I particularly like this chapter, and your characterizations of future! Fleur and Moody. It is very in character for Bill to go find his drunken wife and bring her home...

well, of course!

I have to hand it to you, Gina, I am NOT a James/Lily shipper, and this is the FIRST fic I have ever read that gave me any idea at all why Lily should bother with James.

And of course I loved your Moody moments there...

Excellent, really. Thank you! I fell like I've had an early Christmas present...

Author's Response: Oh Thea, thank you so much! That is high praise indeed coming from a skeptic like you. ;) I'm glad you liked the Moody moments. I had a bit of an issue when I originally took out that chunk of his nose, only to find that it didn't happen for another few years, according to canon. So I gave him his hand injury instead, poor guy. Thank you so much for reading this, I really appreciate it!! Happy Christmas! ~Gina :)

Very nicely done. the first part starts out, at least, sounding like Moody, and the very last part is all Barty, and the transition is very subtle.

If you don't know it's Barty narrating, even "I have my orders, Cannot be entranced" could just be Moody in his vigilance refusing to be sidetracked by a pretty face. But if you do know it's a subtle turning point.

Of course the real pity of the whole thing is that it wasn't Real!Moody, and Elizabeth wasn't there to dance with him...

*ducks and runs*

*ducks back in to say*

The transition of style and meaning makes excellent use of the music, movie, and actual story which the ball goers are unaware of at the time. Beautiful job. And that is my professional opinion.

Author's Response: Thank you, Thea. I agree, that the tragedy is that it wasn't Moody and Elizabeth, but could she have got into Hogwarts? Actually, I have a little backburner story surrounding Barty and his lovely dance partner (the delightfully named Aurora Sinistra). One day I shall invent a timeturner and find time to write it. Thanks again ~Carole~

Very compelling. I've read the other reviews, and I agree with you - in this case, the torture was merely to serve the purpose of getting information - Bella may or may not have enjoyed it as well, but the reason for it was to extract information.

I am also mystified about the part where you have Harry falling on top of her, dead. Is she hallucinating? Have you gone AU? It's not really necessary to do that for impact here, and the rest of the story being canon, I wouldn't go off in that direction without a very specific reason, so I wonder what that was.

Author's Response: Thank you for the questions. Honestly, I'm kind of glad you were "mystified" by the ending. First off, not to put too fine a point on it, but Harry did not fall on top of Hermione. Second, no, I did not go AU. Since the story is from Hermione’s POV, I wanted to convey her deteriorating mental state by leaving the reader with a bit of ambiguity. That said, there is a cue that lets the reader know that Hermione is probably hallucinating. It’s very subtle (perhaps a bit too subtle), but it is there. I do ask the reader to consider a broader definition of the Cruciatus Curse, and I only do so because, at some point, the physical has to impact the psychological for anyone to be defined as "Cruciated". We are never told in the canon why or when the mind begins to unhinge, so I filled in the blank.

Very nice portrayal from another point of view.

I do have to say that I don't think Snape has this much self-awareness. I also think he has a lot more anger, and that he may never have come to accept the degree to which he is actually a component in his own miserable life. I think your point that he may be a closet romantic is well taken, but I believe there would probably, in reality, be more complexity.

However, as far as it goes you did a very nice job. I particularly like the details about the ice. And I do love the line where Albus tells Snape that when Snape says always, he means it.

I do believe Snape's heart is a complicated place, and that there is certainly both love and regret in there. I just don't think he's got it as neatly sorted out as this.

What a cliffie!!!

There are so many things to like about this chapter - the little details of his existence really bring it to life - "Muggle Composer Peter T...," the titles of the magazines he's got lying around, the meager breakfast - it all adds up to a life I can really picture.

