rate_review Reviews

I enjoyed Narcissa'a drunk scene, but I enjoyed even more the thought of her eloping with Gilderoy Lockhart. I'll bet that made Lucius turn even faster in his grave.

I guess there had to be some causualties on their side, and Moody was a logical one to go. I din't know much about Hestia except that she was in the order. Did Hannah Abbot end up marrying Neville? I did miss one of my favorite students though, like I do for Neville, I have a soft spot for Luna.

There is a logical explanation to why she didn't ahow up till OotP. The house system kept us from knowing many of the students. She was a Ravenclaw and the book was written from a Gryffindor viewpoint. She became their closest friend outside of Gryffindor. Until she appeared the only Ravenclaw we know anything about was Cho and she was boring as all get out. We knew a few Hufflepuffs like Ernie McMillan, Susan Bones and Cedric Diggory; but only enough to know they were sorted into Hufflepuff. We did get to know Slytherins better, we know Draco's personality and have a good idea of what Pansy, Vincent Crabbe, and gregory Goyle are like personality wise.

I'm glad you had Minerva abolish the sorting and the house system. That was the root cause of the wizarding world's problems. Just because a stupid hat decides someone belongs in Slytherin that person was branded as dark and evil for the rest of their life. The house system encouraged Gryffindor and Slytherin to be prejudiced against each other.

I can't remember if I told you I am from Maryland and live there now in a rural area full of horse farms. I have sent you the perfect picture of Snape in a Hawaiian shirt.

Oui, bien sur. There's not a thing wrong with your French/Cajun. I'll get heartburn pretty easily too, but sometimes you just got to have it! We had the Irish bangers and mash version...several years ago now. I just remember being told I was getting a sausage only to bite into it and go, "where's the spices?" Wasn't at all what I was used to, just a different taste.

I'm glad you liked the proposal. Knowing that it's Snape that's probably all the romance she'll get for the next ten years or so...nah.

It's an interesting story that you sent the link to...I do like the idea of a resurrection or loophole of some kind that saves him. I know it's WIP, so I'm feeling a real confrontation between wall or real Snape and Dumbledore's portrait. About time.

As for my ending, I wanted it to be more of an all-out battle, which it should have been. I wanted a real sense of fighting as opposed to a sort of Home Alone version of the thing. That's why I had Trelawney throwing fireballs instead of crystal balls and Neville tossing hexes in lieu of plants. Please. Nevermind that she had the house elves sounding like they came straight out of "Gremlins" waving kitchen knives, sounding like ankle biters instead of the gifted magical creatures that they are. And yes, since they were more prepared I gave them the benefit of far fewer casualties.

I will absolutely be doing an epilogue, as there are still things to say. Cassie has an update coming.

Nah... she'll get plenty of romance, he's a highly skilled and thoughtful lover now that he has someone who returns his love. You're right, Cassie has an update coming. I want to find out how her pregnancy ends; you know the baby's gender and what they name it.

I've had Irish sausages for breakfast when we've stayed there. They were good, but not as good as the Yorkshire sausage. I was spoiled by the Yorkshire sausage when we lived in Herriot Country years ago when my husband was stationed at a US Army base near Harrogate. Yorkshire bangers and mash were my favorite meal at Betty's Cafe.

I spent 5 years in Germany with him, but I never developed a taste for wursts. Bratwurst smelled heavenly, but it was tasteless and some of the others were made from ingredients I'd never have eaten had I known they were in the sausage.

Your ending was so much better than JKR's was and I found your battle to be much more exciting because you detailed what each person was doing. Plus you had Death Eaters dying, in her books there were many from the side of the light who died, but the only bad guys who died were Bellatrix, Peter Pettigrew, Nagini, and, of course, 'He Who I Found Most Tedious and Tiresome'; and you even managed to redeem Pettigrew a bit. It's been a wonderful story, are you going to post an epilogue?

My French, or rather my Cajun, is better than I thought; my guess was that it meant 'Let the good times roll!' and when I looked it up I was right. Anyway, I'm sure they both had a wonderful night. I wouldn't do any better than Severus with the Cajun food, my acid reflux problems cn really be triggered by spicy foods and I completely inderstand what he was going through. Also, I have yet to come across a sausage that can match a Yorkshire banger, I just love bangers and mash.

That was a lovely proposal. I had this story confused with another I am reading and I was thinking they were already engaged.

I think that, had he not already been gravely ill with cancer, Richard Harris would have been a marvelously dark Dumbledore and would have done a gradual transition from twinkling old man to someone with questionable motives in PoA and then gotten darker with each film.

