Gluttony: Fanfiction :: Indulge Yourself!

Name: riverwind54 (Signed) · Date: 13/12/2010 07:51 am · Chapter: Snowball Armistice

What a wonderful story, I really enjoyed it.

Thank you for writing it,

River

Author's Response:
Thank you very much. This story was written for a contest at HPFF. I've always been kind of fond of it. Bella.

Name: BKL8008 (Signed) · Date: 03/09/2010 03:24 am · Chapter: Snowball Armistice

I reviewed this one and "Oliver" (can't recall the title now!) on HPFF for you. I love this telling of Harry, Cissy, and Andie making up for the sake of Teddy. It's just divine and so inspired, such excellent capture. You should bring the beautiful banners and those stories over here, too. The ones for these were just heartwrenching.

Author's Response:
Again: thank you so much. I think I may have forgotten how to manage banners, but I will give it a try when I can. Can't tell you how much I appreciate your comments. Work is rather overwhelming right now and I'm not able to write or review as I used to.

Name: datbenik513 (Signed) · Date: 05/05/2009 02:02 pm · Chapter: Snowball Armistice

Been meaning to read this for ages. Boy am I glad I finally did!

While I can't completely agree with some statements here, on the whole, I find the story completely believable. My biggest concern is how on Earth the biggest jerks in the wizarding world could shake off the centuries of prejudices that made them become what they had become and turn good guys in one day. Well, it's valid at least for Lucius. Seeing him turning suddenly good is something like seeing Goebbels dating a Jewish girl (apologies for the harsh allegory).

For sofar we know, Narcissa never took part in any DE activities rather than their meetings, no fights, no raids on Muggles, nothing of this kind. So, while she'd been raised as a Black, toujours pur, with all the Ubermensch mentality et al, she'd all of the time been a mother and a wife, instead of a soldier. Of her, I can believe to have been "reformed" to some point.

Narcissa is wonderfully written. Full stop. No questions asked. I can see her in front of me, a broken woman in her fifties; all her world completely haywire, man on the verge, son alienated, sister dead, another declared dead long ago. Loneliness.

Harry, being ever the gentleman. Order of Merlin to a DE wife? It must have taken some of his best diplomacy to push his wish through; hell, being a war hero must have been good for something, right? I just can imagine he'd had some words with her best friends on this and not all of those words were of the kindest; the essence of Hermione's reaction on seeing Narcissa is a witness to this.

I do not deny, I was reading the ending with tears in my eyes. Partly because you were able to convey the emotions in such an intricate way. Partly because I have been fighting with my own family for 12 years now with no possibilities to reconciliation.

I applaud you for yet another marvellous piece of writing. An instant favourite and a full mark, of course.

Author's Response:
How, how, how did I miss this? The story had been up for so long that I must have just assumed any reviews were old ones. So sorry, truly.

I reread the story again, just now. And I think I would rewrite Narcissa's conciliatory speech to Harry, about how she's decided to give up her bigoted ways. I think she would state that if she clings to her former rigidity, she will be cutting off her nose to spite her face, because she will be denying herself what is most important, which is family.

Lucius is a huge jerk. I tend to focus on him at the end of his career, as a broken PTSD victim, a fundamentally weak, narcissistic man (in the first book, Draco talks about "bullying" father into buying him a racing broom, presumably after dad has already said no at least once) whose talent is not equal to his ego. He pays the price, since he serves an even bigger tyrant. (If I remember correctly, Saddam Hussein used to punish his unsuccessful generals by causing them to have helicopter accidents.   Lucius messed up hugely, and he did it more than once.  It was a long wy down, and he did not have the resouces to deal with it.    In any casem I tend to write Lucius softer than is warranted. (I even wrote him heroic in my Defining Moments piece.)    BUT, I think the reason people like Lucius, and are sympathetic to his character, is that, at the end of the day, his little family -- that the whole DE business was intended to protect -- is the most important thing.

I don't think I had Lucius turn good in this story, did I? In that other story, okay, but this one?

Narcissa is a more complex and enigmatic character than is immediately evident. She is Bellatrix's sister, but her nearest sibling was Andromeda. She has always seemed to have a lot in common with Molly Weasley. Her commitment to her little family is absolute. She could never be a DE, because she could never commit her loyalty anywhere else than to her family. She plays it very close to the vest, so people can make convenient assumptions about her loyalties. She obviously prefers being around purebloods, and she prefers being rich.   But she'd jettison either of these ideals to preserve her family.

And Narcissa's action took a lot of guts, any way you slice. And I always thought it deserved recognition.

Thank you so much for your review, and please accept my apology for this belated reply.

Name: ginwannabe (Signed) · Date: 16/09/2008 04:41 am · Chapter: Snowball Armistice

This was beautiful. All of it. I like how you don't really make Narcissa a martyr. She didn't save Harry because she thought *him* worthy, but because she wanted to save her son and the only way to do that was to pretend he was dead.

I also liked what you said about the Blacks vs the Malfoys... the Blacks had grit, the Malfoys had money.

I don't know if she would have been so quick to try to make amends with Harry and Andromeda, but I like that she did. Very nice job.

Author's Response: Thank you so much. I wrote this originally for a writers' duel, so I had to write it much more quickly than I normally would. I like to write about Narcissa. She's middle-aged and has a more mature outlook. I also kind of think Narcissa has most of the cojones in the family; she just keeps the fact to herself. As far as Harry: the story was set up so that she didn't have much choice but to be decent to Harry; after all, he'd put her up for the award. As to her sister, I think family matters a lot, and she would want to make it up with Andromeda. As far as rushing the ending -- I plead guilty. (The theme was "snow day" or something along that line, and I was trying to fit the story into it.)

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