#Harry Moult

[dame-de-pique]

Harry Moult - Breakers,1920s

[yama-bato]

Camera Pictures of New Zealand

Mountain mists, Mt Cook district. From the album: Camera Pictures of New Zealand

Harry Moult; photographer; 1920s; New Zealand

[awkward-parabuteo]

Annoyed. Offended, even.

[disasterlesbianeldritchhorrors]

took me longer than i expected because uni, but i’ve finished part 3 of that regeneration-except-the-doctor-is-an-extradimensional-insectoid-timesquid-who-literally-moults-off-their-old-body fic! this one’s much less painful than last time, there’s no battles for their companions’ lives or nightmarish political needle-threading, just waking up nice and safe in the tardis with their friends just outside, the walls covered in moulting acid, unit on high alert, everyone on the verge of panic because they exploded into a big ol’ squid... nothing to worry about

today’s deleted scene: there was originally a bit in the doctor’s conversation with sarah jane where she mentioned that when they were flailing through the unit hallways they didn’t seem to know where they were going and they kept bashing into walls and they wouldn’t stop screaming, and it was... honestly about as terrifying as discovering they were secretly an eldritch abomination this whole time. the doctor managed to reassure her through a mix of white lies and sincere thanks, and then they hugged. it didn’t really fit the direction i ended up taking the scene, though - resolved it a bit too neatly - so i cut it. they probably do have a conversation to that effect later in the tardis though

[cpericardium]

I am creating a Disco Elysium skill sheet for Taylor's fractured mind instead of Harry's. Since she went through different experiences and has different priorities i imagine that her skills would have some different notes. I've floated skill names like Hivemind (representing her overall insect brain and and Winslow but you're smart so do you have any input? :>

Hmm... I like Hivemind! I don't know how attached you are to the bug theme, just throwing stuff at the wall: Syndicate - multitasking Ambush - sneak skill, camouflage Dente - threat display Exoskeleton/Elytra - durability Instar - ability to adapt (latin for 'likeness', it's the developmental stage between each moult) Frisson - attunement to surroundings (just stealing shivers) Acuity - visual/auditory perception Locomotion - dexterity of movement And then some cool terms for "creep factor" and "survival instinct" (if this were for Bitch it would be called Hackles ha) which I can't think of right now!

[whinlatter]

Investigator: Have you ever felt drawn to Dark magic? Witness: No. I didn’t - I never meant to - it wasn’t like that. I never wanted to get involved in any Dark Magic. I was [indistinct]. Investigator: I’m sorry? Witness: I was lonely. Investigator: You were lonely? Witness: It all just happened so fast. And I couldn’t get out. It was like I was trapped. the moult (n.): (of an animal) the casting off of an outer layer to reveal a new one beneath.

🪶 read the author’s note for this chapter (coming soon!)

🐾 listen to the playlist

🪺 watch the trailer 

🦉 thoughts & questions? ask me anything!

[odetopictorialism]

Harry Moult • A shaft of light - Euston Station, c.1929

[dramioneasks]

HP FESTS: Dramione Teratophilia Fest (Part 2)

Dramione Teratophilia Fest 2.0 2023:

Moulting by emmarauren - M, one-shot - “My wings!” She cried. “They’re falling off.” “Oh sweetheart. They’re only moulting.”

Ministry Interference by seawitchcreations - E, one-shot - The Ministry has found that you are a MATCH for a Magical Creature. Please report to the office of Mr. Samuel Collins, located in Lab 43 on the 3rd Floor at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at your earliest convenience. We look forward to your cooperation in this matter. Courtesy of the DMLE. Hermione’s plan to take Draco home is derailed by Ministry Interference.

warped, wretched thing by LeafHouses - E, 2 chapters - Draco finds Harry slumped over his desk, body as still and cold as winter, skin already shrinking away from the bone. Ginny has been searching for her husband for a week, recalling the recent madness in him. She didn’t know about the little studio on the riverside, didn’t have a key to the door, and thus, didn’t find the body. Or the broken painting. or On a cold day in fall, Harry Potter dies suddenly, and Draco Malfoy is left with a broken heart, a distraught widow, and a haunting painting of a mysterious woman.

