VII. Yawn

XIX. Heavy

This is part of a continuous story, you can read the first part here. Based off this prompt list by @peachydreamxx and @uncannycerulean

<- previous

After dinner, they moved to the living room as per their ritual. However when Harry had collapsed on the couch, he sank onto the cushions with a veritable weight.

Recently, it was clear he had become more exhausted. There were deep circles under his eyes and his hair was just that bit messier than usual. The way his shoulders slumped with unseen pressure carried him down inch by inch, day by day.

Draco stood behind him and sunk slender fingers vigorously on his shoulders. 

“Is there a problem, dear?” he asked, worry hidden within mockery.

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. A weary sigh left his lips before he spoke, “Auror training.” A repeated sentiment Draco had been subjected to ever since he moved into Grimmauld Place. Ever since they graduated, really. 

“Did real life prove to be too hard for you, my dear?” His fingers dug deeper, more meanly, as he found tense muscles.

Harry hadn’t bothered to reply. He sighed, a little more contently, as he laid his head on the back of the sofa. Little by little, as the night ebbed deeper and deeper into the lazy hours near slumber, a small portion of his heaviness seemed to leave with the time.

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Now also available on ao3

Border hoarders core <3

XIII. Beware

<- previous

Draco missed the writing in small script:

Beware to only add .05mml of bauldee extract at a time.

“Fuck,” is barely out of his mouth before the cauldron in front of him blew up.

“Draco?” Potter yelped as the crashing sounds of feet on wood descended towards the temporary lab. He stepped through the door, hair a mess, glasses nearly falling off, and chest heaving with each breath. “Are you okay?”

“I almost died again but it should be fine,” he replied nonchalantly.

“Draco!” Potter yelled once again and started moving forward.

“Stop!” Draco immediately shouted and Potter at once obeyed. “Vanish the potion vestiges, they’re lethal.”

“What the fuck,” he whispered but still complied all the same. “Everything’s good now?”

“It should be.” Draco brought a hand to his forehead—he hadn’t even noticed how sweaty he’d gotten—and continued moving it toward his hair, brushing it softly. When he pulled his hand back, locks of hair came with it.

“Shit.”

next ->

prompt list all entries

microfic may day 3: coffee

drarry. 273 words. this is unequivocally the stupidest thing I’ve ever written.

After the war, rumour had it Draco Malfoy disappeared. Puffed up and away in a cloud of smoke because he was cursed by Voldemort.

Rumour also had it that he ran far, far away.

Rumour also had it that he was completing a potions mastery somewhere exotic, and that one day he’d return home.

The one thing rumour didn’t have was a timeframe. So naturally, Harry was quite surprised to attend his 3pm appointment and come face to face with Draco Malfoy.

“Err. What did you say her name was again?”

“Coffee, Potter. Please do keep up.”

“Because the scales on her head look like coffee granules and you think they’re multiplying?”

“Well, yes. But there’s more. She’s been more tired than usual. And she’s not been eating too much. All in all, rather concerning.”

Harry poked around at the speckled snake coiled around Draco’s hand. A forked tongue gently lapped at his fingertip and was that a wink?

He cast his usual diagnostic charms which all pinged a gorgeous, normal green.

“I can’t see anything unusual, Malfoy. I’ll give you a standard vitality potion and check back in next week.”

Draco baulked. “There’s nothing wrong? At all? Are you sure?”

Harry gave him an affirmative nod and Coffee a gentle scritch under the chin. “I’ll see you both next week. For a check up.”

Draco was gracious enough to thank Harry for his time on the way out.

Though the more Harry thought about it, he was pretty sure the parting hiss from the reptile translated roughly into something like:

Foolssss. 10 yearssss apart and all he talkssss about issss you.

о/

Hi! Thanks for all the responses -- I hadn't realized how many chapters I'd gotten through since your last round until I saw the emails lmao

I was wondering, in regards to this:

And omg, I totally feel you on being a trans person in the HP fandom. It's very weird how my tumblr dash is set up. I have mutuals still from old fandoms who are queer, and I feel so ostracized from them at times when they toe the line of 'anybody in the HP fandom supports JKR, you're a bad person if you're still engaging with it'. I'll spare you the essay on why I disagree with that, but oddly the safest place I feel on the internet as a trans person is in the HP fandom. Which is weird at face value, I suppose, given what JKR is doing, but we really are separate from her. I've yet to see substantial evidence that fandom, which is infamous for generating zero revenue, is floating trans peoples' demise. It's just a thought crime, I guess.

if you would, perhaps, not spare me the essay? lol

I feel the same sort of ostracization which is especially frustrating when I am in such "thought crimes are fake!" circles, and I'm interested in your perspective, if you want to give it!

Sure, I’ll offer my perspective on it! This is probably best broken down into bullet points:

1. JKR was already a billionaire before she came out as a TERF.

There is nothing in the world that will change this status. Even if every single person currently engaging with her various IPs immediately dropped them, JKR would still have a billion plus dollars to drop on anti-trans movements and whatever. A billion dollars is immensely difficult to picture. The easiest way is to think like this: if you make $50,000 a year, the equivalent of her dropping $75,000 the other day is you spending $3.75. How often do you spend 0.0075% of your income and give it any thought? JKR’s wealth is not directly tied to ‘levels of fandom engagement’.

