Aixelathefool

I've never had a social media before, so...this is new for me, this whole speaking out into the void.

I've been writing Harry Potter fanfictions (drarry) for a bit, though. My fics are more introspective/character-driven.

My AO3 and Wattpad accounts. Go check them out if that's your cup of tea!

Otherwise, more about me:

I'm bilingual, so I'm fluent in French and English (oui, oui, watch mon frenglish)

I study in cinema

I'm ace and demiromantic

I have ADHD

The cover for my childhood Drarry fic A Little Seashell and a Small Captain

G, WIP

G, WIP

Summary: Harry was a lonely eight-year-old boy. When summer came around, the Dursleys left him with Mrs. Figg while they went on a trip. Harry expected a week of utter boredom, but then, he met a blond boy who would change everything. Excerpt:

She was upset, surely. He went out without her permission, coming back like a wet dog, making a mess everywhere. And now, he’d have to take a cold bath and she’ll call the Dursleys, and Aunt Petunia will be so, so upset that he’d made trouble. And then…then, it was the cupboard, maybe; it was his Uncle’s belt, maybe; it was like usual but worse, certainly.

So he shook, even if somewhat dry and warmed by the house. He trembled, and his eyes glistened and prickled. 

Harry followed her into the small bathroom, but kept a good distance between them. She turned the knobs, and water started to fill the tub. She gave a little groan as she stood back up. 

He darted his eyes down, aware of her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and it came out all wrong, all cracked up, and he hated himself. She would just get more angry if he starts acting all pathetic. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

She didn’t say anything for a while, and he became more and more tense. Until finally, “you should undress, dear, you’ll get a cold at this rate.” 

And so, he did, and she turned off the tap and left the room. 

Harry wanted to go after her, and plead for forgiveness—even if he knew he was unforgivable, really—and it would just make things so much worse. But what else could he do, when all he wanted was to stop the inevitable from happening? to not have anyone be angry at him? Instead, he stepped into the warm water, curled up real tight, and cried. 

But silently, with just small sniffles and a chest that seem to spasm with each muffled sob. 

The cover for my collection of Drarry one-shots A Gentler Hand

To refine and redefine

The definition that layers

My emotions and self,

Or is there a difference?

The monotonous homology 

Of days drifted by,

Liquified into weeks,

Mummified in memories.

Am I floating along

Or did I melt, unaware

Moving through the water

Is it all me, river and time?

We did it!! Still alive and thriving (or surviving, y'know)

G, WIP

Summary: Harry was a lonely eight-year-old boy. When summer came around, the Dursleys left him with Mrs. Figg while they went on a trip. Harry expected a week of utter boredom, but then, he met a blond boy who would change everything. Excerpt:

“You’re late,” that high-pitched, pompous voice said. Standing next to him, Harry felt small, even if there was at most a few centimeters difference. 

“Um.” He frowned, holding the straps of his bag. Before he could properly answer, the boy grabbed his arm and dragged him forward. 

Right passed Harry’s gentle tree, to the one they had met yesterday, with the big roots and grass ground. 

“I have this for you,” Draco continued, sitting between the roots and reaching there for a bundle. He unwrapped it, showing the little brown bear inside. “Come on, sit.” 

Harry hurried to follow, and once he’s sitting down on the grass, Draco handed him the teddy bear. 

“He’s better than yours.” Draco once again watched Harry closely for his reaction. “Do you like him?” 

Harry held him careful, wishing he had properly washed his hands before. They felt dirty to something that was clearly cared for. “Yes,” he whispered tightly, the gentle brown fur soft under the rough finger tips of the eight-year-old. 

The bear was nice in a way that hurt, like most nice things he could never have. 

Still, Draco seemed disappointed by his mild answer. He looked down, vivid eyes curtained suddenly. Thin lower lip rising, tightening, almost in a suppressed pout. 

Harry didn’t understand. 

Had he done something wrong? Was the boy upset with him now? The bear seemed even heavier in his palms and he tried to hand it back. 

But that only made Draco more agitated. “It’s a gift, you nitwit, you don’t give it back.” He pushed it back against Harry. “If you don’t like it, just say so.” 

Eyes wide once more, his shoulders dropped as his gaze dropped properly to the gift. He had a little bowtie, and looked new, or at least, clean and unbroken. “You want me to keep it?” He took a quick breath, shaky and a bit uneven. “Why?” 

At that, it was Draco’s turn to look confused. “You don’t question gifts, Harry,” he said, rolling his eyes, exasperated, but softer. He scooted closer until their knees almost touched. “You say ‘thank you’.” 

You sketch it,

Then erase and redraw,

You trace the new,

And colour the old.

You find and discover

The picture beneath your fingers,

And the blankness

Soon explodes with pigments. 

Paint over paint,

Adding layers to the canvas,

Scrap the mistakes

Or go around them.

You form and you twist,

You hint with lines,

The depth that hides

Somewhere under your pencil.

