*jaw drops*
Am I to understand that this... this is really your FIRST STORY? Holy. Crap. I can not WAIT to see what comes out of you in a few years, because this was fantastic. In so many ways, this story captured the bittersweetness of finding joy and beauty and love in the face of irreparable brokenness and hurt. You made my heart ache in the best possible way.
You have a remarkable sense of aesthetic balance, to keep pain and ugliness intact (I love so much that your Snape is ugly, but also beautiful at the same time) but to place them in counterpoint to the beauty of roses that grow from blood, and of a love that seems enduring precisely because it is so against all rational odds. Bravo.