#my dad called me lily but my name legally was not lily its lily in my mothers language lol
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TW // some level of manipulatation/gaslighting? But like...in a lighthearted jokey way?
What if i just lied about my birth name. What if i told yall its Olivia after Olivia Benson because ky mum loves SVU? What if I said that it was on her list of baby names for that reason anyway? What if that was also a lie? But what if all of this is actually true? How would you know? Or what if my birthname was Sunny and i just changed one letter to make it Sonny? How would you ever know whats true?
#this is all a lie /srs#i just wish i had a cooler birthname#its lily lmao#actually im lying again /srs#it IS lily just not in english#my dad called me lily but my name legally was not lily its lily in my mothers language lol#i think like two people here know my birthname but idk if they actually know it or only know me as harrison#i stopped going by lily at age 2#but like imagine if it was olivia#because my mum fucking loves svu#i think olivia actually was on her list but she has a friend whos kid is called olivia lmao#she also considered abby after abby from ncis i think?#and penelope ! after penelope garcia#weird that i grew up to love cm and svu and i also wanna watch ncis#anyway#tldr: my name was lily in a different language and my dad called me lily#it was never olivia or sunny#u can call me lily still btw just not my legal name which ill never share#my name is sonny or harrison but like call me lily as well idc#this is too many tags#ill shut up now#sonny irl
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Picture Perfect Chapter 1
Hey guys! Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been working on a few different fics and also finals are coming up, so that' kicking my butt! Anyhow, I hope you guys enjoy this one, its a two-part series!
Warnings: Bullying, a bit of swearing, Draco being adorable. James being a ass hat. Mentions of death. Pretty much it I think. Let me know if I missed anything!
James Sirius Potter x Malfoy!reader
Summary: James Potter isn't one to be a bully, unless its to a certian Malfoy. But, what happens when his little sister starts dance classes and her teacher is the one and only Y/N Malfoy?
“Mommy! Come on!” A six year old Lily Luna Potter called, waiting for her mom, dad, and brothers at the doors of the dance studio. James ran up to his little sister and picked her up. “Jamie!” She giggled.
“What? Too old to be spun around? Is that what happens when you turn six?” he teased. She giggled.
“No.” James sat her down and looked up at the building, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“This it?” He asked Harry and Ginny. Albus came up and stood besides his brother, looking at the large dance studio. Lily had been begging to go to dance classes since she was three. Lily and Harry had assumed it was a phase and never acted on it. But every year since that's all Lily asked for her birthday.
“Yep,” Harry said looking up at the studio. It was a magical incorporated studio, said one of his coworkers who had sent his daughter there. Apparently a lot of magical students went for the summer. But it also had muggle students attending, so both magical and muggle money was accepted. “Ready to see what its like inside?” Harry asked, leaning down to his daughter’s level. She nodded and ran to the door throwing it open and running inside. James and Albus on her heels. James had his muggle camera strapped over his body in case his sister did anything or wanted a picture of anything.
He had taken an interest in muggle photos back in his first year of Hogwarts when he found some stuck underneath his mattress that were old and faded. And, ironically, it was of his name sake. James Sirius, Remus, and Lily. There were a few with Peter in them, but he just ignored the man who got his grandparents killed.
It had obviously been his grandmother’s camera that had taken them, since she was the only muggle born, but ever since then he had begged his parents for a vintage camera. Albus had taken up poetry, strangely. And James used to tease him about it until he actually read it. Now, apparently, it was Lily’s turn to get an art to pursue.
“Hello,” a woman smiled from behind the desk. “What can I help you with?”
“We would like to sign our daughter up for classes,” Ginny answered, pulling her daughter off the desk. The woman smiled and looked down at Lily.
“Of course. A whole year or half?”
“Whole until she’s eleven,” Harry answered. The woman nodded.
“Very good.” She leaned down towards Lily. “Would you like to look around? I’m sure one of our teachers would be pleased to show you around.” LIly nodded.
“Yes please!”
“See you, Margret!” You called, sliding your dance back higher up your shoulder and making sure your shirt was covering your whole body.
“See you, Y/N!” She called back and you walked out of the back room. You had just finished four hours of vigorous dance training. You didn;t mind though. You loved to dance. You were headed to the back which was the fastest way home without apperating, which you weren’t legally supposed to do yet. But what's the harm in getting ahead of the game?
“Y/N!” You turned to see Miss Rosen calling you to the front. You smiled and walked up to her, braiding your Y/H/C hair as you went. It had been up in a bun for hours, but you didn;t want it to get in the way.
“Hi, Miss. Rosen! Whats up?”
“We have a new student and I would like you to show her around.” You smiled. New students were your facvorite, although you did like working with the older ones as well.
“Of course!” ou stepped into the lobby to see a little red haired girl looking up at you with bright green eyes, freckles decorating her face. You smiled. “Hi,” you bent down to her level. “I’m-”
“Malfoy?”
Oh no.
You looked up to see James Potter. The one person in the entire school who despised you.
“James? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he spat. You sighed. Sadly, James Potter hated your guts, but you loved his. Everything about him. You couldn’t help it! But how could he ever love a Malfoy. Or even give you a chance.
“Well, I dance here. And teach.” You glanced down to LIly and back at him and his parents. Harry and Ginny Potter. “I’m assuming this is your sister.”
“Y/N?” You looked over to see Albus walking in the door. You smiled and waved. Albus was a natural at potions, but not so much at transfigurations. You had been tutoring since his first year. He had slowly grown to like you, which you were grateful for. It also helped that he was friends with your half brother, Scorpius.
"Hey, Albus!" You looked up at Harry and Ginny quickly tabdung and sticking out your hand. "Hello, sir, ma'am. I'm Y/N Malfoy. I mean, you probally already got that from your son's calling me by both," you laughed awkwardly. "Is it alright if I took your daughter round and showed her the studio? You can come as well if you'd like." You said polightly. You knew there was still tension between your families, still a lot of hate on the Malfoy name. You and scorpius had been trying to figure that out it, slowly, over the years. You were now in your fith year and Scorpius in his third.
"Of course," they shook your hand and you could tell they were hesitant. Still, didn't blame them. "You two can go ahead on your own."
"Great! Wanna come back wit-"
"Can I come?" You looked up from Lily to see James standing there with his arms crossed. You noticed he had his camera across the side of his body, which wasn't unusual to see. "Can I go back with her to check it out. I want to make sure my sister has the best school she can," he narrowed his eyes at you, making you swallow. Why did he have to hate you?
"Thats alright with me, just take off your shoes, the both of you." They nodded and took off their shoes, then the three of you headed back. You showed her the diffrent dance rooms introduced her to some teachers and some of your friends at the studio.
"Hi! I'm Margret!" Your red haired friend introduced. She was one of the best in your studio. Also one of the kindest. If she was a which she would be a Hufflepuff you had decided long ago. "I see your going to be taught byY/N. She's one of the best in the studio. Don't worry, you'll see," she said excitedly to the little girl. You rolled your eyes at your friend.
"Ok, yeah. Thanks for the encouragement, Margret." She bumped your shoulder and laughed before eyeing James.
"Are you going to be joining too?" She asked, batting her eyelashes. Oh, did you mention she was a complete flirt? But, sadly, so was James.
"No, but if you dance here I might just consider it," he winked, causing her to giggle and you and Lilly to gag.
"Alright, Margret, she's already signed up, no need to flirt with her brother." She smiled sweetly at James.
"Y/N/N, that wasn't the reason I was flirting," you nearly gaged again.
"Disgusting. Alright. Theres one more studio I want you to see. It's the largest one in here," Lily grabbed your hand and you lead the two into the large. It was a studio as big as a stage with the wooden floors and folding mirrors that would some out or appear to be an audience. There was a balcony up top for parents and younger ones to whatch, which they always did often, pressing themselves up against the railing to watch the older girls dance.
"Wow," she gasped when you lead her in. You flipped a switch and the mirrors folded to appear as if there were any audience and the lights hanged to resemble ones of a stage, even the heat was the same, she gasped again. You smiled at her reaction. It would never get old watching younger girls get excited over the first time they walked in. That's one of the reasons you had a camera in the corners. You would often go back and watch your first tape when you felt distraught. It reminded you why you got j to dancing in the first place.
"I'm still not convinced. You haven't shown us if this studio teaches well enough for my sister to join," James scoffed. Lily's mouth fell open, halting at her. Brother and warning him to shut up and not ruin this for her. You just smiled.
"Well, what would convince you?" You asked, no malece in your voice. I mean, you were talking to James Sirius Potter, could you even have malece in your voice?
He looked you up and downs nd smirked.
"You dance." You raisrd your eyebrows.
"Pardon?" You squealed out.it was a known fact you didn't dance in front of audiences. Ever. Your father and half brother had tried to convince you, but you wouldn't budge. Your stage fright was to sever. And now you had your crush, yelling you to dance for him and his little sister to see if your good enough. Lily looked up at you with wide eyes.
"Would you?" You swallowed and bit down on your lip. You sighed.
"Fine. Fine. Here," you pulled your phone out of your back pocket, they were issued to all the girls for music and communication with muggle friends. Lily looked at the device curiously and James jus raised his eyebrows.
"You have one of those?"
"How else am I supposed to have the music, record my various dances to study, and play the music out side of the studio and the ballroom in my home?"
"You have a ballroom in your house?" You shrugged.
"Part time. Half the summer we live at Malfoy manor and the other half we stay at the cottage, which me and dad prefer but…"you shrugged as if saying it is what it is. You scanned your music until you reached the song you were looking for. "Could you hit play when I say so, please?" Lily nodded and grabbed the phone. You dropped you that and started to take off your shit.
"What in the hell do you think your doing!" He yelled and covered your eyes. You crinkled your brow at him before it clicked. A coy grin spread on your face.
"Something bothering you, Potter?" You teased and you slid off your pants as well, leaving you in your leotard and a pair of pink tights. His eyes were still covered and Lilly was stifling giggles. You tied a black ballet skirt around your waist and leaned on the bar. "For Merlin's sake, Potter! Do you really think I'd strip nude in front of you?" You laughed. He brought his hands away from his face and recomposed himself seeing as you were still covered,. It matter how scandalous the outfit was.
"N-no," he stuttered, still not looking. At you. He knew as soon as he did he would start to blush and he would not give you that satisfaction. You set yourself up and took a breath removing them from the world like you had to do in class.
"Lily? Can you play it please?" Your voice came out shaky. The music began to play and you settled yourself before starting the routine you knew by heart. You had to make sure not to focus on the other two persons in the room. Yas soon as you took notice of them you knew your stage fright would over all of your senses and you would become a stuttering limp noodle incapable of doing anything. You were very careful with who you danced around. Your father watched you on a regular basis because 'he paid for lessons and for ficks sake he was goin to watch it'. You always laughed at him and then let him see. But your half brother and step mother never saw a lick of anything. Well, that's a lie, Scorpius' had walked in on you ounce, but you had caught him and broke your ankle. He had felt so terrible that he couldn't meet your eyes for weeks.
You finished the dance with grace and let the last of the music settle in your bones before coming out of your finishing position and, shyly, face the two of them. You wrapped your hands around your body and ran back to your jeans and t-shirt. You quickly changed.
"So, worthy of your sister?" James closed his mouth, still in shock something so beautiful could come out of a Malfoy. How a Malfoy could actually look beautiful. He snapped himself out of it quickly enough though and nodded.
"I suppose it'll do. But if I hear one complaint I will march down here and demand a new teacher," he sneered. You smiled and slung your bag on your shoulder again, taking a drink of your water and ready to pass out.
"Well, I'm glad you approve. How about you, Lily? Do you want to dance here?" She nodded vigorously and smiled. You couldn't help but reciprocate her smile. She was too cute.
You walked the two back out of the maze of studios and offices and back to the lobby where her parents were waiting. Ginny was looking at leotards and tights with a pained expression, like she didn't know what she was doing.
"We're back!" You said. Lily ran from your grip and latched onto her mother's leg.
"Is miss.Malfoy going to be my teacher? Please say yes! Please please pleeeeeease!" You chuckled and leaned against the doorway.
"I'm sure if you ask nicely," Ginny responded looking at her daughter lovingly and making you jealous. You had never had a loving mother look at you like that. You had a father who looked at you like that, but it was just different.
"Miss. Malfoy, will you please teach me?" She begged. You smiled.
"I think that can be arranged, Lily. And please, call me Y/N. I'm no one special enough to earn that much of a title," you laughed. She beamed and launched herself at you, hugging you tightly. You hugged her back and sent her to her mother and father again. Ginny walked over to you.
"You wouldn't happen to know anything about… Apparel or anything would you?" You smiled at her.
"I know a bit. What are you having trouble with? " Well, I'm not sure on what to buy or how much or hair or… any of it really," she shrugged guilty. "Quidditch I can do. Ballet?" She shook her head. You smiled.
"You'll get the hang of it. You should have seen my dad when I started," you laughed.
"Telling stories about me, sweet heart?" You looked up and saw you father step in. You ran over and hugged him.
" No." You grinned cheekily.
"Uhu." He poked your nose. “What did I tell you about lying when you can;t do it.” You laughed and pushed him out the door.
“I’ll be out in a second. I just have somethings to finish.” He smiled and patted your head before walking out. “Sorry about that.” you walked back over to Ginny “As I was saying, you’ll get the hang of it eventually. But anything you need I’m here.” She smiled gratefully while Harry was eyeing you strangely. He had never seen Draco act like that. Not at school, not at work, not the few occasions he had seen him out of work. It was strange.
“Harry!” Harry snapped out of his mind as Ginny yelled at him. “Stop staring at the poor girl! Unless you want to do this,” she offered and handed him a leotard. He backed up with his hands up.
“No, definitely not.” You chuckled. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was staring at you,” you brushed him off quickly.
“It's no problem, sir. I get the death glare from parents a lot. Any how, what days work best for you? I am here everyday.”
“Wednesdays?” Harry just shrugged.
“Why did I even bring you?” She sighed.
“It's no problem, just send an owl here or just come down personally whenever you figure out the best day or times. Like I said, I’m here everyday from opening till closing.”
“And sometimes longer,” Miss Rosen scoffed. You sent her a smile.
“You’d miss me if I weren’t here so much.” She grumbled something and collected her papers, heading to the back.
“Lock up when you're done. You still have your key?”
“Yup, have a good night, Miss Rosen!”
“Uhu,” she called over her shoulder. You walked to the desk and started collecting some papers to start a file for Lily and for the Potters to fill out.
“Are we here after hours?” Ginny asked. You looked up at her.
“Not really. I mean, technically, yes. But I’m here after hours so much that I have a key and often lock up.”
“They gave you a key?” James scoffed. You faltered for a moment before putting the smile back on your face.
“It beats having someone stay with me here till ten.” You handed Ginny a few papers. “If you could fill these out and just give them back whenever you decide on a day and time. Its just a few questions and health information. Also, her first day, if she would just come in leggings in a t-shirt or a tank top that would be lovely. We’ll get her measured for a leotard and tights then, we’ll also get her shoe sizes in order.” Ginny took the papers.
“Thank you, Y/N. We’ll be back when we get these filled out.” You smiled and started to sort things in order on the desk which had turned into a complete mess. They started to file out.
“Oh! Mrs.Potter!”
“Yes?” She turned back around and you bit your lip.
“I know your family and my dad don’t exactly get along but… if you see my dad out there, could you tell him to just go along without me? It's a mess in here and it’ll bother me all night unless I clean it up.” She smiled.
“Of course, dear.” She smiled and they disappeared. You let your smile drop slightly and you quickly cleaned up the desk before triple checking all the rooms to make sure they were clean enough for the night.
The Potters stepped out of the dance studio to see Draco leaning against the building. He stood up when he heard the door, expecting his daughter, but only saw the Potter’s. He leaned back against the building.
“Malfoy?” He looked at Ginny. He hadn't expected to be addressed. “Your daughter said to go on without her. She’d be a few minutes.” Draco just chuckled and continued to lean against the building.
“Wasn’t expecting her to walk out with you. She’s always late. I swear she’s here more than her actual house. Thank you for the heads up, though.” Harry eyed Draco suspiciously.
“Did you just thank us?”
“I did, Potter. I wouldn;t get used to it though,” James scoffed and Ginny shot him a scolding look. Draco eyed James and raised his eyebrows. “I suspect your James?”
“I suspect your Draco,” James drawled. Draco rolled his eyes.
“Looks like he has just as good of comebacks as his father was,” Harry went to say something but Ginny squeezed his arm telling him to keep his mouth shut for the sake of not proving the man right. Draco nodded to Albus who waved awkwardly. “I’ll be going to see if my daughter needs any help inside. Thank you for telling me my daughter's message.” he turned and walked into the building. Ginny watched the door for a moment.
“How did he end up with a daughter as nice as she was?” She mumbled.
“He didn’t,” James muttered. They all started to walk away.
“What do you mean?” Albus asked. “She and Scorpius are two fo the nicest people in both our years. Just because you don’t like who her father is doesn’t mean she’s rude.”
“And how do you know how nice she is?” James shot back.
“She tutors me in transfigurations. She had some of the highest grades in your year, ya know.”
“She told you that?”
“No, professor Mcgonagall did when she suggested I ask her for help.” Albus shrugged.
You walked out to the front again with your arms full to see your dad leaning on the door. You frowned.
“Why are you still here? I’m going to be here for a while.” He smiled.
“Think I’d leave you to suffer this work all by yourself?” You smiled gratefully.
“Isn’t Astoria waiting at home?” You asked, putting some of the flies away.
“She’s not the most important girl in my life,” he kissed your head and put a file on the top shelf. You smiled at hearing that.
Astoria Greengrass. Your step-mother. You were happy she made your dad happy. You wouldn't have asked for anything better for him. But, she hated you. She preferred her own child and would make that perfectly clear when you were anywhere near her.
Knowing that your father still cared about you made you smile and feel welcomed in your home. Well, the manor wasn't your home. You had never felt at home there. It was too large for you, though the ballroom was extraordinary. You preferred the smaller house, which was still particularly a large place. But it wasn’t as large as the mansion, it also never felt dreary like the mansion. Both you and your father preferred the “smaller” place, while Astoria preferred the mansion. Scorpius was indifferent to the whole ordeal. He could make himself comfortable on a bed of spikes, you often joked with him. Normally earning a dry sarcastic laugh from him.
“How was class today?” Draco asked, breaking the comfortable silence as you handed him a few more files to put on the shelves that you couldn’t reach.
“It was good. I got my grand jete a bit higher today,” you said excitedly, though you knew this was all forgien to him.
“That's great!” You smiled.
“Still have no idea what I’m talking about do you?”
“Not a clue, but you seem excited about it.” You smiled wider. “That Potter kid wasn't giving you crap was he?”
“Lily?”
“The other one.”
“Albus?”
“No the other other one.”
“James?”
“That's the one. Seems like a piece of work, that one.” You chuckled and blushed lightly. Yeah, a piece of work indeed.
“No, he’s just protective. Wants the best for his siblings and such,” you shrugged. Draco scoffed. “What?”
“I was a prick like that. That's not the only thing going through his mind.”
“Dad,” you warned.
“What? I’m just saying. The other two seemed fine. He was an egotistical control freak who, let me guess, has a new girl on his arm every other week. Wait, and let me guess, it gets better, right? He also bullies the less fortunate.”
“You almost described what you were like as a kid.”
“That's because I know what they look like. And that kid was me, just different.” You rolled your eyes, your mind wandering back to the school year and the various jabs he made at you… the less fortunate…
It had been a few weeks since you had taken Lily on as a student. Since she was new to dance you had suggested twice a week and found that Lily was a very capable dancer. She caught on quickly and was very confident in her movements, though you could tell she got stressed when she wasn't able to get something right.
“That was excellent, Lily!” You praised. She smiled brightly at your praise. How about we move to the large room if you’d like, maybe even get your mother and father to watch,” you suggested. Her face lit up. “I’ll go get them. If there's someone dancing just stand on the side like usual, alright?” She nodded and practically pranced off to the large room.
You smiled at her and quickly walked to the waiting area. Her lesson was nearly over and Harry and or Ginny were normally there already. Your smile dropped when you noticed James leaning on the wall looking down at his camera.
“Hey, Potter,” You smiled. He looked up and his gaze made your heart go mad. “Your parents here?”
“No. They sent me to pick up Lily. Is she done?”
“We were going to run her routine in the large studio. Would you like to watch? She’s very proud of it.”
“Sure.”
“Follow me.” you walked him back to a door. “Just go up these steps and you’ll be on the balcony. I’ll send her up to you when she’s finished.” You left him to go up the stairs and to the balcony.
The large room was emptying out from the previous class when you entered. You had class right after you taught Lily so there was a few minutes break in between.
“Ready?” She nodded and ran out to the middle of the room. “I’ll jump in if you get stuck, ok? Just keep going if you forget a step.” She nodded and set herself up. You pressed play on the music and her music started. You watched her from the sidelines, making mental notes on what to work on with her next lesson. You jumped in on the new part and helped her through it, which she seemed grateful for.
The music ended and you smiled.
“That was great, Lily! Keep practising and I’ll see you next week. Your brother is up on the balcony if you want to go meet him. You remember how to get up there?” She nodded.
“Yep! Thank you, Y/N!” She hugged you and ran up to meet her brother as your friends started to walk in. You joined them in center to begin to stretch for class.
James was waiting for Lily when she came running up the stairs. He put his camera away and picked her up.
“That was beautiful! I got a few pictures of you doing it as well,” She smiled brightly.
“Can we watch, Y/N dance?” She asked. “She has class right now and I wanna see what the older girls do.” James forced a smile, hating the idea of being in the same room as you longer than he had to, but agreed for his sister’s sake. He carried her to the edge as they watched you and a group of girls warm up. You were talking to Margaret as you stretched. You had taken your shirt off so you were in a backless red leotard; he was slightly surprised that the leotard wasn’t green.
“Hey isn’t that the girl you're teaching and her adorable brother?” You looked away from your curly hair friend to see James and Lily watching the class. You waved and Lily waved back as James just glared at you. You slowly brought your hand back down and turned back to Margaret. “What was that about?”
“He hates me,” you shrugged.
“Why?”
“We go to the same school.” Her eyes widened.
“Wait, that's the kid who bullies you?”
“I wouldn’t say bully.”
“I would. Want me to beat him up?” You laughed.
“Maggy!”
“What? I will.” You rolled your eyes and slipped into your split.
“No. I don’t want to lose his sister as a student. She is very talented, and a joy to teach.” Margaret frowned.
“Well, whenever you want me to beat him up I’ll be all over it.” You laughed and your teacher began class.
You notice James pull Lily out half way through, which you didn’t blame him for. Class was about three hours, and that wasn’t even the end of your day. Lily looked upset, but let him carry her out without a fuss. Margaret nudged you and nodded up towards the balcony.
“What?” You whispered, pirouetting a few times.
“They left.”
“She’s probably exhausted. She danced for a vigorous hour with me.”
“Or maybe he likes you and couldn’t stop his heart from beating at the sight of you,” She hummed. You glared at her.
She and Scropius were the only two who knew of your crush on James. And now you were regretting telling her.
“Or maybe he couldn;t stand the sight of me anymore because he hates my guts.” You whispered back. She rolled her eyes.
“Probably hard,” she muttered. You smacked her shoulder and stifled laughs.
“Margaret!” She smiled at seeing you laugh. You had looked so off when you noticed them. Your stage fright getting the better of you. Now that they were gone you seemed more at ease.
“Y/N!” You looked at the teacher.
“Yes ma’am?”
“Class has ended.” You smiled.
“Sorry ma’am. Would it be a problem if I stayed here for a bit longer?”
“By a bit longer do you mean ten tonight?” You chuckled.
“Is that your hint that my day is over and to get out?” you asked with a grin. She rolled her eyes.
“Well, my day is over. Good evening, Miss. Malfoy.”
“Good evening.” You went to the player and set up your music. You had some routines you wanted to run, as well as throw some tricks.
James was tearing his already messy room apart, mumbling how he could not believe he lost something or other.
“Jamie?” Lily asked coming in. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I left the cap to my camera at the studio,” He sighed and flopped down on the bed with a huff.
