#elisewrites

Thank you @maesterchill for tagging me! I have several WIPs to pick from, for once, but only one I can share atm 👀

This one is from a Dralbus fic. I've only written one chapter so far, but it's already 6k+ long lol. Draco and Albus are both morally grey arseholes in this fic and I'm having so much fun with their characterizations!

Mr Malfoy hasn’t moved an inch. He’s standing close enough that Albus can feel the heat of his body through their thin layers of clothes. Albus never noticed before how tall Scorpius’s dad is. He has to crane his neck to meet Mr Malfoy’s eyes.

“I should go back,” Albus says. His voice sounds all squeaky again. He wishes the earth would open up and swallow him whole.

“Should you?” Mr Malfoy gives him that small, gut-melting smile again. “Your parents have already forgotten about us.”

The way Mr Malfoy says ‘us’… Albus’s heart lurches against his ribs. Hard.

He swallows.

“I’m not sure Scorpius would like me to be here,” he whispers.

Something sly and dangerous crosses Mr Malfoy’s eyes.

“Really? How do you know what Scorpius would or wouldn’t like?”

“He’s my best friend. I think I know.”

“I believe you renounced your ‘best friend’ privileges when you broke my son’s heart,” says Mr Malfoy, quietly.

Ah, yes. Albus has wondered how much had transpired from his last conversation with Scorpius.

“It’s not my fault he has feelings for me,” Albus mumbles. “I don’t love him that way—”

“Yes,” drawls Mr Malfoy. “Clearly, you haven’t yet learnt what true love really is.”

“Because you have?” Albus retorts, then clamps his mouth shut, horrified by his insolence.

But Mr Malfoy just shakes his head, as if what Albus said was amusing rather than rude.

“I know a thing or two,” he says. “More than my son.” His eyes flick up and down Albus’s body. Albus forgets to breathe. “More than you.”

He backs away and starts climbing the stairs. Fists clenched, breathing heavily, Albus stares at Mr Malfoy’s lithe, graceful body, the strong shoulders pulling his shirt taut, the tailored trousers flattering the curve of his arse.

Until Mr Malfoy stops and turns to look at him over his shoulder.

“Are you coming?” he asks.

Albus’s mouth drops open. His heart drums against his ribs.

“Mr M-Malfoy. Are you trying to seduce me?”

He regrets his words as soon as they leave his mouth. Not because what he said isn’t true, but because his flustered stammering makes him sound like a naive, virginal ingenue.

Which Albus is.

Naive, despite all his brash posturing.

And.

And a virgin.

A hot thrill zings down his spine.

Mr Malfoy’s sliver of a smile turns into a sharp, wolfish grin. “Why don’t you come upstairs and find out, Albus?”

aaaah thank you anon! i could have waited a little more but i also couldn't wait to start posting Passing Stranger (as a little treat to myself - there are few things i love more than posting a chaptered fic and getting to interact with people reading along!)

plus, you know what they say: begin as you mean to go on, etc. my resolution for 2024 is to be more relaxed and have more fun with my writing and fandom life in general.

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Thank you for the tag @magpiefngrl!

I'm normally a one-WIP-only writer, so it says a lot about my writing year that I have more than one WIP in my folders. Too many plot bunnies, too little time! BUT I've set an ETA for each, so at least I know in which order I'm going to tackle them... that is, until the next plot bunny takes over my brain.

Drarry:

[To A Stranger] (memory loss fic with musician Draco and a rapidly-obsessed Harry) -> the WIP I'm currently writing/editing/squeeing about with a few early readers! ETA: coming soon!! early January if all goes according to plan! I'm very excited to be posting a new fic soon!

[The Holiday] (christmassy fic inspired by the titular movie) -> ETA: as I can't picture myself writing a Christmas fic in March, this one is probably going to stay in my phone notes for a while.

Dralbus:

[Dralbus fic] (inspired by the movie The Graduate. in which older, morally grey Draco seduces his son's best friend. angsty and sexy, sexy, sexy) -> probably the next fic I'll finish, as I already have the first chapter written (and I miss writing a fic that's 50% smut lol). ETA: spring of 2024

Original:

[Title redacted] (a New Adult fantasy novel) -> this is both exciting and frustrating because I'm almost done with the final draft of this WIP, BUT I have 25k left to write and I can't seem to find the energy. So I'm writing fic instead. ETA: February/March 2024

[queer romance] (with a bi, nb protagonist) -> I have a Gdoc folder with a collection of lines of dialogue. It's all vibes, no plot for now. ETA: when I'm done with all the WIPs above

Hello friends! I’m in the process of writing the last chapters of a drarry fic and would love a little bit of cheer/encouragement while I edit, if anyone’s interested in an early read!

