Title: The Death Wish

Author: TheOcclumenist

Reviewer: just_an_astrophile

Summary: 3/5

Your summary is, for the most part, a decent hook for your story. That's what the summary should be - the part that draws the reader's attention and curiosity in just a few words. However, in attempting to intrigue a reader through suspense and mystery, it is easy to lose some necessary information.

I do think you could give us more backstory about Carina - how old is she? How do the aforementioned 'rules' apply to her and her life? What exactly does she want in this story, and how is she going to get it? Why is her family set against her?

We don't even really get a grasp of the plot. When it comes down to it, one knows only two things: Carina is the sister of Draco Malfoy, and she's having struggles with her family. Why does that construct an engaging and fascinating plot? One has no idea yet.

Now, I recognize that plenty of authors like to tell as little information as possible in the summary in order to weave an aura of mystery around the book - but really, that can turn away some readers, myself included. If I don't have basic knowledge of what I'm reading by the time I'm through the summary, there's a good chance I'm going to walk away from the book.

In general, the summary should establish basic information about the character, the main and/or side conflicts in the story, and the stakes of not resolving the conflict. Like I said, what you have written is interesting, but does it include enough of the above information to be relevant?

I didn't mark you down further because I wasn't totally sure if you wanted to leave information out for the sake of intrigue. In that case, your summary is purposefully written, and that tactic is merely not preferable. It's also a fanfiction, which means some basic knowledge is already provided to the reader from the original series. Therefore, I leave my score as is.

Grammar: 3/5

While your grammar as a whole is good, there are a few things that need to be fixed. The first thing I noticed is that you sometimes forget to end your dialogue with a period or comma. For example:

"He's on the quidditch team" Carina stated.

Fixed: "He's on the quidditch team," Carina stated.

Now, if the dialogue were followed by an action, it should be followed by a period instead.

"He's on the quidditch team." Carina looked away.

You get the point. A sentence of dialogue should always have some kind of punctuation before the second quotation mark.

I noticed a lack of action tags throughout your work; you're more likely to follow dialogue with an actual verb. That's fine for much of the time, but keep in mind that people often communicate while performing tasks, and quite a bit of that communication is non-verbal.

You also sometimes overuse dialogue tags in general. It's good to be clear about who is speaking, but excessive clarification becomes verbose and boring. It's not difficult to figure out where dialogue tags should and shouldn't be used: usually, as you go back over your work, your brain will catch any instances where it's hard to tell who is talking.

One last thing I noticed: you use italics rather sporadically. For the majority of the time, they're nonexistent. Then, in certain scenes or chapters, they're all over the place, often stressing words that don't need to be emphasized more than they already are. Most of the time, good dialogue should be strong enough to show which words should be stressed without extra help. It's okay to use italics in certain circumstances, but more often I'd rather rewrite a sentence than use italics to convey a specific meaning.

Character Development: 4/5

I'm going to start with what I think is one of the best things about your fanfiction, and surprisingly, it's not Carina. Uniquely enough, it's Draco.

So many Harry Potter fanfictions sugarcoat him as a character and paint over his defining flaws -- namely, his prejudices. In most Malfoy books, he quite rapidly sees the error of his ways, repents, and joins the "light side", to be readily accepted by everyone there.

On the contrary, you gave a much more honest and real light to his character. You openly showed his contempt for Gryffindor (and even any house that isn't Slytherin), which sparked several arguments with his own sister. You provided for the things he's been taught since he was born in a much more accurate way than most fanfictions do. The reality is that most people hesitate to turn from what they've known throughout their childhood, and it's a long, arduous process.

That being said, it certainly isn't wrong to give Draco a redemption arc, and I admire the way you went about it. You took it much more slowly than most, and I think you tried to write in the struggles such a change would create amongst the Malfoy family. I love a good "evil character" redemption arc as long as it's done correctly, and you definitely did it correctly.

I do wish you'd added some of the same aspects to Carina. She was raised in the same way as Draco, after all, and taught to value many of the same things. You could have built several chapters solely about her coming to terms with her house.

Instead, she adjusts quite quickly, and aside from having some fears about her families' opinion, seems fairly unconcerned about her sorting. I understand that she's meant to be a unique Malfoy, but it isn't really plausible that she has nothing at all from her family ingrained in her.