“Y/N might not have left yet. She normally stays after closing.” James scoffed.
“Like I want to be in there alone with her.”
“Wouldn;t surprise me,” Albus smirked from the doorway.
“Go away, Albus.”
“You like her, admit it.”
“Why would I like a stuck up Malfoy?”
“Maybe because she isn’t stuck up?” Albus offered. “Come on, James. You know that better than anyone.” James scoffed and stood.
“I need my lid, so I suppose it's worth a shot. Tell mum and Dad I’ll be back later.” He slung his camera over his body and grabbed his jacket heading out of the room, grumbling angrily.
He walked slowly down to his sister’s studio, semi praying that it was closed and he wouldn’t have to see you. He even stopped and took pictures of random things on his way. But, alas, it was not to be.
When he got to the studio he pulled on the door which opened with ease.
Maybe he wouldn’t see you?
Wrong.
He walked up to the balcony and immediately heard someone on the floor. Being the curious person he was he peaked over to see you in front of a mat, pressed up against the wall on your toes. You ran and flipped in the air, landing on your behind. He cringed, but you got out of it with another trick. Had you meant to do that?
“Are you going to just watch me all day or are you going to at least say something?” You called up to him, prepping for another trick. He scowled and leaned over the railing. You glanced at him, sending him a small smile before running again and doing a front aerial, landing it perfectly. Though, you went over everything you could've done better in your head.
“I was just looking for my camera lid,” he grumbled down at you.
“Is that why you were studying me do a suicide?” You asked. His eyes widened.
“A wh-what?” You chuckled.
“Don’t think I didn’t see you cringe. I have excellent eyesight. The trick when I-oof-” you pushed off the ground into a roundoff back handspring. You landed it and rolled your shoulders, turning to him. “Landed on my butt. Its called a suicide. And the trick afterwards is a valdez,” you informed him. He just glared at you. You nodded awkwardly. “Nice talk. Oh, and your camera lid is on the desk out front.”
“How’d you-”
“I make sure no one left anything around the studio. If they do I leave it on the deck. You just happened to label it. J.S.P. Kind of hard not to know who that is.”
“Oh.”
You stood backwards against the mat and did four back handsprings, grimacing when you came up from the last one. You really needed a rest day. But a rest day would mean not coming into the studio. And you weren’t going to stay home with Astoria.
Walking back to the other end of the mat nearly every bone in your body cracked or creaked in some way, making james cringe. You smiled up at him.
“Not a fan of cracking bone?” You chuckled.
“There was just so much. Is that normal?” You smiled to yourself.
“Yeah. For me at least. I’m not naturally flexible so I crack a lot and I have to stretch every day in order not to get back to point A.” You stood against the wall and ran into your Front Handspring, immediately going into your back handspring.
“Will Lily be able to,” he waved his hand at you. “Do this?” You chuckled and sat down on the mat, needing to stretch for a moment.
“She’s very flexible. Her split is already down and her straddle is close. I could work with her during her lessons with acrobats. It's best to get them started young when they're growing. It gets harder when you're a teenager. So, if she works hard, yes. She could do this.” It was quiet for a few minutes as you stretched. “Your sister is very talented like her brother’s. You should be proud.” You smiled at him, standing and doing a backbend, sitting in it for a moment before coming back up, groaning as you did.
“I am. She works very hard at it.”
“Well, like you saw today, she’s moving quickly. By the time we go back to Hogwarts she should be ready to join a group class.”
“Is that good?” You smiled.
“Yes. Group classes are fun and though they don;t cover as much as a private lesson does they’re just as challenging.”
“Really?” You chuckled at his confusion. This family knew nothing about ballet or dance at all.
“Yeah I should know. I take at least four a week.”
“Four a week, really?”
“Yep. I teach on all of those days, plus one where I don’t have a lesson. And I have two days off. But, I’m still here working on technique.” You shrugged.
“So you practically live here,” he joked.
“Yeah. This is more of a home than Malfoy Manor ever has been.”
“Why, don’t love your parents?” he scoffed.
“My dad I adore. We’re surprisingly close. Me and uh, Astoria, have a… forced relationship.” He raised his eyebrows in shock at you using her first name.
“Must be honest, from the stories I've heard about the Malfoys, I wouldn't expect him to be a good parent,” James scoffed. You smiled sadly.
“Yeah, a lot of people wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t ask for a different one, as cheesy as that sounds.” You backed up against the wall and sprang off into a roundoff back tuck landing on your head. “Ah!” You sat up and rubbed your neck and head. That was going to be sore tomorrow. “Dammit!” You swore, smacking the mat. You stood up and walked back over to the end of the mat, getting ready to do it again.
“Are you alright?” You glanced at James, yoru vision swimming for a moment before focusing on him. You blinked a few times to clear the spots from vision.
“Yeah. Not the first time I’ve landed on my face,” you chuckled. You felt a tear slip down your face and wiped it away quickly.
“You're crying.”
“Thank you captain obvious,” you joked, laughing. “It just hurts a bit,” you snifled and willed the rest of the tears away, rubbing your face and neck. It was definitely going to bruise. “Yet again, not the first time. Gotta fall a couple times before you stick the landing." You got ready on the wall to push off again, but your vision fell to the side and you knew you weren't going to be able to tumble any more.
Dad’s gonna be pissed that he has to fix my head again.
You quickly rolled up the mats and looked at James who was studying. You smiled.
“Did you eat yet? I’m positively starved and I know a good pizza joint down the road.”
“Why would I want to join you?” he sneered.
Moment of being civil over.
You shrugged.
“Just thought I’d offer. My treat if you decide to join.” You looked around the room making sure everything was in place and clean.
You nodded and left the room, shutting off the lights. You checked the other rooms and grabbed your bag, changing into jeans and a black crop top with your jean jacket. You walked out and grabbed your key from your bag. You saw James bouncing awkwardly on his feet. You smiled at him.
“Change your mind?”
“You did say you were paying,” he defended. “And I am not one to pass up free food.” You laughed and double checked everything. You grabbed your notebooks from the counter and shoved them in your bag.
“Well, let's go then. The pizza place is about a block away.”
“Don’t you need to get home?” He asked.
“Worried about me, Potter?” You asked teasingly as you locked up the studio. He scoffed.
“Just asking.”
“My dad’s used to me coming home late. Though he might have to fix my head tonight,” you laughed and touched your forehead.
“It hurts?” You shrugged.
“I mean, I did land on it with full force. I didn’t jump high enough or use nearly as much power,” you chastised yourself. “It was doomed from the beginning.”
“Yet you're walking straight?”
“You were walking straight after you took that bludger to the head last year,” you chuckled. He rolled his eyes.
“That's because you Slytherin’s play dirty.” You laughed.
“I can’t control the bludgers! I’m not even a beater!” You defended yourself.
You opened the door to the pizza place and a fresh whiff of oregano cheese and dough filled your senses. You sighed.
“Donte!” You yelled. A teenager walked from the back with crossed arms.
“Y/N! What do you think I am? Your personal pizza maker?” You laughed and batted your eyes at your muggle friend.
“Maybe.”
“Your usual?” You nodded.
“Yeah, but my friend here has never been.” Donte looked at James.
“Well, take a look at the menu. I’ll tell Dominique to start making your order.”
“It's appreciated!”
“Uhu,” he called back, already headed to the back.
“Come here often, then?” James asked. You smiled.
“Is it that obvious?” You walked with him to the counter where they had a menu above the counter for ordering.
“What's good here?”
“What isn’t,” you laughed. “What kind of food do you like? They have pizza fries, garlic knots, pizza, pizza bread. Everything, realy.”
“What is it you get?”
“Garlic knots and a half of a calzone normally. I think that's what they’re cooking up back there. To be honest though I never know. They surprise me some days.”
“Who knew a Malfoy would be friends with muggles,” he sounded surprised. You hummed, holding back a snarky response.
“Did you decide? I’m Sure the little dancer over here wasn’t much help.” You rolled your eyes at his nickname.
“She really wasn’t. What do you suggest?”
“Well, if you like pizzas we sell smalls that are about six pieces. Great for taking home. Our garlic knots are pretty well known, but she’s already getting those, so I assume you’d just share with her.”
“Why would you assume that?” You asked, offended.
“Aren;t you two, ya know, a couple?” You laughed and so did James. The only difference was you cheeks flushed, wishing you were.
“No,” You answered. “He hates my guts. I just happen to teach his sister. And then he came back to the studio because he forgot something.” Dante’s confused look dropped into one of murder.
“Oh. So you're the one who’s picking on her,” he crossed his arms.
“Donte!”
“Want me to beat him up?”
“How are you and Margaret not an item yet? She offered the same thing, and no. Just-Just order him the same as me but with pizza fries.” you huffed and turned to a both near the corner. James followed you, glancing over his shoulder at Donte who was still glaring at the two of you.
“What was that about?” He scowled at you. You kept your eyes on Donte’s back, ignoring James.
“I’d be careful when he brings the food over. He’s not opposed to spitting in people’s food,” you warned before fiddling with your napkin and waited for your food. You weren’t joking. You were starving. You hadn’t had time for an actual breakfast or to pack a lunch that day. You only had an apple before you left the house and a granola bar for lunch and you couldn’t wait to get some actual food in your body.
“So are you ever going to answer me?” James asked after a moment. You looked up.
“What?”
“About your… friend?... Threatening to beat me up. Like he could touch me.” You laughed.
“Donte is the most bad ass kid in this town. I bet he could beat you in a fight.”
“That was cold, Malfoy. Saying a muggle could beat me up.”
“Oh? Would you cast a few spells on him so you’d get the upper hand?”
“Possibly.” You rolled your eyes.
“Because that sounds fair.”
“Since when do Slytherins care about being fair?” You mouth parted, but you had no words. Yet again, civil and then your back to reality. You slumped in your seat. Donte came over and glared at James as he gave you your food. “Thanks, Donny. I haven’t eaten all day,” you sighed, smelling the spices and ingredients better now that they were even closer to your nose.
Your friend pointed to you threateningly.
“You better start eating.” You laughed.
“I missed my alarm!” You laughed.
“And you had to get to the studio before your first lesson because?”
“Because I needed out of the house.”
“Mansion,” he coughed. You threw a fry at him.
“Get back to work, Ankenson!” You laughed at him.
“Of course, Miss. Malfoy,” he sarcastically bowed and left to continue working. You rolled your eyes and pulled apart one of your garlic knots. James watched the scene before grabbing a fry and eating it.
“What?” You asked when you caught him studying you. He shook his head.
“Does he know about the wizarding world?”
“Yeah. I honestly should've obliviated him but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He found out my first year after I got home from school." You frowned and shoved the bread in your mouth remembering your first year. All the kids up to no good wanted to make nice and be your friend. Thinking you were the stereotypical Malfoy. You had no friends that year and got picked on by James like there was no tomorrow.
“Ya know, you still never answered my question. Why did he want to beat me up?” You shoved a garlic knot in your mouth.
“Becuas woo wick end e,” you mumbled.
“Come again.”
“He found out I was getting.. Uh… picked on.. I guess,” you shook your head and shoved another piece of the knot in your mouth.
“You can handle yourself though.” You looked away.
“Yeah. He’s just over protective.”
And for a good reason. You liked to think yourself strong, but you knew you weren’t. You could hold it together in the moment, but would completely collapse when you were alone. That's actually how you two met.
You had gotten into another fight with Astoria when you were eight and had been packed and leaving the mansion. Scorpius was crying in the parlor because you were leaving and your father was still at work, so there was no one to talk the situation down.
You had made it to the back of the pizza shop before completely collapsing and succumbing to sobs when a nine year old in jeans and t-shirt was walking by and saw you crying. He had taken you home after calming you down. He may have been a punk, but he was still kind. He had taken you back home and father was beyond furious at both you and Astoria. Mostly Astoria, though. You had just scared the crap out of him because he actually thought you would have gone through with it, and losing his kid was his worst fear. You and Donte had been friends ever since.
The two of you finished in near silence. The only time one of you spoke was to see if the other could have fries or a Garlic knot. You had ended up paying, like you said you would.
“I’ll pay you back in wizard money,” James said, his hands in his pockets as you two stepped out.
“Nonsense! I told you I would pay. Besides, I'm pretty sure he gave me a discount.”
“How do you even have muggle money?”
“I work at the studio, so I get paid in both since I teach magical and non-magical kids.” You explained, hopping onto the curb and balancing like you always did.
“Huh, weird. You’d think you didn;t even need to get paid.” You looked at him.
“WHats that supposed to mean?”
“Well your family’s rich.”
“So is yours,” you countered.
“Well, we don’t act like it,” he snapped back.
“Oh? So just because I don’t dress down all the time and we throw a few parties with stuffy know it all pure blooded Slytherins that makes us act like it?”
“Yeah, actually. It does!”
“Fascinating, Potter. Your way of thinking is quite dizzying. A poor, simple minded Slytherin like myself is having a hard time keeping up. Should I bow down to the Gryffindor prince now?”
“Like you don't expect everyone to do the same,” He scoffed.
“I don’t! You do understand that I hate the way people view me, right? I hate that my last name and all the little things that come with it! Having people look at me like I’m some monster! That I’m supposed to act like Slytherin’s princess!”
“Well aren’t you? You're from a family full of murders and monsters. Doesn't that automatically make you one to? A monster? A murderer?” You froze at the word murderer. Tears welled in your eyes and you turned away from the boy.
“Before you go around picking on people, James,” your voice cracked as you tried to keep your emotions in check, but obviously failing. “Try and get to know them first, they might just surprise you.” You bolted down the sidewalk and did not stop until you got home. Or, rather, to the manor.
Tears were running down your face at this point and you were sobbing, the words murderer and monster ringing in your head. You slammed the door shut and pressed your body up against it, putting your hand over your mouth to quiet the sobs. But your father had heard you arrive and stepped out of the parlor, expecting a happy daughter who had just got back from dancing. This was not what he got.
His smile fell when he saw you and quickly ushered you into the parlor where he had come from. You completely broke down and he just held you, worried about what happened. He rubbed your back until your sobs had quieted. He then sat you down on the couch.
“What happened? What's wrong?” You shook your head, looking down at your hands. “Hey, sweet heart, what happened?” You sniffled and wiped the tears from your eyes.
“Dad, am-am I a monster? Because-because of mom?” he stared at you for a moment and shook his head.
“Of course not, that wasn’t your fault. There were multiple compil-”
“But it was because of me,” you said sadly. “Because she had me. I killed mom,” you couldn’t look at him. James was right. Wherever your last name was, death happened. You had caused it last time. It was your fault that your mother died. Your real mother.
“Look at me, Y/N,” he pulled your face up to meet his. “You did not kill your mother. Whatever put this thought in your head, get it out right now. Do you understand me?” You nodded and sniffled. “Where did this come from?”
“It's-its just a thought, I've been entertaining for a while,” you mumbled. It wasn;t a complete lie.
“Possibly, but who brought this up?”
“He didn’t mean to, I don’t think.”
“Who?” He knew it couldn't have been Donte. He’d met him a few times and, though he was a rebel and got into fights every other day, he seemed to take care of his daughter and he was grateful for that.
“James,” you mumbled. He almost didn’t catch it, but he wanted to be sure before he went around throwing accusations.
“Could you say that one more time?”
“J-James. But please don’t do anything!I don't want there to be more problems!”
“More?” He raised an eyebrow and you flinched back.
Oops.
Your father may or may not have known that you had been getting picked on at school. You didn’t want him to do anything rash, like you knew he was going to do now.
“I-I mean any. Because there would have to be problems to begin with for there to be more. But-but there aren’t any problems. Ever. Nope. None.” you faked a yawn and looked up at the mantel’s clock. “Would you look at the time? I’m beat! I-I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad. And please don't say anything. To any one. Ever.” You rushed out of the room, hoping he wouldn’t say anything.
But as Draco watched you scurry out of the room, he knew he had to. He didn't even know you were getting picked on. And by a Potter! How many times had a Potter made you cry and he was unaware there was even a problem? No way was this going to slide by him. Not happening.
“Potter!” Draco called and jogged over to Harry who turned and looked at him suspiciously.
“Yes, Malfoy? Can I help you with something?” Draco hesitated.
“Can I talk to you in private?” Harry gave him a look but complied. They walked into an empty office.
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk about your son and my daughter.” Harry furrowed his eyebrows.
“I don’t understand.”
“Your son said a few… choice words that made my daughter upset the other night and apparently it has been going on for a while.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but she came home in tears last night asking if she were a monster because of a…” He cleared his throat. “An accident that happened when she was born.” Harry understood immediately. He had known about Draco’s first marriage and how that ended. “I then asked why she was thinking this and she asked me not to say anything, but I care for her… a lot.” Harry nodded.
“I’ll talk to James. I’m sorry she had to go through that. You as well.” Draco nodded and cleared his throat again.
“Yes, um, thank you.” Draco walked past Harry and out of the conference room. Harry thought about how the tables had turned. But it still wasn’t right. No matter what happened in their childhood.
“James! Can I talk to you for a second?” Harry called to his son who was playing with Lily in the yard as if nothing had happened yesterday. He had spent the night convincing himself that she had deserved it. That Malfoys and Slytherin’s like that didn’t have emotions. It cleared his conscience and took away his guilt.
“Yeah, dad!” He dropped Lily and ran into the house. Harry took him to the empty dining room, not wanting to rope Ginny into this. “Whats up.”
“Did you say anything that might’ve upset Y/N Malfoy yesterday?” James’ mouth dropped.
“The snitch!”
“So you did?”
“She deserved it,” he grumbled. “I can’t believe she snitched to her father,” he scoffed.
“She didn’t.” James looked up, confused. “Apparently she came home in tears the other night because of whatever you told her. What did you say exactly.”
“Uh-” James rubbed the back of his head. “Just that all Slytherin’s like her never had good intentions and uh- that her family was full of murderous monsters?” Harry stared at his son. He couldn't believe what he had just heard.
“James, do you know about her at home life?”
“She lives in a grand old manor with a huge ballroom, and her parents.”
“Parent. Astoria isn’t Y/N’s real mother.”
“Ok? That sucks but-”
“Her mother died from complications of childbirth.” Harry clarified. James stopped. He hadn’t known you had an actual mother. Albus walked in and read the uncomfortable air.
“What did I just walk in on?”
“Just talking about the way James treats a few of his classmates.”
“You told him you bully Y/N? Thank Merlin!” Harry’s eyebrows shot up and he glanced at his son who was glaring at his other son. “Oh. That wasn’t the conversation, was it? I’m just going to leave now.” He ran out of the room before James could grab him. Harry crossed his arms.
“So you're also a bully?”
“She’s a bi-jerk. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us.” Lily came prancing in the room with Ginny, who was holding a bag.
“Hi, Harry. Hi James.” She kissed the two on the cheeks and Lily jumped on the counter.
“Daddy! You should come next time! Y/N taught me a new turn and asked if I had an interest in par-su-ing acrobatics!”
“Pursuing,"he corrected her with a smile "I thought you didn't have a lesson today sweetie.”
“I had to run to a few places and Lily didn't want to go. We stopped at the studio to pick up a few things and Y/N asked if she would rather take an extra lesson. So while I ran boring errands, she got a free dance lesson.”
Harry eyed James.
“Jerk? Really? She sounds horrid. Have you even ever had a conversation with her?” James grumbled a no. Ginny looked between the two.
“What happened?”
“James made her cry the other day.” Ginny raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms at her son.
“Did he now?” Lily frowned at her brother.
“Thats rude. Especially since she took you to a pizza place yesterday.”
“How’d you know about that.” Lily handed him his camera lid.
“You forgot this again. She also told me to ask you to forgive her for whatever she said wrong. She seemed upset today,” Lily frowned.
“See! She’s using my family against me. Manipulative! She told her dad in, obviously fake, tears and told him to complain to you about a miniscule fight!”
“A minuscule fight where you called her entire family murderous monsters. And she told Draco not to say anything.”
“You called the Malfoys murderous monsters?” Ginny asked, looking at her son, half proud half disappointed.
“I-I didn’t think she’d cry about it! She never does!” Albus walked in, deciding it was a good time to stop eavesdropping.
“Actually she does. Every time. Same spot by the lake. She’s fine until she’s alone. Scorpius and I saw her sobbing one day.” James’ mouth went dry. He had made you sob everytime he picked on you? How did you still have tears? “What did she even do to you?" Albus asked, actually curious. He remembered James complaining about you since the first summer after Hogwarts, though he had never given a reason why.
Ginny and Harry gave him a disappointed look.
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry! I didn’t know!” James yelled in defense.
“And that makes it better?” Ginny asked, disappointed in her son.
“No,” he mumbled. “I’ll apologize.”
“You better bet your-”
“Ginny.” Ginny took a breath.
“Yes you will. Tomorrow. Go to bed.” James rolled his eyes and walked up to his room without complaint.
James woke up late that day, dreading his task. Not only did he have to apologize to a Malfoy, but he had the strange feeling of guilt. Were you as terrible as he thought? He had only talked to you once before he found out you were a Malfoy. On the train. He had been utterly lost and you had wandered into his compartment asking if he wanted to share your bag of sweets, which was quite large. It was literally a duffle bag filled to the brim with all sorts of candies.
“Mind if I join you?” An eleven year old you asked. He looked up from his wand to see you standing awkwardly at the door. Butterflies beat in his stomach.
“Uh-yeah, sure!” he smiled. You smiled and slid into his compartment. You settled in front of him and sat the bag on your lap. You looked out the doors and back at him, motioning for him to come towards you. He leaned forward in his seat. And you smirked, making him nervous.
“Wanna see my stash?” He eyed you suspiciously. Before he could say no, you opened your bag to reveal it filled top to bottom and everywhere in between with chocolate. His mouth dropped open at the sight of it all. There was so much.
“Wow. Where did you get all this?” You laughed and dug in it, pulling out a chocolate frog.
“I have my ways. Want some?”
“Can I?”
“Wouldn’t have offered if you couldn’t!” You slid the bag from your shoulder and sat it on the floor in between you so you could both eat it at your pleasure. You two talked the entire train ride. The butterflies in both of your stomachs were going insane.
You were careful not to reveal your last name to him. Maybe if he got to know you first he wouldn’t hate you, like you assumed most people would when they heard your last name. But then you heard him say his last name.
“By the way, I’m James Potter,” he smiled. Your heart sank. The stories of your family history goes back centuries of Potters and Malfoys hating each other. Your father and his. Lucius and James. It went back even further than that. You smiled through the panic.
“Y/N. So you like quidditch?” You had quickly changed the subject, not wanting him to ask more. Luckily, he didn;t seem to notice and he adored quidditch, just like you. But then it all just went wrong at the sorting Ceremony.
He stared at his ceiling for a minute. Those same damn feelings rising in his chest when he thought about you. Not about how you were a stuck up Malfoy, but how you were an eleven year old girl on the Hogwarts express asking to share some candy with him and talk about his family and anything quidditch.
“I’m just a jerk,” he mumbled to himself.”
“A big dumb jerk, yes,” Albus said from the doorway. He sat up and stared daggers at his brother.
“What did I say about coming into my room?”
“And what did I say about you liking her?” He sneered at his younger brother.
“I don’t like her.”
“Lies.” Albus walked into his room. “You better get down to the studio soon. They close in about three hours. And don’t screw up. Just because her dad was a jerk to ours doesn;t mean she’s rude.”
“Yeah, thanks for the second lecture. Now get out of my room.” Albus held up his hands and walked out leaving James to get ready. He threw on a pair of jeans and a shirt, still half asleep and the other half of his thoughts were on you. “Merlin, I’m a mess,” he muttered as he slid his camera over his shoulder and headed downstairs. Harry was sitting at the dining room table with Ginny. “Morning.” He grumbled out and went into the kitchen to grab a drink before heading out.
“It's afternoon!” Harry called into him.
“So I see!” He chugged a water and looked towards the cupboard that had the chocolate stash. Without a second though he grabbed a small fabric drawstring bag from the shelf and filled it with chocolate. “I’m going down to apologize,” he muttered. Harry nodded in approval and James left the house, quickly making his way down the sidewalk and to the dance studio before closing hours.
