thank you for the tag @quail-in-red (that beautiful moment when one of your fave artists tags you on tumblr 🥹).
Reading: Just finished Flesh by David Szalay which broke my streak of hating Booker winners with its subtlety, skill, and pared back genius. It snuck up on me a bit; I didn't realise I was feral until I was already too far gone, if that makes sense? I loved the writing style so much, it felt extremely considered and very very confident (my favourite thing). Now reading Eden's Shore by Oisín Fagan which unfortunately is suffering by comparison. I have Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor lined up as my Christmas holiday reading and I. Cannot. Wait. I actually preordered it so early that I got the American edition (which is a v satisfying larger format tho the paper seems a bit flimsier than we use here?) but then when it arrived i was so excited that i couldn't bring myself to read it yet. Just me?!
Last Song: It was a Christmas song on the radio in the shopping centre. I don't know the name, nor do i know enough lyrics to google it, but I could hum you the whole tune.
Last Film: I rarely get to watch anything — my days are very full with caregiving responsibilities and work so any writing i do has to happen in the evenings. Usually I write until I fall asleep on the sofa lol. Just looked through my Netflix history and the last film I tried was Oppenheimer but I did fall asleep despite it having Cillian Murphy in.
Last Series: Rewatching Brassic, which is still absolutely fucking gold, Joseph Gilgun my beloved. I watched the new series of Stranger Things with my teenager. And I'm still working my way through Grey's Anatomy, which is probably the series I have watched most consistently throughout my life. I'm on season 19 currently.
Sweet or Salty: Sweet I think, I love chocolate. I have a lot of sensory issues around food and sweet things feel "safer" i think?
Coffee or Tea: Coffee ONLY. i am a terrible irish person as I hardly ever drink tea. I have a Bialetti moka pot and some coffee beans that I got in Rome and drink about three cups of coffee a day.
Working on: A new novel, getting 40k of which written will be my January project. A longish fic, currently 20k but will end up being about 40k I'd say. And a long timetravel fic that I have about 10k of, but will need to be about 70k so who knows when that will happen. Both Drarry.
Tagging @cailynwrites @citrusses @froidefille @maesterchill @megreads99 @orolin-writes @skeptiquex @sitp-recs @sweet-s0rr0w (following the rules by only tagging nine but really this should be a blanket tag for everyone who wants to do it)
oh hello there pal! This is not really very well underway, I only have one scene. Premise is an AU. Daniel owns a fancy farm shop, Max is a finance guy. They meet when Max keeps coming in to Daniel's shop to buy overpriced bunches of wildflowers, and sandwiches made with artisan ingredients on sourdough. Max joins Daniel's amateur footie squad and they all end up going karting on a stag do while dressed as mariokart characters.
“It is a very lovely dress, perhaps, but not very comfortable,” Max says, sounding completely serious, but he’s watching for Daniel’s smile so closely that Daniel knows he must be joking. He turns his back to Daniel, reaching up with one of his big hands, the unbruised one, so he can pull at the puffy neckline of the dress. When he eases it down off one shoulder, Daniel can see the imprint of the elastic in his skin, a pattern scored all the way down lower and lower, running in an orderly line until it disappears under the pink silky fabric. Max’s back muscles flex with the movement. He’s too big for the dress, really; it should be ridiculous. It is ridiculous. His skin is blotchy with heat, the pink bits nearly the same colour as the dress, and every part of him that Daniel can see is gleaming with sweat and specks of glitter.
“Unzip me?” Max says, and Daniel’s hands are moving before he can even think about it.
Do harry and draco ever get the chance to meet little Scorpius ??🥹
Yes! I'll stick it below the cut as it has spoilers for First Watch.
