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brachylagus-fandom · 4 years

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So You Wanna Know Where Exaggerations of Necessary and Virtuous Functions is Going

I know I haven’t updated in almost a year (not for lack of effort, words have just... been hard), but I do actually have a decent idea where this is going. Notes, quotes, and spoilers under the cut!

Next chapter: speedrun to Halloween. Harry tries to break into the forbidden corridor, backs off when he sees Fluffy, and ends up saving Ron and Hermione. (This is about half-written, but I don’t want to post is until at least one more is also done, so... ideally September 1?)

Rest of the year, Harry: Harry falls off his broom (because snape’s gone); goes home for christmas, where the cloak is given a much more mischievous purpose; sees Otto & co as well as bio fam in Erised; figures out someone is out to get the stone but tells no one; saves stone, etc.

Rest of the year, Otto: mild hijinks + discovering magic with the gang; Overlord Protocol is pretty similar to canon (robots are vulnerable to magic? contessa’s part veela?)

Second year: Otto and Harry know he’s a parselmouth but don’t know what that means; they all discover that Mitchell is Laura’s mom

Third year: HOPE’s quest against GLOVE is tied to the hunt for Sirius Black; their knowledge of magic is... debatable.

Debating having Regulus Black on the Megalodon. (Which, given that the gang’s contact with magical Britain is a muggleborn who fought in the first wizarding war... that should be fun.)

Fourth year: tournament and Rogue/Zero Hour! Excellent angst!

It was an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon when there was a knock on the Brands' door. Frowning, Andrew rose to get it, only to be faced by a pair of men in dark, inconspicuous suits.

"We are here to speak with Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Brand," the taller man, whose hair was cut brutally short, said in what was a passable attempt at a Received Pronunciation accent… if said person attempting it weren't British.

"Mary kept her maiden name," Andrew said, "but that's us. Mare-bear, we have company!" he called.

"We do? I thought Andromeda wasn't going to visit for another - oh, hello sirs." Mary, who had quickly stashed her wand in one of her apron's pockets and was hastily shoving something that looked like tentacula roots (they really needed to get a new, separate grater for potions ingredients; anything that went through that was going to taste weirdly spicy for at least a couple days) into the silverware drawer, wiped her hands on a dishrag. "I was just baking some scones," and, indeed, the smell of fresh baked goods was now permeating the air. "Would you like to join us for some tea?"

"That will be unnecessary, Mrs. Brand," the shorter man, who had a nasty scar through his left eyebrow said as his partner said, "yes, please, ma'am." The shorter man glared at him before briefly flashing an official-looking badge and continuing. "I'm afraid this isn't a social call; we need to speak with you urgently."

"What is this about, officers?" Mary asked.

"We're assigned to the Sirius Black case," one of the visitors said; Andrew froze. They weren't connected to Black unless the officers knew about magic, and if they did, he and Mary wouldn't be at the top of their interview list. "You knew him, correct?"

"Not well," Mary said. "I was good friends with his cousin Andromeda - she was sort of a mentor to me - but I met him… twice, I think? At a few weddings. I hadn't thought of him in years until, well, you know." Abruptly, a timer in the kitchen went off; the visitors naturally glanced towards it, and Mary quickly whipped out her wand and stunned them while they were distracted.

"Andrew, I think we still have a vial of Veritaserum in the medicine cabinet," she said. "Next to the cough syrup."

"I'll fetch it." Andrew quickly rose and grabbed the bottle while his wife checked the curtains were closed and secured the visitors. "The shorter one?"

"Yeah. He seemed in charge." Carefully, Andrew poured a drop into the shorter man's mouth - it took much less to work on (or to poison) Muggles than wizards - and, after a moment for the potion to take effect, Mary enervated him.

"Wha-"

"Why did you come here?" Mary asked.

"To assess and potentially arrest the couple." The man's attempt and an English, accent was gone, replaced by something vaguely American.

"Why are the couple?"

"Mary and Andrew Brand."

"Why assess them?"

"Known contact with Maximilian Nero," the man said, "and suspected association with Sirius Black."

"Under what charges would they have been arrested?"

"Conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism and aiding and abetting a wanted felon."

"What would have happened then?"

"They would have disappeared into H.O.P.E's system."

"Is H.O.P.E. who you work for?"

"Yes." Andrew glanced and Mary, who nodded.

