Progress Report 3/17

[lomonaaeren]

And I am back! Ta-da!



hd_worldcup fic: Finished and submitted!

Inter Vivos: This will be my priority for this week—as soon as I can sit down and get it decently worked on. I know what events should happen in the sixth year, but not their order. I also need to come up with a sufficiently dramatic ending for the year.





I was kind of looking forward to working on just one novel-length story and then whatever one-shots I wanted around that. But then two ideas for short novels—which have banged around in the back of my head for awhile, and seemed like one-shots—emerged last night fully-formed. It’s really tempting to start one of them, except a) I don’t know if I should and b) I can’t choose between them anyway.

Temperance would be my second Veela story. Draco is having odd flare-ups where his Veela features emerge with seemingly no set schedule—wings, beak, charm, etc.—and he loses control of himself and goes around using his powers to steal things. The Ministry sends Harry, as the only Auror immune to Veela charms, to capture him. Then the Ministry wants to send him to Azkaban, since he’s nearly made people rape others in fits of lust, but Harry points out that won’t work; he would just charm someone to let him out of his cell the moment the Veela features emerged again. Instead, Harry, who had a bad experience of his own three years ago that disordered his magic and had to deal with that, offers to shelter Draco in his house, keep him safe when the Veela traits show, and help him to control the magic. One option that would help Draco control it is to get him magically bound to another person, but in this universe Veela have no set mates, and Harry isn’t willing to just chain Draco to the highest bidder. He wants Draco to have freedom and choice—and control at the same time. That would be the main theme of the story, that tension between freedom and restraint, and is the reason for the title. And Harry has something to learn about it, too.

Providence is set in a world where Harry has three pieces of knowledge. He’s fallen for Draco after the way Draco has cleaned up his act since the war, but he knows/“knows” Draco is straight and won’t look twice at him. He also knows Draco is lonely, and needs a partner to be happy. And finally, he knows that Astoria Greengrass is in love with Draco, much the same way Ginny used to be in love with Harry, and would give him the adoration and support Harry thinks he deserves—if he could only persuade Draco to consider her as someone mature and clever rather than a bedazzled little girl. So the obvious solution, at least for Harry, is to write Draco letters as coming from a “secret admirer,” and pretend they’re from Astoria. (He lets Astoria into the secret, and she eagerly agrees, since she wants Draco so much). This does not, of course, help Harry’s own unrequited longing, but he cares much more for Draco’s happiness than his own. And he also doesn’t consider what will happen if Draco falls in love with the writer of the letters, who’s, well, not really Astoria. Providence is the title both for the meaning of divine good luck and as a play on the sense of “providing” for someone.



I will start replying to comments pretty soon, and I hope to be able to post something today. I’m still fairly tired from the trip, though, so I can’t promise anything. But it’s good to be back!

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!