stupid and marvelous

Title: Lift Your Open Hand
Author: firethesound
Recipient: who_la_hoop
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, background Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Word Count: 19k
Warnings: slight dub-con for drunken snogging, maybe?
Content/Enticements: accidental bonding, bedsharing, forced proximity, bickering and banter
Summary: With Draco Malfoy as his assigned partner for the next six weeks of Auror training, Harry had been prepared for things to go poorly. But getting themselves accidentally bonded to each other in the first twenty minutes of their very first assignment seemed going above and beyond, even for them.
Author's Notes: Thank you to catplusfox for the beta, eidheann_writes for the cheerleading, and dicta_contrion for the vodka. Title is a line from Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” because I worked on this in a coffee shop that was embracing the 90s and this came on. My dear who_la_hoop: I hope that this story brings you even a fraction of the joy I felt when I opened up my assignment and saw that I’d be writing for you this year. <3

Hey, so, this one's mine! And I was just beyond thrilled that I was assigned who_la_hoop as a giftee this year, because who_la was the wonderful genius behind my gift last year (Defining Dickhead) which I love to absolute pieces. It's become one of my very favorite comfort fics for bad days, and I've reread it probably a dozen times in the last year. So to find out that I got to write something back, well. Very excited doesn't even begin to cover how I felt. There may have been an embarrassingly loud screech of sheer joy when I saw who I got XD

Attempt #1 was a gloriously tropey monstrosity of a fic, and even though I started on it right away to give myself the full number of weeks to work on it, I still honestly don't know what I was thinking trying to take it on with a deadline because it's going to be enormously long. I'm trying not to write novels for fests anymore, but I'm sort of in love with this story idea, and I thought who_la_hoop would love it as well, so. I gave it a try. But the beginning wasn't coming together and blah blah stress and writer's block, and by the end of September I only had 15k so I started over.

Attempt #2 was my seriously-I'm-not-writing-a-novel-this-time attempt that (surprise!) turned into another novel. It's a forced bonding fic that's turned into something of a blend between Lift Your Open Hand (bond-induced forced proximity) and A Convenient Impracticality (found family and lots of people living in Grimmauld Place) I got about 40k into it and was looking at another 40k to finish it off the way I wanted to with a week left before the deadline and that was more than I felt comfortable taking on, so I started over again.

I ended up cutting several scenes out of Attempt #2 and reshuffling them a bit and then building the rest of Lift Your Open Hand around them, and with about a quarter of the writing already done and laid out, it was pretty easy to fill in the blanks and nearly the whole thing came together pretty quickly--I had all but 3/4 of a scene left to write by the deadline and then it ended up taking me the entire week of my extension because of the election but we don't talk about the election and I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and so much of it was just fun to write and it's been a while since I've had something come together that easily and be that fun to write, and yeah. I'm pretty happy with it. My only regret is that both National Treasure and National Treasure 2 came out post-1999 and I'm just not the sort of person who could bring myself to deliberately add an anachronism into my story, because both of those have some real gems of Nic Cage quotes :D

I owe great big thanks to these lovely people:
catplusfox for being your usual awesome amazing fantastic self! As always, I am eternally grateful for everything you do, and one of these days I'll write something without starting over multiple times.
dicta_contrion for a fantastic weekend of fic plotting and bouncing ideas (even though I didn't end up writing that fic) and also for the bottle of vodka you left at my place last year.
eidheann_writes for being a wonderful cheerleader, for being so calm in the face of my flailing, and for graciously dealing with a pile of raw chicken to guilt me into making words.
And of course to who_la_hoop for being so wonderful to write for.

Last but not least, an enormous THANK YOU to everyone who read and commented. I adore you all <3

So, this one was mine...

Title: The Light More Beautiful
Recipient: lumosed_quill
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 81k
Warnings: dub-con, mild violence, creature!fic, knotting
Content/Enticements: blowjobs, handjobs, rimming, facials, switching, Auror!fic, clubbing, Quidditch, bad acronyms, bad jokes, ridiculous drinking games, and one exceedingly grumpy owl.
Summary: Thirteen years after Draco accepts Potter's help escaping the horror of his sixth year, he returns to England where he makes the unfortunate discovery that Potter is still as obnoxious as ever. And worse, more than a decade overseas hasn't been enough to dim Draco's obsession with him.
Author's Notes: To those who held my hand as I wrote and offered me endless cheerleading and and insight and reassurance, know that I couldn't have done this without you beside me every step of the way. Each of you is invaluable to me. The sentence Lumosed_Quill gave to describe Harry and Draco was "The light is always more beautiful when it shines through the darkness." And so this is a story told in two parts: first the darkness, and then the light that shines through.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.



( Rambling )


( It took something of a village to make this story happen and I want to thank the people who helped me find my way to the end without getting too lost along the way. )