#my first harry potter fanfic that isn't harry centric

[diana-bookfairchild]

@harrypocter Week 3: Lee Jordan

Lee flicked his wand and conjured a bunch of dandelions to lay on the grave.

He knelt in front of it, ignoring the dirt getting on his work robes. He worked for a wireless network anyway, appearances didn’t matter.

“Hey, Freddy.” He said casually. “So, this time I decided on dandelions. It represents ‘the return of life and rebirth’ according to the bloody book, which I think is rather ironic. D’you agree?”

He paused. “Of course, you do. It’s a damn good joke, if I say so myself. Plus a pretty great callback. Remember second year? The Halloween Feast?”

There was another long moment of silence. The breeze whistled through his robes and hair and against the gravestone, as though to break the depressing silence or trying to reassure him.  

At first, talking to the grave as though it would actually respond had been a coping mechanism and Lee had nearly sobbed every time he’d realized there was no point and there was never going to be a withering retort ever again. The pauses had been crushing.

Now, though. . . .

Talking to his old best friend’s grave like this made him nostalgic. More upbeat than upset. More melancholy than rage at the unfairness of the world. More a lingering loving sadness than despair. More spasming than debilitating. The pauses were more symbolic of the departure from his regular life, the dipping back into those war-torn awful years.

“George has a new product out,” He continued, standing up and walking around, gesturing as he did when he told stories without a mic. “It’s a figurine of Harry, actually. He’s experienced a sudden upsurge of popularity since the Blackwood case. Should’ve seen his face when George told him. It was at the last DA reunion. George loved his reaction, though he probably loved it a lot less when Ginny started to ‘console’ him, if you know what I mean.”

He waited again, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of wind and sunshine. The Weasleys really had picked a beautiful place for the grave.

“Angie’s pretty great, too. She was all giggly with Luna and Audrey and Alicia at the reunion though, which makes me worry because that is a dangerous group. Don’t tell them I said that,” he added. “Also, she’s taken a break from the Wanderers. Because. . .”

He cleared his throat. “Well, that’s why I wanted to come see you today. I’m sure you must be wondering. It isn’t your birthday, or Christmas, or the 4th of July, or New Year’s Day or the anniversary of the battle. It’s. . . .”

He wondered how to put it. Fred had always liked straightforwardness, Lee decided. George was the one to dilly-dally and outsmart.

“George and Angelina told me they’re pregnant,” he blurted out. “Well, Angie’s pregnant. They’re having a kid,” he emphasized, in case Fred hadn’t understood.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’ll make amazing parents, but still, here I am, bachelor, trying to remember the names of my dates - I accidentally called Andrew Alan and he threw a tantrum and left last month - and there they are, having an actual, literal baby. And they decided to make me godfather! Me!” He gestured wildly at himself. “What the hell made them think that would be a good idea? Ha! Last week I nearly burned down my apartment trying to make something edible.”

Lee paused again, and continued softly. “Th-They’ve found out the gender. It’s a boy.”

He laughed slightly hysterically. “I’m going to have a godson! I’m going to be a godfather! How about that, huh?”

He hesitated. “And – well. I know it’s different, and complicated, and George and Angie are a bit—” He shrugged, not able to articulate it. George and Angelina and their relationship could be as complicated as easy, as ugly as beautiful, as defined by grief as by happiness, and as marked by Fred’s absence as by the presence of his lingering ghost and legacy. “But – there’s no way they’re ever going to end up naming him anything but Fred. Wait and see. George blathered on about some names they’re contemplating, but I’d stake my Gringotts vault on it.”

He let out a breath and then knelt in front of the gravestone again, tracing the letters on it with his finger. “Your life was way too short. And—” He remembered seeing Fred the last time, the easy smirk on his face as he twirled his wand and made a crap joke in the Great Hall, the way Lee clapped his shoulder and said ‘Later, mates’ before leading his own group out onto the grounds, thrumming with excitement and nerves and determination.

He remembered feeling guilty for his own grief, about how all-consuming it had been, when to him George had been more important, George who had lost his twin brother.

“I couldn’t save you. You died.”

He closed his eyes again, pressing his forehead to the stone. “But … it happened. Dwelling on it’s not going to help. I’m going to do my best to make sure Lil’ Fred has a long, long life. He has to at least outlive me.” Lee nodded determinedly.

“I know you’ll be watching over him,” He continued, getting back on his feet. “Just like you’re probably fanboying over Teddy and Victoire and Dominique and Jamie and Lance and Percy’s soon-to-come kid. And well – I will be too. So, one more collaboration, huh, Freddie?” He smiled in remembrance. “S’how we became friends, remember? You were so nasty about it. ‘One collaboration’, you said. ‘We’re a duo,’ George said. And that promptly went down the drain when we actually got into it.”

His mouth twisted in a half bitter half fond smile. Somehow, the old grief had returned as an itch from the celebration of a new life he had meant to do. Grief had that way. He could be standing and doing something perfectly normal one moment and the next want to collapse and curl up and sob. He couldn’t stand to be there a second longer. “Love you, Fred, you Merlin damned asshole. See you soon.”

And he turned and walked away, ghosts still pressing at his heels, back into his life.

Feedback appreciated! I'll admit I got a teensy bit carried away with the length. . . .

