Hi, there! This is the first of probably several Gryffindor May Exchange reviews, if you'd like to make this more than a one-chapter event.

I was both excited and kind of sad to find out that Jennifer was James's cousin. Excited because I think it broadens James's back story in a really interesting way. In the books, he's only ever portrayed as a spoiled, somewhat arrogant only child who suddenly transforms into this wonderful, upstanding guy late in his Hogwarts years and sweeps the saintly Lily Evans off of her feet. I feel like his quasi-brother-sister-relationship with Jennifer will really add some depth and complexity to that picture and I'm looking forward to it. I'm kind of sad because we know that Harry has no family left by the time he's left with the Dursleys. That doesn't bode well for Jennifer's future. :(

You did a nice job with Sirius, too. You made him refined and aristocratic in a way, which felt more natural to me than the stories I've read where he's in full anti-pureblood rebellion mode before he even sets foot on the train. I can see the beginnings of who he'll become, but also the roots that he comes from. Overall, it was very well-balanced. It feels, at least at this early juncture, like you're setting Sirius and Jennifer up as a potential romantic pair. That should also add some interesting depth to Sirius's character, as well as some curious dynamics between Sirius and James. No way to know how James will cotton to the idea of Sirius snogging his almost-sister.

I really like the start you're off to with Jennifer. You managed to define a lot of things about her without doing that horrible thing a lot of authors do where they roll out the proverbial Back Story Dump Truck and proceed to unload every conceivable bit of information about their OC in a long, pointless internal monologue that fills half of the first chapter. Instead you worked some important bits of information into the natural flow of events and left us some things to wonder about. I see similarities between her and James and also some important differences. I did really like the way she feels protective toward James and, by extension, Sirius. I assume she's destined to reconcile with Lily and that should be interesting when it plays out.

Lastly, there's Lily. You did a fantastic job of making her sound like what she actually is: a precocious and temperamental eleven-year-old girl who's also probably pretty frightened, seeing as how she's venturing into completely uncharted waters. The way that she didn't answer Jennifer in the dormitory seemed about right to me, although I'm pretty sure that her reason wasn't the one that Jennifer was thinking of. I'm guessing that she just didn't know what to say.

Let's see, what else? There were two passages that I liked so much I highlighted them as I was reading:

He had striking grey eyes that seemed to look like they pierced into your soul, along with the nicest head of hair I've ever seen on a boy.

It looked silky, lustrous, and well taken care of, though significantly longer than James's hair. -- I chuckled to myself when I first read it, thinking of how mortified Sirius probably would have been if she'd said this out loud. But the more I thought about it, this is the sort of thing that eleven-year-old girls notice.

In all honesty, it wasn’t an ugly name; if I had to grudgingly admit so, it was a nice sounding name, even if it was a name that should have stayed in the 15th century. -- All I could imagine when I read this was Sirius making a crack like, "The 15th century called and they want their name back." Great stuff!

Then there was one passage that felt a little, I don't know, forced to me:

Honestly, the way that James was going on and on, a nearby passer would have thought Salazar Slytherin himself arose from the dead and told everyone that he was setting a basilisk loose in the castle. -- I know what you're trying to do here, but I was kind of struggling with the idea that an eleven-year-old girl would know what a Basilisk was. Recall that even Hermione had to go look it up and Ron, who came from a pureblood family, had never heard of it.

Lastly, I saw two typos that I wanted to point out:

I hadn’t meant to be eavesdropping but it was impossible to live under the same roof as James Potter for the majority of your like without picking up some troublemaking skills. - majority of your life

"Yes, she was but distantly related..." I murmured, not knowing why I wanted to tact that last bit on in the end and certainly not knowing why I didn't like the idea of being related to Sirius Black. -- tack that last bit

Otherwise, I thought you writing was really good. It all flowed very nicely and I liked your word choice. You had a good mix of narrative and dialog and nothing sounded awkward or singsongy. Great start!

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Hello,

This was an interesting and promising first chapter. It gave a good introduction to the main characters, while not giving away too much about their personalities - I guess that will come in later chapters.

I have a remark to make about your use of paragraphs though. I noticed that you start a new paragraph with each sentence, which is not necessary. It doesn't bother me though, I'm not a punctuation - fanatic or anything, I just thought I'd point that out since there're 'rules' concerning this kind of thing. On the HPFF forums there are a lot of topics that explain this, you might want to look into them. But as I said, it doesn't bother me.

All in all, I like this chapter and I think it's promising!

-PB

Author's Response: Hello (: First off, thank you for the wonderful review. I'm glad that you found the introduction okay! And I will definitely have to look into that! I'm just not a huge fan of long paragraphs because I find it annoying to read as a reader but I'll definitely look into it!

Thanks for reviewing!(:

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I love this! I can't wait for the next bit :) I really want Jennifer and Sirius to get together, and James and Lily of course.

Author's Response: I'm glad that you enjoyed my update! I definitely have lots in store in the romance department because I think fourth year is finally the year that things really get going (:

Thanks for your wonderful review!

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Please update soon, amazing story. Maybe do a sirius pov?
~Macy x

Author's Response: I'm glad that you enjoy it! Yes, Sirius will definitely be coming soon xD Thanks for your wonderful review! (:

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I need to read the next chapter!! Please please please post
the next one!!

Author's Response: I'm glad that you like it! The next chapter should be coming soon. Thanks for reviewing! (:

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It's really good! I love the story :) please continue with it.

Author's Response: yay! I'm glad that you like the story!
The next update should be coming in soon! Thanks for reviewing! (:

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Please update this is wonderful! More James and Lily please!

