Ohmygod...that was breathtaking. I haven't read many Helena/Bloody Baron pairings (this is my first).

The way you wrote the story gave it a very easy-to-read quality, and the flashbacks are very smoothly integrated into the story, as always.

The one thing I would like to know is how Helena went from being best friends with Baron to hating him. Other than that, the story is very well explained, I think.

Keep up the wonderful stories!

Author's Response: Oh snap! Breathtaking?! Yes!! *fist pump to the air*

This one was out of my comfort zone, for sure. It's all dark-ish, but I think I somehow made it fluffy...being the King has its strengths and weaknesses :P

Well, this is all from Baron's perspective, and so I wouldn't trust his memories about Helena. He's got a bit of an obsession with the poor girl. Besides that, I wanted to portray how stressful it would have been for Helena to grow up under her mother's shadow. She's also got her independence (girl power, woot), so she would have been put off by his constant proposals.

All in all, my answer to your question is that Helena has a hard life, and Baron's determination annoys her :P

I will, if you keep reading them :D!

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Heya! Perelandra here. FINALLY here with your swap review. When I read this one it had no reviews and now I see 3! haha! I'm so slow. So sorry about that. I got a new job that's kicking my behind...BUT finally here.

It took me a while to realize that you used the title of 'Baron' as his name. Nice touch there because I've never come across that detail. I also really liked how they had a crush on each other since they were young and that they went to school together. I usually see the usual "he's older than her" scenario. He seems, however, to be very obsessed over her. I mean...he just fixates on her. Then again, she's not giving him the time of day.

I do have a question, what happened between the two of them for Helena to become so 'cold' towards him? Did he do something to her? Because even then, it felt to me that they were friends. What caused the friendship to end?

I have a couple of CC, though. First of all, punctuation. Whenever you have something like:

Her voice cuts me more than her small blade, "Stay away from me, Baron...

The word after the comma (after Blade) should not be capitalize unless its a name or the world 'I'. The only way it should be capitalized is if you have a period after 'blade.'

The second and last CC is the lack of description. You have a very strong story here, however, you seem to be lacking some details such as description and imagery. There are times where you paint the picture just perfectly, like when Rowena is dying and wishes to see her daughter and then there are times that you rely so heavily on dialogue. You should try to balance a story with the right amount of description and dialogue in order to have a perfect story.

Well, I believe that is it! This is a great Founders fic. I'm always incline to read those because they never get much love from people.

Keep on writing! And once again, thanks for the swap!

Until next time,

--Rosie

Author's Response: What a wonderful review :)

I'll try to answer your questions, but I try to leave room for my reader's imagination to fill in blanks :P (*cough* I'm lazy *cough*). This story is written from Baron's point of view. I asked the question: What pushed him into murdering Helena? So, my interpretation came down to this: pure obsessive love.

You read about crimes of passion on the news all the time, and the research I did for this one-shot lead me to believe that that could be a possible factor to push Baron to murder.

That all being said, I chose to center his obsession around her voice, because I have a bit of an obsession with greek mythology and I thought Sirens would be awesome to allude to here. So, Helena is the siren, and Baron's the guy caught in her drama.

I really think that the pressure of being Rowena's daughter put Helena in a tough spot. Her life shifted from being carefree to being stressful as she tried to live up to expectations set by the people around her. Petty things like romance and marriage aren't important to her as they are to Baron. She was almost willing to use it as a tool to get ahead, but I think the "Ravenclaw personality" in her pushed her to make the rash decision of stealing the diadem and leaving to gain knowledge for herself without pressure.

Did that all make sense? Basically, Baron's became obsessed with her and her rejection drove him into murder, Helena's trying to escape from her mother's shadow, and I tied it all together with allusions to greek mythology.

Geez, maybe I should stop writing :P Practice makes perfect, so I'll keep going. I have noticed that I hide behind dialogue, I'll definitely work on that.

Oh man, I hope I answered your questions and thank you for the helpful CC :D

I feel as though this reply was a jumbled mess, but, eh, I tried.

Jack

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Hey there - sorry for the delay in getting this to you! :)

First off, I really love the premise of this story. Baron/Helena isn't a common pairing - a shame, really, since I'd love to read more of them - and, being Founders, it's pretty brave of you to go for them - all that historical context, etc. to deal with. Still, I think you did really well with it.

I loved how you had the Baron effectively chasing her since they were both young - how he just assumed that they would get married when they were older, how he become so obsessed with her, particularly in her absence when he was talking to her mother. It was such an oddly heartbreaking idea - that a mother can miss her child to that extent, you know, that she needs someone else who cared about them to be there. He seems so strong in some ways, but then kinda foolish and arrogant with how he just assumes things, but ultimately, he's not really that bad a guy. The phrase 'it was an accident. I didn't mean to' might be overused, but it works perfectly in this situation - and I loved how you worked it in. It was so sudden that I was almost shocked by it, and I knew it was coming, lol.

