One detention was all it took. One night, and they couldn't get her out of their heads. While Blaise was perfectly happy to deal with this little fixation, Draco had a much harder time accepting his attraction to the youngest Weasley.Category: Works in Progress
Another fun chapter! (Oh, what a dick Draco is.) I think you'd probably get more reviews with longer chapters. That's been my experience pretty consistently, anyway.
Okay, just ONE thing... pick a height measurement and stick with it. While we have readers from all over the world, most of us will stare at the metric system with glazed eyes. So feet and inches might be best, if you choose to go that way. OTOH, I think that you don't really need to use specific height measurements at all. ("Ginny could feel Draco towering over her... Blaise Zabini was tall, but still a little shorter than Draco..." That kind of thing.)
Great chapter, though, and I certainly look forward to more!
I really like the D/G/B interactions you're setting up here. Again, I think that Blaise's character is believable for the Hogwarts era; it's just that this is behavior that we didn't actually get a chance to see. Blaise could certainly say nasty things when it came to Ginny, but what you're showing could also have easily been another part of his character. This is the most interesting aspect of the Hogwarts-era fics-- exploring what was passed over in canon. Off to Chapter 5!
Another good chapter! I love Draco's assessment of Ginny-- it's almost like he's trying to analyze his own attraction to her while simultaneously trying to deny it, and he's only willing to do this in terms of rating her against all of the other girls he knows. At some point, he'll have to admit that Ginny is more than the sum of her parts.
Blaise's party coming up... well, this could be good, bad, or in between (as far as what it means to Ginny.)
The Stephen material is interesting. Ginny has always seemed to me to be a character capable of a lot of passion and sensuality, but she would not give it away easily. I don't see her as being a girl who would have sex with any boy who attracted her just for that reason, or to feel that she was obligated to follow through completely with what a boy wanted simply because she'd been willing to do some physical things with him. So-- this really shows her character, I think.
Was the Stephen plot thread the addition? or was it something else?
Author's Response: Yes, I was referring to the Stephen plot. I fell to the temptation of additional drama, and I think it also helps explain some of her thought process through other chapters as well, to be struggling with some issues she refuses to fully address. I really appreciate getting feedback on that particular plot point, so thank you.
This chapter was so much fun! But it needed to be longer.... :(
Okay, here's a word to the wise: for more reviews, post longer chapters. I'm not even completely sure why people aren't as likely to review shorter chapters, but believe me, it's the case. This is such a good fic, and I would hate to see you get discouraged over the review issue. You MUST post more!!
Anyway. There's something so easy and natural about this chapter; the interactions at the party don't feel forced at all. (Why do I think an anorak is a type of ski jacket?? Maybe that's another meaning of the word...) We really don't specifically know who Ginny's friends were at Hogwarts outside of Luna, so it's good to see them included here, and it feels believable. And Draco as Death! I wonder if he means it seriously in any way. You never know with him. ;)
Looking forward to the next chapter! And you're getting a plug on the FIA FB page. If you haven't checked it out already, please do.
The FIA FB Page.
Author's Response: I already said this in another response, but thank you!
As the unintended Captain of the most despised Auror squad, can Draco Malfoy lead his band of Slytherins through Death Eater attacks and threats from the Ministry? Definitely not. At least, not without the help of his reluctant Lieutenant: Ginny Weasley. Inconveniently, the last person he'd ever ask.Category: Long and Completed
(sticks head in.)
THERE WILL BE REVIEWS. Yes, oh yes, there will. Life kind of... got in the way. :p but I have a plan... I'm going to convert all the files to .mobi and read them on my Kindle. and then there will be reviews! yay! :)
Author's Response: Haha sounds like a good plan :)
I'm back to reading and reviewing!! (trying, anyway. ;) It's been very crazy with NaNo and everything else... but I kept seeing this fic being updated, and wishing I had time to get to it.
I love this chapter!! This is one of my favorites, for some reason. You paint such a great picture of Azkaban as it really might have been after the war. And I LOVE the Draco-Lucius relationship here. Everyone might not agree, I don't know... it isn't exactly very warm and fuzzy... but I'm not a big fan of the "let's rehabilitate Lucius as dear old Dad" thing. :P There's enough evidence in canon to show that while Lucius certainly wasn't the epitome of evil, he was not a good father. (There are a few places where I think this evidence shows up, but the final straw was the fact that Narcissa was the one who finally came into Hogwarts after Draco-- if it had been up to Lucius, that never would have happened, which says it all for me.) I've never believed, either, that he showed the capacity for redemption, for even *wanting* to make something better of himself, that Draco ultimately did. So I don't really have any problems with Lucius NEVER being shown as a more admirable person than this (although what you may ultimately decide to to do is still a mystery, of course.)
