#I’d be so devastated if it’s just ‘oh evil actually. just ignore 90% of the things she did this season’

[diocletianscabbagefarm]

Wait, no, this Kalina thing is driving me slightly insane I feel like I need to write it out rather than do shower-thought-analysis.

- Kalina was pretty adversarial with Kristen at the start over what their plans should be, but that seems pretty understandable considering A) they were literally fighting to the death the year before when she was the NMK’s familiar B) her goddess existence - and by extension her own - was super precarious (or “instantly killable” as she put it) with only two followers, with the cleric kinda dropping the ball on their responsibility to spread Cassandra’s worship. Cassandra was noticeably anxious about straight-up dying, and Kalina was forceful on her behalf in advancing the argument since Cassandra was afraid and hesitant to be pushy about it C) Her character trait is being a petty bitch like that and honestly good for her; maybe she was even trying to be Cassandra’s favorite over Kristen but that’s just inside politics.

- Kalina advocated going to the mall, which is where the attacks took place and that can be construed as suspicious or purposeful, as the Bad Kids concluded later in the season. However it could also just be a story excuse for Brennan to get them at the mall to use the battlemap, and there are some alleviating factors; before the attack Kalina went to Adaine at the strudel bar to ask her if she could get Kristen to come (if she orchestrated the attack it would’ve been better to keep a high level cleric absent), and as Cassandra was initially affected by the shatterstars she again told her to get Kristen there asap. During the attack Brennan described multiple times through insight checks that Kalina was horrified, stressed and panicked.

- She threw herself in the path of a shatterstar headed for Cassandra (bloodily piercing through her paws to halt it), and even then first rushed to heimlich the shrimp out of Cassandra’s throat before the rage effect took hold (her eyes go red) and she says she liked Cassandra more when she was the NMK and slits her throat. Before being affected by the shatterstar she also quickly shouts out Ragh’s name as a hint to the Bad Kids to help them solve the mystery.

- Aelwyn said Kalina had come to her to modify the spy’s tongue curse so that it’d work on herself (being a non-humanoid) at some point near the end of freshman year (so before the Bad Kids destroyed her in Sophomore), so working together with Porter seems to have been an old plot from back when she was the NMK’s familiar rather than a recent thing. Aelwyn also mentioned she seemed rather pissed about needing it, and of course she mentioned Ragh’s name already to try and lead the Bad Kids down a trail of questions that’d end up pointing them to Porter (how did Ragh become able to see Kalina -> barbarian healing)

- In Baron’s Game she manages to push through the rage to repeat Ragh’s name again, and then when Cassandra offers her a moment of clarity she clarifies the hint (“it’s the only name I can say”) and < SNAPS! HER OWN! NECK! < in order to not be a threat to the Bad Kids anymore, like how hardcore do you want your sacrifice to help the heroes be because even if you can be brought back, that one is pretty hardcore.

- The Bad Kids discover some medicine in Porter’s desk to help with cat allergies. Could be recent, but could also be old from when they worked together in the past. This seems to be what leads the Bad Kids to conclude Kalina is still evil, but I can also construe it as Brennan trying to offer confirmation they correctly identified the link between Kalina and Porter.

Like, with all this I find it kinda hard to square Kalina was being evil and working against Cassandra; her actions at the start of the season speak more of protectiveness and anxiety, and after being shatterstarred she used every opportunity available to help the Bad Kids crack the mystery, why would the final reveal be she was actually still a villain - why actively sabotage herself, without any payoff? I can understand her to be bad if all she did was trick Cassandra into going to the mall in the astral, and that was the end of her role in the season, but she did so, so much afterwards to help the Bad Kids. To me this speaks at most of her having been a participant in the past, prior to being reconstituted, unless I am missing something major.

The logical followthrough for a Senior Year season - if it were to happen - would be to run with the thread that accusing her of being evil was a hasty judgement, and that because Ankarna was all to happy to smite her wife’s cat she never liked (even at the end Cassandra meekly protested, but was overruled by everybody), Kalina knew to make herself scarce. Great story potential, with the reason for the Kalina-Buddy teamup being that though wrongfully accused she was now on the run and grabbed the nearest ally to hand. Being able to be summoned by Bakarath could indicate Kalina was forcibly disowned from Cassandra as her familiar, and if I were a familiar unceremoniously dumped like that because someone else said you’re bad, I too would probably become the champion of a tiny god of rage because I’d sure be a teensy upset about it. Imagine the potential emotional payoff and catharsis to resolving such a false accusation during the story, Brennan doing one of his monologue things, and proving the faith Cassandra seems to have in her familiar correct despite everyone else insisting otherwise. I really really really hope that’s the direction they take it, rather than doubling down she was bad the whole time (fully ignoring the ways her help was integral to sabotaging the plot) and randomly slaughtering her in a Night Yorb treatment.

