Hi, Nadia. This is Vicki of Slytherin House, and I will confess that I didn’t expect to enjoy a story about Rita Skeeter — she is a bit too brassy for me — but I greatly enjoyed this story because of your writing style, one good sentence after another, happy choices of words and details.

Your story is a textbook example of the old principle: Show, Don’t Tell. Everyplace where you could be writing a general statement, such as “Rita was worried about her career” or “Rita felt disrespected by her mother”, instead you give specific details: Rita’s article was printed on the last page, the photo was very small, she no longer receives free copies, her mother twits her for not being a Slytherin and asks about the downturn in her printed articles, Rita tries to avoid accosting her mother or answering her question. The whole story is full of examples like this.

The result is a fresh, lively writing style with a good pace that never drags. The story is imaginative and actually has a plot; I appreciate that. (I also liked your previous story, All That Was Left Were The Losses; it was less plotty, more of a mood piece, but with the same virtues of good sentence structure and word choice, evocative details, and imagination.)

One major reason why this story is so good is that Rita is not depicted as a one-note character. Her outward persona is the one we know already, a lively, colorful description of how Rita operates, gathers gossip, flouts the rules to suit her own convenience, obviously always treading close to the line, as indicated by her being sometimes on the banned list. But she is insouciant about that, boldly pursuing Kingsley for an interview, relentless in getting information, one way or another, from her sources, and being delightfully amoral. But you also show her vulnerabilities and self-doubts, which surely must have been there but which we don’t really see in the seven books. She is insecure about her status at the newspaper, as measured by the size and location of her printed articles, and her real anguish about losing her complimentary status. She greatly fears being discovered as an unregistered Animagus, so much so that she feels nervous just walking past the office where the Animagus Registry is housed, and she keeps her Animagus information well hidden under lock and key. She feels disrespected by her mother, as shown by her attempt to avoid meeting her mother and her discomfort about her mother’s remarks. All these features make her a well-rounded, and therefore interesting, character.

The plot is not complicated — she encounters Sirius Black, discovers his big secret (which is also her secret), realizes she dare not, for her own safety, reveal it, and goes happily back to work, apparently buoyed up by the satisfaction of knowing something that no one else knows. I loved the line, “She became a beetle to uncover juicy stories and he became a dog to…steal bread, apparently.” Fresh and unexpected. And that’s why this story is so enjoyable. Good job.

Author's Response: Thank you so much for your thorough review! I enjoyed fleshing out the character of Rita Skeeter. I like to think that there is always a bit more than meets the eye when it comes to "evil" characters. "Show, don't tell" is absolutely my mantra while I am revising my work. It helps me to create the best possible piece.

This is an interesting description of a little moment in time, when Luna is captured by the Death Eaters. It is written in the first person, from Luna's point of view. The short sentence structure evokes her unique thought processes. She jumps, in her mind, from topic to topic, and thoughts of the imaginary creatures invented by her father intrude on her attempts to understand what is going on around her.

The first conversational section, between Neville and Luna, seems unsubstantial to me. I'm not sure what it contributes to the main theme of the story. The collection of short paragraphs that follow are a good description of the changes and deterioration of the environment in the school and in society in general as Voldemort rises in power. Then the last of these short paragraphs, where Lune speaks of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, reminds us again that her grasp of the situation (and therefore her reaction to it) is still distorted by her belief in her father's "crazy theories".

In the end, she is too distracted to protect herself, to Ginny's great frustration, when the Death Eaters seize her and take her away. She asks, "How do you Disapparate?" but I do seem to remember that somewhere in the books Luna says that her father taught her to Apparate when she was younger than the usual age for Hogwarts students to learn the skill. (Maybe I disremember.)

Writing Luna must be a challenge. (I have never tried it.) It would be a mistake to stereotype her as a ridiculous figure. She was not a stupid or crazy person, despite her adherence to her father's beliefs. She was a successful Hogwarts student, but with a unique outlook on life and a remarkably even temperament. The author has captured her personality well.

Dad is right. This is a very good story and deserves more reviews. The writing is graceful, the details greatly enrich the story, the characterization is well done, and the plot is intriguing. I look forward to reading the upcoming chapters.

Author's Response: Thank you so much for the complimentary review! I hope you enjoy the rest of the story as well.

Hi, Pooja. I continue to be interested in your long-running and multi-part story about Anurag and his path to adulthood. In this story he still sounds young, but about as sensible as a person can be at age eighteen or nineteen.