[duplicitywrites]

Hi! I was curious to ask, how’d you get into writing tomarry/harrymort?

hi! it's not a very long story but thank you for being interested enough to ask 💘

around the start of the pandemic i decided to revisit the harry potter fandom, kind of like a returning to my roots type of deal? at first i was only reading fic, mostly harry-centric gen fic.

various pairings later, i settled on reading tomarry (don't ask me what i read, i won't remember) and that inevitably led to writing. this isn't my first time writing fanfic (or even my first time writing hp fanfic), though it is by far my most prolific venture.

lockdown just resulted in my writing a lot more than i usually would because i had nothing better to do 🤧

[prince-liest]

Hello! Since I’m binge reading all of your Genshin fanfics I wanted to ask how would you describe your experience contributing to zines? I’m considering it and wanted to ask someone who’s done this before. Is the process fun? Stressful? Both? I’d assume writing with a deadline is not easy! When did you first start? Don’t spare details please, tell me everything about your experience! I have minimal knowledge on the topic

Hey, there! I'm glad you're enjoying my Genshin works!! And of course, I've been in about three fucktillion zines by now so I'd be happy to talk about what it's like! Long post under the cut:

Not all zines are the same but most of them follow approximately the same outline of expectations for you as a contributor, which is:

After you've applied and been accepted, you're sent an acceptance email with a link to the zine server.

You join the server, and after a few days for everyone to trickle in, the mods will post a spreadsheet or a google form where you can submit 2-3 pitches, aka. ideas of what you think you could write for the zine, which should be reasonably different from one another. The reason for having 2-3 is so that not everyone ends up writing the same thing. I prefer when zines give spreadsheets rather than google forms so that I can see what other writers are pitching and make sure I'm not submitting something samey. There will likely be guidelines for what you can pitch (limitations on characters, ships, rating, etc).

(Optional) Some zines do author/artist collabs, and this is usually the time period during which folks figure out if they'd like to collab, and if so, with whom.

After a week or so, you are told which of your pitches you will be writing for the zine.

Creation period! Now you write a fic based on your pitch, usually 2-3k words in length depending on the zine. There's usually 3-4 check-ins scattered throughout the several month period that you get to write during, when the mods basically want to see how far you've gotten to make sure you're making progress. Sometimes you have the option of asking for feedback, but often the writing mod isn't going to be doing that until your final piece is submitted.

At the end of the creation period, you submit your final piece, usually with some formatting stuff like "highlight every time you use italics so the formatting mod can see it." The writing mod will beta it, toss it back to you so you can accept edits, and then that will be the final version in the zine. Voila!

Everything after that is just you waiting for preorders and production. Other stuff that will probably happen at some point includes submitting a snippet for the graphics mod to make a little preview graphic of your piece, and reblogging/retweeting zine stuff during preorders to promote sales.

To answer your more specific questions:

I started in late 2020 when I applied to a Hawks-centric My Hero Academia zine at the same time that I was invited to a My Hero Academia and Harry Potter crossover zine, both of which were an amazing experience. I find that the deadline is really not a source of stress, because you get several months to write 2-3k words and each check-in is only asking for a little bit of progress. My first check-in, for example, is pretty much always just the outline. That said, I'm not really applying to zines anymore (unless something exactly up the alley of my current hyperfixation pops up, which at the time of writing would be a Hazbin Hotel or radiostatic zine, haha) for a few different reasons.

Firstly, I've legitimately been in four dozen zines. I've scratched the itch, haha.

Secondly, particularly in the Genshin Impact space, the zine craze caught on so aggressively that the average quality of zine mod teams declined pretty sharply. There are a number of zine mods that I really trust, and I've been in some phenomenally run zines, but I'm also just kind of tired of the physical production period of a zine taking a year or longer when I know it can be done in like three months. Not to mention the number of times people in the zine space have straight up absconded with money.

Thirdly and most importantly, the actual part of zine writing that I don't enjoy very much anymore is the limitations put on my writing. It's an inherent and understandable part of the process that a fic has to be within a specific word count and topic, but I also have just hit the point where I personally want to write whatever the hell I want without coming up with three separate fic concepts and hoping that the one I actually feel passionate about is chosen - not to mention I've actually ducked out of zines before when the mods were so nitpicky about what they wanted me to write that it felt less like I was a guest writer invited to create something of my own, and more like they were looking for a cheap way to basically custom commission writing from me. And I've also noticed that the pickier the mods are about my writing, the less I end up liking what I create. There's actually three zine fics, now, that I'm never going to publish because I just don't think they turned out very good, and they are all from zines where I felt my writing got micromanaged.

All of that said, I'm basically highlighting the small number of things I disliked out of, again, four dozen zines, so I really encourage you to go for it! A well-run zine is a blast to be a part of, and my favorites have always been ones where it is clearly a labor of love and genuine interest.

Here are some tips when choosing a zine to apply to:

Look at the mods and their pages, and look for mods that have completed zines in the past, but aren't currently part of 4+ incomplete projects. For mods, you want experience, but you don't want someone who's just jumping into every single project they see.

Every P4P zine I've been a part of has been fucking amazing so far. These only get made in certain fandoms, though (mostly danmei). I'm sure they're not all perfect (there's one I know that's a little sketchy), but I think the lack of promise of profit attracts people genuinely invested in the project itself rather than money or clout or whatever.

Pick a zine that you know you will enjoy writing about the subject of. Don't apply to something because you like the character it's about, but you don't actually really know what you'd write for it.

Make sure they have a reasonably large number of followers on Twitter and appealing graphics. This speaks to a couple of things: 1) how well the zine is likely to sell and 2) how well the social media and other mods actually know what they're doing in terms of promo. If a zine has less than several hundred followers and they want to put out a physical copy, I would personally hesitate, because there's a good chance they won't break even on sales. Especially in the Genshin Impact fandom specifically.

Hopefully that was helpful! If you have any more specific questions, feel free to throw them my way.