Into the Light by Absolutely_Avid - E, one-shot - Draco Malfoy, turned recluse and werewolf with one bite, has locked himself away in his manor. Content to waste his life away, Draco is put out when his best friend and childhood enemy conspire to drag him into the light.

Blessed in Darkness by EastWindmlk - E, one-shot - no summary

The Rockrose & The Thistle by Bana_Bhuidseach - M, WIP - It is selfishness that draws her out of the ocean to save him, and it is selfishness that makes him keep her on land afterwards.

À la Claire Fontaine by LiloLilyAnn - T, one-shot - Deep beneath the glassy surface of an enchanted lake, lived a lone water nymph. She knew not the world outside of her marine home nor why she feared those who walked on land, but she believed the feeling in her chest and the magic of the water around her that told her to flee from them, nonetheless. Until one day, a boy appeared on her shoreline, and everything she thought she knew was altered.

Breakfast in Bed and Other Conveniences of the Undead by Art_emis - E, one-shot - A tale of Hermione Granger and her compulsion to secure equity for all. Or, how Hermione Granger accidentally landed in a relationship with Draco Malfoy- Vampire, via the siren call of “properly conducted research.”

Yes, Master Malfoy by orphan_account - E, one-shot - "Draco takes in the tiny creature, such a special thing. A treasure he’d coveted the moment he set his eyes upon her. Granger was no ordinary house elf by any means, such a prize in his collection." Draco Malfoy has a house-elf kink.

I know you won't hurt me by katiekrum - M, one-shot - I'm not sure of my feelings for you, but I won't let anyone before me claim you as their own.

Benighted Traveler by Biirdiee_Rose - E, one-shot - Fingers wrap around his jaw, forcing him to look up and into glowing golden eyes. Oh holy shit— “You dare to disturb my place of rest?” Her voice carries centuries of power, rattling the very frame of him, sinking deep into his flesh and crackling his bones. Draco knows the moment he lays eyes on her who she is. The Princess of the 18th Dynasty. Hermione. Her name had been Hermione. - Draco's research project had been an utter failure so far, until he managed to stumble upon a hidden tomb. Not just any hidden tomb either, but the tomb of a princess everyone thought was lost to history. He didn't mean to wake the princess, nor upset her. Lucky for him, she might just find him useful.

Paranormal Activity by pinkhairandbooks - E, one-shot - The first time she had burst into his bathroom while he was having a private moment in his shower, manifesting her presence with a mocking “and you call that a wank?” Draco had screamed. The second time he had merely blushed furiously and closed better the shower curtain, though that had done nothing to cut off her snide comments about his supposed inability to masturbate. The third time he had snorted, terribly annoyed by those constant interruptions, and had let his irritation take control of his mouth. Idea that, in retrospect, he realized how bad it had been. “Do you want to explain to me how to do it, then?” He mumbled annoyedly, only popping his head out from behind the shower curtain to scowl at her.

We Were Prey by AutumnWeen - M, one-shot - “The name I used to bear is of no consequence. To you I am Draco. I must confess have grown fond of the name, as pretentious as it is. Did you know it was the dragon that guarded the golden apples of a goddess? Golden, like you.” Draco's memories of Hermione make her easy prey for the Fae, and not even her magic can protect her.

soft purrs and dark secrets by FeInTheClouds - E, 2 chapters - no summary

Venenum by pinkhairandbooks - E, one-shot - A dangerous creature has been lurking Hermione’s village since she can remember, too many animals have been killed and too many crops destroyed. Fearing for their lives the village offers Hermione to the beast as a virgin sacrifice, hoping she will quench its thirst.

This fest is ongoing.

[thestylesindependent]

When I was being crushed by a crowd of sweaty singing drunks under the Slane stage in 1987 to a soundtrack of David Bowie’s Absolute Beginners, I hadn’t a notion I’d be back one day shepherding three daughters as they went wild for a musical chameleon of their own.

