#muggle writes

A Harry Potter fanfic (once it has a title, I’ll post it on Ao3, probably Sunday afternoon)

…

Hermione stepped into the common room with a heavy bag over her shoulder. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised when Harry got up from the couch, looking resigned, and met her at the base of the stairs.

“What are we studying tonight?” he asked tiredly.

“What? When have I ever asked you to study on a Friday night?” Hermione asked. She pulled her candlesticks out of her bag, arranging them on the stone windowsill she and Erin often shared.

“You’ve insisted we study with you every night this week,” Ron reminded her, stepping up behind Harry.

Hermione frowned in thought. The boys had never bothered her on Friday nights. They always seemed to have something else going on. Quidditch, maybe? Even though Ron wasn’t on the team, she knew he liked to watch the team practice.

And it was true that exams were only a month away, and she had been pressuring the boys to study, but –

“It’s Shabbat,” she explained simply. She pulled out two white candles and set them into the candlesticks. She peered out the window. It was dim out, but not quite dark enough to see the stars.

“What’s Shabbat?” Harry asked, his eyes lighting up with interest.

“It’s the day of rest,” Hermione explained. Erin Fawley, the fifth-year prefect, arrived with her candlesticks out, saw Hermione’s in the windowsill, and slid them back into her bag, offering Hermione a smile in greeting. Hermione smiled back. “You lot have been busy most Fridays so you might not have noticed, but I do this every week.”

Harry was still giving the candlesticks a slightly distant stare.

“Hello, Erin,” Hermione added, over his shoulder.

“Good evening Hermione,” Erin responded. “Potter, Weasley,” she nodded at them. “Shabbat shalom. Would you boys like to light candles with us?”

Ron shrugged. “It’s better than studying I guess. Can we play chess after?”

Erin smiled. “You can do anything you like, if you find it restful and it’s not against school rules.”

“Yeah, I’ll join,” Harry agreed, sounding as distant as his expression.

“Hermione, would you like to do the honors?” Erin asked, glancing out the window. Many stars were visible now.

Instead of answering, Hermione stepped up and quietly spoke the incantation for the bluebell flames the boys had been so impressed with last winter, lighting one candle and then the other with a practiced flourish.

Erin led them in the blessing, and Hermione, glancing at her friends from behind her fingers, was startled to notice Harry mouthing along, silently. Ron just looked curious.

“That… seemed familiar,” Harry admitted, when they were done. “I felt like I should know the words.”

“Really?” Ron asked. “They were gibberish to me.”

“Is your family Jewish?” Hermione asked, with genuine curiousity.

“I don’t… think so?” Harry answered. “Although, occasionally when my uncle takes my cousin out in the evenings, my aunt gets out candles.”

“Your aunt is your mum’s sister, right?” Hermione mused. “Maybe your mum was Jewish too.”

“You think so?” Harry asked, his eyes lighting up.

“It’s possible,” Hermione answered with a shrug, feeling a brief pang of guilt at the uncertainty. What if she was getting his hopes up unnecessarily? “I could teach you, some things,” she offered cheerfully, shoving down her nerves.

“I can write my uncle, the one who cares about all the pureblood nonsense,” Erin offered. “I can ask if the Potters followed any particular religious tradition. He would probably know.”

“You would do that?” Harry asked, lighting up even further.

“Of course,” Erin agreed easily. “It’s no trouble.”

“Thank you,” Harry gushed, so honestly eager that Hermione felt her heart twinge. What would she have done, if her parents were dead and she was only finding out now that they were Jewish? She would probably feel even more desperate to learn.

“The first thing you’ll want to know is the greeting for Shabbat,” Hermione decided, thrilled to share knowledge, as she often was. “You say ‘Shabbat shalom.’ It’s Hebrew for “peaceful Sabbath” – as in you’re wishing your friends a peaceful day of rest. It’s Shabbat right now. Shabbat shalom, Harry.”

“Shabbat… Shalom,” Harry repeated uncertainly. Hermione smiled encouragingly back at him. “Shabbat shalom, Hermione,” he said, more confidently.

For reference, I’m ace and demiro, but I’ve never been in a relationship in which I’m not feeling romantic attraction to my partner, so I want to make sure I’m writing accurately and I can’t do that from personal experience.

