Half-a-year gone (and then some), checking in on my goals for 2019 as posted on 1/13:

1. Post to DW at least once a week, not counting the monthly book list.
Haha no. Mostly managing once a month, but inconsistent at best.

2. Finish Yes My Queen and post it.
I've been working on SO MUCH PODFIC this year that I really haven't made time for writing since winter. Story languishes at about 4800 words, last edited in March or April. Still hoping, though. I considered joining the HP WIP fest for some motivation, but I've got a lot of pending podfic deadlines so I didn't. Does anyone out there want to alpha-read a Harry/Hermione/Draco (plus bonus Luna) polyamory PWP-with-feelings and kick my butt into gear?

3. 100K words of podfic.
Already done. If I complete all my projected podfics by their deadlines, plus the ones I'm expecting to sign up for around Christmas and my ongoing progress on podfic bingo, I should make 200K easily.

4. Audition for a solo in the Spring and Fall concerts.
I tried out. Didn't get one, but I didn't do well in the audition, either, even though I'd nailed the songs at voice lessons earlier in the week. Bah.

5. Perform at least one song at a karaoke.
Not yet.

I'm struggling with a weird aversion/phobia about practicing at home when the family is around; I don't know how I imagine I'll be able to sing on stage.

Day 13

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

1. Post to DW at least once a week, not counting the monthly book list.
So far doing pretty well, posting almost daily. But it's still January.

2. Finish Yes My Queen and post it.
*fingers crossed*

3. 100K words of podfic.
Last year i did 111K, so this should be relatively achievable.

4. Audition for a solo in the Spring and Fall concerts.
I tried out last spring. Didn't get one, but I didn't do well in the audition, either. I missed the fall audiitions for reasons of Chris being in hospital.

5. Perform at least one song at a karaoke.
I've been working with my voice coach on Come to My Window and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, and have four or so other songs to start working on. I'd like to try singing one of these for an audience other than her.

(tryslora, this might just be partly inspired by your fondness for Dara...)

Initiation

Thirst. Crusty sore eyes. Wiping them you find your hands are gritty with sand. Struggle to stand, limp a few steps and fall again to hands and knees. Thirst. It seems it might never end. Reach for your wand; find it absent. "Aguamenti", you mutter anyway. Nothing happens. Repeat it again and again until you’re screaming your dry throat raw. No water fills your hands.

Oasis. There must be an oasis. Decide it, looking down at the sand you are nearly lying in. Close your eyes and insist on it. There is an oasis and I WILL get to it. Force yourself to stand and walk. No desert is going to kill a Malfoy, and if it does you will NOT die on your knees. You won’t give it the satisfaction.

And ten steps later there it is. A clear blue pool surrounded by lush trees and shrubs. You wade right into it, robes and all, and plunge your face into the water, drinking deeply.
Eventually you begin to wonder why there are no animals here, and immediately you hear a thundering of hooves. Maybe they’re not thirsty. Maybe they’re running from a lion...and a roar follows on the thought. Several roars. A whole pride of hunting lions. Lions make you think of Gryffindors, and like you conjured it a griffin flies overhead cawing raucously.

What is this place? How did I get here? Is it a place at all, or am I trapped in my mind by some curse?

You decide that whatever it is, it’s obviously responding to your desires, and decide firmly that you’ll be safe. The predators are busy with their natural prey, and have no interest in one slightly-battered wandless wizard.

