noctisx

Let's start the year off right! The author assures us in the tags "DESPITE THE TITLE IT IS A HEA I SWEAR". Enjoy!!!

This Bitter End by @iamnoctisx (gorgeous cover art by @ectoheart) Pairing: Draco x Hermione Rating: E Length: 13 hours Summary:

When Draco Malfoy entered her life after the war he changed her. He knows her body, has learned every way to touch her, to break her apart until he is the only one capable of putting her back together. He’s ruined her and saved her, and Hermione knows in her bones that she will never be the same. And when Hermione Granger walked away she lingered like an echo. And now it's gone, but not entirely, and that almost makes it worse. His feelings for her are like a dying ember that refuses to smoulder; it clings to each breath of his oxygen as a last resort. A reminder that she is still here. She’s a char on his very soul, and Draco wants to hate her for that, but he can’t muster the energy. Five years later, Hermione works as a palliative healer for St. Mungo’s battling a new magical ailment that destroys one's magical core, while Draco Malfoy works as a researcher for the Department of Mysteries. When their paths cross once more will they be able to place their pride aside and rediscover the romance they once shared? Or will fate have other plans, and their burdens be too much to share?

Specifically, Voldemort dreamt he was in her penthouse, the one she’d brought him to so long ago, back when he was poor and struggling and she was a rich, tantalizing witch far above the station he’d spent his whole life trying to escape.

Or so he’d thought, at the time. 

He relived that day again—not when he was with her, but when he’d gone back, alone, years later. After all her lies had been laid bare and he thought she was out there, hiding in some hole he had yet to flush out. 

The polished marble floors, the decadent chandelier lights. The penthouse was pristine when he’d entered, like no one had ever set foot in it. Not a speck of dust in the air.

In his dream, he did exactly what he’d done then. He ransacked the entire place. In a fit of rage, he destroyed furniture, broke windows, shredded wallpaper. He sent fine china flying across the room, shattering it to pieces.

Every single thing repaired itself. His violence caused no damage there, only trapped him in a vicious cycle of destruction that went exactly nowhere. 

Until the painting. 

The little girl was a cherubic thing, as trapped as he was, reviving the same roses over and over. Killing, saving, killing, saving…

He slashed his wand across the canvas, and that did not repair itself. The girl, ripped in half, stopped moving. The closest rose went still beneath her small, dirty hands, the tiniest bud forever frozen in mid-bloom.

In reality, Voldemort had turned away from it without a backward glance, then proceeded to burn the entire building to the ground. Fire. One of the only ways to completely destroy that cursed place. 

In his dream, he approached the shredded canvas with trepidation. He grazed his fingers over the frayed fabric; he stared at the girl with her budding flower in horror at what he’d done.

He could fix it. He could heal anything. 

Just as he lifted his wand, the girl sprang back to life. Screaming. Her mouth had been torn in half, her lips in two sections moving in sync on separate sides of her ripped apart world, but still she screamed, the most horrific cry Voldemort had ever heard. It was the sound of agony. Her rosebud started to unfurl as her hands dug into the ground, clawing the dirt. 

— Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows

2. "Do Nothing! He's Mine To Finish! He's Mine!"

— Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

3. "I Could Not Touch Him, It Was Old Magic, Something I Should Have Forseen. But, No Matter, No Matter. Things Have Changed. I Can Touch You Now!"

— Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

4. "Come Out, Harry, Come Out And Play. Then It Will Be Quick. It Might Even Be Painless, I Would Not Know, I Have Never Died."

— Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

5. "I Want You To Look At Me When I Kill You."

— Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

6. "Master The Wand, And I Master Potter At Last."

— Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows

7. "Haven't I told you? Killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore. For many months now, my new target has been you."

— Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets

8. "Still, the power of the diary began to scare her. And she tried to dispose of it in the girls' bathroom. And then, who should find it but you? The very person I was most anxious to meet."

— Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

9. "I knew I had to talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my capture of that brainless oaf Hagrid to gain your trust."

— Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

10. "Harry Potter, I now speak directly to you. On this night, you have allowed your friends to die for you, rather than face me yourself. There is no greater dishonor."

"Join me in the Forbidden Forrest... and confront your fate."

"If you do not do this, I shall kill every last man, woman and child who tries to conceal you from me."

— Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2

—

D/Hr Advent began in 2011 on Livejournal as a small celebration of the Draco/Hermione ship and over the years it has become a tradition beloved by thousands of fans across multiple platforms. I'm sure the original founders never expected it to become such a massive phenomenon, and watching it grow has been a special joy for me.

That means it's a little bittersweet to announce that this will be the fifteenth year of the Advent fest, and it will be the last. Fifteen years is a true milestone, and the right moment to close this chapter. I'm grateful to every fan who has been part of this. Writers, artists, reccers, and commenters - you've all made this fest a marvelous experience.

I've looked forward to this every year, and while I'll miss it in the future, it has filled me with such delight that I'll never forget it. Thank you for all the laughs and tears, for your participation and support, and for making every December feel so magical. It's been a treasure.

<3 Musyc

Is it fruit of wisdom, or fruit of eternal life?

Will you accept it, taste it?

Will you surrender?

“What is it, Hermione? You bored?"  "Hm… If I say yes, will you entertain me?"  "Aren’t you coy? Just say you want to be fucked.”

writing “long” paragraphs is not a sign of AI — it’s a common narrative choice many writers make both in fanfiction and in traditionally published novels, and AI stole it from us.

using an em dash is not a sign of AI. it’s a stylistic sentence choice that’s been an option in place of commas and semicolons for a very long time, and AI stole it from us.

long sentence structures are not a sign of AI, but are yet another stylistic choice writers often make to create a cadence and tone that mimics the flow of poetry, and AI stole it from us.

“YA narrative breaks”? i don’t even know what the fuck this means, but i can guarantee that AI stole it from us.

italics are once again a stylistic choice that many writers love to use to create emphasis, and it’s a more stylistically acceptable and traditional form of emphasis than bold or underline text. oh, and just to be extra clear: AI STOLE IT FROM US.

stop creating fandom witch hunts over AI when you know fuck all about what it means to sit and write a story, and to spend hours fiddling with sentence structure and dialogue to get the exact right tone. writers will stop writing out of fear that their work “sounds like AI” — IT DOESNT! AI STOLE FROM US! AI SOUNDS LIKE US! — and after a while, all that will be available on AO3 is shitty AI-generated fanfiction.

because yeah, people are going to continue to use AI to write fanfiction whether you “call them out” or not. but making a laughable thread on X that uses asinine criteria is not going to fix that problem. it will just push the real writers out because people will accuse them of using AI when they haven’t, and they will (rightfully) stop writing for spaces that attack them.

Co-Workers/Forced Proximity Trope reigns supreme!

I love when they roast each other in a professional setting. I want them to hate each other due to own prejudice and biases!

Give me all the recs! :D