By kokopelli
Reviews
diagonalpumpkin posted a comment on Saturday 22nd November 2014 1:35am
An absolutely wonderful ending to a brilliant story. Thank you so much. I wasn't really expecting another chapter this weekend, since you posted earlier this week, but I'm very glad that you did. I have greatly enjoyed your story, from beginning to end, and I'm glad that you broke away from many of the cliches that follow Daphne. Thank you again for the story, it was truly a joy to read, and I hope you enjoyed writing it.
Kokopelli replied:
I don't like plowing ground that others have already plowed. As I said in the beginning, fanon is usually not very clever, and not very satisfying. Sock-stealing Ginny was cute and clever the first time, but not the 20th or the 100th time.
My first HP story that saw the light (i.e., was publically archived) was a sweet coming of age story H-G, in which Harry and Ginny never kiss. I wanted to break fanon conventions then, and I still like doing that.
Sibling Creature posted a comment on Saturday 22nd November 2014 1:26am
I did enjoy that. Thanks for sharing it. :-)
I'm not a Scot either but I did just finish reading the Outlander series of books by Diana Gabaldon, which begins in Scotland and features Scottish characters throughout, who mostly tend to use the Scots dialect when speaking English, So seeing highland characters speaking in regular English here feels... odd... but perhaps that's just me.
-SC
Kokopelli replied:
If I could write Scot dialect worth beans, I'd do it, but I can't, so I didn't.
witowsmp posted a comment on Saturday 22nd November 2014 1:13am
Congratulations on finishing a story. Since that is such a rare occurance in fanfiction, I try to alway make it a point to say that when it occurs.
It was an enjoyable read.
Kokopelli replied:
If you look through my archive, you'll that the overwhelming majority of the stories I've put up are finished. If I start it, I'll finish it, unless inconvenienced by death or imprisonment. Thanks for reading.
kb0 posted a comment on Saturday 22nd November 2014 12:25am
Thanks for sharing this; it was well done and fun to read. It's nice to see early writers return to sharing their writing passion; hopefully the break has been helpful to you.
Kevin
Kokopelli replied:
the break was necessary - I had teenagers at home that needed my attention more than my imaginary friends needed my attention.
Michael10 posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 11:29pm
thanks for the story.
I was unsatisfied with all of books 6 & 7 and fanfiction has been my balm. I enjoyed it and say again thanks for taking the time to write it
Kokopelli replied:
Thanks for reading.
EricMyerson posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 11:10pm
Cool story! Thanks for sharing this idea with us humble readers. It certainly is an original idea as far as I've read.
Kokopelli replied:
A sweet little story like this wouldn't please the DLP crowd, but I doubt there's much that I could write that would satisfy them.
I write to have fun, and I don't have fun unless I break fanon conventions, which is why my female characters tend to a) not be leggy buxom models with perfect hair and b) are fairly strong characters.
Ratboy posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 11:05pm
I truly enjoyed your story and the take on Right of Conquest in it. I look forward to your next work
Kokopelli replied:
Don't hold your breath on that one.
Thanks for reading.
Zamia posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 10:14pm
Good to see it end so well for them all. Very enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing. Cheers.
Z
Kokopelli replied:
Thanks for reading.
FeNo posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 9:12pm
I'm happy to see that it turned out so well for them, yet i also know that i'll miss reading more about those two and the midget ;)
Maybe, just maybe, the whole wedding shebang got a tad too much stagelight for it's relatively minor importance for the story, I'd have preferred it to read more e.g. about Harry's plans towards Lucky and his co-minions or just Harry and Daphne talking about their wishes from the future... After all weddings and receptions are boringly mundane :P
But that's a pretty petty point to make when the mixture was so nice and versatile and included the nice surprise with the "dirt in the bed" ... I liked this green grass. And hey, a Potter needs to be close to earth too ;)
Uhh yeah, as for your epilogue-ish Postscriptum... no need to say more... We do not need to get to know Hermione's husband or Astoria's... So everybody can fill in their preferred candidate and nobody will be disappointed... and what if it's NOT Neville or Victor or Anthony from Ravenclaw? There are 3.5 billion men on Earth, if she wants to marry she'll find a good one, little brother Harry will make sure of that :D (at least by inconspicuously weeding out the bad ones)
Kokopelli replied:
I wanted to play a bit with a Scottish wedding, and I was intrigued with the notion of piping the bride into (and out of) the church. Compared to other fanfic weddings, I was pretty spare in my descriptions and the whole scene was actually pretty short.
If I were going to do a longer story (100-200k words) I would have gone much more into the taming and domestication of Lucky Malfoy, but I was shooting for a 60-70k word story.
