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[stashandtell]

Newest Fic: Ranking the Weasleys

Hermione was drunk. It was all Ginny’s fault.

“RANK MY BROTHERS, Hermione! The people deserve to know!”

“OKAY! Okay. FINE. I give in! I’ll rank all your brothers, based on their looks AND PERSONALITIES. You have such a morbid fascination with how shaggable I find your brothers!”

“You’re STALLING!”

Hermione huffed as she tucked into a ball and then shoved Ginny in the butt with her lint-covered sock. This was a normal girls’ night for them. Lots of wine, shouting, and playful-but-catty roughhousing.

Read Ranking the Weasleys on AO3

- - - -

I'm so happy to be sharing this on the deadline I set for myself, which is today, Hermione's birthday, 9/19/24. As a very new fanfiction writer, who is committed to enjoying this hobby as long as the muse is with me on it, I had marked a handful of bdays of some of my favorite characters as occasions to post fics this year. It's been a nice way to stick with projects and put some artificial pressure on myself. Originally I was working to release a piece based around Hermione getting a belated Moon Party thrown for her by the Gryff girls. Moon parties are typically thrown for young people when they start menstruation if their friends and/or families are into that sort of thing. I'm still working on that fic but I did quickly push pause on it last weekend when, at 2 AM, after letting myself indulge in almost a full day of writing a different fic, I had the seed of the idea for Ranking the Weasleys and cranked out a very formidable first draft in 2 hours. (Yes, this means I went to sleep juuuuust before the sun was preparing to rise. Worth it.) When the words flow, you go with it. It also happens that I'm participating in The Weasley Clock Discord's Bingo Collection (Event? Fest? Bingo-Thing?) and this covers my square for "Ginny Weasley" quite nicely!

- - - - About Fred, George, Bill, and Fetishizing War Wounds These are some initial thoughts I had on the subject and is in no way a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

I wasn't expecting to discover that Fred's battle injury and recovery included him using a wheelchair for the rest of his life in this story but it came out in the writing process. I thought deeply about how, in many Harry Potter fanfics, we see examples of fetishizing elements of people's injuries or hardships (I say this in a non-judgemental way. I truly was pondering it.) If you read Dramione, think about how Draco's Sectumsempra scars are sometimes described. "Scars are sexy" is often a thing in our fandom (and in real life for some!) and it paints a complex picture of attraction, reverence, and attractiveness in a shorthand, accessible way to many readers, from writers. Especially when writers are writing from inside the private minds of characters, the characters are allowed to have thoughts that may not be appropriate or sensitive to others' identities, sense of self, language preferences, etc. It's why many of us love reading fiction; we get an intimate look into the messy, imperfect, and sometimes illicit thought processes of characters. It can be enthralling. But, for this particular, shorter one-shot, I wanted to try to be consistent about how I approached how Hermione was objectifying and trash-talking the characters for many things they either had control over or were core parts of their developed personalities. But what about George's gold ear? I thought about this too. Yes, Hermione thinks the ear is "very fun and cheeky," but she's not into how he's missing an ear or saying that she is attracted the prosthetic because it's a prosthetic or symbolizes a trauma he went through-- my intention was for her to make a comment on the choice of it being solid gold. The opulence of the ear prosthetic was a "fun and cheeky" choice of George's. I hope that came across. I deleted a whole section about how Hermione found Bill to be sexier after his attack from Greyback, not because of the injury but because it changed his mindset about how he wants to protect others.

"...even after he was attacked, he grew even more assured in himself which just made him hotter. And it wasn’t the mild-lycanthropy that made him more confident..."