[milliebeeweasel]

Draco Sinister: Still a Better Time Travel Story than The Cursed Child

A while ago, I read Draco Dormiens, the fanfic famous for propelling Cassie Claire into BNF-dom, and for being a terrifying Frankenstein’s monster of plagiarism.  My masochistic streak kicked in again, and I decided to try the sequel, Draco Sinister: a tale of dumb love triangles, Shakespearean Wormtail and ignoring Voldemort for 900 pages.

The fic starts when Draco wakes from a nightmare, and struggles to decide who to tell about it, before settling on writing to Hermione … in exactly the same way as Harry wakes up from a nightmare at the start of Goblet of Fire and writes to Sirius.  Yeah.  The plagiarism starts that early.

Harry and Draco are spending the summer at an unnamed Magid school (and yes, it remains unnamed for the whole fic), where Fleur Delacour is also a student/Magid.  Weird Canon Divergence #1: Fleur here is not described as having veela heritage.  She is a veela.  Because Cassie Claire only skimmed the Harry Potter books .  Also Lupin teaches at this school, because the whole drama about him being unveiled as a werewolf apparently didn’t matter in Cassie’s world.

Anyhoo, Draco got this fancy sword at the end of Draco Dormiens during the epic bitchfight with Lucius.  It’s all green and sparkly, and totes belonged to Salazar Slytherin (because if Godric Gryffindor got a sword, Slytherin did too, apparently). But Harry’s hella suspicious of it and convinces Draco to let Lupin take the sword and make sure it’s not, like, cursed as all get out.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at the Burrow, Hermione’s chilling with Ron and Ginny when she gets Draco’s letter.  She merrily writes back to him and Harry, before receiving another letter from Victor Krum.

Because the love triangle in Draco Dormiens wasn’t infuriating enough. Now we need to toss Krum in the mix.

She agrees to meet Krum in Diagon Alley.  Yeah. I’m sure this’ll shake out fine.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Magid school, Draco wakes up in the night again, this time because a demon has broken into his and Harry’s dormitory looking for the sword.

Weird Canon Divergence #2: despite JKR’s efforts to keep the afterlife vague and mysterious, Cassie whacks a Christian Hell into Draco Sinister a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, complete with fire and brimstone.  O … OK?

Harry and Draco banter with the demon for a while, but since Lupin currently has the sword they can’t exactly hand it over (and Draco doesn’t want to because, you know, Draco Malfoy). Eventually the demon decides fuck it, and tells Draco to keep the damn sword because it’s cursed as all get out anyway, and promptly disappears.  Lupin works out the sword is a Living Blade, meaning it has a mind of its own and that mind is kitten-murdering  evil, and Harry’s like, ‘Mate I told you that sword was cursed as all get out,’ and Draco’s like, ‘Shut up I still want it.’

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Diagon Alley, Hermione promptly loses both Ron and Ginny and talks to Victor Krum alone.  Because of course.  When she comes back, she says screw Harry, she’s madly in love with Krum now and is going to run away with him to Bulgaria.

Well that didn’t take long.

Back at Magid school, Harry receives a letter from Hermione informing him of her newest true love, at which he has a full on meltdown, smashing everything in the vicinity with his Magid powers until Draco yells, ‘Oh hell nah, we did not go through all this love triangle bullshit for Hermione to run off with Krum, something is up,’ and slaps some sense into Harry, a scene which essentially ends in Lupin running in screaming, ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MOTHERFUCKERS?’

And I wish that was the last My Immortal comparison I’d find in this fic.

They get Fleur Delacour to seduce Lupin out of his office (I threw up in my mouth a little), before breaking in so Draco can nab his cursed sword back. Lupin’s locked it in an unbreakable case, but Draco deliberately pisses Harry off until his Magid rage comes back and smashes the case open.  This is the first of several times they use enraged Harry to break shit, a trope I will henceforth refer to as Incredible Hulk Harry.

