whinlatter

[whinlatter]

"His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,

His hair is as dark as a blackboard.

I wish he was mine, he's really divine,

the hero who conquered the Dark Lord."

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I’ve been listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks on my commute since the fall, and found your fanfic “Beasts” about a week ago.  It’s so well written and detailed and heart wrenching and just, just SO GOOD.  I looked forward to reading another chapter after work for days and days.  I can’t stop thinking about.  In fact, it was all I could think about while listening to the chapter “The Fallen Warrior” in Deathly Hallows, trying to imagine it from Ginny’s POV.

Like. The world is at war.  Your family is highly involved.  You’ve already lost people you care about.  You were broken up with less than a month ago… at a funeral.  And the most powerful wizard alive wants to kill the young man you still love. 

Now there’s a scheme to get him safely to your house for at least part of the summer.  You are not allowed to know what the scheme is. Your father, four of your brothers, and the friend you’ve shared a bedroom with every summer since you were thirteen are all involved.

You wait at home.  Two people should have arrived, but the portkey shows up, and no one’s there.  Four people should have arrived (including your closest brother), but the portkey shows up and no one’s there.

Finally, finally, Harry shows up.  White-faced, bloody, but alive. You tell him everything you know, and it’s not enough for either one of you.

Finally, one of your brothers shows up.  George is unconscious, has permanently lost a body part, and you are your mother are doing the best you can to keep him alive.

For a second, you think Harry is going to hug you.  He doesn’t.

Two more people arrive.  One of them is Hermione.  Hermione flings her arms around Harry and he hugs her back.

Would he have hugged you back, if you had even tried?

You wait.  It feels like forever.  Fred arrives, learns what’s happened to George.  Ron’s still not back yet.  Bill’s still not back yet.

Out in the garden, you slip your hand into Harry’s.  He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t say anything either.

Then Ron arrives (thank god) and it’s Harry-and-Ron-and-Hermione again.  You run inside to tell your mother. 

Bill arrives with news of another death, another blow, another loss….

When Harry loses his temper, scared of putting them all in danger, you don’t go after him, even though you think he might be in physical pain at this point.  Ron-and-Hermione go after him. 

Your mother tells you to go to bed.  

Three days later, the first time you’re alone with Harry, he makes an off the cuff comment about going after Voldemort and trying to kill him.  You know it’s not a joke.  He knows it’s not a joke.

He lies to you anyway. 

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

[whinlatter]

U should have ginny kiss a girl in the hogwarts flashbacks...just a Little 🤏 i think a homoerotic toxic doomed Yuri situatuonship wouldn't necessarily. help her but it would be fun to Watch....like watching a Rat in a maze...💜 and maybe shrooms idk...i do lobe your Fic a lot whinlatter💜

[whinlatter]

authors note | fic: beasts | chapters one and two (AO3)

i'm going to be sharing little author's notes with each chapter of my new fic beasts, with short reflections on writing, headcanons, acknowledgements and recs for fics/metas and other media that i love and that helped me think through or shape the chapter in some way (writers are debtors!) very aware these author's notes are extremely indulgent (oops), but i find them helpful to think about projects’ shape and influences and moving parts, and also cannot get enough of reading other people's reflections on their writing, so hope you'll humour me with these (or just keep scrolling if not!)

in this author's note, i talk a bit about the scope of the project as a whole, the kind of story (and love story) this is, as well as talk a little about bringing these first two chapters (I: fledgling and II: gamebird) into being. there’s also a little sneak peek of chapter 3 featuring a certain DADA teacher 👀🌙✨

spoilers for chapters one and two below the cut!

notes on beasts:

these are chapters one and two of a multichapter post-war story called beasts, which follows ginny’s seventh and final year back at hogwarts after the second wizarding war.

beasts is a coming-of-age story. it's a fic that has ginny looking back on her childhood and adolescence, coming to terms with the war and her place in it, thinking about the prospect of a rebuilt post-war wizarding world. it is also - of course - a love story.

