Dear Grownupron, Assuming you are actually on Chapter 1, I'll let you continue and see if you think he's the same when you get to Chapter 26!  Thanks so much for the review!

It’s very interesting the weight you put on that first betrayal. To me, as a writer who lives in her head, the intellectual “explanation” for the event was sufficient. Lily could have told someone else how to do it, but Sirius, being under the force of the curse, made her take the Vow not to tell anyone else what was going on. Do you hold the first time on par with the second time, even given the mitigating circumstances of the first one?

Yes . . . “soldiers in the same unit.” I was once involved (before, during, and after) with a man who was in the first Gulf war, and I know he said once that when he was in that position, the “extra bullshit” didn’t matter – what mattered was what was down deep. Like someone could be an asshole in “down time” but be totally reliable in a tense situation. Obviously, he was not talking about someone who had slept with his wife.

Yes, I didn’t think it would be even remotely realistic or honest to have James grovel back to Lily. He is not the one who caused the breech. It is entirely incumbent upon her to be open to him, to soften. However (and I’m sure I’ll hear from you again on this one hee hee), he does have to take responsibility for what he has sown in terms of his own refusal to truly open up to Lily about what his life is like right now.

Again, with the man I dated, he didn’t talk about what was going on for him in that situation. In fact, he almost never brought it up. But it changed who he was in fundamental ways, and he was never the “same” after he came back. This is not his fault – I think experiences like that must fundamentally change you or you go insane. However, he had no context from which to explore how and why he had been so strongly impacted.

If he had been a bit more open, if he had been able to talk about what was true for him, I wonder if his life – and our relationship – would have gone differently? I did try – but there was never quite an opening for him. I’ve given James the opening this other man never had, and given him a will to look at it, a desire to try to see how much he is holding inside. Don’t ever say fiction isn’t based somewhat on life.

It would be a relief to just let Voldemort handle the whole bloody thing! Alas, my intent is to cause all this strife and then, somehow, bring it back to where it was prior to the actual events as Rowling wrote them . . . with a few shadows, not in her work, remaining. I’d love to see how the whole arc rests with you along the way as well as at the end. Also, how this posting hits you.

Cheers -

Theresa

This is very long! Hope you’re still with me.

Hello Grownupron,

I could do that but then there would be nothing to write about, eh? I'll keep them on the crazy train for now.

~missgranger2