I listened to the podcast of this and it was beautiful! I was like... blown away by the beauty of the language and the power your words had.

I loved the 'moocow' and the 'once upon a time' thing which just seemed to give it this horribly potent innocence that just made me want to weep.

Honestly, I'm adding this to my favourites right the second because its a truly beautiful one shot and I can't believe it only has five reviews - that's insane!

I also loved this because I'd never have thought of writting it, but the fact that you've given Fabian such a powerful voice is amazing... and it makes me understand Molly more too.

Thank you for writing this, it was a pleasure to read it again :)

Author's Response: Baww you're so kind. So you've heard my baby voice! I forget that's up sometimes.

The moocow and once upon a time are completely the property of James Joyce. He is amazing that way, especially his short stories. READ THEM. READ THEM ALL. Stories from Dubliners particularly.

I am surprised that it has as many reviews as it does actually! I am not a popular author (the dobby has brought in a lot of readers admittedly haha), and this is a weird story about a relatively unpopular character, so I appreciate each review it has :)

I'm so glad you enjoyed this as you did, and I appreciate your review, thanks so much!


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Hi! I ended up here from the Ravenclaw review thread, but I also recognize you from TGS. I've been meaning to wander over here, and now I have an excuse to!

The piece was excellent. I've never seen a story like this before. There have been ones about Fabian and Gideon together, Molly separately, or all three of them together, but I've hardly ever seen the reaction of one brother and Molly, simply because we don't know enough about her brothers.

I love Fabian's voice in this fic. He sounds every bit the protective older brother we assume him to be, and I loved this line at the end:
You see, once upon a time and a very dark time it was there was a young man coming down along the road and this young man that was coming down along the road met a naughty little boy named the Dark Lord...

A great piece! I can see why they turned this into a podcast.

Nisha/faerieall (Ravenclaw)

Author's Response: Hi Nisha!

I've not read a lot of Fabian stories; just SiriuslyPeeved's which is my head canon now :) I think that an older brother would want to be a protector naturally, and the fact we know that he died as a protector gives some interesting movement to this narrative.

I actually recorded this podcast, I don't know if that was clear lol but, well, now you know ;)

thanks for your review!

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You made me cry! That's a good thing I promise for a story of this nature given I only really cry at stories if they move me. This one was incredibly moving.

I like being able to see the story about what was going on in the first war from Fabian's point of view. I don't think that I've ever read a story about him so it was definitely interesting. To me he was a wonderful version of a big brother, doing something so that his sister would be able to have a better world. I really liked the fact that he realized what was going on and what was going to happen and that he didn't seem to have any illusions that everybody would come out of this mess unscathed.

I also liked that he was thinking of his sister and of how he had joined the order and was going to fight for what was right. It felt like he was letting her know this so that she would know what was going on. Would know why.

I thought that the story was really well written and moving. The language that was used helped to convey the thoughts about what was going on in a very different way than I have seen them conveyed before. I also liked that Fabian seemed to be calm about everything that was going on. He had made his decision to try and do this to protect his sister and I loved that that came across in the story. A real big brotherly act.

Great job!

Miles
(Hufflepuff)

Author's Response: Bawww the intention wasn't to make you sad, if that's any consolation :D

I think, at the time I wrote this, I hadn't really read any other fabian stories, too. I read a lot of marauders when I first joined the archives (and before!), so I was familiar with first war narratives, but I really like getting inside of a character's skin, probing their "desire histories" (as a brilliant TA of mine put it in class the other day!), their mode of interpretation. This whole style of writing is more obsessed with detail and exaggeration and this creepy fairy tale quality, though, so I'm always completely blown away when someone says that they were still able to be moved by the story. One of the biggest critiques on my writing is that I suffer from a love of language too deep for my subject. So this is a personal triumph, that you can report to me that you have connected with the story in this way :)

Fabian is impeccably brave, but also I feel his simplicity, making the story about good guys and bad guys, is a product of his overwhelming fear. So you're right, he comes off as very calm and collected, but I feel there are signals he's barely holding it together, this is his last chance, he thinks, to let his sister know what he's doing and why he won't be able to be with her when she's older, happy, with children and a home.

Thanks so much for your review, and I'm horrid for being so late with this response :(

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I just have to say that this is so amazing! i just listened to the podcast of this and it is absolutely amazing! its just a great idea and very orginal i really love it and its so well written. great job this truly is one of a kind and great!

~Slytherinchica08~

Author's Response: thank you so much for leaving a review! i'm very glad that you enjoyed it :)

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Let me say that I believe you achieved what you wanted to achieve with the narration voice. It does have a nursery-rhyme sing-songiness to it that I can only believe is what you were attempting to express through Fabian's monologue.

In my opinion, though, the rambling style of the fairy tale teller went on for too long. It lasted throughout the entire story. Usually a narrator will use language like that to introduce a story and begin to weave a world for the listener. After that the narration will become more straightforward. This sort of rambling device will recur during narrator evaluation. Your narrator, however, continued in the same way, stringing along complex asides within sentences, throughout the entire story.

It was just a bit too much, IMO. It was well done, but too much.

There were a few places where you seemed to break from the pattern, such as using the term Dark Mark instead of naughty snake head. It seemed incongruous. You also had several sentences where you really should have included more commas.

I did like how the older brother was whispering to baby Molly of things to come in a dreamy, fairy tale way. But I think the piece was just too long to sustain that sort of narration for the entirety. Perhaps if you had broken it up with some other style it would have been better to me.

Author's Response: Hmm, I hadn't thought before about how long it went; and you're right, even in the book that I'm modeling (which I have unfortunately struggled through) the narrator does settle down after a while... something to think about revising, I agree!
And yes, I actually left the commas out on purpose but I agree looking back that it's a little painful to read :)
Thanks so much for your thoughts, you've given me lots to think about! I appreciate your feedback because I know you are a great writer, and I think that as soon as I have time I'll sit down and try to rework this a little.
Thanks again :)


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Wow! I love this! Your way with words is very enjoyable, and the fic itself was very moving. You almost had me in tears by the end. This was a very unique interpretation of Fabian Prewett- usually, he's portrayed as a joker, never serious, but I enjoyed your perception of him and his relationship with his sister. The beginning was very different, and made me want to read the rest of the one-shot to see what it was about. You tied it in very well at the end. Well done!

Author's Response: yep, fabian is usually a jokester. i think that he is, personally, but i wanted to capture a somber moment in his life. i think that he had to have had some like this in order to be so willing to join the order and eventually die for what he believed in.
hehe the beginning is a direct quote from James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. To be honest, going into this, I didn't have a very clear idea of what I was going to write--I just typed in the quote and began writing. It all formed in the process of being written, and I've left it virtually unchanged except for some minor grammatical edits and word choice here and there to maintain the integrity of the stream of consciousness that erupted from my fingertips!
i'm glad that the ending worked well for you—
thank you SO much for these reviews! reading through them agains just makes me smile :D :D


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