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molly being so worried about ginny that she actually wanted ginny to drop out 😭

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I personally just really love the idea of Molly and Ginny and little Lily being baby sisters with older brothers. If Harry can defeat a serial killer as a baby and if Sept. 1 is always on a fucking Monday, then yes, the Weasley girls can all be baby sisters. So, I'm sticking with it. <3

three generations of little sister terror... sign me up

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Hiya Doc! Huge fan of your work, I always assumed Molly was the big sister since neither Gideon or Fabian are mentioned to have been married or have children, if they were older they would have been well in their thirties when they died in 81, Molly I think was 30/31. I’m interested to know why you think she would’ve been younger than her brothers?

you know that is a good point! there’s no real canon basis for assuming molly is a little sister — or even that fabian and gideon were twins or a similar age to each other (so molly could have been the middle child, with an older and a younger brother). i suppose in my head it’s a mixture of plausible interpretations of canon details (molly not being in the original order; fabian and gideon being described as great wizards of their day by hagrid implying age and accomplishment - though ofc james and lily are described that way too) mixed with headcanon (compelling possibility to have molly and ginny as parallel little sisters, even her wanting to be in the order but being warned off by her big brothers - especially little sisters whose big brothers die; a preference for the order of the first war to have a mix of people of different ages rather than too many rag tag teenagers and twenty somethings). but there is no reason for that to be the case. in fact come to think of it molly’s only reference to her brothers in canon is more big sisterly than little sister (reprimanding him for not taking care of his stuff - not safe from a big sister’s nagging, even in death!)

i suppose the only clue we get re fabian and gideon’s own families, or lack thereof, is muriel’s comment that weasleys ‘breed like gnomes’ — implying the prewetts wouldn’t dream of having so many children, and that it is arthur’s side of the family who are to blame for there being so many children of arthur and molly. this could mean it wasn’t entirely implausible or unusual for fabian and gideon to have died in their thirties without children, especially as wizards live long lives, can have children at any point they presumably like, and both were active fighters in a bloody war at the time. but again — no real firm footing on which to base assumptions.

thanks for this anon, and for the very kind words! it has certainly made me think.

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It's very smart what you are doing with Hermione and her parents in Beasts. It was jarring to me that by the end of DH, Hermione is the singular person that goes through the war that is never touched by grief and probably still can't see the thestrals. She's not close to Sirius or Fred or Tonks or Remus lbr. We were just supposed to believe she gets her parents back and goes back to her hunky dory life. It didn't make sense to me, everyone else is deeply grieving who they have lost and we were supposed to believe that Hermione just hides her parents and gets them back later. So she lost nothing? And then JKR said she graduates with Ginny and gets her 7th year too. So she didn't even sacrifice that. It was extremely dumb writing and thinking on JKR's part. But since you are dealing with actual realistic repercussions of powerful memory magic because utilized by an inexperienced teenage girl, it makes so much sense now. Hermione would grieve too, because of the unfair choices she had to make and the consequences she'd have to live with forever.

thank you very much anon, i really appreciate that! sometimes i think that if i read more romione-centric fics i'd probably find 1000 other authors doing similar things with hermione and her parents storylines, but for now - ignorance is bliss.

i think you raise a set of really good points here, points that speak to an important problem with hermione at series end, which is that she's gone through traumatic experiences, but that a) none of them really receive much attention or come to any consequence for the plot and that b) hermione doesn't really get to have that much of an arc in the canon series beyond the resolution of her romantic relationship with ron.

sometimes i think about which characters would be a good protagonist of a post-war fic narratives, or sequels in some form, on the basis of them exiting the canon series with a set of unresolved tensions that would be fun or interesting to play with. (to be clear these are not necessarily fics i would write, just ideas that could hold water). beyond harry, on my running list there are several men - kingsley, for instance, percy, george, my beloved boy dean - but mostly a lot of women. this is because the vast majority of female characters get little by way of satisfying character arc in the main series.