I couldn't make it work without it being clunky and preachy, so I cut it. I wanted to make sure Bill's scars and the effects of a werewolf affliction weren't portrayed as a turn-on in the very same piece where I was trying to navigate a sensitivity and neutrality to Fred's use of a chair. Sometimes it IS best to "murder your darlings," amiright? I'll admit, I fell in love with Fred in this fic and how he's hot and cold with Hermione, even though he's pretty successful in the dating field with other wixen. Maybe this fic will inspire something longer [shrugs]. I grew fond of some of the implied backstories that grew out of this absolute brain-barf I was seemingly compelled to type out through tired, tired eyes. - - - -

A while ago, I drafted a post ranking all my favorite Hermione/Weasley sibling ships, and it was nice to have such a hefty post pre-written that fit in with all this. It was likely the base of the fic I would write-- cooking along on the back burner of my brain until it was ready to served out. I appreciate that my inner-monologue-made-outer-tumblr-posts may be another way of puzzling out plots I may eventually create! Check It Out:

Nobody Asked For This: My Rankings of the Hermione x Weasley Ships with REASONS (tumblr post)

Some Recommendations for Fics That Influenced My Weasley-Ship Rankings (tumblr post)

Ranking the Weasleys, a Harry Potter fanfic by stashandtell on AO3

[so-scarlett-maroon]

Doubts and Presumptions Ch. 4

Hermione spent the next few days mostly on her own. She saw Harry from time to time, but he kept strange hours as an Auror and was also spending quite a bit of time at Pansy’s. So she had plenty of time alone to work on a brew and to think.

She was a notorious over-thinker, she didn’t begrudge herself the habit. It often ended up saving her or Harry or Ron.

Ron was actually one of the many subjects playing on her mind. She wondered for about the millionth time if Romilda’s dose of Weasley’s Wheezes Love Potion from sixth year had somehow been reactivated. She knew she was better off without him. If he could leave her so easily, they hadn’t been meant to be, but it was painful nonetheless.

As she stirred the cauldron, she thought about the other two men who’d taken up residence in her mind recently. She’d long ago reconciled the fact that the sweet, kind, shy boy she’d grown up with had grown into one of the hottest men she’d ever seen. That was mostly old news. But what was new was her desire to explore that attraction. It was an odd feeling. She already loved him, as a friend, and it made her attraction that much more potent even though nothing at all had actually happened between them.

She added the snake fang powder and increased the heat of the fire.

She didn’t know if Neville could ever see her as anything other than a friend, but the other night at the club had felt like maybe he could?

Then there was Draco. He was such an enigma. He was being kind to her. That in and of itself was strange enough. But then he’d sought her out to brew him a potion that he obviously considered a sensitive subject, and asked her to dance at the club.

Hermione added the nettles.

Dancing with both of them had been… hot. Like, knicker-ruining hot. Having their attention focused keenly on her, the way they’d touched and moved with her, and then Draco had touched Neville, too! She couldn’t quite parse her reaction but she knew wanted to experience it again.

She heard the sound of the Floo and knew it must be Harry coming home. She quickly cast a stasis charm on the cure for boils (for a man allergic to horned slugs) and padded down the stairs to greet him.

He was rummaging around the kitchen looking for something to eat. “Sit, I’ll make you a cheese toastie.”

“Oh, Hi Mi.’” He was startled by her sudden appearance. He was half asleep as he stood in front of her.

“You need to get some rest,” she lectured.

He shrugged, “I mean you're not wrong, but what I’ve been doing instead has been so much more fun.”

Continued on AO3

[stashandtell]

Spawn A Spawn Or Go To Az-kah-bahn

My second fic is posted to AO3! I gave myself some breathing room to re-read and tweak it into proper shape instead of sticking to my ideal posting schedule-- because if you're going to share something challenging that nobody asked for, it's in everyone's interest to share the best version possible Originally, the working title of this was Dead Dove Do Not Eat, as I wrote about in the post called "On Tragedies Over HEAs, Emotional Wrecking Balls, and the Next Fic I'm Hitting 'Publish' On. I also have a post about my fave No HEA #EmotionalWreckingBall Fic Recs. 12 pages feels like a lot when you're proofreading until you do a word count and find you're in the 6k range. I ONLY started ATYD a few days ago and am more than halfway through Detrequee (I have the Arthimancer on deck in my e-reader) -- so I'm blown away about what monumentous undertakings super-longfic writers achieve. I'm curious to see the reception to this fic. It's been great getting kudos and hits on my first fic and we'll see how this one goes. Won't stop me though. I am looking forward to giving myself space on the next thing I want to bring forward. Maybe for Hermione's birthday on the 19th?