most of all, though, beasts is about a young person’s relationship with the magical world. who is a beast, who is a being: these are questions that define degrees of inclusion in the life of the wizarding world. this is a story about the littlest weasley - child of magic, animal-lover - growing up among wild things, the savages and the monsters, and learning to find her place among them. it's about grieving and growing up in a world that distinguishes beings from beasts. it asks what it means to see those distinctions (and to doubt them).

this fic will contain multiple timelines: the present (ginny back at hogwarts in 1998-99), as well as memories and flashbacks to her childhood and school years (1981-1998, philosopher's stone thru deathly hallows). this is canon-compliant work, with some amount of speculation in imagining the characters in the immediate postwar moment. harry and ron are about to start training to be aurors in london: ginny and hermione have gone back to hogwarts for their seventh year.

the project as a whole is going to be full of wild things and war, but also softness and conversation and care, flashbacks and memories (and, soon, lots and lots of letters). we're going slow & steady, but i'm very excited to be sharing it at last, and really hope you enjoy it.

TW: depictions of torture and violence against minors | canon character death | discussion of PTSD | mention of sexual harassment

notes on chapters one and two:

acknowledgements: a lil conversation with @btelling helped me better figure out why i want to use non-linear devices to tell this story, and her tips on non-linear storytelling and flagging were a big help, so huge cheers to her for that.

on chapter titles: fledgling, n. a young bird that has just fledged; fledged (of a young bird): having wing feathers that are large enough for flight; able to fly. gamebird, n. a bird shot for sport or food.

on the boating ceremony: chapter one opens at the close, with ginny and hermione's graduation ceremony. i know the boating ceremony, where the graduates sail back across the lake, is not technically canon, but rather comes from an old jkr post-series interview about hogwarts graduation ceremony practices. jkr seemed to think it was poetic. i reckon ginny weasley would think it was absolute bullshit. so, you know, had to nick it

on hannah and luna: hannah abbott, in this story, is now in ginny’s year, as she had to repeat a year after her mother’s death (she’d missed too much of her sixth year). luna is also very much a part of this story, but absent at the graduation ceremony for reasons that will be revealed in later chapters (if you saw a mention of her in an earlier draft of chapter 1... keep that to yourself)

on hermione: hermione is head girl for ~ reasons ~ that will be discussed in a later chapter. any guesses for head boy?

on fantastic beasts: i've used two excerpts from fantastic beasts here - the intro on magizoology, and the entry on the basilisk. the full book can be found online here.

on harry and ginny: this is a love story. but, as (i hope!) you can see from these chapters, this is also a story about ginny herself. what i wanted was to start this fic less with the question of 'how do harry and ginny get back together' than 'how do any of these characters put themselves back together'. it's a question that inevitably asks questions about relationships, but it also allows them be part of a bigger, broader thing, about finding a durable, stable happiness. so we start here, with harry and ginny, together, a summer behind them, but together in a tentative, fragile, new sort-of way. harry and ginny will have lots to figure out over the course of this story. ron and hermione are also together and will, of course, have their own place in all of this. this is canon/epilogue compliant, so we're working with all canon (and canonish hehe) relationships here babyyy

on ginny's first trip to hagrid's hut: i put a little excerpt of the canon scene from chamber of secrets at the top of chapter 2, where hagrid mentions ginny has been poking around hagrid’s hut. i know there's some dispute about whether ginny was already possessed by tom at this point, so trying to get at the roosters, or whether she was genuinely wandering around the grounds, maybe hoping to bump into harry. i tried to go for a half-way point here – i think she's discussed the chicken sheds with tom, but she’s not yet started attacking the roosters. so, for that scene at least, she is very much in control of her own faculties during her first proper conversation with hagrid.

