#draco trilogy

Before anything else, there’s a small detail I forgot from the end of Draco Sinister: at the big finale party, a ~mysterious benefactor~ gifted Harry a magic red bracelet, called a runic band.  That turned out to be kinda plot important, so yeah.  Sorry about that.

Draco Veritas, it beginneth thusly.

Harry Potter and da Crew are all back at Hogwarts for their last year, sitting in a potions class that immediately gives me flashbacks to Draco Dormiens, back when I was young and naïve and had no idea what shit I was getting into.

But I actually like this opening!  Draco and Harry are abusing this psychic connection they’ve developed since the first fic to cheat through the class.  Snape gets annoyed as Draco keeps secretly giving Harry the answers, until naturally Draco gives him a very wrong answer to mess with him, and … IDK it’s funny and in-character, and a sweet callback to the first fic to show character development.  It’s good.

Draco has a dream/vision about Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy, who’re nattering about “four worthy McGuffins”. I mean OBJECTS.  Four worthy objects.  Yeah.  (Take a brief moment to celebrate because holy shit, Voldemort is actually IN this fic!)

However, the plot rapidly dissolves as we discover that, despite the heavy Draco/Ginny shipping at the end of Draco Sinister, Draco is now dating Blaise Zabini.  Blaise, in this fic, is a redheaded girl and not …

Hindsight is 20/20 when a character’s gender isn’t confirmed until several books in, I guess.

So Harry and Draco are now captains of their respective quidditch teams, and—because for some reason they don’t want anyone to know they’re friends, because god forbid anything possibly ever unite the houses of Slytherin and Gryffindor—they stage regular arguments and fistfights in order to keep up appearances.  And by “stage” I mean “actually knock the stuffing out of each other”.

Despite the sweet, fluffy Harry/Hermione ending of Draco Sinister, it turns out Harry and Hermione are now having relationship problems for nonspecific, aggravating reasons, and spend all their time moping or having wild domestics.  Draco and Ginny also kinda hate each other, and basically act like bitter exes despite having barely dated, and Harry’s feeling constant, generalised RAEG and … look, if you’re wondering about Voldemort and the four worthy McGuffins, buckle up because we have several hundred pages of this soap opera bullshit before the plot is even remotely addressed.

But don’t worry.

Rhysenn Malfoy is here to make it all worse.

(Screenshot straight off my phone of the fanart included in the fic.)

This Amy Lee looking motherfucker pops up throughout the fic to bother everyone, pass on cryptic messages from Lucius, and grope at Draco.  Her “cousin”.

Gross.

Anywhoo, Draco realises Harry is having a bad time, and goes to his staple solution for everything: alcoholism.  By which I mean a trip to a wizard strip club called the Sleazy Weasel.  This isn’t even close to the weirdest thing to happen in this fic.

Help.

While they’re getting merrily wankered, it turns out Ron has a ~secret girlfriend~, with whom Cassie plays the pronoun game for half the fic so we can’t guess who he’s illicitly fucking in every other POV swap.  Make your guesses now.  If you get it right I’ll … I dunno, write you a ficlet or something.

Meanwhile, Ginny reads a trashy romance book called Passionate Trousers, the text of which takes up huge chunks of the fic.  (Uh, Cassie.  I, uh, I don’t think you’re in a position to parody or criticise trashy romance stories.  Just saying.) She also starts dating Seamus Finnegan, aka the only decent person in this story, and meanwhile Harry asks Sirius if he can visit James and Lily’s grave but Sirius says it’s too dangerous and Harry storms off in a huff, and …

PLOT?  VOLDEMORT?

HELLOOOOO?

Nope, still more soap opera.

A random Slytherin catches Ron doing the sex with his ~mystery girlfriend~, but then passes out and suffers an immediate bout of amnesia, so that comes to nothing. Rhysenn keeps pointlessly bothering Draco, and reveals that, on top of being goffick and beautiful, she’s also immortal.

You could say … My Immortal.

Harry and Hermione’s domestics get to such a ridiculous point I start to long for Order of the Phoenix Capslock Harry, as Hermione screams at him in the Great Hall for not paying attention to her, and Ginny falls off her broom and hurts herself—

And finally, a tiny wee bit of plot shows up, when someone shoots Draco Malfoy with an arrow, throwing him off the Astronomy Tower.

You’d think this would kick-start the plot in earnest but … no.  Draco’s up and about in time for the Yule Ball (which is now apparently a yearly occurrence, and not just an event for the Triwizard Tournament), and apparently he’s feeling perky enough to be a cheating whorebiscuit and snog Ginny in the rose garden.  Not a euphemism.  Honest.

Meanwhile, the golden trio go to the pub and have a snowball fight and general, wholesome fun, and Hermione makes them promise to always be friends, which is fanfic code for “we’re about to be totally fucked”.

250 pages in, and we have barely scraped the edge of an inciting incident.

By this point in Draco Dormiens, Draco and Harry had swapped bodies and were wreaking havoc.  In Draco Sinister, Salazar Slytherin had kidnapped and date rape drugged Hermione.

This is supposed to be the grand finale.  The epic third episode in this trilogy.

And it’s just … relationship drama.  It’s slow and it’s boring.

So Harry and Draco sneak off to visit James and Lily’s grave, a scene which sounds good but is actually dull and stupid and utterly pointless.  In Deathly Hallows, Harry seeing his parents’ grave at Godric’s Hollow breaks my heart, and guarantees a little tear every time.

‘And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.’

In Cassie’s version?

She literally says he “feels nothing”.

Yeah, Cassie.  I’m sure Harry would suffer all this melodramatic angst over his love life, and not feel a single scrap of pain or loss or regret at seeing the graves of his parents.  His parents, whom he wanted to know so badly in Philosopher’s Stone, he saw them in the Mirror of Erised—the “deepest and most desperate desire of [his] heart”.

And of fucking course, Rhysenn Malfoy then shows up and proceeds to molest Harry a few feet from James and Lily’s grave.  And since Harry goes to putty in her presence, and immediately throws up after Draco chases her off, you can probably guess what Rhysenn is long before Cassie deigns to explain.

She’s a succubus.

Yeah, gasp, ahh, whatever.

Dear Cassie,

GIVE ME SOME FUCKING PLOT.

Where are the stakes? The carefully interwoven mysteries? What is the goal of this fic?  I thought you were good at plot, Cassie!  I praised you for it!  Where did it go?  Where is Voldemort?  Is he knitting socks to go with Nagini’s jumper from Draco Sinister?  She doesn’t need socks, Cassie!  She’s a snake!

(Just let me stare at this adorable tiny snek until I’ve calmed down.)

Phew.

OK.  Draco realises his wound from the arrow is now glowing, and his blood’s turned silver.  That’s … healthy.  And left unaddressed for another fifty pages.

Hermione realises the plot probably should’ve kicked in by now, so she researches the four worthy McGuffins from Draco’s dream.  It turns out, in the time they’ve been pissing about doing nothing, Voldy’s got his act together and already collected the Mirror, the Scabbard, and the … something else?  IDK the third item wasn’t important.  The important thing was there was one item left: the Cup.  So Harry P and da Crew decide they need to get it before Voldemort does, by stealing it from the wizarding museum where it’s on display at Stonehenge.

Several pages of build-up are wasted on planning this heist, but I’m so glad plot’s arrived I’m willing to be forgiving.  At the museum, Draco causes a distraction by kissing Ginny, prompting Seamus to punch him in the face.  While their fistfight ensues, the golden trio replace the McGuffin Cup with a fake.

And it all goes down flawlessly.

Because god forbid we might get some external conflict.

When they get back to Hogwarts, Hermione hides the McGuffin Cup.  Meanwhile, Draco becomes seriously poorly from a combination of whatever that weirdass arrow’s done to him, and the thorough shit-kicking my boy Seamus gave him.

Harry shows Ron the Christmas present he’s got for Hermione: a ring.  Ron freaks out because you CAN’T give your girlfriend a ring, she’ll assume you’re PROPOSING and that’s CRAZY.  (And here I sit, wearing the two rings my boyfriend gave me on separate occasions, howling with laughter.)

Anyway, Ron’s epic bitchfit comes to a dramatic end when he reveals the identity of his ~secret girlfriend~.

Hermione.

(Those of you raising your hands for your ficlet right now … just hold on a second.  You’ll see.)

Because Hermione is completely dumbfounded by this reveal.  She insists it’s not true, while Ron gets angrier and more distraught. Harry finally uses the veritas spell to make Ron tell the truth, and Ron confirms that yeah, he’s for defo been fucking Hermione on the sly.  Hermione screams that it isn’t true and Harry storms out in a rage.

If you, like me, are currently shrieking, “POLYJUICE POTIONS EXIST YOU FUCKING MORONS!” … I am sorry. I am sorry for all of us.

