A very cute and pivotal chapter. So much is revealed about their respective personalities through dinner conversation-- Ginny's stubbornness and determination to handle the situation without letting others know that she needs help, Draco's complexity even as his selfish and spoiled qualities aren't exactly hidden, loved his list of pros and cons!, a hint of his desire for something more meaningful in his life... looking forward to the next chapter! :)

Author's Response: As you know from your first read through, and as I hope to highlight even more in the expanded content, Ginny's stubbornness and independence can be admirable, but it will certainly cause some problems for her. That should be fun though. ;) Yes to that hint of Draco's desire for more!! He's stubborn himself so he doesn't see that he wants more yet, but it's there if he'd only be open to it! Thanks so much for reading and reviewing, Anise! n_n

Again, love this chapter! Every review might just start this way. :) All of your Dracos are different, and this fic really provides a good example. Sometimes they're extremely different, sometimes they're subtly different, but they're all unique, all individuals... and yet all variations on what Draco could have become. This Draco is at such loose ends; he really doesn't know what he's doing at all, and I think he feels much more lost than he ever wants to admit to anyone, especially himself. But something tells me that he just might change...;) On to the next chappie!

Author's Response: Oh, Draco gets even more interesting in the next few chapters (in my personal opinion, of course ;D). I love writing him in different ways and exploring his different outcomes if he'd just reacted to what he went through in certain ways. He's such an interesting character to play with! Thank you for reading and reviewing, Anise!

wOW...

Wonderful and amazing! Mysterious and haunting... O.o. Great concept with the wolf, the barely contained savagery and the clear implication that he's drawn to her for more than one reason, but we don't know what it is... And there's nothing wrong with purple prose sometimes. :) I'm going to call this "periwinkle prose" instead, that being my favorite color.

And when it comes to not being old and yet having medical issues.... I feel you on that one!! Trust me. ;) Hang in there!

(sticking head in)
I will leave a real review for this amazing fic very soon. For now... AMAZING!@

Author's Response: Looking forward to it!

LOVE this chapter! The perfect balance of snarkiness, humor, sharply observed details, and just enough of a serious undertone.

Favorite lines:
Make her happy, Greg—don’t do anything that I would.

and

Bloody lucky bastard, that one. His past didn’t haunt, didn’t hang around his neck like a rotting albatross.
That's pretty much how I would see Blaise. I'm not sure if we ever really knew how much contact Blaise had with the Death Eater crowd, although I tend to think that he was able to wiggle out of it.
Looking forward to more!

And dog breed... I don't know... I'm not the biggest dog person in the world... I'm more about cats.

Dang! Okay, that wasn't a happy ending. ;) But then again, some narratives really aren't supposed to be. This is so intriguing, so mysterious. Are any of these events literally happening? Is it all just a metaphor? Because we're in a magical universe with HP, there's never really any way to be sure. Is it some kind of magical ritual of punishment? I could actually kind of see it that way, and in that case, it could be something that is literally happening. Maybe some weird Wizengamot-ordered thing? although I don't think that this is what you intended... in fact, I think it's pretty clear that you really do mean this to be a metaphor... it does kind of work that way too, as a story of actual events. So many different ways to see this fic!

!!! A new Xmas fic!! I will read and review lavishly tomorrow. :)

You DO realize that I ended up singing the entire song with those words, right ;) It's hardest to get the first, second, and third days to kind of scan...a nyway.

LOVE this fic! Just the right balance of fluff, romance, and atmosphere. And it's so great to see fics set on the Knight Bus! Love, love, and hope to see more soon.

Author's Response: The song is definitely meant to be sung. ;) Thanks for reading, Anise!

I loved this one! Short, straightforward, and yet filled with complexity. You certainly didn't wrap everything up neatly in the end, which I felt worked well for this fic. Everything doesn't need to be tied up in every possible detail. Anyway, great work. :)

OH, SUPER CREEPY!!! But... wow, it really works. I'm not even completely sure what to say about this one (although it's all good.) Afterwards, some logical questions did occur to me (is it believable that Draco would actually open Malfoy Manor as a haunted house in order to make his memories known, to tell his truth, would he really have opened it to everyone, or...) But while reading it, I was just caught up in the spell, like going along with an irresistible dream.

And actually, or did Draco really just do it that way because he knew that Ginny couldn't resist the temptation? The most haunting sentence in this is probably the one about Tom Riddle having groomed her as a child-- the word has a very specific meaning applied to abusers, as you probably know (or you wouldn't have used it.) That really is what Tom did, and so the fact that he wasn't able to take shape in a way that enabled him to do exactly what he wanted to do to her didn't somehow erase everything (and the canon message that this DID happen and now it's all okay was what made me so mad about the trashing of Ginny's character, in some ways even more than the icky pairing with Harry.) And Draco is the one who understands. In this fic, he couldn't escape the past, which at least Ginny did manage to do.

Anyway... great job!!
I think that your writing is maturing, getting more subtle, more meaningful. I want to see where you go with this, so you'd BETTER KEEP WRITING and posting it where I can see it, as in D/G here. ;)

Author's Response: (I am apologizing in advance for an unasked-for ramble!!)

