The notion of my reviewing a story that I unequivocally enjoyed was raised recently, so I interrupted my reading list to revisit an old favorite of mine. I last read it about a decade ago and wanted to see if it still held up, which for the most part it does. Maya was considered a Big Name Fan in her day, and has had a fair bit of fanwork created around her fanfictions, including this one. She has since become a published author. Whilst she has taken her fanfiction down and does not like to be publicly associated with it, a PDF of the story can still be downloaded from AO3.
Premise
Six years after the war, Harry is an Auror and Draco Malfoy is his assigned partner working under Kingsley Shacklebolt. After an 11-month stint of celibacy, Harry is called into Shacklebolt’s office one day, where a lascivious Horace Slughorn must break the news to Harry that he has Veela heritage and needs to have sex as soon as possible because his attraction charms are getting out of hand. Shenanigans ensue.
This is a parody of the trope seen in many Drarry fanfics of Draco being a Veela, as it often trickles into concepts of mates and soul bonds and other outlandish ways of making Harry and Draco turn their affections to each other. Here, there is no credence lent whatsoever to any of this, and Veela blood is more something with amusing side effects than something which gives you a soulmate. Make no mistake though – this is still Drarry, and at its heart a love story.
Drop Dead Gorgeous was written across two years between Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows, so it should be considered AU after the events of book 6.
Rating-wise, it’s not heavy on sex or violence. There are a couple of scenes which approach sexual gratuity, but those scenes all either stop or are cut off before anything gets below the belt, so only an M rating.
Plot
In terms of the backstory, the downfall of Voldemort is largely brushed over, because it is not the focus of the story, and of course Maya didn’t know at the time what J.K’s intentions were for the finale and opted to leave the details vague. All we do know is that Harry killed Voldemort by his own hand and that Snape was revealed to have been spying for Dumbledore all along around the time Harry tried to kill him. Draco was brought into the resistance under Snape’s protection before the fall of Voldemort. It’s able to be a lighter story than canon because many of the people who were killed in DH are alive in this fic, including Snape, Tonks, Lupin, Lavender, Charity Burbage and Harry’s parseltongue.
So there’s sort of an A plot and a B plot as it were.
The A Plot is Harry failing miserably to cope with being an unbearably attractive part-Veela man. He is accosted everywhere he goes by both men and women, because the longer he goes without sex the stronger his charms become. People who are supposed to have heightened immunity to these charms include people who are of a different sexual persuasion to the Veela, have previously had sexual or at least close proximity contact with Veelas, or are in love with someone else. Gradually, Harry’s charms become so strong that each of these groups eventually cannot help but throw themselves at Harry, but all for nought as Harry is very much in love with Draco Malfoy, who is himself immune and in love with his long-time girlfriend, Katie Bell. This plot delves deep into how Harry developed into an adult and found out he was gay and how that affected all the relationships around him, and frankly it was both hilarious and deeply compelling and surprisingly good at switching between the two.
The B Plot really only shows up when the author feels the need to remind us that our heroes do in fact have a job to do other than managing Harry’s inexorable raw sexuality and reminiscing about how they got to where they are since the war. Despite the rather pitiful amount of time Harry and Draco spend doing actual sleuthing, the mystery of the mix-breed kidnappers is pretty interesting. Magical folk – largely children – of part-human heritage are disappearing, and Draco suspects Muggleborns. This plot is all but completely dropped for several chapters in the middle of the story, and when we pick it up again it’s almost a surprise that it’s still an ongoing investigation. We even pay special attention to a family of kidnapped part-goblin children early on, only for the finale to completely forget to mention whether or not those children were ever found alive.
Writing
The story is written in third person limited from Harry’s perspective. In the first half of the story it frequently time jumps between ‘now’ (when Harry is 23 and has been a fully-fledged auror for 3 years), and back to when he was 20 and just starting out. I love this choice of narrative, because of how well it handles the transition between the canon Harry we left behind in Half Blood Prince and Harry the Auror who works willingly alongside Draco Malfoy. It doesn’t have to show directly the long painful journey through six years to get to where we are now, but neither does it ask us to suspend our disbelief around the likelihood of things turning out this way.
We start off with establishing scenes of Harry discovering he’s a Veela and showing a day in his life, then something will happen, Harry will make some decision, and we’ll be taken back to a previous occasion which was some sort of turning point in Harry’s life and informs why he is making the decision he is. The author is also subtle about it, which is awesome, because so many fanfics are guilty of bludgeoning their readers over the head with exposition, and don’t let us join any of the dots ourselves the way Maya does here.
My only criticism of this narrative style is that the transitions between jumps really needed to be marked with dates or something, because the frequency with which it happens can make you easily lose track of which time period you’re reading.
I also dearly love the author’s sense of humour. Maya has a genuine gift for witty dialogue, which pulls you in, keeps you hooked and does the bulk of the work in progressing the plot. It also makes me want to cry myself to sleep knowing I’ll never be that good. Draco is the main mouthpiece for her best jokes, but her humour comes through with most of the characters, and it’s woven into the narrative as well. When I first read the story (probably a decade ago), I had never laughed so hard at a fic, and most of it still works for me now.