He stepped into the building and walked past a bunch of girls who he knew were staring at him. He walked to the front desk and smiled at the woman working.
“Hello, can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m looking for Y/N Malfoy. I have some business I would like to discuss with her.”
“She is currently teaching the new ones, but you can wait up in the balcony for her. I’ll send someone back to tell her you want to speak to her before she goes back to work on her other dances. She didn't look well today, probably landed on her head again and didn’t get it checked out,” she sighed. James swallowed. Had he made you so upset yesterday that you hadn’t gotten your dad to look at your head?
Why did he care this much? Maybe it was because since he found out that you had cried about it, he realized you weren't heartless like he had tried to convince himself. That you were actually kind and that he had wasted five years picking on you instead of talking to you.
He sighed and walked up the stairs to the nearly empty sitting section. He went to his spot by the railing and looked over. You were helping itty bitty ones, looked around three and four. You cheered for them, teased them, and held them. He noticed how gentle you were with them. He frowned deeper.
Merlin, I’m an ignorant jerk.
You were helping Abby with her plie when Margaret walked in. You looked up at her and waved with a smile, but she didn't have the same expression on her face.
“What's wrong? Why are you still here?”
“I was heading out when Miss. Rosier stopped me. Apparently someone,” she glanced up in the balcony, “is here to see you." You followed her gaze to James. “Claims to have some business.” Your entire body tensed. Your heartbeat picked up and you looked down. “I can stay. This is the last class today so it would just be us thr-”
“It's fine, Maggy. Go home. Your mum must be ready to kill you for not being there already. She has four little ones to juggle,” you chuckled and went back to helping the little girl.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you, though.” Your friend eyed James before nodding and leaving. You swallowed. You weren’t emotionally prepared for this.
Class finished up too quickly and the girls left the studio to go home and to their families. You stayed in the large studio and James stayed where he was up top.
“Might as well come down here, Potter. No matter how much you think I’m not going to cast a curse on you.” James walked down and into the studio, you noticed he had his shoes in his hands and was grateful for that. It was one of your biggest pet peeves. “What was your business with me?” You asked, turning around to meet his gaze.
“I wanted to say I was sorry. For what I said the other day.” You shook your head.
“I know my father went to yours. You probably think me a snitch along with a murderous monster.” He swallowed at your words. He hadn’t exactly meant what he said.
“I don’t think you any of that.”
“Then why did you say it?” He stayed silent. He couldn’t answer that question. You sighed and sat on the floor.
“I’m also sorry for the way I’ve been treating you since first year. Since I found you were a Malfoy and all.” You smiled sadly.
“Yeah, well, there was a reason I didn’t tell you my first name on the train. Especially after you told me your last name.” He sat down in front of you.
“I-I shouldn’t have judged you based off of your last name. I know better. I knew better.”
“It's fine, really.”
“But it's really not.” He sighed. “I mean, my brother is friends with your brother and I don’t go picking on him. It's not fair and I really am sorry. I’m not just saying that. And I also didn’t know about your… your mom,” you swallowed.
“It was a long time ago.”
“But you blame yourself and I didn’t help. You're not a murderer, and neither is your entire family. I really am sorry about that. And for the loss of her.” You looked him in his eyes and only saw sincerity. You smiled.
“Thank you, James. It actually means a lot to me.” He smiled and handed you the bag of chocolate he had brought. “Whats this?”
“This is my stash. Wanna see?” He whispered. You smiled and he opened it up to reveal chocolate. You laughed and smiled brightly. Sadness was still laced throughout it, but it was happier.
“You remembered our first meeting?”
“Considering I thought you were going to ask me to do drugs with you, yes.” Your eyes widened.
“That is not what you thought! Did I really look like a drug dealer?” He smirked.
“No. I just figured that's what the bag was about when you said it the way you did.” You laughed and looked at the bag.
“Can I?”
“I brought it for you, a peace offering. Maybe to try and start again?” You smiled and took out two chocolate frogs, handing him one.
“Hi, I’m Y/N. Want to share my chocolate?” He smiled and took the frog from you.
“I’d love to.”
“Don’t you dare eat on this floor though!” He laughed and put the frog in his pocket.
“I wouldn't dream of it.”
“No, he’s just protective. Wants the best for his siblings and such,” you shrugged. Draco scoffed. “What?”
“I was a prick like that. That's not the only thing going through his mind.”
“Dad,” you warned.
“What? I’m just saying. The other two seemed fine. He was an egotistical control freak who, let me guess, has a new girl on his arm every other week. Wait, and let me guess, it gets better, right? He also bullies the less fortunate.”
“You almost described what you were like as a kid.”
“That's because I know what they look like. And that kid was me, just different.” You rolled your eyes, your mind wandering back to the school year and the various jabs he made at you… the less fortunate…
It had been a few weeks since you had taken Lily on as a student. Since she was new to dance you had suggested twice a week and found that Lily was a very capable dancer. She caught on quickly and was very confident in her movements, though you could tell she got stressed when she wasn't able to get something right.
“That was excellent, Lily!” You praised. She smiled brightly at your praise. How about we move to the large room if you’d like, maybe even get your mother and father to watch,” you suggested. Her face lit up. “I’ll go get them. If there's someone dancing just stand on the side like usual, alright?” She nodded and practically pranced off to the large room.
You smiled at her and quickly walked to the waiting area. Her lesson was nearly over and Harry and or Ginny were normally there already. Your smile dropped when you noticed James leaning on the wall looking down at his camera.
“Hey, Potter,” You smiled. He looked up and his gaze made your heart go mad. “Your parents here?”
“No. They sent me to pick up Lily. Is she done?”
“We were going to run her routine in the large studio. Would you like to watch? She’s very proud of it.”
“Sure.”
“Follow me.” you walked him back to a door. “Just go up these steps and you’ll be on the balcony. I’ll send her up to you when she’s finished.” You left him to go up the stairs and to the balcony.
The large room was emptying out from the previous class when you entered. You had class right after you taught Lily so there was a few minutes break in between.
“Ready?” She nodded and ran out to the middle of the room. “I’ll jump in if you get stuck, ok? Just keep going if you forget a step.” She nodded and set herself up. You pressed play on the music and her music started. You watched her from the sidelines, making mental notes on what to work on with her next lesson. You jumped in on the new part and helped her through it, which she seemed grateful for.
The music ended and you smiled.
“That was great, Lily! Keep practising and I’ll see you next week. Your brother is up on the balcony if you want to go meet him. You remember how to get up there?” She nodded.
“Yep! Thank you, Y/N!” She hugged you and ran up to meet her brother as your friends started to walk in. You joined them in center to begin to stretch for class.
James was waiting for Lily when she came running up the stairs. He put his camera away and picked her up.
“That was beautiful! I got a few pictures of you doing it as well,” She smiled brightly.
“Can we watch, Y/N dance?” She asked. “She has class right now and I wanna see what the older girls do.” James forced a smile, hating the idea of being in the same room as you longer than he had to, but agreed for his sister’s sake. He carried her to the edge as they watched you and a group of girls warm up. You were talking to Margaret as you stretched. You had taken your shirt off so you were in a backless red leotard; he was slightly surprised that the leotard wasn’t green.
“Hey isn’t that the girl you're teaching and her adorable brother?” You looked away from your curly hair friend to see James and Lily watching the class. You waved and Lily waved back as James just glared at you. You slowly brought your hand back down and turned back to Margaret. “What was that about?”
“He hates me,” you shrugged.
“Why?”
“We go to the same school.” Her eyes widened.
“Wait, that's the kid who bullies you?”
“I wouldn’t say bully.”
“I would. Want me to beat him up?” You laughed.
“Maggy!”
“What? I will.” You rolled your eyes and slipped into your split.
“No. I don’t want to lose his sister as a student. She is very talented, and a joy to teach.” Margaret frowned.
“Well, whenever you want me to beat him up I’ll be all over it.” You laughed and your teacher began class.
You notice James pull Lily out half way through, which you didn’t blame him for. Class was about three hours, and that wasn’t even the end of your day. Lily looked upset, but let him carry her out without a fuss. Margaret nudged you and nodded up towards the balcony.
“What?” You whispered, pirouetting a few times.
“They left.”
“She’s probably exhausted. She danced for a vigorous hour with me.”
“Or maybe he likes you and couldn’t stop his heart from beating at the sight of you,” She hummed. You glared at her.
She and Scropius were the only two who knew of your crush on James. And now you were regretting telling her.
“Or maybe he couldn;t stand the sight of me anymore because he hates my guts.” You whispered back. She rolled her eyes.
“Probably hard,” she muttered. You smacked her shoulder and stifled laughs.
“Margaret!” She smiled at seeing you laugh. You had looked so off when you noticed them. Your stage fright getting the better of you. Now that they were gone you seemed more at ease.
“Y/N!” You looked at the teacher.
“Yes ma’am?”
“Class has ended.” You smiled.
“Sorry ma’am. Would it be a problem if I stayed here for a bit longer?”
“By a bit longer do you mean ten tonight?” You chuckled.
“Is that your hint that my day is over and to get out?” you asked with a grin. She rolled her eyes.
“Well, my day is over. Good evening, Miss. Malfoy.”
“Good evening.” You went to the player and set up your music. You had some routines you wanted to run, as well as throw some tricks.
James was tearing his already messy room apart, mumbling how he could not believe he lost something or other.
“Jamie?” Lily asked coming in. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I left the cap to my camera at the studio,” He sighed and flopped down on the bed with a huff.
“Y/N might not have left yet. She normally stays after closing.” James scoffed.
“Like I want to be in there alone with her.”
“Wouldn;t surprise me,” Albus smirked from the doorway.
“Go away, Albus.”
“You like her, admit it.”
“Why would I like a stuck up Malfoy?”
“Maybe because she isn’t stuck up?” Albus offered. “Come on, James. You know that better than anyone.” James scoffed and stood.
“I need my lid, so I suppose it's worth a shot. Tell mum and Dad I’ll be back later.” He slung his camera over his body and grabbed his jacket heading out of the room, grumbling angrily.
He walked slowly down to his sister’s studio, semi praying that it was closed and he wouldn’t have to see you. He even stopped and took pictures of random things on his way. But, alas, it was not to be.
When he got to the studio he pulled on the door which opened with ease.
Maybe he wouldn’t see you?
Wrong.
He walked up to the balcony and immediately heard someone on the floor. Being the curious person he was he peaked over to see you in front of a mat, pressed up against the wall on your toes. You ran and flipped in the air, landing on your behind. He cringed, but you got out of it with another trick. Had you meant to do that?
“Are you going to just watch me all day or are you going to at least say something?” You called up to him, prepping for another trick. He scowled and leaned over the railing. You glanced at him, sending him a small smile before running again and doing a front aerial, landing it perfectly. Though, you went over everything you could've done better in your head.
“I was just looking for my camera lid,” he grumbled down at you.
“Is that why you were studying me do a suicide?” You asked. His eyes widened.
“A wh-what?” You chuckled.
“Don’t think I didn’t see you cringe. I have excellent eyesight. The trick when I-oof-” you pushed off the ground into a roundoff back handspring. You landed it and rolled your shoulders, turning to him. “Landed on my butt. Its called a suicide. And the trick afterwards is a valdez,” you informed him. He just glared at you. You nodded awkwardly. “Nice talk. Oh, and your camera lid is on the desk out front.”
“How’d you-”
“I make sure no one left anything around the studio. If they do I leave it on the deck. You just happened to label it. J.S.P. Kind of hard not to know who that is.”
“Oh.”
You stood backwards against the mat and did four back handsprings, grimacing when you came up from the last one. You really needed a rest day. But a rest day would mean not coming into the studio. And you weren’t going to stay home with Astoria.
Walking back to the other end of the mat nearly every bone in your body cracked or creaked in some way, making james cringe. You smiled up at him.
“Not a fan of cracking bone?” You chuckled.
“There was just so much. Is that normal?” You smiled to yourself.
“Yeah. For me at least. I’m not naturally flexible so I crack a lot and I have to stretch every day in order not to get back to point A.” You stood against the wall and ran into your Front Handspring, immediately going into your back handspring.
“Will Lily be able to,” he waved his hand at you. “Do this?” You chuckled and sat down on the mat, needing to stretch for a moment.
“She’s very flexible. Her split is already down and her straddle is close. I could work with her during her lessons with acrobats. It's best to get them started young when they're growing. It gets harder when you're a teenager. So, if she works hard, yes. She could do this.” It was quiet for a few minutes as you stretched. “Your sister is very talented like her brother’s. You should be proud.” You smiled at him, standing and doing a backbend, sitting in it for a moment before coming back up, groaning as you did.
“I am. She works very hard at it.”
“Well, like you saw today, she’s moving quickly. By the time we go back to Hogwarts she should be ready to join a group class.”
“Is that good?” You smiled.
“Yes. Group classes are fun and though they don;t cover as much as a private lesson does they’re just as challenging.”
“Really?” You chuckled at his confusion. This family knew nothing about ballet or dance at all.
“Yeah I should know. I take at least four a week.”
“Four a week, really?”
“Yep. I teach on all of those days, plus one where I don’t have a lesson. And I have two days off. But, I’m still here working on technique.” You shrugged.
“So you practically live here,” he joked.
“Yeah. This is more of a home than Malfoy Manor ever has been.”
“Why, don’t love your parents?” he scoffed.
“My dad I adore. We’re surprisingly close. Me and uh, Astoria, have a… forced relationship.” He raised his eyebrows in shock at you using her first name.
“Must be honest, from the stories I've heard about the Malfoys, I wouldn't expect him to be a good parent,” James scoffed. You smiled sadly.
“Yeah, a lot of people wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t ask for a different one, as cheesy as that sounds.” You backed up against the wall and sprang off into a roundoff back tuck landing on your head. “Ah!” You sat up and rubbed your neck and head. That was going to be sore tomorrow. “Dammit!” You swore, smacking the mat. You stood up and walked back over to the end of the mat, getting ready to do it again.
“Are you alright?” You glanced at James, yoru vision swimming for a moment before focusing on him. You blinked a few times to clear the spots from vision.
“Yeah. Not the first time I’ve landed on my face,” you chuckled. You felt a tear slip down your face and wiped it away quickly.
“You're crying.”
“Thank you captain obvious,” you joked, laughing. “It just hurts a bit,” you snifled and willed the rest of the tears away, rubbing your face and neck. It was definitely going to bruise. “Yet again, not the first time. Gotta fall a couple times before you stick the landing." You got ready on the wall to push off again, but your vision fell to the side and you knew you weren't going to be able to tumble any more.
Dad’s gonna be pissed that he has to fix my head again.
You quickly rolled up the mats and looked at James who was studying. You smiled.
“Did you eat yet? I’m positively starved and I know a good pizza joint down the road.”
“Why would I want to join you?” he sneered.
Moment of being civil over.
You shrugged.
“Just thought I’d offer. My treat if you decide to join.” You looked around the room making sure everything was in place and clean.
You nodded and left the room, shutting off the lights. You checked the other rooms and grabbed your bag, changing into jeans and a black crop top with your jean jacket. You walked out and grabbed your key from your bag. You saw James bouncing awkwardly on his feet. You smiled at him.
“Change your mind?”
“You did say you were paying,” he defended. “And I am not one to pass up free food.” You laughed and double checked everything. You grabbed your notebooks from the counter and shoved them in your bag.
“Well, let's go then. The pizza place is about a block away.”
“Don’t you need to get home?” He asked.
“Worried about me, Potter?” You asked teasingly as you locked up the studio. He scoffed.
“Just asking.”
“My dad’s used to me coming home late. Though he might have to fix my head tonight,” you laughed and touched your forehead.
“It hurts?” You shrugged.
“I mean, I did land on it with full force. I didn’t jump high enough or use nearly as much power,” you chastised yourself. “It was doomed from the beginning.”
“Yet you're walking straight?”
“You were walking straight after you took that bludger to the head last year,” you chuckled. He rolled his eyes.
“That's because you Slytherin’s play dirty.” You laughed.
“I can’t control the bludgers! I’m not even a beater!” You defended yourself.
You opened the door to the pizza place and a fresh whiff of oregano cheese and dough filled your senses. You sighed.
“Donte!” You yelled. A teenager walked from the back with crossed arms.
“Y/N! What do you think I am? Your personal pizza maker?” You laughed and batted your eyes at your muggle friend.
“Maybe.”
“Your usual?” You nodded.
“Yeah, but my friend here has never been.” Donte looked at James.
“Well, take a look at the menu. I’ll tell Dominique to start making your order.”
“It's appreciated!”
“Uhu,” he called back, already headed to the back.
“Come here often, then?” James asked. You smiled.
“Is it that obvious?” You walked with him to the counter where they had a menu above the counter for ordering.
“What's good here?”
“What isn’t,” you laughed. “What kind of food do you like? They have pizza fries, garlic knots, pizza, pizza bread. Everything, realy.”
“What is it you get?”
“Garlic knots and a half of a calzone normally. I think that's what they’re cooking up back there. To be honest though I never know. They surprise me some days.”
“Who knew a Malfoy would be friends with muggles,” he sounded surprised. You hummed, holding back a snarky response.
“Did you decide? I’m Sure the little dancer over here wasn’t much help.” You rolled your eyes at his nickname.
“She really wasn’t. What do you suggest?”
“Well, if you like pizzas we sell smalls that are about six pieces. Great for taking home. Our garlic knots are pretty well known, but she’s already getting those, so I assume you’d just share with her.”
“Why would you assume that?” You asked, offended.
“Aren;t you two, ya know, a couple?” You laughed and so did James. The only difference was you cheeks flushed, wishing you were.
“No,” You answered. “He hates my guts. I just happen to teach his sister. And then he came back to the studio because he forgot something.” Dante’s confused look dropped into one of murder.
“Oh. So you're the one who’s picking on her,” he crossed his arms.
“Donte!”
“Want me to beat him up?”
“How are you and Margaret not an item yet? She offered the same thing, and no. Just-Just order him the same as me but with pizza fries.” you huffed and turned to a both near the corner. James followed you, glancing over his shoulder at Donte who was still glaring at the two of you.
“What was that about?” He scowled at you. You kept your eyes on Donte’s back, ignoring James.
“I’d be careful when he brings the food over. He’s not opposed to spitting in people’s food,” you warned before fiddling with your napkin and waited for your food. You weren’t joking. You were starving. You hadn’t had time for an actual breakfast or to pack a lunch that day. You only had an apple before you left the house and a granola bar for lunch and you couldn’t wait to get some actual food in your body.
“So are you ever going to answer me?” James asked after a moment. You looked up.
“What?”
“About your… friend?... Threatening to beat me up. Like he could touch me.” You laughed.
“Donte is the most bad ass kid in this town. I bet he could beat you in a fight.”
“That was cold, Malfoy. Saying a muggle could beat me up.”
“Oh? Would you cast a few spells on him so you’d get the upper hand?”
“Possibly.” You rolled your eyes.
“Because that sounds fair.”
“Since when do Slytherins care about being fair?” You mouth parted, but you had no words. Yet again, civil and then your back to reality. You slumped in your seat. Donte came over and glared at James as he gave you your food. “Thanks, Donny. I haven’t eaten all day,” you sighed, smelling the spices and ingredients better now that they were even closer to your nose.
Your friend pointed to you threateningly.
“You better start eating.” You laughed.
“I missed my alarm!” You laughed.
“And you had to get to the studio before your first lesson because?”
“Because I needed out of the house.”
“Mansion,” he coughed. You threw a fry at him.
“Get back to work, Ankenson!” You laughed at him.
“Of course, Miss. Malfoy,” he sarcastically bowed and left to continue working. You rolled your eyes and pulled apart one of your garlic knots. James watched the scene before grabbing a fry and eating it.
“What?” You asked when you caught him studying you. He shook his head.
“Does he know about the wizarding world?”
“Yeah. I honestly should've obliviated him but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He found out my first year after I got home from school." You frowned and shoved the bread in your mouth remembering your first year. All the kids up to no good wanted to make nice and be your friend. Thinking you were the stereotypical Malfoy. You had no friends that year and got picked on by James like there was no tomorrow.
“Ya know, you still never answered my question. Why did he want to beat me up?” You shoved a garlic knot in your mouth.
“Becuas woo wick end e,” you mumbled.
“Come again.”
“He found out I was getting.. Uh… picked on.. I guess,” you shook your head and shoved another piece of the knot in your mouth.
“You can handle yourself though.” You looked away.
“Yeah. He’s just over protective.”
And for a good reason. You liked to think yourself strong, but you knew you weren’t. You could hold it together in the moment, but would completely collapse when you were alone. That's actually how you two met.
You had gotten into another fight with Astoria when you were eight and had been packed and leaving the mansion. Scorpius was crying in the parlor because you were leaving and your father was still at work, so there was no one to talk the situation down.
You had made it to the back of the pizza shop before completely collapsing and succumbing to sobs when a nine year old in jeans and t-shirt was walking by and saw you crying. He had taken you home after calming you down. He may have been a punk, but he was still kind. He had taken you back home and father was beyond furious at both you and Astoria. Mostly Astoria, though. You had just scared the crap out of him because he actually thought you would have gone through with it, and losing his kid was his worst fear. You and Donte had been friends ever since.
The two of you finished in near silence. The only time one of you spoke was to see if the other could have fries or a Garlic knot. You had ended up paying, like you said you would.
“I’ll pay you back in wizard money,” James said, his hands in his pockets as you two stepped out.
“Nonsense! I told you I would pay. Besides, I'm pretty sure he gave me a discount.”
“How do you even have muggle money?”
“I work at the studio, so I get paid in both since I teach magical and non-magical kids.” You explained, hopping onto the curb and balancing like you always did.
“Huh, weird. You’d think you didn;t even need to get paid.” You looked at him.
“WHats that supposed to mean?”
“Well your family’s rich.”
“So is yours,” you countered.
“Well, we don’t act like it,” he snapped back.
“Oh? So just because I don’t dress down all the time and we throw a few parties with stuffy know it all pure blooded Slytherins that makes us act like it?”
“Yeah, actually. It does!”
“Fascinating, Potter. Your way of thinking is quite dizzying. A poor, simple minded Slytherin like myself is having a hard time keeping up. Should I bow down to the Gryffindor prince now?”
“Like you don't expect everyone to do the same,” He scoffed.
“I don’t! You do understand that I hate the way people view me, right? I hate that my last name and all the little things that come with it! Having people look at me like I’m some monster! That I’m supposed to act like Slytherin’s princess!”
“Well aren’t you? You're from a family full of murders and monsters. Doesn't that automatically make you one to? A monster? A murderer?” You froze at the word murderer. Tears welled in your eyes and you turned away from the boy.
“Before you go around picking on people, James,” your voice cracked as you tried to keep your emotions in check, but obviously failing. “Try and get to know them first, they might just surprise you.” You bolted down the sidewalk and did not stop until you got home. Or, rather, to the manor.
Tears were running down your face at this point and you were sobbing, the words murderer and monster ringing in your head. You slammed the door shut and pressed your body up against it, putting your hand over your mouth to quiet the sobs. But your father had heard you arrive and stepped out of the parlor, expecting a happy daughter who had just got back from dancing. This was not what he got.
His smile fell when he saw you and quickly ushered you into the parlor where he had come from. You completely broke down and he just held you, worried about what happened. He rubbed your back until your sobs had quieted. He then sat you down on the couch.
“What happened? What's wrong?” You shook your head, looking down at your hands. “Hey, sweet heart, what happened?” You sniffled and wiped the tears from your eyes.
“Dad, am-am I a monster? Because-because of mom?” he stared at you for a moment and shook his head.
“Of course not, that wasn’t your fault. There were multiple compil-”
“But it was because of me,” you said sadly. “Because she had me. I killed mom,” you couldn’t look at him. James was right. Wherever your last name was, death happened. You had caused it last time. It was your fault that your mother died. Your real mother.
“Look at me, Y/N,” he pulled your face up to meet his. “You did not kill your mother. Whatever put this thought in your head, get it out right now. Do you understand me?” You nodded and sniffled. “Where did this come from?”
“It's-its just a thought, I've been entertaining for a while,” you mumbled. It wasn;t a complete lie.
“Possibly, but who brought this up?”