on the troll: there are tiny references to my other fic orchards in chapter 2 (ron’s letter and the drawing of the troll) – if you want to read this piece, an earlier hbp harry/ginny summer fic, you can find it on ao3 here!

on gideon’s prewett’s watch: the mirror to harry’s coming-of-age present from the weasleys, this was ginny’s seventeenth birthday present. we’ll be seeing this watch again…

reading list for chapters one and two:

on ginny's childhood and adolescence:

stumble on a secret power by pinkdementors (AO3) All stories have a beginning. This is one of them: the diary, the girl, the quill dipped in ink. Don’t trust a magical object if you can’t see where it keeps its brain, Arthur would admonish months later, but Ginny had grown up in a house crammed with unknown magic, had no memory of a life separate from talking mirrors and singing teapots and the tinny complaints of Great-Uncle Alfie’s chess set. She was just turned eleven years old, and she wanted a friend. Was this to be her crime?

lost by dirgewithoutmusic (AO3) Or were they something else entirely, this trio who was not golden? They were the unchosen three: the discarded Horcrux and the last Weasley; the brave, broken backup Boy Who Lived; the loony girl who lost her shoes and had more friends in thestrals than in her common room.

on ginny, tom and the diary:

the train station by dirgewithoutmusic (AO3) At eleven years old, Ginny Weasley almost died on the cold Chamber floor.

ginny weasley and the chamber of secrets by @its-nanse (AO3) Chamber of Secrets from Ginny's perspective, as a graphic novel.

slipped (and said something like your name) by @pebblysand (AO3) Through all of it, Harry stands at the back of the room. He stares straight ahead, quiet, hands shoved deep inside the pockets of the Gryffindor jumper that someone’s lent him. Very few of his things are truly his, these days. The morning after they got back, Ginny watched him from her bedroom window, up at four o’clock in the morning. He walked out of the house like he didn’t want to be in it and burnt all the clothes that Hermione had packed months ago in her tiny, beaded bag. ‘It all smells like damp,’ he said. Like blood, like fear and like the war. this meta by @stuckwith-harry on gender, tropes of victorian horror, and harry and ginny's contrasting relationship with riddle (tumblr) this re-read meta for chamber of secrets by @ashesandhackles (tumblr)

on charlie weasley:

Career Advice by edenfalling (AO3) Bill Weasley didn't pay much attention to goblins until his fifth year at Hogwarts.

unreachable by malapropism (AO3) "Eventually, Charlie found the words for what he’d always known, and learned that there were others with stories like his. It was easier, in a sense, once he had a word to explain something that seemed inexplicable to so many... But he’d never really gone searching for language, or for community, and he always just thought of himself as simply not interested. Not interested in relationships, or sex, or the kind of love that people fall into."

on time gaps & non-linear storytelling:

Maps to the Stars’ Homes by lizbee (AO3) Following the war, Harry buys a plane ticket and leaves, but the memories keep following him.

for the hope of it all by @missgryffin (AO3) James Potter’s given up on ever having a chance with Lily Evans. Lily Evans is trying not to be in love with James Potter, whom she’s fallen for too late. And Sirius Black’s not scheming at all when he enlists his friends’ help to spend a week fixing up a remote beach cottage that he bought with his inheritance money—and fails to mention the shortage of beds.

actually have been revisiting lots of films for this project to try and think about how to play with timelines (my taste is reallll basic ok), including:

little women (2019), dir. greta gerwig | moonlight (2016), dir. barry jenkins | dunkirk (2018), dir. christopher nolan | la vie en rose (2007), dir. olivier darhan | the social network (2010), dir. david fincher | 500 days of summer (2009), dir. marc webb | the irishman (2019), dir. martin scorcese

songs from the playlist particularly for this chapter:

smoke signals (reprise) – phoebe bridgers | an arc of doves (remastered 2004) – brian eno, harold budd | wallowa lake monster – sufjan stevens | a window to the past – john williams