Harry and Draco team up with Ron and Ginny, and march up to Krum’s hotel room in London.  But Krum’s like, ‘Oh, Hermy-ninny?  I haffn’t seen her, but then I don’t remember literally any of yesterday except someone yelling “Imperio” at me.’

Luckily for the gang, Draco gave Hermione his epicyclical charm—that ugly ass necklace Lucius had in Draco Dormiens that contained Draco’s life force or whatever.  So Draco can use that like a homing beacon to find Hermione.  Also Harry has another mini meltdown because he’s so glad Hermione does love him after all

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away Hermione wakes up locked in a tower.  Wormtail walks in and she’s like, ‘Aha, I should’ve known this was Voldemort’s doing!’ but Wormtail goes, ‘Nah, I got a bitchin’ new master now, check it out,’ and in walks motherfucking Salazar Slytherin.

Hermione understandably freaks the fuck out, not least because apparently Slytherin thought it’d be fashionable to get the Dark Mark tattooed on BOTH HIS CHEEKS.  Yeah.  Like Star Butterfly’s lil’ hearts.

He tells Hermione the Dark Mark was actually totes his idea, and Voldemort’s basically just a DeviantArt thief. Then he shows Hermione a tapestry of the Hogwarts founders, who look suspiciously like Hermione (Ravenclaw), Harry (Gryffindor), Ginny (Hufflepuff) and Draco (Slytherin).

The fic continues to spiral wildly into insanity as Slytherin announces Hermione is the Heir of Rowena Ravenclaw, who he was in love with until she ditched him for Gryffindor. But that’s OK because Slytherin has a handy dandy love potion to force Hermione to love him 5ever!  Wormtail blindfolds Hermione and makes her chug the potion, and says she will fall in love with the first person she sees once the potion kicks in.  Like a baby duck!

Side note: why does everyone, including the villains, want to sleep with Hermione?

So at this point I’m side-eyeing the fic furiously, because I can sense incoming love triangles like cats can sense earthquakes.  Cast your bets who she falls in love with.  (No, it’s not Wormtail.)

Halfway to Hermione (a great band name), Harry and co. are attached by dementors.  Draco falls off his broom and breaks his leg, so while Ron and Ginny look for help, Harry teaches Draco the patronus charm.

Draco’s patronus is a dragon. Because of course it is.

Ron and Ginny happen to find Charlie Weasley, who happens to be in England and not Romania and happens to have a hoard of dragons with him and happens to have plenty of healers to fix Draco’s leg.  Of course! He patches them up, shows them his dragons (not a euphemism) and lets them nance on to save Hermione.

Except Ginny.

Ginny’s not allowed to go.

Weird Canon Divergence #3: Ginny’s characterisation.  Hindsight is 20/20 when you’ve read Order of the Phoenix, and I know the Draco Trilogy started before that.  But still, reading Ginny Weasley, the quidditch champion, queen of bat bogey hexes, tomboy badass as a ‘girl’s girl more interested in boys and make up’ /stroppy teenager from hell is just … wrong.  She acts, and is treated, much younger than the other characters, despite the pretty minimal age gap.  I had 15 year-old friends when I was 16.  The maturity level was not that different.

ANYWAY.  Harry, Ron and Draco march up to this old castle in the woods, but it’s all locked up and guarded, so Draco’s like, ‘Well everyone pretty much still thinks I’m a Death Eater anyway, so why don’t I go in and let you in after?’  And Harry says, ‘Good idea,’ and Ron says, ‘Actually I’m also still 90% convinced you’re a Death Eater,’ but Draco goes in regardless.

He runs into a bunch of veelas, who fawn hilariously over him and reveal Weird Canon Divergence #4: veelas in the Draco Trilogy are straight-up bonafide dark creatures, who seduce men and then fucking eat them.  Like a praying mantis.

Why not?

The veela tell Draco he’s defo got some veela heritage in him, before waltzing off, presumably to seduce and eat some men who aren’t related to them.  Draco decides fuck Harry and Ron, and goes off to rescue Hermione on his own.

Hermione, also currently trying to escape, has a moment of mind-numbing stupidity and takes her blindfold off—and of course, sees Draco Malfoy.

It could’ve been Wormtail, Hermione.