“He didn’t mean to, I don’t think.”
“Who?” He knew it couldn't have been Donte. He’d met him a few times and, though he was a rebel and got into fights every other day, he seemed to take care of his daughter and he was grateful for that.
“James,” you mumbled. He almost didn’t catch it, but he wanted to be sure before he went around throwing accusations.
“Could you say that one more time?”
“J-James. But please don’t do anything!I don't want there to be more problems!”
“More?” He raised an eyebrow and you flinched back.
Oops.
Your father may or may not have known that you had been getting picked on at school. You didn’t want him to do anything rash, like you knew he was going to do now.
“I-I mean any. Because there would have to be problems to begin with for there to be more. But-but there aren’t any problems. Ever. Nope. None.” you faked a yawn and looked up at the mantel’s clock. “Would you look at the time? I’m beat! I-I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad. And please don't say anything. To any one. Ever.” You rushed out of the room, hoping he wouldn’t say anything.
But as Draco watched you scurry out of the room, he knew he had to. He didn't even know you were getting picked on. And by a Potter! How many times had a Potter made you cry and he was unaware there was even a problem? No way was this going to slide by him. Not happening.
“Potter!” Draco called and jogged over to Harry who turned and looked at him suspiciously.
“Yes, Malfoy? Can I help you with something?” Draco hesitated.
“Can I talk to you in private?” Harry gave him a look but complied. They walked into an empty office.
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk about your son and my daughter.” Harry furrowed his eyebrows.
“I don’t understand.”
“Your son said a few… choice words that made my daughter upset the other night and apparently it has been going on for a while.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but she came home in tears last night asking if she were a monster because of a…” He cleared his throat. “An accident that happened when she was born.” Harry understood immediately. He had known about Draco’s first marriage and how that ended. “I then asked why she was thinking this and she asked me not to say anything, but I care for her… a lot.” Harry nodded.
“I’ll talk to James. I’m sorry she had to go through that. You as well.” Draco nodded and cleared his throat again.
“Yes, um, thank you.” Draco walked past Harry and out of the conference room. Harry thought about how the tables had turned. But it still wasn’t right. No matter what happened in their childhood.
“James! Can I talk to you for a second?” Harry called to his son who was playing with Lily in the yard as if nothing had happened yesterday. He had spent the night convincing himself that she had deserved it. That Malfoys and Slytherin’s like that didn’t have emotions. It cleared his conscience and took away his guilt.
“Yeah, dad!” He dropped Lily and ran into the house. Harry took him to the empty dining room, not wanting to rope Ginny into this. “Whats up.”
“Did you say anything that might’ve upset Y/N Malfoy yesterday?” James’ mouth dropped.
“The snitch!”
“So you did?”
“She deserved it,” he grumbled. “I can’t believe she snitched to her father,” he scoffed.
“She didn’t.” James looked up, confused. “Apparently she came home in tears the other night because of whatever you told her. What did you say exactly.”
“Uh-” James rubbed the back of his head. “Just that all Slytherin’s like her never had good intentions and uh- that her family was full of murderous monsters?” Harry stared at his son. He couldn't believe what he had just heard.
“James, do you know about her at home life?”
“She lives in a grand old manor with a huge ballroom, and her parents.”
“Parent. Astoria isn’t Y/N’s real mother.”
“Ok? That sucks but-”
“Her mother died from complications of childbirth.” Harry clarified. James stopped. He hadn’t known you had an actual mother. Albus walked in and read the uncomfortable air.
“What did I just walk in on?”
“Just talking about the way James treats a few of his classmates.”
“You told him you bully Y/N? Thank Merlin!” Harry’s eyebrows shot up and he glanced at his son who was glaring at his other son. “Oh. That wasn’t the conversation, was it? I’m just going to leave now.” He ran out of the room before James could grab him. Harry crossed his arms.
“So you're also a bully?”
“She’s a bi-jerk. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us.” Lily came prancing in the room with Ginny, who was holding a bag.
“Hi, Harry. Hi James.” She kissed the two on the cheeks and Lily jumped on the counter.
“Daddy! You should come next time! Y/N taught me a new turn and asked if I had an interest in par-su-ing acrobatics!”
“Pursuing,"he corrected her with a smile "I thought you didn't have a lesson today sweetie.”
“I had to run to a few places and Lily didn't want to go. We stopped at the studio to pick up a few things and Y/N asked if she would rather take an extra lesson. So while I ran boring errands, she got a free dance lesson.”
Harry eyed James.
“Jerk? Really? She sounds horrid. Have you even ever had a conversation with her?” James grumbled a no. Ginny looked between the two.
“What happened?”
“James made her cry the other day.” Ginny raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms at her son.
“Did he now?” Lily frowned at her brother.
“Thats rude. Especially since she took you to a pizza place yesterday.”
“How’d you know about that.” Lily handed him his camera lid.
“You forgot this again. She also told me to ask you to forgive her for whatever she said wrong. She seemed upset today,” Lily frowned.
“See! She’s using my family against me. Manipulative! She told her dad in, obviously fake, tears and told him to complain to you about a miniscule fight!”
“A minuscule fight where you called her entire family murderous monsters. And she told Draco not to say anything.”
“You called the Malfoys murderous monsters?” Ginny asked, looking at her son, half proud half disappointed.
“I-I didn’t think she’d cry about it! She never does!” Albus walked in, deciding it was a good time to stop eavesdropping.
“Actually she does. Every time. Same spot by the lake. She’s fine until she’s alone. Scorpius and I saw her sobbing one day.” James’ mouth went dry. He had made you sob everytime he picked on you? How did you still have tears? “What did she even do to you?" Albus asked, actually curious. He remembered James complaining about you since the first summer after Hogwarts, though he had never given a reason why.
Ginny and Harry gave him a disappointed look.
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry! I didn’t know!” James yelled in defense.
“And that makes it better?” Ginny asked, disappointed in her son.
“No,” he mumbled. “I’ll apologize.”
“You better bet your-”
“Ginny.” Ginny took a breath.
“Yes you will. Tomorrow. Go to bed.” James rolled his eyes and walked up to his room without complaint.
James woke up late that day, dreading his task. Not only did he have to apologize to a Malfoy, but he had the strange feeling of guilt. Were you as terrible as he thought? He had only talked to you once before he found out you were a Malfoy. On the train. He had been utterly lost and you had wandered into his compartment asking if he wanted to share your bag of sweets, which was quite large. It was literally a duffle bag filled to the brim with all sorts of candies.
“Mind if I join you?” An eleven year old you asked. He looked up from his wand to see you standing awkwardly at the door. Butterflies beat in his stomach.
“Uh-yeah, sure!” he smiled. You smiled and slid into his compartment. You settled in front of him and sat the bag on your lap. You looked out the doors and back at him, motioning for him to come towards you. He leaned forward in his seat. And you smirked, making him nervous.
“Wanna see my stash?” He eyed you suspiciously. Before he could say no, you opened your bag to reveal it filled top to bottom and everywhere in between with chocolate. His mouth dropped open at the sight of it all. There was so much.
“Wow. Where did you get all this?” You laughed and dug in it, pulling out a chocolate frog.
“I have my ways. Want some?”
“Can I?”
“Wouldn’t have offered if you couldn’t!” You slid the bag from your shoulder and sat it on the floor in between you so you could both eat it at your pleasure. You two talked the entire train ride. The butterflies in both of your stomachs were going insane.
You were careful not to reveal your last name to him. Maybe if he got to know you first he wouldn’t hate you, like you assumed most people would when they heard your last name. But then you heard him say his last name.
“By the way, I’m James Potter,” he smiled. Your heart sank. The stories of your family history goes back centuries of Potters and Malfoys hating each other. Your father and his. Lucius and James. It went back even further than that. You smiled through the panic.
“Y/N. So you like quidditch?” You had quickly changed the subject, not wanting him to ask more. Luckily, he didn;t seem to notice and he adored quidditch, just like you. But then it all just went wrong at the sorting Ceremony.
He stared at his ceiling for a minute. Those same damn feelings rising in his chest when he thought about you. Not about how you were a stuck up Malfoy, but how you were an eleven year old girl on the Hogwarts express asking to share some candy with him and talk about his family and anything quidditch.
“I’m just a jerk,” he mumbled to himself.”
“A big dumb jerk, yes,” Albus said from the doorway. He sat up and stared daggers at his brother.
“What did I say about coming into my room?”
“And what did I say about you liking her?” He sneered at his younger brother.
“I don’t like her.”
“Lies.” Albus walked into his room. “You better get down to the studio soon. They close in about three hours. And don’t screw up. Just because her dad was a jerk to ours doesn;t mean she’s rude.”
“Yeah, thanks for the second lecture. Now get out of my room.” Albus held up his hands and walked out leaving James to get ready. He threw on a pair of jeans and a shirt, still half asleep and the other half of his thoughts were on you. “Merlin, I’m a mess,” he muttered as he slid his camera over his shoulder and headed downstairs. Harry was sitting at the dining room table with Ginny. “Morning.” He grumbled out and went into the kitchen to grab a drink before heading out.
“It's afternoon!” Harry called into him.
“So I see!” He chugged a water and looked towards the cupboard that had the chocolate stash. Without a second though he grabbed a small fabric drawstring bag from the shelf and filled it with chocolate. “I’m going down to apologize,” he muttered. Harry nodded in approval and James left the house, quickly making his way down the sidewalk and to the dance studio before closing hours.
He stepped into the building and walked past a bunch of girls who he knew were staring at him. He walked to the front desk and smiled at the woman working.
“Hello, can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m looking for Y/N Malfoy. I have some business I would like to discuss with her.”
“She is currently teaching the new ones, but you can wait up in the balcony for her. I’ll send someone back to tell her you want to speak to her before she goes back to work on her other dances. She didn't look well today, probably landed on her head again and didn’t get it checked out,” she sighed. James swallowed. Had he made you so upset yesterday that you hadn’t gotten your dad to look at your head?
Why did he care this much? Maybe it was because since he found out that you had cried about it, he realized you weren't heartless like he had tried to convince himself. That you were actually kind and that he had wasted five years picking on you instead of talking to you.
He sighed and walked up the stairs to the nearly empty sitting section. He went to his spot by the railing and looked over. You were helping itty bitty ones, looked around three and four. You cheered for them, teased them, and held them. He noticed how gentle you were with them. He frowned deeper.
Merlin, I’m an ignorant jerk.
You were helping Abby with her plie when Margaret walked in. You looked up at her and waved with a smile, but she didn't have the same expression on her face.
“What's wrong? Why are you still here?”
“I was heading out when Miss. Rosier stopped me. Apparently someone,” she glanced up in the balcony, “is here to see you." You followed her gaze to James. “Claims to have some business.” Your entire body tensed. Your heartbeat picked up and you looked down. “I can stay. This is the last class today so it would just be us thr-”
“It's fine, Maggy. Go home. Your mum must be ready to kill you for not being there already. She has four little ones to juggle,” you chuckled and went back to helping the little girl.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you, though.” Your friend eyed James before nodding and leaving. You swallowed. You weren’t emotionally prepared for this.
Class finished up too quickly and the girls left the studio to go home and to their families. You stayed in the large studio and James stayed where he was up top.
“Might as well come down here, Potter. No matter how much you think I’m not going to cast a curse on you.” James walked down and into the studio, you noticed he had his shoes in his hands and was grateful for that. It was one of your biggest pet peeves. “What was your business with me?” You asked, turning around to meet his gaze.
“I wanted to say I was sorry. For what I said the other day.” You shook your head.
“I know my father went to yours. You probably think me a snitch along with a murderous monster.” He swallowed at your words. He hadn’t exactly meant what he said.
“I don’t think you any of that.”
“Then why did you say it?” He stayed silent. He couldn’t answer that question. You sighed and sat on the floor.
“I’m also sorry for the way I’ve been treating you since first year. Since I found you were a Malfoy and all.” You smiled sadly.
“Yeah, well, there was a reason I didn’t tell you my first name on the train. Especially after you told me your last name.” He sat down in front of you.
“I-I shouldn’t have judged you based off of your last name. I know better. I knew better.”
“It's fine, really.”
“But it's really not.” He sighed. “I mean, my brother is friends with your brother and I don’t go picking on him. It's not fair and I really am sorry. I’m not just saying that. And I also didn’t know about your… your mom,” you swallowed.
“It was a long time ago.”
“But you blame yourself and I didn’t help. You're not a murderer, and neither is your entire family. I really am sorry about that. And for the loss of her.” You looked him in his eyes and only saw sincerity. You smiled.
“Thank you, James. It actually means a lot to me.” He smiled and handed you the bag of chocolate he had brought. “Whats this?”
“This is my stash. Wanna see?” He whispered. You smiled and he opened it up to reveal chocolate. You laughed and smiled brightly. Sadness was still laced throughout it, but it was happier.
“You remembered our first meeting?”
“Considering I thought you were going to ask me to do drugs with you, yes.” Your eyes widened.
“That is not what you thought! Did I really look like a drug dealer?” He smirked.
“No. I just figured that's what the bag was about when you said it the way you did.” You laughed and looked at the bag.
“Can I?”
“I brought it for you, a peace offering. Maybe to try and start again?” You smiled and took out two chocolate frogs, handing him one.
“Hi, I’m Y/N. Want to share my chocolate?” He smiled and took the frog from you.
“I’d love to.”
“Don’t you dare eat on this floor though!” He laughed and put the frog in his pocket.
“I wouldn't dream of it.”
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Let me know what you guy thinkin the comments I hope you liked it and stay tuned for chapter 2 next week!
#James Sirius Potter#James sirius potter x reader#James sirius potter x you#James Sirius potter x y/n#James potter x you#James potter x reader#James potter x Y/n#Malfoy!reader#Enimies to friends#Picture perfect
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an introductory rec list (that nobody asked for) for some of my favorite (platonic and/or romantic) pairings: severitus [2/10]
First fic I read for the pairing:
Of Potions and Phobias by tt22123 [1k,G]
Severitus story with nightmares
[i stumbled on this fic on accident and it was short and sweet (and a little bittersweet at the end).]
Fic that really sold me on the pairing:
Leo Inter Serpentes (Series) by Aeternum [746k,E,6 works] (WIP)
Just one conversation between two eleven year old boys goes slightly differently, and the world changes. Just how much will be different with Harry being sorted into Slytherin, and how much will stay the same?
[i will never not recommend this series: it’s amazing, it’s well-written, it’s true to all the characters and relationships and it feels more canon than canon (of course, it’s also significantly more gay than canon but i said what i said).]
Absolute favorite fic(s) for the pairing:
Nobody Cared by etherian [360k,G]
Harry is 11 years old and looking forward to attending Hogwarts. Why, then, does he miss the Welcoming Feast?
(warnings for: child abuse, bullying, depictions of violence)
[this fic is really well done (but has a lot of angst and definitely mind the warnings above (although the author doesn’t include warnings on the fic)).]
Family Means More Than Blood by WingsOfADream [422k,M]
A prophecy made in 1975 drastically changes the life of the boy who should have been known as Harry Potter.
[this is yet another fic with a really well-written and fascinating plot with excellent characterizations and plot lines. i definitely would recommend it to someone with a lot of time on their hands.]
Most recent fic I’ve read for the pairing:
Blackberry Tart by starknjarvis [33k,G]
One year after Severus Snape offered to become Harry's legal guardian, Sirius Black shows up at Hogwarts.
[the fic is a part of a well-written and pragmatic series and this fic also includes the development of a remus & severus and a sirius & severus friendship so that harry can have a larger and supportive family and i’m living for it (i believe the exact tag that the author used was “coparenting with your childhood nemesis” and i am living for it).]
Favorite AU(s) I’ve read for the pairing:
Alternate Sorting AU (Slytherin!Harry): Malfoy Flavor by Vorabiza [199k,E]
Harry’s ready to banish the Golden Boy image and take charge of his life. Unfortunately for him, or fortunately, there are surprises in store for him.
[Slytherin!Harry but it’s not an entire canon rewrite like most of the alternate sorting fics i love so much, so that’s fun. also drarry and just the right amount of painful but realistic angst. oh and it has a delightfully fluffy little sequel.]
Favorite Series for the pairing:
Forgiveness & Redemption by waitingondaisies [130k,T,2 works]
Severus Snape was discovered as a spy mere days before the start of the school year. Thankfully, Albus had been working on a vague contingency plan for this possibility. It had been inspired by the question, “What would it take for Severus Snape to see that he was wrong about Harry Potter?”
The answer? Force Severus to go undercover as Alfonse “Eli” Hopkirk, a sixth year Gryffindor.
(that’s technically the summary for the first fic but i think it serves well enough in lieu of a series summary, which the author did not provide. also warnings for child abuse.)
[this series is such an interesting concept and it feels very realistic in how it played out and i’m honestly here for it.]
You're a Parent, Severus by acmparker [210k,G,6 works] (WIP)
When Lily got home from her first year at Hogwarts, she found a new distance between herself and Petunia. As a result Severus and Lily became even closer to each other over that summer. The next year Lily found a book in the Hogwarts Library that describe an ancient ritual for creating a blood bond that would make two unrelated people kin. She convinces Severus to undergo the ritual with her and they become brother and sister. This means that when Lily dies there is another whose blood relationship with her is recognized by the blood ward Dumbledore places on Harry. To Severus Snape's chagrin he finds himself the last line of defense between Harry and the forces of the Dark Lord.
(again, no series summary but i think this works well enough.)
[i love a good remus and severus friendship plus severitus so this series really works for me. and it’s a canon rewrite (love those).]
Bruised Words by starknjarvis [49k,G,2 works] (WIP)
After Harry blows up Aunt Marge, Dumbledore decides it's not safe for Harry to spend the rest of the summer at the Leaky Cauldron, and instead sends him to stay at Spinner’s End with Professor Snape.
It's tense, awkward, and teeming with misunderstandings...but it might be the best thing that's happened to either of them. They're both been without a family for a very long time.
(apparently all my favorite series aside from Leo Inter Serpentes, which i’ve already listed above, don’t have series descriptions, but the first work’s description seems to work well enough. also warnings for child abuse.)
[this is the series that blackberry tart belongs to and may i just say: it’s excellent and well-written and pragmatic and i would recommend it.]
Longest fic I’ve read for the pairing:
A Year Like None Other by aspeninthesunlight [789k,T]
A letter from home? A letter from family? Well, Harry Potter knows he has neither, but all the same, it starts with a letter from Surrey. Whatever the Durleys have to say, it can't be anything good, so Harry's determined to ignore it. But then, his evil schoolmate rival spots the letter and his slimy excuse for a teacher intercepts it and forces him to read it. And that sends Harry down a path he'd never have walked on his own.
It will be a year of big changes, a year of great pain, and a year of confronting worst fears. It will be a year of surprising discoveries, of finding true strength, of finding out that first impressions of a person's true colours do not always ring true. It will be a year of paradigm shifts.
And from the most unexpected sources, Harry will have a chance to have that which he has never known: a home ... and a family.
A sixth year fic, this story follows Order of the Phoenix and disregards any canon events that occur after Book 5.
(warnings for: graphic depictions of violence, self-harm, severe medical trauma)
[the fic has some really dark parts but the plot is so intricate and fascinating and the relationships and dynamics are excellently written and the characterizations are spot on and i would definitely recommend it to anyone with a lot of time on their hands.]
Fic(s) with some of my favorite tropes:
Sickfic + Hurt/Comfort: When He Called Me Dad by MarauderChaos [31k,Not Rated]
It was only however as the end of his second year did Severus collect enough evidence and enough of his own courage to step in. The boy looked as though the world was ending when Severus brought him to his private quarters to see Madam Bones, and for a moment Severus felt the world was ending when someone recommended him as guardian.
But that was how it ended, with Harry Potter becoming the ward of the Potions Master.
It was kept a secret from the press and the students of Hogwarts – even his own Godson didn’t know, mainly because Lucius was bound to hear of it if he did and Severus didn’t want to risk their lives.
They had their ups and downs, screaming and shouting, hexes and slamming doors, crying and hugging, laughing and actually having fun.
But there was one moment that Severus would always remember, with its own fair share of good and bad, was the time he called him Dad.
[i’m a sucker for hurt/comfort and accidental revelation of feelings, which in this case is the strength of harry’s platonic feelings, and this fic has all that so… yeehaw.]
Accidental Bonding (but make it platonic): Love is... (series) by atiaahmed [133k,G,4 works] (WIP)
This series revolves around how Snape starts to care about Harry because of a charm put on him by Ron and Hermione.
The first story "Love is a charm" explores how their relationship changes because of the charm and what happens when it expires at the end of the year
The second story explores how their relationship develops after the events of "Love is a charm". In "Love is a haven" other paternal figures, namely Lupin and Black will threaten Severus position with Harry.
[i kind of like the platonic severitus take on one of my favorite hp tropes tbh and i like the way that their relationship develops and the realistic trust issues and such.]
#severitus#severus & harry#harry & severus#severitus fic rec#severitus fic list#severitus fic rec list#intro to my fav ships rec list#hp fic rec#hp fic rec list#hp fics#severitus fics#queue is for quibbler
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Family reunion; Sirius Black x daughter teen reader
*Author’s note*
Okay so this is my first Harry Potter fanfic in awhile so if I get anything wrong, I apologize in advance. So this takes place during POA and I know it kinda drags along in some parts but I promise it gets better in some parts. Now idk if I'll make a sequel to this part, maybe with enough encouragement from you guys, maybe I'll get around to writing a part 2 that takes place during Order of the phoenix. But for now please enjoy this oneshot of Sirius Black.
Warnings: Swearing, mild violence, death of parent(s), bit of angst and fluff.
Taglist:
@plethora-of-things
@waddles03
@psychosupernatural
@ixchel-9275
@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels
@queen-paladin
@platawnic
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If you had told me that when I first walked through the halls of Hogwarts that in my 5th year that I would reunite with my dad, honestly I would believe it. I always believed my father was innocent, even at just 3 years old I remember that night very clearly. Because it wasn’t just the night that my godfather James and god mother Lily were killed, but my mother was also killed that day.
I saw with my own eyes (my mum had borrowed my godfather’s invisibility cloak to hide me) as Peter Pettigrew killed my mother with the ultimate unforgivable curse. I remember crying over her dead body pleading for her to wake up, I remember daddy walking in and seeing us on the floor and him crying alongside me.
I especially remember when he left me at uncle Remus’ place for protection to go hunt Pettigrew only to be framed for murder of not only him but 12 muggles.
Since then my uncle was next in line to take care of me should anything happen to either my parents or godparents (my mum had no other living relatives and my dad wanted to ensure that I had no ties to the Black family tree should the worse happen).
For years I’ve been under my uncle Remus’ care who believed every word the Ministry said about my dad. He didn’t want to but the evidence was stacked against my dad (even though no deep investigation had been made).
Anyways—oh wait I’m getting ahead of myself. I tend to do that a lot. The name’s (Y/n) Lupin-Black, I’m currently a 5th year Hogwarts student in Ravenclaw (my mum’s house). Even though I’m in Ravenclaw I’ve been friends with the Weasley twins Fred and George since our first year when the two of them stole my notes and wouldn’t give it back till I could tell them apart.
Amazingly I did and since then they’ve stuck to me like glue. The three of us do cause a bit of trouble at times (I get my mischievous side from my dad and brains from my mum, according to Gryffindor’s head professor, Professor McGonagall).
I also have an ability that I also inherited from my dad. I am a legal animangus, in fact I’m the youngest animangus the Ministry ever recorded.
It took a lot of hard work and training in order to focus but by my second year I had mastered the ability. My animangus form is a puma, and I’ve used it to help with my uncle’s—condition. In fact that was the reason I wanted to become one.
He was at first against it but with a letter recommendation from Professor McGonagall and my head of house, Professor Flitwick, my uncle had no choice but to allow me to go through it.
Now as a 5th year, things have been—hectic these past few years since Harry Potter came to Hogwarts. The Chamber of Secrets had been opened last year, and we had an incident with a troll, lost 2 DADA professors (but what else is new with that), but this year my uncle is the new professor for that class, and so far according to the Golden trio, everyone loves him.