Favorite line:
As the door clanged shut behind him, Draco wished the remaining five years of his father’s sentence were infinite.
Snerk. I think that Lucius Malfoy's chance of getting a Father's Day card are pretty low at this point.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to review the next chapter, but soon, I hope! :)
Great chapter! You've done a really good job of shifting between different moods and content here, all the way from light-hearted to situations that could have been horrible but were defused (Draco and Harry's meeting) to serious and heart-stopping. Everyone found a way of balancing the past and the present, the negative feelings they'd once had about each other with the way that present realities made different kinds of relationships possible. I really like your Harry... I think you capture a lot of his canon qualities very well.
Ginny chuckled next to him. "I think fate and time itself might literally revolve around him. It's fairly annoying."
Yep, that's pretty much it. IMHO, Harry ended up being a passive main character with all of the events happening around him and to him. It was annoying, in a way. And I think it's part of the reason all by itself why Ginny and Draco are much more interesting characters to explore.
Anyway... I'm trying to catch up on some reviews, so time to move on... but I'm looking forward to the next chapter!
(pops head in)
I'll review this very soon!!! I'm working on a 20,000 word submission for my F2F writers' group. Because I am insane. :) But I have a list of fics that I'll be getting to right after that. Yours is #1! :)
Author's Response: I'm honored! Can't wait to hear what you think! :)
"Draco Malfoy was a miserable wretch. Most people assumed this had begun after the Battle of Hogwarts, when his father was shipped off to Azkaban, Draco was hauled in front of the Wizengamot, and his feeble, traitorous actions were barely enough to save his own neck from the chopping block."
What a wonderful first sentence! You really know how to grab our attention from the very beginning. :)
What a wonderful characterization you build of your Draco. He is certainly not idealized; we kind of see what he could become either way, I think. But he has the power of choice, and he does choose to take a step that has the potential to take his life somewhere constructive. He doesn't know how it will work out, and he suspects (pretty reasonably, I think), that it might be a disaster. In his own way, he makes a leap to faith.
(Okay, when's the last time you saw Søren Kierkegaard quoted in a D/G review? ;)
But he's deliciously imperfect. "If there was anything he liked more than not being held responsible, it was favoritism." WONDERFUL example.
And then Draco's shaky new world is thrown into peril when his mentor dies...
On to the next chapter!
HA! I love this chapter. They're a bunch of losers, and Ginny is insufferable. This should be good... on to the next chapter...
Another great chapter! You know, I always had a soft spot for Greg Goyle. ;) What's fascinating here is that the Slytherin Squad probably really *can't* be trusted... it's not just a simple misunderstanding that will be all be cleared up soon, and then they'll hold hands and sing... I can't remember, whatever song that is the Unitarians sing... you know what I mean. ;)
Another really good chapter! Favorite line:
Draco winced, regretting every decision he'd ever made that even remotely led to this point in his life.
On to the next!
"That's not what bothers me," Kingsley replied slowly. "Your squad should have been able to handle that. What bothers me is that three of your number Disapparated from battle, and one of them fought for the wrong side."
This does interest me, because I still can't figure out exactly what's going through Kingsley's head. Why exactly DID he approve the Slytherin Squad? How did he really think they were going to behave? Is this anything that he expected?
Ginny really knows how to strategize...
Great cliffhanger!
Okay, just so there's SOME constructive criticism here... just a little bit, okay...
I do feel like I want a better grasp sometimes on what Ginny has at stake. With Draco, we know.
“I bet the way they told it was far from flattering.” Malfoy sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets. He owed her honesty--that much was inescapable. “Too many Slytherins supported Voldemort. Most that I know just did it because it was...assumed. The prejudice against us now is well-earned; you won’t see me denying that.” He looked off to the side as his voice turned raw. “I’m just not willing to settle for it. When the next Dark Lord comes around, I want people to be surprised when a Slytherin gives up their own ambitions to follow him.”
