#mosewrites

Fic claim: To Vanish Into Something Better 🏡

{35k | E} // A gift for @corvuscrowned as a part of H/D Erised 2021

Summary: Harry Potter thought he could outrun the burden of infamy by isolating himself in the Muggle world. Draco Malfoy hasn’t been seen or heard from since his trial. Will a top-secret Ministry project, a beautiful garden, and a little heat carry them both home?

Crow—when I started writing this story we had just met. Not to get overly-sentimental on main but I like to think our friendship grew and flourished just like Draco’s lovely garden in this fic. Writing for you was an infinite joy. I love you so much I’ll bury you alive 😤. Very big squeezes and ‘thank yous’ to @softlystarstruck for shepherding me through this story from the start, @nv-md for reassuring me when I lost the vision, and @apr1cots for the clutch beta. Finally—massive thanks to the @hd-erised mods for their incredible, attentive moderating. Your time and care is so impressive and made participating in this fest such a joy!

He Was a Skater Boy [19k | E]

Summary: Harry Potter intends to spend his eighth year at Hogwarts avoiding the endless stares, whispers, and nosy questions that never seem to leave him be. He wants nothing more than to hide in the quiet solitude of his dorm room, keep his head down, and wallow in his grief. At least, that's his plan right up until the moment Draco Malfoy kick-flips his life upside down.

Excerpt: As he warms up, Malfoy starts catching more air and his tricks become more complex. Eventually, he clambers up onto a particularly large fragment of wall and drops straight down onto a ramp that looks cobbled together from roof tiles and cross beams. Harry gasps softly when he accelerates up a matching ramp on the other side of the room and launches probably twelve feet into the air.

After twenty minutes or so, Malfoy strips off his hoodie and tosses it carelessly onto a pile of stones, leaving him in just an oversized black t-shirt. He skates hard—attempting trick after trick and landing most of them—until he’s panting and dripping sweat. His damp hair clings to his forehead and the nape of his neck, and Harry watches him dart out his tongue to catch a bead of perspiration that rolls onto his upper lip.

Harry thinks Malfoy might be about to pack it in—the lunch hour is practically over, anyway—because he weaves his way right in front of Harry’s perch and toward the door. Suddenly, one of the skateboard wheels catches on a tiny piece of debris, causing it to skid to a stop, and Malfoy sprawls out on the ground face-first. It takes every ounce of his—admittedly scant—self-control to keep Harry from throwing off the cloak and leaping to the ground.

Malfoy rolls onto his back, still sprawled out on the dusty ground, and hisses as he rolls his left wrist around in his right hand as though checking for a sprain. He looks injured, but to Harry’s surprise, he starts to laugh. Louder and more genuinely than Harry’s ever heard. His whole body shakes with it, and it’s hard to tell through all the sweat but Harry thinks he sees tears gathering in the corners of Malfoy’s eyes.

As though in slow motion, Malfoy reaches a hand down and gathers up the hem of his t-shirt. Harry feels his face flush hot as he watches the long, pale expanse of Malfoy’s torso gradually come into view as he hikes his shirt up to wipe the sweat from his face. He’s so skinny—his baggy clothes hide just how thin he really is—but firm muscle ripples underneath the skin of his stomach. Harry definitely doesn’t notice the sharp jut of his hip bones, or follow the thin trail of blond curls that starts at Malfoy’s navel and disappears into—

Bloody hell. The waistband of his green boxers that are bunched up over the top of his jeans. They’re covered in little snakes. Little snakes wearing little hats. There’s even one that looks like a tiny, scaly cowboy. Harry wonders briefly if he’s died and become a ghost without noticing because he can’t feel any of his limbs. His stomach feels weird—kind of tight and achy, but warm and tingly at the same time.

Read the rest on Ao3!

show me how to be your boy {14k|E}

This is a thank you // graduation // holiday gift fic for the loveliest @softlystarstruck✨

Summary:

"The ancient and mysterious Patronus charm conjures a magical guardian, a projection of all your most positive feelings." - Miranda Goshawk Draco Malfoy wants all of Harry Potter; the good, the bad, and everything in between. Can he be satisfied if he's only allowed the occasional, drunken hookup in the pub loo? Will Harry finally learn that he can't love someone else the way they deserve if he doesn't love himself first?

Excerpt:

As he’s done so many times before, Draco closes his eyes and lets his imagination take over. Harry is his and he is Harry’s, and they’re allowed this, allowed one another.