I’ll elaborate further on the relationship i intend to portray once we’re chatting.

Another installment in what is apparently becoming a series of “Hermione teaches people about Judaism”

“Braiding is just weaving, Rosie,” Hermione explained, patiently rolling out the first section of dough. “Remember the plastic loom you had so much fun with? Would you pour some more flour on the counter for me dear? Gently,” she cautioned, as Rose ignored her repeated advice, and dumped a large amount of flour onto the counter in one large fwump. Half of the flour immediately rose up in a cloud, coating Rose’s face and hair in a fine dusting. Under the flour, her dark curls became a lovely salt-and-pepper, momentarily making her the spitting image of her grandmother, mid-baking-spree. Hermione blinked, and her daughter’s flour-covered, freckled face came back into focus.

“Rose! That’s exactly why I said ‘gently’,” Hermione chided, though she couldn’t keep a fond smile from her face. She focused on the feeling of the sticky dough under her fingers as she worked more flour in, rather than the flour tickling her own nose. If she ignored the tickle long enough, maybe she wouldn’t sneeze.

Rose just giggled.

“I mean it, Rosie,” Hermione said, as sternly as she could manage. “When you start learning potions in a couple years, and your teacher tells you to treat something gently, you must. When we’re baking you might just make a mess, but some potions ingredients can really hurt you if you treat them wrong. I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s why I’m trying to teach you good habits now.“

“Yes, mum,” Rose agreed heavily, but her cheer bounced right back.

In the meantime, Hermione had finished working more flour into the dough, and rolling it out with a quiet efficiency, until the six long rolls of dough were firm enough not to melt in to each other. She squished the ends together, fanning out the rolls.

“I know you’re used to a braid with three strands, Rosie, but six isn’t hard. Watch.” She demonstrated, tucking the far right strand over one strand and under the next, until it landed in the middle. She grabbed the leftmost strand, to do the same.

“Wait! mum!” Rose protested. “Shouldn’t it go all the way across?“

"That’s the only difference from weaving,” Hermione agreed, tucking the leftmost strand under, over, under, until it too rested in the middle of the table. She shuffled the other strands to fan out further so it would have room. “When you’re braiding, things meet in the middle. But watch, once we’ve gone a little bit further -” she deftly braided the loaf a few strands further - “see how that strand is still woven all the way across?” she followed the first strand with her finger, hovering over the dough, showing how it was neatly woven, over-under, all the way to the other end, where she now held it in her left hand, ready to be braided in, the other direction. “If we had woven it all the way across on the first go, we would miss out on this symnetric part,” she explained, indicating the left side of the loaf, above that.

Rose nodded eagerly, her eyes gleaming with the joy of learning something and seeing the aesthetics within it. Hermione saw so much of herself in her daughter some days. She wondered when she had stopped finding awe in the simple ritual of baking bread every week.

Probably when you went to Hogwarts and decided magic was even cooler, she scolded herself, before pushing the thought aside. She was just glad her daughter appreciated this as much as Hermione had in her own youth.

“Here, you try,” Hermione suggested, clapping her hands so that most of the flour from them fell back onto the counter. She stepped aside, and pulled Rose’s tall stool closer with her foot, until Rose was centered in front of the half-braided loaf.

Rose promptly scrambled up from her seated position to kneel on the seat instead, so she had a better angle. “Like this?” she asked, pulling a little too hard on the current rightmost strand, before weaving it, over, under, into the middle.

Hermione watched the dough stretch and thin without comment. “Good job,” she encouraged. Rose was such a perfectionist, she had certainly noticed her own poor technique. She would learn over time how to do it better. “And the other side?“

"Like this?” Rose asked, taking the leftmost strand over, under, until it was next to the previous strand. She frowned at it. Hermione waited patiently. “That can’t be right,” Rose observed. “These both need to go ‘over’ next.“

"Mmhmm,” Hermione agreed, waiting for Rose to puzzle it out.

It didn’t take long before Rose was gently undoing her work, starting over from the edge to weave it under, over, under, so it nestled properly with the previous strand. “Like that,” she decided proudly.

