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narratives about doomed love that aren’t romantic in nature. the love between siblings who understand each other the most but are growing apart no matter how much they try to come back to one another. the love between friends whose life paths pull them apart and they never see each other again, only remembering the face of a once kind childhood. the love for a hometown that year by year becomes less and less the one that raised you until you are a foreigner in your own backyard. there was no stopping it. the love was there and it mattered and you can never come back again.

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question if there's a fic with a major character death in it but it doesn't last and by the end the character is alive, should the fic still be tagged with major character death?

#tumblr polls #always wondered this #I do tag my MCDs #but get into a lot of arguments with readers about what classifies as a major vs minor character

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Breaking my year-long silence only to announce that today I got my drivers license.

#this has been a decade in the making #born with an eye defect which meant I couldn’t drive #but after two successful eye surgeries #I am now legally a menace on the roads

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Day 6 of Zutara Week (@zutaraweek) 2022: Closeness

i present to you… Katara healing Zuko post-Agni Kai amidst a light drizzle of ash.

find more of my art on instagram and twitter!

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#queue

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Excuse me , what do notp mean ?

#fandom #queue

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Have you ever been called home by the clear ringing of silver trumpets?

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hello! just wanted to ask a suddenly appeared in my mind question, while i was scrolling your ao3. have you ever felt sad or tired because of 'Running on air's popularity/famous? i mean this story is incredible and absolutely deserve all those kudos, but have you ever thought, that 'Astra Inclinant', 'When you wake' or 'Once around the sun' deserves much more, than they have? hope you're doing great and don't forget about rest. have a nice week ♡

Hello, thank you for your ask :)

I’ve never been bothered by RoA getting read a lot more than my other stuff. Once I post a fic, I sort of stop interacting with it. I don’t check my stats or anything. I write a fic and then stick it on AO3 like a kid putting their artwork proudly on the fridge: “There you go! Yeah, that looks good.” Then I wander off to my next project.

Don’t feel bad if you only like one of my fics or haven’t bothered reading the rest — you should enjoy my fanfic without worrying about things like that :)

#answered asks #running on air

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Someone ought to tell Harry…

Have a wonderful week everybody 🌻🐝💚

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Art inspired by Kept in Cages by @sweet-s0rr0w

this is a very belated part 2 to my @hd-wireless reveal!

getting early access to this story was a dream come true, and it was such an adventure making art for it. the story is the main event, and it was very fun coming up with ways that illustration could complement that. the result are three large pieces and 13 small chapter illustrations that all hide little clues to the magic that follows. one of the things that this story focuses on is cruelty and injustice in messed up power dynamics on every scale. The magical creatures I had the privilege of drawing here are all based on real-life animals that are in some way subject to particularly cruel treatment. Thank you @sweet-s0rr0w for being such a source of magic in my life and for bringing me and my art along on so many delightful adventures in fandom ♥️

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hi, i'm so surprised that you didn't put "take me back to the night we met" on songs you were listening to when writing running on air. With it's music video it's such a familiar vibe.

That song was actually released after RoA was written 😅 It definitely fits the vibes though! There’s lots of songs that do, but I tried to remain faithful to the ask and only include what I actually listened to at the time of writing.

#answered asks #running on air

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what’s your favorite quote from astra inclinant?

“James thinks of how he used to explore this land all the time with Teddy. They’d climb trees, and walk along ridges, and wade through the creeks and streams. The last thing Teddy saw was that rainforest in Wales. Maybe, just before he died, he was remembering being eleven years old and whistling as he followed the thread of a stream, five-year-old James on his shoulders. Maybe, as his lungs filled with water, he was dreaming of home.”

#astra inclinant #answered asks

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hey, i dont know if you’ve answered this already, but i was wondering why you chose not to write POV chapters for scorpius in astra incliant? he’s one of the four main characters but we only see harry, draco and james’ povs

Astra Inclinant actually started off as a one-shot from Scorpius’s point of view, but as I wrote more of the story, I realised I had to restructure it. To keep some of the mystery and tension (and control the pacing), I had to keep at least one perspective hidden. It became a question of which perspective to remove.

