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jade_sabremy phone works again.
I'm listening to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack and wishing I could rewrite the story...and then I remembered a couple of years back to when I had this idea in my mind to write a Ginny/Draco fanfiction that was a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story. I wasn't ever going to say it was a retelling, I was just going to write it and see what people got out of it.
the premise was this:
(I will admit that some of my Ginny musings come from After the End, which I feel like I ought to reread, at least for nostalgia's sake. The fic that first introduced me to Bill/Fleur, the fic that I angsted with and laughed with for so many, many months...ah, old HP fandom, what happened to you?)
(you grew, that's what happened. and the 'quillers-in-charge had personal changes in their lives that made them unable to be the kinds of fans they used to be, except in their hearts. *cries for the end of HQoW*)
the war is over. Harry won (of course), though at great cost to himself (of some unknown kind, crippling, perhaps?), but besides some mild-to-serious cases of PTSD, everyone made it through unscathed. (Except maybe Snape. I first conceived of this fic before HBP came out, and as I outline it here, adjusting it to that, I think Snape might have to be dead. Which makes me sad. ...except he needs to live to foil Draco! ha! yay for literary devices pulling me out of my sadness over character death! he might spend a great deal of time unconscious. And definitely locked up. Oooh...he could die at the end, giving Draco a desire to make up his mind if that's the sort of life he wants to end up with.)
ANYWAY.
So everyone's alive, basically (except maybe Percy. Just because a Weasley has to die, and it might as well be him...except damn. but I want it to be a dark, gritty fic, more realistic than anything I've written before, and so I guess he might die. Or maybe I could kill George and endure the endless wrath of thousands of kinky fangirls who like getting it on with the twins. Um. Ignore that last statement. I don't know where it came from). Harry and Ginny are reuinited and happily in love, Ron and Hermione are together, Lupin and Tonks are getting married (heehee), Luna and Neville and Seamus and Dean and Parvati and Lavender and Kingsley and Mundungus and the Weasleys--everyone's alive. They get to work putting (ooh, I could kill Mr. Weasley and defy the Arthur-becomes-MoM cliche!) the magical world back together.
On the bad guy side, most everyone's dead--Narcissa, Lucius, Bellatrix, Peter (or maybe the weasel gets off in the end...hm), etc. Draco, in a curious turn of events (probably under Snape's tutelage) went traitor at almost the last minute...the information he had doesn't even necessarily have to have been crucial to Harry's Plan to Defeat Voldemort, it just has to be just useful enough to keep him alive, once the war is over. Draco still has to go to Azkaban, of course, which isn't nearly as bad as it used to be--though instead of dementors, there's probably some sort of endless torture curse that someone's come up with that has similar effects to the dementors. (Hermione can protest it. hee.)
But in say, five years at the most, Draco is released from Azkaban.
Now, five years after year 7, Harry and co are 22, Ginny 21. Everyone's quite done with school (Hogwarts is probably just now getting on its feet). Let's say Ron's working on post-graduate studies (or the magical equivalent--I imagine you have to do more magical schooling in order to teach at a Hogwarts level, and since that's what he's aiming for...he might end up with a desk job, though. Something where he gets to be strategic, either way), Hermione's doing the same thing in a different subject, they're engaged but aren't married yet--planning the wedding and such. Harry is resigned to the fate of a celebrity and is using his power for good in the government, refusing to be anyone's tool, while technically being an Auror. Ginny, meantime, is a rising-in-the-ranks Healer, of the psychological manner--no magical Empath powers, but I like the idea that her working with Harry gets her interested into researching spells that effect the mind and that in turn interests her in healing people psychologically.
Draco is released to return to Malfoy Manor--which is, to what would be his dismay if he cared anymore, in a horrid state of affairs--under terms of constant supervision, just to see a) that he really isn't evil and b) what the effects of Azkaban have been on his (already tenuous after his betrayal) grasp on reality. However, while he is rather listless and apathetic, he seems to take great delight in driving his supervisors up the wall. Snarky and cruel and biting, but underneath it all is apathy.