Time to think, then, and remember.

~~~

Tile. Blood. Pain. Someone else's horrified screaming. And then black, empty, nothing.
An unknowable time later, you awoke in a soft bed with a girl your age looking down at you. Slim, freckled, short brown hair and green eyes, wearing a brown shirt and trousers rather than robes but somehow she doesn't look Muggle. She didn't quite look sixteen, either; those eyes were too knowing, too deep.

"Who are you?"

She turned it around. "My name is Dara. But the real question is, who are you?"

You scoffed. "I am Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius, son of Abraxas. My father sits at the right hand of the Dark Lord."

She scoffed right back. "I eat jumped up sorcerers like your Voldemort for breakfast. Try again."

Oh, shite and bugger. I've been captured by the other side, and they're idiots. Naming that name, arrogant little..."Potter, you're an idiot. He can hear you."

"I said, I eat jumped up sorcerers for breakfast, and my name is still Dara. I will tell *you* who you are. You're Narcissa Black's son, true enough, but your father is my stepson. You can call me Grandmother if you must, but I'd really rather you didn't. Makes me feel old."
She offered you a hand to help you out of bed, but you ignored it and stood up. Somehow it made you feel better that you were taller than she was.

"I don't believe a word of it." You looked around the room trying to find your wand. It was quietly lying on the table beside the bed, and you snatched it up. "Incarcerous!"

She smiled, and the conjured ropes fell away into flames that went out instantly. "I should tell you, as of right now, that I've decided your magic will no longer work here. I need you to listen to me." It was like a gray cloud just smothered something in your mind...no, that's not right. The cloud was outside you, somehow, but it cut you off all the same.

You stepped to the window, which looked out over ...a whirling disorienting mass of color and shine. The walls of the room you are in were just visible to the left and right, but there was nothing that looks like land. "Where AM I?" You were almost shrieking, you realize now.

She smiled again. "You're in the Ways of Sawall in the Courts of Chaos. You're a long way from home...or more accurately, you've finally come home."

You fainted.

When you woke again, you were back in the bed and there were two voices talking. You pretended you were still unconscious.

"Doesn't believe me, poor child." This was the same voice from before. Dara, you remind yourself.

"The Logrus will fix that right up." A male voice, cold and mocking.

"No excess of fatherly feeling, I see, Mandor."

"No point to it, if he can't survive the initiation."

Squinting carefully, you saw that the second voice belonged to a tall thin man dressed all in black and with yes, white-blond hair and aristocratic features. You squeezed your eyes closed again and wished you were back in the bathroom bleeding to death. It was too much, all too much.

The next thing you can remember, you were standing at a tunnel mouth and the thin man pushed you through it. There was darkness, there was terror, there was cold, there was anger, there was endless sand and heat.

~~~

This is the Logrus, then, whatever that is.

An answering presence somehow communicates a 'yes' without any words either aloud or in your mind.

What do I do?

Resignation, knowledge, peace, all flow into you, and suddenly you laugh out loud. Power. It's all you ever wanted, and now it is yours. Yes, you could eat Voldemort for breakfast. Or Potter, if that's your preference. No mere shadow sorcerer can stand against the unleashed true forces of Chaos.

What happens when I binge on Harry/Draco fanfic and then Tammie wants to talk about Diarmuid of Fionavar before bed: I lie awake all night with this scene coming together and have to write it down. Maybe eventually the rest of the story that gets to this point will come along as well, but for now, here's the most fiction (of any sort, original or otherwise) that I have managed to write in years.

It's completely SFW, by the way.

( Intercedent )

I've been binging on Harry Potter fanfic lately. Ever since I read "Amends, or Truth and Reconciliation" (and am dying for the last few chapters to come out...) I keep reading more.

I discover that I very much dig the Draco/[$Gryffindor] pairings--Hermione, Harry, Neville, all of them at once (oh yes, yes please). So I'm flipping through AO3 looking for such, and devouring it. But I don't want just hatesex, unless a romance develops out of it.

And it now occurs to me that there's some kind of thread there: I love Brand too. Played a long Amber game where he and Fiona had a lifelong romance, split up by a few decades of betrayal during which she married Mandor, and eventually the three of them ended up as a vee-triad.

Beautiful conniving arrogant sons-of-bitches the both of them (Mandor too, now that I think of it), and I refuse to believe there's not a heart somewhere under all that. ;-P

PS tryslora, several of your fics are included in the above...