(no doubt there was some misguided feminist intent in there: some notion that women are innately better than men, so don't need to change or grow or improve that much; men just need to clock that they're great etc etc - but still, it is frustrating. luna is a trigger for everyone else's growth (they stop thinking she's a freak and come to view her as a person...); tonks, too, is a trigger for male growth and self-acceptance. ginny's tension is resolved in that she wins the hero's heart (hardly feminist, and i say this as a hinny fan), but never meaningfully gets to revisit or get any closure on the defining experience of her character's life, despite the fact the series crests with the destruction of another horcrux with gryffindor's sword with ginny present (the circular arc is right there!) molly weasley's worst nightmare comes true and it means not a single thing; fleur remains hot (though proving she is not as vain as everyone thought... terrific). of the baddies, narcissa's arc has some satisfaction (even if it ends with her obligations as a mother trumping all); petunia's moment of wavering hints at something interesting but goes unfulfilled. but for the most part, most (surviving) female characters at the close of the series exit stage left with no canonical resolution to a central tension, positive or negative, in ways that at least give fic authors reasonably good fodder to play around with in trying to explore post-canon narratives.)

of these, then, i think hermione is a very strong candidate as a protagonist of a post-war fic. i don't want to diminish what was significant about hermione as a female character - it genuinely did mean something to have a protagonist that was an unrepetantly bossy girl who outshone the boys at every turn and made no apology for it, much as we take that for granted as a trope in YA fiction now - but she does not get a satisfying personal growth arc by the end of deathly hallows. the idea that hermione is supposed to go back to hogwarts for her eighth year is in fact rowling's way of saying oh yes, hermione went back to her old life, and slayed. but wouldn't going back to hogwarts after a year away, when the school had altered beyond all recognition, after a genocidal war against hermione and her peers and after the torture and abuse of children by authority figures hermione traditionally reveres, be kind of shit and hard and worth exploring?

of course the other core tension of hermione with which the series ends with the issue with her parents. earlier in DH hermione says if she survives the war, she'll go find them and set their memories back, and we are supposed to accept that as an unproblematic action that wouldn't cause any tension or come with any pricetags.

one of the things i find most interesting about hermione is that she is consistently absolutely ruthless (marietta etc). in the case of her parents, she literally seizes the agency of two human beings and plays god with their lives in the name of a greater good. i mean - slay! but that's fucked up! and mental, even if was necessary! and wouldn't it be so interesting to imagine it wasn't actually all happily ever after when hermione clearly thinks undoing her actions would be so neat? so i'm having a lot of fun imagining how the cookie might crumble in that particular scenario - what happens when the dust settles, only not where it's supposed to, and hermione has to reckon with the choices she made (for good reasons!) and the consequences of those actions for the people she loves.

that said, because in beasts i'm most interested in exploring ginny's unresolved tensions at series end (and the hinny tensions within them), i often find myself thinking: i can get hermione to a place of progress in this narrative, but for her, the dam would most likely properly break much later in life. i think, in a fic, hermione's arc would be its most interesting as a proper adult later on in her career , perhaps when she is minister. here you could play with an identity crisis of her as a muggleborn minister in a post-war wizarding world, grappling with motherhood and marriage, taking on a series of tests that no-one, really, can ever ace. i suppose this is a bit spoilery for hermione in beasts, but i do think in the space of a post-war year, the idea that hermione's situation with her parents could ever be more than something shaky and tentative and tricky at the end of AY 97/98 is unimaginable to me. i'm hoping to get her to a place where she has made progress in some directions - in her friendships, in reconciling herself to her relationship to school and authority - but it is more interesting to me to have her still with lots of learning and growing to do in later life (even if i won't trying to write that fic!)

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Amazing new chapter for Beasts! I've got chills. I really really really love the little epigraphs and quotes from the books, as someone who has read them a dozen times, I remember them all and I'm instantly anchored back in the moment you are referencing, it's so evocative. This fic is so well planned, it has a beautiful sense of narrative intent. Do you know yet how many chapters there will be?

thank you soooo much for this lovely message, anon - it means a great deal! i love choosing those little quotes an absurd amount but acknowledge they are a personal indulgence, so am very chuffed someone actually likes em and thinks they add something to the story, that's music to my ears!

in my current sketch-out, i reckon beasts will be at the least 22 chapters and likely 25 chapters max. so we probably have about 7-9 to go! but i'm famously bad at this guesswork as i am on record as saying that beasts would be done in 9 chapters so - truly - what do i know! i hope this sounds good to you!