(I haven’t posted fic in over a year, this one is probably going to be quite different from my previous fics I think, so, yeah. I’m nervous!)

It’s Drarry, rated E, about 50k, no warnings, with memory loss, Drarry in their early twenties, depressed Harry, musician Draco, Draco in the Muggle world tags.

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And in the middle of it, one knee on the tiles, Harry is helping Scorpius button his jacket.

Draco’s breath catches. Scorpius is letting Harry help him with his clothes. Besides Draco and Ernestina — and Balzac, of course — Scorpius never lets anyone approach him or help him, let alone touch him. Not even Greg was able to do that. And here Harry is, buttoning his son’s overcoat and chatting away with him as if nothing of significance is happening.

“So school is going okay?” he hears Harry say. Despite the fact that he and Scorpius are alone in the foyer, he keeps his voice lower than usual, as if he’s sharing a secret. Draco realises Harry often talks to Scorpius like that — not quite whispering, but not quite in the same tone that he uses with everyone else — and wonders if that particular habit is what gets Scorpius’ attention. Draco pricks up his ears and listens. “The mean kids are leaving you alone?”

---

and then skipping ahead just a few paragraphs:

---

“I should learn how to run,” Scorpius muses practically, and Harry laughs. It’s such a pure, unbridled sound, echoing in the marble foyer, up the grand wrought-iron staircase. That’s when Draco realises — Harry is every shade of perfect, everything he’s always wished for the person who’d share his life to be, and Draco’s supremely fucked because… he knows Harry’s not perfect. At all. He still doesn’t know the precise truth about Harry, why he’s really here, the damage he’s no doubt bound to make. Despite her best efforts, Ernestina hasn’t been able to intercept any potential owls coming for Harry, nor copy the memos they delivered — almost as if Harry never received any post. As if he was doing his level best for his correspondence never to be caught. Ever.

omg. thank you @arminaa8 for the DVD commentary ask! I love that you picked this passage of Burn The Witch for it!

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I remember struggling with the structure of Chapter 7 (where this passage is from). That chapter was an important turning point: I needed to show Harry and Draco's feelings grow from friendship to love while Harry still protected his true identity and Draco still guarded his heart.

But how to show that happening in a way that made sense with regards to their characterizations?

Then I realized that Scorpius was the key. He'd forced both Harry and Draco to break down their walls and face their feelings for each other from the get go (demanding they call each other by their first names, for example). Harry made a genuine effort to connect with Scorpius from the start - not to please Draco, but because he cared and respected Scoprius as a person - and Draco, for whom Scorpius is the most important person in the world, couldn't not fall in love wit Harry when witnessing that.

So this scene is, essentially, the moment Draco realizes he's in love with Harry. It's particularly meaningful as Draco is demisexual, and he has so little experience with being in love/attracted to someone, and being in love with Harry will make everything so much more complicated. I love that the revelation of Draco's feelings doesn't ease the tension between them - quite the opposite, as it will make their situation all the more fraught.

This passage encompasses everything I loved in BTW: moments of quiet, easy domesticity with an undercurrent of loaded meaning; an autistic child (Scorpius) getting the understanding and respect he deserves; descriptions of Draco's house (which is almost a full-fledged character in the fic); Draco's cold, guarded exterior vs. his soft, vulnerable interior; and, of course, how inevitable it was that he'd fall in forever love with Harry.

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thank you my lovely!