Hermione goes to Draco in tears, and Draco once again falls back on his reliable solution of alcoholism. They get drunk and snuggle up in bed together because, uh, that’s … not cheating?

Ron meets up with his ~mysterious girlfriend~ again, and strangely, she has no clue about all the domestics that just occurred.  At this point, Ron finally twigs that this isn’t fucking Hermione.  Draco and the real Hermione also burst in, but because everyone in this fic is an idiot, the imposter gets away.  Following this is even more relationship drama, as Harry and Hermione break up and everyone now hates Ron for backstabbing them in spirit, if not technically in reality.

Hermione and Ron toddle off to their separate homes for Christmas, and Draco, apparently the only one with two brain cells left to rub together, works out who the fake Hermione is:

Pansy Parkinson.

So, if you guessed “Pansy Parkinson, with the Hermione Polyjuice potion, in the Astronomy Tower”, you may now request your fanfic.  Please be patient, as I have to pause every time I remember this detail, and nearly crack a rib laughing.

Meanwhile, Ginny tells Seamus about the events of Draco Sinister and he is … one hundred percent accepting and supportive, and gives Ginny a magic bracelet for Christmas, and invites her to visit him in Ireland.

I maintain Seamus is the only decent person in this fic.

The only one.

Harry and Draco get up to shenanigans at Christmas at Malfoy Manor, in which for once Harry is the one getting plastered and not Draco, and … I swear, this fic feels like it’s aiming towards a Harry/Draco ship 90% of the time. Harry spends so much time waxing lyrical about Draco’s beauty, his elegance, his perfect perfection, and it’s weird, because when Sirius and Narcissa get married they’re basically going to be stepbrothers so—

CASSIE.  PUT YOUR INCEST KINK AWAY.

I’M NOT JOKING, CASSIE.  PUT IT AWAY. I’VE READ MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, I KNOW THERE’S WEIRD INCEST SHIT IN THAT, TOO. AND I KNOW IT’S NAMED AFTER THAT ONE ACTUAL RON/GINNY INCEST FIC YOU WROTE.  AND ALL THIS RHYSENN/DRACO AND DRACO/HARRY—

PUT THE KINK AWAY.

PUT IT AWAY.

SHAME ON YOU.

Sirius and Narcissa throw a wedding rehearsal dinner, and it turns out both the entire Weasley family AND the entire Parkinson family are invited, so Draco decides to be a vindictive little shit and announce to everyone that HEY, PANSY AND RON HAVE BEING DOING THE NASTY.

Charming.

AND THEN.

PLOT ARRIVES.

By which I mean Lucius Malfoy and all his cronies crash the party, kidnap Harry, Ron and Draco, and magically boot everyone else out of the manor.  And just a sec, I might need to go lie down and weep after slogging through that entire crappy first half of the fic.

So Lucius locks Harry and Draco up on some balcony, and demands they give him the McGuffin Cup. He even offers to trade it for an antidote to that poisoned arrow currently fucking Draco up in all kinds of ways.  Unfortunately, Hazzer and Drazzer don’t have a clue where Hermione hid the Cup.  So Draco basically yells, “I don’t want your stinking antidote, and fuck you anyway,” and smashes the antidote to pieces.

He’s a … smart boy.

Meanwhile, Ginny uses her time turner from Draco Sinister to do some convoluted time travel, including going to Malfoy Manor in the past and meeting baby wee twelve year old Draco.  She also takes Tom Riddle’s diary from Lucius’s desk (which has a fat hole in it from where Harry stabbed it with the basilisk fang) for … some reason?  She also nicks another book of dark magic, because in for a penny I guess.  Then she finally travels into the present, where she rescues Harry and Draco.  They’re chased out of the manor by hellhounds, and Harry uses that plot-important runic band to scare them off, and there are actual stakes and there’s pacing and I’m practically sobbing with relief at this point.

However.

If you’re wondering where Ron is …

Ron gets to play chess.

With Voldemort.

For basically the whole of the rest of the fic.

See, apparently the reason Ron is so good at chess is because he’s a seer, so he unconsciously reads the future and predicts his opponent’s move.  And Voldemort needs like, a really, really powerful seer for this ritual he wants to do.  So he takes Ron to a secret castle in deepest darkest Eastern Europe, and essentially forces him to grind his seer ability up to level 100 as fast as humanly possible.

So the whole crew, except Ron, head back to Hogwarts, where Dumbledore tells Snape to make a fresh antidote for Draco.  Which Draco SHOULD HAVE DONE as soon as he realised he was POISONED.  I don’t care how “independent” you are, if you are seventeen and you suspect you might be dying of a fucking glowing wound inflicted by a wierdass arrow from nowhere, you get help.

Meanwhile, in Voldemort’s secret castle, Ron is tortured in the most horrific manner imaginable.

He is made to listen to Rhysenn’s backstory.

Allow me to sum it up for you:

RHYSENN: “Dad’s a Malfoy.  Mam’s a succubus.  Bit of a shock for him when he found out.  Also now I’m doomed to servitude in the Malfoy family forever.”

See?  That doesn’t need to take twenty flipping pages.

The fic goes back to Draco lounging dramatically in bed contemplating death, interspersed with other characters waxing lyrical about how beautiful Draco looks even when he’s dying and—

On Christmas day, Harry gives Draco the Marauder’s Map, and Draco gives Harry a copy of the Malfoy Family Code of Conduct—a running joke throughout the Draco Trilogy stolen directly from Red Dwarf’s Space Corps Directives. (The joke was better in Red Dwarf.)

Hermione does more book-reading (specifically, that dark magic book Ginny nicked), and realises why they haven’t seen Ron in effing forever.  Voldemort’s going to drain Ron’s blood for his evil plan.

After everyone falls apart with even more friendship drama, Seamus decides he’s too good for these assholes and breaks up with Ginny, who immediately fucks off back in time. Gotta love that coping method. “Yeah well screw you, time travel!”

So Ginny goes back to when Tom Riddle was still at Hogwarts.  Tom turns out to be an unapologetic sadist (no surprises there) and follows up breaking Ginny’s wrist with … weird, rapey advances.

Then, in the ONE AND ONLY Moment I Unironically Enjoyed in this whole shitfest of a fic, Ginny spits in Tom’s face and gut-punches him.  Satisfied with her fistfight, Ginny lets Dumbledore take her away and returns to the present.

However, this begins a reoccurring trend in this fic: everyone being an absolute fucking shitweasel to Ginny Weasley.

Dumbledore proceeds to tear Ginny a new one for her time travel shenanigans and for daring to try and change the past.  Ginny points out she wasn’t going to change the past—she only wanted to take one of Tom’s hairs so she could make an epicyclical charm and use that to kill Voldemort in the present.  Dumbledore then rips her another new one because apparently an epicyclical charm requires a soul to work, and Voldemort doesn’t have one of those.  Also, Ginny accidentally left that dark magic book in the past, giving Tom the whole idea to do this ridiculous blood ritual in the first place.

So to punish Ginny for this mistake, which was technically preordained and had to happen somehow since time travel in Harry Potter is a closed loop, Dumbledore tells Tom Riddle in the past Ginny’s full name, so Tom can go gunning for her in Chamber of Secrets.  Because of course eleven year old Ginny totally deserved to be punished for shit she hadn’t even done yet.

Ginny runs up to her room and smashes everything in sight, and then collapses sobbing on the floor. In the process, however, she manages to cut herself, and her blood and tears get on Tom Riddle’s diary.

I’m sure that won’t come to anything.

Meanwhile, Snape orders Harry to leave Draco once he gets his antidote, because he thinks their psychic connection is super unhealthy for poor woobie Draco.  Harry reluctantly agrees, and shortly overhears Snape telling Dumbledore he’s got an antidote.  Then, because no one ever sticks around to eavesdrop on an entire conversation, Harry legs it before Snape points out the “antidote” is only temporary and just gives Draco a few more weeks to live rather than curing him completely.

So Harry leaves goodbye notes for Draco and Hermione, and fucks off to finally go and fight Voldemort.

You know, that thing this whole fic was supposed to be about.

Later, Ginny’s sulking in the Gryffindor Common Room when Seamus finds Tom Riddle’s diary—and is instantly possessed by the ghost of Tom Riddle.

“The ghost that Harry killed with the basilisk fang?” I hear you say?

Yes, that ghost.

“But—”

No, no.  But nothing.  Cassie has finally realised this fic is boring as shit, and chosen to introduce Tom-Possessed-Seamus in a desperate attempt to add some external conflict.  I am not going to bitch about things making sense as long as something is finally happening.