This is set about a year after the fic ends. Harry and Draco use the needle to visit Potter and Malfoy, but not too often - they don't want to risk overburdening the magical systems of their two universes. So this is only their second visit. They've agreed to do some tests at Malfoy and Potter's Ministry to see if they can learn more about the way the two universes interact, and by the time they finish, they're too exhausted to travel home and decide to stay at the Manor. They haven't met Scorpius yet. (Full disclosure this is unfinished, there's a sex scene where Harry and Draco talk about their plans for the future, but I'm not going to get that written any time soon, so here's the bit where Draco meets Scorpius).
In Draco's version of the Manor, there's a beautiful Axminster down in this vestibule, but since this is Malfoy's version of the Manor, and Malfoy is a masochist, the bare flagstones are icy under Draco's feet as he makes his way towards the corridor. He's following the noise.
It's a not-unfamiliar sound—the snuffling of a small animal, perhaps, or a curtain shifting in the breeze of an open window. Certainly not anything malevolent; even though Draco has crossed about eighteen timelines to be here, the magic in this Manor still recognises him by the ties of blood and ownership and simple fondness, and the sense of the undisturbed wards gives him easy reassurance. There's no threat here.
It's just as well Draco knows these halls as well as he knows his own magic. The lamps are all off, the whole wing in darkness, though the sky through the window at the end of the corridor is picked out in starlight, clean-edged with the gleam of a thin cold moon. Draco's toes curl, a draught sweeping up his pyjama legs (Malfoy's pyjamas, technically), and bloody hell he loves this place in any universe—its high ceilings, its uneven walls, its fucking frigid corridors and welcoming magic and rolling landscaped lawns and the vast vast sky above it. Home.
The sound picks up in urgency now, a long breathy rasp, stifled. This is, in fact, Malfoy and Potter's wing, Draco registers belatedly. He'd been exhausted when they'd shown him to bed, only vaguely remembers Malfoy gesturing, knowing Draco would know exactly where he meant. Draco hopes he's not going to end up barging into their bedroom, but this noise is far too restrained to be them, even if they've not put up any Silencing Charms. He moves forward, carefully, trying to work out where the sounds are coming from. In his own Manor, he'd light this whole corridor with one wave of his wand hand; here, he can't risk it, so he just treads the stones in darkness.
Three steps forward, four, and then he moves closer to the lefthand wall. Up ahead there's the merest hint of a door, a thin line of light at ground level. Closer than that again there's a shift in the shadows, a change in the pattern of different darknesses, and the sound comes again, more forcefully, from the general direction of Draco's knees.
"Hello?" He only whispers it, but it's loud enough here, in the silence of the Wiltshire night.
An answering murmur, and a noise most definitely animal, a wounded whimper that has Draco bending down blindly patting, grasping. There's an answering clutch, and he finds himself holding onto a small wriggling creature—hot little hands, a hot damp head, hair sticking to hot fat cheeks. A child, crying.
He stoops, clings, lifts—with some effort, it must be said, his centre of gravity thrown off by the unexpected muscular density of the small body in his arms—then stands.
"Scorpius?" His arms tighten. It must be Scorpius of course, that he's holding—or rather, who's clinging to him, wet face in his neck, legs clamped around his waist, so all Draco has to do is balance him on one hip, anchoring arms around him.
"Daddy," Scorpius says, and as though the word is Alohomora it unleashes something in the child, the force of his shuddery breaths rippling through him and into Draco with an intensity that makes Draco hug him closer. The collar of Draco's pyjamas is damp where the child is crying into it, everything moist with breath and tears and probably snot, which is… well, Draco isn't going to think about it.
"Shhhh," Draco murmurs, into Scorpius' hair. "It's alright, I'm here. Let's just…" He bounces gently foot to foot, grip slipping slightly as Scorpius wails louder. Draco doesn't know what do with children, really; this is the first time he's ever held one unsupervised. He begins to walk down the corridor. Someone will be awake, surely, to take over.