He imagines that these aren’t stolen, frenzied moments fueled by the strike of body against body, sparking a fire so fierce and hot that there’s no choice but to be consumed. Draco doesn’t think the dry, rattling husk of his loneliness could withstand that, if it were true. No, he thinks, these moments must be entirely outside of time—infinite spans warmed by a simmering heat building carefully between them—because after so long of this, so long of them, Draco is still standing.

He tangles his fingers in Harry’s hair, pulling hard enough to tilt Harry’s head backward. He swallows Harry’s little groan as he captures his mouth in another slow, heated kiss. Harry’s crackling energy has calmed to a smoldering hum, and he kisses back with his whole body—breathlessly, hips rolling and fingers seeking.

“Whatever you want,” Draco breathes, leaning into the pressure of Harry’s hands on his hips and his back, “it’s yours. It’s yours, Harry.”

Instead of dreaming up a prompt or plot all on my lonesome, I asked some folks who also love bee to share three things: 1) words that describe bee’s writing, 2) words that describe how reading bee’s stories makes them feel and 3) tropes, themes, or images that remind them of bee. I whittled these many words down into a short prompt list, and this story emerged! Thank you @moonstruckwytch, @phoebe-delia, @hogwartsfirebolt, @ronbinary, @academicdisaster24, @fw00shy, @lou-isfake, and most of all @the-starryknight and @nv-md for the words & alpha, and @corvuscrowned for the words & beta ☺️ The hope for this story was not to emulate bee or copy their style, but to celebrate their essence. Thanks for being you, bee! If you want to share your bee words too, please do!

Read on Ao3

Keep reading for the prompt list (if you’re curious) and a lil picrew bonus 😊

Written Proof [E | 34k]

Summary: Draco's move home to Wiltshire after more than a decade is anything but easy. He's given up an illustrious career in journalism to pursue poetry, his mother's health is declining, and it seems that the War isn't quite as 'in the past' as Draco assumed. Luckily, he's found a supportive, if unconventional, community and a local bakery to haunt that sells the most divine macarons.

Too bad Harry Bloody Potter has to storm in and shake everything up, per usual.

Harry is content with his life. Really, he is. Sure, the life of an ex-professional athlete is a bit slow, but that's what he'd wanted when he retired from Quidditch to run his own bakery. Now, he gets to spend his days doing something that he loves in the company of his family and friends. He's fine to let one day bleed placidly into the next, until--

Draco Malfoy turns up at his bakery, causes a scene about his pastries, and is maybe, probably, definitely up to something.

This is a story about two people boldly chasing their happiness in spite of their fears, overcoming the chokehold of a difficult past, and learning how to communicate by whatever means necessary, be it rhymes or recipes.

This is my first fest fic ever, and I'm so grateful to @nv-md, @corvuscrowned, and @frenchmarshmalloww for letting me flail about it until it came together. I think Ali read ... three separate drafts, at least?? A super extra special thank you to @softlystarstruck, who wrote ORIGINAL POETRY (?!) for this fic and helped me find Draco's authorial voice. 💜💜 Finally--thank you, @hd-fan-fair mods for fielding SO MANY exceptional pieces and wrangling every last one of us. You're superstars.

Fic: The Death Zone [5k | E]

Summary: Draco Malfoy is convinced that the key to his family’s redemption lies frozen at the top of Mt. Everest. Harry Potter is bound by love and fate to help him get there. Will they find what they’re looking for, or something much more valuable?

Excerpt:

Draco rubs his thumb reverently over his great-great-uncle’s signature, sending golden tendrils of magic rippling through the parchment fibers, and watches as the word trilobite wavers and transforms to the word yeti . His breath hitches, like it does every time, as his long-lost cousin’s name shifts from George Mallory to Georges Malfoy.

Phineas Black had indeed been the last person to witness Georges alive. Georges’ climbing partner, Andrew, hadn’t been seen or heard from again either. There had been numerous expeditions in the intervening years to recover their bodies from the slopes, and each one came back empty handed. It was like they had vanished into thin air—like ghosts who slipped gently into the ether on a whisper. Before the summit was officially overtaken and its mysteries revealed, many theorized that Georges and Andrew climbed too high , that they ascended from the earth and became part of the very sky itself.

Draco never believed that. He knows, like he knows the rhythm of his own heart and the rush of his own breath in his ears, that Georges is still out there.

And he’s going to be the one to finally bring him home.