Thank you, Anise!! My stories, especially my one-shots, are always open to interpretation, so you can of course read into this story however you'd like. To me, I don't see Draco setting up this haunted house scheme as a way to attract Ginny specifically there. I see Draco as suffering from depression and PTSD after the war. For whatever reason, his parents are no longer in his life and life/society was unforgiving toward him after the Battle of Hogwarts. So he has no support system at all. I see him planning his suicide and his memorial at the same time, as a way to reach out to people, even though it will be too late by the time anyone goes through the manor and sees his memories. He opens the manor to the public because he's dead, his parents are dead or gone, so what does it matter? But as Memory!Draco tells Ginny, there are protections on the manor so that no one can steal or destroy Malfoy property. He sets his ancestral home up as a museum and a mausoleum. And to me, the story is even more tragic if Draco isn't targeting Ginny, because that means that out of the hundreds of people who go through the manor and see Draco's memories (because, honestly, who would ever pass up such an opportunity to see inside if they could?), Ginny is the *only* one to make a connection with him, the *only* person moved enough by what she saw to do something about Draco's memory. Just look at the way Harry, Ron, and Hermione react at the end of the story. They are appalled by what they saw, but they don't think anything of it and just leave. Ginny is the one who stays behind for a final look at the manor and she's the only one who vows to tell Draco's truth. Draco couldn't have known that she would be affected in such a way. He couldn't have known that they had trauma in common. If he had known, maybe he would have tried reaching out to her before killing himself. Who knows?

By opening the manor to the entire public, Draco is not only hoping someone comes to understand him more, he's also shaking his finger at society. Like, "Look what I went through, and none of you cared, and now I'm dead." You know? It's not just a plea to be heard, it's an admonishment that no one cared about him or reached out to him sooner. And now it's too late because Draco's dead, so everyone can feel guilty for what happened. Now, whether or not the public learns from the manor or takes any truth out of it is open to interpretation, but I do see all of Draco's memories being memorable to the average (and not so average) citizen because of their deeply disturbing nature.

I have a tendency to write Draco as an isolated, haunted character who receives no support for his suffering after the war, and Ginny is the compassionate one who sees that mutual suffering and reaches out to him. I think ALL of the holiday one-shots I've written since 2012 feature this dynamic. While Ginny, of course, would also suffer after the war, she's been dealing with trauma since she was 11 years old. Draco, on the other hand, lived a very spoiled, comfortable life until he was 15/16, when Voldemort gave him an impossible task. I guess I see Ginny as being able to come to terms with her grief and her trauma (or at least *recognizing* it) more easily than Draco because she's had more time to sift through those events and emotions, so I also see her being compassionate towards people who are suffering since she understands that pain. And that's why she's able to connect with Draco when no one else is. The second tragedy is wondering how Draco's fate might have changed if Ginny had been able to reach out to him before he killed himself. Maybe she would have been able to offer him the support he needed to keep living. :(

And, yes, I did very intentionally use the word "grooming" to describe Ginny's relationship with Tom. Of course what Tom made Ginny do in CoS is horrific enough, but I think, for her sake, we should be glad that Tom was more interested in Harry than he was in her. Her fate could have been a lot worse. D:

Thank you so, so, so much for reading and for the extremely flattering review! I keep thinking "this is going to be my last DG story"/"I don't know if I can write any more after this one," but I'm always amazed and grateful when the muse kicks in with a new story idea, even in this year of 2016, ten years after I jumped on the Fire and Ice train. I have every intention to keep writing until I can't write anymore. ;)

Well, hon, you already KNOW that I love this fic. ;) (It's possible that I'm not totally 100% unbiased here... ) But this is one of my very favorite chapters... it's telling that Draco was just so incredibly oblivious to the fact that Scorpius and Lily had anything at all to do with each other, much less such a serious relationship. I think it sums up a lot about the dark place he's ended up as a person by this point. And I think that by putting two and two together, we can see that he's been headed there for a long time. But at this very low point, he finally understands that his son really didn't hate him, that the desire to get away from his father wasn't why he went on the expedition. It's the beginning of real hope for Draco. And... I won't say anything else, because readers do read these reviews! ;) Looking forward to more.

Author's Response: Thank you SO much, bb! Hehe! I know only one thing: you helped me make this story 200% better. You really gave me the best suggestions and made me think about my characters and situations and were invested in the story like not many beta-readers would have been at your place. Thank you so much for that. Ah, I love that part where Ginny tells Draco what's going on between Scorpius and Lily, too. I love that we get a glimpse of his son's life and we discover how different it is from what Draco let us believe that it was. And yes, indeed, that's the beginning of hope for Draco, and I love to give him hope. He deserves it, because I think he's too harsh on himself when he talks about his private life to Ginny. And I think it's lovely that he manages to open up to her. It shows how much he actually needs her and finds comfort in her company. b29; Your comment completely and utterly made my day. Thank you so much for that, hon. Thank you! b29;b29;