Living with Danger
By Anne B. Walsh
Ok so I just finished the entire story in like 5 hours. I forgot how wonderful, exciting and enticing it was. I'm off to the next one (again). Keep up the fantastic job.
Taina
LOL, I love this story so much.
Just wanted to ask if you've ever seen 'A Little Princess'? The bit with Meghan makes me think of it every time!
Normally I'm not much for poetry. But Aletha's song (lullaby? - i have a hard time thinking of it in a faster tempo than that, anyway) is positively the sweetest, most wonderful little rhyme,
superlative in all good qualities.
From a previous chapter, the one in which Danger first tames Remus, and this is really the first and so far only thing that I've felt was a departure from character ie an unrealistic reaction to a
situation, my feeling is that he should have taken longer to be comfortable with bringing Hermione into a room with a werewolf. I see it as a problem of omission. He has, obviously, a serious complex
about his lycanthropy. Admittedly, not only would this make him careful about exposing people to the wolf but also eager to belief the best of the cure that seemed to be working. So I don't think
it's necessarily unreasonable that he would have agreed to Hermione being brought into the house that night. But he is accustomed to thinking of his werewolf form as vicious and dangerous, so he
would have needed to consciously consider the potential danger of the "taming" failing, and then decide it was safe for Hermione to be inside because Danger would be there all night touching him to
restore the magic, or some such.
This story is awesome. Things that I particularly liked here were
- Danger asking if there was anything Aletha wanted broken: nothing about the way you said it in particular, but the character trait of calmly announcing rage and then expressing it is a really cool
trait, and totally fitting both with the sort of person you're making Danger out to be, and with your style of omniscient narration.
- the "animal language": a lot of authors give lip service to the idea that animals communicate differently than people do, but then let the substance of those communications be exactly what it would
be if the characters were human. Your method seems very reasonable, and you execute it well. At the same time though, I would have enjoyed seeing clear indications of what the physical signals are
for all of these concepts, not just the first and last.
- the "all sleeping with each other to comfort Harry" idea is awesome. The out-of-the-box sort of thing that most people would never think of, and it's wonderful because it is the perfect solution to
the problem they were confronting.
- the sentence "Because today is the day in between the two most illegal nights of my life." Effective to start the sentence with 'b/c', and the precision ('day b/w the 2 nights') of the description.
Very well-put-together sentence.
The internal monologues are wonderful. The story flows quickly, but the switch between narration and monologue acts as a variation of pacing and tone, so it doesn't get dull the way straight
narration does.
She makes him not a crazy werewolf - that's a much more important reading of that line from the prophecy.
This "share our complete set of memories while we sleep" bit is kind of far-fetched. I guess that's signed-up-for in reading fanfic of a magical world. But it rather cheapens the romance - they don't
have to get to know each other, and we don't get to know them, before they can be hopelessly in love. But I suppose it's going to be useful by allowing the plot to move forward?
This is a killer of an opening.
Granger... the little girl is Hermione... ne-ne Neenie... ?
And Hermione has an older sister with... prophetic dreams? And far-sighted dreams? Wow.
I love the way you write this. Remus is just despondent in his internal monologue, which is so like him. And then he sees Harry and it's just autopilot to run to him and get involved with him again,
so of course he's willing to talk with this girl. I believe all of it.
And this line in particular is really compelling - "Several loose parts of his world were starting to fall into place. Specifically, the “Sirius would never betray Lily and James” part,
and the “Peter doesn’t strike me as the martyr type” part." The way you keep the language references constant I guess: you say that "parts" are coming together, so you refer to the
particular belief-concepts as "parts". Very compelling and awesome.
That prophecy must be really confusing to them, but not quite so much to us: The first bit is the pairings for the story, H/G and R/Hr? (alack, I've become partial to H/Hr) The rat is obvious, and
he's with the Weasley's, so that's "red"? Cat... McGonagall didn't believe the treachery? In PoA she was bewildered by it, but she did believe it just like everyone else... grim is obvious... "truth"
is this aletha who's mentioned in the summary (that's cheating, oops) b/c aletha is really close to the Greek root for true, so they need her to help them rescue Sirius? "wolf that runs in brightest
dark" is a full-moon wolf, werewolf, that's Remus, and that's a fabulous turn of phrase to describe him, "in danger" should read "in Danger" b/c 'danger' is the only word that could be referenced by
'she' in the subsequent lines... although it would also be really cool if that line meant something about actually ?conjuring? fires out "of" bravery rather than fear or some such... "his mind is
whole" so he doesn't want to commit suicide anymore? I feel like "twine" could be used archaically to mean "two", unless that was a similar but other word, in which case it would enumerate "they" at
the beginning of the line, but that would leave the sentence without a predicate. So "twine" means 'tie the knot', marry? Having saved Harry, they can marry him to... a muggleborn?... Hermione,
perhaps? then the first couplet means something else... and yea, if they do it right then everyone lives happily ever after. Cool. This is like the way Shakespeare would open his plays with a quick
plot summary so everyone would be able to follow along?
This fic never fails to ake me laugh, cry and want to hug the creen. well written... PLEASE! update this the main story more often, I love your little side ones, but I really need to know what happens when it ends... DOES DRACO REALLY DIE!! tell me!
Very nicely done, enjoyed this very much and it kept me glued to the computer for nearly the whole day! Bow on to the sequels...:)
Reading this for a second time, whilst waiting for 'Facing Danger' to be updated, has opened my eyes to a few things.
One, i now get what the hell the prophecys are going on about,
And two, to how good of a writer, if just a fan fiction writer, (but most likely not) you are.
Keep up the good work, and i look forward to reading the rest of 'Facing Danger' in the near future.
from a delighted reader,
Toni Cernosa.
I have a question about this chapter. I've read this story several times (you're my favorite fanfic author by the way!) and I just noticed something about the date at the top.
I thought it said in one of the first chapters that Danger's parents died after Harry beat Voldemort, and that she started true-dreaming after that about Harry, etc.
I thought at that point she was dreaming of what had happened, not what was going to. So shouldn't they have died between November and March?
This is a very minor thing, and I love everything in the Dangerverse:) This is mostly just to satisfy my own curiosity :) Keep up the fantastic work!
Remus assumes, when he first meets Danger, that her parents were killed by uncontrolled Death Eaters. They were actually killed before the war ended, and he finds that out later. Thanks for the
review!
Its funny that you used that particular song. My high school has a spectacular carols night, where one of the teachers sings "O Holy Night" operatic style. Its rather odd superimposing my memory of Mrs ____ singing that on a petite redheaded seven year old.
I wonder if anyone has ever written the Weasley's as Catholics. It would be interesting. Your average Catholic parish (in Australia at least) consists of a disproportional number of Irish-blooded
redheads, with a fancy for marrying other Irish people (my own family was in Australia for 150 years before marrying out of the Irish community). In addition, the Catholic church discourages the use
of contraceptives, and while the rule is rarely followed, more Catholics have large families than other religions. I know girls from families of ten and twelve, and larger families of four and five
are more common than in the wider community.
It would definately be an interesting experiment ...
*laughs quite a lot* I'd have no trouble at all writing it, that's for sure! *has three siblings and attends Mass every week*
Rowling stayed away from discussing religion, so I'm doing the same, but I will certainly be looking into religions of several varieties in my original work. Thanks for the idea!
Yay, Aunt Amy here to save the day. (:
Ohh no. Danger, Danger, Danger, what have you done?
No, not a character death!
*cant resist reading anyway*