The door, barely visible in the shadows, swings open invitingly as they draw near, a cracked-open glow of lamplight. Draco shoulders it open further, slides in sideways so as not to bump Scorpius off the door frame. The room inside is warm and well-lit. In Draco's world, it's a reading room, but in this version he sees a little bed, dwarfed by the high ceiling, the damask wallpaper, the sweep of velvet curtains. A dragon mobile hangs above the bed, suspended by invisible threads or perhaps just old magic; Draco had always wanted one himself, as a child, fascinated by the jointed wood bodies, the bright colours, the sparkling false flames.
Scorpius' room, obviously, and as good a place as any to set him down and go in search of his parents. There's a portrait on the wall next to the door, rather a good one too, done in oils with a deft hand. Potter and Malfoy, posing, baby Scorpius a swaddled bundle in Potter's arms. Potter winks at Draco; Malfoy yawns, stifling it behind his hand.
Draco has to kneel to reach the low bed, almost staggering under the weight of the child, shifting him round to his front so he can hold him more carefully, cupping the back of the small head in one hand. Scorpius goes down easily, with a little hiccoughing sigh.
"There," Draco says, satisfied, and draws the blanket up so that Scorpius is covered. The pillowcase is decorated with tiny Snitches, repeating rows of spectacles, a lightning bolt motif. It's the same sort of tat they've started selling in the tourist kiosks down Diagon since the war ended, where you can pick up replica Potter glasses and garments with a truly terrible picture of Harry on that say "I saved the world and all I got was this lousy t-shirt". Which is a bit rich really—Harry wasn't even <i>there</i> when Voldemort died, though Draco's not inclined to set the record straight for fear of sparking a similar line of merchandise with his own face on it in horrifying close-up.
There's something sweet about the dreadful bedclothes, though, with Scorpius snuggled into them, blinking and hot-cheeked.
"Are you okay?" Draco goes to touch him, hand hovering indecisively before he decides it's probably alright and brushes Scorpius' hair off his forehead, tests how warm he is. He's not even sure what he's looking for—it's not like he knows what's a normal temperature for a child—but he remembers his mother doing it when he was little, the comfort of her cool palm.
"Daddy," Scorpius says, then reaches up and pats Draco's cheek contemplatively. His eyes narrow. They're a hazy almost-blue, the exact colour Draco's were when he was the same age, but Scorpius has Potter's judgemental expression, his generous mouth, his stubborn chin.
"Daddy, your face is different." His moist little fingertips graze Draco's skin, perilously close to his mouth. And then: "You're not my daddy."
"No," Draco agrees. "I think your daddy is asleep. It's the middle of the night, you know. Do you want me to go and find him for you?"
"My head feels poorly," Scorpius says piteously. "Want Daddy." As though he's reminded himself about being sad, he begins to cry again, tears sliding effortlessly out of his eyes and down his cheeks. He sneezes, violently, and continues to cry, his nose running now. "Nose," he says to Draco, his voice thick with liquid. "Blow my nose."
He's so pathetic that Draco almost forgets and reaches for his wand. It would be so simple to just perform the old charm, but of course here he has to be more careful.
"I can't use my wand," he tells Scorpius. The child's face crumples, and he sneezes again, very possibly maliciously this time. "Hang on, look."
Draco's got a t-shirt on under his pyjamas, all the better to combat the cold of the Manor. He struggles out of the pyjama top, snagging his hair on the buttons, and then he folds the sleeve up a few times.
"Here." He holds the folded fabric to Scorpius' nose. "Blow."
Scorpius does, so enthusiastically that Draco has to move to a different section of sleeve before he's done. He uses the other sleeve to wipe Scorpius' face down after, patting at his drying tears.
"Better?"
Scorpius blinks, nods, then yawns hugely. His eyes are drooping.
"My daddy didn't have a wand before," he says, voice still muffled by the tail end of his yawn. "But Father got it back for him." He hitches in a breath as though in preparation for a wail. "I want Father."
The word is almost slurred, the th sliding into a soft v sound in his sad small-boy voice.
Draco pats at him frantically, rubbing his hair. "Don't cry," he murmurs. "You just close your eyes and I'll go find your dads, okay?"