As something of a curiosity, btw, the building Daniel Radcliffe bought in NYC is nineteenth century with a room in the basement that can be rented out. All those buildings are pretty much the same, and those basement apartments are down f few steps from street level, sometimes with the door under the stairs up from street level to the first floor. I am now picturing this going on in one of those apartments, and I have to laugh because I think the first thing your OC would have said about the fireplace in NYC would have been, "Wow, working fireplace - you're lucky!" whereas in Britain I am quite sure there are many apartments still without central heat because of the age of the housing stock. So I got a good little laugh at myself in there...

The way he has chosen to work in the Muggle world because it hurts less when he's rejected by Muggles really speaks to me. I see him doing the same thing. It makes good sense, and it is to irretrievably sad that his life is this way.

Just a lovely story. I await your updates breathlessly. Too bad you don't know anyone who could draw you some illustrations for it... :-)

Oh, SOOO good!

Teary part - "When the Owls are over..."

"He laughed, not the hollow, sardonic cough he was given to uttering, but a joyful, euphoric shout of a laugh."

See, he IS capable of true joy - just not often...

And thank you for not making Lily likeable. She was. And in the sense that she was, she is here. She is exactly the sort of girl I'd probably hate, which is what I've always thought...

Shallow byotch, watching the silly Quidditch playing James as if that made him better than someone else...

Author's Response: We're never going to agree on Lily, are we? Despite you having the same shirt as her, you still don't like her *sigh*. Hmm, I thought she was rather nice, certainly she was the one that helped him off the grass when he fell. I can't blame her for finding the star Chaser attractive when she was 16 - hormones are a dangerous thing. Anyway, thank you for reviewing and I am pleased you enjoyed the story. ~Carole~

You know, I despise Lavender, and this seems perfectly in character with everything I don't like about her.

How utterly satisfying!

And I can see this all happening just this way - you've got Hermione totally in character, as well. But it does raise the question - why is Hermione always attracted to people who are not quite her level? Not that Ron isn't great, and better in the books than the movies, but Hermione is AWESOME. Like, they should have to invent an entirely new type of human male just for her. And Lavender... meh.

Ah, well, we've all been young and confused...or just confused... GREAT job, Carole! Very well developed - all Lavender's emotions and actions, Hermione's emotional reaction to the MoM, the whole thing.

Author's Response: Now you see, I don't like Hermione much. Okay, I don't hate her or anything, and I don't despise her, but Hermione would have been the girl that really irritated me, and Lavender would have been the girl I liked - ha ha. Oh dear, I think we're destined not to be friends, Thea. I am glad you liked the story because I did hesitate the characterisation and the un-canonness of it. Thanks again ~Carole~

Interesting. I find it very interesting what people get out of the characters we know so little about. I've been working on a very long Oliver fic that will probably never see the light of day, and I find it interesting that "my" Oliver has a similar sense of...Brave honesty? Brave we can expect from Gryffindors in general, but honesty in relationships I am not sure we can expect from anyone, and I don't think it is explicitly demonstrated in Canon. Yet it must really be there in Wood somehow - no matter how Quidditch mad people make him, I don't think I can recall a fic in which he wasn't essentially honest in his relationships.

I find the idea of ANYONE pulling Percy on to their laps for a snog somewhere between between impossible and delightful. You pulled that off well. I find it totally believable.

Author's Response:

Oh, thank you, Thea! I've never written Oliver!slash before, but Hannah really wanted someone to pick that prompt for LoveNotes (which I took as her subtle hint that she wanted me to do it, lol).

I know what you mean about Oliver. I've written him in four different fics, and each time, he is portrayed so differently, but that rudimentary level of honesty has always been there. I think we are subliminally on the same wavelength in that regard. I just see him as someone who sees no reason to lie. Mendacity doesn't suit him, I think. 

I was far more worried about Percy in this story, actually. He's the uptight one, and consequentially a character I've never given more than a passing thought in terms of how his life ends up, but crawling inside that martinet little brain of his really allowed me to make this pairing not so much an 'OMG, it's like canon!', but plausibility. I'm glad you find it believable. :)

Thanks for reading and reviewing, especially at this late hour!

