#callingdrarry

Pairing: Draco Malfoy/ Harry Potter Rating: Explicit WC: 12 K Summary: Draco has long resigned himself to pining after Harry... that is until an invite on the annual Ministry holiday gives him a chance to change everything.

Thank you for the asks!! <3

#12. Who is your favourite character to write? I think it’s got to be Harry Potter. I love the challenge of writing Snape and it’s so fun to write him, but I always come back to Harry. I have a bunch of stories I still want to tell about him and I have more developed headcanons about him than any other Potterverse character. I just love getting to write Harry, even if he’s not the POV character, I love thinking about how he looks through the eyes of other characters too. I just have a lot of Harry feels and I NEED TO WRITE ABOUT THEM :D

#13. Who is your least favourite character to write? Not a ‘character’ but I find Harry Styles really difficult to write. I never feel like I get his voice quite right. He is very successful at creating a public image which has some ambiguity and, remarkably for someone so high-profile, he manages to keep a lot of himself quite private. I have a couple of ships I love where Harry is involved, but I don’t write them as much because I always wibble over how I’ve characterised my fictional Harry, and whether he reads like the Harry people know and love.

Greg Goyle/Neville Longbottom - 18th December in the HP Secret Santa(Can you believe that since this ask was sent the HP fandom has already moved on from Baker Greg + Hench Neville to Grudders? Hope you don’t mind that I’m late to the party @callingdrarry and @aibidil - thanks for the ask @magpiefngrl!)

It had been a crap day. During the lunch rush an umbrella had smashed one of the display stands, sending a shower of broken glass into the Teeny-Trifles Greg had got up at 4am to finish. Then the shop was dead for the rest of the day, meaning that most of the stock had to be chucked.

And now, after a faulty Floo connection had rerouted him to the Willoughby Wasps changing rooms (sadly empty), Greg had arrived home to find that his flat was on fire. Or at least the oven was on fire which — for a baker — was kind of the most important part of the flat.

Spelling away the clouds of black smoke and shooting an Aguamenti at whatever was burning on the hob, Greg opened the oven door to find a tray of charcoal. Right. On the table was a sticky jar of mincemeat, sticky bottle of whiskey, a sticky, half-melted pat of butter, and an empty tub of protein powder.

All signs pointed to one culprit and, trying to smooth the smile off his face, Greg made for the bedroom where Neville was sprawled on the bed, still in his gym gear. A puddle of drool was collecting on Greg’s pillow.

Kicking off his boots, Greg rolled Neville onto his side and snuggled in behind him. It was a bit of a tight fit, between Greg’s baking and Neville’s weight-training both of them were packing more muscles and curves than a single bed was designed to handle.

Neville was starting to make noises about Greg getting a bigger bed, about the two of them getting a bigger flat. Together. It was a conversation that Greg kept ducking out of, insisting that until Neville could do more than heat up pot noodles and unwrap protein bars he was not going anywhere near Greg’s Mauviel Cookware.

Now, nuzzling into the soft, slightly damp hair at the nape of Neville’s neck, Greg found himself reconsidering this stance.

“Greg?” Neville jerked awake, flailing slightly when he found himself pinned under Greg’s hefty forearm. “Wazzat, what’s that smell? Is something burning?”

“Mmm? S’nothing. Next door burnt their dinner,” Greg lied, tugging Neville even closer. “Heard them ordering a take away.”

“Oh, s’shame,” Neville yawned, burrowing back into the pillow. “Thought it might be the mince pies.”

“They’re fine, love. Sorry I ate them all, was hungry after work.”

“S’alright,’ Neville yawned again, drifting back to sleep. “Made ‘em for you, show I can cook.”

“Yeah, suppose you can.”

“So can we move in together then?”

I wrote a ficlet today about the chicken dance. Wtf. Better than lice, I guess.

The Potter-Malfoy children learn a new dance, and they can't wait to show Lucius and Narcissa.

This is for @callingdrarry, who created the verse. Read it here or on ao3. 

