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Congratulations, this is the only story that doesn't couch the telling of a fairy tale in an insipid, uninteresting mess of canon characters with certain motivations that are wholly pointless drivel.

Like Ched, I think I made a bit of a mistake of culture - I don't actually recognize the muggle version of the fairy tale. I would have undoubtedly enjoyed it more had I recognized it.

The problem that this poses, sadly, is that I have no idea how the story's supposed to end. If I had, I think this would be the most complete work available. As it stands though, I sit in confusion.

 

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I don't actually know the story. Obviously, yeah, the wizarding version ends with the muggle being mocked and presumably driven from the village or killed, and the muggle version is from the perspective of the muggle and ends with the witch being driven from the village in turn.

I think this is an interesting idea, and a poignant way to illustrate that the protagonist and her husband are from two different worlds, but it fails because we have to guess at the actual contrast between the stories. Perhaps if you'd cut some of the initial framing, like the levitation, then you could've added some more explanation about where the stories diverge and given a proper conclusion to the whole piece.

What you do with elongating the syllables to illustrate they're drawn out - I don't like that. I think you should've left that in the text, not made it explicit in the dialogue.

 

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I think wandered as a verb choice doesn't seem to quite suit the deliberateness of her responding to a call.

Following her speech, I think you should reverse the order. I'm not as much of a stickler as our dear, sweet Halt but I do think speech should attach to the action of the speaker no the interlocutor.

Their flat was?

I think there should be a comma after every time?

So I loved this. I was worried it would fall about when the story in the story was introduced so late but it didn't. I can only say that I wished I knew which fairy tale they were alluding to. I feel like I miss half the subtext without knowing what would've happened in our muggle version and then figuring out how it was supposed to go different in this wizarding one.

I love how powerful the characterisations are in such a short piece. Love the sense of their home, and their history. Love the ease with which you set the time-period. It felt very much like a family dynamic, much better than many ever do. It feels almost like The Northumbrian who also does that exceptionally well.

Really great job. Well done!

 

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Yay, a story in a story! Man, this is exactly what I wanted to try, but I didn't think I could pull it off in 1,200 words. Nicely done, you showed it is definitely possible to do this well in such a small word count.

It would've been nice to see a couple of these images. Even just a few would go a long way in terms of painting the scene of a wizarding home. And if you gave a specific detail or two about the "spectral image of a muggle woman," it would've been more powerful when Beth begins to suspect she looks like her own mother.

There were two concepts in the story that I loved:

• "First accidental magic a happy thought, always a good sign."
  
• "Abigail’s eyes glistened in fear and heartbreak for the injustice she couldn’t quite articulate, and Beth’s eyes glistened too, but the stinging in her eyes was due to an entirely different unfairness."

I'm unable to guess the ending of Mr. Bulstrode's fairy tale. I've never heard this one before, so I'm at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the ending of your story. I, too, imagined that most wizarding fairy tales would likely make a Muggle out to be the baddie. You did a good job of taking that idea and using it for a bittersweet ending.

 

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I haven't ever heard this fairy tale, but it's a nice inversion of roles.

I like the parallels that you maintain throughout the telling, it gives the story a nice overarching meaning. The childish delight and the family dynamic are also pretty refreshing. The characters are completely foreign but I feel as if I know them somehow.

Thanks for writing.

 

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I liked this story a lot. I'll agree with a previous commenter that I found your tendency to elongate syllables distracting, but the tone of the story and the voices in the dialogue are all well done.

I get the sense that this story isn't actually a fairytale that we all know but a story that Beth knows in-story? If so, you might want to expand a little bit in how Beth thinks about the story's end and why she doesn't want Abigail to hear it.

I like the bit about accidental magic here, and it is interesting that there is a take on a mean, ugly Muggle instead of a witch in a magical fairytale.

Good job!

 

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I'm pretty sure this is, at the least, tied with the previous entry for the best thing I've read so far. You provide both story and in-story fairy tale, and the way that you go about it, you nailed the voices of Beth, John, and Abigail, and the Butter Princess and old muggle. I'll agree that I don't quite know where this was going when Beth interjected, but we can imagine it was further damning to the muggle side, and John's sudden understanding of what he was doing was a nice touch.

