This is a great beginning! I always love Colin as a character, and I think that on the whole, he's always been underused in D/G fics. There are so many great snarky little details... Ginny's nail-chewing, Molly Weasley sending four Howlers, 'Lose Weight Faster Than You Can Say Reducio!', and so on. I look forward to more of this. :)

(pops head in)

I'll leave an actual review very soon! Actually, I'm stuck on critiquing a piece for my F2F writers' group tonight. It's the prologue to a fantasy novel, and, well... I'm trying to think of *positive* things to say about it so that the author feels encouraged. Mostly, what springs to mind is some variation on "Start writing fanfic, and you'll understand much more about how writing *should* work." ;)

Author's Response: Well, in fan fic, people aren't always so kind or productive in their reviews... so either authors learn quick about how to craft better stories, or they get discouraged from all the negativity. I think this author is in good hands if *you're* critiquing his/her work. ;)

Yes! An ACTUAL review! They said it couldn't be done!! (Who are "they?" It's better not to ask... ;)

I love the structure of the narrative in this fic, and what I particularly like is that you know how to marry plot structure with a really special writing quality, to combine style and substance. The imagery and the concept of a living Malfoy Manor are just beautiful. (I hope we get a chance to see more of how this idea plays out in relation to Ginny...) You pull off the very difficult trick of creating a Draco who feels both real and original-- reminding us all that it can be done! ;) Ginny is more of a mystery, an unknown, because we have only vague ideas of what drives her to these decisions and choices. Does she really not have *any* idea who her mystery partner was? Is she lying to herself? Exactly what does she have to hide?

But.... HOPEFULLY, we'll have more of a chance to find out. In later chapters. Because there will be more. Oh yes, there will be more. (Have you seen the new FIA writers' retreat? Luxury rooms, free seafood and prime rib buffets... vegan and gluten-free options... an ocean view... a hot tub... just come right this way... why isn't there a knob on the INSIDE of that door? You're so suspicious! It's as if you think that we're planning to lock authors in until they finish the fics... um, have you tried the quadruple chocolate cake? ;)

Anyway. It's such a fresh take on a lot of fandom tropes. And it's the kind of thing that we need to see much more of in order to become a mature fandom. So, thank you INFINITELY for writing and posting this wonderful fic. :)

Author's Response: WOW. Ohmigah. Thank you! Right after I picked my prompt I realized I was going to be hard-pressed to stay true to it without falling into total cliche... I'm glad you think that I managed to show some originality. I didn't like how little my story allows for us to see of Ginny, and I wasn't happy with the ending, but I'm hoping to use both of these to my advantage as I continue the fic. Thank you INFINITELY for a great exchange and a great review! =]

(pops head in)

There will be a real review very very soon! :)

!! LOVE LOVE LOVED. This was so much fun to read-- pirate!Ginny was a delight-- and the ending was really a surprise. I hatched about a dozen different explanations for the scenario as it progressed, but I have to admit, this one never really crossed my mind. And... excuse me, didn't you used to NOT write smut?? ;) You have unexpected gifts in that direction!! Unfulfilled as the promise was in this fic, that is. ;)

Anyway. This was exactly the kind of fic I needed to read today-- you have no idea! :) I have a few ideas for a pirate banner... so more about that soon.

Author's Response: Once I got the idea that Draco would be day dreaming the whole pirate scenario, the rest just fell into place, and then, even though I didn't want to commit myself to *another* story, I couldn't NOT write it, you know? XD It's not that I necessarily didn't write smut. I usually make my sexy scenes vague or fade to black out of the fear that it will be baaad, but I'm desperately trying to get better at it, and this is probably my first baby step in the explicit smut direction. I am *attempting* to add a smut scene into my exchange fic, Double-Pointed Needles, so we'll see how that goes. ;) I'm so glad you enjoyed the story! And I'm glad it was there for you when you needed it. :) Thanks for the review!

(dances around happily)

YESYESYESYESYES.

oh yes.

My precious... my precious...
(gloats over the existence of this fic in our dimension)

Anyway. So much here, so fascinating, so intriguing.