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I have a guess as to what may be revealed in the future, Molly dropped out of Hogwarts didn't she? She never graduated? If her brothers died when she was young, how could she ever have the will to graduate after that? And then she couldn't really get a job because she had no qualifications despite being an extraordinary witch. It made her dependent on Arthur financially even though she loved raising her kids. So she really wanted her kids to finish school and take it seriously. IDK. I feel like this makes sense! She prob never expected Ginny to return for her last year and was surprised (and proud) when Ginny wanted to. 🥺

ahh this is such juicy compelling headcanon, anon, but i think the timelines don't add up. fabian and gideon prewett had to have died in mid/late 1981, as they appear in the order photograph that was taken two weeks before the death of the mckinnons (both marlene and the prewetts are in the photo, and we know the mckinnons are killed just before lily and james themselves are murdered). this means that at the least all of the weasley children bar ginny had been born by the time fabian and gideon are killed, so molly couldn't have been at school at the time.

that said... i think you are right that we should cut molly a lot more slack in trying to make sure her children get on in life, do well in school and make something of themselves in terms of sourcing a stable livelihood that doesn't have them socially discounted. for me, one of the most interesting things about molly is that she is consistently torn between her stalwart commitment to the moral cause that the order represents and also acutely aware that life is going to be hard on her children because of their family's reputation, and the need to overcompensate for it through academic achievement and securing stable employment. there are several hints in the series that molly does come from some level of wizarding aristo background/faded grandeur - muriel's priceless goblin heirlooms, her big house and the promise of an inheritance - and that it is the weasley side of the family that is responsible for the broke blood traitor reputation.

i think, given these hints, we can assume that molly and her big brothers had a strong principled objection to pure blood supremacy and to the death eaters during the first wizarding war, and sacrificed a great deal fighting in its name. but it shouldn't be surprising that molly, a character who seems to have given up some amount of financial stability and pureblood safety to marry arthur and join the anti-voldemort resistance, would be aware of what it is to be without money and how much one might need a safety net as part of a family marked as armed resistors and political radicals.

would molly be proud of ginny going back to school? it is a really nice idea. a few times in early(ish) chapters of beasts i have ginny mentally justify her going back in reference to what her mum would want. but i knew i wanted a different arc for molly and for ginny's relationship with her mum. when we finally do see molly in chapter 9, not just in flashbacks but in the flesh, you can see that ginny's difficult decision to go back to school is the last thing on molly's mind; that the part of molly weasley that fretted and cajoled and lovingly nagged her children died with fred, and ginny has been in denial, engaging in wishful thinking because she hasn't really wanted to confront that her mother may never be in a fit state to fret and cajole and nag her ever again. she is trying to make her mum proud, for sure - but, increasingly, as she accepts her mother will never be the same again, her motivations shift away from maternal pressure to wanting to make life a little bit easier and more bearable for her mum knowing she is trying to set her life straight and build enough material comfort not to have to worry about surviving.

sorry for that bummer! to end on a lighter, if grumpier note... i've said this before so forgive me getting back on this soapbox, but i also don't buy the arguments of the 'molly weasley get a job' tiktok brigade, who seem to grow in number every passing week. i know you're absolutely not saying this, anon, but it comes up a lot in the online discourse, and i do think it is broadly bullshit and worth consistently critiquing. until 1991 molly is doing a huge amount of childcare full-time. once ginny goes to hogwarts, we don't know that molly does nothing for any money - she is a famously industrial knitter! - but also can assume that, after that long without formal employment in a very hierarchical (and misogynistic) society, it might be quite difficult for her to just glibly rejoin the workforce (this is, in fact, a common feature of most modern economies where the burden of childcare still falls on women; it's also clear that in lots of wizarding families women don't work at all after having children). molly also clearly lives on a property with a large amount of land and substantial upkeep requirements (have you ever kept chickens? they are a minimum twice daily ballache).

it's also worth saying that the weasleys don't actually need any more money to pay for basic essentials. that they provide everything their children (and their friends) actually need whenever they need to: they just lack a great deal of discretionary income to splash the cash on material goods. and that's fine! sorry! teenagers are allowed to sulk that they have some secondhand stuff, sure. but it isn't actually material deprivation or a moral failing to reuse stuff you have and not be able to afford elite-level sporting equipment for your children. even if molly weasley never took up paid work outside the home ever in her life, i don't think anyone can reasonably claim she did not undertake essential labour. and, as of summer 1995, it is clear molly is doing missions for the order (canon is clear!), while also feeding and housing and clothing a great chunk of the wartime resistance. seems harder than most other wizarding jobs, to me!

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quick sketch of the cokeworth duo during my 9am meeting

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Hagrid, Harry, Ron and Hermione - colored :3 

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so when are we jumping rookwood

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Ginny & Luna, 8th year

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evenings at home

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Remus and Harry from chapter 14 of PoA

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would you be open to fics loosely inspired by beasts? i thought i'd left the hp world behind but i just love your writing so much and the new chapter has really inspired me. totally okay if not!

are you kidding! this would make my year!

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author’s note | chapter 15: beasts (i) 🗡️

now the dust has settled somewhat… it’s about time we talked about chapter 15, a chapter that sure did take its sweet time coming. at long (long) last, we are back and kicking off our flashback chapters, where we find out what went down in crookshanks’ ginny weasley’s war. a picnic it was not! let’s get into it - it being these indulgent author’s notes i love to subject you to and that you love to humour.

✨ spoilers for this chapter below the cut  ✨

writing notes and headcanons

chapter titles: these flashback chapters are called beasts because baby it’s all been building up to this! this chapter and the ones to follow are really the heart of this story - the title track, if you will. at last, ginny is talking, plunged back into last year as she testifies at the inquiry. the beasts of the chapter title, and the fic at large, are people - or, at least, the parts of a self that lies within all people; the beasts within  - but the beasts are also the memories of the war themselves, unwieldy and untameable, memories which expose all the savagery, brutality and hypocrisy on which the wizarding world is built. (these chapters have been my personal beasts to wrangle with for far, far too long.) pls be reassured, askbox anons, that calling these chapters beasts does not mean they are the final chapters! the final chapter has had a name for a very long time and is in fact something different. i suspect we have a good 6+ chapters to go yet. (and if experience has taught me anything, it’s that i will probably split some of those in two. chapter plans! who needs em! not this clown!)

writing ginny’s war: there have been many many brilliant attempts to write ginny’s war in fic over the years, and i feel very aware of the danger of reinventing the wheel. i’m also aware that there are tropes that abound (for good reason) in such fics and that are hard to avoid. nevertheless, any hinny writer worth their salt tends to want to take a run-up at writing DH from ginny’s POV, a book she spends largely off stage, glimpsed only in passing mentions of her that harry witnesses or in memories that haunt harry as he embarks on the horcrux hunt, and gosh darn it i want my turn! the trouble with writing nny’s war, though, is that you have to write chapters that are strongly anchored in plot rather than vibe, except you’re not working with your own plot, but much more tightly confined by canonical timelines and major narrative landmarks, which demands a lot more scrambling around on potter search if - like me - half the fun of writing fic is playing around with trying to write a story that is more strictly canon coherent. still, we love a challenge, and it’s just as much fun to subvert harry’s narration/assumptions of what is happening elsewhere in the wizarding world during DH (and especially what is going on at hogwarts) as it is to get stuck into the text. i set myself a series of rules, one of which is that whenever harry thinks ginny is somewhere or doing something, she has to be doing the opposite of that. he’s terrified she’s in danger at the wedding? she’s sat on the sofa with gabrielle snotting veela snot down her arm. he’s sure she, neville and luna are sat together on hogwart’s express plotting snape’s demise? she’s obviously too smart for that. yung hazza has fucked around long enough and now that young man is about to find out. more of this in future author’s notes once we’re back at school proper - let these serve as little light hints about how things might go down…  but for now:

the order and resistance: in deathly hallows, harry and co crash out of the wedding the night the wizarding state is seized in a coup by voldemort, ejecting ginny from the centre-stage narrative but also detaching the trio from the trajectory of most of the wizarding world for august 1997 - at least, until they go to the ministry to get the horcrux from umbridge - and from the workings and wartime activities of the order of the phoenix. this happens, ofc, just as the order becomes the official underground resistance. of course we know, as readers, that the plot and the outcome of the war will hinge on the trio succeeding on their quest: this is harry’s series after all. but to imagine the perspective of the order off-stage, the trio - three teenagers who have needed order fighters to rescue them from battles with death eaters two years running - are just off doing a weird dumbledore sidequest while the real business of fighting this war and actively resisting voldemort’s regime must surely fall to the order. nevertheless, the order lack an obvious general post mad-eye’s death and clear direction beyond low level sabotage and surveillance. we are told the burrow is now official headquarters and that the weasleys remain in their home and resume going about their daily business as a fig leaf for their resistance activities. 

the order and the traitor: crucial context that harry largely dismisses but that is clearly on the older order members’ minds in the summer of 1997 is mundungus’ betrayal and the idea that there might be a rat. harry is so convinced he would not be betrayed: remus calls him naive for it, which harry bristles at but ultimately decides to disregard. would the others, though? the order are still smarting from the wounds inflicting by the apparent treachery the night of the seven potters (a betrayal that cost their most seasoned fighter his life); fleur, for her part, spends the run-up to the happiest day of her life convincing hagrid is going to get binned, hop on mic and reveal harry’s whereabouts half-way through the cutting of the cake. kingsley and remus were livid at the idea of a traitor the night of the rescue; remus, of course, for obvious and deeply personal reasons, though he also makes himself suspicious by vanishing (to run out on his preggo wife), no doubt raising some eyebrows among his fellow fighters. all this adds an extra layer of tension to the summer of ’97 at order hq, especially when there are yung women wandering about who are about to go back to the den of vipers that is hogwarts under death eater control. and speaking of…

what about ginny? one can only assume, then, that under these circumstances ginny must have gone back to much the same unglamorous infantilising existence she endured in the holidays during ootp: living at order hq, barred by virtue of her age and mother’s protectiveness from order activities, only without harry, ron and hermione to keep her company as kindred spirits, underrage and overlooked. for this reason, i have ginny spend this chapter confined to the claustrophobic house, becoming much closer to a grimmauld-like space than the burrow has ever been so far in canon, and almost entirely alone: protected as is possible, but shut out, left to her own devices. it is at once a very safe position to be in but also a vulnerable one - too much time to think and stew, a lonely character whose loneliness has previously driven her to ruin, back to being lonely again. i wanted there to be shades of sirius and ootp harry in it - restless, cooped up, prowling around, growing bitter and isolated - and also (as the echoes to chapter 2 suggest) echoes of an earlier time in ginny’s life when she was lonely, and vulnerable, and ripe for the picking. too much time to think, especially to think about…

those pesky horcruxes: in revisiting late HBP/DH and preparing to write these chapters one of the things that i found most baffling was how astonishingly cavalier and clumsy the trio seem to be discussing crucial information about horcruxes around ginny or within her plausible earshot. ginny of course knows harry has gone with dumbledore the night the tower is struck. after dumbledore dies, the four of them spend ‘all of their time together’, harry carries the locket everywhere with him in his pocket (‘not as a talisman, but as a reminder of what it had cost and what remained still to do’). hermione may wait until the door up the dormitories closes behind ginny to talk about RAB, butt it’s not exactly a watertight way of remaining out of earshot (especially given ginny’s canonical curiosity and expertise at listening at doors). while at the burrow, hermione still stays in ginny’s room, presumably packing up all manner of clue-like items around her: molly may try her best to use ginny as a barrier to the trio getting together to plot next steps, hermione still manages to slip away and leave ginny in order to seek out harry and ron to plot next steps elsewhere in the house (‘Oh, Ron’s mum forgot that she asked me and Ginny to change the sheets yesterday’). what’s more, the trio openly invite order members’ views on the items in dumbledore’s will, and we know that this encounter had such a lasting impression on ginny that she commits to stealing back harry’s rightful property (the sword of gryffindor) at great personal risk having presumably stewed on it for quite some time. the most fun i had in this chapter was adding in the little hints that, had the trio invited ginny into their confidence, they might have found someone quicker on the uptake on some of their trickiest mysteries than the three of them ever were. wouldn’t ginny the quidditch enthusiast and former seeker know that snitches have flesh memories? doesn’t it seem possible - even probable - that ginny explored grimmauld place thoroughly and found the little sign on regulus’ room long before harry even set foot in grimmauld place? wouldn’t ginny, of all people, remember exactly what gryffindor’s sword was used for last time and start to wonder why it need be used again? she is so close - and yet! so far. but isn’t that always ginny weasley’s way?

the weasleys’ dilemma: i have had a fair few very compelling messages in the askbox criticising harry for leaving ginny to it, assuming she would be safe (how could she be!) and taking insufficient interest in her wellbeing beyond pining for as a comfort for himself on lonely tent-watch nights. i have also had a few criticising the weasleys for much the same thing. i think these are very very reasonable and understandable takes with a lot of truth to them. what i will say though is that this is a period of the narrative where nobody had good choices to make, including harry, but also including ginny’s whole family. the weasleys deciding to send ginny weasley back into hogwarts when she is very obviously and publicly close to both harry potter and to the order is, on the one hand, a completely mental proposition. but the other thing to remember, and that is consistently and widely overlooked about the weasleys, is that they are a family of soldiers. they are generations of committed resistors and agents of conscience, ideologically-committed and devoted to an extremely morally worthy cause that actually really, really matters. the new state is carrying out an attempted genocide: if ever there were a time to bang on about the greater good, to not put your own family’s safety over the safety of hundreds of others of innocent victims, wouldn’t it be this one? i care a lot in this fic about making clear that although there are malicious bad actors in this narrative whose actions cause harm and pain, there’s also lots of proper goodies trying to do their best and make the best moral choice under exceptionally difficult circumstances - whose actions also cause harm and pain. often they have to make very tough utilitarian choices about what the right course of action should be: they have to live with some amount of pain being the direct result, often pain for the people they love most in the world. and so the weasleys send ginny back to hogwarts, telling themselves she will be safe as a pureblood, as their family (and the trio’s) cover: business as usual, nothing to see here. 

voices of dissent: it was important to me to have two voices in this chapter who raise doubts about sending ginny back. one i’ll come back to in a later author’s note, but is charlie, although he does not fight for ginny to stay at home, and stays silent as her family sees her off. the other one is molly weasley, the consistent voice in canon for children being allowed to have a childhood, overly protective and patronising but fundamentally trying to do something powerful and good: letting kids be kids. of course, as soon as ginny has set herself the sword quest, she is a one-track mind: she is going back to school, she is getting the trio the sword, she is helping fight voldemort, and she is not listening to her mother. would ginny weasley want to be protected, really?

reading list

not fics but real books can you believe!

the feast by margaret kennedy (fabulous devastating postwar ensemble novel, sank it in one sitting, claustrophobic and wry and searing and o the doom is building, vibes are very very very good)

silence of the girls by pat barker (silence becomes a woman)

testament of youth by vera brittain 

"I am writing this in front of an open casement window overlooking the sea. The sky is cloudless, and the russet sails of the fishing smacks flame in the sun. It is summer but it is not war; and I dare not look at it. It only makes me angry with myself for being here — and with the others for being content to be here. When men whom I have once despised as effeminate are being sent back wounded from the front, when nearly everyone I know is either going or has gone, can I think of this with anything but rage and shame?"

songs from the playlist for this chapter 

one properly stand-out song that i considered just having standalone is king creosote’s please come back, i will listen, i will behave, i will toe the line. the opening is so chilling, and the song proper is so rousing, the lyrics childlike, the protagonist pleading their way through grief (please come back, and take me with you next time). that whole album absolutely fucking slaps. but these other songs are good too! 

which side are you on by pete seeger | please come back… by king creosote | come back to us by thomas newman | tomorrow is a long time by bob dylan | oceans apart by ben crosland | precipice by jack simpson | mìorbhail nam beann by duncan chisholm 

…and a sneak peek from chapter 16, including the return of fan favourite/everyone’s favourite grouchy stoner king: 

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’  A rough hand grabs by the wrist. Two years without a word uttered to Michael Corner and now he’s dragging her by the arm down an empty corridor, iron grip as she tries to pull away. Once out of sight, around the corner, he rounds on her. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he hisses. ‘It’s insane that you’re here.’

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i just got married and seeing that there’s a new chapter felt like a wedding present. i’ll need to send you a thank you notes now

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Started reading beasts last night after seeing your intriguing peter/ginny parallel. Honestly i must say it was very difficult to start mostly because i just got over my 35,000 th reread of the changelling and wasnt sure if i was ready for more emotional wreckage. Turns out it doesnt fucking matter because YOU are an absolute literary genius you beautiful angel. Every line. Every single line was so capturing. The characterisation. The flaws. Omg the flaws. This fic makes me feel closer to ginny because she is such a fully fledged character here with her owns flaws and qualities and i just wanna give her sooo many pets and just cuddle her in a knitted blanket. Not just her, every character feels so real. So raw. So human. Thank you so much. You are doing amazing!!

Ps. You're paying for the tissues i wiped my tears and snot with.

ah, mate, thank you so much.

i have been very touched by the number of people who have reached out since posting the new chapter - both the people who were following beasts already and have been very kind and very patient waiting for more/not giving up on it, and also new people coming across my fic now for the first time. it means a great deal to me! and i am so glad the ginny you get in beasts resonates like this for you, especially when she is well served elsewhere (as you rightly say!) in some wonderful fics. and pls do invoice me! i must be held accountable.