So Tom finds the letters Harry wrote for Draco and Hermione, and decides to fuck with everyone in the vicinity by burning Hermione’s and magically rewording Draco’s to be full of backhanded compliments.  He then nances down to the Common Room and finds Ginny.  She works out pretty sharpish that this new, creepy “Seamus” is actually Tom screwing with her, and for a few paragraphs, this fic reads like M rated torture porn waiting to happen.  Then Ginny sticks her arm in the fireplace, causing her charm bracelet to go haywire and explode all over the place.

This would be cool, except:

There was absolutely no indication before now that bracelet + fire = explosions

Why didn’t Ginny just toss the bracelet in, rather than setting her own hand on fire?

So Tom flees and Ginny passes out.  Meanwhile, Draco takes his kinda-antidote, which actually gets him out of bed.  This is surprising, considering the fic claims it contains both belladonna and nightshade, each of which are poisonous.

Cassie … what the fuck.

Anyway, Draco and Hermione find unconscious, lightly charred Ginny and rush her to Madame Pomfrey, and then discover Harry’s remaining letter.  This naturally results in a slew of drama I can’t be bothered to recount, but suffice to say Draco is pissed.  They decide to hunt Harry down, presumably so they can kick the shit out of him in person.

When Ginny recovers, she explains the new Tom Riddle plot thread, and follows it up with, “Fuck this shit, I’m out.”

Yeah, she literally just … goes home.  This actually didn’t annoy me, because it seemed like the only sensible decision anyone in this entire fic had made so far.  “There are dark wizards fucking everywhere and every time I try to do anything helpful I screw it up and get yelled at.  Yeah, fuck you guys, I’m going home.”

Meanwhile, Tom sets up in Diagon Alley, where he reads up on his future self’s adventures and decides “Screw that guy, I can do better.”  He runs into Harry and, rather than killing him on the spot, he directs him to a nearby friendly Death Eater establishment.

So Harry flees the Death Eaters, and winds up bumping into Draco Malfoy down a quiet alley.  And um.  This happens.

Well, no, OK, it’s not really Draco Malfoy.

It’s a polyjuice prostitute.

A prostitute who takes polyjuice potion … in order to look like Draco.  For customers.

I’ll uh … I’ll just let that sink in.

Anyway, the polyjuice prostitute takes him to safety.  By which I mean a brothel.  A polyjuice brothel.  O-of course?

Meanwhile, back at the Burrow, Ginny gets a visit from Ben Gryffindor and Gareth Slytherin—the respective sons of Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin she met when she time travelled in Draco Sinister. It turns out Gareth has a bracelet that looks suspiciously similar to Harry’s runic band, and apparently it repels demons.  However, Gareth can never take it off until the day he dies.

So Ben and Gareth give some vague, unhelpful advice, and the plot grinds to a halt as we cut to several tedious pages of Hermione reading Teen Witch Weekly, followed by Draco having EMOTIONS.

And the emotions of these characters.  The melodrama.  They randomly fly off the handle over the smallest, most meaningless little things. Like, Harry could be stuck on his homework and mutter, “Ugh, I don’t understand,” and Hermione would leap up and scream, “NO, YOU NEVER DO!” and run from the room weeping.

One exchange is literally:

DRACO: You look cold. Shall we go back?

HERMIONE: No … we can never go back …

HE MEANS “GO BACK INDOORS” YOU MELODRAMATIC LUNATIC.

And SO MUCH drama is built on this pointless little exchanges.  It’s infuriating—the characters just can’t seem to ever have a normal conversation.  I know teenagers can be emotional, but they’re not like this.  Jesus.

Meanwhile, Blaise Zabini—oh yeah, she’s in this fic—figures out that Pansy Parkinson is the one who shot Draco with the poisoned arrow, on Lucius Malfoy’s orders.  Pansy confirms that there was only one vial of antidote, and Draco’s pretty much doomed at this point.  Man, isn’t Pansy just a giant pain in the ass in this fic?

Anyway, back at the Polyjuice brothel, while Harry hides out, Tom walks in with Ginny’s hair.  And if you can guess where this is going … I’m sorry.

So while Tom tortures, murders and rapes a polyjuice prostitute pretending to be Ginny (yes, in that order), Hermione and Draco break into the brothel looking for Harry.  This involves Hermione dressing up all slutty, because undercover. Of course.

Naturally, they find the dead fake Ginny, but Tom escapes, and Draco theorises that Tom is in love with Ginny and … isn’t coping well.  I guess murder is a pretty serious case of not coping.

Draco then finds Harry, and they bicker briefly before Harry runs away again.  Because no one in this fic can sit down and discuss their problems like rational adults.  Draco and Hermione go back to their hotel room and get down to their own unhealthy coping, which means copious snogging.  I guess cheating is at least a healthier outlet than murder.

So Tom finds Lucius, who is like “Yeah I’ll totally help you kill your older, uglier self, no problem bud,” and they merrily get down to hunting all the Death Eaters who betrayed older Voldemort.  Tactically, you’d think it would be smart to recruit them, but no.  Tom just murders them in revenge.  Or … pre-venge?

Meanwhile, Harry manages to stumble through the floo network to Victor Krum’s house, where Fleur Delacour also lives because apparently that ship is a thing now.  Harry then travels to Prague, and Hermione and Draco show up to Victor’s house too late, and Draco collapses because oh yeah, he’s meant to be dying, isn’t he?

So Fleur tucks Draco up in bed, and … unbuttons his shirt … while whispering to him … while he’s unconscious …

Damn it, Cassie, why you gotta put me through this?

Well, it turns out she’s not JUST sexually harassing Draco.  She also gives him some of her Magid powers so he can continue with Mission Kick the Shit out of Harry in Person.  (Yeah, I also completely forgot Magids were a thing until now.)

Over in Prague, Harry’s caught out after dark by vampires, but luckily Draco and Hermione show up in time to scare them off … by using two swords to make the shadow of a cross. The shadow.  Of a cross.

Draco then knocks Harry the fuck out before he can escape again, takes him inside and ties him to the bed.  Luckily, Cassie puts her incest kink away before Harry wakes up, and they all take turns talking about their feelings for several pages and ultimately resolve nothing.

Meanwhile, Ginny discovers that Tom is gunning for Pansy Parkinson’s family, and decides, ugh, fuck it, fine, she’ll join in on this shitshow.  By the time she arrives, Tom’s already murderkilled the whole Parkinson family, and is busy torturing Blaise Zabini.  Tom drops Blaise in favour of torturing Ginny, but then realises he can’t. Every wound he inflicts on Ginny also appears on him, because something, something blood magic connecting them.  This is actually kind of a cool concept, and I’d love to see where it could go in the hands of a skilled writer

Ginny, however, decides bugger all this for a lark and tosses herself down the stairs.

I mean.  That’s one way to kill Tom.

Meanwhile, Death Eaters show up and attack Harry, Draco and Hermione.  Harry kills a Death Eater and has a minor existential crisis over it, which apparently distracts him enough to let the Death Eaters capture Hermione.

The Death Eaters drop Hermione off with Ron in Voldemort’s Evil Castle of Doom, where Hermione and Ron immediately start formulating a plan … oh wait no, they just bicker pointlessly.  It turns out Ron’s got pretty sweet digs in this castle for a prisoner, so Hermione gets to take a bath, and then Ron makes out with Rhysenn pretending to be Hermione and … ugh, this is all just so unbelievably stupid I want to die.

So Draco and Harry finish their own pointless bickering and fly after Hermione on thestrals.  Where did these thestrals come from?  No idea, but Cassie wants thestrals, so here they are.

Meanwhile, back at Voldemort’s castle, Rhysenn calls out Hermione for being an indecisive slutmuffin because come the fuck ON, woman you gotta pick Harry or Draco at some point, and I thought we’d been THROUGH this already.  This rant is all the more bizarre coming from a succubus, of all things.

And then Voldemort shows up and shoots a cruciatus curse at Hermione, because I guess today is just Beat Up Hermione Day.

Harry and Draco stop off in a vague European village for a light lunch of crusty bread and cheese and brandy (because Draco’s alcoholism continues), and I laugh because Cassie seems to think Europe hasn’t invented fucking sandwiches.

We get a few paragraphs of Lucius Malfoy poncing around doing nothing, before Tom bursts through his window clutching a half-dead Ginny and screaming at him to heal her. Instead, Lucius locks them both in a magic marble tomb and buggers off to tell grown-up Voldemort about this whole debacle.

By the way, POV swaps at this point are so swift I am lumping two or three chunks together in a somewhat helpless attempt to make everything flow better than Cassie did. I’m also hacking away huge chunks of pointless, meandering text.  You’re welcome.

So we hop back to Harry and Draco walking up to Voldemort’s castle.  Draco at this point is going blind because, oh yeah, he’s totally dying isn’t he?  And they finally, FINALLY address Harry’s letter.  The one that pissed off Draco so much.  The one that Tom Riddle tampered with.