We feel what he has to lose, and to gain. I do think that your Draco is a slightly "thicker" character than your Ginny, at least some of the time.
Understand... this means that I think your story is so good that it's *worth* leaving the CC (aka "constructive criticism." ;) For fics that aren't this good... well, it might not even be worth making the effort. I haven't done it very often at all. It's a compliment, in a way! ;)
You really have something great here, and I want to keep reading and find out where it goes.
Author's Response: I get what you're saying about Kingsley. I don't want to Word-of-God tell you, but don't know how to work Kingsley's motivations into the story better. Hrrmmmph.
Yes, I absolutely get what you're saying about Ginny. I love and welcome CC, so I really do appreciate hearing how I can do better. My problem is, and I'm just going to be blunt, I STARTED writing Ginny with a less persuasive motivation than Draco, and now I've finished the story. Whenever I reread it, I'm struck with how much less engaging Ginny is, how she's absolutely the secondary character...and I don't know how to fix it without basically starting over. I would LOVE help on fixing Ginny. Also, in chapter 2's review you mentioned that Ginny was insufferable. Has that lessened at all or is she still annoying to read? Thank you SO MUCH for the feedback, good and critical. I adore it :D
Snerk. If I planned to be mean, I would tell you that all of the writing discussions need to wait until the OFIC forums open... ;)
(waits)
Okay, I'm not that mean. Because it won't be open to anybody except potential mods at first.
I do think that the questions surrounding Ginny's characterization are the ones that apply to ANY character we write, whether this character is 100% original, very canonesque, not too canonesque but still in the realm of fanfic, and so on. In my F2F writers' group, one of the biggest issues that keep cropping up is that authors have trouble defining what their characters want. The other part of this is that they don't make their characters' desires strong enough and specific enough so that readers believe those desires will drive them to the actions in the fic.
I think that this is a really, really complex issue, and it does need an entire topic of its own (someplace just like the OFIC forum, yay!) But I also think that there's a specific issue when it comes to Ginny. The following is all IMHO, of course... ;) She's a character who had incredible potential up until a certain point in Book 6. Then, that potential was largely trashed. I really think that she was blanded out, flattened, and the complexity of her character was squashed. I could go on about THAT for, oh, about eight hundred pages or so... :P But the point is that it can be hard to completely free ourselves, as writers, from that Ginny. She's the one who ended up being canon. I've fallen into that hauntedbycanon!Ginny trap sometimes, for sure. A lot of what makes D/G so appealing, I think, is that it allows us to write a complete, complex Ginny... but it's still so tricky to do. I could go on and on about all of this, but that's enough for now! ;)
Finally, a chance to actually REVIEW!! :)
This chapter was so interesting, and the way you handled the visit was so subtle. Everyone's reactions to Draco showed a lot about who they are-- Molly Weasley fell for the charm, Arthur was more reserved but willing to give him a chance, Fred and George clearly didn't like him but the moment was saved by Blaise and Daphne; Ron was nuts but calmed down pretty fast.... and Harry triggered what was almost an awful moment. You definitely write a more sympathetic Harry that I'm able to do. ;) His feelings do make sense here, and so does Draco's reaction. And on to the next chapter!
LOVE this chapter! This is exactly the kind of "should have been in canon" thing I've never been any good at writing, so I truly admire those who can do it. The action sequences are thrilling, and the dilemma is believable and nail-biting. (Note to self: stop biting nails.) I can definitely see that Draco and Ginny would bond further over this.
Another great chapter! It's so much fun to see Draco and Ginny *having* fun and enjoying banter, although we feel all along that the darker side of their situation is never far away. A good example is when they begin talking about the diary incident and Draco's knowledge of it, and their conversation is... it's hard to put my finger on it... it's as if they way they talk is both strained and natural, as I think it would have to be if they did have that discussion. We don't actually know from canon, of course, whether or not Draco knew about the diary, but it's believable that he would have found out fairly soon after it happened. I think that he surprises even himself by being honest in telling her that he didn't get very upset about it then. They're both very straightforward about it, and then they move on. (Although I could certainly see them discussing the topic in more detail later.)
And then there's the sudden, out of the blue disaster-- which is just how it would happen. Great scene with Snape.. and beautifully handled scene with Hermione. Looking forward to more soon!
