Hi, Cannae. I love it when an author takes a tiny, virtually overlooked moment of canon and unfolds it, as if a wrapped gift were being opened, to reveal all the intricacies inside. That is what you have done here. We all ought to know already that brief and seemingly simple episodes contain a wealth of little implications and ramifications, if we but search for them. Characters as richly developed as the members of the Malfoy family of course lend themselves to this kind of examination, and you have done it very well.

Your prose is very fluid; the sentences are complex and well constructed; the words are precise and carefully chosen. The images are varied and vivid. There are many lines that are noteworthy, such as “…he would rather starve than ever have to enter the Great Hall again…”, and “…do the unimaginable and apologize to a Mudblood…” (which contrasts with Draco’s “…know that his own arrogance had helped to fuel their grief…”; a little cognitive dissonance in Draco’s mind, it seems), and “…he had damned them before they were even born…”

I like the image of the Malfoys standing uselessly in the Entrance Hall as cleanup occurs around them. When you say that Draco is “aware that he and his parents were standing stupidly in the way,” and later the Malfoys go into the Great Hall, where Draco “steels himself for the ordeal ahead,”, you sharply reveal that there is no good and comfortable place for them to go, no welcoming refuge. One place is as bad as another.

The only line that seemed a little weak to me was the final line, “…facing the proverbial music." The word proverbial in that position seems to weaken the impact of the phrase “face the music,”, so I would have written something like “As the old proverb says, it was time to start facing the music…”

A very nice job. I enjoyed this story.

Vicki of Slytherin House

As time passes I find more enjoyment in your stories about Albus Dumbledore, and Jacqueline and the Flamels. Again, the story is just a slice of life (or rather, several slices), but it shows that a slice of even a seemingly unexciting life can be interesting, revealing the humanity that is in all of us, including the vast majority of us who are neither heroic nor famous.

It would have been difficult for me to understand or properly appreciate this story without having read its predecessor “Fool’s Gold”, but I enjoyed your depiction of Albus Dumbledore in both these stories, spanning well over 41 years total (if my math is correct), showing a consistency in his patient and relaxed nature, but an evolution in his wisdom.

I was a little confused about the time sequence between when Jacqueline gave birth and when she reappeared in the laboratory. Dumbledore says to Nicholas, “She gave birth and hour ago,” but when Jacqueline steps into the laboratory, he says, “You almost died last night.” Perhaps we are to infer an elapsing of several hours between these two remarks, or perhaps Dumbledore was simply exaggerating the shortness of the time since her delivery by saying “…an hour ago.”

Because Jacqueline is close to death in the final paragraph, I imagine we will see no more about this character, but it has been enjoyable to see this glimpse of Nicholas Flamel, alchemy, and magic in France.

Author's Response: This story was really complicated. I'm glad that you stuck through and read it. You know when you write or read something and come back later and you think that this is horrible? It's confusing? It's choppy? You have no idea where your mind was when framing this idea? That's how I feel about this. I'm glad that you enjoyed the idea behind this. I think it was forty years ...? You pay good attention.

Hi, Bijou. This is Vicki of Slytherin House. Your story sounds familiar to me; I must have read it before, but didn’t leave a review. So now I will make up for that.

You have packed a lot of story into less than 9,000 words, which means that every sentence contributes to the furtherance of the narrative, and there are no wasted digressions into stuff unfocused on the main plot. The dialogue is tight, not repetitive or rambling; it gets to the heart of the matter. All this gives your story a good pace. I also like your usage of different locations (Grimmauld Place, the Aurors’ Office, Hogwarts School, Elizabeth’s house) because the frequent change of scene keeps the story lively.

You capture our interest right away by opening with a mystery, the stash in the hidden attic. We can all relate to the thrill of potential discovery. (Yesterday I went to an exhibit of historic photographs printed from glass negatives found in a cardboard box in an attic.) The discovery of the letters moves directly into a detective story, and finally into a love story. There’s something in this story for every reader’s taste. It ends with still another development, a surprising twist: the previously unknown love child turns out to be someone Harry knows. So there is a lot of structure in this one-shot story, more than many authors manage to create. That is impressive.

The love story gains some originality by being told in flashbacks, old letters, and reminiscense. I enjoyed this because love stories can all start sounding alike, and by treating your story this way, you make it a little different. I must say, I was irritated at Sirius for being so heedless: on their last night together he romanced his 17-year-old girlfriend without the slightest thought of the consequences, much less any precautions, and he deserved to be blamed for that, even though Elisabeth most forgivingly did not blame him. But it is his fault, not the author’s; you are merely reporting what he did.