"Obliviate," Mary whispered, then, in a much more normal tone of voice. "You realized that your identification of Maximilian Nero as having had contact with the couple was incorrect and left. You believe Mary and Andrew Brand pose little threat to your organization." The man nodded, and Mary repeated the procedure on his partner before enervating him and saying in a sugary sweet tone, "is that all sirs?" Still decidedly dazed, the men stood up and left the house. As their vehicle (an SUV with darkly tinted windows, incredibly stereotypical for a secret agent getup) drove away, Andrew let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

"That was close."

"Yeah."

"Think it has something to do with Laura?"

"Probably."

"Think she's safe?"

"Safe enough. Want me to owl Andi for the next time they show up?"

"Definitely."

Laura’s parents get kidnapped during the fourth year summer; we discover this because Douglas apparates/is sent to her.

The gang had claimed one of the tables next to Block Six's waterfall and were planning out strategies for the Hunt/in the midst of a study session when there was a loud crack and Otto's head exploded in pain. As other students looked around for the source of what sounded like a gunshot, saw the group, and deliberately looked elsewhere, Laura put her arms around the (thankfully not crying) toddler that had appeared in her lap. Otto dug around in his bag for asprin.

"Who's the kid?"

"My little brother, I think, but - apparition with accidental magic is extremely rare, and never more than a few meters." Laura, features unusually pale, started trembling. "I think we need to talk to Dr. Nero."

after that... lots of chaos, I think.

The Glasshouse has Death Eater/Grindelwald connections.

Nero’s probably still in denial about magic.

#exaggerations of necessary and virtuous functions #envf update #harry potter #h.i.v.e.#fic talk

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brachylagus-fandom · 3 years

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Multiples of five for the meta asks!

Ooh, that’s a nice hearty chunk!

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

That’s a tricky one; I tend to be drawn more towards worldbuilding ideas than characters. For H.I.V.E., I probably relate most to Laura (it’s that trauma, baybee!); Honor’s anxieties and relationship with her gender also strike a chord with me. For 39 Clues, I relate to both Amy and Sinead for similar reasons (though I loathe the twist in CvV).

Weirdly (given my current project is centered around him), I don’t particularly care about Kazakov in canon; he’s kinda just there.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

Erratic! I forget projects for months if not years on end and then churn out 5K for them over the course of a long weekend.

Most of my ideas come to me late at night when I’m sleep deprived, and then I try to make those weird ideas a reality.

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Summaries, definitely. I come up with titles pretty early on (and have been known to start things just for the chance to use a particularly poignant/pretentious one), and my tagging is pretty bare bones, but writing a good summary with a good hook is almost always a struggle.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Five from different fics:

Beckmann from Rewind (Back to Their Trenches) is named after the main character in Draussen vor der Tur, a German play I read the year i started working on it. The most notable things she took from him are the thick glasses, code name (Andere, another character in the play), and that she’s coming back to the Lucians. She’s been away a long time. Perhaps too long. Collins is Chrissy Collins’ uncle; I made him up because she’s a very fun website/card-only character (and there aren’t that many Lucian agents).

Exaggerations of Necessary and Virtuous Functions was/is going to have Harry fall off his broom during his first match since Snape can’t save him. HOPE’s crusade and the manhunt were also going to be quasi-merged, so Nero’s first proper interaction with the magical world was the confrontation in the Shrieking Shack, which goes rather differently since Mary knows Andromeda believes Sirius is innocent. And the effects of Harry’s magic on the computer in Otto’s head (foreshadowed by the migraines) may have had lasting damage on it.

There’s a shifter romance gag in Charlie Weasley and the Sneaking Suspicion that I don’t think anyone noticed.

Not technically something I came up with for A Bit of a Mind Flip, but a fun fact I learned while writing it (specifically bowdlerizing the lyrics) was that Kidz Bop has a cover of the Time Warp, and they replace “but it’s the pelvic thrust“ with “the way you shake it“.

Foxface’s backstory in The Girls Who Died is recycled from a project that didn’t pan out I wrote a couple years before the rest of the idea came together (which was the year before this fic actually got published; I had about half of it writted during the previous wbex and waited to see if devilchicken would have the prompt again). The premise behind said backstory also pops up in my 39 Clues/Hunger Game fusion that is stuck at training.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

I really enjoy when a plot gels together for the first time - when a project is born out of a (generally sleep-deprived) idea.

And, as always, thanks for asking!

#fic talk #well that got long #spocks-evil-godmother

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