I had to keep one of the parents’ perspectives so I could show what was going on at home, and I had to keep one of the boys’ perspective so I could show what was going on at Hogwarts. Of the parents, I chose to keep Harry’s perspective. Harry wears his heart on his sleeve, and withholding his perspective wouldn’t really keep readers guessing about his thoughts or emotions.

Of the boys, I chose to keep James as he has the most contact with other characters — not just Harry, Draco, and Scorpius, but also Rose, Teddy, and the extended Weasley family. So I kept his perspective in order to show little glimpses into the lives of all the others.

This left Draco and Scorpius. Either perspective could have been removed, but ultimately I chose to keep Draco since there were long periods of time where he was alone at the manor (with Scorpius at Hogwarts and Harry only visiting infrequently) and I wanted to keep moving the plot forward during those times.

So it was a conscious and tactical decision to remove Scorpius’s perspective, and it was purely about optimising pace and narrative tension.

#astra inclinant #answered asks

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@ fic authors what do you personally consider a successful fic? What’s the bar?

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#I’m genuinely terrified of the dedication of many AO3 authors #it frightens me sometimes #ao3 #writing

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This is going into my list of top ten comments I’ve ever received.

#I remember someone leaving a comment on one of my fics complaining that it was angsty #and someone else replied to them #saying that if they clicked on an eleventy fic and expected sunshine then they were a complete moron #sometimes I wish I could see my writing from other peoples perspective because I honestly thought I DID write fluff

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It’s the first of September! The first day of spring, which is my least favourite season on account of its unpredictability.

Anyway, here’s a snippet of a fic request I’m currently filling for @stargazing-enby who submitted it two years ago aaaagh

The office is tucked away in the suburban sprawl of Bexley. It’s an old terrace townhouse; the original staircase, a hefty wooden beast, smells of furniture polish. The floorboards creak beneath Harry’s feet. The reception room is converted from the front parlour, and still has touches of the home that was once there: a lace doily over a dainty hall-table, and faded curtains framing the window. Harry glances at the wall, noticing the vintage brass light switch. This was once a Muggle home, then.

“May I help you?”

There’s an elderly witch he doesn’t recognise at the reception desk. She’s peering at him suspiciously over her spectacles, one hand resting on a typewriter which is furiously tapping out letters by itself.

Harry looks away from the typewriter. “Harry Potter. Here to see Malfoy.” It’s a little petty, he knows, but he won’t use Malfoy’s full title. Cursebreakers love that. They love the showmanship of it. The little flourishes of their wand (completely gratuitous), the dramatic pauses (unnecessary) and of course, their amazed and grateful customers (audiences; the only thing missing is the applause). It’s why Harry won’t see Levinson any more, or Sheldrake, or Vittily. It’s why he ditched Fromer after just one appointment, and why he left Clarkson’s office without even beginning the appointment. One glance into Clarkson’s delighted face — ooh, the great Harry Potter! What fantastic publicity for my little agency — and Harry had turned around and walked wordlessly out the door.

Now he waits for the usual reactions. But the witch doesn’t widen her eyes, or glance at his scar, or nervously smooth her robes. She just keeps squinting at him, and then she says, “Henry Potter…”

“Harry.”

“Harry.” She frowns. “Potter with a P?”

Harry can’t imagine what other letter Potter might begin with: he pauses, then says, “Erm. Yes.”

She picks slowly through a little wooden box filled with small white cards. “Ah. Here you are. Eleven o’clock?”

“That’s right.”

She puts a neat little tick onto the card and then moves it to another box. “Take a seat. Tea and coffee’s across the hallway.”

He sits down on one of the straight-backed wooden chairs next to the dainty hall table. There’s a little magazine rack nearby, with very well-worn copies of Cosy Homes for Country Witches and Enchanting Gardens of Magical Britain. Once Harry thumbs through them and then finds a copy of Knitting Patterns for Thrifty Witches, he begins suspecting the collection has been generously donated by the elderly receptionist. He glances up at her, then at the grandfather clock standing ponderously by the door. It’s only been fifteen minutes, but perhaps Malfoy is sitting somewhere in a comfortable office, laughing at the fact he’s keeping Harry waiting.

The receptionist speaks then, as if sensing his thoughts. “Mr Potter? Mr Malfoy will see you now. Directly up the stairs, second door on the left.”

