Thanks!  And believe me, sweetie, there's LOTS more to come!  Hope you'll stay with us to the end!

Thank you! Yes, that's one of the things about the Fae -- they see themselves as the guardians of Nature, and as such, cruelty to animals or the despoilation of wild lands is deeply morally wrong to them.

Sure, Faeries hunt animals for meat, leather, fur, and bone, and they fight in wars, but they make a point of taking their quarry down as fast and painlessly as possible, and they consider the use of torture to be a punishable war crime. As such, Emily was going to admire Fleur's approach to the First Task the most, as while Fleur took her time about the task at hand and wasn't as showy and action-hero-ish as the other three male champions, she didn't upset her dragon in any way, and did no damage to her eggs. (Em also wouldn't see the point in Transfiguring animals into water glasses or hedgehogs into pincushions either, so luckily she's teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts instead.)

Thanks muchly for the review, and I hope you enjoy the chapters to come!

Oooh, when you put that many exclamation points side by side like that, they look like a little white picket fence.  Cute!

And hyperventilate no more, my darling, a big, long, FAT new chapter is in the queue right NOW!

Ah, regarding the potential sensitivity to iron atoms in human bodily fluids, like blood, male ejaculate, etc., it is actually noted in later chapters that the concentration of iron in such substances isn't sufficient to cause a toxic reaction, (although you aren't going to see Emily or any other Faerie chow down on heavy doses of spinach salad, beefsteak, blood pudding, or take a human's iron supplement pill or multivitamin any time soon, because that would result in a nasty stomachache.) The extreme sensitivity is to iron in forged, metallic form, in which the pure iron atoms are industrially processed, and exponentially more concentrated. But believe me, some very clever scientific types MAY concern themselves with the problem of iron burns sometime soon...but no spoilers! I have to save SOMETHING interesting for Part III!

I actually did consult with a medical student friend as to what color blood would be without red blood cells, and she told me, "Oh, sort of blue I guess," and what with all the "blue-blooded" sort of colloquialisms in British English, it all kind of went from there.

Thanks for the review! I can get a little worried about my "Brit-picking" due to the fact that I'm American, but I'm also a HUGE Anglophile and Hibernaphile as well.

Re: in (not) writing a Mary Sue, I find it helps to allow one's OCs to do things like sweat, bleed, get dirty and cold, have inconvenient bodily functions, dress down in old clothes some of the time, appear in less than perfect hair and makeup sometimes, feel insecure, walk into jokes at their own expense, misjudge others who really aren't as bad as they seem, feel unattractive and disliked, slack off at work now and then, make bad romantic decisions, and just in general act like real live people. That seems to work pretty well for me.

Anyway, lots more to come! Glad to have ya with us!

But Emily loves her veggies ;)   I wondered if you meant exclusively forged iron, and not the more disolvable ions, but most authors don't pay that much attention to science, and it occasionally pains me.  I think, even in that case, she could, theoretically only, eat significant sources of living iron, but eating fortified cereal or vitamins would be a problem because they do contain actual metal iron, in my experience.

I like Emily, a lot.  I wish I could be like her, but then again, I played ice hockey for five years and did martial arts in the year between hockey and going away to college, so I highly enjoy hitting things and can do so well enough to make myself happy.  That, and I don't do make-up (long-lasting Bell's Palsy means I can't control my eye well enough to put anything near it without accidently poking myself), or hair so much.  

As far as Brit-picking, I know a lot of the basic slang, but I tend to miss the "ae" and "oe" where Americans use onlyone of the given consonants. 

I'm reading through more chapters now, and I usually try to not review too early, but that one surprised me.  Thank goodness you'd thought it through, and had a real explanation to give!

Being at least partially torn apart quite literally indeed, and I didn't want to downplay that post-traumatic stress that hate crime victims suffer, either.  It wouldn't have been one bit emotionally honest for Em to just shrug off an attack that on its face appears to be a very much motivated by the fact that she's of another supernatural "race."

(I simply cannot WAIT until you see chapters 25 and 26, though... Oooooooooooooooh!)

I cannot wait too.  I'm on vacation, and I am reading the one you have in queue bit by bit as I can get online.  I just can't stay away. 

Oh yes, I'm having LOTS of fun writing Lucius as a smooth, silver-tongued bastard who could tell you the sky was down and the ground was up and make you believe it -- but Emily MIGHT break out of his thrall yet...

Cannot WAIT until you see what's coming up in the final chapter of this part! Oooooooh!

Indeedy, our poor heroine's situation is going downhill fast at the moment, and poor Snape's completely clueless as to how to help. And unfortunately both of their days might get worse before they get better... but no spoilers!

I absolutely cannot WAIT until you see what's coming in the end of Part II!! !