Here is a sample from Harry’s first day working as Malfoy’s partner in the office, in which they try to start out agreeably as they are both a thread away from being fired:
“I’ve got two reasons for not wanting to be fired, though, and one of them is that I’m damned if I get fired before you do.”
“Malfoy, this is not quidditch.” Harry snapped.
“I know, there’s all this paperwork,” Malfoy said. “Pull up a chair and show me your report on the sea monster. Mine’s over there.”
Malfoy’s was about four times the size of Harry’s and Harry had forgotten how much Malfoy’s handwriting looked like the flailings of a drunk spider.
“I’d forgotten that your writing looks one step away from a tiny tot’s fingerpainting,” Malfoy said, frowning at the pages.
Harry began a partnership which required mutual respect and civility by saying: “Bite me.”
Despite it being a Drarry story there is no Ginny bashing, although there is a lot of rewritten perspective (and in some cases, drastic reinterpretation) on the canon which rips into the justification for the canon pairings. Possibly my favourite example was this scene, in which Slughorn is still trying to convince Harry that his Veela powers are real:
“Women crowding the Quidditch pitch when you practised,” Slughorn reminded him. “Droves of women following you hypnotised through the corridors. Surely you didn’t think this was normal behaviour?”
“Uh,” said Harry.
“Have you ever felt a little clawing, growling thing in your chest when you were in a sexual situation?” inquired Slughorn, as if he was asking if Harry took milk in his tea.
“Er,” Harry said.
Slughorn nodded with satisfaction. “That would be your Veela powers trying to manifest.”
Harry’s chest monster was one of my least favourite things about Half Blood Prince, and I got a real kick out of having it rewritten this way.
As a last quick note, it gets all the points for British context, setting and dialogue, but this is probably a free pass since the author is Irish.
Characterization
Maya’s characterization is exceptional.
Harry feels very much like canon Harry, which is already a point in her favour, but she goes one step further and makes me actually care about him. I cared very much about canon Harry when I read the books. It’s much harder to find myself caring about fanon Harry most of the time. The prevalence dark/power-tripping/edgelord Harrys Who Don’t Need No Friends might have something to do with that.
But Maya’s Harry is just trying to figure out how to adapt to adult life after all the shenaniganry about prophecy and being the Boy Who Lived is over, and it’s both relatable and sympathetic. Harry is a good Auror – he has great instincts and is dedicated to doing the right thing – as canon Harry always was. But without the world resting on his shoulders for one singular goal, without the structure of routine provided by Hogwarts whilst he was a minor, Harry flounders in pulling his life together. Discovering he was gay led to a dramatic fallout with Ginny, which in turn isolated him from all the Weasleys bar Ron. His anger issues left over from the war make it hard for Harry to get along with most of his colleagues, resulting in him cycling through so many partners that the long-suffering Shacklebolt eventually forces Harry to partner with Draco, because “I wouldn’t wish you two on anyone else.”
Harry gets called out for a number of things which actually have a pretty solid canon basis but aren’t addressed as flaws very well in the books. One of them is how bad Harry is at paying attention to people and remembering who they are. There’s a joke that keeps resurfacing that Harry can’t remember a girl who was in Gryffindor at Hogwarts in his own year, or Ritchie Coote who played beater in his quidditch team, etc. He’s so single-minded as to have blinkers to the world around him and can be terrible at basic courtesy because he jumps to conclusions which he bluntly says out loud. He isn’t soft, he doesn’t talk about his feelings or tell someone when something’s wrong, and isn’t good at communicating as a general rule. Draco often makes jokes at Harry’s expense about just how socially inept he is, and he has an impressive amount of canon material to back himself up with.
Here’s a passage I particularly enjoyed:
Harry had been mystified when Dean spent all his time avoiding Harry in Auror training camp and after at the office. Eventually he’d got Malfoy to take him out for a drink and see why. Malfoy had reported that since Harry had kissed Dean’s ex-girlfriend in front of him and then smirked when Dean broke a glass in his hand, Dean had thought he was a complete git.
Apparently Malfoy had enthusiastically agreed, and they’d had several more drinks.
And none of this is to say that the fic is a party to hate on Harry – it isn’t. It’s just a fic in which Harry is a consciously flawed character, and it works brilliantly to get you invested in his conflicts. Through the narrative perspective we see his good intentions and just how much he cares about his friends and his job and the cases he works. Having a flawed Harry also means there’s room for growth arcs, which both Harry and Draco go through in the course of the story.
The author also does what is probably my favorite interpretation of Draco, because he’s consistent enough with his canon personality to be believable whilst still being likeable. Many fanfictions which feature Draco in a central protagonist role (as love interest or not) tend to wipe his canon personality and give him one with more gravity, sexiness, and boundless skill. In this version, Draco is more of a theater kid, and reminds me a lot of Lauren Lopez’s take on him. He’s a bit manic, obsessive, overcompensatingly talkative and loves being the center of attention. He’s still very snobbish and entitled, but less in a “my father will hear about this” sort of way and more in a “I have no compunctions about drinking all the coffee in the office and leaving none for anyone else” sort of way. Fanon Draco always seems to be an obsessive coffee drinker – I don’t know why.
