http://lunacy.livejournal.com/354496.html#cutid1]lunacy
I wonder if I'd ever read any fics I truly loved without them being written by someone either a) in love with passionate, insane, you-and-no-other-even-if-you're-not-so-good-either love or b) in love with H/D to the total exclusion of any other pairing (though perhaps a few runner ups that certainly didn't involve either Harry or Draco).
I always felt like H/D encapsulated the sort of relationship (in my mind) that you can't be casual about. You can't be a swinger and really get H/D; not unless you're the kind of swinger that only really craves one person like a drug but either likes denial or totally separates sex & love, haha. You can't be polyamorous and get H/D, on a gut level I mean. You can't even be a non-romantic, in some ways, and really get some aspects of H/D (not to say it's a shmooshy sort of romance like James & Lily or even Sirius & Remus, but it's high romance ideally, if only the sort that breaks bones & takes no prisoners even as it rolls its eyes at itself). As an interesting corollary, I don't think you can fully get H/D being naive or... entirely nice, either; it'd help to have some burning heartbreak and rage under the belt, that's for sure. I mean, I like my H/D realistic and hardcore, even unsentimental, but the thing is that if you write it honestly, the romance and sentiment will shine through clearer. That's my philosophy: imitate life/truth, and the situational pecularities will shine through naturally; or in other words, the point of faithful representation is that it shows without telling.
I think to write any pairing very well you probably need a vision-- not just an understanding of the characters or a workable plot in mind, but something to say.