...and a sneak peek of chapter 3 👀🐺🛖

She’s getting cold feet with every step she and Lupin take towards the gamekeeper's hut. ‘He won’t bite, you know.’ ‘No, I know, but –’ ‘And, as I recall, what Hagrid’s baking lacks in quality, it more than makes up for in quantity.’ ‘No, you don’t understand –’ ‘What don’t I understand?’ ‘I’m the one,’ she whispers, a little frantic, ‘who got him sent to Azkaban!’ Lupin halts on the path. He turns to look at her sharply. ‘I’m afraid I don’t agree with you there,' he says. 'It seems to me the only person who got Hagrid sent to Azkaban is Lord Voldemort.’ Lupin frowns. ‘And perhaps Cornelius Fudge, who has an unfortunate tendency to cast aside anyone he deems lesser than him in the service of his own ambition.’ He’s a madman, she thinks. Professor Lupin looks like a gust of wind might finish him off — and yet here he is, slagging off the Minister for Magic, and throwing Tom’s darkest name around on a Tuesday morning, like it’s nothing.

🦉 thoughts & questions? ask me anything!

[whinlatter]

I know I'm projecting but I like to imagine Remus as a little biology boy

So I checked and in the books he got the grindylow delivered for the class, but also why!? I'm sure there were plenty of pictures he could show the kids. But no! he was a hands-on teacher, he knew seeing the real thing is something else. ( I sure hope they didn't practise spells on the caged animal, I won't check ) Anyway in my humble opinion he wasn't a book nerd, he was a go out and find some cool critter nerd.

Sirius is supportive but I think he prefers fluffier animals. I was going to draw him reading but then I saw people mentioning the crossword thing and I like it a lot. ( Now I'm wondering about magical crossword puzzles, do they move? Do they give hints? )

I like to think it reflects their childhood activities. Sirius holed up in grimmauld with books and games trying to ignore his family and Remus in a cabin god knows where with only his parents to talk to. With Lyall being a certified ghost hunting enthusiast, I imagine little Remus running around turning every stone to find something of interest to show his dad and bond with him.

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Professor Sprout and Professor McGonagall being gal pals

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happy valentine’s day from ron and hermione

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Wait do you ship Tom/Myrtle? As in, in a serious, non Crack way?

every now and then someone talented takes a crack ship seriously and makes magic. and that is what happened with one of my favourite pieces of fanfiction of all time, Bookbinding by @saintsenara. it’s the first and only tom/myrtle i have ever read and it’s really very special. give it a go, anon. any ship, in the right pair of hands, can sail!

[whinlatter]

In canon though Harry really was more like Sirius than he was like Molly

very often, anon, yes — but also a crucial tension between harry and sirius in ootp shows up in the moments where harry is more like molly, eg. harry asking sirius to take the safer course of action because he loves sirius and wants/needs him to be safe and to live. (‘i just don’t want you chucked back in azkaban again!’ ‘you’re less like your father than i thought. the risk would’ve been what made it fun for james.’) it’s not a perfect binary — harry is like sirius in some respects, unlike him in others. but ultimately hermione is a little bit right and harry tacitly acknowledges it: sirius has been lonely for a very long time, his judgement is clouded because of it, he’s restless and reckless and a small part of him (one that he no doubt felt ashamed of) kind of did want harry to get kicked out of school so they could be outcasts together. and part of harry’s arc in the book is him a) learning to overcome his own adolescent recklessness/restlessness and angst to develop a more mature approach to the war and his role in it and b) navigating an emotional distance from sirius and a part-parental/part-fraternal relationship with him when he wants sirius’ approval but also is discovering a lot of the ways they are different for the first time (SWM being the main one). that doesn’t mean it’s a matter of choosing between molly and sirius for harry. but it is about harry learning to walk a middle line between them.