Which leads to…

2. Boycotts don’t work.

Sorry. They don’t. Not against someone this politically powerful. If they did, the flood of people out of the HP fandom in 2020 would have had a measurable effect. What did have a measurable effect? People not going to watch the Fantastic Beast movies (because they were hot trash lmao). Not giving JKR any more money works in the sense that it cripples her future projects, but it has zero effect on what’s already in her purse.

Also, think of boycotts this way: wasn’t it hilarious watching conservatives try to boycott the Barbie movie, Nike, Bud Light, and whatever else they’ve systematically locked on to? But so then why do progressives/the left/whoever think it’s going to work the other way? Like with Hogwarts Legacy? Just don’t interact with the media, dude. And if you do, pirate it.

3. Fandom is not mainstream. I have never seen any data to substantiate that participating in a fandom directly correlates to dollars for the IP. Copyright literally prevents that from happening. To bring up to popular saying, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, fandom exists outside of capitalism—for me, at least, as a fan fiction writer. This is a hobby to me. I have never seen a red cent for any of the hours of work I’ve put into my fics.

And I can probably guarantee that no one has stumbled upon Harry Potter through me, lol. They didn’t read one of my fics and go, ‘you know, I should check out what source material this is coming from’. Harry Potter is so well-known that there’s no way they came in blind.

Also, the TERF discourse is very much an online thing. I work retail irl and I’ve had conversations with customers who’ll say “you know, I really don’t get all this hubbub against trans people” but are too boomer to be anything more than tangentially aware that Harry Potter is a Thing. Like, ‘oh yeah, my kids read those books when they were coming out, but I never bothered’. One of my employees bought a set of the HP books because they were on a wicked deal at Costco, and when we were discussing it I told her that while I still enjoyed HP, I wasn’t comfortable giving JKR more money because she’s extremely transphobic and donates a lot of money to anti-trans causes. My employee was horrified and said that had she known that, she wouldn’t have bought the books. Lots of people just don’t know!

Which takes me to…

4. This type of online activism isn’t effective.

I’m talking specifically about being anti-Harry Potter or anti-JKR. Falling into those two categories does not automatically make you pro-trans. This was pretty blatantly obvious back when the books were being burned for promoting witchcraft. As far as fighting for trans peoples’ rights, screaming until you’re blue in the face about how anybody who engages with Harry Potter is a traitor and JKR BAD is wasting time better spent doing something productive - something that could actually benefit trans people rather than…I don’t know…virtue signalling that their blog or twitter account is a safe space?

5. I personally do not feel welcomed or vouched for by these people.

Listen, I’m going to break myself down into all my stupid little categories. I’m trans. Autistic. Intersex. Aromantic. Asexual. Basically, all the things that people love to try and cast out of the queer community, whether that means they’re trying to split LGBTQIA+ at the T or Q.

The anti-Harry Potter stuff, as far as attacking the fandom, feels like the latest strain of purity politics to me. As I’ve laid out above, abandoning HP will not right the wrongs of JKR in any measurable or tangible way. Boycotts don’t work. Fandom does not feed JKR’s coffers, and destroying the fandom will not cripple her. There are trans people inside the HP fandom, and what of us? Are we traitors? Are we not ‘really’ trans, because obviously we don’t care about the current political climate? Are we just confused and need to be enlightened as to what harm we’re doing? Where have I heard this rhetoric before?

One small thing, tangentially related:

6. I don’t care what JKR says about how engaging with Harry Potter tells her about who her ‘supporters’ are.

Seriously? She’s a lying dirtbag, and I’m just supposed to take her word on this? This is the one thing she just so happens to be right about?

When she started spouting TERF shit, I was really saddened by the writers who, upon leaving the fandom, also deleted their works in protest. Seeing as the majority of the HP fandom is queer, I’m sure that JKR was very pleased with the amount of queer media erasure that occurred. Why did we do that for her?

7. I believe JKR actually seethes and malds over the prospect of her fandom being queer and producing queer content.

As a writer, there’s a special kind of pain that comes from someone not quite interpreting your work the way you would have wanted them to. What do you think JKR’s first reaction was when she first learned about the Harry/Draco ship? The Draco/Hermione ship? If she didn’t live in a stone castle, I bet she would’ve punched a hole in the wall.

So, yeah. Transing and gaying all of her characters is a pretty nice way to get to her in a way that she can’t legally or financially retaliate. Every time she screams ‘WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!’ at the queer people in her fandom, a trans person’s crops are watered.

8. The HP setting is very welcoming to trans people.

Potions exist that can change your body. Enough said.

That the Harry Potter books never really says anything specifically about trans people (NOTE: obviously JKR’s prejudices even back then showed through, but this isn’t about that) leaves the question on the table. Obviously trans people exist in the Harry Potter setting, because they exist everywhere. So, how did they never get any page time?