Since your opinion of Dumbledore is the same as mine, I think you will appreciate this story, especially the last chapter. It's only 5 chapters long and give you a lot to think about. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3683077/1/Giving_Extras

The night of the Shrieking Shack was the point when I started to see DD for what he really was. When Snape found that Lupin hadn't taken the Wolfsbane potion and went after him with the potion I realized that Lupin considered Sirius more important that the safety of the students and the staff. That's when I lost respect for Lupin. I never had any respect for Sirius because of the way he treated Snape that night, it seemed like he was deliberately trying to give Snape more severe injuries by bumping and scraping his body against the walls. Then Dumbledore executed a full cover up using Harry, Hermione, and an illegal time turner.

Of course, that left Snape woth no choice but to tell his house that Lupin was a werewolf. He knew that once th Slytherins knew it the rest of the students would know it too by the end of the day. He was lucky to escape with his life in both Shrieking Shack incidents and both times DDpandered to the Gryffindors, particularly Sirius, and ignored Snape's injuries and real concerns.

What actually burned me though was how much he kept Harry in the dark right up until the end with regard to his fate. I don't care how much he knew or how much was only suspect at the time, he should have kept Harry abreast of whatever knowledge he had. *Especially* the prophecy and the fact that Harry was a horcrux as well. I mean, good lord, he didn't know that Voldemort could read his thoughts for five books and in that time never told Harry about the prophecy at least. Although I do admit all it did was verify what they already knew.

That is what burned me too. Harry had the right to know that the prophecy meant he was being raised to be a sacrificial lamb. Snape had the right to know that too, he had dedicated his life to protecting Harry and risked his own many times because of that. I think DD knew that from the time Sybil first made the prophecy to him. It was Snape's memories that made Harry's survival possible, not a near death/out of body experience talking to Dumbledore that gave Harry the tools he needed to survive.

I think that moreso than read Harry's thoughts 'He Who I Find Most Tiresome and Tedious' was trying to implant thoughts in Harry's head. The boy had no idea that Occlumency existed until the middle of yr. 5 when he was told that Snape would be teaching it to him and his thought up till then we the thoughts of a normal adolescent boy. That looked like prime territory to 'HW' to use to implant a mindset that would make it easy to overpower Harry

"Now that I've reread HBP, I've seen that the only things ever mentioned were the diary, locket, cup, snake, something of Ravenclaw's or Gryffindor's (yeah, no doubt) and then Voldemort as the last soul piece."

What about the ring?

Anyway, it seems like JKR hadn't figured out what they all were herself when she wrote HBP with 'something of Ravenclaw's or Hufflepuff's' on the list. I notice that on the final list there was something from each house except for Gryffindor, so Harryhimself must be the representitive of Gryffindor. Was the Sword of gryffindor the only thing that could destroy a Horcrux, I don't remember for sure?

Yes, DD, spent enough time with Harry in HBP that he had ample opportunites to tell him everything, but he didn't because he loved being the puppetmaster and pulling all the strings. If Harry had been forwarned DH would have been a better book, the camping and all the angst about not knowing what the other Horcruxes were and where to find them that bored me so much could have been shortened and she could have concentrated on the action instead. The Deathly Hallows struck me as superfluous to the story, only the wand was vital to the plot and it felt almost as contrived to me as 'Beadle the Bard', it seemed to be put there to give "HW' a motive for killing Snape.

I had completely forgotten about the unnecessary roughness in the Shrieking Shack, but yeah that didn't exactly endear me to Sirius. In fact, there's not one blasted thing that did between him being nasty to Snape and reckless with Harry's welfare. There again, he and Lupin (by no means an innocent bystander) bullied him yet again, cropping up more nasty memories and baiting him to fight. Remembering that whole ordeal was what made Alan Rickman's lines about dementors so enjoyable in the movie. The cover-up never made sense to me either since the Wizengamot was so keen to use the confessions of house elves and overbred purebloods, only to turn around and use their memories as evidence enough to reopen the case. To me, the fact that Dumbledore mentioned they took the true memories into consideration as a possible means to clear Morfin and the house elf can be taken to mean that they could have used Harry's, Lupin's and Hermione's memories to do the same for Sirius. So if their court system works the way ours does, there would have been a set precedent. Why not? In Rowling's world, unless they are tampered with (and it's obvious when they have been), memories are somehow free from the mind's editorializing through perspective.

And I categorically despise the idea of throwing in the Hallows at the eleventh hour the way she did. Typically, that is just not done in fiction. Strange twists like Severus' big dark secret? Yes. A completely different plot device? Not hardly. It was bad enough introducing a wealth of fairly major characters halfway through the series (hello: Luna, Tonks, Fleur, Moody...none of whom were ever mentioned even in passing but yet as in Moody's and Tonk's cases, were already in the Order. Luna Lovegood goes to school with them for five years before we ever hear of her--and she's the same age. What? Where was she at the sorting ceremony?) *puh* Things like that just go against my training. Granted, you shake up a genre every once in a while, but most of that was really off-putting.