The dirt in the bed was one of the original ideas from the beginning of the story. There really is a folk custom of bonking in the fields, but I was playing around with different types of magic, which is how this story came to be.
In the postscript, I tried to give just enough detail that I could satisfy some readers, but not answer every little thing - Daphne's sons are unnamed, and we know nothing about the children after that (they have seven and adopt a few to boot).
The notion of the midget working for MI-6 (or MI-6 for that matter) is such a hoot.
Mionefan posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 8:15pm
"Playground’s very temporarily closed for routine maintenance, my husband,"
What a great line! I've never heard that one before and I love it. It tell it all.
Kokopelli replied:
The problem with two virgins on a wedding night is that the poor bride gets sore much more quickly than her appreciative husband gets sore. Daphne, being no pushover, tells her loving husband that she needs a bit of a rest, then after that breather they'll go at it like crazed minks again.
Zamia posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 8:01pm
What one could say about Harry and women but as Bill said Discretion is etc. Nicely put together discussion between Hermione & Daphne. Cheers.
Z
Kokopelli replied:
Harry's clueless about women - just like Susan said.
The Seeker posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 7:40pm
I enjoyed your story tremendously and will greatly miss the world that you have created. Yes, it Harry Potter, and it does have the basic underpinnings, but you've made it entirely your own. Thank you for the creativity, hard work and talent to accomplish that. In that way - creating an HP story that is unique - this ranks with the best I've read. I imagine I'll be visiting it often.
Your Daphne is inconic, unlike any other I've read, and she was wonderfully drawn. The section toward the end of this chapter, where you have her moving past the stick rose bushes and later to the marital bed - completely missed that it was soil and not the talcum powder as stated - to the absolutely lyrical joy when she discovered the garden and specifically the rose bushes humming with their magic - Daphne's and Harry's - well, I'm tearing up again just writing about it.
Malcom and Grace became people I liked and admired; Astoria was a complete and complicated person, not a clone of Daphne; and the supporting cast, locales, lifestyles, etc. were all well described and added to the story. Thanks for spoiling us with the quality of this story. Hope you find another concept (soon) that motivates you to write another HP fic. As always, thanks for your hard work and brilliant story telling. - The Seeker
Kokopelli replied:
If you sterilize soil and grind it fine, it will look like talc. As I went along, I began to realize that Daphne was looking a whole lot like a brown haired version of my youngest daughter (5'11" last summer) which is not what I was envisioning at all in the beginning of the writing process.
Another reader riffed on the Grimoire as a lousy plot device. The Greenglass family were playing a very deep, very Slytherin game. Because of Fiona's untimely death, they had no idea whether or not Daphne really was going to be an earth witch. So, yes, they were betting that marriage to Ridde would trigger the gift, and her ability to move into the shadows would keep her safe, so it was an acceptable gamble. Grace had more vision than the rest, and she believed that her daughter could get Harry Potter to fall in love with her in a very short time.
Daphne was gambling - and as she said when sitting in the garden, "I won, I won it all."
Thanks for reading.
Brian64 posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 6:27pm
"Thanks again for writing, I really enjoyed everything about this story!" pretty much expresses what I want to say, but seems poor payment for the enjoyment I've gained from reading it. Whether it's just my good fortune to appreciate the same things in stories that you do, or whether you have an understanding of what readers want to read and deliver on that, I certainly didn't find anything to complain about. Now if I remember correctly, I believe at the start of this tale you may have mentioned something about seeing feeling rusty and/or whether you can still to write a good story (or words to that effect)? For whatever my opinion matters, I have no hesitation in confirming that you can write a -great- story, and I'm looking forward to seeing whatever you turn your hand to writing next. Please feel free to add me to what I'm sure is a long list of people willing to beta (eg, sneak peak read and comment) for you. LOL.
Kokopelli replied:
I have no illusions that I know what people want to read - but the people who tend to read my stuff tend to like what I write. It's like the notion that big girls tend to go out with guys who like big girls - some things are self-selecting.
I had a very busy year at work and in the down time that followed after, I started carrying a steno pad on the Metro and jotting down dialogue and story arcs. I have no idea if I'll write another HP story. I have a few original stories that I've been tinkering with for years, and I have no idea if I'll ever get them off the ground either.
Thanks for reading.
Pennywise posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 6:22pm
Awesome ending to a awesome story.
Kokopelli replied:
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
jilumasam posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 4:55pm
I di enjoy it very much.
My favourite characters were surprisingly enough, Astoria and Rufus.