"It's alright, Draco." Draco jumps at Potter's voice, but Scorpius just turns over in his bed with a pleased noise and snuggles deeper under the covers. There's a door in the wall that Draco's pretty sure isn't in his own Manor, carved cunningly into the panelling. Through it, Draco can see a slice of the next room, just soft lamplight and the end of a big bed. Potter stands in the doorway, Malfoy behind him.
"Just a minute, Scorp." Malfoy sounds exhausted, and then he puts a hand to his mouth and turns quickly, retreating back into the room. Then comes a distant, dismal retching sound, and then Potter steps into the room and lets the door close behind him, shutting out the noise. He's wearing flannel pyjama trousers with nothing else, feet bare. Draco looks away from his soft stomach, the line of hair above his waistline.
"Sorry," Potter says quietly. "He'll be alright. Just, you know, something he ate."
He kneels down at the side of the bed, kisses Scorpius, smooths his hair back off his face. His expression is nakedly tender, the low light reflecting softness. He's not wearing his glasses.
"I found him in the corridor," Draco says, stupidly. "I was just coming to look for you."
"Poor baby," Potter says. "Couldn't you sleep?" Scorpius doesn't answer, dozing, eyes closed already under his father's careful touch.
"I wasn't asleep anyway," Draco says, though Potter hadn't asked, was still watching Scorpius with that awful raw look on his face.
"His room is meant to be warded," Potter tells Draco, voice low. "But I think he can sometimes do wandless magic in his sleep. He had a bit of a sleep regression when we got back from your world. We usually wake up when he does, but I suppose I was tired from earlier, and Malfoy's been sleeping so badly…"
Malfoy had looked wretched over dinner, face too angular, complexion waxy. He'd barely eaten, barely spoken. He'd been a bit off with Draco since their last visit, when Draco had refused to bring his mum to visit, to take part in the tests Malfoy's Ministry team was conducting on them all. Malfoy wouldn't do anything as gauche as say something out loud, but Draco knew him, and worse, knew what he himself would have wanted if his mum was the one who had died. Malfoy had the sort of hunger Draco himself understood, but that didn't mean he'd let his own mum be the one to satisfy it.
"Scorpius thought I was Malfoy at first," Draco says. "I suppose that makes sense."
"He's a little monkey. And I was really looking forward to introducing you and Harry to him in the morning, too," Potter says. He looks weary too, now that Draco sees him up close, but then, it had been a long and tiring day. "He's not at his best at 3am, funnily enough."
"He's lovely," Draco says, and finds that he means it. Between them on the bed, Scorpius shifts, lets out a fluttery little snore. "He reminds me of—" Myself, he almost says, but of course he doesn't mean that. Draco's room had been off in the nursery wing, with Nanny in the connecting chamber, and he would never have been allowed lightning bolt bedclothes or dragons on the ceiling. Draco would have got in trouble for being out of bed at night, if his father had even noticed. "—Malfoy," he finishes, somewhat inadequately. "And you, weirdly. Despite the colouring."
"He's quite a mix of us both," Potter says, smiling down at Scorpius.
"Good luck to the Hogwarts staff in about eight years' time," Draco says, and it startles a laugh out of Potter so he almost looks like his usual self again. His smile is just like Harry's.
"Sorry he woke you." Potter stands, knees creaking, and stretches. From this angle, Draco can see faint silver stretchmarks on his lower belly, catching the light. He stands himself, a bit too quickly.
"It's fine." He hesitates, but the tired lines at Potter's eyes convince him to continue. "Look, if I can help with anything… If you need a break, or someone to babysit…"
Potter's eyebrows are creased in confusion, but he's smiling.
"Draco, thanks, but I'm alright. Malfoy's been a bit under the weather recently, so I've been the one on night duty and getting up in the mornings at the crack of dawn with the incredible non-sleeping child. I'm just a bit tired."
"I don't mind, though. I mean, obviously, I'd offload most of the work on Harry, he's the one who's good with children—"
Potter laughs again.