So he sends a couple of them packing, and the head of the department at St. Mungo's turns his/her eye on Ginny. Ginny has recently achieved a rank that would allow her to work in a position of live-in constant supervision, though usually that's a task reserved for people much more experienced. So the head mentions the case to Ginny, who of course wants nothing to do with Draco Malfoy--no soft spot for traitors has our little redhaired heroine. Nor is she tempted by the authority or power or prestige of the job.
But suggest she's incapable of it, because she's a girl (the head has to be a he, and not even a chauvinistic one, just pushing her buttons), and so young, and she's immediately going to set out to prove you wrong. Of course, Mrs. Weasley would never ever ever in a million years allow her baby girl to stay for an undetermined period of time in Malfoy Manor, so Ginny tells her mother only that she's been given a special assignment that involves her going away for an extended while to do research (which is partially true--she is there to observe as well as treat the patient). Authorization comes through, she says goodbye to everyone (including her dear Harry, who is still dating her), packs up her bags, and arrives.
Draco of course wants nothing to do with Ginny Weasley, much less have her stay in his house, but she refuses to budge and eventually the head of the department leaves, reminding her to file a report every day. (I could have a whole chapter that was nothing but reports...where you have to read between the lines, such as "Patient exhibited interest in reading a History of Hogwarts, commentating on his ancestors' involvements therein, exhibiting interest in remembering his past" which would translate into either Draco entertaining her with silly (if frightening) stories about his long-deceased family, or him angsting over his parents...). He listlessly shows her to her room and tells her when dinner is, and leaves. Ginny does not want to go to dinner, and so when she doesn't come he locks her in her room with his magic over the house (he doesn't have a wand anymore, and his mind isn't stable enough to exectue any major wandless magic, but he does have power over the house as its master). This gives her plenty of time to de-curse the room and find a way from the window to the window of the dining hall.
Little things like that continue, with him trying to snark her into leaving and her snarking right back, and lots of anger and yelling. That eventually devolves into his silence in the face of her treatment questions, then into her frustrated abandonment and consequent silence, and finally that drives even introverted Draco crazy, and so he starts snarking again, but it's obvious that he's just doing it to talk. And Ginny of course has seen the apathy behind the snark long ago (though for him with her there is real resentment, which will eventually come out) and still snarks back, and finally though they're being rude they're both talking to each other. Ginny has been sharing stuff about herself too, at first in terms of trying to get him to talk, and then in real conversation with him, so they're getting to know each other. Progress.
She's called away from the house for her six-month report, during which she sees her family and realizes something is missing. She returns to the Manor only to find Draco as surly as before--when she finally breaks this down his resentment towards her family (Harry is always a touchy subject, don't forget that) etc. comes out. She, surprised to find herself the target of all of this (mainly it's because she's there and so he can focus it all on her) and gets very angry with him, realizes this is completely illogical for a doctor to do, and immediately tries to cool herself down. I bet this makes Draco angry. He probably goads her into yelling again, and then she sees him smile and wants to know why he smiles when she yells, and he immediately goes stone-faced and doesn't reply (silly boy).
But the storm has passed, and he seems really to be making progress back towards the land of the living--starts getting to work on his accounts, etc., almost as if something outside is motivating him.Ginny is pleased with his progress, though a bit sad because that means soon he won't need constant supervision and she likes living in his house and whoa slow down there Ginny.
Then something--don't know what--agitates him again. While he's in this state Ginny receives word that someone (Harry? somebody) has been greviously injured, and she needs to go right away. She has permission from her head of department, but she seeks it from her patient anyway. He is greatly torn and finally gives her a Malfoy ring, saying it's charmed to show how the head of the Manor is doing (like the Weasley clock), just in case. He thinks he'll be fine, though, and almost wishes her good luck. She thanks him and leaves and wonders why the air seems so thick (with UST that you could eat like Coolwhip right out of the air).