“Can I please bring a video camera?” Harry asked with equal parts excitement and horror.

Draco, who was sitting in an armchair with his hand covering his face in resignation, sighed. “No you may not. This is going to be bad enough without you intentionally prodding them.”

James and Scorpia, dressed in their Fancy Manor Clothes, shouted, “NA NA NA NA NA NA NA!” with linked elbows and spun each other around in circles. Again.

*

When the Potter-Malfoy family tumbled out of the Floo into the Manor (and they did tumble: James ended up in some sort of somersault and Scorpia pulled Harry down into a tangle of limbs on the marble floor—only Draco managed to stay upright, his family strewn around him as if in a metaphor for the state of his Malfoyness), they met a disapproving house-elf.

“Master Lucius and Mistress Narcissa is waiting in the guest drawing room,” Tipsy announced.

“Thank you, Tipsy,” Draco said, taking a breath and arranging his face into its Manor-worthy facade.

The elf disappeared, and Draco immediately held up a hand at Harry, who had a crinkle at his eyes that indicated imminent joking. “Don’t,” Draco warned.

“Don’t what?” Harry asked innocently.

“Don’t make a joke about how you wish you were Tipsy.”

“I would never!” Harry objected with a fair bit of hyperbole, as he made that joke every single time they visited.

“It’s culturally insensitive,” Draco claimed, reaching out a hand to try to keep James in one place as he raised a teasing eyebrow at Harry. “You mustn’t let another species’ naming practices be the butt of your joke. I’m going to tell Hermione.”

“House-elves aren’t the butt of the joke!” Harry said, reaching his hands under Scorpia’s armpits and hoisting her up onto his hip. “The fact that your parents drive me to drink is the joke!”

Draco pressed his lips together, trying and failing to hide a smile. “Alright, Potter-Malfoys. Is everyone ready?”

“Yesssss!” James and Scorpia hollered.

“Is everyone on their very best Manor behaviour?” Draco asked, his voice becoming imperceptibly posher each time he opened his mouth since stepping through the grate.

“You BETCHA!” James yelled, reaching up to high-five his sister’s foot.

*

“Grandad! We learned a new dance!” James cried with gusto ten minutes later.

“Indeed?” Lucius asked with a bored drawl. “That’s lovely. Draco, have you taken them to see Madame Wexcombe?”

“I say,” Narcissa added, “if they’ve learned the Wizard’s Waltz I’d be tempted to host a small ball.” She turned to Lucius. “Remember how darling Draco looked dancing when he was small? Children, would you be so kind as to give us a performance?”

James smiled and Scorpia began bouncing up and down excitedly. “Yes!” Scorpia enthused. “We’ve been waiting all day, Grammamama.” Scorpia’s little mouth tripped over the syllables.

“It’s ‘Grandmother,’” Narcissa corrected with a smile that teetered on the line between fond indulgence and impatient vexation. “Come here, darling,” she said, holding hand out to Scorpia.

Scorpia looked at her dads, unsure what to do. Harry nodded his most encouraging smile, which, at the moment, came off as quite manic. Reassured nevertheless, Scorpia walked to Narcissa and allowed her grandmother to cast Charms at her hair, bringing the strands off of her face and into a tight chignon. Scorpia winced, but didn’t complain, and Harry squeezed Draco’s hand so hard that his fingernails left marks. Had it gone on one moment longer, one suspects, Harry would have exploded and stopped the madness either with screaming or with magic.

As it was, Narcissa finished her officious hair Charms, brushed down Scorpia’s itchy frills, and patted her back towards her brother. Narcissa looked briefly at James’s hair, but seemed to give that up as a bad job before she’d even begun.

“Can I make the piano play the song?” James asked, eyeing the grand piano that always stood, unused and dustless, in the corner of the large room.

Lucius raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You may try,” he drawled.