Not a masterpiece,

But good enough for this,

For your own eyes,

Anyone else have internet addiction? 

I just read that a common comorbidity of ADHD is, in fact, the bane of my existence, the nightmare of my days, the hellhound that follows me everywhere like a little pest: internet addiction. I was given a phone at the age of seven, and I haven’t let go since. 

I don’t know how to moderate my screen usage. It’s all or nothing for me: a constant cycle of putting it down, doing great, then getting absorbed in something on it, losing track of time, and spiraling back down to my former usage. The number of things, tricks, challenges, habits I’ve tried to lower my screentime is ridiculous: 

A specific time in the day when I can use it 

A limit for the amount of time I allow myself 

A dopamine detox 

Blocking my phone in a box for a specific amount of time

Blocking specific functions (like shorts on YT)

Using minimalist phone launcher 

Making schedules where I plan screentime in advance

Making a box of cards with offline activities on them (to make it a 'game', so more engaging)

Literally going to an addiction center (which wasn’t really equipped to deal with my type of screen dependence, which wasn’t social media addiction or video games addiction, but passive content consumption)

I know it’s making my ADHD symptoms worse, which makes my life worse. Whenever I manage to get off, I do love it. I do things, I take care of myself, I enjoy my hobbies, and I enjoy...life; I notice my surroundings, I think, I feel, I live.

Yet…like an addict, I always come back for another shot.

To quote myself:

"My lifetime is both too short and too long: there’s never enough minutes to properly fulfill my need, and there’s always too many minutes to try to fill ‘properly’."

The real solution, I’m afraid, is also the problem: you need to find things you enjoy outside your phone. To get off your phone, ladies and gents (and nonbinary folks, happy pride) you need to get off your phone. Brilliant. 

Though, I will say this: it’s not hopeless. And I speak as a pretty hopeless case. I may not be “cured”, but I slowly but surely manage to have more good days than before, even if it’s still mostly bad days. And that counts for something.

It’s always been the sky

It’s the emptiness in the vastness of life

The wind, flickering across a patch of dry skin

Cold, cool, or maybe warm 

It’s always been more than blue

More than crystalized water droplets

Holding up these heavy clouds

In the palm of omnipresence

It’s always been you 

These little eyes tracing the fluffs

On the shirt of another day 

Holding out their arms

You’ve always known how to hold my dreams

It’s a little boy

That lost his pants

“Oscar, where have they gone?”

The little boy laughed

Not embarrassed

He didn’t noticed

While he played in the sea

He tasted the salt and grasped a tireless wave

Riding the crystalized summer glaze

A little boy who lost his pants

But isn’t scared of all their gaze

He didn’t noticed

All the gawking and shame

He played in the sea

With a laugh, not embarrassed

I was standing behind the counter of Super Corndale, the convenient store closest to my apartment, counting lottery tickets. A fan was vrooming behind me, while the white noise of the fridge at the back of the store buzzed along. 

It was the perfect, aimless moment to cushion my musings, as there was nothing to think about in here. My blinks were slow and sleepy, and the light outside was still all shy, barely daring to peak through the clouds. 

It dawned on me gently; a murmur so tender, it made me shiver, as if caressed by the idea. I could just…stop trying. 

“Morning, Evelyn!” The voice jiggled as the door of the store opened. I looked up, as Evelyn: the cashier, the nametag. 

And he was the old man who passed by enough to pretend familiarity with me. A subtle eye with an obnoxious voice, big veiny hands with chubby fingers, and a taste for cheap coffee and sunflower seeds; that’s all he was to me. 

I wished he wasn’t there from the moment he walked in. I wished I wasn’t there, with him, in him; in his eyes, his ears, his thoughts, his mind. Get me out. 

“Morning,” I mumbled back, ducking my head to finish counting the lottery tickets. I put them back under the glass, sliding the drawer shut. 

The coffee machine started as he pressed the button with his chubby finger. “What’s with the long face?” he asked.

My lips were already forming a cheery ‘nothing’ when I remembered my earlier soft thought. 

There were rules in life. Relational, societal...moral responsibilities I acquired from the moment I was born. These terms weren’t mean, on the contrary; they were the wheels that allowed people to move toward personal fulfillment with the least amount of friction with others. 

But I don’t need to abide by them. I can just stop trying. And then, what would happen? 

As the silence stretched, I didn’t answer. The vroom of the fan filled in for me, along with the buzz of the fridge, and the pounding of the old man’s presence. I think of what he’s probably thinking: she didn’t hear me. But he didn’t repeat himself. 

Maybe he was feeling embarrassed or awkward now. But I didn’t check, I didn’t try to interpret the light and colours that pushed into my eyes, to guess from my blurry impressions what was going on inside that old man’s body. 

I already had all that was going on inside my own body to process. And here, it was much clearer, much safer, much nicer. 

I was feeling awkward too, a reflex kicking in. I was feeling hesitant; was I being mean by not answering? 