~Jess

I came over here from LJ to read your top five, and of course started with this one. (It was the one on top, after all.)

Very clear, very concise - which is not to say short, but, rather, that you didn't throw anything in here that does not play to the effect of the story - a masterful show of restraint and good judgement.

I don't find myself particularly horrified, but then, I have lived longer and seen more than most of your readers. Yes, life is like this, people have very unclear motivations, the motivations shift from moment to moment, they do things they regret - but they also don't do things they should do, and they also regret things that make no sense to regret. In that sense, I find this story very true to life, indeed, but not so much dark as just the color of the sky - overcast, perhaps.

On a related note, pertaining to one of your responses - yes, many times in history, you find that the disciplined troops are the winners, however, it is by no means always the case. Moreover, to say that the Americans had no real victories until the French came in and taught them how to be an army ignores several important things, including Trenton and Von Steuben, who was by no means French. They were a key ingredient at Yorktown, but they were in some respects mixed blessings and to just hand the Revolution over to their organizing influence is over simplification. The issues of supplies and pressure on an ancient enemy and so forth do not carry through your analogy, if analogy is what you were going for...

But that is in the responses, not the story. Yes, I'm left quite convinced that Michael will be affected by this for the rest of his life. I don't think the Cruciatus should bother him at all, however. Those characters have done far worse for far less.

There are issues here no one else has mentioned. Is it so certain that Miles wouldn't kill him at this point? I have no problem seeing the character you've described hitting him in the back just because he can, as a last grasp at some sort of victory, even if he is on his way to Azkaban. I'd have at least disarmed him and tied him up, myself.

The question of how much of the killing was motivated by previous things the cousin has done is a good little complication.

Overall, a good job, and I think you did what you set out to do. Congratulatoins...

Author's Response:

I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the moral ambiguity of what people did during the war. Even Lupin himself berated Harry for not being willing to kill when he Disarmed Stan Shunpike rather than Stun him or worse, and it's more or less a given that Remus was a man of above-average character. And he was willing to kill people to get done what needed to get done. Many others, I wager, were aiming for the same. That's where I created the baseline for what Michael did and how he reacted to it.

Miles is a character with a story in my head canon, and yes, he has a history with Michael. While I won't go into it because it's convoluted and rather detailed, suffice it to say that neither of them would've cared overmuch if the other dropped dead. What Miles did was throw whatever punches he could before the inevitable happened. They both knew what was happening, and Miles wasn't stupid; he knew where he was going to end up. But goading Michael and hurting him was a battle he thought he could win. He didn't count on Michael snapping, but they were maybe a bit more alike they either of them cared to admit. Neither was a killer by nature, but when their buttons were pressed and the issue forced...well, you see what happened.

The analogy between the non-Death Eater side and the American revolutionaries is actually pretty apt, I think. The Death Eaters were unified in that they dared not stray, but the Order members in canon often had their own agendas and things they had to worry about outside the cause. However, like the Americans, the Order side were fighting for their equality and the right to exist the way they chose, and I think that provides an unique motivation for them that, eventually, might have tipped the scales to be in their favour, or at the very least not so lopsided.

All in all, I wanted to tell a story about a 'winner' who didn't think he was all that much of a winner. Whether Michael hated himself for killing Miles or if he hated himself for not feeling as bad about it as he possibly should've been, I'll leave that for interpretation. But ultimately, this story is about moral dilemmas and how not everyone makes the right choices and, when they go unpunished, they go about punishing themselves in some manner because it's the only way they can cope. Yes, Michael is messed up for a long time, for life, but this is only the beginning of his story and how he learned to live with the man he had let himself become. And this is why I lurve Dark/Angst!

Thank you very much for your visit. I hadn't actually expected anyone to read/review due to the meme, but it made a long, s*** day a lot better because you did. Very much ♥

~Jess