But back to this story about my dad. This year everyone at Hogwarts was on alert because my dad had escaped from Azkaban, the first ever wizard to ever do such a thing. Now our school was to be housing for the Dementors until my dad was found and captured.
I tried to keep a low profile about it but at nights whenever I helped my uncle out during his ‘wolf-trots’ I would also try to see if I could find my dad.
Then one night it happened.
I was out with uncle Remus but I had lost trace of him through the Forbidden forest. As I walked along in my puma form, my ears soon picked up the sound of barking. Not werewolf barks, they were—dog barks? But why was a dog all the way out here? Dogs are the sort of creatures allowed within a mile of Hogwarts, nor can they get pass the barrier.
I raced on ahead and when I stood over a cliff but lowered myself down behind the rocks. There I saw a scruffy, lean, but massive black dog barking at a few Acromantulas. God I hate those things, I don’t care what Hagrid says, spiders can’t be trusted! And I was right because right now this dog was being attacked by about seven of these things.
As one of them knocked the dog down and pinned it to the ground, ready to bite it and fill it with its venom, I let out a protective roar. The spiders all looked up at me and I leapt down from the cliff and stood protectively in front of the black dog.
With a slash of my paws, I struck one of the spiders across it’s many eyes before biting down on it and tossing it like a paper ball. I then leapt forward and pinned one of the other spiders down. Another one tried to attack me but as it reared upward, the dog suddenly came up and rolled around with the spider.
I bit the head off the one I had pinned before racing across and swiping the legs off another one. Soon realizing that they couldn’t win since a few of their siblings had already fallen, the rest of the spiders retreated back into their burrows and caves. I let out a loud and aggressive roar before turning towards the dog.
We walked towards each other till we stood face to face of one another. As I stared at this dog, something about it was familiar to me. Through the scruffy, madded fur and the very lean body I looked into it’s eyes and if I were back in my human form I would’ve gasped.
This wasn’t any ordinary dog, it—it was him. My dad. Of course this was his animangus form, I remember! All the times he’d chase me around in his dog form when I was little, our nights curled up under the stars whenever mum wasn’t home, it was him!
My ears bent back as I sniffed at him. When he noticed that I wasn’t any ordinary puma, he came up and sniffed around me. He let out a surprised grunt as his ears perked up and his tail went up as it softly began to wag.
I leaned my head up against his letting out a loud, affectionate purr and he nuzzled against my head as well. His paw would reach up and lightly touch the side of my head, almost as if he were embracing me. We continued to nuzzle each other and I knew that if we could both show our human forms, we’d both be weeping hysterically as we’d hug and kiss each other.
But for now, our animangus forms would have to do. As his head rested on my chest, I licked down his neck where I had seen a pretty bad scratch. I licked his wound when we both heard the sound of a werewolf’s howl. Uncle Remus.
We both turned towards the direction of the howl before looking back at each other. Dad gave me a gentle nod. I looked between him and the direction of the howls hesitantly while giving him sad eyes. How could I leave him when I just found him after 12 years. He came up to me and licked my muzzle up to behind my ears. He then backed up and let out a couple of confident yet soft barks.
I nodded and nuzzled him again purring before licking his face affectionately. I backed up and walked to where uncle Remus was but turned back to dad one last time. He let out another bark before I let out a low meow before racing on ahead to find uncle Remus.
That was over a month ago, but here is where our story truly begins. Harry and his friends were slowly starting to piece together the story of my dad and Peter Pettigrew but with some straying doubt from my uncle, Harry still believed that my dad betrayed his parents and sold them to Voldemort.
I myself have tried to get him to see that my father wasn’t a threat but Harry has shut himself away from me. He’s called me practically every name in the book and refuses to listen to me, hell he barely can even stand the sight of me. Ron’s also elected to ignore me and treat me just like the school and the whole wizarding world has treated my dad.
Hermione on the other hand tolerates me just a bit more. She wants to believe what I have to say but due to the 12 long years of ‘evidence’ against my dad, she can’t seem to fully understand why the wizarding community would lie about framing an innocent man.
I sat alone by the Black lake looking up at the gloomy sky and stared out into the still, calm lake. I let out a heavy sigh when I heard a voice behind me.
“You should really started heading back to the castle, it’s almost curfew time.” I turned around and there stood uncle Remus. “And I would hate to give my niece a detention.”
“Please. You couldn’t find it in your heart to ground me for a week when the Weasley twins and I exploded the supply closet in the potions classroom in our second year.”
“Yes but I did give you a stern good lecture about messing with those chemicals.” He sat down beside me on the rocky surface and stared out the lake alongside me. “This reminds me back to my years at school with your father and the rest of my friends. We always snuck out here to this lake for late night swims.”
“Now, now uncle don’t go influencing me. You never know I might just run it by the twins.” I teased.
“(Y/n).” he started in that lecturing manner of his.
“Kidding, kidding. I know of the dangers of this lake.”
“Plus I never approved of us coming here to swim. It was always James and…….” He trailed off.
“Uncle do you really believe dad did what people said he did?” I said as I looked up at him. He sighed deeply and said in a soft manner.
“As much as I want to believe it didn’t happen, I wasn’t there to say it wasn’t your father.”
“But I’ve told you countless times about my mother’s death! I saw with my own eyes who it was that killed her.”
“And I don’t doubt that. But with your godparents and those 12 muggles……your father’s family ties…..”
“Don’t define him! That’s why he made sure to not let anyone of the Black family tree get custody of me! Why he made sure that you were to be my guardian after papa James and mama Lily died!”
“If I‘m being honest he shouldn’t have done it to begin with.”
“Because of your condition?” he went silent. “Uncle……I never cared about that. You were never a monster to me. Why do you think I studied to be an animangus?” he turned to me.
“I’m just thankful you didn’t do the same thing your father did. Going ‘bout it the illegal route.” He cupped the side of my face, “You know Harry’s not the only one with his parent’s appearance.” I smiled solemnly.
“I know. My mother’s face but I have my father’s eyes.” It’s true. Throughout all my life I had been told of people, especially uncle Remus here that I look practically identical to my mother, my eyes however are just like my father’s.
“I wish that she did get to see the women you grew up to be. She would be very proud of you.”
“Sometimes I—fear that I’m starting to forget about her.” I admitted to him. Uncle Remus stroked my hair and allowed me to rest my head on his shoulder as an arm wrapped around me.
“Just think of how you succeeded throughout your schooling. That’s your mother right there. She was far too clever for her own right, even more than me. I’ll even admit that at times I was jealous of her at times.” We both softly laughed.
“I do recall dad telling me some of your little competitions you and mum used to do to prove just who was the most clever. She always beat you.”
“Not at everything!”
“I’m kidding. I know you did beat her at some stuff.” I looked up and saw my uncle looking toward the sky. He almost seemed deep in thought about something. “Uncle? Uncle? Uncle Remus?”
“Hmm? Oh sorry love. But back to the reason why I came here; even though I am your uncle and guardian, I’m still a professor at this school and I order you to get back to the castle.”
“Yes Professor Lupin.” I said as I got up and walked away. However I snuck behind a tree because I wanted to see just where he was going.
If he wanted me to get back to the castle so urgently, why not just take me all the way there himself? What’s he up to? So I quietly followed behind him in my animangus form. Sticking to the shadows and any tall shrub or bush to hide myself from my uncle, I crouched down low behind a rock as he now stood before the Whomping willow tree.
He took out his wand and said a spell which made the tree go still. Once the branches went still, I saw him enter inside a small entrance of the tree and I quickly followed, now phasing back into my normal form.
I noticed that this place now suddenly looked like some sort of shack. It was haunting and creaks and groans were heard all around me. I reached out for my wand but before I could even grab it, I felt something touch my neck and a low, graveled voice said.
“Don’t. Move.” Ahh bollocks!
“Professor Snape.” I said lowly, trying to not be a threat. Yeah much like my dad, Professor Snape pretty much hated me since day one (I’m pretty sure he hates every student that isn’t a Slytherin).
“Sneaking out past curfew, allying in your father’s hiding, I would have the right mind to have you expelled from Hogwarts and have you be taken to Azkaban alongside your fugitive of a father.” Oh man did I really wanna punch him at this point.
“Professor you know he’s—” I felt his wand press harder against my neck as he hissed in my ear.
“It’s your word against the Ministry’s. Now follow me and do as your told.” Knowing I had no other choice, I allowed him to lead me up the stairs where I heard my dad’s voice say.
“Peter Pettigrew. And he’s in this room! Right now!”
“Take your wand out, and if he’s armed, disarm him.” I took my wand out and as my dad was calling out for Peter to come out, I stepped forward and cried out.
“Expelliarmus!” I saw as a wand fell out of my dad’s hand and that’s when my dad turned to me in shock.
“(Y/n)?” he gaped at me.
“(Y/n) what are you doing here?! I thought I told you to go back to the castle!” uncle Remus said.
“You should’ve realized that she’s more like her father in every way. Including disobedience.” Professor Snape soon made himself known as he now aimed his wand at my back, making sure to let my dad see it. “Vengeance is sweet. How I hoped to be the one to catch you.”
“Severus—” my uncle started off. Snape sent him one dirty look and as usual my uncle submitted as Snape hissed out.
“I told Dumbledore you were helping an old friend into the castle and now here’s the proof.”
“Brilliant Snape. Once again you put your keen impenetrating mind to the task, and as usual it comes to the wrong conclusions. Now if you’ll drop your wand and step away from my daughter, Remus and I have unfinished business to attend to!” his wand moved from my back to my throat.
“Give me a reason. I beg you.” He challenged my father.
“Dad.” I pleaded with fearful eyes.
“It’ll be alright darling.” He assured me. His eyes then turned cold as he stared at Snape. “It’s one thing when you put your nose where it doesn’t belong, but when you force others to do your dirty work for you, that’s where I draw the line. If you don’t let my daughter go now, then I will show you a reason why I belong in Azkaban!”
“Sirius don’t be a fool.” Uncle Remus said.
“Well he can’t help it Remus it’s habit.”
“Quiet Sirius!”
“Quiet yourself Remus!”
“Listen to you two quarreling like an old married couple.” Snape said but that’s when dad sassed back at him.
“Why don’t you run along and play with your chemistry set!?” I was then shoved out of the way as Snape now had his wand right at my father’s neck now. I fell to the ground but was quickly brought back up and held in my uncle’s arms.
“I could do it you know. But why deny the Dementors? They’re so longing to see you. Do I detect a flicker of fear? Oh yes, a Dementor’s kiss, one can only imagine what that much be like to endure. It’s said to be unbearable to witness but I’ll do my best.”
“Severus please.” My uncle tried to reason with him again. Once again Snape glared at my uncle and sneered once again.
“After you. Then we can deal with that rebel daughter of his next.” The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife before suddenly Harry called out.
“Expelliarmus!” then Snape went flying back towards an old rotten bed which collapsed right on him.
“Harry what did you just do?” asked Ron.
“You attacked a teacher!” Hermione exclaimed.
“Tell me about Peter Pettigrew.” Harry demanded as he pointed his wand at my uncle and I.
“He was an old school friend of theirs.” I answered him.
“No. Pettigrew’s dead. You killed him!” Harry said as he now pointed his want towards my dad.
“No he didn’t. I thought he was too till you mentioned seeing Pettigrew on the map.” Uncle Remus said.
“The map was lying then!” Harry argued.
“The map never lies! Pettigrew’s alive! And he’s right there!” my dad said before pointing towards Ron.
“Me? He’s mental!”
“Not you Ron! Your rat!” I told him.
“Scabbers? But he’s been in my family for—”
“12 years?! Curious long life for a common garden rat. He’s missing a toe isn’t he?”
“So what?” demanded Ron.
“All they could find of Pettigrew was his……” Harry started off.
“Finger.” Both my dad and I said. The two of us looked at each other and softly smiled before my dad continued.
“The dirty coward cut it off so that everyone would think he was dead. And then he transformed into a rat!”
“Show me.” Harry ordered. At this point my dad went to grab Ron’s rat but of course he refused to let go. Once he managed to get Pettigrew out of Ron’s grip, Ron pleaded for my dad to leave Scabbers alone. Hermione and I held him back so that my dad and uncle could finish the job.
Unfortunately Pettigrew was too fast for them to get a good shot to change him back. So I quickly whipped out my wand and right as the rat went for a hole in the wall, I shot the spell and he soon morphed, for the first time in over 12 years, back into the stout, pudgy man that killed my mother.
My dad and uncle pulled him out of the wall and for the first time, Harry, Ron and Hermione saw Peter Pettigrew, the real man behind my father’s framed crime and the person responsible for Harry’s parent’s death and my mother’s killer.
“Remus…….S-Si-Sirius? My old friends.” Pettigrew praised before trying to make an escape for it, but they wouldn’t have it. When his eyes soon lay on me, I felt my blood boil. “Ohh little (Y/n). So much like your mother, and with your father’s eyes. You remember me right? Your old uncle Pete—” as he came closer to me, I allowed my puma claws to come out as I scratched him across the face. He whimpered as blood now began to seep down his face.
“You have no right to talk to me!” I growled at him. “I saw what you did that night! I WAS THERE YOU BASTARD!! YOU KILLED MY MOTHER!!” this time Ron and Hermione had to be the ones to hold me back from tearing that rat apart.
He shielded away from me in fear before turning to Harry who was just stunned in shock.
“Harry, look at you. You look so much like your father. Like James. We were best friends you know……”
“How dare you speak to Harry!” my dad hissed protectively. “How dare you talk about James in front of him!” soon the two of them had Pettigrew pinned by the piano, their wands at the ready.
“You sold James and Lily to Voldemort didn’t you!?” my uncle demanded.
“I didn’t mean to.” Wept the rat man pathetically. He then began to go off on a ramble of how Voldemort was powerful and had weapons we had no idea he possessed. “What would you have done Sirius? What would you have done?”
“I would’ve died! I would’ve died rather than betray my friends or the woman I love!” my dad exclaimed as Peter tried to make his escape. Harry blocked his escape but Peter whispered into his ear about something.
Finally I decided to step in and I pulled the rat away from my godbrother and aimed my wand at him. Without even hesitating my father and uncle joined at my side and I said.
“Then you should know uncle. That if the Dark Lord didn’t kill you, then we will!”
“No wait!” Harry exclaimed. My breathing sharpened as I said.
“Harry, this bastard……”
“I know what he is (Y/n). But we’ll take him to the castle. Together.” He placed his hand on top of mine and he softly whispered, “Would you mother want this?” I looked at him, tears starting to form in my eyes.
I turned back to Pettigrew who was now on his knees praising Harry for his mercy.
“Bless you boy. Bless you sweet boy.”
“Get off!” Harry snapped. “I said we’d take you back to the castle. Afterwards the Dementors can have you.” oh now this I like. The traitor’s face turned from pure bliss to absolute horror as he fidgeted fearfully trying to make himself smaller.
After leaving the Shrieking Shack and exited out of the Whomping Willow, I watched as my dad walked ahead and stood to look up at the school.
I looked to Harry and gave him a soft nod. His eyes showed hesitation but with a gentle shove he walked towards my father and I watched as the two of the proceed to talk with each other.
“You knew he was innocent?” Hermione said to me.
“Yes, I did. As I said back there it wasn’t just uncle James and Aunt Lily that died because of Peter. I was there to see my mother die right before my eyes. She had the invisibility cloak at the time, probably stole it from uncle James just to spite him or something. But she hid me with it and I saw as Peter came in and killed her with the last of the unforgivable curses.”
“I’m so sorry (Y/n). To think you had to see something like that.”
“We’re sorry we’ve been wankers to you about this (Y/n). Harry and I especially, can you forgive us?” Ron said. I softly smiled and ruffled his hair.
“There’s nothing to forgive Weasley. Although you’re gonna have to do a lot of kissing up to your brothers Fred and George. They’ve been wanting to slug you for your behavior towards me.”
Then something happened that I wished never did. The clouds slowly began to move away to reveal the full moon. Oh no!
“Uncle Remus!” I exclaimed but it was too late. He was starting to transform into his werewolf form.
My dad quickly ran up to him trying to hold his transformation back, but it was no use. The agonizing groans and screams coming out of my uncle as his bones snapped and broke before changing and morphing to fit his upcoming werewolf body. And to make matters worse, Pettigrew seized that opportunity to escape from our grasp.
Even though Harry disarmed him with an Expelliarmus spell, it still didn’t stop the rat from turning into true form before making his escape. My dad knowing he couldn’t hold uncle Remus any longer told us to run.
Soon my dad was thrown down the hill and I exclaimed out.
“DAD!!” I quickly ran towards uncle Remus hoping I could knock some sense into him before his final transformation came around. “Uncle Remus you can fight it! The monster does not control you, you control it! Fight it! Think harder on your human senses!”
Just like my father, I too was sent down towards the hill as the last thing I heard was the sound of my uncle’s werewolf howl.
When I opened my eyes, I saw myself in Madam Pomfrey’s nursing wing.
“(Y/n), oh thank goodness you’re awake. Can you stand up?” Hermione’s voice said over me. My vision finally came back and I said.
“What happened?”
“There’s not a lot of time to explain (Y/n) but your dad’s in serious danger. The Dementors are going to suck his soul.”
“What!?” I said fearfully as I shot up. “They can’t do that. He’s innocent!”
“Which is why I need to ask if you can stand and walk?”
“Yeah I can but why?” she pulled me up from my bed over to Harry who stood at the center of the room.
“Sorry Ronald but you can’t walk.” She then took a necklace out from her shirt and placed the chain around Harry and I before holding out what looked like a mini-hourglass.
The pendent began to spin around and soon right before our very eyes, the world around us seemed to go backwards. Night turned into the gloomy afternoon once more as the medical wing was now abandoned and Hermione stopped the pendant’s spinning and she said as she took the chain off of mine and Harry’s neck and tucked it back into her shirt.
“Where were we at this hour Harry?”
“Uhh going to Hagrid’s I think.”
“And (Y/n) where were you at this time?”
“I was down at the Black Lake with uncle Remus, why?”
“Alright come on!” she took off running. Harry and I ran after her confused asking her just what was going on.
That’s when she explained to us about the time turner necklace she had been given by Professor McGonagall, and she explained to Harry that that was how she was able to do all her classes this term.
So throughout the day we went down to Hagrid’s and I even got to see Hermione sucker punch Malfoy right in the nose (which I praised her on). We went down to Hagrid’s hut and we made our plan to save Buckbeak the Hippogriff (apparently Professor Dumbledore said that more than one life could be spared today).
As the day went on, it was nearly time to try and save my dad. So we sat just down the hill from the Whomping Willow. We watched as uncle Remus came in and made the tree stop it’s swaying for a brief moment before entering inside, followed by me shortly after him.
“Wait you’re also an animangus?” Harry asked me.
“Surprised?” I asked him.
“When did you become one?” asked Hermione.
“I was roughly around your age when I took my test before the Wizard council to get my official license. They said I was the youngest registered animangus there ever was.” I looked up and said, “And there goes Snape. Right in after me.”
The two young teens turned and saw that Snape did go in shortly after me.
“Now we wait I guess.” Harry said. We all made ourselves comfortable because we knew it would be awhile before we all left the Shrieking shack and came back before the Whomping Willow.
Then after seeing us come out, I watched as Harry went down to talk to my dad and that’s when he told me.
“You see me there talking to Sirius? He had just asked me to come live with him, you as well (Y/n). He talked about you and your mother a lot. As well as my parents.”
“I know. They were really good friends Harry. Even at just 3 years old, I knew my dad would never have betrayed yours. Never, not even if he were tortured. That’s why he named your parents my godparents.”
“I guess we were meant to be siblings either way.” I softly grinned at him and ruffled his hair before pushing his glasses back up his nose.
“I remember be so excited to have a younger ‘sibling’. Though I’ll admit I wanted you to be a girl, but you eventually grew on me.” Hermione giggled while Harry turned away embarrassedly.
Then that’s when the trouble began. We saw uncle Remus transform into his werewolf form, the fight between him and my dad (who was in his animangus form), and then even be chased by him when Hermione howled to stop him from attacking Harry.
I phased into my animangus form to protect Hermione and Harry in case my uncle came around to find us. When he did, I stood protectively in front of my brother and Hermione snarling and roaring at him. But before we could charge at each other, Buckbeak had came in and fought my uncle off.
Man poor uncle Remus is having a really rough night. I then felt a coldness in the air and when we looked up we saw the Dementors flying towards where my dad must’ve been at after the fight with uncle Remus.
I gestured for Hermione and Harry to get on my back and once they were on, I raced on ahead and we stopped across the frozen lake and we all watched with horror as the Dementors began to suck out both Harry’s and my dad’s souls.
“Now just wait Hermione, my dad will come. He’ll be standing right there.” Harry said as he got off my back and walked a few steps ahead of us. Hermione and I looked at each other sympathetically and she got off my back as well and stood beside him.
“Harry—your dad’s…….”
“Dead I know but just watch. He’ll cast the Patronus right there. Just like he did before.” We waited and waited but all we saw were my dad and Harry dying right before our eyes.
“You’re dying Harry. Both of you.” I said as I morphed back into my normal form. God I had heard of witnessing a Dementor’s kiss is something awful but—god this was torture. I wanted to step in and save my dad and Harry from the Dementors but what could I do? I’m not strong enough to conjure a Patronus charm, plus I would be outnumbered even if I tried any other spell I could name.
Next thing I saw was Harry racing forward to the spot where he said his dad was standing at.
“Harry!” Hermione called out but I wrapped my arms around her to stop her from racing towards him and that’s when we saw him lift up his wand and exclaim.
“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” Soon a bright light came from out of his wand and a bright wave of light shot out, which sent all the dementors away, saving Harry and my father from a terrible fate.
As I stared at my godbrother, I couldn’t be more proud of him. Not even I was able to conjure up a spell like that at his age, hell I can barely do it now. He truly was a gifted young man, and I couldn’t be more proud of him.
After saving himself, we were now flying on Buckbeak heading for the highest tower where my dad was being kept. I was sitting right behind Hermione while she was terrifyingly holding onto Harry for dear life.
“You were right Hermione. It wasn’t my dad I saw earlier. It was me! I saw myself conjured the Patronus before. I knew I could do it this time because—well I’d already done it. Does that make sense?”
“No! But I don’t like fly-AHHH!!!” She screamed as Buckbeak took a dive down towards the school, while Harry and I were cheering our heads off.
When we reached the tower, there we saw locked up in a cage, my dad looking forlorn as he awaited his fate. He quickly turned to us and I took out my wand and pointed it at the lock as I proclaimed out.
“Alohomora!” the doors unlocked and swung wide open. “C’mon dad, we’re busting you out of here.” I extended my hand out to him and he immediately took my hand.
The four of us now flying on Buckbeak with Hermione up front, me behind her then my dad and Harry.
And for the first time in 12 years, my dad finally felt free as a Hippogriff flying high in the sky. Never have I heard him sound so happy and it brought a smile to my face as I heard him cheering.
We landed in the garden wing of the school and as my dad helped Hermione as well as me off of Buckbeak he said as we walked towards the corner of the garden.
“I’ll be forever be grateful for this. To the three of you.”
“I want to go with you.” said Harry.
“One day perhaps. For some time my life will be too unpredictable. Besides, you’re meant to be here.”
“But you’re innocent.”
“And you know it Harry.” I told him. “Just like I’ve always known.”
“She’s right. And for now that’ll do.” As Hermione left the three of us to have our little family moment, my dad then turned towards me. He stood before me and gently cupped each side of my face. His calloused thumbs stroking my cheeks as he said to me, “I expect like Harry you might be tired of hearing this, but you are a splitting image of your mother. Except your eyes, you have……”
“Your eyes.” I finished for him. Tears flickered in my eyes but I tried to hold them back. “I’ve only dreamed of something like this happening, and—even now I fear this still feels like a dream.”
“I’ve told you once when you were little; Dreams can feel like many things. Whether to make us feel happy or afraid, but in dreams you can never feel what is happening to you. So this, right here, is real my darling kitten.”
He took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. When I felt it, I knew that this was real. My dad was free, he was here, and he was right in front of me. I embraced him as tightly as I could, burying myself into the ragged cloth of his prison uniform. Slowly a few tears dripped from my eyes one by one as I felt my dad embrace me back just as tightly while rocking me from side to side.
