stupid and marvelous

Claiming my Erised:

So. This one’s mine:


Title: A Convenient Impracticality
Author: firethesound
Recipient: isinuyasha
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco (background Ron/Hermione, Dean/Seamus, Ginny/Luna)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~38,000
Warnings: none
Content/Enticements: Friends-with-benefits, fake-dating, pining, lots of bickering, and all of Harry’s and Draco’s friends are terrible.
Summary: Somehow Harry ends up agreeing to a fake relationship with his ex-nemesis-turned-friendly-acquaintance-with-benefits, except for some reason it involves an awful lot of actual dating and, sadly, not much sex. Confused? Harry is too, but when has anything with Draco Malfoy ever been as straightforward as it seems?


Once again, the Erised mods have done an outstanding job matching. I was so pleased to have gotten the wonderful isinuyasha as my assignment this year, and when I first clicked over to her sign-up to look at what she wanted, my first thought was “oh, okay, I see why we were matched up!” Right away I knew exactly the sort of story I wanted to write. Something around 30-35k, a bit on the lighter side, lots of bickering and a bit of silliness, very romance-y, something that people would read and it’d leave them with a smile on their faces.

So imagine my frustration when the story idea that blossomed in by brain and then wouldn’t freaking leave was a behemoth of a fic that I initially estimated around 60-70k, with a tremendously large cast of characters including OCs, multiple locations, an exceedingly slow burn enemies-to-friends-to-lovers relationship, Character Growth For Everybody!, and a lot of critical things to say about wizarding society and politics. (Wait, what?)

Obviously, I did not end up writing this story.


( the story that wasn't... )


( the story that was! )

So, reveals are up and this one's mine!

Title: Pieces Left Incomplete
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Content: (Highlight to view) *I suppose I should warn for MCD although he’s not really dead and everything’s resolved quite nicely in And the Clock Keeps Ticking, but that’s not addressed here.*
Summary: It’s always too quiet these days, at least until he shows up. A remix of nherizu’s story And the Clock Keeps Ticking.
Word Count/Art Medium: 2k
Disclaimer: HP characters and world belong to JKR, no copyright infringement is intended. The specific scenario for this story is inspired by the events in And the Clock Keeps Ticking.
Author's/Artist's Notes: Title comes from a line in the song “Cathedrals” by Jump, Little Children. Many thanks to S and Other S for the beta and encouragement


I had a hard time picking which of Nherizu's stories to play with, but I ended up picking this one because A) it was her preferred fic for remixing, and B) I got really hung up on the idea of Draco alone in the Manor for months on end thinking that he's dead, and it was a lot of fun to play around with that. I was sort of aiming for 'Victorian ghost story from the ghost's POV' when I was writing, and I'm pleased with how it came out though it's very different than what I normally do nowadays: no sex, no swearing, no dialogue, much heavier on descriptions, and only 2k.

It was a lot more of a challenge than I thought it'd be to remix someone else's fic, but I'm really glad I signed up this year because it was a really great experience. <3

So, I wrote a thing for HR Hols this year.

Title: Something They Can Barely See
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Harry/Ron, off-screen Hermione/Percy
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Word Count : 5k
Summary: Harry has no idea how to tell his best friend he wants more that friendship. He’s pretty sure this would be hell of a lot easier if he knew for sure how Ron felt about him.
Author Notes: Title comes from Weezer’s “Photograph.” Many thanks to sophie_french for the beta. Darling Capitu, your prompt called to me and I had to have it. Hope you enjoy this. Happy holidays. <3


I didn't really intend to write for this fest, but the claiming post went up with the list of prompts, and I thought to myself "Hey, no harm in looking since I don't write this pairing..." And then I saw capitu's prompt and immediately went all grabby hands for it. It was mostly the implication that Harry doesn't ever go into Ron's room, and how yeah of course that'd make perfect sense with Ron's big family and half a dozen siblings who were probably always messing with his stuff, how it'd be really important to him to have a private space, and then the rest of it just sort of took off from there because I'm the sort of writer who can be given a little fragment of characterization like that and will cheerfully built a whole story around it. The fact that Capitu had prompted it just made it all the more tempting, because she is lovely and I really enjoyed making something for her. <3

I was a bit nervous to write something that wasn't H/D but I'm really pleased with how it turned out. :)

And then I also got this sweet banner for it. (Thank you, DIG!!)

Yay, reveals for Tropes are up! That means I can talk about my story! My trope was Time Travel. :D

Title: At the Crossroads There We’ll Meet
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: ​temporary character death, slight dominance during sex​
Word Count: 25k
Summary: Potter keeps dying; Draco keeps saving him.


And I'm sure that some of you right now are going "Oh dear lord, firethesound wrote character death again." But this is temporary character death, because yay time travel! It's not even as angsty as I think it sounds. The opening scene is sad, which I thought was necessary for setting the tension for the rest of the story, but beyond that... well, I wasn't really interested in writing loads of angst and so I just sort of didn't. Plus, my giftee requested that it have a happy ending, so I tried to keep the overall tone a bit lighter to match up with that.