But that’s as it was 37 years later and I found myself draped in the ultimate sign of the times - a moulting feather boa - with 80,000 people around me dancing all night to the best songs ever.

The crowd gathered for Harry’s house party could scarcely have been more different to the one that had stormed the castle last time Lord Henry Mountcharles threw open his gates in 2019 to let tens of thousands of Metallica fans in to bang their heads and pump their fists to raging metal.

This time it was more fluorescent and female and family-friendly.

As the day started, parents hoisted children onto shoulders ahead of the long march from the wildly expensive car parks to the castle gate, following a rainbow trail of boa feathers.

There were stewards offering wrist bands to minors “and to the adults who might get lost at the bar”, the woman policing the table said as she scribbled my name and number on a band for my smallest child.

The road led past blocks of portable toilets where enterprising children sold rolls of toilet paper to anxious looking customers.

When asked about prices a child said they were “only €2″.

For the packet?

“No, per roll.”

They cost the kids 20 cent. The future of the rip-off Republic is in safe hands.

Once inside, the challenge was to find a space to sit for the hours before Harry. Tens of thousands of people were ahead in the race for that space so we struggled to find a patch of grass even three quarters of the way back from the front.

We ended up beside a super-organised group of families who had spread a network of picnic blankets across a small area having arrived at midday, a full two hours before the gates opened.

Dave Ellis from Carlow was the sole man in the group. He’d been sitting for more than two hours by the time we interrupted him. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get up,” he said. “I’ve lost the feeling in my legs and I don’t think they work any more.”

He laughed when asked if he was a big Harry Styles fan. “I was kind of roped into coming.”

Roped or not, he’d embraced the Styles spirit with zeal. “I spent last night putting hairspray on the boas to hold them together,” he said. “That is what we were told to do.”

And?

“It didn’t work.”

Beside him was Serena Carney. “We’ve been sitting here for hours and we are not moving,” she said with the firmness of an Irish mammy.

The last time she was here was for Guns and Roses in 1992. “It was a bit a different, I suppose. The atmosphere was different for sure.”

She certainly didn’t have a picnic including feta cheese sprinkled with crumbled bacon at that gig.

We didn’t even have feta in Ireland back then.

Annie Mac took to the stage to play some tunes and if Slane had a roof she’d have lifted it off when she played a snippet of Abba’s Gimme Gimme Gimme (a man after midnight) and started a wild singalong.

Jenny Murphy from Limerick was another concertgoer in the parent trap. “I’m here with my daughters,” she said. “I’m not a big fan. The last time I was here was in 1995 for REM.”

How did then compare with now? “There is a lot more pink today and the crowd is so different. We took the bus up and there were three people over 25 on it. Me, my friend and the bus driver. But it’s great and there is such a happy vibe and people are so stylish.”

She did have one gripe though. “The prices! They’re mad. The t-shirts are 40 quid and the hoodies are 80. And I am just after buying a scoop of ice cream for a fiver.”

As the support act Wet Leg embarked on a scream therapy session which lead singer Rhian Teasdale promised would make everyone feel better, a man stumbled past carrying two hard-won crepes from one of the food stalls where insanely long queues formed for most of the day.

When asked if he was okay, he sighed heavily and said “I just f**king want to go home.”

Only four hours to go, I thought, but said nothing.

Not everyone wanted to go home. In fact virtually no-one else did. Grainne Gleeson from Downpatrick and Caoimhe Daly from Warrenpoint didn’t care about prices or queues or feta and were all about Harry.

“She’s his number one fan,” Gleeson said gesturing to her friend. “She’s seen him twice already on this tour and this is her third time. And she’s going to London to see him.”

Daly nodded enthusiastically. When asked why she’d want to see anyone play four times in a matter of weeks, she said that while “it might be the same songs every night it is a different vibe. And I had to come to Slane because it is such an iconic venue.”

