a few extra Sickles). And, of course, as much as she hates to admit it, she's frightened. Fear makes people irritable. As for plot, I suppose you will have to keep reading to find out. There is a plot, there is a plan, there is an ending already written, and I promise to update this more regularly! Thanks so much for your review, I hope to see more from you as the story progresses! Julia x

Hi Alex. This is Vicki of Slytherin House. I came across this story which you wrote for the Summer Term classes, and I hope your professors gave you high marks because it is a good little story.

I like the image of Fleur taking matters into her own hands and Bill not being put off by her frankness. The roots of her forthrightness are seen in canon: she first lays eyes on Bill in about June of 1995, goes to work at Gringott’s (where he works) shortly thereafter, summons up her boldness to approach him, as outlined in this story, and is engaged one year later. One might assume that a girl with Veela blood could have her pick of the countless young men who would throw themselves at her, but she ignores them to pursue the one man that she herself has chosen, in a planned, proactive way. Thus she is depicted as having a strong and focused character, completely at odds with the bubblehead image that Bill’s family has of her.

I will admit that I was not entirely sure what Fleur was talking about in the paragraph that begins with her saying “But only wiz some…charm.” When she says,”I wanted to be sure eet was me zis time. I wanted to be in control,” is she saying that she wanted to control who she would be in a romantic relationship with, and that she wanted to be loved for herself, not as an object? In a previous review, Lori speaks of the downside of having Veela blood, and I think that that is a point some readers can identify with; in the real world, it doesn’t take Veela blood to attract a bunch of suitors who want to feed off your success, wealth, fame, glamour, power, even, yes, beauty (if you are so lucky as to have these qualities), and trying to distinguish between the true friends and the leeches can be a real problem. It is perceptive of you to deal with this issue.

The sudden jump in the story from Bill and Fleur’s conversation on the steps of the bank to the scene, one year later, at the Delacour home works very well; there is no need to present any of the intervening courtship because everything necessary was said on the steps. Details of the courtship would have just been filler.

I was amused by the contrast between the Bill that we know, with long hair and a fang earring, and the Bill who is visiting M. Delacour with a ring box in his pocket. His behavior at this moment seems very old-fashioned; I can almost picture him going down on one knee when Fleur appears unexpectedly in the room. But for me the significant moment at the end is not the fact that Bill is about to propose to Fleur; it is the fact that she dates the beginning of their life together from the day when Bill took her on a tour of London, which was shortly after she arrived there, which was shortly after she left Hogwarts where she had met him for the first time. She obviously had the perception to recognize quality when she saw it and the courage to seize it.

This is a thoughtful piece, even though you do not spend a lot of time in the characters’ inner reflections; the story is told through their serious words and actions. I like that sort of story, because that is how we get to know people in real life: by their words and actions. Nice job.

Hi, William. I am glad that you have started a new story because a good story based on World War II will always capture my attention. Plus, my son’s name is William, so I am prejudiced in favor of all Williams.

What a treat to see you using the familiar components of the Harry Potter story in such a novel reconfiguration; it reminds me of those children’s books with different animal body parts on separate little pages that can be flipped to produce an infinite variety of fantastic animals. We are left intensely curious about how the familiar story elements are going to be further repurposed. Suddenly all bets are off. This story could go anywhere.

You have flipped the switch on the Statute of Secrecy also, resulting the complete and open co-operation between Muggles and the wizarding community. This is actually refreshing; that statue had a stultifying feel to it, and it is good to see that people have finally come to their senses about partnering their forces in order to maximize their effectiveness. Wizard-Muggle collaboration must stick in Grindelwald’s craw, no?

The timeline of the story needed some close attention to follow it accurately. The story seems to progress by leaps and bounds, part one comprising World War II from 1944 to 1948; then the second part appears to be war-training games on the grounds of Hogwarts in the late 1970’s; part three, the death of the policemen in Manchester, seems to be undated: and the final part, the evacuation of the Dursleys and the fostering of Harry, is set in 1981, I presume. This leapfrogging takes us quickly from World War II to the beginning of Harry’s life, after which I expect time will progress more slowly.

The pace of your story is very brisk, with continuous action. We learn about the characters by what they say and do, not by mental reflections, ruminations, and reminiscence. All the verbs are active verbs. There is an almost total lack of description, but we don’t miss it amidst all the action; it would just slow down the pace, and anyway we’ve all seen World War II movies, so we know what it looks like.

Your writing style is terse, but I like that. There are definitely no wasted words. Here’s a good example: A search turned up nothing. When a wizard arrived, he was able to confirm that they had taken a Portkey out. Now that information could have been expanded into one or more paragraphs, but doing so would not have improved it any.

There’s a lot of imagination in this story, but that has been true for your other writing too, so I am not surprised. You left an enjoyable story unfinished last year (or maybe it’s just in suspended animation); I hope that this story will keep going to its unpredictable end.

Vicki