"Before Peace" (Padma, Anthony, Luna, Terry, Michael)

[friendshipmods]

Author:Anonymous
Prompt/Prompt Author: He talks about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising like it's more magical than Hogwarts, and she listens because she wants to believe they'll make it out of this alive. / liliths_requiem
Title: Before Peace
Characters: Padma, Anthony, Luna, Terry, Michael
Rating: PG
Warnings: Canon violence
Word Count: 4,900
Summary: "In this century

Comments

[delphipsmith]

My, this is unusual but very lovely! I'm intrigued by the idea of hidden rooms, Muggle literature and science forming a sort of shadow library within the magical one. The couplets of poetry before each section (I had to look up ghazi) were beautiful, and such an elegant way to chain the segments together. There's a nice complexity to this, too, with its intermingling of humor and anger, fear and courage. Loved the crack about Snape's sense of humor being the "most acidic" thing in Potions class, and of course the mention of the card catalog ("Transfiguration on one shelf, Alchemy in the next, Astrology in yet another, with no respect for the card catalog system") made my little librarian heart happy :)

If I had to pick a favorite bit, it would be this:

That was how it had always gone. It was the same whenever people learned something new, when faith met new knowledge. Eventually, if you waited long enough, people would learn to step out of each other's way and into an elegant dance.

Well done!

[ext_1054020]

Thank you so much! I had only just learned about the ghazal form when I signed on for this, but I immediately loved the constraints and was glad to have an excuse to write one for this one. I think there'd be a lot of different sides to this year, one of my favorite off-screen moments to enjoy.

I've worked and/or volunteered in a couple libraries, yep--you just know they don't have their computer system in order, alas! And glad you liked that section, I try for that kind of optimism in RL too. Thanks again for reading and commenting!

I have been waiting for this since I saw the prompt was taken.

[wemyss]

And it was more than worth the wait. Superb.

[ext_1054020]

So glad you think so! I hesitated for a long time before claiming this one because I thought someone else might be better-equipped or more motivated to explore some of the themes, so it's great to hear that that actually worked. Thanks so much for reading, even if this is more "love" and less "labor of" in most places.

[lash_larue]

Absolutely fascinating.

A wonderful take on the climate of the times and how people dealt with things.

One to think on for a good while,
L

[ext_1054020]

Thanks so much! I love exploring this off-screen era.

[anne_arthur]

A beautiful, lyrical, utterly surprising story - I loved it.

[ext_1054020]

Thank you very much! I had fun integrating the poetry with the prose.

[anne_arthur]

I have a friend who writes ghazals, and I have tried it myself (with no great success, sadly) so I enjoyed that bit of it very much.

[mmadfan]

I loved this. Absolutely loved this. And I know this is scarcely a comment, let alone a review. But I loved it. I'll need to come back and reread it and soak in all the bits and pieces that put this fic together.

Really, really wonderful, clever, good characterizations, beautifully constructed.

Thank you.

[mmadfan]

One of the many, many things I loved in this fic:

Michael stepped over to join them, Terry in his wake. “That's not an only way, is it? There can be more than one right answer.”

“People say that,” said Terry, “but then they make too much of it. It's not like-everything's true and we can't know anything, it's just, there can be answers we expect, as well as answers that surprise us.”

[ext_1054020]

Aw, thank you so much! It's great to hear from anyone that enjoyed, much appreciated.

(I'm definitely on Terry's side here--some cliches can be frustrating when blown out of proportion, for me this is one of them.)