Aoife Sheehan from Limerick said she wasn’t such a die-hard fan and was here because she got a ticket for her birthday. “I was a big One Direction fan but forgot about him until I heard his last album and was blown away by it. And look around you, isn’t the atmosphere just brilliant?

She wasn’t wrong.

Then Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody blared out of the speakers, a sign that Styles was ready for us. After that it was all screams and shrieks and singalongs and as I marvelled at the energy and the enthusiasm of the crowd it dawned on me that REM, Oasis, the Rolling Stones or even Bowie who I’d seen play this field had not come close to matching the joy, excitement and showmanship Harry Styles brought to Slane.

Hats off to him.

[alarrytale]

I also saw that Harry wore the most boring outfit he's ever worn, with no rings, and that awful hair. Wearing worn down vans next to Anna Wint*r, how is he even alive...// Yes please! Everyone´s praising his haircut but my immediate reaction was a bit shock how short his hair is and that he looks like moulted chicken. Wearing the most boring outfit ever and dirty Vans but we all know V*gue is so high up his a** that they are already writing how he´s setting trends with his dirty and worn Vans and super extra boring outfit. Sigh. Anyway I hope he got to catch up a bit with Emma Corrin because they´re (last minute I corrected pronounciation when talking about Emma) one of those few people who doesn´t name drop him for their own attention even they are friends and played together in the movie.

no pls not a boringrry era..

even though since those football match pap photos i've been thinking about harry's huge change in style, i hope he'll give us silly captions on clothes back(on a regular basis)and then maybe okay let him stay in this bland whatever it is

Hi, anons!

Who is "everyone" because if it's harries, then they're too up his ass to critizise him. The haircut is no good. He looks electrocuted from the front. I think we all need to cross our fingers that this isn't indicative of his style change for this new era. I don't think we can handle a boringrry era. I can't handle bland!Harry. I certainly can't handle people praising bland and boring Harry. People calling dirty vans a fashion trend? Really? Christ on a bike.

What is he doing?

[bodidarma]

Harry Moult - Seaside loneliness, Napier, 1920s

[dame-de-pique]

Harry Moult - The Minarettes, Tasman Valley, 1920s

[pronouncingitwang]

[ID: 2 memes about the Insulindian Phasmid from Disco Elysium.

The first is a version of the "I'm Justin Bieber" "And?" Derpina comic. Jean says, "hi i'm rcm satellite officer jean vicquemare" and 3 girls go, unimpressed, "And...?" The Insulindian Phasmid then appears and says, "I was born to detect sucrose rewards and semichemicals," and the girls all ecstatically scream, "The Insulindian Phasmid!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The second shows two text conversations. One is with harry. He says, "kim and i got shot at by mercenaries near the whirling." OP replies, "ok harry." He then says, "also i crashed my motor carriage in2 the bay but yeah" and OP replies, "whatever." The second conversation is with the phasmid. It says, "One time i was moulting nd a leg replaced my antenna." OP replies, "oh my god / dude that's crazy." It says, "the leg started moving around independently and i couldn't walk" and OP replies, "you can talk to me any time man"

/end ID]

for the phasmidheads

[awkward-parabuteo]

As the seasons change 🌱🍂❄️

[perfecttacolady]

"Dedication to Mr. Moult with Love:

I got a feeling ill be out here sooner and better than before poor lad that I am wretched and damnable but lest I fade away in time immemorial I strove for worlds to conquer not a mere cosmos yet twas all a dream within a drama a painted shape upon some craggy rocks afar in the horizon drifting in and out my memories which were naught but a dream inside a dream but dreamt it nevertheless therein lies a Nameless word for a desperate void of loneliness longing for love from a woman never found escapble only myself knows the truth but truth became lie and lie truth until I pondered what is it to what is what's the point of dreaming dreams never to achieve the iron game of Nature is Grim primordial law the logic of the ancient man is still the wisdom of today"

- @knockingonheavensgate on Wildfire

https://link.xpal.com/vr354WPYjlkMA

If you want to chat in private then let’s use xPal.