YES!! I'm r and r ing again, yay! :)
The thing I admire the most about this fic is that it reads like something that really could have been an actual continuation of canon (well, if this part of it including D/G had ever actually been explored, of course. Which it wasn't. :P) So many aspects of the original canon world are just so beautifully integrated. I can't write that way at all... and actually, I never could. So I admire it a LOT. And lots more reviews coming very very soon!! :)
Another great chapter! I'll probably say this so often that you'll get sick of reading it, but you really know how to write in a way that is very original and yet reads almost like a piece of lost canon. And everything that you write is believable. This is exactly the way that Ron would behave in this situation. He's a logical thinker (much more so than he usually gets credit for,) and he'd know that allowing the Slytherin Squad to be disbanded would make no sense at all. Yet he'd also be far from happy at having to work with Draco, especially at any hint that his sister was endangered by the connection. It also makes sense that Voldy would have strengthened the existing wards on the manor, and that Lucius would have included a back door way out of them because of how the Malfoys were being treated at the time. Looking forward to the next chapter. :)
Yes! The promised review! :)
I think I missed reviewing the last chapter, so that'll be here too.
I loved seeing Ginny at MM. )And I think I want to move there... ;) Yep, that's what I'll do... in some alternate universe, I'm SURE it will work.) Narcissa's reactions were just right... not unwelcoming, exactly, but it makes sense that she'd be cautious with Ginny, and very alert to whatever might be going on between Ginny and her son. There's something about all of the forces tugging at Draco in the past years of his life that is summed up just by the existence of the Manor, and the way it's described. He still has all of these possessions, and yet they couldn't begin to make up for everything he had lost, and, at the start of this fic, for everything that he now understands that he had never been.
I also see more of Ginny's character, and her need to make up for how ineffectual she felt she was during that last year at Hogwarts before the end of the war-- not just the last battle, I think.
I never really know if it actually IS a good idea for the Slytherin Squad to fight or not, and I think that's part of what makes these dilemmas so interesting. How many people on it can really be trusted? OTOH, who could do a better job of understanding what's going on now, and of maybe solving it? And the Weasley dinner!! Oh, this should be good...
(sticks head in)
A review is coming very very soon!! :)
In which Ginny attempts to cope with the perils of pro-active dating, and Draco is a merciless tease. Banter - among other things - ensue.Category: Completed Short Stories
YAY!! A new fic!! Review coming soon. :)
And here it is! A review, yay!
This one was so much fun to read...
“If the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee is so beneath you, then don’t bother coming to our meetings,” Ginny said sweetly as she turned to leave.
Favorite line, definitely.
I love how Draco keeps interfering with Ginny's dates!! I'm not sure if she knows what's going on, or if she's determined not to let him get to her, or...?
When the elf mentions something about Draco's "lady visitors", I think I start to understand why Ginny wasn't willing to take him seriously when he made the original offer... she would have reason to believe that he wasn't interested in her as anything more than another conquest.
I love the way that they come to an understanding in a way before they finally have sex. She honestly tells him that she doesn't compromise, and the reader gets the feeling that if he says or does anything to make her believe that she's nothing more than another conquest, she will kick him out-- even at that point.
LOVE the ending with the jogging pants!
Overall, such a fun read. :)
For Ginny Weasley, being thirty-two years old and divorced while struggling to raise a teenage son on her own, romance just isn't on the map. But when help comes from the most unexpected source she has to re-examine her priorities. Draco Malfoy has it all, the house, the job and the perfect son, but when he meets Ginny Weasley again he realizes all of what he never had.Category: Long and Completed
I just want you to know that I WILL, will I tell you, catch up on this fic and review the unreviewed chapters. ;) I'm getting back into reading D/G, so trust me, it will happen!!
Author's Response: No stress, take your time. Speak soon! :)
YES!! I'm reading and reviewing again!! Great, great chapter. Their relationship is so... solid, somehow. You have such a sure touch when it comes to helping us understand the things that draw them together, that could *keep* them together. I do have a feeling that it's not going to be that simple, of course. (Since it's up to 15 chapters by now, well, there has to be some truth to that... ;) It's going to be so much fun to read and review the rest. And even though it might take a little while, it all WILL be reviewed.
Author's Response: WEEEE!!! So glad to see you're here! I think there definitely are a lot of things that could keep them together, besides me wanting the to :) Of course with our lovely protagonists it's never simple - that's kind of why I love them, in fact. Thank you for taking the time to let me know! //S.