James, at seven, was much too young for a wand, or to have much control over his magic. And yet. He scrunched up his eyes, his little cheeks red and still slightly chubby as he stood on the threshold of older childhood, and suddenly the piano began to play, like one of those Muggle player pianos.

Narcissa’s face burst into a delighted smile for one brief moment, until she heard what the piano was playing, at first simply a kind of strange, insistent beat, and then her jaw fell in horror.

The children had their hands in front of them in the air, opening and closing their fingers like little mouths. Then they tucked their hands under their armpits and flapped their elbows.

“What in the name of Salazar’s spirit do they think they are doing?” Lucius seethed.

“It’s called the Chicken Dance,” Harry offered happily, watching his in-laws greedily as if this was the best programme on telly.

The children wagged their bottoms with exaggerated vigor, crouching down toward the marble floor, then sprang up and clapped their hands, all the while singing, “NA NA NA NA NA NA NA” at the top of their lungs.

Lucius had to avert his eyes.

Draco faked a sneeze in order to hide the laughter that he couldn’t keep from his face.

*

For the rest of the visit, Lucius and Narcissa were both abnormally quiet as they contemplated the depth of their descent into ignominy. They did manage to muster their society death glares for Harry.

Draco would try to explain that Harry was not responsible for the Chicken Dance blunder—that, in fact, Draco himself was the one who made the grave and irreversible error to introduce the dance to his children. It had been a low moment—before toothbrushing, like many low moments of parenthood—and Draco had grasped for anything to bring the children back from the brink of chaos and destruction. It was unfortunate that, in his desperation, he thought of the ridiculous dance he’d seen at Dudley and Greg’s non-wedding. Since then, the children hadn’t stopped doing the blasted dance for two weeks, and it was all his fault. But when he would try to explain this to his parents—because he may have been an arsehole but he was not a feed-the-spouse-to-his-horrible-parents type of arsehole—they wouldn’t believe him.

“It was worth it,” Harry would say later, once the children were asleep and their poultry-themed festivities were confined to dreams. “I only wish you’d let me bring a video camera. You have to buy me a Pensieve now.”

Ooo thank you!!! (and thank you for allowing me to distract myself from housework ha ha!!)

18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

I do. I have a really old Pirate/Magic Larry on AO3 which taught me that I cannot write/post a WIP because of the way I write. I need to get the whole thing done because often (at least in the longer things), what I’ve written later will contradict something earlier and it has to be edited!!  I’ve got a LOT of WIPs on the computer as well. In part, I *love* to start things, but having the stamina, especially for the long things, is tougher for me. I was describing what I wanted to do with (We’ll Call This Fixer-Upper) Home to @noeeon and @femmequixotic and they were like “Oh honey, that’s not a 10K fic, that’s a 50K fic” and I was like oooooo shit. They were right, of course. They always are. I have a lot of Larry in flight - some of which got derailed when my dad was dying (as did all of my writing) and then I’ve struggled enormously with figuring out my place in that fandom. I just started a Drarry last night for @allwaswell16 , and I’ve got a ton of other things in flight, including 4 or 5 Drarry. So I prefer to think I’ve “put them on hold” because I’m a psychologist and like to reframe. :-D

19) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?

Oooo....I would really love to continue to explore Drarry in Magical San Francisco from Come Rain or Come Shine (I'm With You Always) [and gosh do I love parentheses in my titles - what’s up with that??] That story is very much a getting together story (the same story is told from both Harry and Draco’s POVs so you get to see how similarly and differently they experienced the same events), and I think it would be cool to see what happens for them during second semester as they get to know each other in this new way, but I feel anxious about the idea of “having” to do it from both their POVs (and literally no one has asked that but me). In Slide Over Here (Give Me a Moment), which was my challenge to myself to write bed sharing (success!) and PWP (not a success!), I think it would be really interesting to see more of Draco’s adventures as the world’s leading appraiser and expert in historical sexual artifacts, not to mention Harry in private security.  Also, if I can find the right inspiration gifs, I might have to continue Beautiful Madness.