[whinlatter]

author's note | chapters 13 & 14: the moult & the vulture

now the dust has settled... thank you for reading chapters 13 and 14 of beasts! thank you also to the askbox angels who asked for the author’s note (it is still mad to me someone reads these). now, it's inquiry time, baby - and boy are the gloves coming off, and the secrets spilling out. the wait was long; so were the chapters. sorry, again, about that. so - kindly read on for discussion of some major themes and plot points, a little on song choices, and some juicy deets and a sneak peek of chapter 15... and 16…

�� spoilers for this chapter below the cut  ✨

writing notes and headcanons

first - a disclaimer: am going to talk about that cliffhanger in a separate post up shortly (i rambled on too long). it will be up shortly!

second - a thank you! the reaction to these chapters has me in absolute bits. i'm a soppy sentimental shit at heart and this really did make me the happiest little girl in the world. so thank you forever and ever for that.

third - an acknowledgement, as ever, to @saintsenara, whom i bounce all the inane details off of, whose takes absolutely slap and who i hope will forgive me for making her boy rookwood such a flop.

divide and conquer/accidentally wrote two chapters again: what am i like! the trouble is - life-stuff aside - i was excited about these chapters (and the reveals), but also put far too much pressure on them to do a huge amount of heavy lifting, and to get the story to a place it wasn’t yet at and needed to get to quick. the writing challenge for these chapters was that i needed a series of plots to hit a rolling boil so we can get to the flashbacks to ginny’s war and all the reveals. and it took fucking ages to work how to structure and serve them as each needs at this point in the fic, and try to find a set of themes/devices to tie those plots together into something cohesive (especially because writing fic is much more like dropping tv show episodes in structure rather than actually sharing a novel, in part because you drop them one at a time at intervals, and i think the more successful ones can stand alone while also serving the overall body of work). i have - i confess - knitted, in my time, and you know when you have really thick wool and thick needles and you’re trying to slowly eek off one stitch onto the other needle and it actually really starts to hurt? it felt like that :) 

two inquiries, both alike in dignity: god, i love an inquiry. the truth being dragged out kicking and screaming by  the state, buffeted by political winds and a rapacious press? inject it. at last, the past is getting properly dredged up, and all sorts of buried secrets are getting unearthed in the process. so: in the present, the hogwarts inquiry is under way, and the wizengamot has assembled to hear what exactly has been going down in that cursed drafty old castle. in the past, though, we have flashbacks to a separate inquiry, into the events of 1992-1993, after the chamber of secrets was opened, where it wasn’t hogwarts on trial, but ginny herself (in a way). the events of ginny’s first year have haunted her in diffuse, quiet, private ways in the flashbacks throughout this fic so far, but we’re moving into the part of the fic where we see just how much they changed the course of her life and who she is as a person. in canon, ofc, we only see harry’s view of the aftermath of ginny’s ordeal in the chamber - dumbledore is reinstated, lucius gets kicked off the governors, ginny weasley is ‘perfectly happy again’... but would that *really* be the end of it? doesn’t it seem perfectly plausible the ministry would investigate given the scale of publicity and threat to student lives, given (as discussed previously) the ministry canonically holds inquiries of varying scales for all sorts of things in canon? wouldn't they hold one for this?