“That’s right,” Hermione agreed. “Let’s see you keep going.” She took the opportunity to wash the flour and dough bits off her hands, keeping an eye on Rose as she worked with increasing confidence.

Hermione pulled her wand from its holster and activated the oven. She debated vanishing the flour from the floor, but decided against it. It wouldn’t hurt Rose to sweep it up and learn that her actions had consequences. Plus, she could always vanish anything the broom didn’t pick up, after Rose was done.

She stepped up, when Rose was frowning at the end of the loaf, visibly puzzling out how to finish the braid without a hair tie.

“Egg will glue it together,” Hermione pointed out, uncovering the beaten egg yolk they had prepared earlier, and brushing it onto the strands. She twisted the ends together and tucked them under the loaf, then levitated the shaped loaf gently onto the pan. “Help me cover the whole thing with egg,” Hermione instructed, handing Rose the basting brush. Rose took to her new task with abandon and Hermione wielded her wand to cover the other end of the loaf with egg.

I tried to come up with headcanons for jewish characters based on the word strength

but my brain instead fixated on the idea of “jewish” and “strength” together and I wrote a Thing about some important women in my life

(may or may not be poetry. What the hell is a title. Below the cut because it’s long)

Requested by @dove-actually​

Most of this @badthingshappenbingo card inspires whumpy happenings, but this fic turned kinda shippy instead.

Content: Anxiety/facing fears, summer shenanigans when they’re all young and innocent, preslash Fremione

unbetaed and barely edited

read it on AO3

High Stakes and Higher Flying

“C'mon, Hermione, we need a sixth,” Ron pleaded. “Three on two isn't as fun.”

“Ron, no. You know I'd much rather watch,” Hermione insisted. She tried to step away, to sit down with her book and read, and keep her feet firmly on the ground.

“Please? you can play Keeper," he offered. “That way you won’t always be in the middle of the action.”

“I’d really rather not,” she insisted. Harry shifted his broom from one shoulder to the other, clearly impatient to be in the air, but also unwilling to leave her behind until everyone agreed that she was staying on the ground.

Ron was still on the ground, half mounted on his broom while holding a second out to her, but the other Weasleys had none of Harry’s hesitations. Ginny was far above everyone’s heads, testing how high she could climb around the edges of the clearing before Mrs. Weasley scolded her, and then diving, so steeply that just watching made Hermione's stomach clench, before climbing again, testing the limits. Although they were flying lower, Fred and George appeared to be trying to tackle each other off their brooms. Neither activity made joining in seem more appealing.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

George’s whoop of laughter interrupted their argument as he made a muddy crash landing. He popped up hardly a moment later, still laughing, before even his mother could worry about him being hurt. Meanwhile, Fred swooped down beside the cluster of almost-fourth-years, grinning triumphantly. “Ronnikins, I think it’s a lost cause,” he said, shaking his head with mock solemnity. “Hermione is scared of flying, but she’s not scared of crashing, she’s scared she won’t be the best.”

“That’s not true!” she protested, trying to quell the guilty flinch at his words. Yes, she was scared of flying and yes, she knew she wasn’t the best at it, but causation went the other way …right?

“Prove it,” Fred demanded, with a wicked glint in his eye.

Fog curled over the lake as she made her way around it, footsteps carefully silent in the sand and grass, avoiding the muddy patches.

Her eyes fixed on her destination, a simple canvas tent, a short ways up from the bank at the edge of the trees, and inhabited by campers. Stupid campers. Perhaps they were new to the area and thought the stories of the haunted lake were exaggerated to scare children, or perhaps they put down the rumored disappearances of previous campers to bears. This pair had strung a dark plastic bag full of human foodstuffs responsibly over a branch, a safe distance away from their tent.

Unfortunately for them, even the bears avoided the area in favor of the fiercer predator.

the eastern horizon was starting to be a lighter gray, threatening dawn. she quickened her pace, her inner eyelids instinctively snapping shut against the very idea of sunlight. Counter to the legends, sunlight wouldn't kill her, nor would it burn her worse than it would any pale-skinned human. The sun was just painfully, impossibly bright to eyes adapted for the night.