3. Do you write fics from start or finish, or jump around?

I write every fic in chonological order (I can't even think of an exception to this rule!). Mostly because I tend to discover the story as I write it (though I often have the main beats in mind when I start, or at least a few key scenes I want to include). And... to be honest, if I started with all the scenes I'm dying to write, I'd be left with the filler/less exciting scenes at the end 🙈 I'm not sure I'd ever find the motivation to finish anything if I wrote all my favorite scenes first 😅

12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

Not really! I have favorite tropes for which I've already written several fics (past relationship/getting back together, Draco in the Muggle world, UST/pining my beloved!) and tropes that don't inspire me (creature fic, fake dating, de-aging, casefic, spy/double agent) until they do! Burn The Witch is a good example of a fic full of tropes I'd never thought I'd write (and will probably never write again) before that story popped into my mind. The fic I'm currently writing is also based on a trope I don't particularly seek out as a reader, and never wanted to write before (it's memory loss!) I like the idea of going into a trope without having a lot of other examples in mind. And I love how inspiration works, and how sometimes stories based on tropes we'd never have thought about spring fully-formed in our minds, begging to be written.

21. What is the one fic that got away?

For me it's the longer, plottier fics that have the potential to get away - or at least end up very far away from the initial idea!

A fic like Heart of Silver/Heart of Gold (demon Draco falling in love with Harry during 8th Year!!) already had a fairly wild premise, but working with the 25 days prompts helped me build many details I loved and would have never come up with on my own (Draco's demon mentor and his pet Niffler were so fun to write!).

Burn The Witch was supposed to be a much darker spy fic with hitman Harry and mob boss Draco. I couldn't write that idea right away due to other fest commitments, so it marinated in my head for several months until it began to look... more like what it became eventually. What was great about waiting to write it was that I could work out the kinks of the story and daydream about a lot of details that ended up being important components of the fic: demisexual Draco, Scorpius and his piano, their house, their dog, the recurring theme of scars, and the pacing of the case and spy reveal (which is a scene I'm still really happy with).

The only thing I knew about Fire Meet Gasoline before I began writing it was that it would be a fake dating fic, and that it would include the image of Draco stepping out on the World Cup Quidditch pitch like he owned the place. Everything else came up as I was writing it... I remember taking a step back after the first chapter and realizing it would probably end up being a 60-70k fic... and it did 😅 don't we love when that happens??

The only "longer" fic that is very close to the idea I had for it is Paper Rings. I knew I wanted to write a getting back together fic blending an 8th Year timeline and an Epilogue Compliant timeline. I had all the main beats and the epilogue in mind before starting it. And though writing it also came with its share of sweat, tears, and self-doubt, I was (still am) very pleased with the result.

I was tagged forever ago by @wolfpants and @kbrick to share a snippet of something I'm working on - thanks, friends! (You can read theirs here and here!). Here are a few lines from a fic I've been writing on and off for two months. I kinda love it, but it's been hard staying motivated lately, and I'm hoping to pick this up again more actively in the new year!

cw: memory loss, mentions of death of past minor characters (incl. suicide), smoking, drinking

Malfoy scrutinised him for a moment, then tilted his head towards Harry. “Tell me another story.” Harry turned his head. Malfoy’s face was close enough that their noses almost brushed. Harry’s breath stuck in his lungs. “Er,” said Harry. “If you ask me like that…” “You said you weren’t my friend back then. So who were my friends?” Malfoy’s friends. Oh, god. Who could Harry even start with? Goyle, who’d bullied Harry and his friends for years, and had killed himself in Azkaban two years after the war? Crabbe, who’d died in the Fiendfyre? Pansy, who’d demanded Harry be given away to Voldemort in front of their entire school? Harry decided to go with the less fraught of the three. For all he knew, Pansy Parkinson was, at least, still alive. “Your best friend was called Pansy,” he said. “What was she like?” “Black hair cut in a bob. Short. Pretty. A rather fearsome mouth.” Malfoy smiled, as if recollecting her. “Yeah?” “Oh, yeah. She was a total bitch, and if anyone so much as touched a hair of your head, she went after them like a vengeful… er, snake.” “Did she go after you?” “More than once. Sometimes I even deserved it.” “Good girl,” Malfoy said with a fond sigh. “Pansy… Pan-sy. What a pretty name. God, she sounds wonderful. I wish I remembered her.” Harry tried to imagine his own life, if he had no memories of Ron and Hermione. The thought made him unspeakably sad. “She loved you,” he said to assuage his wistfulness. “She was your girlfriend at some point.” Malfoy snorted. “Unlikely.” “Why not?” Malfoy smirked at Harry, a delighted glint in his eye. “You’re kidding, right?”