Reviews for One Day At A Time
Tracie chapter 1 . 5/12
Please do more chapters for The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree I love that story please do more in what about the twins and Mal dad hades in can we get more of Mal and Ben moment please do more chapters
rebecca-in-blue chapter 7 . 12/28/2016
I really like the "it doesn't break him like it might have a few days ago" in the opening paragraph. It shows that Remus is slowly starting to move towards acceptance in a natural way. I also love the mention that he has to cough at work now to call in sick during the full moon later. How hard it must have been for him, to go through life pretending to be something he wasn't and trying to blend in.

Well, I certainly give you full marks for surprise in your depiction of Peter's mother. A chain-smoking, hard-drinking bed-hopper isn't how I had imagined her at all. On the one hand, I really like that it's so unexpected, but on the other hand, I'm not sure that it jives with Peter's personality. Canon always implied that he was pretty timid as a kid, like Neville, and I think that growing up with a mother like Angela would've made him tougher. Still, I think you could make a case for it if you'd spent more time there and worked in a few lines describing Peter's relationship with his mum.

One thing that I can't really buy is Angela hating Remus, because I don't see Peter having enough backbone to continue being friends with someone that his mum didn't approve of. I think her being indifferent towards Remus might work better; if she'd been indifferent to most of Peter's friends, his life at school, etc., that would work as one more reason why he joined the dark side for attention. I would've liked to learn a little more about his aunt, too. I love the moment when Remus wonders whether her comments are just comments or veiled anti-werewolf prejudice; I think that mindset is something that a lot of minorities live with.

"had the misfortune of meeting because of his friendship with Peter" - This seems pretty unnecessary. Why else would Remus have met Peter's mother?

"Euphemia's damn lucky she doesn't have to outlive her own kid" - Shouldn't this sentence be in past tense, since you're talking about James's mother? Writing it in present tense really confused me for a second.

I think the ending scene between Remus and Emmeline works well. It has a good "what now?" feeling - that shocked, empty wondering what to do next that so many people are left with after loss. (And between Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, I think I'm starting to feel it myself! :( )
rebecca-in-blue chapter 6 . 12/21/2016
I really enjoyed this chapter, especially the poignancy of the opening scene. Remus briefly forgetting and planning to visit Lily and James is very effective and realistic. Seeing Remus interact with Hannah is very cute and also creates some bittersweet glimpses of how he probably behaved with Harry. I can't remember right now whether it's canon that Hannah Abbott is Tom's granddaughter, but you make it work well either way. I really like the way, throughout his story, you've fleshed out characters that we never saw much of in the series, like Emmeline and Dorcas. I look forward to Peter's funeral and Remus taking on his new job. I know he had a lot of bad luck and probably won't keep it forever, but you have a lot of room to play around there.
rebecca-in-blue chapter 5 . 12/14/2016
Although I enjoyed this chapter, I think that the opening loses a lot by starting with descriptions of past events, rather than with scenes of the present. It doesn't really seem to fit a day-by-day story like this one. I would suggest opening it with a scene of Remus dressing for the funeral (you could put the descriptions of his clothes there), then shift into the "Lily and Petunia had become orphans..." paragraph.

"He does not know what to expect" - Ok, this line rubbed me the wrong way. Muggles are human, just like witches and wizards, not some separate species; they all experience the same universal feelings of grief and loss. It seems kinda ridiculous that Remus apparently expects Muggle funerals to be drastically different. I would think he would be more apprehensive about the fact that this funeral was arranged by someone who wasn't even on good terms with Lily and James.

I'm pretty surprised by how little you show us of the actual funeral. I feel like there was barely a funeral at all. Lily and James had so many friends in the magical world that it leaves me wondering why the magical community didn't just hold their own memorial service for them, where they could've all spoken and shared memories. (After all, I don't think there's any law stating that dead people only get one funeral each.) The final Great Hall gathering in GoF had a lot of elements of a memorial service to Cedric, with such a strong, somber atmosphere. That's what I was expecting here.

