Fic: Anointing Life's Eyes (Dean, Neville, Seamus) PG-13 (2 of 2)

[wook77]

Title: Anointing Life's Eyes
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Neville, Seamus, Dean
Era/Time-Frame: post-Hogwarts, for the most part.
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~13,900
Summary: Seamus is determined to live the rest of his life as a Muggle farmer and forget the past, but Neville is determined to make him to remember.
Warnings: past character death (

Comments

[secretsolitaire]

Ohh, this was wonderful. *sigh* I found Seamus's struggle believable and moving, and I admired Neville's gentle persistence in encouraging him to confront reality. I liked that Dean was a subtle but constant presence as well, and Finn was ♥.

[wook77]

Oh thank you!!! I'm so glad that you enjoyed this! I had a blast writing this, tbh. It was a bit disappointing that it received so few comments at the fest so I wasn't sure if that was because it sucked or because of the character death warning. You've reassured me that it doesn't suck :D.

Finn is absolute love. Irish wolfhounds are my absolute favorite dog ever and I've always wanted one to name Finn. I love that he plays matchmaker in this one.

Thanks so much for letting me know what you thought! ♥

[libgirl]

OH!

This was glorious. I liked the mystery at the beginning: was Dean there or not? If he was, why didn't we ever see him?

I also liked the slightly ambiguous ending. We don't know what they're going to do about living in separate countries or having separate lives/responsibilities, but we're confident that they can find a way and that they will. Wonderful. :D ~hugs~

Your Seamus voice is stunning and I liked the slow progression of the story--and that you took the time to address what things meant to him and how he would need to change/change them in order to find another way.

Fabulous, as always :D. I don't know how I missed this in the fest, but I'm glad that you've posted it here.

:D

[wook77]

That's exactly what i was going for! I totally wanted that bit of hesitancy and wonder.

The ambiguous end is one of my favorite endings. It's sort of a "choose your own adventure" ending though, in my head, Seamus eventually rejoins the wizarding world.

Seamus is my favorite character from the books. At one point, I rp'd him in four different games though now I'm down to two.

I like to go for realistic and it takes time to get over things and I'm glad that you pointed that out, especially :D.

Thank you thank you thank you! I'm just glad that you enjoyed it!

[kethlenda]

Oh, this is beautiful. The way it takes Seamus a long time to wrestle his grief, and the way Neville is so gentle yet so stubborn, and the way they blame themselves for things that happened in the heat of battle when everyone was just doing what they needed to do in that moment, it's just perfect.

(And I spent a lot of time cursing JKR after I finished the book, for not saying for sure whether certain characters were living or dead. It does give a lot of scope for fic, though...)

[wook77]

Thank you!!!! I had this other story that I'm now tweaking where Seamus copes with grief and an unexpected reunion and I wanted to write a story where there is no reunion. I wanted him to have to just deal with it and find the happiness that is right in front of his face.

I've not seen enough fic dealing with survivor guilt other than about Fred and George so I wanted to play with that a bit as well. It was wicked fun to write this.

And YES!!!! I cursed at her for that same thing. There's that ambiguous "and fifty other people" and so I couldn't resist playing with my favorite three :D

♥

[kethlenda]

I ended up deciding, for the sake of my sanity, that if any other characters important enough to have names and personalities had died, she'd have said something. *crosses fingers* But 50 people...and I can't imagine there were tons of people there in the first place. Ack! But yeah, lots of room to play. You only get these little glimpses of the battle and don't know who won what duel, plus JKR evidently decided that she didn't need to edit her epilogue to include any characters she made up after she wrote the first draft of it umpteen years ago, oh wait, I'm digressing...;)

[oconel]

Lovely fic. You had me half of it with a lump in my throat because Seamus's pain was so raw I could feel it. I'm glad Nev was there to help him and that they both are able to hear Dean in their heads.

Gorgeous.

[wook77]

I'm so glad! That's exactly what I was going for!

*loves*

I've been abusing poor Dean severely lately. I'm a bad bad person, methinks *winks*.

[the_rainbow_jen]

*cries* Oh, but poor Dean! Wasn't Malfoy Manor enough?

Really, a well-written fic that takes a different approach/spin on DH. You totally need to post over to gryffindor_boys SO the rest of theworld can appreciate this.

[wook77]

:( It's never enough. Whenever I "have" to hurt someone, poor Dean is the first to suffer. But you only hurt the ones you love, right?

Thanks so much for your comments! I did pimp this over at gryffindor_boys and I appreciate the heads up!