He was in that castle.

WHY WOULD YOU TAKE THE BLINDFOLD OFF?

Hermione’s nearly as devastated as I am to discover the plot triangle Cassie killed at the end of Draco Dormiens has risen from its grave, and begs Draco not to tell Harry about the love potion.  Because, you know, honesty isn’t that important in a relationship.

Weird Canon Divergence #4: love potions are illegal in the Draco Trilogy.  I actually approve of this, because it’s always kind of boggled my mind how literal mind-control date rape drugs are A-OK in JKR’s world.  Good job, Cassie, I guess?

Draco and Hermione leg it out the castle, but Slytherin blocks their way.  He’s surprisingly chill, though, considering his whole love potion plan is now utterly fucked—he essentially pats Draco on the head and says, ‘Go get ‘em champ,’ before letting them out the door.

Suspicious as hell, but whatever.

Hermione sees Harry outside and flies into his arms, because apparently the love potion hasn’t cancelled out her love for Harry.  Because otherwise the love triangle couldn’t continue!  Then they all toddle back to Charlie’s dragon camp, and THEN.

Draco.

In leather pants.

YES IT HAPPENS.

(For those who don’t know, Draco in Leather Pants is a trope coined specifically from this fic, referring to bad boy characters who are really good at heart, but struggling with an inner turmoil because they might be kinda evil.  Like Spike from Buffy. Except Spike was well written.)

Anyway, Ginny sees Draco in leather pants, and her ovaries basically leap into her throat and throttle her.  She tells Hermione she fancies Draco now, and not ten minutes later she catches Hermione and Draco snogging the shit out of each other.  Because love triangles.  Painful, painful love triangles.

Ginny’s mad as hell, but for some reason also agrees not to tell Harry about the love potion, and they all jet back to Malfoy Manor, aka Sirius and Narcissa’s house.  Because yes, in case you forgot, Sirius/Narcissa is a thing in this fic.  And they are engaged.  Making Harry and Draco soon to be brothers.  Sort of.

Hermione hits the books looking for love potion cures and they send a letter to Snape asking for help, figuring Snape will at least help Draco if not the rest of them.  Meanwhile, Draco visits Daddy Dearest in prison, who tells him being good is dumb, Malfoys are always evil, and Draco is destined to murder the shit out of Harry and become either Slytherin or Voldemort’s minion. Then, shortly after Draco leaves, Lucius summons demons in his cell and accidentally blows himself the fuck up.

Good job, Lucius.

All the love potion research comes up nil, and they find the only way to end it is for either Draco or Hermione to die.  Then Harry finds out about the love potion after all and has another Incredible Hulk meltdown.

Draco, who by now is living through Draco Malfoy and the Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad, No Good Day, takes the epicyclical charm/ugly ass necklace off Hermione, kisses her, probably insults her, and shoots away on his Firebolt. Not his Nimbus 2001, because apparently Cassie forgot what broom Draco has.

I won’t lie, a good chunk of the middle of this fic is a blur, but it involves:

Sirius and Lupin having 10x the chemistry of Sirius and Narcissa

Slytherin’s Evil McNasty sword trying to make Draco kill Harry, and also refusing to be thrown away like goddamn Three Wolf Moon

Ginny exploring a quarry underneath the Burrow and finding Fred and George’s porn stash

Draco getting a will-strengthening potion off Snape so he can fight the temptation to murder Harry, and discovering Snape’s heart-print pyjamas and beautiful singing voice

Draco making out with Fleur, because why not?

Sirius, Lupin and Snape going to St Mungo’s because a ~mysterious dark wizard~ killed Cornelius Fudge and put Dumbledore in a coma

Neville giving Draco a concussion

Harry and Hermione doing lots of kissing and not much else

An illustration of Snape and Malfoy in which Snape has a fucking evil goatee

Arthur fucking Weasley is announced as the new Minister of Magic

Draco appearing at the Burrow to apologise for being a dickweasel to Ginny, and then making out with her as well

Harry appears outside the Burrow to try and talk sense into Draco, but Draco’s will strengthening potion runs out and he stabs Harry in the chest.  Luckily, Harry isn’t really Harry, but a magic projection thing, and the real Harry is chilling in bed back at Malfoy Manor courtesy of some spell I can’t remember well enough to explain.