And.

AND.

*Deep breath*

Christ doing handstands on a unicycle at the fucking circus, Draco’s whole problem with this stupid goddamn letter is so obnoxious and pathetic I want to scream.  Chapter upon chapter of drama over some vague fucking backhanded comments that just aren’t that fucking upsetting, OH MY GODDDD.

Draco realises Harry doesn’t know he’s still dying, but chooses not to tell him because???

Thankfully for my blood pressure, a plot hole … um … black hole opens up in the ground and swallows them up, which is pretty fucking satisfying at this point, let me tell you.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the cruciatus curse (or “excruciating bane” as Cassie calls it, because she has access to a thesaurus and zero common sense) totally didn’t work on Hermione!  The McGuffin Cup apparently protects its holder from curses.  How neat.

So the baddies guess the flask on Hermione’s belt is defo the Cup, and take it off her, and I am SO convinced they are right and the obvious decoy is not, in fact, an obvious decoy.

At this point, Lucius shows up and tells Voldemort all about wee babby Tom, and then teleports Tom and Ginny over so Voldemort can meet himself in person.

That was a weird sentence.

Ginny has spent the interim since she tried to off herself having fever dreams about Passionate Trousers, that crappy romance book she was reading before.  This, apparently, is her equivalent to the river of the dead that Draco saw in Draco Sinister when he almost died.  Yeah … Draco gets a spooky river of ghosts, and Ginny gets a thematically inappropriate bodice-ripper.

Lame.

But whatever, she wakes up in time to meet Old Voldy … and promptly faints again.

Our heroine!

At this point, Harry and Draco are traipsing through an underground tunnel when they run into those weakass vampires again.  Draco’s like, “You really don’t wanna bite us, bro,” but a vampire bites him anyway, and then instantly dies from all the poison in Draco’s blood.  The weakass vampires all run screaming, and Harry FINALLY realises Draco isn’t actually cured.

With tears of exhaustion, I reach the penultimate chapter, and pray to the powers that be for a finale that was worth slogging through all this crap for.  But really, deep down, I know I’m just tumbling further and further into the sunk cost fallacy with every page I read.

So Ginny wakes up in a big fancy bedroom, where Tom tells her that he’s working with Old Voldy now, and I gigglesnort because all I can think of is Nega Scott the end of Scott Pilgrim vs the World.  “He’s not that bad when you get to know him.  We actually have a lot in common.”

On the bright side, Ginny get to be Tom’s special prized concubine forever while the rest of the world burns. Yay?  Tom leaves and Hermione appears, and continues the tradition of bullying the shit out of Ginny.  She victim-blames the hell out of her, because it is just so GROSS that Tom is obsessed with her and that’s all totally Ginny’s fault, and never mind the fact that Hermione was in exactly this position with Salazar Slytherin in Draco Sinister.

So Hermione finishes yelling, “How dare you seduce Tom Riddle, Ginny!” and proceeds to tell Ginny her plan for defeating Voldemort, which involves … Ginny continuing to seduce Tom Riddle.

UGH.

So Hermione finally fucks off, and pretends Rhysenn has killed her.  Because reasons.

Outside, Harry and Draco finally reach Voldemort’s castle.  Harry tries to gently Wingardium Leviosa Draco over the battlements, and ends up tossing him through a window.  Harry is then chased by a bunch of Voldemort’s guards, but his runic band lights up and murders the shit out of all of them … and then crumbles into dust. Not sure why it chose this specific moment to die, but I guess Cassie got tired of Harry carrying around a get out of jail free card.

It turns out Draco coincidently burst through Ginny’s window.  AND AGAIN, the instant he sees her he’s like, “Oh fuck off, what’re YOU doing here?”

Like.  BITCH.

Ginny only fucked up in this fic because everyone was such an unapologetic shitweasel to her.  And then she tried to fix her mistake, even to the point of attempting suicide.  Jesus Christ, what do you all want from Ginny?

CAMPAIGN BE NICER TO GINNY 2K18.

I didn’t take very good notes over the next part, mostly because I was skimming but also possibly because my hand was occupied with the glass of rosé I sorely needed to get through his hellfic unscathed.  But basically everyone winds up having a big battle; Draco, who couldn’t stand unaided one page ago, is suddenly able to charge into a sword fight no problem; Hermione’s “play dead” plan lasts exactly 0.1 seconds and amounts to nothing; and everything utterly fails and Voldemort captures them all anyway.

So Voldemort kills them all and gets on with his spell, right?

Nope.

He keeps them alive.

Why?

Because Cassie Claire is too cowardly to kill a protagonist and too lazy to invent a decent explanation for how they survive, that’s why.

So Voldemort chains them all up around a whacking great pentagram with the four worthy McGuffins, and I roll my eyes because we’re back at the end of Draco Sinister.  Draco and Tom have an argument about Greek mythology which is supposed to show how smart and cultured Draco is, but actually just shows that Cassie’s only research into Greek mythology was watching Clash of the Titans because she thinks the Kraken is a Greek monster … and I slam my head against a wall because JUST LET THIS BE OVER ALREADY.

So Voldemort cuts Ron open to get at that delicious seer blood, and the ritual kicks off with Cassie stealing the “close your eyes!” gimmick from Indiana Jones.

Guess what happens next?

It’s OK, I’ll give you a second.

That’s right!  The McGuffin Cup wasn’t really the McGuffin Cup! Hermione pulled the old switcheroo, and it totally wasn’t obvious even slightly at all.

So Voldypoldy gets trapped in the pentagram, screaming his guts out, and Tom does a runner.  Draco goes racing after him, because Ginny decides not to tell him that killing Tom will also kill her.  This lack of communication would piss me off, but after how fucking horrible everyone’s been to Ginny I’m not surprised she’s suicidal. And frankly, I am also ready for death.

Meanwhile, Harry dives into the pentagram to fight Voldemort, while Ron and Hermione fight Lucius. The pentagram cooks Wormtail alive for some reason, and Voldemort tries to stab Harry but—

The Malfoy Family Code of Conduct in Harry’s pocket stops the dagger.

Seriously.  We are pulling a “Bible stopped the bullet” here.

Voldemort then remembers he’s a fucking wizard, and throws a killing curse at Harry.  The curse bounces off the McGuffin Mirror, one of those other worthy objects we all forgot about, and kills Voldemort instead. And then Harry cuts Voldemort’s head off for good measure.  Because everyone loves unnecessary violence.

Meanwhile, Draco gets thiiiiis close to killing Tom, before Tom points out Ginny will also die.  So naturally, after knocking Tom out and tying him up, Draco realises what a douchecanoe he’s been to Ginny and apologises—HAHAHAHA no, he just berates her some more.

Ron and Hermione apprehend Lucius, and all is looking good.  Voldemort’s dead, the others baddies are dead or captive … surely there’s not much left, right?  I check the page counter at the top of my screen.

260 A4 pages left.

So it turns out the whole reason Lucius was such an unapologetic dicknozzle this whole time was because he sold his ability to love to Voldemort.  For like, power?  Or something? And now Voldemort’s dead, Lucius suddenly loves Draco, and realises he poisoned him, and has Some Regrets. Unfortunately, Draco doesn’t give a fuck, and in some of the most awkward, out of character dialogue in the fic, he tells Harry to just kill him if he wants.

TEENAGERS DON’T TALK LIKE THIS.

However, Harry decides not to kill Lucius, instead interrogating him for information about Draco’s antidote.  Turns out they’re missing one ingredient: argent dragon’s blood.  Too bad argent dragons are extinct.  This might’ve been a clever twist, if argent dragons had ever been mentioned before this moment.

Harry then leaves Lucius alone with Ron, who proceeds to prophesise the fall of the Malfoy name and the loss of everything Lucius holds dear.  And because Ron is a seer and couldn’t possibly be making shit up, Lucius freaks out and kills himself.

For complicated, nonsensical reasons, Rhysenn now becomes Draco’s servant.  Draco’s like “Bugger it all, I’ll free you if you kiss Tom Riddle’s soul out of Seamus’s body,” because apparently succubi work just like dementors. So Rhysenn does that, and then leaps out the window, presumably yelling, “DOBBY IS FREEEEE!”

Draco makes some long, sad speeches about how very hard he is dying, and then does what he’s been threatening to this whole fic, and stops breathing.

Well.  I wish.

The final chapter begins with a funeral, but as anyone with half a brain can guess, it’s not Draco’s funeral.  It’s Pansy Parkinson’s.  Draco is actually in a coma.  And despite the fact Pansy poisoned Draco and tricked Ron into shagging her and basically ruined everyone’s lives, they all show up to her funeral.  Possibly just to ensure this bitch is deep in the cold, cold ground.

