I know this is abandoned, but I’d just like to leave a comment, saying, your vocabulary is exceptional. Excellent writing, I loved your version of Astoria. Enjoy your summer!

Please PLEASE come back :(

It is the best Astoria fic I've ever read!It has been two years since your last update. I have read your current chapter for like,twenty times!Nov 11is my birthday,and it's also the date I found your adorable Astoria a year ago XD!I really really wish there would be a sweet miracle this year ...your sweet sweet update!

This is one of those stories I come back to when I revisit the fandom. Please please update.

I cant believe you left this story. All this amazing work you've done and you give it up? Let me tell you that I think your story is fantastic. You made me believe everything like as this could be a real cannon. This story is a perfect Draco/Astoria. Please, in the name of Harry Potter and all the people who we admire your work, you HAVE to finish it. Otherwise, I'll send Bellatrix to curse you with Cruciatus until the end of time.

This is really good i enjoyed it. I think it was very in keeping with canon while managing to be it's own story too and that's hard to do.

I first read this scene, where Draco tries to cut out his Mark, years ago, and stopped reading this fic then and there. I felt sick to my stomach. I hated it, in a way I couldn't articulate.

Other readers told me I must be jealous. For a while, I believed them. I had no other reason. But now, I see why I had such a strong reaction to this scene.

I am a recovering self-harmer. I began using physical pain to distract from emotional pain when I was fifteen. I'm in my twenties now, and I still haven't broken the habit. The addiction. Because that's what it is-an addictive means of trying to substitute your emotional pain with physical pain. The worst part is that it works. That's what makes it addictive. It's a serious problem, and complicated one, and any story involving it should treat it with the nuance and sensitivity it deserves.

This scene does the exact opposite.

Maybe you didn't mean to make this scene "about" self-harm. Maybe you just meant to show how numb Draco had become. But to me, the coding is there, and it's screaming for my attention. He's using physical violence to rid himself of memories he doesn't want. As a recovering self-harmer, it's difficult for me NOT to see this as self-harm.

Now, you may ask why I find this problematic. It's because there's no grounding here. The scene happens and then it's over. Draco has no basis for self-harm; throughout the story, there has been no obvious depression, no clouding of his thoughts, no intrusive thoughts or flashbacks that so often lead people toward self-harm. He's perfectly lucid, and when the scene is over, that's it. It isn't here to show people why self-harm is used as a coping mechanism. It isn't here as the culmination of two years of depression and despair. It is only here to earn Draco pity points with the audience.

That? That is *sickening.* That is taking a very real, very serious problem that many people have and cheapening it so you can earn praise for your "darkness" and "gritty realism."

I've wondered, since I read this, why that scene stuck with me for so long. And now I know why. It's because you cheapened part of my identity and used it to earn praise from people who understand it even less than you do.

And I'm still disgusted.

Reading this story is like gazing into the Uncanny Valley: It's supposed to be realistic and heart-wrenching and emotionally honest. The characters are supposed to be deeply flawed and not quite likable, the sort of people you'd meet on the street and probably dislike. The prose is supposed to be rich and detailed.

But overall, the tale falls short. It nearly reaches its goal, at points, but it is those points that make it so painful to read. It's like watching The Polar Express, seeing images that are supposed to look beautifully realistic, yet wind up looking like disturbingly realistic plastic sculptures of human beings. At no point are the characters allowed to act realistically; they are always pushed back into the "nasty Slytherin" box and forced to recite bad dialogue. The pain in Draco's life is never allowed to stand on its own; artificial angst is always piled on. At no point is Astoria allowed to develop into a character of her own; she fluctuates perpetually between Sue and Jerk Sue. The world always conspires to deliver as much pain as possible to the Slytherin characters, as is made clear in the last few chapters.

And yet you, as an author, do show promise. So here's my advice, for what it's worth: Ignore the reviewers telling you this story is perfect in every way. You don't have to take every negative review to heart, and you don't have to take the advice in every one. But mull it over. And then, try writing a story while putting that criticism in action-for instance, write a postwar story where the government just wants to move on, rather than punish everyone who was even remotely connected to the failed regime. Or one where a small sliver of pain is shown, rather than the full brunt of it. Try putting some of the criticism to work for you, and see how the result goes.

But...but Harry used both the Cruciatus and the Imperius Curses multiple times throughout the final book. Why should he get off scot-free while the Slytherins are rounded up and sent to Azkaban?

No. Really. Why is this happening?

Again, remember that this is the fallout of a civil war. And even if it weren't, look at what happened when Germany was punished excessively at the end of WWI - German bitterness and disillusionment with the international community, especially Britain and France, practically built Adolf Hitler's podium. Research the terms; they're pretty vindictive. German representatives weren't even allowed to enter Versailles by the same door as the other delegates. And these punitive terms were leveled at Germany by the leaders of different nations; imagine how much worse it would've been coming from their own citizens. The Ministry isn't giving the Malfoy and Nott families their just deserts; they are practically BEGGING another Voldemort to rise to power in the next twenty or thirty years.

