Thebe Moon

Writer of winding, self-indulgent fanfics. We're all here to have fun!

[thebemoon]

"A Clock With No Numbers" by Thebe Moon is updated! Hermione is ready to tell Draco about the clock. How will he respond? A CLOCK WITH NO NUMBERS

Chapter 37: Breakfast With Draco

Excerpt:

Hermione was up at five o’clock after a restless night, standing barefoot in her kitchen wearing wrinkled pajamas, trying to make coffee. She dropped the pot. She dropped her spoon. And spilled half the beans. And hit her hip against the sharpest corner of the table. It was mornings like this when Hermione wondered if purebloods weren’t on to something with the house elves.

Finally, success. Hermione managed to sit at the table without incident. But her first sip of coffee went wide, the cup hitting her cheek and spilling the hot liquid down her front. Stifling a scream of pain, she flailed a bit, then remembered she was a witch and cast a cooling spell. She carefully poured another cup and took a cautious sip. A small victory.

Then she stared into space and waited for the caffeine to kick in. The clock pendant felt heavy below her collarbones. So many secrets. So much unsaid. Would telling Draco help relieve the pressure or just add more?

Hermione didn’t know. But when in doubt, her father always said, do the right thing. And today, telling Draco about the clock was the right thing to do.

[thebemoon]

My political dramione, "A Clock With No Numbers," is updated! Enjoy a nice cocktail with a scheming Hermione, Draco and Justin.

A CLOCK WITH NO NUMBERS

Chapter 36: Drinks at Hermione's Flat

Excerpt:

“Good, you’re both here.” Justin fell onto the loveseat and dropped his papers on the coffee table.

“A drink, Justin?” Hermione asked. “And no, I’m not mixing you a Chelsea Sidecar.”

“She adds too much gin, anyway,” Justin told Draco. “And refuses to soak the orange peels in sugar.”

“Shocking,” Draco said. He walked over to her drink cart to set down the wine. “Do you have London Dry, Granger? I can make gimlets.”

Hermione said she did, and Justin allowed that a gimlet would be acceptable. And so Hermione found herself on the sofa beside Draco, sipping at the chilled drink while Draco and Justin discussed 1930s Savoy cocktails.

“I do enjoy a good Corpse Reviver No. 2,” Draco said.

“Don’t let Thana hear you say that,” Justin warned.

“Non-poisoned,” Hermione added.

[thebemoon]

My political Dramione, "A Clock With No Numbers," has been updated! We spend some time with yet another Weasley, and a new character is mentioned.

A CLOCK WITH NO NUMBERS

Chapter 35: Light and Shadow

(links in the comments)

Also, this illustration was drawn by me for this chapter. Please do not use elsewhere.

EXCERPT

“Shall we go back to my headquarters?” Hermione said.

“No,” said Draco.

“I … I have to buy cupcakes,” Justin said, not looking at her.

Hermione narrowed her eyes further. “Why?”

“It’s an anniversary, of … of Susan’s, erm, first cupcake,” Justin stammered. “First cupcake she ever baked for me. Chocolate. With vanilla buttercream. And sprinkles.”

Hermione gave this statement the response it deserved, which was none, and turned to Draco. The Slytherin hastily pulled a blinking Planful page out of his robes.

“My schedule,” he said. “Quite full this afternoon.”

“You two are pathetic,” she said. “You’ll face goblins for me, but not Molly Weasley?”

“Yes,” Draco said.

Yes, Justin thought.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I'm riding the high of posting two chapters in two days, so I thought I'd share a comment that someone left me at least a decade ago but that I still take to heart.

In fact, I'll share two (both paraphrased)

Your chapters are the perfect length for reading on my lunch break!

I love short chapters like yours for reading before bed because I know I can finish them without falling asleep in the middle.

The comments had more to them than that, of course, but that's two wonderful examples of celebrating shorter form writing (without needing to compare it to longer form writing at all)

[thebemoon]

There is no right length for chapters. Eight hundred words or eight thousand words. It's fanfic! Let your joy be unconfined!