On the whole, solid, solid work. Good job.

 

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Okay, so I really liked the moral of this though I also didn't get the fairy tale reference. This does have a fairy tale in it but it's more about the characters and I liked the back and forth dialogue between them. Really enjoyable, I'd say just have a beta go through it and it makes a nice oneshot.

 

This was my entry! I'm so pleased everyone liked it, and honored it took first place! I got some great feedback from you all, and I've incorporated it into the story. Luckily, I've managed to keep it under 1200 words. The changes are small, but I feel they were important. I agree with nearly every critique I received, and I tried to incorporate them all.

Spoiler: Here's the new version

Beth hummed a tune to herself while she twirled her wand in a widdershins spiral, in and out and in. The dishes did themselves, bouncing along to her tune. She could hear the sounds of her husband and her daughter playing out in the living room; her heart warmed with every giggle she heard. With the world outside getting more frightening, people she grew up with disappearing at the drop of her hat, she basked in her own little paradise within the walls of their small flat.

“Wo ho ho!” She heard her husband exclaim. “Beth, come look!” The dishes gently drifted back into the soapy sink as she sauntered out to see her family. Her husband was floating close to the ground, splayed out like a seeker going in for a deep dive. Abigail, her precious little girl, was clapping and giggling up a storm.

She hated to be the stick in the mud, but self-levitation wasn’t safe, which John good and well knew! “Get down, please? I don’t want you to hurt yourself!”

She needed her home to be safe. Out there she was only “mudblood” with curled lip and spit on the ground. John was “Mr. Johnathan Bulstrode,” pureblood of good breeding. Their flat was supposed to be a shelter against the storm.

He smirked at her, that coy little smirk that had tempted her into more than one abandoned classroom back at Hogwarts. “Can’t, love. I’m not doing it.”

Her eyes turned to her still laughing daughter, and pride rushed through her like a geyser. She scooped her up in a giant hug. “Oh, who’s my good little girl! Accidental magic, so early?”

“Dadda up! Dadda up!”

“Yes, yes, Daddy went up!” Beth cooed.

“She’s certain to be a strong witch! First accidental magic a happy thought, always a good sign. That’s what my mother used to say. I think she deserves a treat tonight! Perhaps a bedtime story?”

“Stowwy! Stowwy!”

Beth trailed behind them as her wonderful husband scooped up their bright little girl and rocked her to her room. He swaddled her up in her bed and settled himself upon the edge. Abigail leaned up against the door jamb, excited to hear another wizarding bedtime story.

“This is the first story my grandmother ever told me, back when I was just a wee lad. She showed me pictures just like these.” John flicked up a few shiny images to go along with his story, spectral illusions to delight their little Abigail.

“Once up on a time, a long time ago, so long ago that Hogwarts was only a thought tumbling about in Godric Gryffindor’s wrinkly old hat, there was a beautiful, clever young witch. She lived high up on a hill, overlooking a peaceful little town. She was known for having the most beautiful blonde hair that anyone had ever seen. Everyone in the town came to her for help with and she never turned anyone away.”

Jonathan waved his wand around in big, looping arcs that matched his exaggerated voice, then popped a kiss right on Abigail’s forehead and whispered “Boop!”

“Boop!” Abigail clapped back.

“She loved magic, and her villagers, that’s true. But the one thing she really loved, that she was best at in all the village, that was her favorite thing in the entire world more than anything else?”

Abigail looked up at him with wet, gleaming eyes, anxious for the answer.

“Butter.” John nodded his head overdramatically.

“Dadda no! Princess, no butter!”

“Yes, butter! She was the butter princess! She made the most wonderful butter.”

Beth held her breath. What story was this? It sounded like one she vaguely remembered from her youth, back when her grandfather had tried to warn her off against witches and magic. Their relationship hadn’t ended well.

“Every week, she’d take one lock of her magic hair and feed it to her big, friendly cow. Then the milk would turn into butter that looked just as perfect as her hair, silky and golden. She’d bring her butter to the market every week. Because she used magic to make it, she could sell it for cheap! She was so loved by everybody because her magic butter tasted the best and lasted the longest and everybody loved it.

