This is possibly the most beautiful fanfic I've read. Literally stayed up until 5am finishing it. Thank you thank you thank you for taking me on such a feisty but emotional ride!

Astoria sounds awesome!

i really love this story. i love how you portrayed Astoria and the changes you made in her parentage. i love her relationship with Draco like you wouldn't believe. i teared up many times while reading and there was a lot of laughs and fangirling. you are a really great writer!

these chapter titles are funny af

I loved this. I'm not one to pair Draco and Astoria but you caught my attention with the first chapter and held it throughout to the epilogue. Very well written. Your version of these characters are very realistic. I'll be looking at your profile to see if I you have anything else I can fall in love with :-)

Great work! Really well written and interesting story :) Good character development

The last few months I've taken to only reading novel length fan fictions and I've read a load of them now but this has by far been my favorite. I didn't want to put it down, something I've only experienced with 2 published novels over the course of my life. The first night I read till my eyes couldn't focus anymore and the second night I finally finished at 4am lol.

You are a great writer and I hope you decide to write something entirely your own and have it published because you deserve that.

Thanks so much for all the work you it into this! I've enjoyed every bit of it

I'm loving your story!

Well, I stuck on through the end of this, and shuffled it into my favourites group. It was a great read - something that's really rare for the Astoria/Draco pairing. I think the only fic that approaches this quality is AccioAsh's "The Private E Project".

The was drama, and romance, and smut, and humor all wrapped up in a well written package here. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed reading about the convoluted past, about the conflicted present, and even about the amusingly "repetitive" future.

You did well on most of the characterization. I enjoyed your Snape - he was a conflicted mess, caught up between old loves and old regrets, and a grudging love for his hidden child. He was very true to the vision we have handed down from Rowling, and I applaud you having written him in a believable way.

Your Helios was a surprising character. I admit that I had some suspicions about him from the moment he was introduced - after all, even a fool would recognize that child wasn't his and hear the rumors. But you turned it about magnificently. I was expecting a defeated sort of man from him. A distant drunk, tied up in old regrets and an unfulfilled life to the point where he was aware of Astoria's paternity - he was simply so defeated that he didn't care. After all, he had his true blooded heir. Instead, we were gifted with this remarkably shrewd and intelligent man - not only does he know of his wife's infidelity, he takes advantage of it without even her knowing. He achieves this with little bitterness and much cunning, topped by a surprising mercy where he actually considers Astoria his daughter despite knowing her true paternity.

Your Narcissa and Lucius were surprising characters. I understand Lucius' personality and motivations perfectly. They're well done, and his descent from self-righteous arrogance into a more humble sort of dotage is how I would always picture him going. Crumbling under the weight of his own choices - monumental mistakes that overshadow his business acumen and the personal pride that causes him to lash out at everyone and everything, until he realizes nothing is left to him but emptiness. Which at last drives him to let go and yield things up to his son.

Narcissa is also a sensible adaption from her canon self. She has this sort of indoctrinated social grace, that she both believes in and takes enjoyment of. The perfect pureblood wife, as it were. And she's the woman that every feminist hates - the one that apparently enjoys "being in the kitchen". But all those old joys and carefully learnt mannerisms crumble down when her son is threatened. She loves her son more than she fears Voldemort, more than she loves the pureblood cause, more than she loves the delicate intricacies of noble life. It all gets thrown under the cart for Draco, and she's perfectly willing to let the light fall on her poisonous majesty if she thinks it will benefit her only child. The only thing I would object about her character is that at the end she shucks up and accepts Astoria back. I would have at least expected her to strike out venomously once for her son, before subsiding into a bitter detente with her daughter-in law. Contrary to the initial "She's his young love, and it splits this family, and I don't like it but if I can get my husband to deal with it everything will work out great" initial sort of feeling Narcissa must have had, she would have a very different feeling towards Astoria afterwards. "She left my son pining. Broke his heart without even a word so she could run across the ocean and get fucked by strange men in alleyways, the heartless little slut." Where Lucius mellows, I would expect her to grow harsher.