Regardless, Wormtail chooses this moment to pop up and … Christ on a bike, Wormtail is without doubt the single worst written character in this entire godforsaken fanfic.

See what I mean?  It sounds NOTHING LIKE Wormtail.  Although I’ve never seen that dialogue before, my suspicion is it’s nicked from something else.  When I said I read Draco Dormiens with constant paranoia, this is what I meant.  Some dialogue’s out of character, or the style changes for a few paragraphs, and the alarm bells just won’t stop ringing.

Wormtail demands Draco come and work for Slytherin, and Draco refuses, so Wormtail reveals his shiny new arm-sword and they have a scrap, until Wormtail pushes Draco in the river and drowns him.

Wormtail vanishes, and Draco gets to have a fun time in Purgatory nattering with Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and also Harry’s parents, while Ron and Ginny drag Draco out the river. Harry makes Ron perform mouth-to-mouth on Draco because boys kissing is hil-arious!

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Malfoy Manor, Hermione knows instantly that Draco’s died because she feels the love potion break.  She panics and runs for Sirius, but finds him a wee bit occupied with Lupin, who’s turned into a werewolf because Slytherin is Calling all the dark creatures to come join him.  Luckily, Hermione found this funky silver necklace, which turns out to be a lycanthe, which repels werewolves, and also does whatever other plot-helpful Cassie needs for a given chapter.

They lock up Lupin safely, and also manage to lock up the demon that attacked Draco right at the beginning of the fic in the cell right next to him.  So you know.  He’ll have a friend.

Harry wakes up and tells Hermione to chill, because Draco is alive thanks to Ron’s CPR, and they zip to the Burrow together to celebrate with Jesus!Draco. Then we get Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #1: Ron offering to teach Draco to play chess.  D’aww.

We get some flashbacks via Draco and Hermione’s dreams, and learn that Slytherin got all his power from Hell, and also his bitchin’ ass sword, which he was meant to give back but has somehow wangled his way out of it until now (thus the pissed-off demon in the Malfoy Manor basement).  Also he created werewolves, veelas, basilisks and a shit tonne of other dark creatures, which he refers to as ‘experiments’ like a mad scientist.  Hermione reads a bunch of books about Slytherin and tries to tell Harry and Ron about this magic orb Slytherin has that either unleashes all his powers or kills him or probably both, but they’re like, ‘Yawn, boring,’ because of course they wouldn’t be interested in information about the villain they are supposed to be fighting against in this fic GDI.

Anywhoo, the group all chill out until Salazar Slytherin kicks in the door, like ‘GRANDMA, IT’S ME, ANASTASIA’ and kidnaps Harry and Draco, leaving the others behind because meh.

At this point, I’d like to take a brief break from the plot to address a question I kept asking myself throughout the entire fic:

What the fuck is Voldemort doing all this time?

He’s nowhere.  Wormtail makes vague assertions he might be dead, but Slytherin later says he’s alive. Voldemort’s return in canon is the turning point of Harry Potter.  It changes everything.  Hogwarts isn’t safe anymore.  The children have to grow up.  Characters die.  But in the Draco Sinister, Voldemort’s fobbed off like he’s unimportant or uninteresting.  Characters keep crying ‘Slytherin is far worse than Voldemort!’, which might make sense if Cassie had killed off Voldemort in Draco Dormiens, and needed a bigger, badder villain for the sequel.  But she didn’t.  Voldemort is still out there.  Twiddling his thumbs.  Knitting jumpers for Nagini ,for all we know.

OK.  OK, back to the fic.

So, Narcissa has a natter with the demon in the basement, who reveals that yep, the demons want the sword back from Slytherin, but Slytherin has to return it by his own hand. Otherwise, the demons will have to take a descendant of Slytherin blood has repayment.  Handily, it turns out Harry and Draco both have Slytherin heritage, so now Slytherin has a choice. Good for him.

Hermione’s lycanthe activates GPS mode, and takes them into the quarry underneath the Burrow, where Ginny says she had another older brother who drowned.  Seems like a weird, shoe-horned in detail now, and that’s because it kind of is.  After some puzzles, they discover a time turner that used to belong to Hufflepuff. Since Ginny is the reincarnation of Hufflepuff or whatever, she gets the time turner.

You may be wondering why the boys get swords and the girls get necklaces.  And I’m sure Cassie Claire has a good explanation for that.