“I’ve missed you so much dad.”
“Not as much as I’ve missed you. I’ve missed so much of your life. You were just a little girl when I was taken away and now I’ve seen you’ve become a beautiful young woman, just like I’d hope you’d be. Your mum would be so proud. Just as I am. I’m so sorry I put you through this.”
“I know why you did it dad. If I were older I would’ve done the same thing. I just……wish none of this had to happen.”
“As do I kitten. As do I. There hasn’t been a day that I don’t regret leaving you like I did. I made you lose both your parents.”
“That’s another thing I’ve inherited from you.” he looked at me confused. “Uncle Remus has always said I did get your stubbornness.” He softly chuckled before grabbing the back of my head and pressing his forehead against mine.
We stayed in that position for what felt like forever till he pressed a kiss to the center of my forehead before he guided me over to sit next to Harry. He knelt down before the both of us as he said to us.
“It’s cruel that I got so much time with James, Lily and (m/n) and you both so little. But know this. The ones that love us never really leave us. And you both can always find them,” he then placed his left hand over Harry’s heart while his right hand pointed towards mine, “In here.”
Dad stood up and walked over to Buckbeak and mounted on top of his back once again, gently gripping onto the chained reins. As Harry and I came up and stood beside Hermione, my dad complimented to her that she was indeed a bright witch for her age.
Buckbeak then reared as he let out a proud roar before taking off running before flapping his proud wings and taking off high towards the moon with my dad on his back.
Two souls finally free from the law.
The clock tower began to gong loudly and that’s when Hermine told us we needed to get back to the hospital wing. We quickly raced towards the medical wing before the last strike of the belltower.
We saw Professor Dumbledore with his back towards us as he peeked through the doors before closing them.
“Well?” he asked us.
“We did it. They’re free.” Harry said.
“Did what? Goodnight.” The headmaster gave us a wave before descending down the stairs. Oh that crazy old man. The three of us walked towards the door but before we went in, we had to watch ourselves disappear to start the whole rescue all over again. Once we disappeared, that’s when we came in the room.
“How did you get there? You were just over there. And now you’re there!” Ron said to us in shock.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about Ronald? Do you Harry? (Y/n)?”
“No clue. Maybe you should have your head examined Ronny, think you might be going mental.” I teased.
“Yeah Ron. How can people be in two places at once?” Harry joked alongside me.
Things after that were pretty crazy. After it had been leaked out about my uncle’s condition (damn you Snape!) my uncle resigned as professor at Hogwarts, Harry had gotten the new firebolt broom (curtesy of my dad) and he got to test it out.
I was in my bedroom just finishing the last bit of my packing to return home for the summer when my owl Arella came flying in. Her familiar grey and white feathers ruffled as she landed on her perch and she made her trilling sound.
“What have you have there, girl?” I noticed she had a small jewelry box tied to her back along with a note in her beak. I took the note then untied the box from her back as she shook herself out and ruffled her feathers.
I set the box down and opened up the note and inside was a letter written in my dad’s hand writing.
My beloved kitten,
This once belonged to your mother (I gave it to her just shortly after you were born) and I figured she would want you to have it. Keep it close to your heart and her memory will never leave you.
Your father,
Sirius Black
I set the note down and opened up the box now and inside was a necklace. It was a silver heart-shaped locket and I noticed a little button at the side of it. I pressed down on it and it opened up to reveal something that not only broke my heart, but also filled it with joy.
The moving picture inside was my mother holding me as a baby. Her wide smile as she held me in her arms, her eyes filled with nothing but love. When she looked up and her smile softened, I really did get to see what my uncle and dad were talking about.
I really did look like my mother. Same hair, same mouth, same face, almost everything was of my mother. A single tear fell down my cheek as I kissed the picture and held it close to my heart.
Soon I began to get brief flashbacks of various moments with my mother. I remember how she’d always sing me to sleep while having the windchimes of various creatures softly ring above me. The way she’d make breakfast, and how we’d play together at papa James and mama Lilly’s place.
I unhooked the chain and placed it around my neck and saw as the heart shaped locket actually rested against my own heart.
“Thanks dad. And thank you mum. I miss you, but you can rest easy now. Dad’s free.” I said as I stared up at the sky holding the locket closer against my heart.
#harry potter#harry potter fanfic#harry potter fanfiction#harry potter imagine#harry potter imagines#sirius black#sirius black x reader#sirius black imagine#sirius black fanfic#sirius black fanfiction#harry potter x reader#harry potter fandom#sirius black oneshot#harry potter oneshot#remus lupin#remus lupin x reader#fred weasley#george weasley#ron weasley#hermione granger#sirius black daughter#sirius black x daughter reader
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My Journey
Hey everyone,
As you will likely know by now I am a trans woman and I live in the UK where lately trans people have been under significant scrutiny by the press, government and groups claiming to be acting in the name of feminism.
One of the arguments used when not directly attacking trans people, is that the medical institutions that help us in the UK fast track us through transition, even the NHS and I know so many trans people in this country that I can say without a shadow of a doubt this is not true. This includes a significant number who have been under the care of Tavistock and Portman, the under 18s service which was recently banned from giving its patients hormone blockers without the approval of the courts.
But anyway, I’m gonna share my story and how lengthy the process actually is and I will warn ahead of time this deals with suicidal ideation, gatekeeping, mental health, etc. So proceed with caution. This will also be a long post.
September/October 2008
I can’t remember which month but it was just before my 16th birthday, my Dad encouraged me to go to my GP regarding my gender dysphoria. I lived with my transphobic Mum at the time and had to go behind her back which was terrifying to say the least. I saw a doctor called Dr Moulsher and explained everything I was going through and his response was, “I don’t think the NHS funds any of this.” He was very ignorant on trans issues but it actually fortunately worked out in my favour, I got lucky, I know, but he just wanted me off of his hands.
I explained in Sheffield there was a GIC (gender identity clinic) operated by the NHS known as Porterbrook and he was just like, “Oh right. Well I’m more than happy to refer you but they likely won’t see you till you are 18.”
He asked me some questions, wrote up a detailed report and put in the referral to “get the ball rolling” as he worded it.
I was terrified at the time of the referral letter going to my home address though and he was like, “Well it needs to be sent somewhere.” So he agreed to send it to my grandparents address.
Later That Year
About a month or so later a letter arrived at my grandparents saying I had been accepted onto Porterbrook’s waiting list, explaining it is substantially long, that they wouldn’t be able to see me till I’m 18, etc. Your typical boiler plate stuff. Also as I understand it they don’t typical accept referrals for under 18s so I got lucky there. I remember getting so excited when I got my letter though, that I took it into school to show all of my friends.
Back then it was a requirement that I have a mental health assessment while on the waiting list though. So I returned to Dr Moulsher who I had become rather comfortable with and had made him my regular GP. He made a referral to the local mental health clinic and that was that.
January/February 2009
A letter came in the post asking me to ring to book at appointment at the local mental health clinic. I couldn’t ring from home cos my Mum would overhear and she was spying on me a lot at the time due to really being against the fact I’m trans. My school - which was a Catholic school shockingly enough - had already decided my home environment had become so toxic that I needed removing from my Mum’s care. They would be a process that wouldn’t be completed till June 2010 but yeah, it had got that bad. Anyway, I ended up asking the school receptionist if I could ring on their phone to book the appointment. That was booked for February.
The appointment was a weird one to say the least. The doctor asked me a quite a lot of questions but these are the ones that stuck out.
So with this first one, I am going to preface with that as far as I am aware, I am white and of white ancestry for all the generations I know of. However I do have remarkably curly hair that left to its own devices grows into an afro (or at least what looks like an afro).
So the first set of questions that stood out;
Dr: What’s your mother’s ethnicity?
Me: White British.
Dr: Sorry, did you say Afro-Caribbean?
Me: No. White British.
Dr: And your father’s ethnicity?
Me: White British.
Dr: Sorry, was that Afro-Caribbean?
Me: Nope. White British.
Not really sure how you can get Afro-Caribbean and White British verbally mixed up but he seemed very adamant at least one of my parents must be Afro-Caribbean.
He then later goes;
Dr: Do you have a partner?
Me: Yes.
Dr: Are they male or female?
Me: I have a girlfriend.
Dr: Then you can’t be trans. You can’t be trans if you like girls.
Me: What about lesbians?
Dr: That’s beside the point.
Shockingly, in the end he agreed with my GP’s assessment that I am trans but Jesus, as you can probably guess from above that mental health assessment was a minefield of weird.
24th October 2010
In June 2010, I was finally removed from my Mum’s care at the age of 17 and placed in supported housing and on the date about I got a phone call from Porterbrook GIC on my 18th birthday no less, inviting me to my first appointment in November.
22nd June 2012
I legally changed my name and title by deed poll to Miss Lily Nichole Robinson.
22nd October 2012
I’d now been at Porterbrook for almost 2 years, had lots of appointments, most of which repeated the same mundane questions and it had started to feel like nothing was ever going to change. I had become increasingly depressed and suicidal and I had decided that if nothing had changed by my 20th birthday I was going to take my own life. I did not want to enter my 20s still living my life as a man. I didn’t want to lose another year of my life.
I remember this date exactly, not because I marked it in my calendar but because Taylor Swift’s album “Red” came out that morning. Despite everything, I was dancing along to 22 that morning while ironing some clothes, before I headed off to Porterbrook. I didn’t really feel like it mattered, I was going to kill myself 2 days later but I figured what is the harm in going through the motions one last time.
I sat there, trying not to let on how miserable I was, didn’t see the point in letting them in on how I was feeling. Nothing would change.
I remember being asked some really gross questions that day though. I got asked if I masturbated and I just declined answering. When challenged I was just like, “I maybe trans and I may hate that equipment but I’m a human being. I still have sexual urges. What do you think the answer is.”
The appointment though, shockingly ended with them telling me they were going to put me on hormones. I was gonna get my estrogen. It was enough to give me a reason to keep on living.
But just bare in mind how close I got to taking my own life there. 2 days away from my 20th birthday. Also it took almost 2 years for them to say they’d be placing me on hormones.
January/February 2013
In January, I had my bloods taken to get a baseline and I was told about options for storing gametes. I did decide to consider this but in the end it ended up being too costly for me at the time. So in February, on a day it was snowing I got the train and was adamant the snow was not stopping me getting to Porterbrook and I had an appointment with the head clinician, Dr Kevin Wylie.
He oddly listed all the testosterone blocker options to me with side effects and risks and all the estradiol options to me with side effects and risks. In the end I chose Cyproterone Acetate for my blocker and Estradiol Valerate pills for my hormones.
50mg per day of Cyproterone Acetate and 2mg per day of Estradiol Valerate. I was ecstatic and took them both the second I got on the bus 😊
May 2013
Slightly unrelated to the medical process but just 3 months in and my mental health had improved drastically. Since I was removed from my Mum’s care I had become a bit of a shut in. I didn’t have any friends, my anxiety was through the roof, I was insanely depressed and I just avoided everything and everyone, only leaving my house for work. Hormones changed that though, I just felt so much happier and I also remember that Spring just being like really vividly aware of the colours of all the flowers and plant life for like the first time in my life. I actually wanted to go out and social and make friends and there was a local LGBT youth group for 18-25 year olds that I decided to join and I started to have and social life again. And by September 2013 I started university and soon came getting drunk with the LGBT Liberation Group at the various socials. I was happy and finally starting to feel like myself.
2013 - 2016
Porterbrook became very gatekeepy in the final stage of my transition. They didn’t like how I dressed. Apparently girls wear dresses while I preferred jeans, t-shirts and hoodies. I didn’t like wearing make-up. I wasn’t the 1950s image of a girl that Porterbrook seemed to expect. I actually have a trans guy friend who around the same time had been told he couldn’t start on testosterone unless he cut his hair short, cos apparently men don’t have long hair.
It pissed me off to no end because I transitioned to be me, not to be a performance of how the world thinks a woman should be. I refused to give ground on how I dressed, etc but in the end I ended up telling a few white lies to get past the final level of gatekeeping. And I can’t remember most of this dates as they happened while uni was going on in the background. But eventually Porterbrook gave me the go ahead for surgery, about 6 months later I had my second opinion and then I was referred for surgery.
January 2016
I had my pre-surgery assessment at Nuffield Health Brighton and I was told if I wanted I could have my surgery as early as March 2016. Due to university though, this proved a bit too soon and the date was pushed to June 2016.
22nd June 2016
The day before the EU Referendum I had my gender reassignment surgery. I don’t actually remember feeling all that ecstatic after the surgery. There was lot of pain and I was on a lot of drugs. But a friend, Rosie, who I hadn’t seen since high school lived in the area and she was at my bedside when I woke up. I was in hospital a week and had 3 months of recovery ahead of me.
Post Surgery 2016
Having surgery had been great, things finally felt right. My entire body felt right for once but I had tunnel visioned my life towards surgery and put a lot of stuff on the back burner and had some major post-surgery depression so I sort counselling at my university to get through these issues and once that was sorted I felt a lot more stable in myself and like nothing was in my way.
October 2016
I put in my application for my Gender Recognition Certificate only for it to get rejected because they did not like the assessment from Porterbrook GIC and Dr Wylie who wrote the assessments was off on leave. Me and a nurse had to sit down and look through my medical record to find a medical report they might accept and we finally found one. However they wouldn’t say what was wrong with the original which made Porterbrook kinda stumped on what was wrong.
February 2017
I received my Gender Recognition Certificate and my new Birth Certificate.
March 2017
I was discharged from Porterbrook GIC.
For those who are under the impression gender reassignment is a fast process it isn’t, it took me 8 years and 6 months start to finish, from initially seeing my GP at 15 to finally being discharged from Porterbrook GIC at the age of 24. It is a long ass process with a shit tone of gatekeeping and honestly going through the process as it stands isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy. When I was discharged from Porterbrook GIC in 2017 my first thought was, “I’m free. I’m finally in control of my own life.” As up until that point, I felt I had no autonomy and that my life and happiness was in the hands of doctors. It was miserable.
But there it is.
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indemnify. (i)
Gaius got his second chance from his savior, yet he finds it hard to find justification on her behalf. While Gaius searching for his meaning, someone else is looking for him for another reason.
(18+ Trigger Warning. Explicit. Smut. Heavy one.)
The story is set long after the last war with Rheya and Gaius is confused with his purpose. This is based on my weirdest dream ever. Bloodbound is the perfect story for my dream. In this story, My MC (Adora Ramsey, now Raines) married Adrian and I spare Gaius to have his second chance. This is a two part story. Enjoy!
(Bloodbound: Gaius Augustine x Lily-Rose Raines (OC))
PART I. PART II.
i.
London is wet and gloomy. Perfect place for him. 100 years living in England, he feels like finally, he found his perfect lair. After being spared to live, Gaius roamed around the world. Trying to find his reason to live, trying to find justifications why the Goddess decided to spare his life.
His Goddess.
His steps stopped in front of the Museum building he's been working for. For the last 50 years, he's been telling the story behind all paintings regarding vampires. It's been almost 300 years since his Goddess saved the world from his previous Goddess, fuck that's probably confusing right? But Gaius can't help it. Rheya was his Goddess once. Adora is the Goddess now and Gaius needs someone, fuck, even something to worship. If he isn't a worshipper, he is nothing. When Adora spared his life, she took half of his soul with her.
He decided to go to work earlier today. It's been raining so fucking hard in London since morning and the sun is nowhere to be found. That allows him to go out and blending out with humans. He finds it amusing that after 100 years, humans found vampires no longer interesting. After his Goddess decided to breach the wall between humans and vampires, they live together side-by-side just fine. Silly of him back then, thinking that vampires could rule humans like a little toy when the reality is, humans always evolving. And creatures like him always stuck in one reality, between life and death. But Gaius stopped complaining, if his Goddess decided that this is the kind of life that she thought the best for her kind, then it is the best.
"You are early,"
"No sun outside and I'm bored," he said as he smiles. His coworker just nods and usher him to get inside. Gaius proceeding to walk to his office before he stops in front of a painting he knows too well.
50 years.
50 years he's been looking at her face and his heart yearns for a glimpse of her more and more each day. Dark brown hair, almost black in some of its layer, brown eyes too deep, piercing to his soul every single time he stares at them. This painting serves no justice of her beauty, but this is the closest he could be with her.
"You know, her hair is actually not that wavy in real life,"
A soft voice startled him a little bit. Very unusual of him. But again, he got here too early and the museum still packed with humans. Too many voices to concentrate while his eyes are too focused on the painting.
"Yes, it's not. It's actually darker too in real life," he nods and turns around.
His heart stops.
She stands across the room, yet he can hear him perfectly well. Vampire? In the middle of the day? Maybe she finds rain as freedom too like him.
Long golden brown hair framing her face down until it reaches just below her chest. Gaius couldn't see her face clearly as his vision to her got blocked by people walking around repeatedly.
Yet those eyes. She is a vampire.
Pair of deep reddish eyes, staring into his soul. Much more to his dislikes.
Why her eyes are red? Did she just have her feast? Is she planned to feast here? That would be foolish of her.
He stares and just stares. Can’t bring himself to get a closer look or run to her like how his heart yearns for her, somehow. Why? The voices inside this museum suddenly gone, nothing to his ears as all he can hear is her breathing and the sound of his own heart.
Since when his heart beating this fast? He is a goddamn vampire. Ancient one. His heart isn’t supposed to pumping his blood this loudly.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Who are you?
That girl walks closer to him. The closer she gets, the stronger her scent filling his nose. The louder her heart sounds. The redder her eyes became. Vampire? Definitely. But she radiates warmth like a human. She smells like a human.
Red eyes. Blood red eyes.
Not until she stops two feet away from him then he realized.
"Adora."
His lips accidentally slipped that name.
“Adora? You know my mom?”
She looks so much like Adora. Unconsciously, he stretches out his hand at her, “Let me feel you.”
That girl looking at him in confusion, yet Gaius still takes his chance. She’s too much like Adora. He needs to make sure.
“Please,” He whispers, chocking his own breath.
Last time he checked, 100 years ago, Adora is still in New York with Adrian, settled down. Happy. Healthy. Why she’s here now in London? Alone? Is God, whichever that is, finally hearing his yearns? Is it his chance already, finally, to have her?
“Who are you?”
That girl takes a step closer him before placing her hand on his.
A rush of warmth and shock almost make Gaius dropped to his knees.
How? How is it possible?
The girl looking at him in more confusion.
How can he not recognize it? Two faces blended into one. Two faces that destroyed and building his soul, again and again, every time Gaius thinks of them. His sins.
“What’s your name, child?” his words came as a yearning whisper.
She stares at the painting once before he stares at him, “Lily-Rose. Lily-Rose Raines. And you are?”
“Gaius. Gaius Augustine.”
ii.
The second time they meet is in the museum again. But now, he caught her staring at Adora's painting instead of him staring at Adora's painting.
"You killed her once," she said.
Gaius stops right behind her, framing her smaller figure between his reality and his fantasy, "I did."
“Why?"
"I just did."
She turns around.
Red blood eyes. Why her eyes are always red? Is she always angry? What makes her always angry?
"Why?" She asked him again.
Gaius sighs and tears his eyes away from hers, "She stood in front of my purpose back then."
"How about now?"
"She is my purpose."
Lily-Rose just nods and they decided to just stay in the silent.
iii.
The third time is in Gaius' office. It was late in the rainy night. 2 weeks after their second meeting. Lily-Rose just sits on one of his office sofas and stares at him for three straight hours.
"Ask if you have something to ask," he said.
She moves so slowly to the armchair, letting her leg stretches out from the slit of her satin gown. Gaius knows she can smell him. Gaius knows she can hear his heartbeat.
And he is not playing this game with her.
"Aren't you curious about me?" She asks, sounding like a purr to his ears.
"You will tell me what you want to tell me." He gives her a glance before continuing to read the parchment on his desk.
"Aren't you curious about my mom?" She continues. Gaius drops the parchment and sigh.
She knows how to bait him. She is too much like Adora.
"Oh, you curious now? Don't worry, mommy is healthy in New York. Healthy and just as beautiful as your painting." She said with a smirk on her face.
"You look like her,"
She raises an eyebrow, "So you think I'm beautiful?"
"You are."
She roses from her seat and walks to his desk, placing both hands on his desk, proudly, alluringly, wickedly, offering the front view of herself to him.
Yet... it's her eyes, he couldn't stop staring at.
"Your eyes."
"I give you my breast to look at and you focus on my eyes. You miss out on the good stuff, Mr. Augustine." She chuckles. He didn’t.
"Is it always like that?"
They stare at each other before, to his surprise, she tears away from his gaze. Looking shy? Scared? Anxious?
"No. It was brown before." She pulls away from his desk. Gaius tilts his head in amusement and curiosity.
"It was as deep as my mom's. 10 years ago, I had a dream and when I wake up, It changed. Never come back to brown until now."
10 years ago?
"How old are you, Lily-Rose?"
"How old do I look?"
"Barely 20." He answers quickly. Lily-Rose smiles at his answer. "I'm legal enough to be in your bed, Mr. Augustine." She teases.
"Not answering my question."
She sighs, "Do I have to spread my legs in front of you and send you an official letter for you to fuck my vagina? You know what I want from you. You can smell me. I can smell you. Are you that old-fashioned?"
No. Gaius is not playing this game with her
"How old are you, Lily-Rose?"
"Turning 50 this July." 50?
"Are you turned by Adora or Adrian?"
"Both."
Both? A vampire could only have one master.
She slumps on his sofa and stares at him. For once there's no tease in her eyes. Just confusion, and a little hint of fear.
"I am not turned, Mr. Augustine. I was conceived. With my face, you could guess already who is my mom and my dad."
That confirmed his fear. Conceived? How come?
iv.
The fourth time they meet, they fucked. In Gaius' little house on the outskirt of London, 1 month after their last meeting. Lily-Rose in front of his door, in rainy midnight. Wet and crying. The next thing? Gaius couldn't remember.
All he remembers is she fucked him and so did he.
Lily-Rose under him. On top of him. Beside him. Crying. Moaning. Mewling. All Gaius could think is this is the first time Lily-Rose ever called him Gaius instead of Mr. Augustine.
She called him Gaius while his cock thrusting inside and out her young little cunt. She called him Gaius while his mouth latched to her wet pool. She called him Gaius while he took her from behind, claiming her everything.
Yet she surrenders at his mercy. Letting him using her body, biting her, marking her, and he didn't stop to his disgust.
How could he?
To add his sins, he forgot about his Goddess while his cock burying deep inside her so-called-daughter.
And he never forgets about Adora before. Never.
Lily-Rose lays beside him. Eyes closed as her breathing calmed down. He could stare at her for days and not complaining about it. She looks so much like Adora, with a hint of Adrian here and there.
“Do you love my mom?” She said, finally opening her eyes.
“I do.” He replies rather quickly. She doesn’t answer, just staring at him with an expression he can't understand.
“You turned my dad. You killed my mom. And now you fucked me. Isn’t it too much of a kink even for you?” She whispers.
“You tempted me. You let me.”
“Did my dad permits you to turn him? Or my mom to kill her?” She propped her head with her elbow, placing one hand on his chest.
“No. But you permitted me,”
She chuckles, “I did. I must be sick. I let you cum all over me.”
Gaius choose not to comment on that. His hands unconsciously caressing the younger vampire’s skin. She is so warm, too warm for a vampire.
“How- how did you happen?” He asked.
Lily-Rose gives him a ‘what the fuck’ look at his question, “Seriously? How did I happen? Sex of course. We just did it.”
“No, Lily-Rose. I know about intercourse. But how? Both of them are vampires. Vampires can’t bear children,”
“I am a miracle.”
You are.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to have more knowledge than I do? I’m only 50 years old.”
A wife. A child. Adrian gets everything. Is this God showing him mercy? After all, Adrian did lose everything.
A pang of jealousy hit Gaius so hard, he had to flinch it away. Did he not suffering enough too? He loses everything too. When will God, if there's any, show him some mercy?
“I’m the product of your sins, Mr. Augustine.” She whispers. Is she? She looks more like an angel than a sin.