Writing this was a challenge just because I've been so writer's block-y lately. I kept starting things and then having them not work out, to the point where I started naming them like Borg. This was attempt Five of Five. (Of the other attempts, I tossed Three of Five entirely because it sucked, both One of Five and Four of Five are about half-written, and Two of Five was supposed to jump straight into the action but somehow I ended up with a 4k running joke about house-elves before I abandoned it, because I'm leery of inflicting my weird sense of humor on people I don't know well. I'm sure I'll finish them eventually. Especially the house-elf one because I really like it.)

Part of the problem I'd been having before is I was trying to write the sort of twisty-turny time travel plot I love reading, but it turns out that I sort of suck at writing. So for Five of Five, I thought I'd keep it relatively simple and be able to get through it in just 5-6k because I'd already gone past the deadline. I only missed the word count by about twenty thousand, but I think keeping it simple worked out well. I'm really really happy with how this story ended up. This was my first time writing time travel, and my first time writing Luna and I adore how she turned out. And I feel that I'm finally getting comfortable writing smut, because I rather like how that bit of it turned out as well.

So, yes. Thank you to everyone who read and commented. And to the mods for their unending patience with me being so late. <3

Title: Baby It’s You (here at the fest, or here on AO3)
Word Count/Art Medium: 24k
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Infidelity (but not between H/D) Swearing. Very slight dub-con due to shagging under the influence. Rimming. Switching. Non-explicit Harry/OMC.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Harry sometimes wished that his life wasn’t quite so prone to turmoil. Some days it felt like he couldn’t even take a piss without throwing his entire future off-course. Or, you know, have a drunken shag in a public toilet. It’s more the principle of the thing, really.

I'm sure this'll come as a huge surprise to everyone reading this, but I really didn't mean for this story to be the length it ended up. I saw 0idontknow0's prompt, which used the word "swimmers" and for some reason my brain just latched onto it and wouldn't let go. I also thought it'd be a great excuse for writing sex under the influence in a public place, which I really wanted to do, so I claimed it. This'll be about 7-8k, I thought, a bit of set-up and some smut and a bit of drama and then the resolution. Quick and easy. But the story just kept going and things kept happening and there was rather more sex than I thought there'd be. And overall I'm really really happy with how it turned out.

This was the first time I felt really comfortable writing smut, and I think it shows. (At least I hope it does!) This was also my first time writing mpreg, and probably won't be the last. <3

Reveals for Hurtfest went up last Friday, and I wrote two things for it!

Title: Stop All the Clocks (This Is the Last Time I’m Leaving Without You)
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Harry/Draco, Harry/OMC, Ron/Hermione
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: character death
Word Count: 44k
Summary: Living with Draco was difficult; living without him is unbearable. But if there’s one thing Harry learned from the war, it’s that even when one life ends, the rest of the world goes right on living.

I'd originally signed up to write for Hurtfest because at that point I was only writing romance and humor, and I wanted to push myself and my writing in a different direction to branch out a bit. I picked writcraft's prompt because it specifically asked for character death and I felt that making myself write angst would be easier if I had a prompt that didn't allow me to write a happy ending for it. Which turned out to be a good thing, because I ended up getting so attached to these characters and their life together that if I could have written them a happily-ever-after, I absolutely would have.

It was very difficult for me to write, but I am extremely proud of how this story turned out. I love pretty much everything about it, and I feel that it's definitely some of my best writing so far, if not THE BEST thing I've ever written. It's certainly the most honest. And I'm a little overwhelmed by the response to this one. I assumed most people would take one look at almost 45k of character death and click the back button just as fast as they could, but they didn't. I've received some of the most amazing comments on this, and it's been amazing to watch people talking about it as much as they have.


Title: And I Know the Spark
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Warnings:6th and 7th year AU, infidelity, dub-con/non-con, torture, character death of minor OCs (including children)
Word Count: 15k
Summary: All Draco cares about is keeping Potter alive, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that happens.

This one was a pinch hit. I'd actually written it around the time I first started posting, but it was so wildly different than anything else I'd done that I just saved it away in the depths of my writing folder and then sort of forgot about it. When I volunteered to pinch hit, I pulled it out again, figuring it'd just need a little bit of editing and I could turn it in, but that didn't quite happen as planned. Of the original story, I think I only kept about 4-5k of writing, and then entirely rewrote the rest of it, adding an extra 5,000 words in the process. Through the endless rewriting on this, it was really interesting for me to see just how much my writing has changed in the last six months.



Hurtfest was my first anonymous fest, and it was such a fun experience for me. Thank you to everyone who read and commented and recced during the fest, and who messaged me or sent me emails over the last couple of days. You're all wonderful and your words have meant so much to me. I'm going to be a little bit slow in responding, because these comments and messages were so wonderful (and I still can't believe that some of you took the time to leave me such long comments!) that a simple "thank you" won't be nearly enough as a response. I don't think words will be enough to express how much I appreciated everything, but I'm sure as heck going to try.