#wandless fanfic

[zarinari]

Real Enough just passed Wandless in stats this weekend. Apparently you guys really like texting Snape. 👀 (Can’t blame you. 🥰)

[zarinari]

I noticed you have a couple Wandless edits featuring some girl as Heather and AR as Snape and I've been wondering... Writing Wandless, do you picture Sev as AR, movie costume, voice and all?

You know, not exactly. Parts of him, for sure. The voice more than anything, though not necessarily the cadence. The clothes sometimes, but I doubt Snape wore the exact same thing every day. Same color, maybe similar style, but not the same outfit on repeat.

When I picture Snape in my head, it’s not Alan Rickman as he was in the movies. Maybe a younger version of him, but not exactly that either. He’s thinner—doesn’t eat as much as he should, doesn’t drink enough water, doesn’t exercise. (Living on the edge of malnutrition and dehydration is why I think his skin is described as sallow in the books.) He’s in his early 30s when Wandless starts, tall enough to be imposing but never described as notably tall in the books (Sirius is “rather taller,” so Snape’s probably somewhere in the average-to-slightly-above range). Definitely black, loose-fitting robes of various kinds that cover everything but his neck and hands. Shoulder-length greasy hair. Yellow, crooked teeth. All the negatives Harry describes in the books.

But I don’t think these things make him unattractive. I think he’s caught somewhere between depression and never having been taught how to care for himself properly. I’ve had this line in my notes forever that I think about a lot: as he is naturally, in canon, he’s “conventionally unattractive”—but if he started caring for himself, he could easily become “unconventionally attractive.” Because all of his visual flaws (minus the hooked nose, but I don’t actually see that as a flaw rather than it being just a striking feature) are maintenance flaws. Things that could be fixed with some care. I didn’t want to shy away from that in my own descriptions of him. He’d never be a model, but he has the potential to be a decent-looking guy.

So comparing to Alan Rickman: he doesn’t have a lot of these flaws, he’s older, he speaks with a slower, more patient cadence than I think the character actually has. But he is the main visual representation outside of fanart, at least for now. So while I don’t picture him as the character, I don’t blame anyone making fan edits for my story for using his version.

[zarinari]

Of course his first concern is the herbs.

From Wandless - Chapter 31

[zarinari]

Currently revising the last Wandless chapter I posted. I had my husband read over the posted version for me, and he snickered when he read this line, thinking it sounded like an innuendo, and now I'm having a hard time reading it as anything else. 😐

[zarinari]

I got hyperfixated on catching up on my Wandless second drafts up to Chapter 19, which I just finished last night (my silly self really thought I was going to rewrite five chapters over the weekend because I clearly had no idea how much work they needed).

Micro tweaks throughout, but the bigger structural changes: I completely removed the Remus scene from Chapter 17 (he felt a bit shoehorned into an already long chapter). There was one joke of his I liked though, so that's getting slipped into Chapter 20 when I get to those edits. I also added a new conversation between the Hospital Wing and Greenhouses scenes in Chapter 18, mostly because Heather was being too passive and doing too much circling in her own head without actually doing anything about it. Cut a lot of that too.

I'll probably do the same pass on RE, although I'm only about three chapters behind there. But since I didn't get a new Wandless chapter out last week and RE got left on a bit of a cliffhanger, new chapters come first. Second drafts can wait until after.

One more thing: I've noticed my chapter lengths creeping up. Recent ones are landing around 3000+ words where earlier chapters were closer to 2000. Wandless Chapter 9, for example, is only about 1700 words while Chapter 19 is around 4000. So I'm considering whether some of the shorter ones can be absorbed into surrounding chapters, or whether they can pull in content from neighboring chapters, so things feel more consistent. I could also just add detail to extend them, but I don't want to pad with unnecessary fluff when this would be the easier fix. This is very much out of my usual scope for a WIP, so I may talk myself out of it since the main goal is getting it finished and then making it pretty, but if it's a simple fix I might go ahead and do it now.

[zarinari]

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Update on the drafts: I'm currently working on Chapter 5 for Real Enough, which when I finish will be two chapters short of the goal of 7. I haven't posted the drafts yet; I was doing it initially but kept going back and changing things, so I decided to stop posting until I was finished and could fix the formatting for the chapters at the end.