I'm not sure how I feel about your Draco. I liked his cleverness, and the sense of struggle we got from him. Old family values vs. modern reality and business really struck me with him. Though I was impatient about him not recognizing the obvious financial possibilities, it was a good conflict for him to start to let go of old prejudices. His unstable emotional tendencies were both annoying, but in line with what we expect from the spoiled man-child with too much suddenly on his shoulders that Rowling hands us. I don't like it out of him, but I understand and expect it from him. Even his promiscuity is something I would assign to his character - both because "experienced men, virgin women" is a traditional value, but also because Draco has the unfortunate tendency to reduce people to objects. They matter more how he can use them, rather than how they feel, and his growth into someone that can sympathize is an important part of his development in the shithole his time with the Dark Lord was. And those experiences are what ultimately shape him into being something approaching a man, with the hard reality pressing in at every corner for him - destitute with nightmares of torture - rather than a naive boy.

But at the same time, he became someone without self-respect, or at least someone who couldn't have self-affection. His pride and his self-worth he sweeps under the rug constantly for someone that not only moves on with other men, but whom constantly espouses her dislike of him at every meeting. A determined man could do something like that for a week, or a month. Draco does it for half a year - something practically ubermensch - and throws away the natural bitterness such abasement causes in a moment. Even if he's willing to swallow it for a moment so she doesn't run off (again), he's not perfect. He's human. Surely he must feel angry and bitter? Insecure? None of which we see influencing his choices afterwards.

Your Astoria was the most conflicting character for me. Because of her promiscuity (not directly, though I make no secret I detest the practice in all humans), in contrast to her other character traits. What we're initially introduced to is this compelling woman. Someone that has a mind as sharp as a blade. She's amusingly caustic, with a stinging sense of humor. She is perfectly aware of her precarious situation, as it relates to her parentage, and rather than taking the easy way out of trying to bargain a safe marriage, she steps out on her own. She's independent, determined to succeed on her own, without begging from scraps from her parents or needing to prostitute herself to some boorish pureblood boy. I would almost peg her as a genuine misandrist - she has no desire to tie herself down to some man. She refuses to submit to anyone, or become a good little breeding housewife. She's powerful, in a way few people are.

And then she's revealed to be ultimately hollow. Blaise takes her virginity under outright rape, if not at the least dubious consent, and she laughs it away as "it had to happen sometime", rather than storing it for revenge. She debases herself, spreading her legs for any man that catches her fancy because it fills up that empty space inside of her - taking a measure of personal worth and desirability from it. Rather than rejecting all men with the harsh uncompromising attitude of someone who truly doesn't need validation from the opposite sex, she puts up a front so that when she's spread out on her hands and knees she can lie to herself that it means she's something different than "all the other girls".

It's not even like she uses men for sexual objects, because she admits that the vast majority of her sexual encounters (if not all of them) were terrible and unsatisfying. Rather, it serves as a proof of her meagre self image. And then when she runs off, she even uses meaningless sex as some sort of proof to herself that her time with Draco didn't really matter, rather than saying sex wasn't even important enough to have. It makes her entire character seem like a lie, because this independent caustic adult is revealed to be little more than a child clutching at the barest straws of attention anyone will bestow.

I don't know, it feels like Draco has done a lot of crawling about when she left him, you know? From the other chapter it's pretty clear he did go after her, and turned around when he found out she was off shagging other people. Now maybe some people would say that if he was really going after her, he should have sucked it up and dealt with that, but I don't agree. There's a matter of self respect there.

Or maybe not. I suppose I have my own bias against infidelity, cuckoldry, or whatever other category that sort of thing falls into.

Okay, my English is bad, but I think it's good enough to understand.
This is probably the best fanfiction I have ever read. I have read it for the third time (the first time I started reading, it wasn't finished) and I even made a profile so I could review it. :D
You sure have talent. I really like dialogs, they are so real and natural.
And do I have your premission to try to translate it into my language? :D

Corresponds to my previous review, which I can't post under 's one review per chapter rule...

I was talking about Rose/Scorp in my previous review...not the story...

I'll gladly "overlook" that slight detail...

Not to seem like a hypocrite or anything (but probably will) but I absolutely love this story! It's brilliant, ingenious and the best thing ever. Now, I will search your profile for more stories...

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Am I the only one who sees the irony in Draco falling for a raven-haired green-eyed beauty? Wonder what Cheri has to say to that...so wish I could read about Cheri pyshco-analysing Draconand just generally pissing him off. *hint hint*

But anyways, I absolutely adore this story and also your Percy/Audrey fic and cant qait for the sequel tp be updated! Love your work!

kat

beautifully written! characters are vibrant and complex, development was slow and believable, smut was ;)! really really love it and im gonna binge read everything else you do now