Withone set of eyelids closed she could see what humans now were calling infrared - the shape of heat. It was sufficient to avoid fire or to find prey, but not to avoid inanimate obstacles like their tent.

Speaking of which, inside that tent, one of the humans was stirring, meaning they'd probably be out soon to stoke the coals, brightly warm and buried carefully in their own ashes, back into a proper fire. Despite the threat of fire, she smiled at the prospect. It always was more fun to catch humans alone.

decades ago, when names were relevant and her soul siblings still hunted beside her, they had often competed for who could make their target scream the loudest. Describing their screams as "blood curdling" to fellow victims was fortunately only metaphorical - it didn't ruin the taste at all - but those reserved for the second course would always fight more fiercely, after such a fright, and tonight she wasn't in the mood for wrestling. She had a different tactic in mind.

She forced her eyes fully open again, promising herself she would finish quickly, so the sun wouldn't give her a migraine. She edged into the trees, still on silent feet, and watched for the human to emerge, focusing on relaxing her fangs so they wouldn't look alarming.

Finally, a young woman, who only looked a little older than the vampire herself, emerged from the tent, and, as predicted, started using a long stick to uncover the coals, pulling a handful of twigs from her pocket.

Hidden in the trees, the vampire relaxed. It took so much effort and attention to flirt to take the men off guard, but women were easy. At least, they were easy for someone who looked like a woman to disarm. And she still looked every bit like the young woman she had once been.

She laid down briefly, silently matting dirt into her hair and smearing it into her clothing. The dirt would wash out later. Then she stood up. Fangs in. Eyes wide. She stepped on a branch, pressing until it snapped, and her target's head shot up, scanning the trees for movement, but she wasn't moving. She made her way through the woods at a bit of a rush, no longer silent. She was perfectly in control, making only as much noise as a human trying to be silent usually did. (So many had fled from her over the years; she knew exactly how she sounded.)

She spilled out of the woods and into their campsite, breathing audibly though she didn't need to breathe at all.

The young woman met her eyes warily, brandishing the stick she'd been poking the fire with. (Fangs in!) They held each other's stare for a long moment, each assessing the other as a threat (the woman was slowly relaxing her grip on the stick, and although the tip was smoking, it wasn't actually on fire.)

They both broke the silence at the same time.

"Who are you," the woman asked, concern clearly winning out over her initial fright.

suggested by @dove-actually

This vignette has actually been sitting around for ages, and I was trying to write more of a follow up showing the effects of sleep deprivation more than the insomnia itself, but with such a broad cast as the Weasley family, when I usually focus on 2-4 characters and not 7+, I’ve been stalled on finishing later scenes. And this stands alone pretty well, so I decided I’d post it now. If I ever finish the later scenes, I’ll add them to the version on AO3, but not to this post

content: Ginny Weasley, and the aftermath of her first year. Depiction of PTSD

My wife no longer has a tumblr, so I can’t tag her in thanks for beta reading

read it on AO3

To Flee From Morpheus

Ginny jolted from asleep to alert almost instantaneously. She scrambled upright, frantically trying to get her bearings. It was dark. Home. She was in bed at home. As her breathing settled and her heart slowed, she could hear Percy snoring through one wall, and the gentle creaking of the house. She’d only been asleep.

Thanks for the prompt!

(Sensory Prompts here)

24. Dust floating in golden sunlight

(my apologies if this posts twice. luckily I drafted this in another program because tumblr ate my first attempt to answer)

original work; no applicable content warnings. My apologies for length on your dash - the readmore only works to shorten reblogs, not the original (thanks tumblr)

.

Press Pause

“What am I going to do with you, little goblin?” Julian asked fondly, rolling his eyes at Zachary. In the time it had taken Julian to take the last plastic tote out to his car and come back to check that it was really the last, the cat had rolled into the middle of the doorway to be underfoot, again. Julian had been trying not to trip over him all day. Zachary, meanwhile, didn’t care, luxuriating in the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the sturdy plastic storm door.

Julian opened the door as narrowly as possible and squeezed his way inside, keeping a close eye on Zach in case he decided to bolt, and also to avoid stepping on him. Julian managed to close the door firmly behind him, mid-stride, without stepping on the cat. It was a reading success; he should be an acrobat.