Was not expecting it to take this long (I still feel it's unreasonable to be taking this long lol) but something about editing these chapters has my brain going in circles in a way it didn't when I edited the Wandless chapters. I've just been getting dizzy staring at it for prolonged amounts of time. I finally found my groove on Monday, but Tuesday I had a public speaking thing and went right back into not being able to concentrate. The plan is to power through it to 7 by tomorrow, then instead of jumping into editing the two Wandless chapters, I'm going to write the next Wandless and RE chapters first and go back into editing afterwards. I'm getting a bit antsy going a full week without writing anything 😬

As for the poll results: I've decided to keep the RE fic recaps to keep the story simpler. Editing has shown me that the appeal of this story is keeping it simple on the surface and complicated in deeper levels. However, I am playing with the idea of posting the internal fic as a separate fic, so those who are curious can read it but those who aren't can enjoy the current story without the added layer. If I ever decide on this for sure, I'll give an update.

[zarinari]

Okay, I put it off last week, but I'm definitely starting on the RE second drafts this week. Plan in this order:

Get RE second drafts up to Chapter 7 (currently at 2)

Get Wandless second drafts up to Chapter 21 (currently at 19)

Outline & write Wandless 31

Outline & write RE 17

I've been putting RE off in particular because it's a lot of CSS and HTML to make it pretty (ask me why I dropped out of CS). But between Chapter 1 and 2, it's probably mostly in my head since the formatting is already done. From this point on I'm pretty sure everything is just app messages and AO3 comments. I'll figure it out when I look at it lol.

My main goal going into second drafts is cutting monologue. Reader is an overthinker intentionally, but also tends to narrate exactly what we just read in the messages, and a lot of that can go. There's also some office/work fluff that isn't doing enough for story progression, and a math issue with the time difference that needs fixing (easy fix though).

If I make any major changes beyond this, I'll post here on Tumblr like I usually do, if I cut or add a scene, etc.

Also, an update on the Wandless restructuring: I've looked over the first five chapters and I think they can be reduced to three without issue. I will continue to look over the remaining chapters similarly. I'm not going to post this in increments though, I'll keep it in my Docs until I reach where I am in the story and restructure all at once, so there's no constant confusion about what the latest chapter number is supposed to be. The goal is to average chapters around 4k words, topping out at 5.5k and bottoming out at 2.5k, with most landing in the 3–5k range. I'll be doing a similar review of RE, but I haven't decided on any restructuring there yet.

Wish me luck!

[zarinari]

I would like to skip to the end, please.

I woke to the slow awareness that she was already watching me. This was, in itself, irregular. I tended to wake before her—habit and constitution conspiring against any morning during which I might otherwise have slept past dawn. It was not, by my reckoning, past dawn, but the grey light at the edges of the curtains suggested it was not far off either. I had slept longer than I usually did, and I had slept more deeply. She was on her side, propped on one elbow, her gaze fixed on me. Her hair was still loose from sleep, and she had the patient, unhurried expression of a woman who had been content to wait for me to find my way back to the surface. She reached over and cupped my jaw, turning my face towards hers with the certainty she applied to most decisions concerning my person. "Good morning to the most handsome man in the world." She kissed me. It was the slow, lingering kiss of a woman who had nowhere she needed to be, and I, having nowhere I needed to be either, let her take her time about it. I would have let her do a great many things in that moment; I was not, by any reasonable measure, awake. I was somewhat more awake when she pulled back. I studied her for a moment. She was watching me with the expression she wore when she had decided something and was waiting to see whether I would catch up. "I cannot imagine why you bother lying to me. I am not that gullible." "It is not a lie." She slid out from under the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her mouth had curved—the small, private smile she wore when she had set a trap and was waiting to see whether I would walk into it. "You are the only man I look at, Severus. The competition is rather light." "Charming. So I win only when I am the only contestant." She had begun walking towards the bathroom by now. At that, she stopped, turned, and continued backwards—her eyes on me, her expression the particular kind of triumphant that meant she had been hoping for exactly this. "What—are you complaining you have no competition?" I declined to answer. Instead, I reached for her pillow and threw it at her. It caught her square in the chest. She caught it on the rebound, her hands closing around it on instinct, and the look on her face—the genuine, startled outrage of a woman who had not expected the projectile—was, I confess, not without its rewards. A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. "I cannot believe you just did that." She tossed the pillow back onto the bed beside me and pointed at me—a gesture of considerable conviction. "I am going to get you back for that, Severus Snape." I made a small noise that I judged adequately dismissive, lay back, and closed my eyes. The bathroom door clicked shut. I heard her laughing through it—properly now, the unrestrained version she had been saving for the moment she was alone. Only then did I allow myself to smile.