ginny's guilt: in CoS, young harry never blames ginny for any of it: she was hoodwinked, he recognises, and not at all culpable. it’s very harry, and it’s a compassionate read of the situation. but given how little we know dumbledore tells anyone about what the diary actually was (even lucius didn’t know), wouldn’t ginny expect to face at least some questions about her own involvement and culpability, even if she was clearly to some extent also a victim? (the nod to colin’s mum is there as a reminder that there were real victims of the basilisk attacks: ginny could easily have been responsible for the deaths of several children, including her own friends, and if it were my child i think i’d want to ask at least a question or two). what i wanted to show with these flashbacks was this very formative experience for young ginny grappling with her own guilt and her place between two wars, having to face difficult questions about her own complicity in dark magic and attempted murder; for there to be echoes of ginny’s experiences in the experiences of young death eaters during the second wizarding war, and to start to properly draw these themes about choices, moral agency and grey areas, about children’s radicalisation and wars fought both by and through them, and, in particular, where ginny weasley sat within them. what i wanted to show was how ginny’s political and moral worldview was shaped in those pivotal years: her guilt, her sense of her own failings and inadequacies, how discontent she was to be a victim, how obsessed she is with being an agent and a soldier, how much she feels she has to prove. i might bash out a proper meta on this but i think it’s so telling how ginny talks about her second year later on in canon - how haunted she is by the forgetting (in OotP), and how much she sees it as having ‘[taken] orders’ (in HBP), rather than thinking of her possession as just playing host to another entity. here, it’s dumbledore who points out the key traits that led ginny into riddle’s path: her loneliness and isolation, her many insecurities that made her so vulnerable, her fear, a certain desire for self-preservation. even though we know most hogwarts students don’t seem to really know what happened in CoS, and certainly not ginny’s part in it (terry boot in OotP is like ‘lol did you kill a basilisk with a sword!’ which seems to be the extent of the student body’s knowledge of what went down). but i like the idea of there being a record of ginny’s darkest moment in her file, ink and paper proof of this most formative experience in her life, dumbledore dancing around her defence but keeping his cards close to his chest - and also there to pursue if anyone planning a hogwarts takeover was interested in finding someone close to the order of the phoenix who might be a weak link in the chain and be persuaded to flip…

dumbledore: dumbledore appears here only in flashbacks - he’s still absent from his portrait in the present - but it was sooo fun (re)introducing him as a character for the fic for the first time. what i liked about writing dumbledore’s dialogue (though it’s actually much harder than i expected, and i don’t feel that great about some of the lines) was that it was a chance to get a bit meta with the dumbledore bashing tropes that circle around fandom - you work through child soldiers, you monster etc - and try and do something a bit more interesting with them, or at least ask some questions (child soldiers or human shields? can children fight for what they believe in? how you fight a fair fight when the other side sees children as fair game - do you confine children to victimhood, or do you acknowledge, or even encourage, their own moral agency and desire to fight back?) dumbledore is walking a very difficult moral line here: defending ginny, but declining to disclose information that might conclusively exonerate her - eg. the existence of voldemort’s horcruxes - in the name of his most favourite thing, the greater good. in dumbledore’s mind, ginny deserves a defence, but not the whole truth, because that’s too important and bound up in a much bigger picture. dumbledore is always playing 3D chess while everyone else plays chequers. should dumbledore have revealed the horcruxes to conclusively exonerate ginny here? no, right? and yet. one day ginny will name her middle son after this man, and we might start to think about why. is it just loyalty to harry? or something else? i wanted us to see ginny’s political worldview being built, and her view of war and a soldier’s role in it, all themes that will be super important as we go back in time to see her war as she lived it in future chapters.

the intellectuals: one of the least developed but most interesting parts of the wizarding world in canon are the ideas and the people who have em. the series has a lot of important characters that are supposed to be eminent thinkers, but it doesn’t ever really linger on ideology, in the end settling on a kind of boilerplate liberal universalist good vs evil message which is fiiine but much less interesting than actually playing around with the concept of political thinkers and political thought in wizarding culture. it’s why i find the department of mysteries so interesting and so ripe with potential; the idea of a space of intellectual inquiry and investigation, but also a place where the staff’s moral allegiance is kind of a question mark. i loved introducing rookwood here and playing with a different kind of death eater, especially juxtaposed with dumbledore’s reflections in the flashback testimony. rookwood isn’t a bruising thug for fire, or a self-serving machiavellian real politik type or a coward acting out of fear, but someone who really believes in magical supremacy and has built a robust political worldview around it. there’s something really chilling about that. we’ll be seeing him again and i unfortunately am now so rookwood-pilled i worry i will never recover. i knew i’d get hegel in there somewhere! and they said it couldn’t be done! ariana carl schmidt what are you doing here!