You have written him as different from many teenagers whom we see in fiction, who are impulsive and heedless, and do not look more than about five minutes ahead. Your main character is more organized, more determined, with his eyes on future goals, even though those goals are no more than to finish medical school, earn a good living, find his soulmate by a particular deadline, and win the prettiest girl in his class. That’s enough to keep a young man busy! I appreciate that he is different from the usual James/Sirius rapscallions.

Your story covers a lot of time, and that is good, because the kind of maturation that Anurag undergoes takes time. He starts off as vain of his looks, judging girls by their looks (because he just likes to look at pretty girls or because he thinks a plain girlfriend would lower his status in the eyes of his friends?) and feeling ego-bruised because he is not the top student in his class. He has not yet learned that there will always be persons greater or lesser than himself. But by the end of the story he has learned that these values (being the handsomest or prettiest, being the very top student) are not worth much, and that other, harder-to-quantify qualities are worth more. If you had written him as learning this lesson in just a few months, it would have been less realistic.

In your story I seem to pick up elements in which Indian culture differs from western culture. There seem to be closer ties with parents and family, so that when a child goes away to school, family members move to the same town in order to maintain close and frequent contact. The mother in your story feels as if she has to continue taking care of her child, even though he is an adult.

And asking a girl to go out with you seems to suggest a more serious commitment, not as much as asking her to marry you, but more than a casual date. But I notice the absence of matchmaking or semi-arranged marriages that seemed to be common among my Indian friends of my own generation. Anurag’s mother is not doing that in your story; perhaps times have changed.

There’s not a lot of plot in this story; it’s more like a slice of life, but it’s very interesting nevertheless because it’s about a different culture. My only comment on the writing is what I said about your story “At The End Of The Tunnel”: there are places where adjacent shorter sentences could be combined to make a longer, more complex sentence that might increase the fluidity of the writing. But that’s not a very big issue.

I see you have a fair amount of stories on your author page about these characters. If I get some free time this winter, I might read some more of it! Thanks for writing.

Author's Response: Hey Vicki! Good to see you again! :)

Like I said in my previous response, Anurag is a brat I'd hate, had I known him for real. But that's why I like writing about him, ha. He is impulsive and heedless, but then he's also career-focussed (or nerdy) so you have that. And he isn't looking for a soulmate -- he's just looking for a girlfriend, whom he can have fun with, which is why he looks at Rashmi, but then his mind changes, as you can see. But he's a scumbag there too. He makes a bet on Rashmi and everything, so I won't say he's at the best of his behaviour here.

He is still immature at the end of the fic -- he just understands a bit more about how these things work -- like companionship and all. He wants the pretty girl in the beginning -- has good legs, nice to bang, y'know, and then he falls for someone else because of the person they are. He doesn't learn that people can be better than him -- for a long time, and when he does, it's under really sad circumstances.

Well, Anurag's parents didn't move to the same town but yes, in India, the parent-child bond is very different -- as in we're their babies for a long, long time. This I wrote from my own experience -- I've been so protected, when I started college, I was in a different city, and I was very naive and I had to grow up fast. My mum still cracks this line to me, "you're my baby girl, no matter what." And that's funny, as I'm really a grown person now who is perfectly capable of taking care of myself. :) And this is not just me -- this happens everywhere, and I just took pointers.

Yeah, Anurag is about two years elder than I am, in my canon, and when I was about his age, that's how things would work. They've changed now -- people are more open to casual dating and everything, but at that time, it was more like there would be no dates until one person 'asked the other person out' which meant that they were officially boyfriend-girlfriend starting then. At least, that's how it was in the middle-class, upper middle-class society, and Anurag in my head, is of the latter. And yes, the term for two people going out used to be 'they're committed', Break-ups have always happened of course, but a few months of relationship was considered a short time period, and people wouldn't even lose their virginities unless they were in for long-term commitment, or were married. But it's changed, like I said. :) Just societal differences lol. The semi-arranged marriage thing is still there, but nowadays, that's like the parents setting you up on a date with someone. You can court and dump each other and look at another guy, or the relationship continues and you get married in 2-3 years. It isn't the 'saw him for the first time at the wedding' thing lol.

This is just a lesson I wanted Anurag to learn. He has to make a lot of compromises later in life, and he needs to know that you should give everything a try. :)

The other stories that include Anurag are 'Mum's the World' and 'Where Are You?' WAY is a story that's a sequel to another one, but it works p[erfectly as a standalone, and I'm more or less revamping the prequel, Killer Instincts, so please don't read that, unless you want to be bludgeoned by epically bad writing from my teenage days (I am serious about it). LOL. Otherwise, you're welcome to look through WAY and MtW at your leisure. Thank you for the lovely review! :)

Hi Nagini. As usual, your poetry is lovely. As usual you have taken a tiny moment in canon history, a brief reference in passing, and expanded it into a tapestry of senses and understanding.