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for writing Abandoned Hospitals

✮ The smell arrives before anything visual does. Always before. Decades-old antiseptic that never fully evaporated, black mold, particulate plaster, and something underneath all of that you will not name. Your character detects it from the parking lot. Do not skip this. Writers skip this constantly. Smell is 70% of fear. If your character walks in and immediately describes what they SEE, you have already lost the reader's stomach. Fix it.

✮ Long hospital corridors are acoustic funnels. A door swinging on a corroded hinge forty feet away sounds, physiologically and neurologically, like it is directly behind your character. It is not. But they don't know that yet. And more importantly: they can't immediately tell the difference.

✮ Original floor tiles: white hexagons, many cracked, grout gone grey-black with decades of something. Footsteps echo differently on intact vs. cracked tile. Your character will begin unconsciously stepping around the cracked ones without deciding to. Write it as unconscious. Don't give them the decision.The body knows things the mind hasn't processed.

✮ Nurses' stations have the room call-board still mounted. Metal slots, room numbers, some still containing names on yellowed paper in faded handwriting. Perfectly legible. Your character should read one name specifically. A real first and last name. This is what grounds supernatural dread in human scale. The horror of a ghost is always the horror of the specific person who became one.

✮ Do not have your character open a patient file and find something horrifying written in it. That is lazy and everyone does it. The horror in the file is that it is completely routine: a 54-year-old man admitted for a hip replacement in 1987, three pages of unremarkable medical notes in a nurse's tidy handwriting, then nothing. No discharge date. No transfer. Just nothing. The nothing is the story. Let the reader ask the question. Don't answer it.

✮ Operating theaters are always on upper floors. The surgical table is still there. They never take the table. In real abandoned hospitals, across multiple countries, documented cases: they always leave the table. Your character should wonder why no one took the table. Do not have a character explain why no one took the table. Some questions should stay questions.

✮ The morgue is in the basement. This is always true. The drawer handles are still there. Your character's hand will move toward one of them. Write this as involuntary. The hand goes first. The decision to stop, or not stop, comes second. We don't choose our curiosity; we choose whether to follow it.

✮ The drawers are not all empty. Not because of anything supernatural. Because animals nest in sheltered spaces in abandoned buildings, and a heavy insulated metal drawer that latches shut is extremely sheltered. Your character knows this. They do not think of this until after they've opened one.

[thebemoon]

This is GENIUS.

[thebemoon]

Still working on "Clock With No Numbers" — really!

It's been two months since I've updated "A Clock With No Numbers" (Bad Evil Author!) but I swear I'm working on it! To prove it, here's a little excerpt. I'm even working on a drawing to go with it of Unspeakable Thana and Audrey Weasley. (Now THAT's a strange meetup.)

A CLOCK WITH NO NUMBERS

SUMMARY:

In the middle of an intense campaign to be Minister for Magic, Hermione Granger receives a mysterious little gold clock on a chain. The timepiece bears no numbers, only a single clock hand, and when she wears it, she can hear the thoughts of those around her without using Legilimency. Where did such a gift come from? And what could an aspiring politician do with it if only her scruples didn't get in the way?

EXCERPT:

“Ten minutes, Audrey,” Hermione said, settling into a sofa and casting a Muffiliato. 

“Surely …”

“Nine minutes, fifty-seven seconds.” Once a Time Unspeakable, always a Time Unspeakable.

Affronted, Audrey sat on the opposite sofa, still clutching her purse. “This is how you treat family?”

“Uninvited family, yes,” Hermione said. She smiled at Thana, who gracefully took a seat beside her.

“Why is she here?” Audrey asked rudely.

“Unspeakable Thana is a liaison and advisor to my campaign,” Hermione said. “She’s, erm, shadowing me today.”

“Death casts a long shadow upon us all,” Thana said.

“Unacceptable!” Audrey snapped Percy-like. “This is a private matter!”

“Thana is very discreet,” Hermione assured her.

“Silent as the tomb,” Thana said.

“I will not …” Audrey sputtered. THIS is her campaign? A haunt of freaks and Death Eaters and has-been lawyers —

“Eight minutes,” Hermione said, trying to keep her temper.

Audrey glared. “Very well, if you will have it so, Hermione.” She stiffened in her seat. “Ronald is out of control.”