Helena... okay, so I've read a few Helena's (not many, though) but yours is definitely one of the better ones I've seen. She's headstrong and independent and studious and somewhat ambitious and bitter and malicious and manipulative... she's, frankly, such a mess that she's not a particularly nice person, but a brilliant character. I loved how you had her mother refuse to admit the deceit, as well, so that the Baron himself didn't even know the diadem was gone or the real reason Helena ran away right until the end when she told him. The casual way you had her reveal all her lies to him kinda rammed the impact home better than if you'd had her draw it out. She never loved him, she stole the diadem, she hated her mother. It was kinda like... woah. Okay then. The kind of moment where you have to blink, take it in and then read it again to make sure.

Also, I loved the references to phoenix song and the section with them as ghosts at the end. The idea that even after so long he still hasn't been able to have the courage/strength to approach her about, well, everything is really haunting. I did like how you suggested she's not too angry with him at the end, it's more pity and hurt and disgust rather than fury. Since they're ghosts their story doesn't end with them dying, you know, so it makes so much sense to include them as ghosts (that being said I've never seen someone do that before...) and show what it's like after all of it... And a little cameo from Fawkes... he's totally my favourite magical creature, not gonna lie... ;)

So yeah, I really, really enjoyed this. It could perhaps do with a little more description, but the characterisation, plot - everything was just so good that it's really not that important.

Aph xx

Author's Response: Ha, this one-shot was an experimentation. Wow, this review really makes me less embarrassed by the thing.

I have a hard time writing sad/dramatic/dark stories, so I wasn't expecting this kind of response to it :D Wow, thank you so much.

The bloody baron was a hard character to figure out. Why did he, exactly, kill Helena? This is my interpretation of it, that he became so obsessed with her, that her rejection would have pushed him to the point of murder.

Helena was less challenging, maybe because the HP series gives the story from her account, so I kind of knew where to start with her. She was cast into the shadow of her mother that she tried to escape from, hurting those around her in the process. I wanted to make her a strong female character :) I'm glad you liked the climax of the story. I didn't really want to make it the murder scene, but the part where she reveals her motives and cuts the baron down.

The ending...I re-wrote this ending a million times, because it's a sad story. I did some research and found that the Grey Lady only speaks to those in her house. What does this mean for the baron? Either she is too furious with him, or disgusted. I obviously chose disgusted ;)

Fawkes...so I tried to revolve this story around the greek mythology of Sirens. A siren is a creature that attracts men with their voice, but kills them. They are unattractive creatures, but their voices cause them to be attracted. The final scene where she effectively hurts him with her voice, sending him into rage, is like a siren, killing her victim. Did I just blow your mind? No? Eh, I tried. I added Fawkes in to add to this allusion of sing-song voices.

This is actually my least favorite one-shot because I don't think I did a very good job in the narrative and description. Thank you for your awesome review!

Oh man, thanks again,
Jack

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Hello I’m here from the swap! I saw that this story looked a little lonely, and I love the founders era, so I came to check it out!

I liked the description of Helena through the Bloody Baron’s eyes, as I really liked how he viewed her as not exactly the conventional beauty. I guess with her being the child of Rowena Ravenclaw, she wouldn’t be, as I always imagined Rowena as a sort of feminist, and therefore she would be going against convention.

You could tell how much he loved her, as he seemed to have analysed every part of her, and that just shows how much he loved, though it does seem to be more of an obsessive form of love, rather than a romantic one, and Helena seemed to recognise that, from her annoyance at him staring at her.

You could see that she had inherited her mother’s feminist streak, due to her insistence on not marrying him, and of studying which was uncommon for women in that time. The Baron seemed to have recognised that, due to him calling her ‘headstrong’. I guess as he’s a Slytherin, he probably saw someone like Helena as a challenge to gain her affections.

I liked the dream part of the chapter, as it was nice to see a more innocent form of their friendship, and it made me laugh about how sure he was that he would marry Helena someday. I guess her disappearing is showing how much she would hate to marry him, as running away would be a better alternative. By Rowena not wearing her diadem, I guess you mean that Helena had stolen it?

I really like how you built up his obsession of her through the years that she wasn’t there, and that his obsessive love grew. It seemed a more fitting reason as to why he would kill her, as she ran away after kissing him, and that seemed to be the end of their potential relationship, so the only way to continue would be to kill her.

I really loved the ending scene, it seemed so poignant, as it just showed you how much Helena Ravenclaw had changed to become the Grey Lady.

I thought this was an excellent one-shot, and it was a really interesting perspective to explore!

-Kiana!

Author's Response: Wow, I'm glad you liked it :D It was more of an experiment for me to write this one, and I haven't gotten much feedback on it. I'm grateful that you decided to review this one :D

I was sitting at my laptop, thinking of why he would kill her, so I decided to take the "obsessive love" approach to it. Wow, you've really taken the time to analyze this. I'm smiling like a two year old reading what you came up with :P

Because this one-shot was from Baron's perspective, I decided that he probably wouldn't have figured out that Helena had stolen the diadem, because only the Grey Lady knows its location. I made the assumption that Rowena would keep it a secret that her daughter would betray her like that, so she told everyone that she refused to wear it.

Thanks! Oh, something interesting I kind of explored is the mythology of the Siren (hence the title) and his obsession with her voice. Just a cool tid-bit for you :D

Jack

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