A phenomenal facet of your writing is Carina's friendship with Fred and George. Healthy, casual male/female friendships without possibility of romance is unfortunately rare in YA stories and even fanfiction, but you nailed that adorable friendship. The pranks, insults, jokes, and teasing are all very reminiscent of a brother-sister relationship (with a bit less fighting) and leads me to believe that you have at least a few good guy friends of your own to be capable of writing such a quality relationship. Well done.

You covered a lot of different situations with Carina over much of the story, which is also great. It shows us how she reacts to different emotions and circumstances. I would quite like to see you delve a bit more into her flaws throughout the plot. We can pick up that she's stubborn, she's reckless, and she has a temper: all classic Gryffindor faults. What issues does she have that makes her unique? I'd love to see her face and acknowledge her own personal flaws at some point, rather than sticking to the Gryffindor stereotype.

Writing Style: 2/5

While your grammar is fairly solid, your style needs a bit of work in some places. Your paragraphs can come across as choppy and rough, mostly due to the large amounts of small, split-up sentences that could easily be fused into one with a semicolon, comma, and/or conjunction.

You also struggled with transitioning events. As an example: when Carina is by the lake with the twins in Chapter 11, and then all of sudden is with Hagrid and Harry. Perhaps the action is meant to be sudden, but there isn't enough context to prepare us for the mood change.

You tend to use a fast-paced writing style, which can be good for your plot, but not always for key scenes. When Carina finds out about her father's treachery for Voldemort and talks about his abuse, it's sad, but not as heartbreaking as it should be -- the scene is moving too rapidly for us to feel what Carina does and take in her thoughts. Drawing out her panic and giving more insight into her mind would drastically improve such an important part of the book.

One thing you did very well is adding just the right amount of normalcy. We hear about the daily routines and classes of Hogwarts enough to make her life and setting feel real, but not so much as to be boring. You incorporated it into basic dialogue as well; your characters discuss their ordinary lives in much the same way that real friends do. On occasion, you were able to use the mundane events to lead into the more extraordinary ones, which is one of the cleverest and most useful skills I have seen in writing.

A tip I try take into consideration when writing is to create chapter arcs, not just story or character arcs. As a general rule, a chapter should end in a different mood than when it started. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but it assists in preventing stagnant or filler chapters. Applying this to some of your longer chapters could assist in keeping the motion of the plot steady.

Plot + Originality: 4/5

The first positive thing I noticed about your plot is character usage. The vast majority of Harry Potter fanfictions out there focus on Draco or the Golden Trio. In The Death Wish, all those characters are present and important, but none are the focus. You did a fine job of integrating them into the plot without overusing or mischaracterizing any of them.

You brought some less popular characters to the forefront of your story: Fred, George, and Oliver. You built their characters beautifully, and it's very refreshing to read a book about some of the underrated characters in the Harry Potter franchise for once.

I also appreciated your portrayal of the Malfoy family as a whole. While many people have explored the idea of a Malfoy child being sorted into Gryffindor, most immediately show the family as turning completely on the child (except for Draco, who, of course, can do no wrong in these stories. But I already ranted about him in character development.).

In contrast, you wrote an excellent depiction of initial shock and disappointment transitioning to acceptance to even possible pride, which in my opinion is quite probably what a canon reaction would be. Carina is their child, and it's much more fulfilling to watch them realize that she is more to them than her house. (And yes, her father ends up being abusive, but that's a whole different aspect.)

Inserting OCs into fantasy worlds can very easily turn south for a writer, but I admire the way you want about it. You did a fine job of balancing the original plot with the addition of a new character, changing only the events pertaining directly to Carina or her family. That is probably the trickiest part of writing semi-canon fanfiction, so figurative hats off to you.

OVERALL SCORE: 16/25

You have a wonderful fanfiction in progress, and I think with a relatively small amount of fine-tuning, you could have a work worthy of far more read a than it has thus far received. If you focus on the grammar in dialogue and flesh out your main character a bit more, everything else is just petty details that can be easily fixed. I'm happy to answer any questions or comments you have -- please let me know. Fine work!