When I read it, I felt good about being able to figure out, by verse two, who the subjects of the poem were, because when the reader can know who the poet is talking about and what the incident was, the experience of reading it blossoms from simply appreciating graceful language to creating a connection with both the fictional subjects and the very real poet himself or herself.

Of course the clue in the title should have given it away at the very beginning, and for those of us readers who are the slowest on the uptake, you give the final clue at the end by mentioning Ariana’s name, so that no reader is left out. That is very thoughtful of you.

The one line that hung me up a little was “My nose — like a whip it cracks.” I had to think about that for a minute until I put two and two together (this line plus the title); voila! this line is the sole reference to the fact that a brawl actually occurred coffin-side and a nose got broken. By relegating the physical brawl, which must have been spectacular to the onlookers, to one line out of forty-eight, you emphasize the fact that the brawl, painful though it must have been, was nothing to Dumbledore compared to the pain and guilt he felt over his sister’s death.

I like the way you interleave lines of objective observation (not all of them, but many) with parenthetical lines of even more emotional content. This emphasizes that Dumbledore is mentally torn in two directions, one being the necessity to keep it together and get through the mechanical events of the funeral and the other being the impulse to break down and be overcome with emotion.

Your various poems show a wide variety of techniques to present your thoughts. Poets like me can learn a lot by reading your works.

Author's Response: Nothing like a spree of reading Nagini's earlier poetry to learn more about her writing style! :) *chuckles* Thanks for taking the time to read and review my work. It means a lot to me, and I have to agree with your statement made in your Poetry Anyone? thread- I sometimes feel like we are the only two people on the boards and archives as well!!!! :) And I am gla you caught the fact that Albus was more distressed over his sister than actually getting hit by Aberforth- in the books it said that Albus took the hit calmly :) Keep reading and writing. ~Nagini

Hi, Nidhi. I see that this story is your first chaptered fiction in the archives. I hope it will be the first of many.

Despite its mysterious title, it is a cheerful story, moving along at a good pace with an optimistic, upbeat tone and a cast of kind and friendly characters. It is also well edited for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation, or dodgy word choices.

The plot of the story is not clear yet, in this first chapter. The story promises to be a mystery, with troubles that need to be dealt with, and it would be good to give us readers a hint of what those troubles might be, to pique our curiosity.. Your opening is good, the family being worried about James’s tardy Hogwarts letter, but that problem seems permanently solved when the owl finally arrives; it is not the promised mystery after all. The rest of this chapter is a pretty routine visit to Diagon Alley to buy school supplies, with a bit of tension supplied in two places, where Ginny regrets telling Lily to ask her father about the Pygmy Puff because Harry will give Lily anything she wants, and where someone (Ginny?) says, “George!” after George insists on giving the children their little purchases for free. These two little points are good because they show some unique moments in an otherwise unremarkable visit.

Here are two suggestions for style, both easy to put into effect and both providing a good return for efforts made.

You have covered a lot of ground in only 1622 words, so you have some wiggle room to make your story even more vivid than it already is by adding more description. Your readers are already familiar with Harry Potter, and Diagon Alley, and owls, and so on, but it is good to add description anyway, because no two experiences are ever exactly alike. Owls can be different colors and sizes, for example, so “an owl landed on the windowsill” can be expanded into “a large gray owl landed on the windowsill, clutching a thick parchment envelope in its talons,”, making the image easier to envision, without making your chapter too long.

The second suggestion echoes what one of your previous reviewers mentioned: the short sentences that tend to give a choppy sound. This is also easy to fix. Try combing two or three adjacent sentences into one longer, more complex sentence. Example: “His first incident, when he was three, was the worst. James had managed to get hold of a wand and stun himself. Worst of all, he had hit his head when he fell and got very badly hurt.” These three sentences could be combined thus: “In the first and worst incident, three-year-old James had managed to get hold of a wand and stun himself, hurting himself badly when he fell and hit his head.” This way you can improve your story by making it more fluid. I do this with my own stories, looking over the first draft to find areas of shorter, choppier sentences that need to be combined to flow more gracefully.

But even as written, your story has a certain sparkle; there is an expectation that something intriguing is just around the corner. Do you plan to write another chapter and let us know what that something will be? I hope so.

Vicki

Author's Response: Casually replies to review two years later... So, I posted this in 2012, at the ripe old age of 13. As you can tell, 13 year old me struggled at writing. A LOT. But thank you for the feedback, and I might? continue this story. This is the first time I've logged in to this account since 2012 Nidhi

What a perfectly lovely poem. It seems to stem from Harry’s question about dying, “Does it hurt?” and Sirius’ answer, “Not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”

One might be surprised about a poem that is so gentle, so positive, so hopeful about death, especially in the context of the terrible battles that occurred before and after this incident, and the bloody build-up to these final scenes. Compare, for example, the peaceful acceptance of death in this poem with the frantic, panicked attempts to avoid death seen in the final moments of James and Lily.