I'm looking forward to it too!  I keep checking the queue for it, and I just saw it pop in today!  *joy*

Well, in barest truth I have to acknowledge a debt to Monty Python in that conversation about pranks. Have you ever seen the "Cheese Shop" sketch, where one fellow goes into a cheese shop and asks for ALL these varieties of cheese, and the shop proprietor answers "No" after each one? That was the inspiration for "Frog Spawn Soap?" "No." "Belch Powder?" "No." (I could just imagine poor old Snapey's mounting rage as this little pointy-eared blonde git innocently disavows all knowledge of the devices that have made his life miserable for years on end. I'd probably want to strangle her myself in his position there.)

Plus, I JUST saw the OotP movie less than 24 hours ago, and after seeing Jason Isaacs as Lucius onscreen, I was entirely reminded as to why he could make Emily spontaneously lubricate go weak in the knees with just a "Hello, how are you, dear?" WHEEEEW! I might have to go see that flick again this week!

Thank you!

And the funniest part is, Emily never means for that remark to be a double entendre... she genuinely means it, but realizes a beat after the words leave her just HOW ridiculously ironic they are... and wishes she could desperately UN-say them, but can't.

Anyway, glad to have you with us!

I have been accused of being something of a suspense junkie who loves cliffhangers... and well, there's some truth to that assessment.

Thanks for all the reviews!

Ah, but will Severus actually tell her anything...? Therein lies the question...

And yes, Emily does have that tendency to put all of her energies into protecting other people and kind of forget about protecting herself, doesn't she? Believe me, this may be important later...

Anyway, glad to have you along and thanks for the review! The next chapter will be up soon -- and it's an especially sizzling one...!!!

I simply cannot WAIT until you see what happens in the second part of this chapter, and the next one...

Yes, that durn Faery custom of extreme respect for personal privacy kept Emily from questioning Liria about the whys and wherefores of her former "profession" -- all Em cared about was getting Liria well OUT of that job, safely into hospital, and seeing her made healthy again. As such, any descriptions of Liria's "clients" went back to the Faerielands with her, and it's entirely probable that Lucius never gave Liria his real name any more than she gave him hers.

And yes, Buckminster Swain initially thought that Tom might be a reasonable guy at heart... !!! I got the idea for that particular plot twist from the short-lived British pacification movement of the 1930's, in which a few British patriots imagined that perhaps working peaceably to affect a compromise with Adolph Hitler might prevent a German invasion of England (which worked out about as badly as you might expect.)

There will DEFINITELY be more on that later... stay tuned!!

No, it's Fae custom to give someone a friendly nickname as a social cue that you'd like to get to know them better.  Because of the way their magic works, it's very polite to give someone else "a new name," as it were.

And Snape might have more of an affinity for Fae magic than he himself realizes yet -- all I can say is, Stay Tuned! 

In my version of things, Em is far from Lucius's first extramarital entertainment, so Narcissa turns a wilfully blind eye to her husband's frequent absences...MOST of the time.

Also, Snape's physical resemblance to Em's late husband IS pretty superficial, other than the same dark-hair-eyes/pale skin coloring. Emily hasn't quite picked up on the fact that she has a type just yet -- as with most people, her romantic preferences are so innate that she isn't entirely aware that they fall into a pattern.

Plus, Dorien was a Faerie and Snape's human, to begin with, and Dorien didn't wear black all the time, and his speaking voice was more tenor than baritone. Plus Dorien was a world-class archer, liked to dance, and was quite a good singer, unlike Snape.

And no, there won't be any interaction with Emily's half-family. They don't like her and she doesn't like them, so she stays as far away from them as possible.

Yes, that situation puts her in a rather interesting position, doesn't it? But she promised Snape that she wouldn't breathe a word of his activities in opposing Voldemort to ANYONE, and she certainly doesn't want anyone to know about her little fling with Malfoy, especially Snape.

This MAY lead to some interesting developments later, but no spoilers!

Don't worry -- we'll be returning to the "present-day" timeline in the very next chapter. As for Emily's affair with the ever-so-perfect pureblooded git... all I can say is that it's going to be a WILD ride, starting with the very first chapter. I can't wait 'til you see what's coming next!

Believe me, sweetie, both LM and SS are just getting STARTED...can't wait till you see what's coming up next!

god i cant wait.... are we gonna get some LM/SS/ES action?! *begs!!!*

Well, as far as menage a trois-threesome-type action: No. While Luce might be amenable to that sort of thing if you get him drunk enough, Snape wouldn't go for that in ten million years, especially if he was at all emotionally attached to the woman in question. KEC!Snape is very much a "You're mine and I'm NOT sharing" kind of guy.

However, that's not to say that there won't be some SERIOUS LM/ES/SS pyrotechnics of the dramatic variety coming up, because this fic is very much a LM/ES/SS love triangle. Lucius may be winning right now, but all I can say is...STAY TUNED!