"You seemed to be doing an alright job tonight." He rubs at the back of his neck. Draco had almost been managing to ignore the full expanse of skin on show, but now he's faced with underarm he thinks it's time to go back to his own room. "Okay, well, if you're sure. Maybe you and Harry can take Scorpius for a walk after breakfast, then, and I'll have a quick nap?"
"Perfect," Draco says. "Righto, I'll let you get back to bed."
He makes for the door, stepping back out into the hallway where the stone floor is once more icy against his feet, no warming charms like the ones that keep Scorpius' room toasty. As he pulls the door shut behind him, he sees Potter Accio a stack of blankets and pillows from a cupboard, shaking out a duvet and laying it on the floor beside Scorpius' bed.
Tacky I’m obsessed about your newest writing !!! Hudcon ?? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got the email. How lucky are we to have you among us <3 it was insane, so good, so hot. I missed your writing !
Anon hi 🥹🥹🥹 this is so nice.
I've been writing SO MUCH, since the end of January i have written nearly 60k of a hollanov fic and it is, kind of anyway, nearly finished. Probably going to finish a first draft (maybe this month?) and then start posting it in chapters as I edit. but yeah i haven't been posting much and everything i have been posting is hollanov (obsessed).
first trip into rpf with the hudcon fic and the idea descended upon me like a sudden fever, i wrote it within a few hours yesterday which is very quick for me so was pleased with myself. and then i realised i'm bad with change and new things and got very fucking nervous about posting it. but turns out rpf readers are so nice so it's all good!
anyway i know hudson williams said no more rpfing but quite frankly i am but a man and am helpless when faced with the met gala afterparty look so that's why i wrote the fic
The challenge of it! In my old fandom i knew it inside out — I had been a reader for years before I ever got brave enough to write. And once I did start I always felt like I *could* do it (whether it was good or not was another question but at least i felt like i had a handle on it). Here in HR it's just been the most exhilarating learning curve — I have zero confidence in my writing ability, zero confidence in my knowledge of canon, zero confidence in my knowledge of canada, north america, or hockey. I am just writing because i really want to and it's actually fucking scary because it might be all for shit but that's fine. I'm having so so so much fun with the actual writing, probably more fun than i have done for years. I'm also spilling over with ideas — I feel creatively fired up in a really beautiful and exciting way.
One thing I have noticed is that I have incorporated magical settings into a couple of my HR fics, and I do wonder if part of that is about easing myself into a new fandom while still relying on tropes from my old one? (magical pussy acquisition and time travel, in case you're wondering lol)
But I just hit 30k on a longish fic which is not magical, and am launching straight into another long fic after that's done (which, while it will have some magical elements is also v rooted in the canon universe) so I think I'm finding my feet now. I also wrote a couple of shorts set in the canon universe already too. plus i quite like playing around with tropes and themes anyway, nothing wrong with a bit of whimsy imo. if i want to write hot older shane coming back in time to suck off younger ilya then i can handwave the rationale for that, it's the sucking off that's the crucial thing here (and the emotional fulfillment for ilya, let's not forget that).
Lord I want to know ALL OF THEM but: "Sword in the Stone" PLEASE!!!!
Ah thank you for asking about this one! I really like it. It was meant to be my Wireless fic this year but I didn't get it done because it's going to be a long fic. The premise is that someone Harry is going through time changing the present, and Draco is tasked to go and get him. He follows him through various past times and then they end up in Medieval Hogwarts where the new monarch is about to be chosen, by inviting everyone to pull the sword from the stone. And of course the new king needs a trusted knight.
It's got an ensemble cast, with Ginny, Hermione, Greg, Andromeda, Teddy, Lucius, and Narcissa all featuring quite heavily. Hermione is Head of Mysteries.
"We've kept it out of the papers so far," Granger said. If Draco had known her better, he might have been able to tell if that was relief or resignation in her tone. "No one knows. It's not just about… the person. It's a matter of national security. Everything to do with this case is on a need-to-know basis."