Well, who says they didn’t? In a setting where potions exist to change your body, trans people are just…people. I don’t even think that they would have a marginalized identity because gender dysphoria would be something very easily treated. Think of it like someone who takes medication for blood pressure. They need the medication, it’s life-saving, and while there isn’t a magical pill to ‘cure’ high blood pressure, it can be managed. The magical world revels in being strange. Why would being trans, while being considered strange here in the ‘Muggle’ world, be anything other than normal there? Why can’t it be?

And then there are Metamorphmagi. People who can literally change themselves at will! If that isn’t a trans person’s dream, I don’t know what is. I would personally love the option of being the biggest, hairiest dude with a dick so big an erection would make me black out, and then ultra femme and delicate the next.

Last on this point, Harry never notes anyone specifically trans in the text (NOTE: touching on things like the physical descriptions of Rita Skeeter and Marge Dursley, JKR tends to do the ugly=bad person thing. Although she describes Rita and Marge as mannish in appearance, they aren’t trans characters. They’re women that JKR wants to frame as bad people. Like I said above, this is JKR’s prejudice showing through). If Harry never notes anyone as specifically trans, that probably means that it’s impossible to tell at face value. The same as blood pressure medication, to return to that analogy. How do you know someone is on them? They tell you. You see the pill bottle and happen to know what that medication is for. They complain about side effects. They complain about the symptoms that led them going to the doctor in the first place.

9. Queer HP fandom content can potentially be how a Harry Potter fan realizes that they’re queer (or that queer people are just regular folks).

Hey, the first one happened to me!

If someone comes into the Harry Potter fandom unaware of JKR’s politics - maybe they were gifted the books for their birthday or happened to catch the movies on TV - it’s good actually that this person doesn’t fall right into an echo chamber of JKR’s politics. I’ll be happily here to correct her record in a way that isn’t shaming or policing them.

Anyway, I think that’s everything lol. To summarize:

- The HP Fandom is a neutral setting. Engaging with it doesn’t help JKR, and not engaging with it doesn’t help trans people. Just don’t spend money on official HP merch.

- If you want to be a pro-trans activist or trans political ally, please just ignore JKR and put all your focus on the real world.

- There are trans people in the HP fandom who are left feeling awkward and uncomfortable due to virtue signalling.

- Generating queer HP content is good, actually.

XIX. Heavy

This is part of a continuous story, you can read the first part here. Based off this prompt list by @peachydreamxx and @uncannycerulean

<- previous

After dinner, they moved to the living room as per their ritual. However when Harry had collapsed on the couch, he sank onto the cushions with a veritable weight.

Recently, it was clear he had become more exhausted. There were deep circles under his eyes and his hair was just that bit messier than usual. The way his shoulders slumped with unseen pressure carried him down inch by inch, day by day.

Draco stood behind him and sunk slender fingers vigorously on his shoulders. 

“Is there a problem, dear?” he asked, worry hidden within mockery.

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. A weary sigh left his lips before he spoke, “Auror training.” A repeated sentiment Draco had been subjected to ever since he moved into Grimmauld Place. Ever since they graduated, really. 

“Did real life prove to be too hard for you, my dear?” His fingers dug deeper, more meanly, as he found tense muscles.

Harry hadn’t bothered to reply. He sighed, a little more contently, as he laid his head on the back of the sofa. Little by little, as the night ebbed deeper and deeper into the lazy hours near slumber, a small portion of his heaviness seemed to leave with the time.

all entries next ->

Now also available on ao3

Metamorphosis

When Draco awoke in the morning, he found that he was a beetle, and not a particularly dazzling one at that, with a dull black coat and ridged legs so brittle that he almost snapped one trying to get up.

“This was going to happen sooner or later,” Pansy said when she caught him scuttling down the hall toward the bathroom. When he made no word of response except to clack his claws together, she picked him up and asked, “What are you going to tell Potter?”

Potter was Draco’s parole officer, and he didn’t find it funny at all. He harangued Draco to “transform back” for five solid minutes before taking out his wand to cast Finite Incantatem over and over and over, as though it was sheer lack of will and not some bloody blood curse that confined Draco to his hard-bodied shell.

“I wish you’d say something,” Potter said an hour later, his throat dry.

Potter took him home that day, handing him off to Pansy before Flooing the rest of the way to his own home.

A week passed with no change. Pansy left out a bit of milk and bread for him every night. On Saturday, she asked if he couldn’t set her up with a weekly allowance from his vaults for his expenses. “Nothing big,” she said smoothly, presenting him with crisp scrolls fresh from Gringotts and an ink pad for him to press his forked claw into, to sign.

“How long is this going to last?” Potter asked Pansy when he dropped Draco off again the following week.

Pansy frowned. “What do you mean?”

“This — thing. This insect thing.”

“It’s a blood curse, Potter. It lasts forever,” Pansy tutted dismissively.

Draco rather agreed with Pansy’s assessment, but still, Potter came by, week after week, neverending with his questioning: “Black or Malfoy? Are there any records? What species—” as though Draco’s condition wasn’t so hopeless as long as he didn’t stop trying to change it. As though, after all these weeks and years, Draco could still change.

It filled Draco with an idiotic kind of hope.

—————–

For today’s @drarrymicrofic prompt, metamorphosis!