His relationship with Harry is antagonistically amicable, if such a thing exists. The two of them function as excellent foils to each other, just as much as they did in canon, and because they’ve lost the childhood chips on their shoulders it makes their partnership function very well. They tease mercilessly but make up for each other’s weaknesses, and it’s loads of fun to read. Draco gets a LOT of mileage out of Harry being a Veela.
“This is a stake-out,” Harry said. “Put that book away because it’s your duty. And because it kind of makes me want to cry.”
“It is my duty to read this book,” Malfoy announced virtuously. “I am your partner. Your danger is my danger, your case is my case, and your crazy Veela charms are my crazy Veela charms. Except technically not, which is such a shame, because I would put them to good use.”
With that, he returned to the awful book he’d found in the Unspeakable library. It had a picture Harry found very distressing on the front, and it was called Virgins and Vixens: A Veracious Version of the Vicissitudes of the Veela.
Of course, Harry is also in love with Draco and Draco is blissfully unaware. The overarching love story is sweet and angsty and it’s hard not to feel for Harry as he tries not to pine for Draco whilst his Veela charms get worse the longer he holds back from doing what he wants to do. I honestly think this story could sell Drarry to a non-Drarry fan.
I have a couple of criticisms to throw in amongst the platitudes too, so here they are:
Despite being a story featuring several gay characters and a gay protagonist, it is quite disparaging of gay men who might be referred to as ‘twinks’. That is, it seems to be perfectly fine and dignified being a gay man, so long as you’re still a manly man, which sort of misses the point. Secondly, there’s a questionable scene in which Harry nearly tries to just lie back and think of England when he realises that Oliver Wood is swayed by his charms. Harry finds Oliver attractive and is feeling the weight of the pressure to ‘fix himself’ so that the rest of the office can go back to normal, but it’s also noted that Oliver’s only love is quidditch, and he wouldn’t have been attracted to Harry at all were he not under the effects of the charm. It doesn’t go further than kissing, and yet Oliver’s very dubious consent in this scene is never remarked upon. It stands out particularly because in most other respects, the author is meticulously conscientious about the way we treat others.
I wanted to touch briefly on the supporting cast, who are characterised with varying levels of rich detail.
Ron is relatively central as he is the last bastion of sanity, straightness and Definitely-Not-Attracted-To-Harry-ness, and he’s brilliantly characterised and very likeable, which Ron often isn’t in Drarry stories. He and Hermione dated but did not last in this story. Ron is a bloke’s bloke who failed out of Auror training but became the richest wizard in England by becoming its only flying car salesman, and Hermione is an ambitious academic who was snapped up by the Ministry and became an Unspeakable (though she has a very minor role in the fic). One backstory scene shows directly how their fighting got worse as their careers diverged, but the author also writes a scene between Ron and his new girlfriend – Pansy Parkinson – which indirectly reveals her thoughts known on why the Romione pairing wouldn’t have been a healthy one in the long run:
“You tell me you’re going to work, and you sneak off to work on the field with Aurors,” Pansy continued, her voice a low snarl. “D’you think Vincent and Gregory tell me nothing? Do you imagine I don’t have spies in your office?”
“She’s a Slytherin, Weasley, honestly,” Malfoy murmured.
“I’m sorry Pansy,” Ron said promptly. “I didn’t want you to worry, or – or to-“
“Or to stop you doing it,” Pansy put in, tapping her foot. “I don’t know where you get these ideas from. You’re a grown man and you can make your own decisions. Why the hell would I want to lead you around by the nose?”
“Oh,” Ron said.
For my part, I’m ambivalent on Romione, but I think this fic has a point, and was probably responsible for why I thought Ron and Pansy would make a good couple.
Crabbe and Goyle are still Draco’s supporting cast, though they’re much friendlier here, and also together. Whilst Maya’s characterisation is skillful enough to give them both distinct personalities, they are still so far in the background as to remain relatively two-dimensional.
Kingsley Shacklebolt is probably the only other character worth mentioning, and he mostly fits into the comedy aspect of the narrative – the fatalistic boss at his wits’ end with his out-of-control team. He’s a hard-line man who does not care one whit what your personal issues are, but still helpfully offers Harry a business card for Sinistra’s Sinnin’ Spot, assuring him that they cater to every pleasure. He might also have a thing for house elves.
TL:DR
This is still one of my favorite fanfictions, though it might have been a tighter story with either more emphasis on the detective aspects or a reduced word count. As a Drarry story it does absolutely brilliantly, giving us believable, sympathetic and compelling characters with real conflict, and the humor is second to none I’ve seen anywhere in fanfiction. I’d give it an overall score of 8.5/10.
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