"Oh, just fill Malfoy in already." Weasley waved her hand dismissively. "The sooner he gets going, the sooner you can obliviate him all over again."
"Excuse me?" It was already so cold in the room, Draco hadn't thought any more could penetrate, but he felt a shivering realisation at her words nonetheless.
"Shut up, Ginny," Granger said viciously, then placed her face in her hand, elbows on the table, a dusting of loose feathers scattered on the table in front of her. When she looked up again, her face was totally composed again. "Sorry. I'm… tired."
"It's alright," Weasley said grudgingly. "Sorry for being a dick."
"It most certainly is not alright," Draco told them both. "What do you mean, obliviate me?"
tacky! if you’re not fed up with talking about it: what was your macro process for first watch of the night, soup to nuts? wondering about how you broke down outlining, drafting, editing. was it different in scope from your ordinary process, or just scaled up?
soup to nuts, baby (i had to google that, it is one of those delightful phrases that we don't use here and i'm hopelessly charmed by it).
thanks for the ask, pal. i'm always interested in people's processes myself, particularly since I came to writing so late (late 30s) and have never approached it formally. i do read an awful lot and that i think is my main influence and teacher (less so in recent years but am trying to get back to incessant reading). i have also been trying to read more works in translation and to revisit classics too, as well as try more formally inventive works. this i struggle with as i'm a bit basic when it comes to reading, i like the segue 'twixt page and brain to be seamless so it's like i'm absorbing it rather than thinking about it, while ofc a more experimental style does often necessitate thinking about it. My partner (approvingly) described my original work as a 'stylistic blank' (the cleaner the better i say) and that's exactly what i like best to read - though it's always a pleasure to be dragged by the throat out of my comfort zone too.
I would always have described myself as a pantser - I never outline, never do writing exercises or character work or beat sheets or whatever (i'm quite resistant to a very structured formal approach). every fic i ever write starts with the germ of one very specific idea - a cameraflash-quick image of a scene, a piece of dialogue... whatever it is. and then i usually start to write at the start and then work my way through.
This one was fairly similar in approach, initially. I opened one doc for loose note-taking — it's where i jot down any ideas i had for scenes, any snippets of dialogue, anything I'd need to remember. I then started writing the fic itself - in this case, I actually skipped through and wrote out of order, not that I knew what order things were going to go in, as such - but I just wrote any scenes I had thought of that felt interesting to me, and skipped a lot of the world-buildingy scenes or the sort of "texture" scenes, the ones that construct a sense of the world they're in and the relationships they have. I then found myself in the position of having to go back and write those bridging scenes, and make the connections (which in some cases did not naturally fall into place) - it was not easy, and I wish i had taken a more linear approach to the writing, in retrospect.
So by the end, some scenes in this fic were written in 2021 and some in late 2024, which means that when I finally finished the rough first draft, the writing quality was patchy, the pacing was off, and some plotty stuff really didn't make sense. That's when the real hard work started.
A few people had looked over very early scenes, but the bulk of the fic was written with no input from anyone else - just three years of writing it into a vacuum without any sense of perspective. Showing it to my alpha/beta people was so nerve-wracking. they read it at different times, which was great as i could concentrate on their feedback one by one, and all three of them had different suggestions (as well as lots of overlap ofc). It was extremely helpful to see what made sense to them, and what they liked - but more significantly, what bits they went 'what the fuck' at, or which bits all three of them had issue with (i'm thinking of the ending here, i really had to kill some darlings there when all three were unanimously just like... tacky no). i had different docs for all three of them, and i worked off one master doc, deciding which changes i wanted to incorporate and how i wanted to approach them. plot stuff was a HUGE issue. the writing quality could be smoothed out - but i'm not a plotty writer and sadly this fic has A LOT of plot. so i needed to work on that. i also have some wolfstar (including a sex scene) which i was nervous about, as i have never read any wolfstar.