Harry dutifully goes upstairs. There’s a narrow hallway with a window at the end of it, showing a rather unspectacular view over the grey rooftops of Bexley. He passes by the first door, which looks like a cleaning closet, and then stops at the second.

D. Malfoy

5th Order HCJ (DefM)

Cert HM (C. II)

It’s a faded set of letters printed upon the frosted glass pane. The dark-blue paint of the door is beginning to slowly flake away. Harry’s annoyed, though he can’t pinpoint why. All the other cursebreakers he’s visited have had their name, bright and glossy, upon their doors, with CURSEBREAKER emblazoned in large letters below. They love that word. It’s exciting. Full of action and danger. Curse, and breaker. Destruction and glittering shards. Smashing spells to pieces and then getting called a hero for it. Of course Malfoy would love to call himself cursebreaker.

But instead Harry’s left to decipher 5th Order HCJ (DefM) and Cert. HM, C. II.

The door swings open suddenly, leaving Harry blinking at Draco Malfoy’s face. He’s seen him around in the years following the war — it’s hard not to, really, with the magic community as small as it is — but always a distant glimpse of a blond-haired man disappearing into a shop, or waiting for one of the elevators at the Ministry (and despite Harry firmly telling himself he’d outgrown schoolyard scuffles, he’d always elected to choose a different elevator instead).

Now, however, an awkward meeting seems inevitable.

Malfoy looks down his long nose at Harry and says, “Take a seat.”

Harry won’t give him the satisfaction of pausing. He walks into the office and sits down in the nearest chair; a squeaky relic from the seventies, by the look of the avocado-coloured vinyl and slightly rusted metal legs.

Malfoy closes the door and then sits at his desk, ignoring Harry and picking up a file instead. Harry had expected the cold shoulder, and anyway, it gives him time to look around. He’s been in plenty of cursebreaker offices. Large and grand affairs, with ceiling-length windows and bookcases lined with rare tomes, and little gold name-plates on solid-oak desks. And the trophies, of course. Cursed jewellery glittering in the sunlight. Beautiful dresses stained with unicorn blood. Portraits of subjects which whisper just too quietly to decipher the words.

But Malfoy’s office is small and neat and efficient as a Ministry cubicle. There’s two framed certificates on the wall, which give Harry his answer to the riddle on the door — Fifth Order of Defensive Magic specialising in Hexes, Curses, and Jinxes, and Certificate of Healing Magic, Class II. There’s no grand bookcase, but instead a simple row of tattered texts on a shelf above the desk. A filing cabinet, grey and mildly threatening, sits in the corner.

Malfoy says, without looking up from the file, “You’re here today because…” He turns a page, “…you’re not very good at your job.”

“What?” Harry asks incredulously.

Malfoy does look up then. His expression is blandly polite, which somehow only makes Harry more angry. “You don’t currently fill the criteria of your role as an Auror. Is that correct?”

“No, that’s not correct. I’m a fully qualified Auror — ”

“Says here,” Malfoy says, looking down at the page again, “That your supervisor has referred you here on the basis that…” He taps his finger against a line of spindly writing. “Let’s see… ‘Auror Potter requires further training in sensing areas of concentrated magic.’ Says last December, you walked directly into a ward and set off a Caterwauling Charm, which compromised the entire operation.”

“What? Well - what it doesn’t mention is that the ward was very well-hidden in a staircase — ”

“And in February, you tripped a jinx when you opened a door during another operation, which resulted in several minor injuries.”

“Yes, but it was — ”

Malfoy turns a page, somehow managing to do it loudly. The rasp of paper cuts through the air. “February again. Declared a room cleared when in fact it was still armed with a Severing Curse. Your partner suffered a significant injury.”

Harry looks away. That had been a particularly difficult incident, and the guilt still lingers. “I could’ve sworn that room was — ”

“March. Picked up a cursed wand, resulting in moderate burns.”

“I had to, I was trying to disarm — ”

“Which brings us to April,” Malfoy says, closing the file. The pages flutter shut. “Ran straight through a basic security ward, shattering it. Minor injuries sustained.” He finally looks up, his expression indecipherable. “Anything you care to add to these notes?”

“I do my job,” Harry snaps. “And I do it well.”

“Mm,” Malfoy says, and it’s maddening exactly how much condescension he manages to fit into a single syllable. “Well, that particular judgment is up to me, isn’t it?”