“Ronald is not my problem,” Hermione said. “I believe I made that quite clear at the masquerade.”

Audrey leaned forward. “But something must be done about him. Ronald keeps showing up in public, shouting. And drinking. And he will wear that awful red Chudley Cannons jersey even though his face is still orange —” “Tragic,” Hermione drawled, channeling Draco. “Yet, still, not my problem.”

[thebemoon]

I know this is tough in the age of AI, but it's important to embrace poorly written fanfiction by humans.

These are free stories mostly written by amateur writers whenever they can find the time.

Awkward, confusing, and even outright badly written fanfiction is inevitable, because that's how people learn to write better. The brave ones try. They take risks. They lean into difficult topics. They self-insert. They explore their own issues and past traumas. They bash characters and/or make them OOC because it's fun. And that's okay. At the heart of such works is often just a love of the characters and the universe. (Again, I'm talking about human-written fics, not AI.)

I've seen amazing support and love and encouragement in the Harry Potter fandom. But I've also seen a lot of judgment, especially in the Dramione fandom. By all means talk up what you love, but take it easy on the less-polished stuff out there. It's still fun and meaningful to somebody.

It seems like some readers approach fanfic in a very transactional way: If a fic isn't giving someone what they want right then or has gone in a direction they don't approve of, the story has failed them.

So if you're reading a fic and you're bored and you're skimming, and your Pet Peeve Flags are flying and you want to DNF, then do everyone a favor and just click out. It will help your own nerves, too.

It's true that fanfic should be fun for the readers or they won't read. Nobody should be attacked for a thoughtful opinion on a fic. And thank Merlin for readers who give fics a chance.

But keep in mind, fanfic also has to be fun for the writers, too ... or they won't write.

They just won't.

[thebemoon]

So I'm getting a little nervous about people publicly accusing fics of being AI-written.

I agree, there are some awful AI fanfics out there that make no sense at all. ("His eyes held every breakfast my cat has ever eaten in the dark.") But I can't call them out because even one wrong accusation can be devastating to a writer.

I've written eight Harry Potter fanfics and if you look hard, you'll find a few "red flags" for AI even though I don't even use Grammerly. Or an alpha or beta.

I pre-write almost all my fics so sometimes I post chapters really fast. I recklessly use adverbs — and em dashes — with abandon.

And most recently, I accidentally changed a character's name and then changed it back. In my WIP, "A Clock With No Numbers," I mistakenly changed Justin's wife Susan to Hannah and then changed it back again. That's easy to do when you're juggling an ensemble cast. Plus I was wrapping up another WIP, "Augurey Park," at the same time, and Hannah was big in that. (I mean no disrespect to Hufflepuffs.) A kind reader pointed this out in the comments and I fixed it.

So please be careful when calling anything AI because I see a lot of anxious new and prospective writers out there. They are so scared of AI accusations that they're changing their writing or not posting at all.

We don't want to chase new writers away. I'd rather see 100 fics where the sun glows with all the confidence of a peanut butter sandwich than wrongly accuse one fic that is just a little weird in a human way.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering, I'm still working on "Clock," and a new character is entering the chat!

[thebemoon]

I‘ve been seeing more posts by Dramione readers who are sad because they didn't finish a free story, which apparently disappointed them in some way. Apparently they feel ”let down.”

Or they are in a reading slump with the free stories and nothing satisfies them and they need a perfect recommendation to make them happy again.

And so others toss out their favorite free stories in the hopes that something might possibly appeal to these poor, jaded souls.

This makes no sense to me. In fact, I humbly submit that in such cases, the problem is not the free stories.

[thebemoon]

"Augurey Park" by Thebe Moon is complete!

My Draco/OC fic, "Augurey Park," is COMPLETE! Yay!

In the final chapter, Draco has nightmares, Chloe attack-eats tiny cheesecakes, and Narcissa writes a letter.

AUGUREY PARK

Summary:

When American magizoologist Chloe Baffles arrives in wizarding Britain to start a new life, she isn't looking for trouble. But she finds it anyway, in the form of a posh, handsome wizard with a terrible reputation named Draco Malfoy.