So she's seeing everyone and her whole family is gathered and again she feels something is missing--and she sees Harry and the spark isn't there and they both feel it so it's sort of awkward--and whoever was hurt gets to go home, and so Ginny goes to see her head of department but the head says that someone else went to check on her work with Draco and declared that he doesn't need constant supervision anymore, so she'll need to go see him once a week but starting next week so she can have this week off.
Ginny is very disappointed, and goes home where everyone is celebrating so-and-so's return, which she realizes what it is she's missing. And she's pretty shocked and disgusted with herself over the whole thing, but the more she thinks about it the more right it feels.
About that time someone pops their head in to say her patient is in St. Mungo's, apparently dying. This is when everyone else finds out it was Malfoy that she was staying with, and amid a great deal of WTF YOU WERE STAYING WITH WHO?s she runs off to St. Mungo's to see him. (everyone else is shocked and yelling and she's just staring at the black ring on her finger.)
Malfoy seems to perk up when she arrives, sending everyone else out of the room. The ring on her finger lightens, and she demands to know what's going on. He explains that it's a sort of failed Horcrux--he tried to make one, but lost his nerve at the last minute and only wounded the person, not killing them (he's probably mentioned this story before). Consequently, his soul didn't rip, and the spells he had set up backfired--so if he were separated from the ring, it would be like tearing out his entire soul.
Ginny is of course flabbergasted. "But why did you give it to me?"
He looked irritated, with his deathly grey skin turning a more lively shade of putrid green. "I don't know," he said. "It just seemed that you had it anyway, so you might as well really have it."
"Your soul--"
"Heart. Body. Soul. Whatever. It's yours."
...*insert the makeyouty* Which probably involves her angrily breaking off kisses and yelling at him and him stopping her and then her freaking out about patient-doctor relationships and him stopping her and
I just don't know how to end the thing--if I should end it in the hospital room, and then do an epilogue summarizing the family reactions. That might be the way to do it.
...so there. I outlined it. Now I have to write it. Because I really really want to, because it could be really really good, and I think I could do it really, really good. And I really, really want to.
*is late to meet a friend for Starbucks, but feels better about herself*
I'm listening to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack and wishing I could rewrite the story...and then I remembered a couple of years back to when I had this idea in my mind to write a Ginny/Draco fanfiction that was a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story. I wasn't ever going to say it was a retelling, I was just going to write it and see what people got out of it.
the premise was this:
(I will admit that some of my Ginny musings come from After the End, which I feel like I ought to reread, at least for nostalgia's sake. The fic that first introduced me to Bill/Fleur, the fic that I angsted with and laughed with for so many, many months...ah, old HP fandom, what happened to you?)
(you grew, that's what happened. and the 'quillers-in-charge had personal changes in their lives that made them unable to be the kinds of fans they used to be, except in their hearts. *cries for the end of HQoW*)
the war is over. Harry won (of course), though at great cost to himself (of some unknown kind, crippling, perhaps?), but besides some mild-to-serious cases of PTSD, everyone made it through unscathed. (Except maybe Snape. I first conceived of this fic before HBP came out, and as I outline it here, adjusting it to that, I think Snape might have to be dead. Which makes me sad. ...except he needs to live to foil Draco! ha! yay for literary devices pulling me out of my sadness over character death! he might spend a great deal of time unconscious. And definitely locked up. Oooh...he could die at the end, giving Draco a desire to make up his mind if that's the sort of life he wants to end up with.)
ANYWAY.
So everyone's alive, basically (except maybe Percy. Just because a Weasley has to die, and it might as well be him...except damn. but I want it to be a dark, gritty fic, more realistic than anything I've written before, and so I guess he might die. Or maybe I could kill George and endure the endless wrath of thousands of kinky fangirls who like getting it on with the twins. Um. Ignore that last statement. I don't know where it came from). Harry and Ginny are reuinited and happily in love, Ron and Hermione are together, Lupin and Tonks are getting married (heehee), Luna and Neville and Seamus and Dean and Parvati and Lavender and Kingsley and Mundungus and the Weasleys--everyone's alive. They get to work putting (ooh, I could kill Mr. Weasley and defy the Arthur-becomes-MoM cliche!) the magical world back together.