“But there was a nasty muggle lady who had been making butter for a long, long time. She had dirty brown hair, knotted up on her head and mean, squinty eyes. She shouted all the time at everyone about every little thing. Her butter was even nastier than she was, and so, so expensive! She hated the pretty butter princess-witch. One day, the muggle creeped right up onto the hill and into the witch's house, and hid herself away to spy on our witch!”

Abigail’s eyes glistened in fear and heartbreak for the injustice she couldn’t quite articulate, and Beth’s eyes glistened too, but the stinging in her eyes was due to an entirely different unfairness. Why did it turn her heart icy to see her daughter quiver in fear beneath her covers at that particularly scary muggle? Was it her imagination, or did that spectral image look just a bit too much like her mother, who she knew John wasn’t fond of?

“The mean, old, muggle lady watched our princess-witch make her butter, and was dismayed to find that there wasn’t anything gross or weird about it. She even stole a little bit and tasted it! She was so mad when it tasted better than her own lumpy butter. She went down into the town and started spreading lies about the witch. She said-.”

“A goblin made it for her!” Beth interjected. Yes, she knew this story, but she knew the muggle telling of it. She had a flashback to the nightmares she had for weeks after her grandfather told it to her. A sneering old witch with a dead man’s hand, stolen fresh a churchyard, used to stir the butter. She felt her old fear fester in her chest like a closed, aching wound; terrified that she’d grow up into a witch like the story and be run out of every town she ever lived in, forever alone and spiteful. She was sure the magical version wouldn’t treat the muggles any better. It seemed she wouldn’t be a fan of either version.

Beth continued her own ending to the story, breathing quickly as she invented something on the fly. “But the beautiful witch went down and said sorry to the muggle and they became the best of friends. Now, who’d like a song?” She cracked her wand out like a whip and ignored the look on John’s face as the tune she was humming earlier that evening wafted from everywhere and nowhere all throughout the room.

“Beth?” He whispered, so quiet Abigail surely couldn’t hear.

“Not in the house, John. Not a story like that. Not these days.”

He paused for a moment, forehead crinkled until suddenly his eyes went wide. “Hun, I’m-“

“I know, it’s just -.”

“Mummy?” Abigail piped up.

“Yes, love. Train whistle blowin' makes a sleepy noise, underneath the blankets for all the girls and boys.”

Additionally, for all those who asked, yes this is based on a real fairy tale. I have a beautiful book which I received as a gift years ago, entitled "A Treasury of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales." It is 748 pages long and not illustrated on even a single page. I scanned through it for shorter stories which had to do with witches, and this was the one I settled on. A few tweaks here and there, and this story was the result. I had thought, when I wrote it, that I was clear enough about the ending, but I think I fell trap to assuming people would make assumptions based on knowledge I had that they didn't. Silly of me, really.

Thanks once again for all the kind words! I appreciate every comment I received!

 

Spoiler: Review after the fact

The benefit of being a month late is to get to review the finished product, instead of the stinky work-in-progress. You lose suckers, I win.

Onto the story itself. A worthy winner.

This bit feels a bit expository though;

and I think that you shouldn’t capitalize anything but names after question marks or exclamation points when introducing a speech tag, this is very wrong indeed!

(example of wrongness)

Also the fact that some rando muggle is telling Beth to stay away from wizards makes me very angry, grrr, such bigotry should be allowed (!).

Also it is pointedly silly. Why are wizards/witches not akin to gremlins to Beth’s grandfather (i.e. not a real thing). Did this one single farmer from Cornwall escape the Statute of Secrecy? Curious and curiouser. I feel it works if she has heard the story before - from an opposite perspective - but not as a cautionary tale, simply a scary fairy tale and it saddens/frightens her to see it so twisted by bigotry. But of it's your story - and a finished one at that.

What I do know though is that there shouldn’t be a period after an em-dash;

And also that Beth seems to be out of her rocker, I wouldn’t want to be her husband, no siree!

Thank you for attending this review and God Bless.