Obviously, the sensible thing to do is to walk away. But if Chloe was the sensible type, she wouldn't have been fired from the San Diego Magical zoo for defending blood-sucking bugbears.

So there she goes, falling for a former Dark Beater with a father in Eggs-Ban. It's a slippery slope likely to lead to dark, twisted sex, and Chloe just knows she'll end up roaming the streets with crazy hair and a bad potions habit.

And somehow she has to keep this mad affair from her new boss, the U.S. Ambassador to the Ministry of Magic, and also from her new friends, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

Easy enough, right?

Not really. In this enchanting, weirdly Victorian society, danger lurks everywhere, even six years after the Wizarding War. And when Chloe isn't helping hapless American tourists, she finds herself fighting darker, more terrifying forces than any potions habit.

[thebemoon]

My Draco/Original Female Character fic, "Augurey Park," is updated! Alerted by Susie Snake, Chloe rushes to Malfoy Manor to save Draco.

AUGUREY PARK

Chapter 29: We Will Be Righteous

Excerpt:

Wand in hand, I landed on a familiar paved road near Malfoy Manor. The air was cold, and a round moon hung in the night sky. The edge of the manor grounds looked shadowy and menacing, the silhouetted tops of the great house rising above the treeline.

It seemed smarter to approach the estate this way, using my previous escape route from the Manor — although really, nothing about this was smart. If Draco was in danger, how could I possibly help? No idea. But he had called me. He wanted me to help.

So I entered the wooded area between the road and the house, following the path that Ruffles the peahen had shown me. Fallen leaves crunched under my heeled boots, and sharp thorns and branches tugged at my fake fur-edged cloak. Finally, I hit the flat, winding path that wove between perfectly trimmed hedges. The Manor was hidden from view now, and the wind was picking up. I gripped my wand, not daring to cast Lumos, and trudged on.

[thebemoon]

'A Clock With No Numbers' by Thebe Moon is updated!

You are cordially invited to attend some rather tense negotiations with Weasleys and goblins.

A CLOCK WITH NO NUMBERS

Chapter 34: Meeting with Gringotts Goblins

Excerpt:

“Ah, Ranrock, my father’s old friend.” Draco smiled rather unpleasantly. “You look prosperous.”

“May gold flow to your coffers, Lord Malfoy.” Ranrock said this most basic of goblin pleasantries through gritted teeth.

“May your enemies bleed in darkness, Mr. Finch-Fletchley,” the goblin told Justin more politely.

[luna-azzurra]

Mystery Thriller Spots <3

[bakedbakermom]

if you ever find yourself writing fanfiction and thinking "this is too indulgent" that is the devil talking and he can go ahead and shut the fuck up

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

jane austen said "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." and proceeded to make one of the most iconic austen girls of all time so like. keep making annoying and cringe and overpowered ocs and love them to bits even if no one else will.

[riverwriter]

I love that if you didn’t already know, it would be hard to tell which of her heroines she was talking about.

[thebemoon]

I think of this quote whenever I start creating a main character.

[thebemoon]

"Augurey Park" by Thebe Moon Is Updated!

My Draco/Original Female Character fic, "Augurey Park," is updated! Draco remains in seclusion, and Chloe receives an interesting offer.

AUGUREY PARK

Chapter 27: The Press Conference

Excerpt:

“You're sending American Aurors?” I asked the magical secretary of state.

“They’ll be there next week.”

“I don’t think the Ministry will like it —”

“Like it? Of course they’ll like it! Those are two of our best! Klara Kilburn caught three dark wizards and a Manticore just last week! And Sam Lopez captured a pack of leithfolds! Do you know how hard it is to nab a leithfold? Do you?”

“Actually, I do, but the point is …”

“Damned smart pack that was, hid in a cloak factory outside Milwaukee! A cloak factory!” Salem cackled approvingly. “We could use some of that ingenuity around here! Wish I could hire some leithfolds, they’d get things done!”

“When they weren’t suffocating and eating people, anyway,” I said.

“Well, sometimes you have to make concessions to get the best talent,” Salem said.

[luna-azzurra]

Tension-filled dialogue Prompts <3