Ooooo, I'm so glad you liked it!!! *excitement* I was all sorts of unsure about this one, so it was quite a relief to get your comment. :)
YAY I got you all thinky! This theme got me all thinky too, and to think, it started as a throw-away line one of my friends said (the music in question was in Hindi though), and I was like, gah, I can so totally hear Cho saying this. And then it went and took over the whole fic!
I'm with you on not loving saccharine endings. Realism is definitely something I like to aim for in serious fics, so it was really easy to write for you in that regard! This is easily the longest, most in-depth fic I've written this fall, so I'm so glad all the charactery, themey stuff worked for you. *g*
Re: secret fangirling... well, it was almost completely secret until I got the assignment, when I'd run into a few of your fics and loved them to bits, but from then on I just kept seeing your fic everywhere... and then you friended me...and I stopped myself from friending you back because I was worried you'd figure out my secret identity, but after I was done writing I caved and did it anyway. You have no idea how much harder that made it to wait for reveals!
I'm curious though - in complete honesty, was I really obvious? Cause I felt like I was being completely obvious, no matter how hard I tried to avoid overt hinting. XD