Yeah, the mindset thing was one of his goals. If you can't beat him, have him join you. The movie expounded better on that idea, especially with the first and fifth movies when he tries to tempt Harry--first to join him and give up the stone, then again to torture Bella and embrace his dark side. It smacks of Star Wars a bit, but there you go.

He did mention the ring, of course, but it had already been destroyed by the time Harry knew about it. The shopping list he left was for the locket, cup, etc. with nary a mention of Harry's own scarred head on a platter. And no, in a couple of cases (diary and cup) Harry used a basilisk fang to dispatch the horcrux. With the diadem it was actually Crabbe's fiendfyre.

I am still angry at two other things she did to Snape towards the end. First off she had him fighting for Voldemort in the "Battle of Hogwarts," which I thought was ridiculous. I already mentioned that it irked me when she had him leave the castle, but still had he gone to LV anyway, in battle he could have at least taken out a few Death Eaters from behind. Surely he recognized the end was coming. I still shake my head over that one, but the other thing is why could Dumbledore not have at least told Harry he was dying? That would put Snape's work into perspective, since he could have mentioned that Snape had agreed to put him out of his misery, plus Harry would not have guilted himself over giving DD the potion in the cave. All of that angst and guilt was unnecessary. Which is exactly why I wrote it away. ;)

I forgive you for lying, since you gave me a lovely lemon. I guess pregnancy was inevitable since there was no mention made of birth control. When is the wedding? They are engaged and he's too much of an honorable man to let her have the baby and then the wedding in that order.

There is something else I find unforgivable about Dumbledore, he left nothing behind to clear Severus's name. If he hadn't managed to give Harry his memories he would have been remebered as evil and black hearted unto eternity. If he had survived he would have gotten a life sentence in Azkaban because DD (and JKR) didn't care enough to secure Severus's future.

Richard Harris's Dumbledore was the kindly old man with the twinkle in his eyes, but I think that image was a set-up. His version is the image so many people have in their heads when they think of Dumbledore, Michael Gambon's DD is darker. I think had Harris lived his Dumbledore would have become much darker, probably more so than Gambon judging from some of the characters he played.

Hmmm...marriage or no marriage, and if so when? Very good question. I like that. lol Here is where I play Jo and start sitting on some of the details.

"There is something else I find unforgivable about Dumbledore, he left nothing behind to clear Severus's name. If he hadn't managed to give Harry his memories he would have been remebered as evil and black hearted unto eternity. If he had survived he would have gotten a life sentence in Azkaban because DD (and JKR) didn't care enough to secure Severus's future."

The thought of that really chaps my hide even worse than how he handled the Sirius/Lupin fiasco. I agree.

Richard Harris actually struck me as too old to play Dumbledore. I don't know if it was his illness already, but even from the first movie he seemed way too feeble. I would have been incredibly surprised if he could have pulled off some of the things that came in later movies. He could have fought in the OotP scene and Voldemort could have blown him over with a breath; it was kind of sad, really.

Thanks for the recommendations. I was thinking actually, of courtly love since Snape's love was unrequited, so yeah I totally agree. Ditto on reading better fan fics than she could have done, especially in regard to him. Some of them capture his character so well, and still can squeeze the romance out of him. I don't think she was prepared for him to be so likeable either. I was just remembering the other day that she had based his snarkiness on a teacher she didn't like, but oddly, that's one of the things people find so endearing. In fact, when I was a full-time teacher I often wished I could instill that kind of fear in my kids. Would have made things so much easier. ;)

I guess I can understand the issue with roses, given the American Beauty reference (which I loved, by the way, Kevin Spacey is a favorite actor of mine, though not so high on the list as John Cusack and Alan Rickman) and even the country song. yech My main thought there was that in his desire to do everything right this time, he might go overboard a bit.

"I never did feel that he could have maintained a romantic love for Lily all those years. He was driven by guilt and had to fan whatever feelings he still had for her into an obsession to motivate him into accomplishing his mission." Absolutement. I reread the scene from DH of all the memories that should exactly how much Dumbledore reopened the wound time and again to utilize his pain and remorse. It was nauseating, but it also kept him from being able to heal properly and put it behind him. In the end I don't necessarily think that he was still totally enamoured, but more that he still could not let her memory rest since it kept getting drudged up. And he needed to put that to sleep once and for all, so he kept working for the Order.

I did do the one shot w/ Snape and Lily, which may not be your cup of tea. But now that I'm enjoying this first foray into fan fic writing, I do have some other ideas tossing around in my head that I want to work on. More likely to contain more smut than this one.

"It fuels my Snape fantasies to see what others fantasize about him and my Snape/OFC friends seem to feel the same about those fantasies. After the quality and skill of the writing, it's what keeps us following a story. You write it exceptionally well and without the coarseness and without being graphic; coarseness and graphic scenes turn me off."

Me too, don't worry.