Blood of Mud, Wing of Bat
Hey!
As I had promised long ago, here is the review for one of my favourite fanfics, one which has many elements in common with Trouble in Paradise, by AngieJ, although romance plays no important part in it.
Title: Blood of Mud, Wing of Bat
Author: Whippy
Status: NOT COMPLETE, APPARENTLY ABANDONNED
Length: 43 chapters that get longer and longer
My opinion: definitely in my top 10, would be excellent if was complete.
Genre: Our favourite characters, twenty years later, or “When did my life start going so wrong?”
Pairings: Hermione / Ron, but the story revolves around the character of Draco Malfoy as seen from Hermione’s point of view.
Spoilers: the fic is based on the first four Harry Potter books
Author’s Summary: “20 years post-Hogwarts, Hermione is married to Chudley Cannons beater Ron Weasley and employed by successful inventor Sibyll Trelawney. Then she is asked to work with Draco Malfoy. Can her job and marriage survive the test?”
Critique:
This fanfic is one of my all time favourites.
One of the things that make it rare and thus remarkable is that its plot is not based on a romance. At all.
And yet, it is a page-turner, which gives considerable insight into the psyches of many major characters.
This story is for people who, when they read Harry Potter, wonder how much a sickle is worth, how the Minister of Magic gets elected or what the actual size of the wizarding population in Britain is.
It is also a story for people who wonder what the ideals of youth become once you get older and what happens to the characters after “they get married and lived happily ever after.”
The story devotes considerable attention to the workings of Wizarding society and the evolution of individual characters in it, focusing both on their choices and on the instances when they are not really given a choice.
Blood of Mud, Wing of Bat has only two significant flaws, in my view.
First, it not complete.
Second, things go so steadily wrong and out of control for the main characters that it would require great talent to bring the story to some sort of a conclusion, that is to say without killing all the protagonists, which would be a rather lame solution.
That being said, the story is excellent. The representations of Draco and Hermione are rich and fascinating. They have all the complexity of real life and so do those of many minor characters, including Ron and Arthur Weasley.
Trivia: the title is inspired by Macbeth, although it is not a direct quote from Shakespeare’s work. In Act 4, Scene 1, the witches are brewing a potion whose ingredients include “Eye of newt, and toe of frog, / Wool of bat, and tongue of dog”...etc. The title uses that reference to potion both to refer symbolically to its two protagonists and to evoke the importance of potion ingredients in the story.
Where to find it: This fanfic is available on Fictionalley.org and Fanfiction.net, but the most complete and edited version is on Whippy’s own website Blast-Ended.
Also, for the few people who enjoyed the first instalment of Better Than Expected, the second chapter is written at last and will be posted as soon as it is betaed and corrected.