On the bad guy side, most everyone's dead--Narcissa, Lucius, Bellatrix, Peter (or maybe the weasel gets off in the end...hm), etc. Draco, in a curious turn of events (probably under Snape's tutelage) went traitor at almost the last minute...the information he had doesn't even necessarily have to have been crucial to Harry's Plan to Defeat Voldemort, it just has to be just useful enough to keep him alive, once the war is over. Draco still has to go to Azkaban, of course, which isn't nearly as bad as it used to be--though instead of dementors, there's probably some sort of endless torture curse that someone's come up with that has similar effects to the dementors. (Hermione can protest it. hee.)
But in say, five years at the most, Draco is released from Azkaban.
Now, five years after year 7, Harry and co are 22, Ginny 21. Everyone's quite done with school (Hogwarts is probably just now getting on its feet). Let's say Ron's working on post-graduate studies (or the magical equivalent--I imagine you have to do more magical schooling in order to teach at a Hogwarts level, and since that's what he's aiming for...he might end up with a desk job, though. Something where he gets to be strategic, either way), Hermione's doing the same thing in a different subject, they're engaged but aren't married yet--planning the wedding and such. Harry is resigned to the fate of a celebrity and is using his power for good in the government, refusing to be anyone's tool, while technically being an Auror. Ginny, meantime, is a rising-in-the-ranks Healer, of the psychological manner--no magical Empath powers, but I like the idea that her working with Harry gets her interested into researching spells that effect the mind and that in turn interests her in healing people psychologically.
Draco is released to return to Malfoy Manor--which is, to what would be his dismay if he cared anymore, in a horrid state of affairs--under terms of constant supervision, just to see a) that he really isn't evil and b) what the effects of Azkaban have been on his (already tenuous after his betrayal) grasp on reality. However, while he is rather listless and apathetic, he seems to take great delight in driving his supervisors up the wall. Snarky and cruel and biting, but underneath it all is apathy.
So he sends a couple of them packing, and the head of the department at St. Mungo's turns his/her eye on Ginny. Ginny has recently achieved a rank that would allow her to work in a position of live-in constant supervision, though usually that's a task reserved for people much more experienced. So the head mentions the case to Ginny, who of course wants nothing to do with Draco Malfoy--no soft spot for traitors has our little redhaired heroine. Nor is she tempted by the authority or power or prestige of the job.
But suggest she's incapable of it, because she's a girl (the head has to be a he, and not even a chauvinistic one, just pushing her buttons), and so young, and she's immediately going to set out to prove you wrong. Of course, Mrs. Weasley would never ever ever in a million years allow her baby girl to stay for an undetermined period of time in Malfoy Manor, so Ginny tells her mother only that she's been given a special assignment that involves her going away for an extended while to do research (which is partially true--she is there to observe as well as treat the patient). Authorization comes through, she says goodbye to everyone (including her dear Harry, who is still dating her), packs up her bags, and arrives.
Draco of course wants nothing to do with Ginny Weasley, much less have her stay in his house, but she refuses to budge and eventually the head of the department leaves, reminding her to file a report every day. (I could have a whole chapter that was nothing but reports...where you have to read between the lines, such as "Patient exhibited interest in reading a History of Hogwarts, commentating on his ancestors' involvements therein, exhibiting interest in remembering his past" which would translate into either Draco entertaining her with silly (if frightening) stories about his long-deceased family, or him angsting over his parents...). He listlessly shows her to her room and tells her when dinner is, and leaves. Ginny does not want to go to dinner, and so when she doesn't come he locks her in her room with his magic over the house (he doesn't have a wand anymore, and his mind isn't stable enough to exectue any major wandless magic, but he does have power over the house as its master). This gives her plenty of time to de-curse the room and find a way from the window to the window of the dining hall.