Well, except for Harry, that is.  Harry has apparently sat motionless at Draco’s bedside for three straight days. This I do not buy.  A man does not go three days without needing to get up to piss.

Meanwhile, Ginny is busy looking after poor, shell-shocked Seamus Finnegan, who claims to remember nothing about being possessed, but who wakes up from nightmares screaming for people to run, or begging someone to stop.  You know, totally normal, not at all PTSD stuff.  And naturally, Ginny is patient and understanding, because this isn’t something you just “get over”, and she treats Seamus with the same kindness he always showed her—

HA, NO.  Ginny resents Seamus for making her look after him, and acts like an absolute martyr for showing a single ounce of human decency.

God damn it, Ginny.  I defended you.

Anyway, apparently it took three effing days for anyone to have the bright idea that Harry should try and contact Draco through telepathy.  This essentially amounts to psychic Harry dramatically begging Draco to “Hold on!” while psychic Draco acts surprisingly millennial and yells back, “LET ME DIE, I’M FUCKIN’ TIRED.”

Meanwhile, Ginny realises Harry’s runic band had argent dragon blood it in.  A shame, since the damn thing poofed into a million pieces, but luckily she knows someone else who’s got one.  So she does a few time travel trips, and winds up arriving at the moment Gareth dies so she can take the runic band from him.

Snape manages to get the argent dragon blood out of the runic band, but then points out it needs to brew for 1,000 years.  So they make two vials, and Ginny does more time travelling.  One vial goes to the Malfoy family (that’s the one Lucius will eventually have), and one vial is hidden in the Hogwarts library.

Ginny also passes Gareth’s now-empty runic band to Rhysenn in the past, so Rhysenn can be the ~mysterious benefactor~ who gives the band to Harry at the end of Draco Sinister.  If all this sounds like a really confusing episode of Doctor Who … yeah, I’m sorry.  I can only guess that Cassie realised the time travel shenanigans worked well in Draco Sinister, and so she decided to cram WAY MORE time travel into Draco Veritas.

So Ginny gets to the present, but it turns out time travelling that much is kinda bad for you so she starts coughing up blood and passes out.  (Side note: I love fanfic, where coughing up blood is a symptom of basically any generic illness, as opposed to reality where it means “punctured lung”.)

So they manage to tip the antidote down Draco’s throat, and he wakes up fine and dandy, but now Ginny’s dying instead.  There’s some drawn-out angst, until Seamus marches in, grabs the time turner from Ginny’s neck and smashes it, which somehow magically makes her well again.

So uh … the end?

No, no, no.

Time for an epic Cassie Claire epilogue with pages and pages of pointless friendship drama and romance angst.  Because we haven’t had enough of that already!

Ginny hangs about with Seamus, bitching at him for being miserable (yeah Seamus, how dare you be traumatised by Tom Riddle possessing you and using you to rape, torture and murder and bunch of people!), and eventually she asks Hermione for a love potion so she can try to actually enjoy the rest of her miserable life with Seamus. Hermione reluctantly gives her a potion, but then Ginny spends the next several pages mooning about wondering if she should take the bloody thing.

Meanwhile, Cassie pulls “Dumbledore the master manipulator” out of her arse and claims Dumbledore had Snape deliberately mess with Harry and Draco’s polyjuice potion way back at the beginning of Draco Dormiens, with the intention of them swapping bodies and gaining these psychic powers and—

THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

If Snape and Dumbledore knew about the bodyswap thing back in Draco Dormiens, why would they allow Lucius to take Harry back to Malfoy Manor, thinking he was Draco?  Why wouldn’t Snape be keeping an eye on Draco all the time at Hogwarts?  Surely, if the whole plan was to ensure they were best buddies in time to kill Voldemort, the safest and most responsible way to do that was with them both at Hogwarts, where Snape and Dumbledore could watch over them.

AAUUUGHHHH.

Well, whatever.  Snape and Dumbledore say they have an antidote for Harry and Draco’s psychic connection, so they can separate and go back to being their own individuals again.  This means Harry and Draco spend the next several pages angsting over their imminent separation.

Draco takes Harry to the bottomless pit from Draco Dormiens, and chucks his two epicyclical charms down it.  I guess this is meant to be symbolic, but since the epicyclical charms did fuck all in this fic … meh.  Then again, when you consider that Cassie’s username used to be “Epicyclical”, this scene has some frankly hilarious connotations.

So Seamus once again decides he’s too good for these assholes and fucks off, leaving Ginny and Draco to finally fucking get together again.  Harry proposes to Hermione, and astoundingly, she shows half an ounce of common sense and tells him they’re too young for that bullshit.  Also Ron and Blaise are a thing now.  Apparently.

Ginny tosses the love potion away, and then finds out it was never a real love potion anyway.  Harry and Draco refuse to take their antidotes, instead choosing to go on an EPIC PSYCHIC ROADTRIP.

And this monstrosity of a fic finally fucking ends when Harry and Draco stop off at Hogwarts so Draco can look in the Mirror of Erised, because Cassie is sodding obsessed with mirrors.  He sees himself exactly as he already is.

*

So, overall thoughts?

It was shite. Godawful.  This was a behemoth-sized fanfic of absolutely nothing sodding happening.  Draco Veritas commits the worst sin any writing can commit.  It’s BORING. Friendship drama can be fine and enjoyable, but not in a fic that’s meant to be an epic whirlwind fantasy adventure.  By this point, I would expect the characters to have their shit together, but instead they’re bickering and falling out and weeping more than ever.

The first half is definitely the worst—so bad I almost gave up several times.  In the second half, Cassie seems to realise the characters should be doing something by now, so she starts throwing in heists and kidnaps and Tom Riddles for conflict. But it’s all just swallowed up in more pointless, meandering drama.  If anyone else reading this has waded through Draco Veritas, you’ll know what I mean when I say I’ve cut out over half the shit that happens in this fic to try and boil it down to an actual plot.  Writing out this spork was like doing a fucking archaeological dig.  “I know the good shit’s down here somewhere, but there’s about six meters of mud to shovel out before we can see it.”

I can’t believe Cassie Claire became a BNF on the back of this.  I can’t believe she got a publishing deal and was a roaring success on the back of this.  Accusations of plagiarism aside, the whole fic is just plain bad.

And honestly, as much fun as I had laughing at the Draco Trilogy, I’m glad I never have to read any of Cassie’s writing again.

Well … until I dig out that Ron/Ginny fanfic, anyway.

The fic starts when Draco wakes from a nightmare, and struggles to decide who to tell about it, before settling on writing to Hermione … in exactly the same way as Harry wakes up from a nightmare at the start of Goblet of Fire and writes to Sirius.  Yeah.  The plagiarism starts that early.

Harry and Draco are spending the summer at an unnamed Magid school (and yes, it remains unnamed for the whole fic), where Fleur Delacour is also a student/Magid.  Weird Canon Divergence #1: Fleur here is not described as having veela heritage.  She is a veela.  Because Cassie Claire only skimmed the Harry Potter books .  Also Lupin teaches at this school, because the whole drama about him being unveiled as a werewolf apparently didn’t matter in Cassie’s world.

Anyhoo, Draco got this fancy sword at the end of Draco Dormiens during the epic bitchfight with Lucius.  It’s all green and sparkly, and totes belonged to Salazar Slytherin (because if Godric Gryffindor got a sword, Slytherin did too, apparently). But Harry’s hella suspicious of it and convinces Draco to let Lupin take the sword and make sure it’s not, like, cursed as all get out.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at the Burrow, Hermione’s chilling with Ron and Ginny when she gets Draco’s letter.  She merrily writes back to him and Harry, before receiving another letter from Victor Krum.

Because the love triangle in Draco Dormiens wasn’t infuriating enough. Now we need to toss Krum in the mix.

She agrees to meet Krum in Diagon Alley.  Yeah. I’m sure this’ll shake out fine.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Magid school, Draco wakes up in the night again, this time because a demon has broken into his and Harry’s dormitory looking for the sword.

Weird Canon Divergence #2: despite JKR’s efforts to keep the afterlife vague and mysterious, Cassie whacks a Christian Hell into Draco Sinister a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, complete with fire and brimstone.  O … OK?

Harry and Draco banter with the demon for a while, but since Lupin currently has the sword they can’t exactly hand it over (and Draco doesn’t want to because, you know, Draco Malfoy). Eventually the demon decides fuck it, and tells Draco to keep the damn sword because it’s cursed as all get out anyway, and promptly disappears.  Lupin works out the sword is a Living Blade, meaning it has a mind of its own and that mind is kitten-murdering  evil, and Harry’s like, ‘Mate I told you that sword was cursed as all get out,’ and Draco’s like, ‘Shut up I still want it.’