On the other hand, he had a job already. (…almost. He started next Monday.)

A quick check around the entryway, the coat closet, and finally the kitchen, confirmed that Julian hadn’t forgotten anything. He’d checked his room again this morning before packing up his car, so he didn’t bother running up the stairs. instead, he came back to the entryway, squatting down next to Zach. Julian ran his fingers through the dark brown stripes on Zach’s side, from shoulder to hip, slowly, almost meditatively.

“I’m going to miss you, Zach,” Julian said, even though he knew the cat couldn’t understand him. “What am I going to do without my sneakthief?“

One of Zach’s ears twitched, but as Julian wasn’t currently holding a sandwich that Zach could pull the roast beef from - nor was he holding any other food -Zach didn’t react further to the nickname.

“I’d take you with me,” Julian continued, “but we both know Mom would just come steal you back.“

Zach didn’t respond, of course, but Julian glanced down at him anyway, pausing as though to listen. The tip of Zach’s tail was twitching, indicating his waning patience with being pet, though he was still vibrating with soft rumbling purrs. Julian switched to scratching Zach’s shoulder, then under his orange collar, then behind his ears, letting the silence stretch on.

Julian had hugged his parents goodbye before they’d each left for work in the morning, and the empty house now felt detached from the timeline. It should have been momentous - he was finally moving out. And not just moving out to college dorms in the city half an hour away, but to his own apartment, to be a real adult, with a real job. It deserved some ceremony, something loud or grand. Instead it was quiet, serene.

Julian looked around, at Zach who had rolled onto his back and was stretching, the white fur on his belly a tempting target for petting if Julian was willing to risk getting clawed when Zach decided that it had actually been an invitation to wrestle; at the dust motes, swirling lazily in the sunlight streaming in from the open door in front of him and from the window right beside it; at the faint scratches on the floor and the way Zach’s fur clung to his hands and his jeans. Around the corner, he could hear the dishwasher softly gurgling in the kitchen, and he knew if he moved two steps to the side, he knew he would smell the lingering scent of his mom’s favorite vanilla chai mixed with the too-sharp tang of lemon scented dish soap The stairs were just behind him, and his imagination carried him up the stairs and down the hall into the previous mild clutter of his bedroom, rather than its current state, stripped of books and posters and clothing and personality and ready to be converted into an office. It felt like nothing had changed.

Everything was changing.

Julian closed his eyes, trying to stamp this idealized snapshot of his early adult life into his memory, permanently.

How had Andrea managed to tear herself away from this place when she moved out, just under two years prior?

Julian dragged Zach gently aside, fur sliding easily along the hardwood floor until Zach was out of the path of the real door. Julian tried to ignore the quietly betrayed mew Zach let out in protest, but he still felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe Zach did understand that Julian was moving out. He wasn’t usually this patient. Julian was surprised, but glad, that he hadn’t yet gotten tired of the attention and wandered off.

“I’ll visit,” Julian promised, forcing himself to stand up. “A four hour drive isn’t so bad. It won’t be every weekend anymore, but I’ll visit.“

He sighed. He really had to get moving if he wanted to get to his apartment and move things in before dark.

The moment still didn’t feel real, even as he locked the house behind him (Zach finally popped up from his sprawl as Julian closed the door, meowing indignantly about his sunlight being taken away), and settled into the driver’s seat of his car, adjusting his mirrors unnecessary to procrastinate. It wouldn’t feel real until he hit the interstate, or at least it hadn’t in his college days. This was bigger. maybe it would take longer to sink in.

He fired up the car, cranking up the air conditioning against the summer sun.

With one final sigh, Julian texted his dad ’house locked up. driving. call if you need me’ and then his sister ’was it this surreal when you moved out?’ and then dropped his phone into the cup holder, and turned up the radio, breaking the moment with the wail of a guitar solo.

He wasn’t leaving home, he was driving home. Suddenly, he was excited again. He pulled off the driveway with a rapid pair of thumps as his wheels crossed the seam between cement and asphalt.

As he turned out of the subdivision, Julian couldn’t fight his smile even if he wanted to. The open road stretched before him, as did all of his adult life.