Also, of course Astoria has relatives in Greece, because she wasn't special enough already.

Wait a sec.

They confiscated his wand? Wizard society uses wands for everything from cooking to travel to identification. Most wizards are nearly unable to function without one. If he were already in Azkaban, confiscating his wand would make perfect sense; but since he's in his own home and his sentence is undecided, this seems needlessly cruel, like stipulating that a convict on probation tie one hand behind his back in addition to wearing an ankle bracelet. I know I've been mostly silent up until now, but this chapter highlights one of the biggest flaws of the story: trying way too hard with the angst. Draco's arc throughout the last two books-coerced into committing felonies, being set up to fail, having a nervous breakdown that elicited zero sympathy from the good guys, having his family be in constant danger that he was helpless to stop, implied torture and emotional abuse-is angsty enough without piling on all of these other circumstances. Angst is the habanero pepper of writing: A little will spice up a dish and make it unforgettable; but too much will overpower the other flavors and make the dish unpalatable.

"For a moment as the wizengamot decided his fate, Draco Malfoy found a pair of green eyes in the audience."

Wait-how close IS this audience? Put enough distance between two people (and it doesn't take much, maybe a few yards at the least) and eye color becomes impossible to discern. And while I see what you were going for with having other wizards yell insults at him as he walked by, remember that Britain's war was a civil war. They weren't fighting some dehumanized enemy; they were fighting their own countrymen. Shouting insults at a teenager who was coerced into every crime he committed is way too over-the-top for a community that's trying to heal.

And why was the Manor gutted and assets seized? If this happened because all of the Malfoy assets were tied up in outright illegal investments, this would make sense; but if the government seized their property on shaky legal grounds, then the Ministry is doing everything wrong when it comes to repairing war damages. Think about it: If the Ministry made up a law allowing them to seize the Malfoy assets and add them to their coffers, then what's to stop them from doing the same to the Potters if the next Minister has different loyalties?

It probably would've been more realistic for Draco to plea-bargain his way out of trouble, to be honest. There are Death Eaters and other Voldemort allies still at large, which the Ministry still needs to catch, and they need insider information to do it. Pragmatism would dictate that Draco could sell out his fellow Death Eaters in exchange for amnesty, which would benefit both him and the Ministry. Putting him on trial might satisfy somebody's vengeful streak, but it's not going to do any practical good aside from deterring those few who would be deterred from crime by the trial of a teenager; and while we're on that point, putting a seventeen-year-old on trial instead of letting him plea-bargain his way out makes the Ministry look downright vindictive, especially when Harry and his allies are going to face zero consequences for using Unforgiveables. After the war, the Ministry is going to have an uphill battle regaining the public's trust, and putting a teenager on trial will make them appear just as bitter and unforgiving as Voldemort's puppet regime - in other words, they're creating their own PR nightmare. But, whatevs. Trials are more dramatic, I guess.

After reading all of the glowing reviews for this story, I feel somewhat guilty in saying that I cannot force myself to read another word. I'm sorry, but the prose is overblown, the dialogue is pretentious and unrealistic, and Astoria is one of the more unlikable OCs I've seen in a while. I understand that writing about unlikable characters was sort of the point of this, but even then they have to be interesting. Not only is Astoria a flat protagonist, with little personality aside from "so smart we have to hide her smartness," but the canon Slytherins have any interesting traits they possessed in canon drowned out by mountains of bad dialogue and purple prose. I clicked on this story in part because Draco - canon Draco, not fanon Draco with his horrid leather pants - is the character I identified most strongly with during the last two books, and his arc in those books was one I wanted to see expanded upon. Sadly, his negative qualities are emphasized to a point that makes his Pottermore article (with the phrase "inconveniently awakened conscience") seem generous, robbing him of all that wonderful complexity.

I wish I could have loved this story, but I'm frankly left wondering if I and those other reviewers read different fics.

Hi! This is by far the best fanfiction I have read, so I sincerely hope that someday, you'll be able to give it the ending that it (and you) deserves. After I finished reading (this time around..I think it was my third time reading it?) I read some of the reviews, and I have to say I was shocked to see the negativity that some people were giving you. I have always thought of fanfiction as a safe place for growing writers, so was sorely disappointed to see the malicious reviews that failed to include anything constructive within their criticism. Please know that it is not anything that you can guard yourself against, even if you were to write a story exactly to their specifications. Frankly, anyone as talented as you will always be a threat to the critics/haters/jerks of the world, as your accomplishments leave them with little to criticize and therefore not much to do in their ample free time. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you job well done, that I hope you will someday pick this story back up again, and to not let the muggles get you down:)

You know it hurts my soul that you gave up on this story. I keep trying to find something that compares, and years later I still have little to no success. But that's life I suppose. I wish the best for what other endeavors you picked up over the years. Best of luck.
- Emma