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Diagon Alley, Hermione promptly loses both Ron and Ginny and talks to Victor Krum alone.  Because of course.  When she comes back, she says screw Harry, she’s madly in love with Krum now and is going to run away with him to Bulgaria.

Well that didn’t take long.

Back at Magid school, Harry receives a letter from Hermione informing him of her newest true love, at which he has a full on meltdown, smashing everything in the vicinity with his Magid powers until Draco yells, ‘Oh hell nah, we did not go through all this love triangle bullshit for Hermione to run off with Krum, something is up,’ and slaps some sense into Harry, a scene which essentially ends in Lupin running in screaming, ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MOTHERFUCKERS?’

And I wish that was the last My Immortal comparison I’d find in this fic.

They get Fleur Delacour to seduce Lupin out of his office (I threw up in my mouth a little), before breaking in so Draco can nab his cursed sword back. Lupin’s locked it in an unbreakable case, but Draco deliberately pisses Harry off until his Magid rage comes back and smashes the case open.  This is the first of several times they use enraged Harry to break shit, a trope I will henceforth refer to as Incredible Hulk Harry.

Harry and Draco team up with Ron and Ginny, and march up to Krum’s hotel room in London.  But Krum’s like, ‘Oh, Hermy-ninny?  I haffn’t seen her, but then I don’t remember literally any of yesterday except someone yelling “Imperio” at me.’

Luckily for the gang, Draco gave Hermione his epicyclical charm—that ugly ass necklace Lucius had in Draco Dormiens that contained Draco’s life force or whatever.  So Draco can use that like a homing beacon to find Hermione.  Also Harry has another mini meltdown because he’s so glad Hermione does love him after all

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away Hermione wakes up locked in a tower.  Wormtail walks in and she’s like, ‘Aha, I should’ve known this was Voldemort’s doing!’ but Wormtail goes, ‘Nah, I got a bitchin’ new master now, check it out,’ and in walks motherfucking Salazar Slytherin.

Hermione understandably freaks the fuck out, not least because apparently Slytherin thought it’d be fashionable to get the Dark Mark tattooed on BOTH HIS CHEEKS.  Yeah.  Like Star Butterfly’s lil’ hearts.

He tells Hermione the Dark Mark was actually totes his idea, and Voldemort’s basically just a DeviantArt thief. Then he shows Hermione a tapestry of the Hogwarts founders, who look suspiciously like Hermione (Ravenclaw), Harry (Gryffindor), Ginny (Hufflepuff) and Draco (Slytherin).

The fic continues to spiral wildly into insanity as Slytherin announces Hermione is the Heir of Rowena Ravenclaw, who he was in love with until she ditched him for Gryffindor. But that’s OK because Slytherin has a handy dandy love potion to force Hermione to love him 5ever!  Wormtail blindfolds Hermione and makes her chug the potion, and says she will fall in love with the first person she sees once the potion kicks in.  Like a baby duck!

Side note: why does everyone, including the villains, want to sleep with Hermione?

So at this point I’m side-eyeing the fic furiously, because I can sense incoming love triangles like cats can sense earthquakes.  Cast your bets who she falls in love with.  (No, it’s not Wormtail.)

Halfway to Hermione (a great band name), Harry and co. are attached by dementors.  Draco falls off his broom and breaks his leg, so while Ron and Ginny look for help, Harry teaches Draco the patronus charm.

Draco’s patronus is a dragon. Because of course it is.

Ron and Ginny happen to find Charlie Weasley, who happens to be in England and not Romania and happens to have a hoard of dragons with him and happens to have plenty of healers to fix Draco’s leg.  Of course! He patches them up, shows them his dragons (not a euphemism) and lets them nance on to save Hermione.

Except Ginny.

Ginny’s not allowed to go.

Weird Canon Divergence #3: Ginny’s characterisation.  Hindsight is 20/20 when you’ve read Order of the Phoenix, and I know the Draco Trilogy started before that.  But still, reading Ginny Weasley, the quidditch champion, queen of bat bogey hexes, tomboy badass as a ‘girl’s girl more interested in boys and make up’ /stroppy teenager from hell is just … wrong.  She acts, and is treated, much younger than the other characters, despite the pretty minimal age gap.  I had 15 year-old friends when I was 16.  The maturity level was not that different.

ANYWAY.  Harry, Ron and Draco march up to this old castle in the woods, but it’s all locked up and guarded, so Draco’s like, ‘Well everyone pretty much still thinks I’m a Death Eater anyway, so why don’t I go in and let you in after?’  And Harry says, ‘Good idea,’ and Ron says, ‘Actually I’m also still 90% convinced you’re a Death Eater,’ but Draco goes in regardless.

He runs into a bunch of veelas, who fawn hilariously over him and reveal Weird Canon Divergence #4: veelas in the Draco Trilogy are straight-up bonafide dark creatures, who seduce men and then fucking eat them.  Like a praying mantis.

Why not?

The veela tell Draco he’s defo got some veela heritage in him, before waltzing off, presumably to seduce and eat some men who aren’t related to them.  Draco decides fuck Harry and Ron, and goes off to rescue Hermione on his own.

Hermione, also currently trying to escape, has a moment of mind-numbing stupidity and takes her blindfold off—and of course, sees Draco Malfoy.

It could’ve been Wormtail, Hermione.

He was in that castle.

WHY WOULD YOU TAKE THE BLINDFOLD OFF?

Hermione’s nearly as devastated as I am to discover the plot triangle Cassie killed at the end of Draco Dormiens has risen from its grave, and begs Draco not to tell Harry about the love potion.  Because, you know, honesty isn’t that important in a relationship.

Weird Canon Divergence #4: love potions are illegal in the Draco Trilogy.  I actually approve of this, because it’s always kind of boggled my mind how literal mind-control date rape drugs are A-OK in JKR’s world.  Good job, Cassie, I guess?

Draco and Hermione leg it out the castle, but Slytherin blocks their way.  He’s surprisingly chill, though, considering his whole love potion plan is now utterly fucked—he essentially pats Draco on the head and says, ‘Go get ‘em champ,’ before letting them out the door.

Suspicious as hell, but whatever.

Hermione sees Harry outside and flies into his arms, because apparently the love potion hasn’t cancelled out her love for Harry.  Because otherwise the love triangle couldn’t continue!  Then they all toddle back to Charlie’s dragon camp, and THEN.

Draco.

In leather pants.

YES IT HAPPENS.

(For those who don’t know, Draco in Leather Pants is a trope coined specifically from this fic, referring to bad boy characters who are really good at heart, but struggling with an inner turmoil because they might be kinda evil.  Like Spike from Buffy. Except Spike was well written.)

Anyway, Ginny sees Draco in leather pants, and her ovaries basically leap into her throat and throttle her.  She tells Hermione she fancies Draco now, and not ten minutes later she catches Hermione and Draco snogging the shit out of each other.  Because love triangles.  Painful, painful love triangles.

Ginny’s mad as hell, but for some reason also agrees not to tell Harry about the love potion, and they all jet back to Malfoy Manor, aka Sirius and Narcissa’s house.  Because yes, in case you forgot, Sirius/Narcissa is a thing in this fic.  And they are engaged.  Making Harry and Draco soon to be brothers.  Sort of.

Hermione hits the books looking for love potion cures and they send a letter to Snape asking for help, figuring Snape will at least help Draco if not the rest of them.  Meanwhile, Draco visits Daddy Dearest in prison, who tells him being good is dumb, Malfoys are always evil, and Draco is destined to murder the shit out of Harry and become either Slytherin or Voldemort’s minion. Then, shortly after Draco leaves, Lucius summons demons in his cell and accidentally blows himself the fuck up.

Good job, Lucius.

All the love potion research comes up nil, and they find the only way to end it is for either Draco or Hermione to die.  Then Harry finds out about the love potion after all and has another Incredible Hulk meltdown.

Draco, who by now is living through Draco Malfoy and the Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad, No Good Day, takes the epicyclical charm/ugly ass necklace off Hermione, kisses her, probably insults her, and shoots away on his Firebolt. Not his Nimbus 2001, because apparently Cassie forgot what broom Draco has.

I won’t lie, a good chunk of the middle of this fic is a blur, but it involves:

Sirius and Lupin having 10x the chemistry of Sirius and Narcissa

Slytherin’s Evil McNasty sword trying to make Draco kill Harry, and also refusing to be thrown away like goddamn Three Wolf Moon

Ginny exploring a quarry underneath the Burrow and finding Fred and George’s porn stash

Draco getting a will-strengthening potion off Snape so he can fight the temptation to murder Harry, and discovering Snape’s heart-print pyjamas and beautiful singing voice

Draco making out with Fleur, because why not?