I like the way you develop little sections of the story, such as the relationship between the grandparents and Elisabeth’s mother, and later with Elisabeth herself. There are many such little sections, and they really put the meat onto the skeleton of the story.

Hopefully you will continues writing, because I see real potential here. The important features, such as plot, pacing, suspense, development, are all here. Nice job.

Author's Response: Thank you so much for your review! I am so glad that you enjoyed it and were able to appreciate the details and effort that I put into it. Constructing every plot line and ensuring that things were properly introduced and tied up was a difficult job, so I am grateful that it did not fall on deaf ears. With each story I write I learn a little more and more about writing fiction, which really is not my forte, and I do intend to continue writing. I have been formulating a story for over a year now, which I am still not sure if I will write as fan fiction or as an actual novel-like book. I might do some more Harry Potter stories in the coming months to publish here. Thank you again for your review!

This story is just a snapshot, a moment in time. Nothing much occurs in the way of action. It simply illustrates how circumstances have changed.

I am reminded of the Shakespearean-age world view: society is like a giant wheel, with some people on the top and others on the bottom. At seemingly random times for random reasons the wheel turns. Those on top become on the bottom, and vice versa. The rise and fall are not connected to virtue or vice; they just happen.

This image of the wheel of fate comes strongly to mind while I read this piece. The first two paragraphs clearly lay out Draco's former status as the one on the top: rank, power, privilege, wealth, entitlement, superiority, an assured future. Then the whole wheel makes a 180-degree turn and he is on the bottom: disgraced, despised, lacking in opportunities, a very clouded and ill-defined future. How much of this outcome is due to his own sins and those of his compatriots, and how much is simply due to being one of the losers instead of one of the winners? After all, history is written by the winners, and the losers never fare well in that tale.

The Draco we see in this piece is notably more introspective than the Draco we met in the seven books. Not only is his personal world turned topsy-turvy, but his bedrock beliefs have been cast into serious doubt or even refuted. Voldemort was not a savior, despite what Draco's father said. The means can become so dreadful that they are no longer even remotely justified by the ends. One is forced to accept assistance from one's erstwhile enemies, so that the question of who is friend and who is enemy becomes confused, and the line between the good guys and the bad guys is all blurred. The only thing he knows for sure now is that the path before him is unknowable.

Pansy is portrayed more sympathetically than she often is in other stories. Draco considers her pretty, a fit consort for the Slytherin King, not merely a handy lay. She is described as tough and strong, a natural leader, but not coarse or crude. And because her involvement in the war and the events leading up to it was so much more peripheral than his, she does not comprehend the monumental changes in values so keenly as he does. For her the changes are merely inconvenient -- her father lost his job but her mother is still working. So Draco has moved far beyond Pansy, and how could she ever catch up? There is not another war to teach her the things she failed to learn in this one.

A neat detail: Draco picks some meadow flowers and asks if they are pansies. How could he not know whether or not they are pansies.? Perhaps it is because in his former life he never had to pay heed to the beautifully landscaped gardens around Malfoy Manor. Hired gardeners did all the planting and tending; they had to be the ones to know the names of what they had planted. One more symbol of what he has lost.

The author has achieved something I don't very often see in these archives: a non-action piece that avoids being merely an extended rehash of someone's emotions. The carefully chosen details of Draco's and Pansy's recent history, with (and this is a biggie) no unnecessary words, spell out perfectly the points that the author wants to make. A very enjoyable read.

Hi, Martha. I was fascinated to read your story because I saw in it a parallel with my own story "The Baby in the Closet," which deals with the same general topic but in a quite different manner. Your story (and the others you have posted) is very well-written and obviously well-thought-out. The prose is easy to read, fluid, with no awkward phrases or word choices that can have a jarring effect. You give an excellent feel for what it must have been like for both Eileen and Severus to live with a man who is a brute. One wonders, "Why did Eileen marry him?' but we all know of cases of men who were charming before marriage and sorry excuses for husbands afterwards.

Severus strongly resisted opening up his thoughts to his wife, his business partner, or the American Healers. I get the feeling that he is resisting the readers also. There must have been more to his childhood story than this one incident that he remembers in the Pensieve. The paternal abuse was surely ongoing, spanning many years, much of which he always remembered. Does he think that by reliving this brutal scene from his infancy his problems will be cured? Does he have the strength to explore this issue as it needs to be explored, or will he pull back, close up, and hunker down again?