The difference, of course, is that Harry has chosen his death, has had a relatively long time to think about it before it happens, and believes that it will accomplish some positive good; none of these things were true about James and Lily, or really about any of the other people killed by Voldemort and his death eaters.

The master mentioned in the poem is of course not Lord Voldemort, who only thought that he was the master of everything and wished to be master of death. Death itself is the ultimate, unsupplantable master, the master whom Harry addresses. The Avada Kedavra curse, described as the emerald waves, the emerald fury, and the peace-bestowing emerald light, is revealed to be not a curse in the generic sense, but rather a kind of blessing in the hand of the master, since we all must die sooner or later.

This poem elucidates something which we may not be able to understand fully otherwise: how Harry could be so calm and accepting of death, when all around him everyone was trying so hard to avoid death. In fact, I think it explains his frame of mind better than J. K. Rowling did in Chapter Thirty-four of Deathly Hallows.

Thank you very much for writing this poem, which both gives us pleasure and helps us to understand better a crucial point of the story.

I am glad that I finally decided to give your Severus & Zoe stories a try. They give the impression that you really enjoy creating this alternative reality.

It seems that you are very familiar with the behavior of three-to-four-year-olds, because your story paints a vivid picture of a pre-schooler being entirely herself. I can just see her crawling up into her father’s lap and wriggling around to get comfortable.

I love the contrast between Snape’s patience with his little girl and the flashes of his old self that we have know for so long, such as scaring students into silence and being snappish with Madam Pomfrey. He has always expressed feelings of impatience with children, and these feelings persist, as shown in the one “What kind of child chose anything for itself. Weren’t they all incapable of making rational decisions?” but he cannot help being soft toward her. These contrasts give the story its spice and keep it from being a bland stream of mush.

It is interesting to see that Snape is capable of love, that the spark is still there. We knew that he loved Lily, but did he ever love anyone else? Yes, his daughter Zoe. In the seven Harry Potter books, Snape emerges as a tragic character, and in the end we feel sorry for him. So it gives us a warm feeling to know that in your alternate universe, his heart can be stirred.

I loved the graceful writing, with awkward sentences, phrases, or word choices. There is careful choice of descriptive details, actually, not a lot of details, and that is good because it focuses our attention sharply on the behavior of the child and the reaction of the father A well-focused story is good.

Your story doesn’t have a lot of plot, of course (though it can be seen as one element in a longer saga comprising many stories); there is no big tension or momentous issue resolved in the final paragraphs, but that’s just fine. It’s just a charming glimpse of an intimate moment in Snape’s personal life. The dynamic tension comes from the juxtaposition of Snape’s stern outer persona and his much more human inner persona, revealed by the stream of his unspoken thoughts.

I never read Severus and Zoe before because I am not a fan of romance and assumed that Zoe was an adult. I will have to go back and read the rest. You have captured the essence of a child well. I am reminded of my own children and grandchild.

Nicely written, and I am glad that you are addressing a topic I have wondered about also, namely, parents who have reservations about sending their children to Hogwarts. It will be interesting to see where this story goes.

Author's Response: Thanks! More about Phoenix's parents' reservations in the next chapter.

Hi, Envy. I see that your poem is one of those based on a very clever rearrangement of whole lines, to create new meanings from previously-stated thoughts, and ingeniously ending up where it started from. (You can tell that I have never had the courage to try to write one myself.)

I was intrigued by your title, The Lament Of The Darkest Servant. I even checked the dictionary to see if there perhaps was another definition of the word “lament” other than the well-known one of “sorrowful statement”, but there was not, so I went back to the poem looking for indications that Bellatrix felt any sadness or dissatisfaction with her role in the Dark Lord’s service.

Perhaps line two of verse three holds a clue. To paraphrase it: Her rage and her knowing bathe all who seek what she fears. This is the only clue that there is something she fears, something about which she is not totally happy. (Line four says that she takes His poison, which might sound unappealing, but apparently she does so gladly, so that can’t be the thing she is lamenting about.)

Most of this poem practically explodes with her negative energy, even madness, showing the great power for evil that she embodied. Your language is certainly vivid, so much so that the reader scarcely notices that the lines are being repeated. Although the point of view seems to be that of the poor unfortunate people who behold her, we get such a look into her heart that we can scarcely stand to see any more.

Well done.