But I don’t.

So, Harry and Draco wake up locked in a big adamantine cell.  Adamantine is basically Cassie’s Magid kryptonite, meaning they’re basically stuffed. They argue for a bit about whether Draco is gay, ending in Draco giving Harry hair care tips because this fic is weird, and then for the lols, Draco decides to teach Harry how to fence.

Now, I’m not an expert on sword fighting.  I know a bit.  But one thing I know for sure?

You cannot fence with swords made in the Dark Ages.

Fencing foils are lightweight, thin and poky, made for stabbing your enemy so full of holes he bleeds to death. Swords in the Dark Ages were whacking great bludgeons with sharp edges, made for separating limbs from bodies. They were heavy bastards; they were not made for lunging and poking and riposte-ing.

You cannot fence.  With a sodding broadsword.

While Harry and Draco are having their ridiculous and physically impossible sword fight, the cell door opens and Fleur Delacour walks in like, ‘I’m here to rescue you, bitches!’  Harry doesn’t trust her because she’s ‘boy crazy’ (a trait of every female character in this fic, so hardly a reason for distrust) but regardless they follow her outside.

She leads them through the famously plagiarised nightmare grass scene, and then underground to a locked door. Draco gets Harry to Incredible Hulk the door open by informing him his dead parents are stuck in Purgatory, after which Fleur betrays them and leaves them to get eaten by a manticore.

Harry and Draco kill the manticore, getting Harry utterly soaked in manticore blood in the process.  Like, ‘took a bath in blood’ kind of soaked. Slytherin shows up, and in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #2, Harry yells, ‘We killed your monster and we’re not sorry!’ and Slytherin says, ‘Well, duh, that’s what I wanted you to do.’

Slytherin sends Harry back to the dungeons but keeps Draco to be his evil minion, then hacks open the manticore and pulls his magic orb out of its stomach (um … you might wanna wash that off, bud).  But now he needs all the Hogwarts founders’ Heirs to touch the orb so he can get his power back.  Or die? The fic never seemed decided on whether opening the orb was a good thing or a bad thing.  Both sides seemed to want it to happen, and also to not happen.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Ron, Hermione and Ginny use the time turner to go to the Dark Ages, during the original war with Slytherin.  They meet wee Ben Gryffindor, Godric’s twelve-year-old son, and Rowena Ravenclaw, who is dying.  Rowena initially refuses to speak to Ron because he’s not an Heir, at which point I started screeching incomprehensibly, because that’s not how heirs work.  If anything, Bill should be Hufflepuff’s heir.  Definitely not Ginny, the youngest sibling.

But no, Heir is Cassie Claire’s dumb way of saying “reincarnation”, and eventually Ravenclaw lets Ron in anyway and tells him that, as a seventh son, he’s totes psychic.

If you just counted the Weasley brothers on your fingers, don’t worry, I did the same.  I also got to six, got annoyed, and then remembered that extra brother Cassie shoehorned in who drowned.  I guess you got me, Cassie.  Bravo.

Wee Ben Gryffindor takes the gang to Slytherin’s castle, and lets them in the adamantine cell.  Ginny uses the time turner to take them back to the future …

… Where Slytherin is having a whale of a time psychologically torturing Draco.  He has his own Mirror of Erised dealie, which shows you ‘who you truly are’.  Draco sees his whole ancestral line of unapologetic dickfucks and realises he can never be truly Good™.  Slytherin also gives Draco the Dark Mark, because FASHION, then sticks him in a room with Fleur Delacour and tells them to get it on, because apparently he invented veela for the sole purpose of procreation and I just threw up in my mouth again.

Draco and Fleur do not get it on. Draco does what any sensible person would do in this situation: orders cocktails and gets thoroughly shitfaced.

See the thing is, Draco’s whole tortured evil/good dilemma would be a lot more compelling in this fic if he actually had to overcome something besides teenage angst bullshit. The fic separates everything into pure Good and Evil, states that Harry and Hermione are just naturally good, and the Malfoy family are just naturally bad, and that’s it. But that’s not how morality works.  

Real people have good traits and bad traits, and in fiction, overcoming those bad traits is how redemption arcs happen.  For Draco’s redemption to be rewarding, we need to see him overcome a character flaw. But he doesn’t.  He just Decides To Be Good.

SIGH.