It is not unreasonable to posit that Snape could recover enough from the horrors of his childhood and young adulthood to rebuild an outwardly-seeming normal life (Holocaust survivors come to mind), but the damage to the psyche will probably never completely heal.

Interesting take on this topic, focused on the Magical aspects. Read my story and tell me what you think of it.

Vicki

Author's Response:

Hi Vicki. I was so happy to see your review. It's been a while since anyone has responded to this story.

Hello, Phoenix Song. This is Vicki of Slytherin House, commenting on your work in progress, Dark Fire. I have been reading Next Generation stories recently, and yours is set the farthest into the future that I have read so far, but it seems that some things don’t change.

In your story Draco, who was born around 1980, is the grandfather of Matt, who is fourteen as the story opens, so the date must be near to 2050. Regulus and his twin sister Isrea, the parents of Vale & Sari and of Cell respectively, were born in 1961 and are now in their late 80’s. Canon says that the lifespan of wizards and witches is well over 100, but I’m not sure if it answers the question of whether witches can still give birth in their 70’s. We will assume they can.

The present date being so far in the future, it is reasonable to presume, as you do, that some things have changed. In your AU, the Sorting Hat takes the candidates’ preferences into account much more than previously indicated, so that the houses have become grossly imbalanced, and there does not seem to be any attempt made to control this. Surely this imbalance will cause logistical challenges of residential accommodations, classroom assignments, and so on (or maybe the rooms just magically expand), as well as social challenges not easily cured by the waving of a wand. Has the Sorting Hat become senile after all these centuries? On the other hand, some things are exactly the same: the train, the thestral-drawn carriages, the castle layout, the Sorting ceremony, as if tradition has become a straitjacket keeping the wizarding world imprisoned in a past increasingly less suited to their needs. Perhaps that is why the Sorting Hat is allowed to continue. There are lots of possibilities for this story of a society stuck in a time warp where things are slowly getting out of kilter. (Have they updated their curriculum at all in the last fifty years?)

This story is well written, with a smooth style and many interesting details that make the characters come to life. I liked Cell’s remark that Matt wanted to “steal my robes one day and pretend to be a Hufflepuff for twenty-four hours.” An interesting way to express the probably common curiosity about what it would be like to be a member of a different house. But when I look at these “interesting details,” I notice that none of them is humorous; this is a pretty serious story. Even when the Hufflepuffs are overjoyed to get three first-years at the very end of the Sorting, it is an emotional moment but not at all humorous.

Of course we are curious about the secret that Cell cannot forget, even for a minute, and we wonder who the strange foe will turn out to be. We are disappointed that a segment of wizarding society has seemed not to have learned any lessons about prejudice, even after the last disastrous wizarding war.

It’s too bad that you have put this story on the back burner for now, because it certainly has possibilities, and you have written well so far. Perhaps you can find time to come back to it and let us know what it was all about.

I enjoyed reading this story, a well-written glimpse into the life, thoughts, and moral evolution of Andromeda Black.

The timeline was a little confusing. Andromeda starts out at Hogwarts in 1964, takes the OWL exams five years later, in 1969, and should have graduated in June of 1971. But the 1973 entry sounds as if she is still at Hogwarts. Her father says, "I don't think we should let our daughters [plural] stay there anymore." But by 1973 there should be only one daughter, Narcissa, still at school. And Andromeda thinks "And Ted...How could I leave him?" as if they were both still at Hogwarts.

For a girl who was so determined at age 11 to do what her family expected, and who seven years later still doesn't know what to do because her family doesn't love her, she makes a fairly abrupt about-face. Even though she has been observing Muggleborns at Hogwarts for years and has been seeing that they don't seem bad, but rather as human as purebloods, she has been unable to resolve this cognitive dissonance until Ted Tonks spells it out for her. (I would have liked to see a few more lines of dialogue between Andromeda and Ted before she spills her story to him; her confession seemed a little sudden, given that she had not been in the habit of talking with Muggleborns at all.)

Then it is two more passive years (at school or at home?) before she finally makes a break, which seems to be impelled more by love for Ted than by a final, overt rejection of her family's values. I wonder, as she headed down the stairs with her trunk, whether she sneaked out of the house unseen or had a final blow-up with her parents.