kingsley vs minnie: delicious to reignite the minnie discourse, especially to come out to try and beat the minnie-bashing allegations that have jovially dogged me thus far. so far in this fic, kingsley has been an unrelenting goodie, someone who came to ginny to get her endorsement of the inquiry and framed that approach as the righting of a moral wrong in letting the victims of a death eater-run hogwarts have their day in court. minnie, on the other hand, seemed like ginny’s opp, defending a toxic status quo and making wild suggestions like ‘do your homework’ ‘don’t play quidditch when you might die’, like some kind of fucking idiot. in the series ministers of magic are canonically not to be trusted - harry certainly never meets a minister who doesn’t try to put the squeeze on him - and it’s extremely fun to sow these seeds of doubts about kingsley’s motivations here, especially when using ginny the protagonist as canon harry’s mirror (ie. a narrator who is frequently a dumb bitch). what’s kingsley up to? answers on a postcard. but i’ll die on the kingsley is a slytherin hill i’m so sorry! and speaking of minnie…

mother figures (or: the pitfalls of shipping your mum out to the dominions): look i bummed myself out with this one. i have had that the mrs granger knife crime incident scene written for SOoooooo long let me tell you. i’ve written elsewhere about how much this fic is really so much about the girls, and - especially - the girls and their mums, or the people they make mother figures out of. one of the least satisfying of the ‘all was well’ aspect of the series was that actually, at the end of DH, you have a whole host of people who were probably never going to be well again, and i very much see hermione’s parents in that camp. the world and his wife has an opinion on hermione’s decision vis-à-vis her parents. hermione’s stans see it as her deepest personal self-sacrifice; her haters take it as yet more proof of her monstrousness. even if you imagine the grangers were totally mentally well after having their muggle brains messed around with by powerful magic, it is hard to imagine how their relationship with their daughter could ever really be the same again after hermione played god with their minds. but also - as ron says - hermione was motivated by a desperate desire to protect two people who would never really be able to wrap their heads around the peril (such was their distance from her life in the magical world), and who conceivably did need to be yeeted halfway across the world to get them out of harm’s way. the choices made in war - the inglorious, imperfect decisions not of purist heroes but of soldiers in the grimmest of circumstances - are so interesting to play with writing post-war fic, and i have found it so interesting and so sad to play with; especially the idea of girls coming of age and learning to see their mothers clearly, and - in the case of both hermione but also ginny - having to wrap their heads around the possibility that they may never really be ok again, and asking what that means for them, their daughters.

(also hermione brawling at ballet is a tribute to a very dear friend of mine who was in fact asked to leave our ballet lessons for pulling another girl’s hair in a fight over the barre in a pre-primary exam. monstrous competitive precocious stroppy madams unite!) 

hinny: i’ll answer some of the Qs i’ve had about this in a separate little from the postbag post shortly, but i do want to say: the thing with these chapters is that it was really important they happened after harry and ginny have had some breakthrough in the preceding chapter, where ginny has agreed to be honest and harry has asked her to let him help her and not to protect him from the truth. i always wanted harry and ginny to write these letters each other and promise to be honest to work on bridging the gaps between them and overcoming their own failings to work to do better by each other, and for those letters to now look like contracts they have to hold each other to. how will harry take it? they’ve made a commitment to each other. now they’re testing that commitment, and that’s going to take a lot of work, especially on harry’s part. (also ofc he had to find out at shell cottage, the official place of harry realising stuff. he’s going to start declining bill and fleur’s dinner invitations fr.)

ron weasley is our king: this whole fic is just ron apologism and i will never apologise for it. helping his girlfriend's traumatised mentally scarred mother with a bit of tlc and a spot of gardening! rescuing neighbour's children from trees! you will never be able to convince me ron weasley wouldn't be a great fucking boyfriend to one ms hermione granger. do not ever try!