Sirius, Lupin and Snape going to St Mungo’s because a ~mysterious dark wizard~ killed Cornelius Fudge and put Dumbledore in a coma

Neville giving Draco a concussion

Harry and Hermione doing lots of kissing and not much else

An illustration of Snape and Malfoy in which Snape has a fucking evil goatee

Arthur fucking Weasley is announced as the new Minister of Magic

Draco appearing at the Burrow to apologise for being a dickweasel to Ginny, and then making out with her as well

Harry appears outside the Burrow to try and talk sense into Draco, but Draco’s will strengthening potion runs out and he stabs Harry in the chest.  Luckily, Harry isn’t really Harry, but a magic projection thing, and the real Harry is chilling in bed back at Malfoy Manor courtesy of some spell I can’t remember well enough to explain.

Regardless, Wormtail chooses this moment to pop up and … Christ on a bike, Wormtail is without doubt the single worst written character in this entire godforsaken fanfic.

See what I mean?  It sounds NOTHING LIKE Wormtail.  Although I’ve never seen that dialogue before, my suspicion is it’s nicked from something else.  When I said I read Draco Dormiens with constant paranoia, this is what I meant.  Some dialogue’s out of character, or the style changes for a few paragraphs, and the alarm bells just won’t stop ringing.

Wormtail demands Draco come and work for Slytherin, and Draco refuses, so Wormtail reveals his shiny new arm-sword and they have a scrap, until Wormtail pushes Draco in the river and drowns him.

Wormtail vanishes, and Draco gets to have a fun time in Purgatory nattering with Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and also Harry’s parents, while Ron and Ginny drag Draco out the river. Harry makes Ron perform mouth-to-mouth on Draco because boys kissing is hil-arious!

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Malfoy Manor, Hermione knows instantly that Draco’s died because she feels the love potion break.  She panics and runs for Sirius, but finds him a wee bit occupied with Lupin, who’s turned into a werewolf because Slytherin is Calling all the dark creatures to come join him.  Luckily, Hermione found this funky silver necklace, which turns out to be a lycanthe, which repels werewolves, and also does whatever other plot-helpful Cassie needs for a given chapter.

They lock up Lupin safely, and also manage to lock up the demon that attacked Draco right at the beginning of the fic in the cell right next to him.  So you know.  He’ll have a friend.

Harry wakes up and tells Hermione to chill, because Draco is alive thanks to Ron’s CPR, and they zip to the Burrow together to celebrate with Jesus!Draco. Then we get Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #1: Ron offering to teach Draco to play chess.  D’aww.

We get some flashbacks via Draco and Hermione’s dreams, and learn that Slytherin got all his power from Hell, and also his bitchin’ ass sword, which he was meant to give back but has somehow wangled his way out of it until now (thus the pissed-off demon in the Malfoy Manor basement).  Also he created werewolves, veelas, basilisks and a shit tonne of other dark creatures, which he refers to as ‘experiments’ like a mad scientist.  Hermione reads a bunch of books about Slytherin and tries to tell Harry and Ron about this magic orb Slytherin has that either unleashes all his powers or kills him or probably both, but they’re like, ‘Yawn, boring,’ because of course they wouldn’t be interested in information about the villain they are supposed to be fighting against in this fic GDI.

Anywhoo, the group all chill out until Salazar Slytherin kicks in the door, like ‘GRANDMA, IT’S ME, ANASTASIA’ and kidnaps Harry and Draco, leaving the others behind because meh.

At this point, I’d like to take a brief break from the plot to address a question I kept asking myself throughout the entire fic:

What the fuck is Voldemort doing all this time?

He’s nowhere.  Wormtail makes vague assertions he might be dead, but Slytherin later says he’s alive. Voldemort’s return in canon is the turning point of Harry Potter.  It changes everything.  Hogwarts isn’t safe anymore.  The children have to grow up.  Characters die.  But in the Draco Sinister, Voldemort’s fobbed off like he’s unimportant or uninteresting.  Characters keep crying ‘Slytherin is far worse than Voldemort!’, which might make sense if Cassie had killed off Voldemort in Draco Dormiens, and needed a bigger, badder villain for the sequel.  But she didn’t.  Voldemort is still out there.  Twiddling his thumbs.  Knitting jumpers for Nagini ,for all we know.

OK.  OK, back to the fic.

So, Narcissa has a natter with the demon in the basement, who reveals that yep, the demons want the sword back from Slytherin, but Slytherin has to return it by his own hand. Otherwise, the demons will have to take a descendant of Slytherin blood has repayment.  Handily, it turns out Harry and Draco both have Slytherin heritage, so now Slytherin has a choice. Good for him.

Hermione’s lycanthe activates GPS mode, and takes them into the quarry underneath the Burrow, where Ginny says she had another older brother who drowned.  Seems like a weird, shoe-horned in detail now, and that’s because it kind of is.  After some puzzles, they discover a time turner that used to belong to Hufflepuff. Since Ginny is the reincarnation of Hufflepuff or whatever, she gets the time turner.

You may be wondering why the boys get swords and the girls get necklaces.  And I’m sure Cassie Claire has a good explanation for that.

But I don’t.

So, Harry and Draco wake up locked in a big adamantine cell.  Adamantine is basically Cassie’s Magid kryptonite, meaning they’re basically stuffed. They argue for a bit about whether Draco is gay, ending in Draco giving Harry hair care tips because this fic is weird, and then for the lols, Draco decides to teach Harry how to fence.

Now, I’m not an expert on sword fighting.  I know a bit.  But one thing I know for sure?

You cannot fence with swords made in the Dark Ages.

Fencing foils are lightweight, thin and poky, made for stabbing your enemy so full of holes he bleeds to death. Swords in the Dark Ages were whacking great bludgeons with sharp edges, made for separating limbs from bodies. They were heavy bastards; they were not made for lunging and poking and riposte-ing.

You cannot fence.  With a sodding broadsword.

While Harry and Draco are having their ridiculous and physically impossible sword fight, the cell door opens and Fleur Delacour walks in like, ‘I’m here to rescue you, bitches!’  Harry doesn’t trust her because she’s ‘boy crazy’ (a trait of every female character in this fic, so hardly a reason for distrust) but regardless they follow her outside.

She leads them through the famously plagiarised nightmare grass scene, and then underground to a locked door. Draco gets Harry to Incredible Hulk the door open by informing him his dead parents are stuck in Purgatory, after which Fleur betrays them and leaves them to get eaten by a manticore.

Harry and Draco kill the manticore, getting Harry utterly soaked in manticore blood in the process.  Like, ‘took a bath in blood’ kind of soaked. Slytherin shows up, and in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #2, Harry yells, ‘We killed your monster and we’re not sorry!’ and Slytherin says, ‘Well, duh, that’s what I wanted you to do.’

Slytherin sends Harry back to the dungeons but keeps Draco to be his evil minion, then hacks open the manticore and pulls his magic orb out of its stomach (um … you might wanna wash that off, bud).  But now he needs all the Hogwarts founders’ Heirs to touch the orb so he can get his power back.  Or die? The fic never seemed decided on whether opening the orb was a good thing or a bad thing.  Both sides seemed to want it to happen, and also to not happen.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Ron, Hermione and Ginny use the time turner to go to the Dark Ages, during the original war with Slytherin.  They meet wee Ben Gryffindor, Godric’s twelve-year-old son, and Rowena Ravenclaw, who is dying.  Rowena initially refuses to speak to Ron because he’s not an Heir, at which point I started screeching incomprehensibly, because that’s not how heirs work.  If anything, Bill should be Hufflepuff’s heir.  Definitely not Ginny, the youngest sibling.

But no, Heir is Cassie Claire’s dumb way of saying “reincarnation”, and eventually Ravenclaw lets Ron in anyway and tells him that, as a seventh son, he’s totes psychic.

If you just counted the Weasley brothers on your fingers, don’t worry, I did the same.  I also got to six, got annoyed, and then remembered that extra brother Cassie shoehorned in who drowned.  I guess you got me, Cassie.  Bravo.

Wee Ben Gryffindor takes the gang to Slytherin’s castle, and lets them in the adamantine cell.  Ginny uses the time turner to take them back to the future …

… Where Slytherin is having a whale of a time psychologically torturing Draco.  He has his own Mirror of Erised dealie, which shows you ‘who you truly are’.  Draco sees his whole ancestral line of unapologetic dickfucks and realises he can never be truly Good™.  Slytherin also gives Draco the Dark Mark, because FASHION, then sticks him in a room with Fleur Delacour and tells them to get it on, because apparently he invented veela for the sole purpose of procreation and I just threw up in my mouth again.

Draco and Fleur do not get it on. Draco does what any sensible person would do in this situation: orders cocktails and gets thoroughly shitfaced.

See the thing is, Draco’s whole tortured evil/good dilemma would be a lot more compelling in this fic if he actually had to overcome something besides teenage angst bullshit. The fic separates everything into pure Good and Evil, states that Harry and Hermione are just naturally good, and the Malfoy family are just naturally bad, and that’s it. But that’s not how morality works.  