So Hermione, Ginny and Ron pop into the future, and find Harry sitting in the adamantine cell alone. And Harry’s like, ‘I guess Draco’s evil now?’ and they’re like, ‘I doubt it, this fic is literally named after him,’ but then the door opens and Hermione, Ron and Ginny all have to huddle under the invisibility cloak.

Draco comes in with Slytherin, gloats evilly for a bit, cuts Harry’s arm probably by accident, and nances off again.  Ron and Hermione run out to free Harry, and realise Ginny’s missing because she ran after Draco.

Oh.  BOY.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Sirius gets a will-strengthening potion off Snape to cure his lover Lupin’s permanent-werewolf-ness, then they visit Godric’s Hollow to get Harry a magic scabbard that also used to belong to Godric Gryffindor.  Happy Christmas, Harry.  No more chopping your belt off every time you try to sheathe your sword.

(And yes, swords do basically replace wands in this fic.  Magids can do wandless magic anyway.  IDK. Cassie Claire just really hates wands, apparently.)

Sirius and Lupin break into Slytherin’s castle with a scene ripped from Buffy, and are swiftly separated as Lupin is shut in with the other werewolves, and Sirius, claiming to be a vampire, is dragged off to meet the new general of Slytherin’s armies.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Draco, still pissed as a parrot, is chilling in his room when Ginny marches in.  Then, in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #3, Ginny proceeds to rip the sweet shit out of Draco Malfoy’s emo ass, because if he wants to be Good™, he can start by being less of a pussy and fixing his shit.

Draco kisses Ginny, and the whole thing is thoroughly ruined when Fleur reminds them she’s still in the room. Ginny assumes Draco is sleeping with Fleur (and pretty much anything on two legs); Draco does nothing to help this assumption; and Ginny magically sobers him up as revenge.

At this point, Draco’s called away to deal with some other shit, so Ginny talks to Fleur and finds out she’s not evil either, she’s just protecting her sister, blah blah blah. Fleur also gabbles more about how SUPER SCARY Slytherin is, like he made a whole army disappear once, and he can control his minion’s minds, and Ginny’s like ‘OK cool bye’ and uses her time turner to GTFO.

The other shit Draco has to deal with turns out to be Sirius, because Draco is apparently now head of Slytherin’s armies.  For convoluted reasons, Draco has Sirius locked in the dungeon.  For his own protection.  Or something.

Then Draco runs off to rescue Harry with Hermione and Ron, but Slytherin catches them.  He locks up Draco with Harry in the adamantine cell, and sends Hermione and Ron to the dungeons with Sirius.  Lucky for them, Sirius has his magic pencils, which they get to work using to draw a door back to the adamantine cell.  (Ron can draw in this fic.  Ron the Psychic Artist, still better than Ron the Death Eater.)

In the adamantine cell, Slytherin makes Draco run Harry through with his sword, but it’s OK because manticore blood apparently makes you temporarily immortal, and Harry got drenched in it.  Cassie actually points out that this is in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is great and all, but good writing would have still involved actually foreshadowing that shit in the fanfic.  Then bunch of demons pop up to explain the whole contract with Hell Slytherin’s got going on, and to remind them they really, really need to get Slytherin to give that sword back by his own hand, or Hell will take one of them instead.  Just to remind you.  No pressure.  The demons vanish as Hermione, Sirius and Ron get inside the room.

This is another part of the fic that I don’t 100% remember because there’s a lot of Scooby Doo style running about and getting separated and getting unseparated again, but it includes Sirius running to save his one true love Lupin and finding Fleur as well, Harry and Hermione winding up in an underground cavern with a bunch of merveela (yes, mermaid-veela) and Draco and Ron getting chased by dementors.

In the distant past, Ginny meets grown-up Ben Gryffindor, and convinces him to let her pinch his army and send them to the future.  It turns out Slytherin didn’t make the army disappear—Ginny did.

So Cassie Claire understands how time turners work better than the people who wrote Cursed Child.  Go figure.

Ginny pops into the future with her army, and in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #4, rides in on a FUCKING DRAGON to rescue Ron and Draco from the dementors.

Sirius gets Lupin and the other werewolves out safe, who turn out to be … pretty adorable?  They all just want to bake cakes and make bunting. Lupin stops them all going haywire by giving them Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans spiked with his will-strengthening potion, so they basically all wander off and make a drum circle somewhere for the rest of the fic.  I don’t know.