I really like the dialogue between Remus and Emmeline, both at the funeral and in the bar later. I love the way they slip into casually talking about Sirius and Peter, their recalling happier times, the Beatles reference, etc. Poor Remus has been swimming in angst for a lot of this story, so it's really nice to get a chapter where he's actually enjoying himself and laughing again. My only nitpick for the scenes between them would be Emmeline's line "Some people out there just knew how to break them," because it's not clear to me whether she's talking about Lily and James or Alice and Frank there.
rebecca-in-blue chapter 4 . 12/11/2016
I enjoyed this chapter for how it depicts the business side of death - the wills to read, the estates to execute. I think this chapter might be more poignant if you had Remus dwell on that at some point, the contrast between the extreme shock of James, Lily, and Peter's deaths vs. the mundaneness of paperwork.

In fact, this chapter feels somewhat rushed, and I think you could dwell more in several places. Remus just seems to move so quickly from his flat to the Hog's Head to Dumbledore's office. I also think the conversation between him, Moody, and Dumbledore relies too much on dialouge again (although not to the same degree as the talk in Chapter 2) and needs a few more mentions of what they're physically doing.

I really like how you establish the details about the Order's wills and Moody's mandate that they update them regularly. But I think you have a contradiction in that here, Remus has been living off James, but in Chapter 2, he has "a job to get to." Perhaps by "job" there, you didn't mean an actual place of employment, but the funerals/wills/post-death stuff that he's been doing - which is fine, but you just need to clarify.

Typo: "stuff which contained stuff"
rebecca-in-blue chapter 3 . 12/7/2016
I really enjoyed this chapter. The idea of Remus trying to see Harry like this is something that never occurred to me, and you execute it very well here. It is so heart-wrenching to see baby Harry recognizing Remus and asking for his parents and Sirius. What a poor, confused little boy - and poor Remus, being unable to make him understand what's happened. I also really like the scene with Petunia for how you make her the mean aunt that we all recognize from canon, but establish a little unexpected sympathy for her at the same time.

"Harry, he realizes with a start" - It doesn't really make sense to me that Remus doesn't recognize Harry right away here, especially since Harry (a year-old baby) recognizes him.

The mention of them practicing changing diapers reads a little oddly to me, especially Dorcas "freaking out." Why exactly was she freaking out? Was it changing diapers? Was it finding out that Lily was pregnant? I don't understand why either one would make her freak out enough to almost knock Lily down (geez). Perhaps it might be clearer if you spent a little more time there. A longer flashback to a time when they were all together would make this chapter even more bittersweet.

Typos: "lays Harry down nonetheless on the table nonetheless"

A lot of nice little touches throughout this chapter: him wanting to burn the shirt Sirius gave him, not knowing what a "serial killer" is, Sirius's attempts to teach Harry to say Padfoot, Remus seeing that they've put Harry's things in the cupboard under the stairs. In many ways, this reminds me of Fantine leaving Cosette with the Thenardiers - two poor babies wondering where their mothers have gone and not knowing what crappy childhoods they were in for.
rebecca-in-blue chapter 2 . 12/4/2016
Exactly when the attack on the Longbottoms happened was never specified in canon (just that it was sometime after Voldemort's fall), so I'm intrigued by your decision here to place it so very soon after the attack on the Potters. Literally the next day? On the one hand, it seems a little too soon and too much for the story to handle. (Remus is already coping with Lily and James's deaths and Sirius's betrayal. Maybe not throw the Longbottoms in right away?) I've always had the impression that the Death-Eaters waited for people to really feel relieved and get used to the idea of Voldemort being gone, then struck suddenly to rekindle fear, like terrorists. On the other hand, I should read the rest of the story and see how it's executed before I judge.