“Gaius. It’s Gaius. You called me Gaius earlier and I like it better.” he said. Lily-Rose shakes her head, “Gaius is only when your cock is deep inside me, Mr. Augustine. My endearment to you.”
Her hands already stroking him again. His heart clenched when her hand tightening around his shaft and her lips already down on the tip. He can feel he is tempted again.
Shame. Guilt.
“What are you doing to me?” He whispers and she licks him.
Lily-Rose managed to look so innocent as she looks up, “Me? I’m simply sucking your cock, Mr. Augustine.”
Both knows that it’s not what he asked and both knows it’s not the answer.
v.
Every time they met, they fuck. In his office, in his house, in the museum, in the park, in front of Adora's painting.
Just let him die.
They fuck like their time is limited. When they fuck, his intention is to break her. To find reasons why she keeps doing this. Why she let him cum all over her? Inside her, on her face, on her back, on her chest, there's no more fucking spot he hasn't let his cum drip on her already.
She smells like him.
His heart is full of guilt and shame after they fuck. Looking at the much, much, younger one, laying down on the floor, spent, red skin between her legs and his smell all over her. Why?
He feels guilty for fucking her.
He feels ashamed.
But he couldn't stop. Not when she looks at him like he is her savior. Like she worships him. Solemnly, only him.
"Stop, fuck- Stop-" His breath hitched as he holds her hip, Lily-Rose rocking on top of him, bouncing eagerly as her world depends on it.
"No. I can feel your cock twitching inside me. Here, Gaius. Here." Her hand guides his hand to her navel while she sits on his cock. Red blood eyes staring at him, clouded with arousal and yearn. She yearns for him.
Does he look like that every time he stares at Adora's painting for 50 years?
"What are you doing to me?" he grunts as he can feel his cock on her navel every time she bounces.
"Make me come, please. Please. Hurt me." She cries as her movement turns clumsy. "What are you doing to me, Lily-Rose? What the f- fuck... are you doing to me?" Gaius moves his hips upwards to meet her movement.
"Tell me, what the fuck are you doing to me?!" He groans as he flips their situation. Frustrated. Having her crying under him, moaning as her life depends on his cock, his thrust, his decision.
"Please- please make me come. Spill your cum inside me like you usually did. Please. Mark me. Please, please, please."
He wraps his hand around her neck, fastening his pace. Break her. You must break her and you will no longer feel your guilt, Gaius.
Lily-Rose wraps his legs around his hips, claws his back like she's afraid he will stop.
"Tell me and I'll cum inside you, whore."
She opens her eyes as he said that, teary red blood eyes and.... solace?
"I let you taste your own sin, Gaius. I make you do what you love the most. Making sins."
And he comes. He comes so hard inside her, he cries.
She wanted to hurt him.
And she did.
#playchoices#bloodbound#gaius augustine#gaius#adrian raines#bb fanfic#pixelberry#gaius x mc#adrian#this#is#steamy#and#long
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Lily liveblogs: “The Rise of Skywalker,” part two
Neener, neener, world-building is for losers. Not to mention plot, character development, and general coherence.
(Or, fifty ideas in a trench coat pretending to be one movie.)
Look, you get ONE fetch quest per film, and we've already exceeded the limit here, please stop... [does not stop]
Poe literally has to ask to kiss Zorii because she's wearing a mask, lol. I mean, I like to think he would anyway, but... just saying.
They literally slot the medallion into the designated coin slot and that's it, it's over so fast, lololololol.
Like, the FO lets them in because they have a medallion and then only sends two troopers to investigate because Something Is Clearly Up? LOLOLOLOLOLOL.
Okay, they're just going to straight up assault the Star Destroyer. 10/10 for style. Refuge in audacity and all that. Fine, whatever.
Finn ought to have some idea about the layout of the place, didn't the FO teach him that stuff when he was a stormtrooper? Or at least enough to have a hint. Or are they just going to wander around without a clue and magically find the right spot??
Oh, Rey's mastered the mind-trick now, good to know. (*Legally Blonde voice* "What, like it's hard?")
Poe's question if Rey does that to him and Finn is 100% spot on and he is RIGHT to ask that because the mind trick is SUPER INVASIVE and can be badly misused.Given how recalcitrant Poe’s been, I’m sure she’s been tempted.
Rey is so concerned about Chewie until she gets distracted by the dagger, sigh... [Han Solo voice] Convenient. [/Han Solo voice.]
Why do they need the dagger macguffin if they already have the coordinates? What a stupid thing to get Rey alone so she and Kylo can have a moment.
Kylo searching through Kijimi for Rey like he's got no fucking clue, lololol. So much for their "Force bond" here.
Does Finn feel, like, anything for the troopers he's shooting? I mean, obviously not in the heat of battle, but like, ever? Considering that his friend's death on Jakku was what snapped him out of the FO brainwashing in the first place... so he knows it's possible for the others to change. So... what a wasted opportunity here.
Literally, all of the troopers are patrolling either in pairs or alone, that is so dumb if there's actually an alert out on the ship for them.
Is Poe having PTSD flashbacks to the last time he got captured by the FO? Because I would, if I were in his shoes.
Rey picks up the dagger and has flashbacks again PSYCHOMETRY PSYCHOMETRY PSYCHOMETRY PSYCHOMETRY
Okay, the FUCK is going on with this fight scene. Where is she, really? Is she Force projecting? How can she do that when it killed Luke? How can BOTH of them be in two places at once? Ie, it's not that Rey is suddenly having an out-of-body experience and fighting Kylo on a spiritual plane in Kijimi - she's also fighting in Kylo's room, and even though I could see her body moving in time with her mind, is Kylo projecting himself into his room with HER, too? What is happening?
I feel like this scene would be so much more powerful if we established some parameters for HOW THIS POWER FUCKING WORKS so I know what the stakes are. Wouldn't it be interesting if this moved used life force, for instance, the same way that healing did? What are the restrictions/limitations? Why is none of this ever explained? It just happens... waaaaaahhhhhhh
I really love it when this is an open question in works that are thematically ABOUT "is it a dream? is it real? is it a mindfuck?" [see: Inception] but that's NOT THE POINT OF THIS FILM, this is a side issue, so it SHOULDN'T BE A MYSTERY, it should be actually intelligible to me what is going on even if I don't understand all the intricacies.
It does look cool, though. I'll grant them that much. The aesthetics of a night fight in the falling stone are ON POINT. Too bad the fight doesn't really use much of its scenery to any advantage. This could be literally anywhere for all that the characters draw on their surroundings.
"Wherever you are, you are hard to find." So smooth, Kylo.
Rey VERY CLEARLY SAYS "I don't want this!" in response to Kylo's "I've been in your head". Because consent is for LOSERs, am I right? [/sarcasm] ugghhhhhhh
"Your parents are no one...." but turns out they were actually someone! Never mind we never get their names or backstory anywhere! That might make them... interesting! Or even RELEVANT.
Okay, so stuff from Kijimi is literally spilling into the star destroyer and vice versa, is that actually happening or is that just a visual metaphor/dream sequence, I really need to know wtf is going on here.
Kylo using his knowledge of/from Palpatine to manipulate Rey is terrible but actually something he would do... and kinda clever. I'll grant him that much.
Ochi looks just like a twisted version of Maz, except taller... does that mean anything? probably not!
We literally have no connection to these two random new characters so their fate does not resonate as much as it SHOULD HAVE. Which one was Palpatine's kid? How did he HAVE kids in the first place? What was said kid's life like? Why did they grow up to run away and defy their dad? How did they meet the other partner? How did all this, you know, HAPPEN??
And why did Palpatine send an agent to kill them instead of killing/tortuing them himself, since they clearly had info he was interested in? THE FUCK.
I was hoping the Vader mask would finally be destroyed, but NOOOOOOOOOOO.
Lol how Kylo's like "I'm gonna only tell you the rest of the story in person" as if they weren't already fighting face to face in some weird dream-reality hybrid thingy. Kylo, you are so desperate and so so so so dumb.
LOL, Hux being all dramatic here. "I'm the spy!"
This just gets funnier when you remember how Poe trolled the SHIT out of him at the beginning of TLJ, so Poe has NO CLUE (because the writers didn't either until just now, natch), AND why Poe's reaction when Hux says he's gonna "do it himself" (ie, murder Poe) is so on point.
I approve of Rey looting Kylo's room before running off. Too bad she doesn't smash the Vader mask and be done with it. At least Chewie gets his crossbow back.
"I don't care if you win. I need Kylo Ren to lose." 10/10, excellent character motivation, and I approve. Hux is such a bastard and Kylo totally deserves this betrayal. (also: the Imperial philosophy in a nutshell.)
I'm not averse per se to Rey Palpatine, but this way of handling it is total bullshit and an asspull, sigh.
Oh, no, here comes the Force dyad nonsense. "We have no choice but to be together because we're SOULMATES! I'm stalking you because I LOVE YOU and it's DESTINY, Rey!" </sarcasm>
Oh, the destroyer is still in the atmosphere over Kijimi and not in space, I see. getting bespin feels here. This should have happened in the second movie not halfway through the third.
Yup, there's the "join me and rule the galaxy" offer right on cue.
Taking off your mask does not help here, Kylo. No one cares about your puppy dog eyes, you fucking stalker.
yeah, she would have jumped if the Falcon hadn't shown up right at the last minute, lol.
[Honestly, I would have had her jump and land smack on the back of the Falcon, but that may just be my twisted sense of humor talking.]
love kylo's dismay as she gets away. EXCELLENT LEAP. And Finn is wearing an oxygen mask, which is a detail which I <3!
Hux just dies with no drama, which is too bad, but also soooo typical of Imperial/FO management style. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Good thing your pettiness lives on!
(Pryde is clearly the Real Villain now that Hux is Actually Good, I see what you did there.)
I hate how Rey literally shuts Finn out here, when he is TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND REMIND HER SHE'S A GOOD PERSON and Rey is so confused by Kylo's constant gaslighting that she ignores him. Like, psychologically understandable (and sad) but I fucking hate it. Finn deserves so much better than this.
Palpatine talks in Kylo's head... how? why? Why does Palps have this kind of connection with Kylo when he had to make hologram calls to Vader the old-fashioned way? (I know they established at the beginning of the film that they had this relationship, but it's still odd and inexplicable. Like the whole thing that was supposed to make Mara Jade special was that she could hear his voice anywhere in the galaxy... and Kylo's just... got that... for no reason? Because Palps targeted him since he was a kid???
(Keep in mind Kylo was concieved RIGHT AFTER ENDOR, so I dunno what Palps was up to or how long it would take him to get a body or LITERALLY ANY WAY IN WHICH THIS WOULD MAKE LOGISTICAL SENSE.)
It's a moon of Endor, but a DIFFERENT moon of Endor, fine, okay, and we're going to ignore the whole "How did the Death Star ruins get here, anyway?" because that's a world-building problem of an entirely different order of magnitude and just roll with it.
I do believe Rey is mentally running the numbers on Death Star scrap/value of kyber crystals on the open market here, because old habits die hard. And that is such a gorgeous shot, with the cliffs and the churning sea and the ruins.
Oh, I see, the wayfinder was on the moon because it was in the Death Star with Palps and somehow... didn't explode or get sucked out into the vacuum of space. That's a leap, but okay, whatever, fine.
using a macguffin to find another macguffin, wow.
I don't literally don't understand how this dagger is supposed to work as a compass, but fine, whatever. now we will never see it again.
Jannah looks great, I love her character design, but unfortunately, this movie is going to spend very little time exploring the world she lives in because we have to rush onto the next thing, sigh. And apparently, they know about the Resistance! Okay. And they know Babu Frik... or Babu Frik knows them enough to call in some favors...? WHAT.
So it's too dangerous to travel on the water because the waves are so big... which means some killer tides! That is actually interesting, but Rey just overrides everyone and goes anyway (alone!!) so I don't even know why this comes up as an obstacle if it is instantly resolved. This film keeps doing that, and it is not as cute as the director thinks it is.
Finn and Jannah bond over being ex-FO, and this film should spend wayyyy more time on this than it does. THEY BOTH HAD "FEELINGS" ABOUT WHAT WAS RIGHT AND THEY OVERCAME THEIR BRAINWASHING -- Finn is talking about the feeling and calling it "the Force," this is great, AND MY HEART IS DISSOLVING IN A MILLION FEELS AND I JUST... WANT THIS TO FREAKIN' MATTER... why is Finn so sure the Force is real? Faith? Or because he's actually a Jedi, too? (You already know which one I believe here. MAKE HIM A JEDI YOU COWARDS.)
Rey just fucks off and steals Jannah's boat? Where... was it? How did she find it? What... how does that even make sense??
too bad they don't have a working ship, they could just FLY over the ocean instead of surmounting the waves for extra unnecessary drama, lol.
Please keep in mind that Rey grew up in a fucking desert. That she cannot (despite what TLJ might have told you) swim. Yet she is on a boat in an ocean alone. This is a terrible idea. (I'm not going to say it's OOC, because Rey would, in fact, totally do this--just emphasizing how bad an idea this is.)
Finn says, "You have no idea what she's fighting" to Poe... who does know, actually. Kylo tortured him at the beginning of TFA, just like he tried to do later in that film to Rey. Surely Finn should... know this?
If Finn and Poe are going to fight here, fine, this is just a stupid argument. Finn says he and Leia know what Rey is up against and Poe says, I'm not Leia, YES WE NOTICED POE.
Whyyyy is Poe the Team Skeptic here and such a grouch?? not cool.
"That's for damn sure." OH SNAP. And also, actual profanity in Star Wars? Whoa!
Of course Finn is going to go after her.
I will say this: the Death Star ruins look hella cool. also, a nice callback to the beginning of TFA where Rey is exploring the Star Destroyer ruins.
my goodness, the upper arm strength required. I love this scene. they should have made Palpatine's ghost haunting the ruins so we could have the final boss fight here - that would make so much more since than him fucking off to Exegol of all places.
(the ruins are totally my aesthetic, tho.)
And the Sith wayfinder.. is just floating in midair. In the ruins of the Death Star that shouldn't exist. In some sort of chamber with no security whatsoever. wowwwwww. Oh, okay, it's in some sort of suspended chamber thingy, but still.... security measures??
Hey, Rey touches it, and experiences a creepy vision--PSYCHOMETRY, ANYONE? A security measure? Oh, no, just a crazy Force vision... maybe? I don't know anymore. I don't know why.
The double-bladed quarterstaff lightsaber is super cool, though.
Rey fighting her evil self in the crumbling tech ruins is TOTALLY MY AESTHETIC YESSSSSSSSS.
since Rey gets a vision when she touches the wayfinder and is released when she lets go of it, I honestly wonder what the other wayfinder said to Kylo, if he experienced anything when he touched it.
speaking of which, there's kylo! ughhhhh.
Like, literally Rey could have stolen the Sith wayfinder from Kylo if he had left it in his room, and she blew up at least one of his TIE fighters that had it so... I don't even know if Kylo has one anymore. Maybe he doesn't need it? WHATEVER.
Rey is not amused. GIVE ME MY MACGUFFIN!
This is, for the record, the THIRD FIGHT between Kylo and Rey in this film, please just kill him already.
Kylo trying to gaslight Rey about not being a Jedi and how she's proven she's not and she'll disappoint Leia. HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK LEIA FEELS ABOUT YOU, KYLO??? PROJECTING MUCH???
"Like I can't [go back to Leia]." Ooooohhhhhhh, forced teaming there, way to make your move by claiming to show vulnerability. YOU CHOSE THIS. YOU CHOSE THAT PATH. SHE SENT HAN TO BRING YOU HOME AND YOU MURDERED HIM BECAUSE SNOKE TOLD YOU TO SO YOU COULD LEVEL UP IN HIS STUPID DEATH CULT AND SNOKE TURNED OUT TO BE A PUPPET SO IT WAS ALL FOR NAUGHT, YOU ASSHOLE, and NOW YOU'RE TRYING GASLIGHT REY BY PROJECTING YOUR FAILURES ONTO HER.
And he shatters the macguffin rather than let her have it because he's that much of an asshole.
He doesn't pull out his lightsaber until several seconds in, just moves around because he genuinely doesn't want to hurt her even though he just provoked her into losing her temper to prove a point.
It's raining back on Jungle Planet for ATMOSPHERE and Leia is having a Force Vision of DOOOOOOOM, this was oh so clearly supposed to be for Han's death in TFA, but noooooooooooo we're using it here.
(Also, how is it not raining on the tech, I think there are roofs, but it's so hard to tell.)
Maz is so dramatic about this. "Leia knows what must be done, Artoo." Yes, Kylo is going down.
The aesthetics of the ocean ruins fight scene are 100% my jam, not gonna lie, it looks very cool.
So, once again, the Supreme Leader went off on his own... without backup... not even his own private biker gang.... AGAIN. I just.... can't even... what an idiot. What an absolute idiot.
Good thing Finn and Jannah are here, though I doubt the narrative will actually let them do much. I wish Finn and/or Jannah would just shoot Kylo here once Rey gives them an opening, but no, they're just going to stand there helpless.
I get why Rey pushes them away so Kylo won't use them against her as hostages, but STILL. THERE ARE THREE OF YOU AND ONE OF HIM. USE THAT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE, REY.
drenched unhappy Kylo Ren is excellent, yesssss.
This is the first time I've seen anyone use the Force to halt the blade of a lightsaber... interesting.
Rey is treating her lightsaber like it's one-half of a quarterstaff, I LOVE it, but it also begs the question why didn't she just make a double-bladed saber (with, say, a split kyber crystal from TLJ?) in the first place instead of using a weapon that clearly doesn't work for her as well????
Leia could have reached out to her son at any moment, but she chose not to because she needed to save her strength... but Palps can talk to Kylo across the galaxy and he's fine?? And Kylo and Rey can be in two different places and be just fine (yeah okay, Force dyad soulmates whatever whatever)??? THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
Rey stabbing Kylo with his own damn blade is POETIC CINEMA and also justice. FINALLY.
I think if there were any questions about whether Rey has killed someone, the answer in this scene is no. I can't tell if she's crying for Leia, for shock, for relief, for grief and regret over murdering Kylo, or what.
WHY DOES SHE USE HER LIFE FORCE TO HEAL HIM? WHY? WHY? WHY???????????
(give me a motivation, I dont know what her motivation is here, I dont know why she makes this sacrifice to HIM of all people and I feel like I really should know for this scene to have emotional impact but it doesn't).
LEIA SACRIFICED HERSELF FOR YOU, REY, AND YOU'RE JUST GOING THROW IT AWAY LIKE THIS???
Now, if this movie were actually serious about Kylo and Rey being a Force dyad or two halves of the same whole, then we, the audience, would realize along with Rey that she can't let Kylo die without hurting herself... which I'm not sure I would enjoy, but would at least be COHERENT and fit into the ESTABLISHED WORLDBUILDING even if said worldbuilding is dumb and personally offensive to me. I'M JUST SAYING THERE ARE OPTIONS HERE, YOU TOTALLY HAD OPTIONS THAT WOULD HAVE MADE NARRATIVE SENSE SO I DIDN’T HAVE TO DO IT FOR YOU ON THE SPOT.
"I did want to take your hand. Ben's hand." We know that. That was the whole ending of TLJ. Why is this such a shock now??? She already said that at the end of the last movie, so what have we accomplished since? Absolutely nothing has changed on that front, Kylo!!
Also, Kylo--she saved your life when she didn't have to, and you can't even say Thank you? YOU UNGRATEFUL ASSHOLE.
{there's one hour left in this movie WHATTTTTTTTTTTTT how is that even possible}
lol, she just straight up steals his ship.... which is just perched on top of the ruins nearby and hasn't been damaged at all by spray... and which should ALSO have the wayfinder macguffin in it.... so she's going to Exegol, right? The thing she's been wanting to do for the whole movie? The thing that they only have what, four hours left before the attack or whatever?
NOPE. She goes to Ahch-To. Because of course she does.
I hate this fucking movie so much.
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Double Trouble Pt. 1
Description: Chaos and turmoil burn deep with the council. The young mortal lover of Kamilah, now power hungry more than ever, always gets her way. With Kamilah by her side, will she get her total domination? What if what you see is not exactly as it appears?
Characters: Kamilah x MC (Amy), Adrian, Priya, Lily, Jax, Autumn(Amy’s identical twin sister)
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Rating: Mature
Disclaimer: Not my characters:( Also want to thank a very special friend (they know who😉) for helping me with this story. Please enjoy!
...
Words, simple as they appear to be, are vital for human communication. It’s amazing how these words can affect a person. The right choice of words spoken from the wrong person can create a problem. All it takes is one person and one believer for those words to work. Rheya was good at it, Gaius was good at it, Adolf Hitler was good at it. You tell people what they want to hear and you can almost conquer anything. What do all these people have in common? They wanted to conquer the world, and it all began with a simple word. So that’s where our story starts.
It’s amazing what love could do to a person. Kamilah had never felt such a true, pure love before and she would give the entire world to her sweet Amy, ‘the mortal.’ Amy could make her do things no one could imagine. Kamilah Sayeed, the badass CEO vampire queen was whipped for a 23 year old and she couldn’t hide it. It’s dangerous to let your walls down, something the queen never thought she would ever do. It creates weakness and exposes you to threats.
A woman of her stature was very influential in both of her worlds, she ran a risk opening up to Amy but so far everything was good. So far...
...
Amy was a passionate lover, loving her vampire girlfriend was challenging but she took it and ran. Now she has the said woman wrapped around her finger. She was arguably the most famous and hated person in the world for being Kamilah’s girlfriend, a position that didn’t go unnoticed by a familiar face that Amy had left in the past years ago.
Do you ever get that feeling that you’re always being watched? You know the feeling, the chill that runs down your spine that makes you shiver. The way the air feels calm around you even in a mass of people. The way your heart speeds up and you begin to feel uncomfortable? Amy had been feeling that way for the past two weeks everytime she stepped outside. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being stalked but she could never pinpoint the source.
Until it stared her down right in the face. The face that haunted her every dream. A face that was left behind years ago. A face, identical to hers.
“Autumn!?” Amy shrieked in disbelief.
“It’s good to see you sis.” Autumn replied jumping Amy while she was shocked. Wrapping a bag over her head and dragging her down an alley.
Amy had just got off in the early morning, the sun had started to wake but not a sole was stirring, no one to hear her cry or beg for help. Not even the almighty Kamilah.
All Amy could do was feel herself being drug down an alley, the concrete leaving its marks on her back as she kicked against the firm grip of her sister Autumn. All she could hear was a cold, rusty steel door open, and the force of a boot being firmly pressed into her stomach as she was kicked down an old set of stairs before abruptly stopping at the bottom.
“Amy, Amy, my big sister.” Autumn teased as she slowly walked down the stairs. Each cracking board made Amy shake in fear.
“You never change do you? Always a pathetic gold digging whore!” Autumn angrily yelled as she kicked and stomped the body of her older sister, her cry for help fueling her on more.
Autumn stopped her kicking before she killed her sister, figuring she could be useful alive rather than dead, so she drug her body and chained her to a chair.
“How did you get out?” Amy weakly spoke.
“Everything has a weakness stupid. But believe it or not, I was a good girl long enough to be released.”
“What about mom and dad? You won’t get away with this.”
“Yes. Well I thought about that. Don’t go calling and expecting a Merry Christmas. You’ll have to visit the cemetery for that.” Autumn spoke without hesitation.
Amy just sat and cried. Her sister was pure evil and was capable of anything. Beautiful on the outside and legally insane on the inside. She suffered from schizophrenia and had to be locked away in a mental facility to save herself and her family. Now that she was free and openly committing murder, no one was safe.
“What are you going to do with me?” Amy sobbed fearing the worst.
“Nothing for now. But I think I will go visit that pretty girlfriend of yours. Live the life YOU STOLE FROM ME!” Autumn hissed kicking Amy a few more times then stripped Amy naked and dressed in her clothes before making her way to Ahmanet Financial. All Amy could do was pray and cry, sitting exposed to the world naked. New York was screwed and poor Kamilah had no idea what hell was coming.
Autumn walked into the penthouse suite and was floored by the decor, it was extravagant. The suite was huge and overlooked the city that was stirring to life. She stood in awe peering out the window as she watched the sunrise. Something she hasn’t got to see properly in over a decade.