Ron’s injured and thus out for the count, but Ginny and Draco charge back in the castle to rescue Harry and Hermione.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Harry and Hermione find Slytherin’s orb and try to open it, because … ???

Well, the orb doesn’t open because they’re still missing the Hufflepuff and Slytherin Heirs, but Slytherin himself appears and promptly captures Harry and Hermione until Draco and Ginny show up, and also try to open the orb.

That’s all four Heirs, so Slytherin now becomes Super Saiyan Slytherin, laughs maniacally, and mind-controls Draco to toss Harry over to the demons.  Draco has one last moment of pure emo dipshittery, until Harry, Hermione and Ginny collectively yell at him to get his shit together.

Draco chops off Slytherin’s hand, wraps his fingers around the sword, and tosses that at the demons. This would be a clever twist on the whole ‘give it back with his own hand’, except I read Avocado’s exposé and I know it’s stolen.

Oh well.

The demons take the sword, and for good measure also take Slytherin to Hell.  Draco passes the fuck out while the castle collapses like Ganondorf’s dungeon at the end of Ocarina of Time, but they all escape ready to live happily ever after.

At this point, I looked warily at the word count.

Draco Dormiens wasted half a fic on sodding love triangles long after the plot was over.  Draco Sinister is way longer, and I was honestly dreading slogging through the miles of shipping at the end of this fic.

But actually, Cassie was merciful. The end of the fic is one chapter, featuring Harry’s birthday, for which Sirius basically throws together a freaking Gatsby Party.  I guess he realised he had access to the Malfoy vault all of a sudden.  For some reason I cannot fathom, Snape is invited to this party.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t end with him getting shot in the swimming pool.

Harry and Hermione smooch. Ron makes out with a veela … which … not a great idea, considering they’re still literal man-eaters, but whatever I guess.  Draco and Ginny do some romance, but it’s interrupted.

By Enoby Raven Dark’ness Dementia Way.

I’m not kidding.

Well I kind of am.

But not really.

She’s pale, and black-haired, and wearing a corset, and she introduces herself as Draco’s cousin, Rhysenn Malfoy.  And immediately invites him to stick his hand down her top.

She gives Draco Lucius’s signet ring, and also a message from Lucius, which essentially reads, ‘Not dead, ur lame.  Thnx 4 killing slytherin tho, voldy sends love and kisses.’

Because apparently Voldemort has finished knitting Nagini’s sodding jumper.

Draco runs into Dumbledore, now recovered from his coma, who tells him not to worry about Voldemort, because that’s Harry’s job.  He also says Draco did a good job resisting Slytherin’s mind-control because of love. I suspect Dumbledore whips this explanation out for anything he doesn’t know the answer to.  What happened to Amelia Earhart?  Love.  What’s with the Bermuda Triangle?  Love. What’s the answer to life, the universe and everything?  IDK, probably love.  Or 42.

Dumbledore also says Slytherin lied about that magic mirror—it actually shows your greatest fears, not your true self.  So Draco totes has every chance to be Good™ after all.

Draco heads back to the party, and he and Harry agree to be frenemies next year, and … that’s the end of the fic.

 --

 When I read Draco Dormiens, I couldn’t understand how Cassie Claire became a BNF.  Draco Dormiens was bad.  Bad characters, bad plot, bad writing, bad, bad, bad.

The first half of Draco Sinister is bad.  Dredging the Harry/Hermione/Draco love triangle back up with a love potion is dumb.  Voldemort just pissing off doing nothing for the whole fic is dumb.  Every line of dialogue given to Wormtail is dumb.  The dozens upon dozens of lines lifted from Blackadder, Red Dwarf and various other sources, regardless of whether they’re in-character or suit the mood or the scene or the setting, are infuriatingly dumb.

But about halfway through the fic, it’s like Cassie got her act together.

I don’t know if this is because halfway through the fic, Cassie was banned from FFN for plagiarism.  I don’t know—she still uses quotes all the way through, but possibly doesn’t lean so heavily on them.  Maybe it’s because she realised an actual plot was more interesting than constant angst romance.  But for whatever reason, it got better.

And I want to read Draco Veritas now.  Not just to look at a trainwreck, but because I’m kind of invested. But when I do, I will spork the hell out of it.