beasts | from the postbag 🦉
it is a source of great delight, great gratitude and great guilt that i have an inbox full of juicy questions i haven't answered. reckon it's about time i got around to answering some of them! this is a bumper post with lots to answer and plenty to rummage around in, so if you have sent me a question i hope you will find it answered in here! (if i haven't replied, please know that i have treasured/been tickled by every one and will never not be pleased as punch that people reach out to say hi and chat about stuff i put out into the world). alright. to business!
it’s a fair question anon, and the answer is at least partly as you suggest: neville and seamus are loyal to ginny (dean, ofc, wasn’t there). in c.12 harry talks about having spoken with neville about it, and though he tells ginny about it, he also reassures her neville didn’t spill her secrets - harry doesn’t like people talking about him behind his back, and he���s right to assume ginny wouldn’t either. (i mean, i also think waiting for someone to be ready to talk about something is a basic mark of respect for a loved one - and learning to be patient and not demanding information from people is a skill a certain mr potter could do with learning). but, as i hope c.14 gestured towards and as the flashback chapters will unpack, ginny also had a very specific war that was particular to her and who she was vis-à-vis harry and the order. neville and (to a lesser extent) seamus know some of it, but they don’t know the whole picture. hope this helps!
i live to gag! (thank u anon!)
i played with writing ginny having different emotional reactions in the final scene of c.14, but in the end decided i liked having her quiet, resigned to it, like she knew this was coming (they’ll all know soon, as she tells herself throughout this chapter). for someone who is often kicking off and raging at people bearing bad news, it’s a lot of fun to write ginny as someone with the wind knocked out from her every now and then.
i won’t spoil this one, anon, but i will say that i think ginny understands harry, his good intentions, and the reasons for his blindspots. they’ve got chats to have for sure. but will she be throwing hands imminently? i would not bet on it.
it was little women! the same book hermione's reading in chapter 3. the granger girlies love a classic. they prefer the winona ryder adaptation but hermione takes the family to see the greta gerwig version and bawls and ron has to mop her up in the richmond everyman cinema.
to these lovely anons and the others i am keeping close to my chest - i am reaching into the screen and tenderly stroking your rosy little cheek. thank you for waiting for next bits of my fic !!!
on harry's characterisation - harry is a cranky crabby little grouch with a temper and a good sulk in him. he also is not beating the softie/sentimental allegations and will always be a sweetpea when it comes to those with good vibes and freckles in spades. and we should not forget it!
anon, i don’t know what you’re like as a host, but if two horny teenage houseguests decided to use my hut for a spot of snogging and heavy petting i’d be putting my foot down and setting the skrewts on them.
more seriously - there are lots of reasons, and most are boring. some are just ‘plot’. these are two characters who are not just physically removed from one another, but having to clock their emotional distance from each other, or at least the distance in their experiences of war and how that has changed them. having them physically distant and trying to find their way back to each other through new ways of communicating is a part of this story. it would be a much much more boring story if harry and ginny could see each other every week. i love a hinny hangout as much as the next person. but the story wouldn’t work if they had endless access to each other. and this is where the other reasons come into play - story conventions, or the rules put in place by canon, where characters beyond hogwarts very rarely set foot on hogwarts’ grounds without serious reason, and the school behaves pretty much like every other english boarding school, which is strictly controlling visitor time and not just letting people rock up and hang out with the students whenever they feel like it.
you best believe michael A&R corner will be handing out the ravenclaw lads’ mixtapes outside the courtroom, anon!
this is definitely an agree-to-disagree on this one, anon. i think, if there were no post-war justice, no trials, no public reckoning, no need to immediate need to clear snape’s name, then maybe. but i think harry would get one whiff of death eaters trying to blame their crimes on old sev and say, not on my watch. he’s literally the only person who can clear snape’s name posthumously. do i think he felt weird about it all? absolutely. but i think he would do as he does in ootp re clearing his own name and make it his business to get the truth out. i don't know if you've noticed but that young man is really rather righteous. he also couldn't wait to tell voldemort snape was actually a goodie. he was chomping at the bit, he was salivating. he had the goss and he could not wait to spread it. he's just like me fr!
thank you sm anon! i have talked a little bit about my view of hermione and ginny's relationship here (forgive the link to an old thing, i am terrible for repeating myself), but i think their relationship as you see it in beasts is my way of trying to write the middle ground between the two views of their friendship often doing the rounds in fandom - eg. they're absolute soulmate besties who totally get each other all the time vs they're basically not friends at all. i am just a bit of a sucker for hard won female friendships earned by girls growing up and getting a grip. now - if harry and ginny had an argument, i imagine ginny would be right, and hermione is always on the sign of reason. but even if ginny wasn't right, i reckon hermione would have a quiet word with her about it, but still make sure she told harry off to, just because it's good to never let the men in your life know peace.
i yelped! you dreamed of my fic! that's bonkers and brilliant in equal measure. look if chapter 15 gets revealed to you in a dream and it's better than in the google doc i'll be soooo fuckin pissed.
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