Once i finished all the edits, i then did one more read-through myself. I've never edited on such a significant level before. my other two longer fics were written for fests, usually in a scramble to get them done on time — this felt expansive in a way i couldn't have imagined allowing myself to be before i was in it, but as i was working it didn't feel necessary to try to force myself into speed i couldn't hope to achieve or maintain.
@sweet-s0rr0w and i had a really happy morning organising the chapter breaks, and then i had to decide on a title and write a summary. tagging was easier as i had my friends to advise.
another big difference to previous processes is the posting schedule. now i'm posting a chapter every two days, i spend the day between posts working on the upcoming chapter one more time. in all but one chapter i have made quite a few changes immediately prior to posting, which just goes to show that the work is shaping itself as it goes. It's been fascinating to me how putting the fic out into the world is giving me a sense of perspective, creative distance, and dare i say a tighter control over the narrative now that it's not just in my head anymore? so i do think any tiny remaining wrinkles are more satisfyingly flattened than i could have ever hoped for.
so in short, this work is different in scale, ambition, and process in almost every way to anything i've ever written. I can't imagine i'm likely to be able to pour myself into something so profoundly ever again, tbh. it took me by surprise, but it's been the most creatively satisfying thing i've ever done. having people finally reading it (and so generously too) is like getting a very special gift.
Regrets? Being the slowest writer in the world, being too perfectionist (not that i think it's perfect in any way, just i wanted it to be the best i could make it, when it probably would have been grand if it was ehhh fine, you know?) Also, i think i could probably have refined the pacing a bit more. We're on chapter 7 now and six months have passed, so basically the last three months of the fic take place over the last 14 chapters 🙈 But that's because this is where most of the romance and plot develops, so it makes sense that it would take up more space. And i do firmly believe that fics should be a bit self-inulgent, so why not stretch out in the parts i'm most interested in writing?
tagging @citrusses @maesterchill and @sweet-s0rr0w who i can never thank enough for the work they did to get me to this point. everyone already knows what brilliant writers all three are - what a lucky bastard i am to have had their insights and advice.
would love the director's commentary on "wield me" :D
hi el! Thank you so much for the ask.
haha imagine my panic when i realised i have absolutely no memory of writing this one. but I have gone back to the doc and refreshed my memory! I was actually ill when i wrote it, as well as being smack bang in the middle of the long fic that I wouldn't actually finish for another year, but at the time had high hopes to get through asap. But I always try to write something for my dear pal @sitp-recs on her birthday, and a drarry microfic prompt came up at just the right time to provide inspiration (the line "hold me like a knife" from a Hozier song, fyi).
I remember that I really wanted to write Teddy for Liv, but I also know that she feels very tender towards him and she wants him to be treated well. I wanted to see if I could hit a very specific age-gap dynamic where one person is older, and though quite cheerful and sunshiney is a bit hung up and guilty about one specific person, who in turn is younger but extremely competent and confident and yet has this thread of insecurity and desperation geared towards the first one specific person. This is, by the way, very much a Drarry fic... but it's not that simple, I guess? And I wanted the Teddy of it all to feel important too.
There are probably some things I'd change about this fic now, but I still really like the smithing element (I'm a sucker for that sort of magical theory); I also remember that I was (at the time) very happy with the Teddy kiss and with the Drarry sex scene (or at least the lead-up to it, from what I remember Harry stops to rub his bad leg and then adjusts his dick in his jeans, I like getting little details like that in).
Finally, I had actually hoped to write a follow-up long fic whereby Teddy comes back through the Veil with Sirius (who would be at least ten years younger than Harry or Draco at that stage). But I couldn't decide how the ships would sail so I haven't delved into it yet... but maybe someday I'll try to work out how it would all go.
All in all I have fond memories of writing this one. I was pleased with the Draco POV too, because I'm very much a Harry guy and it was fun to work out the Teddy/Harry aspect (such as it is) through his eyes.