last thing - sodding quidditch: fucking hate writing it!!! hate it with my whole heart!!! i see why everyone writes hermione now. you don’t have to give a shit about those stupid balls if granger's your gal. the mystery of what’s going on with ginny on her broom continues, with ginny’s apparent ability to seek (just about) but not chase throwing up more questions than answers. what was fun about writing this bit was getting to write ginny the captain and the team player, taking on great risk for the team - of injury, of humiliation -  and also place her in this surround that the trio never really operate in: a character who is canonically very popular and liked by her peers, who has played the thoroughly selfless and unrewarding role of backup seeker and potter understudy for years for her house, and who will saddle up at enormous personal expense not just because she is brave, or inherently self-sacrificing, but because she wants to make the people around her happy - her gryffindor family, but also the hogwarts student body at large. the trio are much less motivated by the well-being of the other children around them - they have higher-minded self-sacrificing tendencies about a more abstract moral good. neville and luna, the other two members of the silver trio, are goodies but unpopular oddities. it’s an underplayed part of the series that harry and the trio turn around in their sixth year and clock that somehow ginny turned out to be very liked and respected by the popular and unpopular of hogwarts alike, admired for being a) a laugh and b) someone who cares about other people and wants to get on with them. (makes you realise how often protagonists are removed from their peers in a slightly lofty they don’t understand me or being popular is beneath me vein.) this isn’t just a Nice Thing: i think it’s important for who ginny is as a character, and will be important for thinking about her wartime motivations, too.

reading list:

not done one of these in a while! but most things should come with a reading list, and these chapters are no different.

on ministry bureaucracy and the state (actually read this after these chapters were done but desperately wish i had read it before ffs):

Subluxation by @saintsenara

on hermione's mum/parents:

alone now by Kyra Along the Way by ElizabethCulmer you were broken-hearted and the world was, too by celaenos

on post-war justice and difficult questions:

what you're not to do by irnan

on the potters and the sea (more vibes than subject matter - this is next gen - but this one is gorgeous, and really got me thinking about harry and ginny's family by the sea):

Eyes like Sea Glass by @clerical3rror

songs from the playlist for these chapters:

for chapter 13 i went all moody, building dread, bit of a throwback to michael corner calling ginny a tryer with the taylor swift choice (i've never been a natural/all i do is try, try, try). that kate bush song basically got this chapter written i swear to god:

she is like the swallow by karan casey | waking the witch (2018 remaster) by kate bush | house of the rising sun by joni mitchell | bane by alt-j | afraid of everyone by the national | mirrorball - the long pond studio sessions by taylor swift | what if the birds aren't singing they're screaming by aldous harding

for chapter 14, much more abstract, a bit more instrumental, and out to sea (watershed moment; the tide is rolling in, kids). tortured poets is a deeply flawed deeply uneven album by a deeply un-self-aware artist convinced she knows herself well but but i'm afraid the albatross is very good (so is guilty as sin but it wasn't the moment for a matty healy wank anthem now was it):

the opportunity passed in less than a minute by roy montgomery | the albatross by taylor swift | first of the tide by erland cooper and benge | wash by bon iver | escapism by a. blomqvist

about chapter 15 (and 16…)

the next chapters are ginny's war. they're (almost) all flashback, and i am sooooooo excited about them (and desperately hope you will like them jfc). i am in the unusual position of now picking up great enormous pieces that i wrote over a year ago and dusting them off and sorting them out and rewriting bits and writing new bits around them. there's probably two chapters in it, so am currently expecting chapter 15 and 16 to drop at the same time (that might change, but for now, that feels right to me). i'm tip-tapping as fast as my little fingers can carry me. here's the least spoilery sneak peek i could rustle up!

'I'm not smugglin' in nuthin", says Hagrid. He raises a large muddy finger at her. 'I want yeh to listen to me, for once in yer life. Keep yer head down. Go to yer classes, have yer dinner, put up, and shut up. They're lookin' fer a reason to go after yer family. Reckon the best thing yeh can do for the Order is to keep to verself and stay out o' trouble. Reckon that's what yer mum wants yeh to do. Reckon that's what Harry wants, too.'