I'm sure there must be good quality Hermione fic out there, but I must confess that my forays into HP fic have been limited to a handful of authors based on recs. I have nothing like a comprehensive grasp of the fandom - indeed, I haven't read the BNFs, for the most part. I'll ask around, though.

I don't read HP fic, so I'm just asking this out of idle curiosity, but why is Draco such a popular character in fanfic? I've seen that he gets paired with Harry constantly and with Hermione occasionally, and I just don't get it. In the books (and the movies for that matter) there's nothing likable or redeemable about him. He doesn't seem like a conflicted villain, or a character with hidden depths. He's just a cruel adolescent.

Largely what Connie said. ;o) The appeal of villains is timeless

But also - Draco's popularity is, I think, due to a number of other reasons. In canon he's interesting in relation to Harry because Rowling sets up the whole hero-villain dynamic (see Clark/Lex, Mulder/Krycek et al), but then doesn't actually give Draco much time as the focus of attention - so there's an awful lot of leaway for fan writers. But also, if one's writing futurefic, Draco's potentially VERY interesting. Granted Rowling doesn't give him much depth, just as she cheerfully (thus far) uses Neville as comedy fat-boy-who's-totally-incompetent light relief. But based on what we have in text, Neville's actually a lot more interesting than that - Hall commented that in GoF it's noteworthy that nobody comments upon how horrendous it must be for Neville to realise that the teacher whom he'd thought was taking a friendly & avuncular interest in him was actually the very person who brutally tortured his parents and reduced them to the catatonic mess they're both in. Canonically, I was most surprised to realise upon re-reading, Draco isn't nearly as much of a shit as one supposes. He does make friendly overtures to Harry intially, and indeed the majority (not all - I'm not saying he's nice, but he's not nearly as ghastly as he's painted) of his instances of nastiness are actually reacting to rejection and/or snarkiness. I mean, Harry & co despise him, and we're told he's a shit, but in point of fact he doesn't do anything so very dreadful in canon - being rude is actually as bad as it gets. (eg. the 'mudblood' thing was in reaction to Hermione's assertion that he'd bought his way onto the team on the basis of gifts rather than talent - and yet clearly Draco is actually fairly good as a seeker. The initial nastiness on the train in HP: tPS is as a reaction to having his overtures turned down. Etc etc etc.) And once you take into consideration his home life - indoctrinated with anti-muggle sentiments and a sense of his family's worth, Lucius's icy and aggressive approach to fatherhood, his mother's self-involvement... and the fact that he's just a wee boy, well, basically there's a lot of scope for seeing Draco as a product of his enviroment. As he gets older, he's going to be obliged to assess his reality & make up his own mind more, and possibly face some very sticky decisions. Teenagers generally do rebel against their parents' beliefs and point of view, after all, and although he's obviously desparate for his father's approval & attention he could feasibly be driven in the opposite direction by sufficient unpleasantness once he's an adolescent.

But yes, that whole blond and snippy villain thing has a lot to be said for it...

Still, let me pimp AJ Hall's Lust Over Pendle once again:

During what wizards and witches were now coming to refer to as Recent Events Voldemort had had a simple initiation test for those recruits who - depressingly - had flocked to join him after his initial successes. If they wished to become a Death Eater they must kill a victim selected for them at random, within twenty-four hours, without assistance. Furthermore, if Voldemort's star should fall, it would be clear to the whole world that the individual's decision to take the test had been one of pure free will: no hope this time of sheltering behind Imperius.

Dying in the attempt was a honourable end (and, of course, neatly weeded out those whose incompetence might embarrass the Dark Lord later). Failing to carry out the test and surviving was not an option. Refusing the test, warning the intended victim, and then walking back to Voldemort's HQ to inform his second in command that one had done so was an act of such spectacularly suicidal stupidity that a depressed lemming would have earnestly counselled against it.

Even if the second in command concerned was the recruit's own father. Especially if the second in command was the recruit's own father.

Naturally, in the aftermath of Recent Events, when the wizard world had leisure to think once more, the question of Why? tended to arise. Various far-fetched theories were spun as to what exactly had happened the night Draco Malfoy went out to murder Hermione Granger, and returned some hours later, to tell his father that, actually, he thought becoming a Death Eater was a rotten idea, and he'd rather be excused.