This relatively timid girl, who doesn't get her backbone until she is 20 years old, contrasts sharply with the older Andromeda whom we meet in the books at age 42, tough and strong, a survivor.

The writing style is fluid and graceful, the words well-chosen, and the characterizations of the members of the Black family are well-drawn. This piece is a good addition to the backstory of Andromeda Black.

Author's Response: Hello! Thank you for the review :D. I see that you've found quite a bit of mistakes; I'm sorry ,but I guess I didn't do my research as well as I thought I had, hah. I'll go over it and edit any corrections. Thank you! And as for the contrasting characters: I had never written Andromeda before, and this was just a trial. I guess I couldn't nail her properly enough. But this is what it seemed would be like; it didn't seem to me that she'd be an outright rebel like Sirius, considering that she was a Slytherin. I think as a child she would have wanted to follow her family traditions, but as she got older she realised that it was all wrong. That's what I was aiming for :).

As I remember, Andromeda was blasted off her family tree "for marrying Muggle-born Ted Tonks". Since it didn't say that she was disowned for not following family values or anything, I just had her leave due to her love for Ted, hah. And I think she would have said something to her parents, but I didn't feel that scene was needed too much, so I left it up to the readers' interpretation :).

I'm glad you like the characterisation of the rest of the family, though! And once again, thank you so much for the review; it's greatly appreciated :). --Nadia

Hi Ellie. I always enjoy reading what you write, but this piece is really different from your other stories, which are straightforward narrations of events.

Like most readers, probably, I couldn’t figure out who you were talking about until the end, where it seems to be Bill and Fleur. But then, looking back, I could pick up on the little clues: her native language is more smooth and lyrical than “rough” English, people consider her beautiful, she is called a flower. The line in the summary refers to the story of the wolf and the flower.

The reference to the wolf also confused me. Did it refer to Bill, who was attacked by a werewolf but wasn’t a werewolf himself, or did it suggest that the cuts and scars on her stomach were caused by a wolf, perhaps during the final battle? I finally decided not, because it seemed that the cuts on her stomach, old scarred cuts and new bandaged cuts, were self-inflicted, and that this was a case of self-injury, as some people do. But why does she do it, and why does she feel that she is ugly and twisted inside?

Perhaps there is a clue in the line “…people used to tell me I was nothing more than a pretty face.” This line suggests that it can be damaging to praise a child’s good looks rather than his/her deeper and more valuable qualities. The end of the story suggests that Bill’s insistence that he loves her in spite of everything has had a healing effect on her feelings of worthlessness.

I do not recall seeing any reference to self-loathing or self-injury in the Harry Potter books, so I suppose that this story is an original extension of her personality as imagined by you, the author. In trying to fit it into the Harry Potter canon, I conclude that it must occur during Harry’s fifth or sixth year, when supposedly Fleur was working at Gringott’s Bank “in order to improve her English” (as the reason was given in canon), and getting to know Bill a lot better.

When I read this, I wondered if you wrote it simply to try out something new, a new style or approach, since I don’t see it connected to other stories you have written. Well, it’s fun to try something very different. I have found that to be true for me too.

This is a neat little story, nicely written. The first section (the prologue, you might say) is succinct but gives all the necessary background in a few short paragraphs with adept sentences and good word choices. In the second section, Rosmerta does not explain to her friend Caitlin why she is going to work at the pub, saying "You wouldn't understand." I'm not sure what was non-understandable. Caitlin seems to have known that Rosmerta didn't want to go back to an alcoholic father who ruined her life, and probably Rosmerta's sorry exam results were not a secret. (Or were they?) Maybe I'm missing something here. Was she hoping that she might see her father again someday if she worked in a pub?

The final section is sweet. Rosmerta's kind treatment of the impoverished woman shows that she still has a loving heart, even though she tries to be hard-boiled, and that fact that the reader can guess, partway through this section, who the old man probably is does not detract from that sweetness.

It was good to include the lines where Rosmerta asks herself if she wants to risk a reunion with her father. After all, she is nobody's fool, and she realizes that the reunion might not be what she hoped for. It would be out of character for her not to have these misgivings. But hopefully she and her father have both learned something over the years.

At a couple of spots in the second and third paragraphs of the last section, there was some alternating use of present and past tense, whether on purpose I don't know. But that's a tiny matter in an otherwise well-done story.

I'm so glad to see you back, Hannah. A fellow Slytherin! Thank you so much for adding a chapter to this great story.

Vicki/Oregonian