What is real? What is imagined? What is hovering somewhere between the two extremes? Are they even mutually exclusive? These are the most fascinating questions raised by this fic, and what you do so well is to keep everything together with such a firm hand. In the kind of writing where we really can't say what's real and what isn't, and we're kind of dealing with magical realism anyway, it's all too easy for everything to devolve into a mess. But that never, ever happens here. Instead, we as readers can feel a powerful structure underlying everything in the narrative. And that's how to do it right.


There's something you do so well here, and it's not often seen. You're integrating certain elements from canon with what is totally original, so that we feel that this narrative could have come from canon... except that you've made it totally yours. (I guarantee that this is something I don't really even TRY to do. :P) The locations feel real (the robe shop, WWW), and they feel grounded in what we originally saw in canon, but you've gone far beyond that.

I just love your Harry... he has so little space here, and yet we can SEE what he's like at this point. It's exactly what we'd logically expect of him, too.



I wonder if the way that Draco saw himself at the very start represented external reality, or if that was more of a manifestation of his mental state... .it seems like somebody, somewhere would have commented on his appearance if it were actually that bad...

And Narcissa!! Just how much does she know?? And how much does Ginny know? Did something similar happen to her? Did she cast some kind of memory spell on herself, or was it done by someone else, or...?

This piece is starting out in such a deliciously amazing way. KEEP POSTING. Don't make me come over there... ;) ETA: and oh yes, think about what kind of art you want for this! :)

Author's Response: Anise, you're a perfect human being, I swear. I honestly was disappointed in myself with this chapter because i felt it was a lot of thinking and not much action. Like, I think it's necessary to the overall plot to show where Draco's head is but I also thought it was a boring chapter to start the "new story" with. I'm so grateful that you can see just how unreliable of a narrator Draco is--nothing that happens in this story should be taken at face value. I think that Draco would probably see the Wizarding world post-war kinda lopsided, like everything he grew up with now has this element to it he can't place. I'm very scared to write Harry because I want to stay as true to these characters as possible, and for some reason I have a hard time getting Harry right. I actually got out my books to try to make it seem more canonical but I still don't think Harry was quite right. But if you're happy with him, then I sure am too! I think you give me way too much credit and praise, but I really appreciate you reading deeply into my stuff and picking up on everything I'm trying to do, whether or not I'm succeeding at it. Thanks for consistently reviewing =]

What a great fic! And here's the review, as promised.... see, I DO eventually post these reviews.... ;)

There's a lot to like here, so I'll concentrate on a few aspects that really stood out...

She grabbed the empty glass in front of her and lifted it to her mouth. Then she turned it upside down and shook it with a forlorn frown. “What’s the point?” she said. “You know, when Harry broke up with me after Dumbledore was brutally murdered, I understood, you know? He has a saving people thing, and I knew he needed to go off and be the hero, and part of that was protecting me by not being with me. I knew that. I figured once the war was over, maybe we would get back together. I used to dream about it, that he’d see everything I’d done while he was gone and see that I didn’t need protecting. We could just be equals.

“Then afterwards we started dating again, and I thought we were finally on the same page. He’d already saved the world. He didn’t have to sacrifice our happiness for anyone else ever again, but then he became an Auror.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Does this story have a point?”

She pointed the mug at him. Her eyes tried to glare into his, but they kept crossing and getting distracted by other things. “Yes, Malfoy. It does. The point is I sacrificed my happiness for Harry and he didn’t even have the courtesy to stay with me and be unhappy, too.”



I love this part! We see the conflict between the different things that Ginny wanted from Harry, and the fact that they were mutually exclusive—they COULDN’T all come true. Harry left her because he wanted to “protect” her, but he didn’t understand her and didn’t even try. He couldn’t see her as an equal when he came back—in order to have that ability, he would have needed to try to understand Ginny as a person and what she really wanted and needed before he originally left her back at the end of his sixth year.

I think that Ginny knows that she gave up too much of herself for her relationship with Harry, or to be more accurate, her *ideal* of that relationship, and yet she knew that she wasn’t happy. There’s a selfish part of Ginny, which is why she wanted Harry to be unhappy too—but it’s understandable from the point of view of what he put her through.


Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Shhhh. We’re pretending I wasn’t crazy enough to stay in a relationship with a man I didn’t really love just because he was famous.”