The thought was interesting, and I felt content. I liked thinking. I loved being inside myself. 

Perhaps that made me selfish, self-centered…but wasn’t that wonderful? Society was so complex, and the way I fitted inside it was an endless, comfortable scenery I could observe for hours. 

That Saturday morning, I decided to stop existing out there. My hands still scanned his purchases, but I didn’t bother pulling myself to the front of my mind and interacting with him; with the world.

There’s this conversation I often see in ADHD spaces between accountability and disability.

In recent years, there’s been more of an effort to acknowledge that ADHD is a disability, that its symptoms can be disabling, that our quality and longevity of life can be heavily impacted by our disorder, that we should get treatment and accommodations. Yet, at the same time, there’s always the question of accountability that comes up—the responsibility we need to take for our actions and life. And I think it's especially prominent when we’re talking about ADHD because many of the symptoms of our disorder are considered…immoral. Bad, wrong. 

We’re disrespectful for wasting other people’s time, or promising things we don’t deliver, or forgetting important details, or overreacting, or not paying attention—and the worst is that, it's true. It is disrespectful, inconsiderate, careless, selfish. Our actions impact others negatively, and nobody owes us their trust, patience, understanding, or love.

But it's also genuine symptoms of our disorder; it's the consequences of time blindness, activation difficulties, attention regulation, emotional impulsivity, executive dysfunction. We don’t do these things to be disrespectful, most of us DO care, A LOT. And, though our difficulties tend to bleed out onto others, we’re still the ones that suffer through them the most. The dirty dishes—annoying or disgusting as they are—tend to be nothing next to the enormous amount of paralysis, shame, guilt, and stress those dirty dishes caused us. 

Don’t get me wrong: we shouldn’t sit on our hands and just say ‘it is what it is’, I have ADHD, I’m just like that, deal with it or get out. We should always work to find new ways to cope and work through our symptoms. Still, that shouldn’t be the end of the discussion.

If you have ADHD, you’ll always have ADHD. I can’t emphasize this enough: you’ll never be neurotypical. No amount of vitamins, exercise, sleep, stimulants, alarms, reminders, notes, schedules, lists will make you not have ADHD anymore. You can get better, you can know yourself better, you can deal with yourself better, but you’ll never be neurotypical—and pretending you are will exhaust you. 

Additionally, learning how to deal with ADHD is a process, one that takes time and that never truly ends. It’s trial and error, it’s a trick that works for a while and then stops working, it’s starting over, again and again. It’s inconsistency; being on top of the world until something goes wrong, and spiraling down all over again. That’s not carelessness, or selfishness, or laziness—that’s disability. And let's be honest: we often don't get nearly enough support or accommodations, making all of this even harder. We're expected to just know how to manage our disorder, all on our own.

Not everyone can live with your disability, and others are lucky enough to be able to choose to walk away from it (from you). Let them. No amount of explanation will make them understand if they just don’t. No amount of apologizing will make you be in the place they need you to be.

Simplify me to my core 

As I sit, a line of sun over my forehead,

Among tiny comforts, material, natural:

A blanket and bird,

A book and breeze.

Summarize my existence. 

(The water rushes, unaware, 

While the pond sits still, 

Not a monument, 

Not a movement,

But sitting, conscious, aware, 

Existing wholly, in itself, 

G, WIP

Summary: Harry was a lonely eight-year-old boy. When summer came around, the Dursleys left him with Mrs. Figg to go on a trip. Harry expected a week of utter boredom, but then, he met a blond boy who would change everything.

This fic explores the dynamic between child-Harry and child-Draco, the way their upbringings would influence the way they act, they speak, they misunderstand, hurt, or care for one-another.

You pull the world up 

With joy, trust, passion 

Ablaze in perception 

A heat that crawls and longs, 

That climbs up and up;

Shining, you guide and light up.

But, beyond the flame;

The sparkles, the helping hand;

What does the boy on fire 

Need from the world?

I take your hand, I stand in your light; 

I am mostly darkness, tiny and contained in myself, 

What makes you enjoy my shadows? 

What could I possibly give 

To a boy on fire? 

Not direction (I am not wind), 

Not fuel (I am not wood), 

Not relief (I am not water). 

All I have is my corner, 

A spot where I don’t need fire, 

For I like my simple darkness, 

The cover for my newly completed Harry Potter (drarry) fanfiction Observing Potter

Summary: Draco looks at Potter across the Great Hall.

G, 6k

(Psst, if you like the cover, come check out my Wattpad and encourage the story!)

The writing style for this fanfiction was actually inspired by none other than Virginia Woolf. I wrote the first chapter while I was still reading my first Woolf book, To the Lighthouse, and I thought it would just be a little one-shot. But than...I read more Virginia Woolf, and I felt so inspired. So, I turn this into a multi-chapter story. Now, after finishing, I've read two more of her books: Mrs. Dalloway and The Waves.