Thanks and smooches to @moonstruckwytch for the beta!

I'm back on my Choose Your Own Adventure bs! This time with gorgeous art by @fantalf!! 2k (so far) G (so far)!! Big thanks to @crazybutgood and @corvuscrowned for the alpha/beta work!! How does this work? I wrote the first episode entirely from their own brain, then Lory illustrated three possible scenes for the next installment. This is where you come in! Read the first episode and indicate your favorite of the three images in the comments. I will write the next episode around the scene that gets the most votes here and on Ao3. Rinse, and repeat, until the story comes to an end! Summary: Years after the war finds Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger working side-by-side to rescue and rehabilitate retired race-thestrals. It's an avoidable inconvenience that The Chosen One has chosen to drop out of Auror training and move to the preserve to help them. It's just plain torture, though, that Draco has to stare at Potter's soulmark every day, a glowing reminder that his secret fantasies will never become reality.

Draco Malfoy has always been a morning person.

Even on his worst days, he rises with the sun. He feels protective of--and protected by--those still, silent moments before the rest of the world wakes. He knows, better than most, that time has no morality--the dead of night is not inherently evil, and midday is not good by default. The arrival of dawn does not erase sins committed in darkness, and the setting sun does not eclipse daylight’s good deeds.

That he knows this, believes it to his core, does not stop him from feeling just a little righteous, a little more virtuous, in the burgeoning light of early morning. There’s something about that time of day--clean and bright with overflowing potential, untold promises for a new day blinking awake in creeping shafts of sunlight--that grounds him. The capacity for virtue is boundless at dawn.

For @hp-fearfest's day 9 prompt: Mad Scientist. CW: Mentions of arson and immolation, Mention of Fiendfyre.

(Read on Ao3 | 539 words | T)

“Shay. Shay!”

Seamus drags his dry eyelids over his rough, heated eyeballs and turns away from the fire to find Dean standing in the sitting room doorway, half dressed. He’s holding two different colored ties up to his throat, switching them back and forth.

“Sorry, what?”

“Which one goes best? I’m horrible at matching colors. Blue or red?”

“Erm—red. Looks nice on your skin, love.”

Dean flushes and rolls his eyes, but loops the red silk around his neck. “We need to go in five, we can’t be late!” he calls as he walks back down the hallway toward their bedroom.

Seamus kneels on the hearthrug and pulls a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket. He tosses it into the dying embers and watches as the edges curl in on themselves, falling to ash until there’s nothing left.

[E | 9k | cw: light, consensual dom/sub] Summary: Up in the air, Draco can become anyone he wants to be, or cease to be anyone at all. When he puts on his flight attendant's uniform he's just one more smiling face in the crowd, a forgettable interlude in his passengers' day. Not a petrified boy, not a criminal, not a Wizard just trying to keep it together as best he can. That is until a certain someone interrupts his flight patterns.

DEN to ORD -- Flight 5693 August 13th, ↑4:55pm -- ↓8:32pm Flight Duration: 2hrs37

Draco doesn’t know how he got himself into this position.

Well, actually he does. He sort of splayed himself out flat—his left knee is hiked up onto the narrow shelf behind the toilet, his right hand is gripping the rim of the tiny metal washbasin, and his left hand is twisted behind him and clutched into the thick, curly hair of the man currently shagging him senseless in the airplane lavatory.

No, what he doesn’t understand is how he’s found himself in this position with Harry Fucking Potter.

An hour ago, he hadn't so much as thought that name in almost five years. All he was concerned about was making his connection in Chicago and whether or not the place that does the cinnamon pretzels in terminal 3 would still be open when he landed.

This is the second-to-last leg of a fourteen-day stretch. As much as he loves his job, he’s completely exhausted and ready for a week off. He’s been looking forward to Pansy’s birthday party for weeks—he can’t remember the last time he saw his roommate and best friend for longer than a few hours at a time.

This isn’t his first mid-flight hookup, not by a long shot. Flight attendants spend so much time together in confined spaces on the job; it’s bound to happen on occasion. That isn’t even accounting for the communal crash pads the airline provides for them between shifts. They’re often just glorified hotel rooms lined with bunk beds. Draco always feels like he’s back in the Slytherin common room, surrounded by horny teenagers with little regard for their roommates’ need for sleep.

This is, however, the first time he’s gotten off with a former childhood rival—in the air or otherwise.

Read the rest on Ao3