Real people have good traits and bad traits, and in fiction, overcoming those bad traits is how redemption arcs happen.  For Draco’s redemption to be rewarding, we need to see him overcome a character flaw. But he doesn’t.  He just Decides To Be Good.

SIGH.

So Hermione, Ginny and Ron pop into the future, and find Harry sitting in the adamantine cell alone. And Harry’s like, ‘I guess Draco’s evil now?’ and they’re like, ‘I doubt it, this fic is literally named after him,’ but then the door opens and Hermione, Ron and Ginny all have to huddle under the invisibility cloak.

Draco comes in with Slytherin, gloats evilly for a bit, cuts Harry’s arm probably by accident, and nances off again.  Ron and Hermione run out to free Harry, and realise Ginny’s missing because she ran after Draco.

Oh.  BOY.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Sirius gets a will-strengthening potion off Snape to cure his lover Lupin’s permanent-werewolf-ness, then they visit Godric’s Hollow to get Harry a magic scabbard that also used to belong to Godric Gryffindor.  Happy Christmas, Harry.  No more chopping your belt off every time you try to sheathe your sword.

(And yes, swords do basically replace wands in this fic.  Magids can do wandless magic anyway.  IDK. Cassie Claire just really hates wands, apparently.)

Sirius and Lupin break into Slytherin’s castle with a scene ripped from Buffy, and are swiftly separated as Lupin is shut in with the other werewolves, and Sirius, claiming to be a vampire, is dragged off to meet the new general of Slytherin’s armies.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Draco, still pissed as a parrot, is chilling in his room when Ginny marches in.  Then, in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #3, Ginny proceeds to rip the sweet shit out of Draco Malfoy’s emo ass, because if he wants to be Good™, he can start by being less of a pussy and fixing his shit.

Draco kisses Ginny, and the whole thing is thoroughly ruined when Fleur reminds them she’s still in the room. Ginny assumes Draco is sleeping with Fleur (and pretty much anything on two legs); Draco does nothing to help this assumption; and Ginny magically sobers him up as revenge.

At this point, Draco’s called away to deal with some other shit, so Ginny talks to Fleur and finds out she’s not evil either, she’s just protecting her sister, blah blah blah. Fleur also gabbles more about how SUPER SCARY Slytherin is, like he made a whole army disappear once, and he can control his minion’s minds, and Ginny’s like ‘OK cool bye’ and uses her time turner to GTFO.

The other shit Draco has to deal with turns out to be Sirius, because Draco is apparently now head of Slytherin’s armies.  For convoluted reasons, Draco has Sirius locked in the dungeon.  For his own protection.  Or something.

Then Draco runs off to rescue Harry with Hermione and Ron, but Slytherin catches them.  He locks up Draco with Harry in the adamantine cell, and sends Hermione and Ron to the dungeons with Sirius.  Lucky for them, Sirius has his magic pencils, which they get to work using to draw a door back to the adamantine cell.  (Ron can draw in this fic.  Ron the Psychic Artist, still better than Ron the Death Eater.)

In the adamantine cell, Slytherin makes Draco run Harry through with his sword, but it’s OK because manticore blood apparently makes you temporarily immortal, and Harry got drenched in it.  Cassie actually points out that this is in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is great and all, but good writing would have still involved actually foreshadowing that shit in the fanfic.  Then bunch of demons pop up to explain the whole contract with Hell Slytherin’s got going on, and to remind them they really, really need to get Slytherin to give that sword back by his own hand, or Hell will take one of them instead.  Just to remind you.  No pressure.  The demons vanish as Hermione, Sirius and Ron get inside the room.

This is another part of the fic that I don’t 100% remember because there’s a lot of Scooby Doo style running about and getting separated and getting unseparated again, but it includes Sirius running to save his one true love Lupin and finding Fleur as well, Harry and Hermione winding up in an underground cavern with a bunch of merveela (yes, mermaid-veela) and Draco and Ron getting chased by dementors.

In the distant past, Ginny meets grown-up Ben Gryffindor, and convinces him to let her pinch his army and send them to the future.  It turns out Slytherin didn’t make the army disappear—Ginny did.

So Cassie Claire understands how time turners work better than the people who wrote Cursed Child.  Go figure.

Ginny pops into the future with her army, and in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #4, rides in on a FUCKING DRAGON to rescue Ron and Draco from the dementors.

Sirius gets Lupin and the other werewolves out safe, who turn out to be … pretty adorable?  They all just want to bake cakes and make bunting. Lupin stops them all going haywire by giving them Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans spiked with his will-strengthening potion, so they basically all wander off and make a drum circle somewhere for the rest of the fic.  I don’t know.

Ron’s injured and thus out for the count, but Ginny and Draco charge back in the castle to rescue Harry and Hermione.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Harry and Hermione find Slytherin’s orb and try to open it, because … ???

Well, the orb doesn’t open because they’re still missing the Hufflepuff and Slytherin Heirs, but Slytherin himself appears and promptly captures Harry and Hermione until Draco and Ginny show up, and also try to open the orb.

That’s all four Heirs, so Slytherin now becomes Super Saiyan Slytherin, laughs maniacally, and mind-controls Draco to toss Harry over to the demons.  Draco has one last moment of pure emo dipshittery, until Harry, Hermione and Ginny collectively yell at him to get his shit together.

Draco chops off Slytherin’s hand, wraps his fingers around the sword, and tosses that at the demons. This would be a clever twist on the whole ‘give it back with his own hand’, except I read Avocado’s exposé and I know it’s stolen.

Oh well.

The demons take the sword, and for good measure also take Slytherin to Hell.  Draco passes the fuck out while the castle collapses like Ganondorf’s dungeon at the end of Ocarina of Time, but they all escape ready to live happily ever after.

At this point, I looked warily at the word count.

Draco Dormiens wasted half a fic on sodding love triangles long after the plot was over.  Draco Sinister is way longer, and I was honestly dreading slogging through the miles of shipping at the end of this fic.

But actually, Cassie was merciful. The end of the fic is one chapter, featuring Harry’s birthday, for which Sirius basically throws together a freaking Gatsby Party.  I guess he realised he had access to the Malfoy vault all of a sudden.  For some reason I cannot fathom, Snape is invited to this party.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t end with him getting shot in the swimming pool.

Harry and Hermione smooch. Ron makes out with a veela … which … not a great idea, considering they’re still literal man-eaters, but whatever I guess.  Draco and Ginny do some romance, but it’s interrupted.

By Enoby Raven Dark’ness Dementia Way.

I’m not kidding.

Well I kind of am.

But not really.

She’s pale, and black-haired, and wearing a corset, and she introduces herself as Draco’s cousin, Rhysenn Malfoy.  And immediately invites him to stick his hand down her top.

She gives Draco Lucius’s signet ring, and also a message from Lucius, which essentially reads, ‘Not dead, ur lame.  Thnx 4 killing slytherin tho, voldy sends love and kisses.’

Because apparently Voldemort has finished knitting Nagini’s sodding jumper.

Draco runs into Dumbledore, now recovered from his coma, who tells him not to worry about Voldemort, because that’s Harry’s job.  He also says Draco did a good job resisting Slytherin’s mind-control because of love. I suspect Dumbledore whips this explanation out for anything he doesn’t know the answer to.  What happened to Amelia Earhart?  Love.  What’s with the Bermuda Triangle?  Love. What’s the answer to life, the universe and everything?  IDK, probably love.  Or 42.

Dumbledore also says Slytherin lied about that magic mirror—it actually shows your greatest fears, not your true self.  So Draco totes has every chance to be Good™ after all.

Draco heads back to the party, and he and Harry agree to be frenemies next year, and … that’s the end of the fic.

 --

 When I read Draco Dormiens, I couldn’t understand how Cassie Claire became a BNF.  Draco Dormiens was bad.  Bad characters, bad plot, bad writing, bad, bad, bad.

The first half of Draco Sinister is bad.  Dredging the Harry/Hermione/Draco love triangle back up with a love potion is dumb.  Voldemort just pissing off doing nothing for the whole fic is dumb.  Every line of dialogue given to Wormtail is dumb.  The dozens upon dozens of lines lifted from Blackadder, Red Dwarf and various other sources, regardless of whether they’re in-character or suit the mood or the scene or the setting, are infuriatingly dumb.

But about halfway through the fic, it’s like Cassie got her act together.

I don’t know if this is because halfway through the fic, Cassie was banned from FFN for plagiarism.  I don’t know—she still uses quotes all the way through, but possibly doesn’t lean so heavily on them.  Maybe it’s because she realised an actual plot was more interesting than constant angst romance.  But for whatever reason, it got better.