Little things like that continue, with him trying to snark her into leaving and her snarking right back, and lots of anger and yelling. That eventually devolves into his silence in the face of her treatment questions, then into her frustrated abandonment and consequent silence, and finally that drives even introverted Draco crazy, and so he starts snarking again, but it's obvious that he's just doing it to talk. And Ginny of course has seen the apathy behind the snark long ago (though for him with her there is real resentment, which will eventually come out) and still snarks back, and finally though they're being rude they're both talking to each other. Ginny has been sharing stuff about herself too, at first in terms of trying to get him to talk, and then in real conversation with him, so they're getting to know each other. Progress.
She's called away from the house for her six-month report, during which she sees her family and realizes something is missing. She returns to the Manor only to find Draco as surly as before--when she finally breaks this down his resentment towards her family (Harry is always a touchy subject, don't forget that) etc. comes out. She, surprised to find herself the target of all of this (mainly it's because she's there and so he can focus it all on her) and gets very angry with him, realizes this is completely illogical for a doctor to do, and immediately tries to cool herself down. I bet this makes Draco angry. He probably goads her into yelling again, and then she sees him smile and wants to know why he smiles when she yells, and he immediately goes stone-faced and doesn't reply (silly boy).
But the storm has passed, and he seems really to be making progress back towards the land of the living--starts getting to work on his accounts, etc., almost as if something outside is motivating him.Ginny is pleased with his progress, though a bit sad because that means soon he won't need constant supervision and she likes living in his house and whoa slow down there Ginny.
Then something--don't know what--agitates him again. While he's in this state Ginny receives word that someone (Harry? somebody) has been greviously injured, and she needs to go right away. She has permission from her head of department, but she seeks it from her patient anyway. He is greatly torn and finally gives her a Malfoy ring, saying it's charmed to show how the head of the Manor is doing (like the Weasley clock), just in case. He thinks he'll be fine, though, and almost wishes her good luck. She thanks him and leaves and wonders why the air seems so thick (with UST that you could eat like Coolwhip right out of the air).
So she's seeing everyone and her whole family is gathered and again she feels something is missing--and she sees Harry and the spark isn't there and they both feel it so it's sort of awkward--and whoever was hurt gets to go home, and so Ginny goes to see her head of department but the head says that someone else went to check on her work with Draco and declared that he doesn't need constant supervision anymore, so she'll need to go see him once a week but starting next week so she can have this week off.
Ginny is very disappointed, and goes home where everyone is celebrating so-and-so's return, which she realizes what it is she's missing. And she's pretty shocked and disgusted with herself over the whole thing, but the more she thinks about it the more right it feels.
About that time someone pops their head in to say her patient is in St. Mungo's, apparently dying. This is when everyone else finds out it was Malfoy that she was staying with, and amid a great deal of WTF YOU WERE STAYING WITH WHO?s she runs off to St. Mungo's to see him. (everyone else is shocked and yelling and she's just staring at the black ring on her finger.)
Malfoy seems to perk up when she arrives, sending everyone else out of the room. The ring on her finger lightens, and she demands to know what's going on. He explains that it's a sort of failed Horcrux--he tried to make one, but lost his nerve at the last minute and only wounded the person, not killing them (he's probably mentioned this story before). Consequently, his soul didn't rip, and the spells he had set up backfired--so if he were separated from the ring, it would be like tearing out his entire soul.
Ginny is of course flabbergasted. "But why did you give it to me?"
He looked irritated, with his deathly grey skin turning a more lively shade of putrid green. "I don't know," he said. "It just seemed that you had it anyway, so you might as well really have it."
"Your soul--"
"Heart. Body. Soul. Whatever. It's yours."
...*insert the makeyouty* Which probably involves her angrily breaking off kisses and yelling at him and him stopping her and then her freaking out about patient-doctor relationships and him stopping her and
I just don't know how to end the thing--if I should end it in the hospital room, and then do an epilogue summarizing the family reactions. That might be the way to do it.
...so there. I outlined it. Now I have to write it. Because I really really want to, because it could be really really good, and I think I could do it really, really good. And I really, really want to.
*is late to meet a friend for Starbucks, but feels better about herself*
