Title: Vacillation
Author: fairmaidofkent
Rating: M
Genre: Romance
Status: Complete, 215k words
Library Category: Romance
Pairings: Lucius M./Narcissa M., Bellatrix L./Rodolphus L.
Summary: Coming together is not always an easy feat, but the rest of the time, things fall apart. As Narcissa and Lucius navigate whether or not to trust one another, the Wizarding world begins to bend to the power of a Dark Lord and everything they've ever known starts to unravel.

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13016242/1/Vacillation

I've only read the first chapter so far, but it's immediately obvious that this story is a cut above your standard fic. The description is evocative without being overly wordy. The characters are distinct in voice and personality, with meaningful motivations and conflicts. The pacing is just right - the opening chapter could serve just fine as a one-shot.

This is definitely a @Sesc kind of fic.

In terms of content, I think this is one of the first post-Hogwarts fics I've read where I feel like the post-Hogwarts setting enhances rather than detracts from the story. The concept of a just-graduated Lucius making his first steps as an adult in high society is an interesting premise - it's almost like a de-troped independent!Harry premise.

There's a few negative points, however.

Firstly, the paragraphs are too long. They'd be fine in print, but on a fanfiction website they present almost as a wall of text. It makes reading a bit more difficult than it should be.

Secondly, I have mixed feelings about the aristocratic worldbuilding with political marriages, traditional gender roles, etc. To be clear, this story's depiction of that trope is among the best I've seen. The political marriage is dysfunctional, as opposed to resulting in immediate true love, which immediately places it above 99% of all Lord Potter-Black stories. And the whole atmosphere does have a certain Jane Austen-esque charm.

However, I just don't think that this type of worldbuilding fits particularly well into the world of Harry Potter. At most, I think the Harry Potter world we see can be forced into a Victorian-era society where rule is largely by the gentry, who have displaced the old nobility as the political and social elite. But I just don't think it works as a Georgian/Regency era style aristocratic society without going into heavy AU territory which loses a lot of the character and charm of the canonical HP world.

Thirdly, I'm not completely enamoured with the character interaction between Lucius and Narcissa. I do love the conflict at the heart of the interaction, and the motivations of the characters, simple to understand yet providing so much possibility. What I'm less keen on is the fairly tropey "sneaky Slytherins" type stuff where they hatch all these unlikely and needlessly complex schemes, like Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl.

To be fair to the story, Lucius' scheme fails and he only gets what he wants when he just comes out and speaks plainly. But the whole "dancing around the point" stuff feels over-egged to me. Being too proud and too polite to just speak directly is fine. That's good characterisation. My problem is with the chain of causation and its realism (or lack thereof). The whole series of events of Lucius negotiating this fake contract, to Narcissa catching wind of it, to her coming immediately to London and Lucius accurately predicting it all... it all just seems inherently unlikely. Complexity creates chaos, long causal chains tend to be interrupted by unexpected events or interventions of third parties. But (so far, at least), there is a certain level of unrealistic predictability about events in this story.

Still, the first chapter is plenty intriguing enough for me to continue on.

 

Fucking Americans using the word 'neighbourhood' in a UK-centric story. And even worse, using that word to describe Mayfair of all places. I'm going to read and review this fic eventually (200k+ words and Complete is an automatic erection) for me but it's already lost 5/5 potential.

 

I've read about half of it so far. It's hard to pigeonhole this story into a genre - it's slice of life, except, their lives are very much not at ease. If you want typical romance, this isn't that story. If you want action and adventure, this isn't that story. It falls somewhere in the character piece category, where the marriage is a catalyst. For how little we see of Lucius, Narcissa, Rodolphus, etc in canon, they all feel like natural fleshed-out characters here. The author has lot of stories with these particular people, and how much care and thought they've put into making them 3D really shines through. So far, I'm impressed. My only "complaint" is that the story does feel a bit slow at times, but that's not a pacing issue, it's a personal taste thing. 5/5. I don't know how much I like it but I definitely respect it. And the writing is top-notch as well.

 

I've finished reading the story. It's been quite a while since a story has interested me to the extent that this one has. My thoughts are largely aligned with Selethe's. It's hard to place this story in a category. It's not a story focused on world-building, magic, and doesn't even feel as if it focuses on the plot at times. Like Selethe says, it feels like a character exploration. The technical aspect of the writing was as good as it gets. The plot has a nice resolution. What little was seen of magic in the story was quite nice, especially with the resources Lucius has to put it to use, a fresh perspective in fics where most of the time magic is done by the protagonist themselves.

Spoiler: Example

For example, Lucius's plan to bribe a ministry official to guarantee good weather for a particular date.

That's not to say that the story has no flaws. Some elements of the plot were a bit repetitive, that reflected the slow change of the characters. The style of the writing suffered in some areas where it felt like the author really wanted to make sure that their point came across to the reader.

As someone who normally hates romances, this was surprisingly good. I liked that I hated the characters and yet still hoped that Lucius and Narcissa would resolve their issues. I'd say this is 4.5/5.