(the irony being that sirius’ death makes harry more like molly, not less - intensely over-protective of those he views as family, desperate to keep them out of harm’s way/in the dark from knowledge of his war, needing them to stay alive because he loves them even if it risks them resenting him for it. but molly haters do not like to remember this…)

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"Molly only cared about Harry's fame" Molly's boggart was Harry dead in a pile of her husband and children

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upon reflection nearly headless nick and harry were bros honestly like not only did harry skip a delicious feast to attend nick’s deathday party but also when sirius died the first person harry really spoke to about it was nick to ask him about the possibility of sirius becoming a ghost? and like harry always makes a point of speaking to nick at every welcoming feast and in turn nick always looks out for harry when he’s up to shenanigans and gets really offended anytime anyone tries to question that he’s harry potter’s primary ghost friend and ally. a truly iconic friendship

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“…vVeriTaSerum…”

*spoken in dramatic hissing voice*🌚

———

PRINT available

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Post-DH, listening to a Holyhead Harpies game on the Burrow’s wireless. Harry would totally wear Ginny’s gear like a classic high school sweetheart.

[whinlatter]

Hello 👋

I've been re-reading the last 4 chapters of Beasts (as a Xmas treat I guess 🤭) and here's some details I've picked and loved :

- Cho entering Sirius' room at Grimmauld to get a change of clothes from Ginny and stepping into Harry and Ginny's intimacy - I'm picturing clothes on the floor and those eggcups on the mantelpiece

- Neville sending his friend some bulbs to plant in Hagrid's garden 🥹🤧🤧🤧

- Ron helping Mrs Granger unpacking and keeping an eye on her, whithout telling anyone he's doing so, just because he's a generous and caring man 🙏- those little labels he put on the photo !

I hope you still have some time to write and I can't wait to read more from you. You've got a very special gift, making us dive into the world you've created with such complex and endearing characters.

Do you have any future plan for Ginny and her inquiry?

Cheers ✨

mate! i really hope you are well and 2025 is being good to you, even in the dark global days... i am obsessed with you re-reading and pulling these out, pleased as punch about it (these are all the little moments and details that are most fun to add into chapters - plot, blegh, eggcups, slay - so makes my day to have them noticed. your kind words mean the world, honestly, as do the very very kind words other people have left the old inbox in the past few weeks, all of which are very much appreciated.

please be assured i have many plans for ginny and her inquiry. i'm in a weird position rn where i'm writing more than ever (o lawd she writin), churning out stuff i think is some of my best shit (fr) and thinking about beasts constantly as i try to rework these next few chapters about ginny's war (am having to write chunks of them together for complicated reasons - mostly to keep track of plot threads, but also because the next chapters are all in the past, so it requires me to write with the canon narrative/timeline, which takes ages if you are as forgetful as me and have to keep going and checking canon/calendars constantly). i am very aware that i am quiet on socials/not posting chapters yet and causing annoyance and frustration, which i feel very badly about. it will always be weird to have people ask if you have abandoned a fic you work on a little bit every day (life would be easier if the ideas for the fic would leave me alone, believe me). candidly, i have found guilt for taking more time with writing to be a real demotivator: equally i have tried not to be on tumblr too much (as people tend to get mad when i am posting on tumblr but not posting chapters), but then feeling less connected to the source material when i'm not having regularly engagement with fandom. so am trying to remember this is my hobby too and it's supposed to be fun and a source of joy, because that approach is a much deeper font of motivation and inspiration than guilt (who knew). the main thing is no-one need worry about official hiatus or abandonment - i am just taking my time and enjoying doing so, especially as i turn a corner and feel i'm writing my way out of a sticky patch. and unusually for me, i think i will be proud of the stuff i put out when i do put it out, and hope people will get a lot out of it when i do. loads of love!

[whinlatter]

Happy Birthday, Severus Snape🖤

wherever you are, I hope you’re giving a killing lecture!

[whinlatter]

Someone is about to get a lecture on constant vigilance.

(If we ever got a series about the Aurors featuring Tonks and Moody and cubicles, I would simply perish)