Perhaps the best explanation was, after all, the simplest: Voldemort, whose grasp of his own psychology was, by that time, slipping considerably, had simply failed to appreciate that dislike, even intense dislike, is much further from hatred than it appears. Killing someone whom you have seen across the breakfast table for nearly half your life cannot be comfortably classified as mere garbage disposal, or the clinical negativing of a subject, however much you may have cringed inside at every bite of toast they ate for every breakfast of every week of that time.

Why, in any event, was not a question that occurred to Lucius Malfoy. His main objective was damage limitation. Thirty-odd years in the Dark Lord's service had polished his ability to regard people as things to a high degree.

Twenty minutes later Draco was lying in a deserted quarry forty miles from Voldemort's headquarters, already feeling the first effects of the Death in Life Potion his father had forced down his throat. As Lucius Disapparated he tossed over his shoulder two pieces of information. First, that the potion had been carefully designed to produce death and most of its after-effects, but in the wrong order. Decomposition commenced while the victim was both alive and sentient, and death, when it came, was a relief not only to the well-rotted victim, but to anyone strong stomached enough to remain in his vicinity. Secondly, that there was no antidote.

Some time later that evening, it appears, Lucius Malfoy mentioned to his wife that he had dealt with a potential family embarrassment.

This was a tactical misjudgement possibly never equalled since that of the general whose last words had been:

"Don't worry, they can't possibly hit an elephant at this dist-"

Legend, and the will to believe, clouds much of what happened next. Those allied against Voldemort were doing very badly at the time, and the impact on morale of the slightest victory was wholly disproportionate to its tactical value. Narcissa received the news quietly, but can have wasted no time. Within three hours Malfoy Manor, the fourteen top Death Eaters it was sheltering, and a cache of valuable intelligence information about Voldemort's plans had been turnedover to his enemies with not a drop of allied blood being split.

As the advance party made their way unopposed into the enemy stronghold they found Lucius dead in the basement, an expression of extreme annoyance on his face. It was believed that he had committed suicide, lacking the nerve to meet either Voldemort or Narcissa alive.

By dawn Narcissa was standing over the best Potions wizard the allies could put at her disposal, holding her wand with an air of indefinable menace. Whether it was the threat, the sheer intellectual challenge, or the fact that against considerable odds she had found one of the few allied wizards who actually quite liked Draco, but Lucius Malfoy's confidence that the effects of the Death In Life Potion were irreversible proved as illusory as all his other hopes. Narcissa and her son had joined the allies, and the rest, as they say, was herstory.

The furore was amazing. As someone said, "Never in the whole history of the struggle against Voldemort was so unexpected a reversal inflicted so effectively by one so stunningly photogenic". Others might justifiably feel they had contributed more to Voldemort's defeat; Narcissa, however, got the book deals.

Yup, AJ Hall has the best handle on a "redeemed" Draco I've seen.

And it's conveniently bookmarked for my reading pleasure. What a pleasant scene to imagine, Narcissa giving Lucius (which I originally typed as Lucious, darn my Freudian mind) The Look when told of her son's fate.

That was delightful. Thanks, FayJay.

I'm sure there must be good quality Hermione fic out there, but I must confess that my forays into HP fic have been limited to a handful of authors based on recs. I have nothing like a comprehensive grasp of the fandom - indeed, I haven't read the BNFs, for the most part. I'll ask around, though.

What's a BNF? t acronym clueless

Thanks! I'll look around on my own, too. I was just hoping someone here would know the way to the good stuff and spare me the wading through the badfic.

Big Name Fan.

The HP fandom is scary.

So, you know, I tend to avoid it.

No problem! ;o) (Presently working on a big old Draco-centric fic myself. I'm all over Redeemed!Draco)

Have you read Fearless Diva's Tissue of Silver, SA? She's still fiddling with rewrites that are really improving the pants off it prior to archiving, but the WIP in her LJ is cracking stuff.

What kind of scary? (she asks nervously, as she prepares to search Google)