Really enjoyed the glimpse into what Harry learns from Riddle's diary.
I'm not a fan of Ron either, I did enjoy your handling of him. Everyone has something they are good at, your treatment of him, rather than highlighting his inadequacies, highlights a good skill of his and then cuts him loose.
Thanks so much for writing.
Kokopelli replied:
The seduction scene wasn't in the original story arc - it kind of wrote itself when I had Astoria sneaking in to ask what Harry's intentions were towards her sister. Then I had to go back and rework the whole Astoria subplot.
Rufus is a hit with a lot of readers, but he gets so little screen time, and even smaller amount of lines. In reality, I was writing a scene thinking "boy, this is boring, what if I have someone following them? - then I went back and made backstory for that character.
I had a notion of correspondence between Ragnok and Rufus on the surveilance, but this wasn't intended to be a 200k word story, so it got cut.
Rufus was assigned to keep Harry alive during a turbulent time. Ragnok is betting on Harry and Daphne being agents of change. Ragnok is also very interested in contracting for services from Britain's only earth witch
The Seeker posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 4:47pm
What a wonderful, involving chapter! It was also a bit sad, since it's the next to last chapter in this very enjoyable story. You've created an intriguing world, with Harry and the Greengrass family, along with Andi and the usual supporting characters. You've said you like to bring in real world issues, practices, locations, etc. This story is made so much better with all of the depth and flavors these local pieces bring.
The conversations between Harry and Daphne were fantastic. I strongly feel you are among the very best in constructing dialogue that fits the characters, adds to their depth, and provides insights into their personalities. This has been true throughout this story. Perhaps the most moving conversation was between Daphne and Hermione. It really tugged on the heartstrings. I hope we see some sign that Hermione will find the guy who feels the same way about children and can support her in all other ways.
Andi velcroing Harry to a chair via her special 'tea' was disconcerting. While he needed that talk and seemed to benefit from it, I initially questioned her heavy handed approach, but then chalked it up to her being a Black and used to using controlling strategies. No harm, no foul, I guess.
I'll say this in the final chapter, too, but wanted to put it in front of you before that. I hope you will write another story after you finish this one. There are very few HP fan fic writers around these days who write at the level you do, and it has been a treat to have this story. Yes, I know stories aren't created just by people asking for one, but I hope you find an HP topic that is inspiring soon.
Thanks for this wonderful story and all the hard work you've put in. - The Seeker
Kokopelli replied:
Checks payable to me are always treated as sincere. (which is what I told my employer when they asked if I'd like a performance bonus or time off...)
The Andi scene is an homage to some of the golden age HP fanfiction in which an adult sits down to have "the talk" with Harry. I thought it would be hillarious to have the adult be a mother figure, but Molly wasn't available in this story, so I pressed Andi into service.
Fanfiction at its best explores the "what if" element in the stories - what if Sirius hadn't gone chasing after Peter, what if Harry met someone different on the train, what if Harry had been sorted into Slytherin, etc. Fanfiction at its worst is gormless pornography, but slightly above that is when the fanfic writer attempts to "correct" canon - this usually results in a flat, unsatisfying tale - although not always. There are some "redo" stories that are really, really good - or if unfinished, had a really, really good beginning.
WhiteElfElder posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 3:48pm
If Harry's magic unexpectedely bled into the magic of the plants and earth, did Harry take on some earth magic capability himself?
Kokopelli replied:
Go back and re-read what Grace said.
Marriage to a powerful wizard can wake the gift in a witch, and if there is mutual love, then some of the wizard's magic is mixed with that of the witch and is involved in the earth witch magic.
As to whether or not Harry can do earth wizard magic, that remains to be seen.
Riegert8 posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 2:25pm
I think it odd that Draco would be a porn star, I thought that he be someone that want power.
What happen to Ron in the future is better then I thought it would be. Keep in mind I been reading fan fiction for about 10 years, I read hundreds of story's that Ron is not liked by the author and in some cases hated. So I am used Ron coming to a bad end then a good one
Kokopelli replied:
Draco, in canon, wants glory.
As to Ron, I don't hate Ron, I just don't find a lot to admire in Ron. He's jealous, immature, rude, ill mannered, and doesn't want to work hard.
I think the best thing for Ron to do is to get out of Harry's shadow and find what he's good at doing, which is what I did in this story.
dogbertcarroll posted a comment on Friday 21st November 2014 2:10pm
Good ending! Very satisfying and didn't go on into matters that would bore the reader.
Kokopelli replied:
What matters might those be?
elmoryakhan posted a comment on Saturday 22nd November 2014 3:21am
Kokopelli replied: