HP&THBP 1.6180339887...Ch.4

Title: HP&THBP 1.6180339887...

Genre: Fan Fiction, Spiritual/Drama

Current Chapter: 4 - Heirlooms

Chapter Word Count: 2,698

Total Story Word Count: 10,809

Summary: Two years after the Final Battle, Harry Potter receives an unexpected and rather unwanted letter amidst his already tumultuous life. He embarks upon a new quest, this time a more deeply interpersonal one as he blazes a trail down what's left of Severus Snape's memory lane. Is he truly ready for his parents', or more accurately, Severus Snape's history?

Find the story on FF.net!

Read the story with its original format!

IV

Heirlooms

SHOCK was what Harry felt when he read that sentence in Snape’s new letter to him.

Harry Potter, I also have memories from both your parents.

But, how?! Harry wondered, his mouth hanging open.

The letter didn’t say and there wasn’t too much to the letter after the shocking bit, just detailed instructions on how to mix the catalyst to view the memories, which sounded suspiciously like complicated Potions brewing to Harry.  

After staring at the letter with the glow of his wand for some indeterminate amount of time, he had finally lit one of the two candle-filled lamps in the sitting room and had continued to sit staring off for another indefinite length of time.  

This is mental!  This has to be some cruel joke!  A very elaborate cruel joke, mind you.

Harry’s mind kept coming back to how.  How had Snape set this up?  How had Snape gotten a hold of memories from Harry’s parents, who were dead long before Snape died?  How, how, how?

It just couldn’t be possible...

Story Maps

As I'm gearing up to release Chapter 4 of my Harry Potter fanfic and finding that my plot needed some restructuring, I thought I'd share some of J. K. Rowling's own plot maps.  This first one is allegedly from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

I am absolutely amazed and humbled.  I mean, look at the level of detail here!  She organizes by chapter number, the date an event takes place, the chapter title, major plot points (we call these "set-pieces" in writing), how the prophecy relates to each bit, and then characters and their interactions and relationships.  This is so cool!  My plotting is not nearly as intensive as this, although for my own personal full-length work, I hope to achieve an outline like this (also outlines are tools - obviously she didn't follow this perfectly {I think I spot some discrepancies} but she did use it to guide her to keep her on track with all her subplots and weaving of relationships and the setting up and resolution of each scene and set-piece, as I hope to do with my own work).

I also just read Rowling's 2012 novel The Casual Vacancy which was very riveting, with extremely rich characters, and a plot that was almost too real, too close to home for my liking but I liked it because of that, too.  I couldn't put it down, I read it in three days after borrowing it from my local library (it's also being adapted into a TV mini series; the first episode just premiered in the UK on the BBC on the 16th of this month!  It comes to the US on April 29th, partnered with HBO).  I was fascinated by the "braiding" in the novel - the characters were intricately woven together and it was amazing to watch the separate strands come together to form something "solid".  I found a handy little chart depicting those interactions:

Complex, yes?  But important for solid writing!  

Circling back around to Harry Potter, I also found a good fan-made Black Family Tree:

Also neat, character-relationship wise.  

(And, yes, before you ask, I am quite familiar with Tolkien's level of family trees!  No need to go into them here, though!)

All in all, story mapping is obviously very useful in both the pre-work and to explain a work after-the-fact.  I only hope to have this much attention to detail in my own works, both fan-made and from my heart and head!

HP&THBP 1.6180339887...Ch.3

Title: HP&THBP 1.6180339887...

Genre: Fan Fiction, Spiritual/Drama

Current Chapter: 3 - The Prince's Humble Abode

Chapter Word Count: 3,210

Total Story Word Count: 8,111

Summary: Two years after the Final Battle, Harry Potter receives an unexpected and rather unwanted letter amidst his already tumultuous life. He embarks upon a new quest, this time a more deeply interpersonal one as he blazes a trail down what's left of Severus Snape's memory lane. Is he truly ready for his parents', or more accurately, Severus Snape's history?

Read the story in its Original Format

Find the story on FF.net!

III

The Prince's Humble Abode

APPARITION always made Harry quite dizzy.  He stood for a moment staring at the cracked cement beneath his feet, getting his bearings back and his faculties functioning normally before he took his surroundings in.  It didn't take too long and soon his eyes were roving over a dilapidated, dingy, near-deserted spread of outdated brick houses with an old factory chimney looming on the hazy grey horizon.  Harry himself happened to be on a street corner near a small, gross-smelling brook, which wended its way on his left and on towards another grouping of slightly nicer houses.

Harry began to recognize the area from the memories he had witnessed of his mother and Snape as children, although the years had made the area itself worse for wear.  The rusted, crooked street sign did, in fact, read "Spinner's End".  

Being on the correct street, Harry decided that the only way to go was forward and so forward he went.  He began to wonder, after passing what had to be the seventh-or-so boarded-up house, if anything still lived in these sad little dwellings at all anymore.  

Not that he was worried about being seen or anything (he was usually most comfortable in Muggle jeans and t-shirt anyway) but he found the lack of people rather comforting, oddly enough.  At least he felt that no-one was going to bother him about anything he was or wasn't doing here.  

Here, he was only here for one thing, a thing of his own choosing again, with no-one to bother him except the memory of a dead man.  

HP&THBP 1.6180339887...Ch. 2

Title: HP&THBP 1.6180339887...
Genre: Fan Fiction, Spiritual/Drama
Current Chapter: 2 - A New Quest
Chapter Word Count: 2,676
Total Story Word Count: 4,901
Summary: Two years after the Final Battle, Harry Potter receives an unexpected and rather unwanted letter amidst his already tumultuous life. He embarks upon a new quest, this time a more deeply interpersonal one as he blazes a trail down what's left of Severus Snape's memory lane. Is he truly ready for his parents', or more accurately, Severus Snape's history?

Read the story in its Original Formatting!

Find the story on FF.net!

II

A New Quest

GRIMMAULD Place was dead quiet when Harry stepped out of the fireplace and into the large drawing room.  The late afternoon sun was filtering through the shuttered windows and Harry could see dust motes floating like dainty, dreamy snowflakes in and out of the rays of light.

“Kreacher?” he asked aloud, but not too loudly for the silence was grating on him like a foreboding shadow (that and he still had not yet removed the portrait of Sirius’ mother).  Looking around his inherited home, he realized he hadn’t been here in days (or maybe weeks?), usually spending what free time he did have these days with Ginny (when she also had time away from practices and games) at The Burrow, which was always bustling with warmth, action and good food, unlike here.  

Suddenly there was a little pop! and his wizened house-elf stood hunched before him.  He was wrinklier, looking more like a pile of old than ever, his garb was his usual tattered and dirtied potato-sack-loin-cloth getup but with the addition of Regulus Black’s locket hanging from his neck, swinging softly like a pendulum from the house-elf’s recent Apparition.

“Master has returned,” the stooped and gnarled creature before him said, giving him a wily look.

“Yes, but unfortunately only for a short while again.  I’ll be needing provisions for a week - I’m going away...on...business...a business holiday.  Can you manage that?  Please?”  Harry waited for Kreacher to take action.  When the house elf continued to stare at him, unmoving, Harry began to feel both a wee bit agitated and anxious.  “Kreacher, did you hear me?”

HP&THBP 1.6180339887... Ch. 1

Okay... here' goes!!!

Chapter One of my fanfiction, titled HP&THBP 1.6180339887... Since I'm extremely attached to my formatting, please take a look at my original "manuscript" here. (I'll update this with a link to it on ff.net once it's up there as well{if I go that route} - I went that route: ff.net Chapter 1).

Summary: Two years after the Final Battle, Harry Potter receives an unexpected and rather unwanted letter amidst his already tumultuous life. He embarks upon a new quest, this time an internal and deeply interpersonal one as he blazes a trail down what's left of Severus Snape's memory lane. Is he truly ready for his parents', or more accurately, Severus Snape's history?

Chapter 1 - Harry Receives a Letter

HARRY Potter was not quite sure what to do after he read the letter in his hands. He felt rather nauseous, in fact. He remembered a time, some eight odd years or so ago (Merlin's bollocks, had it been that long already?) when he had stood just like this - hand-scrawled letter in hand, feeling outright sick to the stomach with this warm, sloshing anticipation. However this letter was from a different Headmaster of Hogwarts than the one who had sent him his letter as an eleven-year-old boy. Very different indeed.

Harry's stomach somersaulted sickeningly.

Severus Snape had been dead for nearly two years and yet here Harry was receiving a letter from the old bat.

As if it were yesterday, he thought.

He shuddered, but decided to read the letter over again, just to make sure he had read it correctly, just to make sure it was real.

Severus Snape & Lily Evans, fanart

A kawaii little piece of fanart.  Harry Potter - verse; Severus Snape and Lily Evans as teens smoking fags and dressed in muggle clothes.  I suppose you could say this is from my fanfic.  This is an old drawing (circa 2011 or so!) - I think I just wanted an excuse to talk about my fanfiction haha.

I ought to post the first chapter...

Doodles

Just some silly Snape doodles 'cause my brain is preoccupied with this silly fanfic I'm apparently writing.


Ickle Snape


Snape-o's lovely face.

:P