Author's Response: aww thank you so much! the next update should hopefully be coming soon once my queue clears up! (:

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I love James' point of view, do more of him and Lily!

Author's Response: I'm glad that you like James's POV! I'll take that into consideration (: thanks for the review!

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Your story is amazing. Please write more!

Author's Response: Aw thank you so much! :)
The next update is in progress!

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Ho ho ho, it's you Secret Santa here!

Hi :) I love this chapter! And Jennifer is awesome. I've read so many James Potter sister/cousin/some-sort-of-relation stories, and it's always the relation and Lily being instant BFF's- even though Lily hates James and is always badmouthing him. I don't see how that would work! I'm so glad that you did something different, and Jennifer stood up for herself and her cousin!

This looks like a promising story so far, and I'm definitely gonna keep reading this :)

The last line- " I dreaded to think what other sorts of trouble would follow us in our seven years at Hogwarts if this was what our first day had been like. "- Can I just say how perfect this line is?

Jennifer seems very perceptive for an 11 year old- then again, we've seen how smart 11 year olds can be, haven't we. I can't really even find much to critique about this! I love this story so far :) Great job!

Merry Christmas!

Author's Response: Aww thank you so much!
I'm glad that you found this intersting and promising! I won't let you down with future updates! Thanks for this awesome review! (:

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This is quite excellent! Love how you had James realize that he fancies Lily. Your inclusion of the attack is good and makes it realistic and also shows that you are not getting caught up with your plot so much you forget to mention the small stuff. I am guilty of this. :) Keep up the writing and good work! Can't wait for the next chapter!

Author's Response: awww thank you so much (:
im glad that you like how I made James fancy Lily. yeah, I'm trying to keep everything realistic; the war is a big part of their lives and I didn't think it'd be right to forget about it.
thank you so much for reading and reviewing!

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Hey, it's SamMalfoy93 with your challenge review prize. I'm sorry it's taken so long, free time kind of left me.

This is a really great start to this story. I'm already loving Jennifer; the way she holds her own with Lily in the dorm and is honest, the way she is loyal to James but recognizes that he can be an idiot. She seems like a very loyal character and I look forward to reading more of her.

I enjoyed reading the points of view from both Jennifer and Sirus, giving different insights into situations. And I'm not sure I like Lily's character at the moment. I love Lily in general, but she was rude in defending Severus, when it seemed he started it.

I'll be back here soon. I enjoyed reading this and I look forward to knowing more about the characters. :)

Sam.

Author's Response: awww thanks for this review! (:
im glad that you like Jennifer! She's going to have very interesting character development.
I'm glad that the different points of view is good becuase I was worried that it would be too much.
awww Lily~ I feel like Lily deserves to be a far more complicated character than the Mary Sue that a lot of people portray her to be so I want to write her as more of an actual person, and we do know that Lily is very loyal as well.
Thanks so much for everything! (:


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I really like this story! Please update soon? :)

By the way, you do know that robinet means the tap of a sink or a bathtub in french, right? Because it makes me laugh every single time...

Author's Response: yes sorry about the late updates! school is so busy! haha really?
i never knew that! thanks for telling me xD

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Quite excellent! I'm not sure about the animagus process, if I was writing a Marauder fic it would be much much slower, but I'm not writing one so, yeah. I can't wait to see all those tricky conversations and such about Snape and stuff because I would be hopeless at writing them. So er, yeah excellent job!

Author's Response: awww thank you so much!
yeah, the Animagus process O.O i racked my brains for the longest time to try to figure out how that would work but all I could work out was the Patronus because that makes sense to me xD
ah tricky conversations are going to come up! thank you so much for reading and reviewing!

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Excellent story! Really liking where you are going with this and I am really excited to see where it all goes. I like how you are going through the chapter so we can see important things but not have to read about the little things, so excellent job!

Author's Response: im so glad that you like it!
i hope you wont be too upset when i go through fifth-seventh year in detail! i just feel like there are a lot of stuff that happened, but rest assured! i definitely wont make you guys go through the pain of reading chapters with nothing in them xD
thanks so much for your awesome and amazing review! thanks for reading!

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I love your idea for this story and I can't wait to continue to read and read. It is slightly confusing but I think that's just because I kept forgetting what date it was, so keep writing! This is excellent.

Author's Response: haha sorry for confusing you! i'll get better at it xD thanks so much for reading and review! im so glad that you like it!

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Aww, poor Jen. I think we all can relate to her. I think Jen and I will get along just fine - if she was, you know, a real human being - cause we're both kind of dramatic. I love your writing style and I love how you didn't make Jen absolutely abhor Sirius. It's something fresh. The formating is good but it'll get better when you don't have to skip so many things.

I like how you made Lily and Jen friends. It's really realistic. Girl power! I can list all of the things I love in this story, but I think it will take less space if I just told you that I love your story as a whole. Keep up the good work and I can't wait for the next chapter.

Author's Response: yay! im so glad that Jen is relatable!
i figured that it was time that there is a change from a girl who "hates" sirius like how lily "hates" and then they get together.
that storyline is a little old for me, and considering Jen is James's cousin, I didn't think that would quite fit in so well.

im so glad that you like it!
the next update is in the process of being editted, which shld be in the queue very soon!

thanks so much for R+R! (:

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i love it! i think the formatting is fine like that! It will get better later on when there isn't any bits being skipped :) x

Author's Response: awww yay! thanks (:
yeah, im writing third year right right now and im already finding less things to skip!
thanks for reading and reviewing!

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I love how you have portrayed all the characters, can't wait for more chapters!! x

Author's Response: awww thanks so much! im glad you like my portrayal of the characters because its the most important to me (aside from the actual writing itself). thanks for R+R! (:

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