Gioia’s Rec:
I don’t know exactly why it is that I always cry when I read this story. It’s not a sad story, really. Based during the darkest days of Deathly Hallows it’s not exactly cheerful, though there is definite humor there. And it isn’t that the romance is so overwhelming that it makes me cry, although the relationship between Lee Jordan and Holly (Kirke) Jordan is so real in this short piece, that I actually ran to the hp-lexicon to verify that Holly isn’t a canon character. (Holly’s Scottish Gran is so spectacularly tangible, too, that I’ll swear she’d be walking around Hogsmeade now if she hadn’t been confined to this fic.)
No, I think it’s something about the strong hope in this story that really touches me. If Winston Churchill wrote fanfic, this is what it would look like. St Margaret’s meticulously drafted characters express such perseverance in the face of adversity, such determination under subjugation, that I felt completely inspired and encouraged - as if the war they were fighting was real! The fact that the author sucks her readers in that completely with so little text speaks volumes about her talent.
I’ve never read St Margaret’s novel-length story, Lee Jordan: Tour Guide, from which Holly is taken, so don’t feel that you need to read that in order to appreciate this short story. This story feels far more like an essential, vivid backdrop to Deathly Hallows, which you absolutely will need to read first, than to St Margaret’s other fics.
Antosha’s Rec:
I second everything that Gioia said—even the Winston Churchill comparison, which made me laugh. St. Margaret’s calls herself a Fluff writer, but like any good author, genre really doesn’t come close to describing her work. Fluff they may be—in that they’re almost always romantic, and there’s an unspoken promise that things will end… if not happily, at least well. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t darkness in her fics, and this one provides a perfect example. It’s a memorable missing moment from DH.
I have read Lee Jordan: Tour Guide. It’s one of the best extended minor character/original character fics out there—it flows so seamlessly from OotP (and works pretty well with HBP as well) that like Gioia I found myself reading DH waiting for Holly and her gran to show up in Hogsmeade.