This points up the idea that some of the reasons that Ginny stayed with Harry weren’t the most admirable, which is realistic.

Ultimately, I think that Ginny wasn’t willing to be oblivious about the feelings and needs of others, and Harry was. That’s made very clear by the fact that he took it upon himself to inform her that he was getting married right before the crucial Quidditch match.

But it took her a long time to break free from that trap. In canon, of course, she never did.

Draco, however, does notice her turmoil, does see her, and he ends up caring about what she feels. I think that a big part of what makes D/G intriguing is that while the caring doesn’t feel inevitable, the seeing does. He sees her as Harry never did—which I think is something that also comes from canon.

And ice cream is the connecting factor! :)

Author's Response: "I think that a big part of what makes D/G intriguing is that while the caring doesn’t feel inevitable, the seeing does. He sees her as Harry never did..."

Yes! I love the way you said this. I think this story is ultimately about Ginny deluding herself into thinking she's happy, but it's also about the delusions that Harry and Draco have concerning Ginny, too. Harry wanted Ginny to be the kind of girl he wanted, and when he finally saw that she wasn't, he was the one who ended their relationship because he knew there was no point going on. Ginny, meanwhile, as you said, after all she went through with him, wanted that delusion to continue because she wanted her dream to be justified. And Draco's delusion is that Ginny and Harry are happy and perfect (because he couldn't imagine there being any problems in their relationship), but as soon as Harry burst that bubble, his prejudice against Harry showed him who Ginny really was, if that makes sense. He's only on Ginny's side because he's against Harry, but that means that he's the ONLY person on Ginny's side when she and Harry break up, which leads to him TRULY seeing her as even Harry couldn't.

I know I've written the way Draco "sees" her in other stories, and I think it's such a crucial part of D and G's relationship, for both of them. Ginny seeing Draco and vice versa is both of them getting over their prejudices, and potentially being the only people who see each other for who they are and not the people associated with them (Ginny-Harry and Draco-his family). I love that part of this ship!

Thanks so much for the awesome review!!

LOVE! I get such a vivid picture of your Ginny and Draco-- the snarkiness, the teasing, her spunkiness, the bond they feel with each other, the love. The fact that Draco actually thought emblazoning "I Belong to Draco Malfoy" over every article of Ginny's clothing was an APOLOGY... perfect. ;) Thank you so much for this fic. I really love to see longtime members of FIA posting new fics, and I HOPE to read more from you. :)

This was fun to read. :) . I love your portrayal of Draco, the sense we get for his vulnerability, and Ginny's feistiness is great. I would LOVE to see you in a critique group in the new forums, because I think that all your writing needs is a little polishing to really be exceptional.

(pops head in)

This will be reviewed VERY soon. :)

Review coming soon! I've been taking a lot of Tramadol this week... knee issues.... anyway, the point is, I haven't been in any state to review. :P But soon.

Author's Response: No problem, Anise. Hope your knee(s) is/are doing better!

This is so adorable!! There's a wonderful sense of place, and just the right amount of description to evoke the atmosphere. We really don't know at the end exactly what Draco and Ginny's relationship is, how it started, how serious it is, etc etc etc, but we don't need to. We have everything we need for a perfect vignette. And yes... I WOULD really like to see your other fics. ;) Something tells me that they already may be posted elsewhere, but... well...

Sorry, but I have such a burning resentment of FFN after the way they've thrown off so much of my writing without reason, explanation, or appeal... so it's hard to bring myself to go over there to read D/G. I really should, I know. But your fics could all go up HERE too! SUBTLE HINT, and again, much yayness for this fic. :)

Author's Response: Gosh I'm so sorry it took so long for me to reply but I only just logged in after I posted the fic... Don't worry you haven't missed out on anything as I've posted no other fic online... I'll try to work out something else but SAT is driving me around the band and I am not a native American TAT.

Wow, they're really nasty to each other!! But again... I think that this is believable for the Hogwarts-era Draco and Ginny. It's the type of interaction that we weren't going to see in canon-- JKR wasn't going to write the c-word, or passages about students checking out each other's butts. But if she HAD, this is what we might have actually seen. I especially like that Ginny isn't admitting any attraction to Draco AT ALL. Snerk.