"Where's Harry?" - I can believe Remus not wondering about Harry until today, but I think it needs some explanation to back it up, or he seems kinda callous. Like, you could mention something about how yesterday, he had been so shell-shocked the news that it had never occurred to him to ask about Harry until now.

"(Not the best image to have of a man)" - The first word inside a parenthesis shouldn't be capitalized (which happens again later on), unless the parenthesis are their own sentence. Also, this is rather ineffective telling, not showing. I can understand not giving a mental image, since Remus never saw Mr. Evans, but he could've seen James after they visited him and James looked really down, or said sadly that Mr. Evans was in really bad shape. Otherwise, I would recommend just deleting this parenthesis. It's kinda redundant when you've just told us that he had cancer.

"It didn't hurt to talk about Marlene anymore" - I really like the way you explore Remus's feelings in this paragraph and the next. I imagine it would've been so hard for him to NOT over-analyze every encounter with Sirius and try to figure out when he "changed sides." The writing felt too verbose in some spots, though. Like "the new developments of the past day" - it seems a kinda distance, wordy way to describe an attack as brutal as the one on the Longbottoms. And it just occurred to me, Remus was an Order member, too. Wouldn't he have found out from another member before reading it in the paper?

Haha, Dumbledore always is the exposition piece. A lot of his conversation with Dumbledore is nothing but dialogue, which is one of my biggest pet peeves in writing. I think it needs more to stay grounded in the scene, and to shows us Remus's reactions to this news. Doesn't he ever shift in his chair uncomfortably or lean back in surprise or bite his lip to hold back the emotion?

I really love the sad poignancy of his dream at the end. It's such an interesting way to explore an AU timeline, and I loved seeing what Remus got right (like Harry and Ginny) and his trying to be fair towards Draco. His fairness was something that I always really admired about him. It showed how conflicted he was about being best friends with bullies. Looking forward to the next chapter!
rebecca-in-blue chapter 1 . 11/30/2016
I love that you open the story with the date. It's a simple thing, yet it accomplishes so much, since that date is immediately recognizable to HP readers as "the day after," and it establishes that the story will be Remus-centric, set immediately after Lily and James's deaths and the fall of Voldemort.

What puzzles me is that after the date and the opening line, you move away from that day and go into recap mode. It isn't until "But now, now it was 10:46..." that the story actually returns to what's happening on that day. Remus's feelings of numbness, shock, and grief must've been so strong that day, and that paragraph and the next one ("Remus had sat numb...") convey that very well. I think this chapter would flow better if you moved those paragraphs up in the story (like, after the opening line), and then went into the summary of the last few months. While that part is well-written, recappy stuff is rarely ever as interesting as what's happening in the present.

"could not deny how Sirius had begun to look at him" - This line feels confusingly vague. Did he feel that Sirius was romantically interested in him? (Like, Marlene has just died, and Sirius is looking for someone else? They're a pretty popular slash pairing. Tonks always felt like a beard to me, and I don't even ship them.) Or did he think that Sirius was growing angry/evil? It reminds me, not in a good way, of Ron's "oddly furtive look" in OotP, which was debated to death because it could be taken so many different ways. If it isn't explained in later chapters, I think this needs to be worded more clearly.

"Marlene he'd never seen look scared before" - I thought this was a typo at first, and the wording still feels awkward to me. Wouldn't "He'd never seen Marlene look scared before" sound more natural? After establishing her fear so strongly, putting "The two couldn't keep their hands off each other" right on the heels of it feels kinda odd and abrupt. I think it would flow better if there were some transitional sentence in there, like "Perhaps she was afraid she would lose Sirius, for the two of them..."

"and it makes him feel like a First Year again" - Oh, this line is so sad and poignant. How much Remus has lost. And even though Sirius is still alive, his "betrayal" means that he's lost him too, and I think that might be the most painful for all. I hope this will be explored more in later chapters.

"to find his face very, very wet" - The "very, very" seems a little over-the-top to me. This chapter has explored his grief so well that I think "his face wet" would work just as well.