“AMY close the curtains!” Kamilah said ducking behind a column. “Babe you know better than to do that when I’m home.”
Autumn was puzzled but did as told. Even for her, Kamilah’s demand was strange but that thought left her mind when this goddess of a woman stepped out from behind the column.
“Well? Aren’t I going to get my greeting kiss?” Kamilah asked growing impatient.
“Oh right!” Autumn jumped and stepped up to greet Kamilah with a lackluster kiss.
“Are you alright dear? You seem...off.” Kamilah questioned concerned.
“Ummm. No I don’t feel good. I think I need to rest.” Autumn quickly lied seeming to make Kamilah believe her.
“Well then lucky for you, I was just heading to the bedroom.” Kamilah extended her hand which Autumn took and followed the woman to the bedroom enjoying the view as she went.
“Phase 1 is complete” Autumn grinned as she crawled into bed with Kamilah who basically laid on top of her to sleep. Autumn closed her eyes thinking about her future and all the possibilities....
“Amy! Wake up.” Kamilah nudged her lover, “You’re gonna be late for work.”
“Mmhm. Work???” Autumn moaned.
“Yes love. Adrian is going to need you sharp for the meeting tonight.” Kamilah replied back laying Amy’s clothes out on the bed.
“Tonight? What time is it?” Autumn set up and rubbed her eyes.
“5:30pm. Now hurry or else you will be late.” With that Kamilah kissed her deeply and went back to her office to prepare for the meeting.
“Whyyyyy does Amy have to work nights...who are these sick people.” Autumn sighed trying to gather her thoughts about Amy and her life. She had been stalking the girl for 2 weeks for this exact moment so she would be prepared.
Autumn finally made it to work and was greeted by Adrian who quickly handed her a file to type out and another folder to memorize for the meeting that she would sit in on a make notes.
Although she had been stalking Amy, it didn’t prepare her for the actual work part she had to do so she oddly accepted the items from Adrian and went to a desk, the wrong desk Adrian pointed out and when she got to the correct one, she was tasked with issue of starting the computer up and typing the required information in.
Adrian began to worry about Amy who was acting different. The bubbly high spirited personality that was Amy was quiet and paranoid looking. She look troubled but Adrian had things to do so he left her to it and met her at the meeting.
If Autumn thought she knew what went on before this conference, she was is in for a cruel awakening. Here, standing before her was Kamilah defending her opinion against a gorgeous woman named Priya and a hairy dude named Lester. Even Adrian was aiding with them. Mad Kamilah was starting to scare Autumn, she started to grow ill with the others and “are those fangs?” She asked herself before Priya went flying through the room and the fight was on.
“Vampires!? They are real!” Autumn whispered while watching Kamilah and Priya fight. She took it as her cue to leave so she could plot out her next move. If Amy had Kamilah eating out of her palms, and now that Autumn knows Kamilah’s true powers, perhaps maybe she could control vampire Kamilah too? Her plan was coming together better than expected.
#playchoices#kamilah sayeed#kamilah x mc#bloodbound 2#kamilah sayeed fanfiction#bloodbound#priya lacroix
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Se Qing and the Naked Truth
February 24th, 2017
Below the rooftop of a Beijing building that shudders against a glaucous sky of factory moans is an unextraordinary office building. In it, perhaps on the sixth floor, sits a man in a suit at a desk. The phone on his desk rings. He probably picks it up. Maybe he shifts his weight in his seat, undoing the buttons on his cuffs. Maybe he texts his wife, tells her not to wait up, a client needs this or that document tonight.
It’s 11 degrees Celsius, and a pair of broad-boned feet rest on the ledge of the rooftop above the office building. The owner of the feet crouches over them, back bent round as if in a snail shell. He looks down to the street below, speckled with pedestrians bundled in scarves and cars blaring their horns. He thinks about what kind of people might be in the office building.
Seven months prior, he’d written in a series of diaries published online:
我总是能听到开枪的声音，开始的时候我有点害怕，时间久了，也就习惯了，那声
音也像有人在用槌子往我脑袋里钉钉子，好像有一个建筑工地，有人要盖摩天大楼
，盖了这么多年也没盖好，好多无家可归的人在我的脑袋里面哭啊闹啊，我要被吵
死了，他们不让我睡觉，也不让我出门。不睡觉也好，不出门也好，反正每天出门
前，穿上精心挑选好的衣服，照着镜子怎么看都觉得像要去参加自己的葬礼
I am always hearing gunshots. In the beginning it scared me a little, but over time I’ve
grown used to it. Someone has taken up a hammer and is knocking nails into my head,
it’s a construction site where someone is erecting a monstrous skyscraper, they’ve been
building it for years and it still isn’t done yet. The many homeless people in my head are
crying and jibing, they won’t let me sleep, won’t let me out the door. Staying home and
awake suits me just fine, because every day before heading out, after putting on the
clothes I’ve selected so meticulously for myself, and looking into the mirror, it looks to
me as if I’ve dressed to attend my own funeral.
It had always felt this way. For much of his life, since his childhood in a suburb of Changchun, the capital of China’s northeastern province of Jilin, Ren Hang had felt as if he was stumbling through a shadowy psychosis, a jammed film reel in disparate shades of gray.
Still, through the fog of voices and visions clouding his consciousness, in Ren’s pulsing circuit board of veins, he has always felt a deep connection to his family, to his hometown, to China.
And this has never wavered, even as he moved what seemed continents away to study marketing at 17, to live in the 4-to-a-room cramped quarters of Beijing’s university housing, high from the ground, amidst the haze and cancers and pollution of a city of chaos.
–
Fragmented light splashes across the bare thighs and torso of a man whose face cannot be seen. Each hand holds a disco ball, whose mosaicked faces refract the flash’s exposure. Between the disco balls, an erect penis. In another photograph, from the last series Ren published, two nude men sit curled atop one other on the ledge of a building, pasted against a jumbled, silver skyline. Their eyes meet the camera’s gaze steadily.
As Ren crouches on the windowsill, many of these photos are already on exhibition at Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam. Museum curator Mirjam Kooiman says of the work, “It’s visual poetry. It’s without limits.”
Ren is not without limits.
The man in the office shuffles a stack of paper, maybe. He sighs when the phone rings again. Perhaps he stares at the minute hand on the wall clock.
Ren, some days, can’t tell wall clock from whiskey.
He rises slowly in the frame of the window. Stands, looks. Maybe he is naked, like so many of his subjects are. Maybe, as always, he’s meticulously selected what he believes to be the proper attire for the occasion. In one month he’ll be 30. He is always hearing gunshots.
He steps into the air.
–
January 15th, 2010
我只会注意那些病态，结巴，物质，2维思��，单亲家庭的男孩。有一种男孩是我
在涨潮几个小时之后会打电话给他，听到他的声音我知道虽然我还在水底，但是我
还没有溺亡。
I will only pay attention to those morbid, stuttering, material, two-dimensional- thinking
boys in single-parent families. There is a kind of boy who calls me after hours of high
tide. Hearing his voice, I know that although I am still underwater, I am still not dead.
Huang Jiaqi has the broad, hopeful eyes of youth and lips full as if they’d been stung by honeybees.
It’s been nearly a year since he ran away from home, leaving his university entrance examinations unfinished, his childhood tucked somewhere in diaries with thick-pulp pages, like those still made by tired men in the Qinling mountains.
At only 18, Jiaqi is slight of build, and can often afford nothing more to eat than a box of fried rice with a cucumber for five yuan. He devours the meal shoulder-to-shoulder with his lover, beneath the opaque and oppressive Beijing sky.
Jiaqi and Ren sleep in a house with five or six others who pad silently through the space like apparitions, also hungry.
Ren takes Jiaqi to rooftops. He snaps his shutter.
And with friends pitted naked against mosaicked Moroccan-style floors, between red curtains backlit by pale light, in reeds and bushes, amidst the haze of cigarettes in dingy apartments, Ren snaps his shutter. Boys and boys, girls and boys, girls and more girls mingle, mangled in limb and wire and branch.
Ren graduates from his compact analogue camera to a $29 Minolta X-700 film model. He is not interested in digital cameras. He says, “I like film. It’s exciting to wait.”
His work is featured in small group shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Nanjing.
Still, it seems no one in the art world knows Ren Hang’s name.
Jiaqi knows Ren Hang’s name, his mother’s name, the pock-marks of his left cheek, the sound of his heartbeat. In and out and in and out like the tide.
Jiaqi is Ren’s greatest muse, the reason for all things.
In eight years, an image of his face will splash the cover of an international art book published by Taschen and Ren Hang will be dead.
–
June 8th, 2008
写给周耀辉的信
每个人都是同性恋，每个人都是霸权者，每张脸都打上马赛克，每颗心都穿上防弹
衣。所有的亲吻都是一味毒药，所有的拥抱都是一个牢房。
Letter to Zhou Yaohui:
Everyone is homosexual. Everyone is a hegemonic person. Each face is marked with a
mosaic. Each heart is wearing a bulletproof vest. All the kisses are blind poisons, and all
the hugs are a jail cell.
Ren books his first solo show in 2010. It opens in July under the name “Eat Naked Lunch!” at Yuyintang, a cozy underground live house in Shanghai.
One photograph features a young woman lying on her back, her knees drawn against her bare chest. Between her legs sprouts a tangled bouquet of leaves and red wildflowers. No genitalia can be exposed in the photographs on display, though the work Ren produces is often explicit, featuring cigarettes with seething red heads protruding from vaginas and lilies with their stems tucked into anuses.
He begins to exhibit quietly in other galleries and live houses.
And gradually, like a moonflower unfurling, Ren Hang’s work begins to bloom in the art world. The influence of boundary-pushing erotic photographer Robert Mapplethorpe becomes increasingly apparent, yet curators and collectors insist they have never seen anything like it before.
They are eager to comment on its starkness, its unapologetic sensuality, its balance and color, and its function as a bold fuck you to the Chinese government.
–
In the spring of 2018, Chinese social media platform Weibo announces a three-month “cleanup” effort of its site, a censorship initiative launched on the heels of President Xi Jinping’s new cybersecurity jurisdiction. Weibo quietly begins removing all content related to homosexuality. In response, social media users storm the platform with the hashtag #Iamgaynotapervert.
Though homosexual sex was decriminalized in China in 1997, members of the LGBTQIA+ community continue to face prejudice and a dearth of political discourse about their rights. Today, gay marriage is still not legally recognized in a single continental Asian country.
The Dream of the Red Chamber, the Qing dynasty-era novel oft considered the peak of Chinese literature features a number of steamy same-sex relationships, and passages of dialogue brazen enough to make even the most indiscreet of patrons blush: “What’s it to you if we fuck asses! It’s not like we fucked your dad,” says one character. Hand scrolls of the same time period depict what appears to be recreational sex between male friends, one colorful panel portraying a man hiking up his robes, sitting upon another man’s lap while they enjoy a cup of tea.
So whence came the disdain for homosexuality in China? Anthropologists argue that the influence of Western socio-cultural norms and exposure to foreign media rendered the subject taboo, casting shame over same-same relationships as the perverted product of delinquency or mental disorders. Others assert that the filial values of traditional China that have dominated social life since the era of Confucius are to blame.
Ren says, “We hide the body in our culture,” because it is “a demoralization to show what they think should be private.” But instead of hiding, Ren rebels—worshipping both the sacred and the sacrilegious in the human form, twisting and contorting it into geometry and shadow.
Everything about Ren’s photography is charged with the electric current of sexuality. Much of it is homoerotic. Much of it is not. As one curator puts it, “There’s no hierarchy between the female and the male model in his work. It’s very telling about these tendencies of sexuality and queerness in Chinese society and how his generation is dealing with it.”
What does this one represent?, they ask. It must be a commentary on the political state of modern China, they whisper.
When asked whether his pictures are meant to inspire or incite a sexual liberation in China, Ren responds flatly, “A sexual liberation? No.” He says, “Nudes have always been around. We were born nude. So I don’t think there’s anything to revolutionize. I just photograph things in their more natural conditions.”
Ren Hang didn’t intend to become a photographer. He became one accidentally, toying with a compact camera in the ennui of his days at the Communication University of China, snapping photographs of his roommates here and there, often naked, scuttling to the showers from their room with four bunks like narrow coffins stacked atop one another.
Perhaps he didn’t intend to become a poet either, although after his death, Tim Crowley of the KWM Art Center in Beijing says, “He was, in a way, a poet who just happened to be a great photographer.”
At times, he writes:
"My cock"
When soft, it’s like a piece of meat
When hard, like a knife
I give you soft when you eat
Wait for you to eat hard
Use it to kill you
And, at other times:
"Real desperation"
I found
My breasts are bigger every day
My vagina is wider day-by-day
I can be ashamed
I can hold hundreds of rivers
My time is finally coming
But I also felt for the first time
What real despair is
I stand in the highest place
But I dare not take a look below
And as Ren Hang comes barreling into the world of contemporary Chinese art with images that incite gasps, fury, and arrests, he perplexes and enchants by straddling, unapologetically, the worlds of straightness and gayness, of kink and custom, of truth and deception, of masochism and tantrism, of woman and man.
–
May 9th, 2013
还有一次连续几天晚上我都觉得我的隔壁睡了两匹马，我能听到他们的喘息，还有
那种马的“突突”的鼻音，我每天回到家都小心翼翼地怕吵醒了他们，有一天我的朋
友来家里住，我跟他说，我的邻居是两匹马，他们一直在睡觉，你今晚还是不要洗
澡了，洗澡的声音太大了，我们说话走路也小声一点，不然会吵醒他们的，我已经
三天没洗澡了。我朋友说我疯了。我说，他们不是一般的马，他们会说人话，会躺
着睡觉。开始他以为我在开玩笑，但是我的表情越来越严肃，他说你真是疯了。后
来我也不知道该怎么跟他解释，他再也没有住过我家。
For a few days in a row, I felt like there were two horses sleeping next to each other. I
was very careful not to wake them. One day, my friend came to stay at my place. I told
him that my neighbors are two horses. They have been sleeping. You shouldn't take a
shower tonight. The bathing sound is too loud. We can only speak quietly. Or I will wake
them up. I haven't bathed for three days. My friend said I was crazy. I said that they are
not ordinary horses. They speak ‘people’ and lie down to sleep. At first he thought I was
joking, but my expression became more and more serious. He said that I was crazy.
Later, I didn't know how to explain to him. He never stayed at my house again.
In China, mental illness is like homosexuality. It exists. We don’t talk about it.
–
April 5th, 2016
我适应了逆来顺受，就像掷骰子，每次都掷到同一个点数，后来你发现，其实每一
个面的点数都是一样的。这个房间里我最熟悉的就是头顶的那块天花板，它就像我
的天空，白色的天空，没有任何阴晴变化的天空，我幻想过楼上的邻居就是住在天
上的神仙
I have adapted to obey just like a die that is rolled over and shows the same number every
time. In the end you realize that each side of the die is exactly the same. I am most
familiar with the ceiling from my room. It’s like my sky, a white sky. There is no
pleasant change in my sky. I imagine that my neighbor from upstairs is an angel living in
heaven with the gods.
“I love China, and I like shooting Chinese people,” Ren tells Vice Japan. “The more I’m limited by my country, the more I want my country to take me in and accept me for who I am and what I do.”
Ren is arrested a number of times—for shooting nude models in public places, where indecency is punishable by up to six months’ jail time, and, perhaps more scandalously, for self-publishing.
The Chinese government exercises nearly complete control over the press, and the country’s commitment to extensive media censorship is a well-documented phenomenon. Self-publishing, while technically legal, is a highly regulated procedure requiring an ISSN number and authors’ compliance with mandatory censorship policies.
Ren begins publishing his work underground in 2011 with the help of a friend who works in printing, knowing that he will never be able to publish his work otherwise, as the distribution of explicit photo or video content in China is illegal. The Communist Party once dubbed pornography “spiritual pollution.”
In 2015, in the vindictive heat of a Beijing summer, when asked about if he considers his pictures erotica, Ren tells a magazine intern, “I don’t like the word ‘erotica’ (in Chinese, qing se). I prefer ‘pornographic’ (se qing). I think it’s more direct.”
In China, a lifetime behind bars may await anyone who produces, disseminates, or sells “obscene materials.”
Naturally, Ren sets out to do all three.
Within five years, he produces 16 of his own zines and monographs, filled with glossy pages of penises urinating into corded telephone receivers, bodies twisted into fantastical shapes, vaginas splayed open like raw wounds. Many of the earliest of these books were sold underground in small shops whose owners knew his work.
A posterboy millennial, Ren has generated cult followings on his Weibo, Tumblr, and Instagram profiles. He publishes his photography freely on his website, alongside collections of poetry and an unassuming tab on the sidebar menu bar labelled “My Depression.”
His website is shut down unexpectedly. Once. Twice. Again. Law enforcement officers swarm Beijing galleries in wailing Volkswagen Passats, calling for the stop to his exhibitions. A man attends an exhibition and spits on one of the photographs.
He is arrested, but never imprisoned. While Ren operates as an anomaly, a dark creature inhabiting the fringes of Chinese society, authorities seem ambiguous about his status as a criminal. Is he a political rebel? Is he subverting the zhengfu?
They hesitate further because the mind of China is evolving. The economy, taking new shapes.
Chinese citizens born in the 1980s were taught that the country’s “pillar industries” included the automotive, construction, mechanical, electrical, and petrochemical sectors. But these categories are not static. In recent years, biotechnology, advanced energy, and IT have made their way to the forefront of the economy. These new pillars are China’s loyal heed to the call of science. Yet—more than anything—they’ve become the cherubim upholding the god that is capitalism to this country of atheists.
What is largely unexpected is the State Council’s 2009 announcement to make “culture” one of its pillar industries by 2020. In 2016, the Ministry of Finance earmarks nearly four and a half billion yuan in funding for cultural development initiatives. Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are booming. The art world, rising.
“The market in China has greatly matured, and this has enabled us to present exciting, emerging artists from China and across the Asia-Pacific region,” says Alexander Montague-Sparey, the Artistic Director of Photofairs Shanghai.
It’s no wonder that authorities cannot put their thumb on Ren Hang with enough accuracy to stamp him out like a cigarette butt. Instead, they fumble with his burning edges.
–
May 19th, 2011
这几年你一直在寻找一张失踪的桌子，生活在一只倾塌的杯子里，逐步进化成愤怒
的杯底。这世界就是离你这么近，却摸不着，又看不清楚。就像一束光要和影子做
爱，那么难，我活得像一个影子。却只能再黑夜里出没。
In the past few years you have been looking for a missing table, living in a falling cup,
and gradually evolving into an angry cup. This world is so close to you, but it can't be
touched. Just like a beam of light to make love with a shadow, so difficult, I live like a
shadow. Only to haunt the night.
Ai WeiWei is China’s most beloved and most despised political dissident. The irreverent artist is known for designing the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics and for his controversial visual arts challenging the institutions of modern Chinese society. In 2014, he exhibits an entire collection featuring only photographs of his left hand pitted against the background of famous global monuments and religious buildings, his middle finger raised in bullish protest.
The state media deem him a “deviant and a plagiarist.” He’s arrested in April of 2011 and held for 81 days by authorities. Officials allude vaguely to his “economic crimes” without filing specific charges. His assistant, Wen Tao, mysteriously disappears and is never seen again.
In the consistent spirit of controversy, he champions the work of underground photographer Ren Hang.
In 2013, he curates an exhibition called “FUCK OFF II” at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, featuring the works of Ren and 36 other contemporary Chinese artists, many of whom are pioneering a neo-avant-garde driven by a need to challenge the sociological, environmental, and political climates of modern China. It contributes to a burgeoning, global Ren Hang following.
Ren always maintains that he is simply making pictures the way he wants to make them.
“Politics is interested in me,” he tells the press at the OstLicht Austrian photography gallery in 2015, “but I am not interested in politics.”
–
March 23rd, 2015
我昨天在超市
偷了一管牙膏
前天把邻居的锁孔
用口香糖堵住
上周把小区门口的
一排垃圾桶
全都踢翻
每次我做了坏事
都觉得生活好像
又变得美好了一些
I was in the supermarket yesterday,
I stole some toothpaste
The day before yesterday,
I blocked the neighbor’s keyhole with chewing gum
Last week, at the neighborhood entrance,
I kicked over
A row of trash cans
Every time I do bad things
I feel like life
Is getting better again
Ren hasn’t spoken much to his family since he left Changchun at the age of 17.
He calls his mother. He paces the length of his apartment slowly, watching one foot move in front of the other, the pattern in the floor’s wood grain rendered into clusters of tiny faces.
“I’m wondering if you’d like to model for me in a photo shoot.”
His voice hangs in the air like a bird riding a current of wind.
“Do you want me to take off all my clothes?” she finally laughs.
He is jarred by the realization that his parents must know everything. Here, all along, he believed they couldn’t have suspected a thing.
Of course he doesn’t want her to take off her clothes—she’s his mother, for goodness sake.
She doesn’t mind.
He insists that a bra and underwear will do just fine.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
She smokes a cigarette. Ren snaps his shutter.
Expressionless, she holds a pig’s severed head. Ren snaps his shutter.
–
February 2nd, 2010
《我爱你》
想在你身后，
看你走路的姿势，
盯着你并不丰满的屁股看。
想去你家。
想跟你睡一张拥挤的铁床，
在半夜突然醒来，
舔你的眼睫毛，
摸你冻裂的嘴唇。
想在早上抢着穿你的内裤，
让你穿我的，
看你站着小便，
拍下你用过没冲的厕所。
"I Love You"
Want to be behind you,
Look at your walking posture,
Stare at your not-so-plump butt.
Want to go to your home.
Want to sleep with you on a crowded iron bed,
Wake up suddenly in the middle of the night
Lick your eyelashes,
Touch your cracked lips.
Rush to wear your underwear in the morning,
Let you wear mine,
Watch you standing, urinating,
Photograph the toilet you used without flushing.
Sometimes Ren darts into traffic, or lunges himself ahead of an encroaching bus, only to leap backward at the last moment. Sometimes he stands too close to the platform’s edge in Beijing’s swollen subway stations. When he swims in the chlorine-blue pools of hotels around the world—places where his work is championed, where he receives bottles of wine and dinners of black caviar and foie gras from museum directors—he keeps his eyes closed, lets his body sink to the bottom of the basin, listens to the muted sparkling of the water.
He feels most at peace when he is close to death.
“Since I was seventeen,” says Jiaqi, “the most important thing for me has never changed—to protect you and to protect our love.”
Jiaqi is well on his way to establishing himself as a leading fashion stylist, editor, and model. He makes his own pictures, too. In 2018, his photography glosses the cover of Tatler Hong Kong.
He snaps an iPhone photo of Ren. Beneath the glow of a red umbrella amidst geometries of sunlight, Ren stands in a blue Umbro soccer tank top. He looks into the distance blankly, his broad and elegant cheekbones lending to his perpetual appearance as gaunt, as exceedingly gentle, as older than he is. It seems so far removed from the world of art that they both have learned to inhabit in different ways.
–
January 10th, 2013
《最亮的光太快》
我从来不想变成最亮的光
最亮的光太快
比流星还快
我愿意变成黑夜
我愿意缓慢得就像静止
我愿意经常被你遗忘
偶尔被你仰望
即使在那仰望里
我只是一张背景
“The Brightest Light is Too Fast”
I never want to become the brightest light
The brightest light is too fast
Faster than meteors
I would like to turn into night
I am willing to be slow like static
I am willing to be forgotten by you often
Occasionally you look up
Even in that gaze,
I'm just a background
Ren Hang steps into the sky.
The gray of Beijing’s carbonate heavens flashes against fragment of glass, of skyscraper, of silver branch. Perhaps a bird darts past, cutting through the air careless—careless as one must be to have been given the great gift of flight without cognition of one’s privilege.
Perhaps before peace,
He sees his mother’s face. Her harsh mouth in a line, a stream of smoke curling around her.
Perhaps
He sees a boy with bee-stung lips.
The boy says: “I didn’t even know about this thing called depression the first time I saw you crying and telling me you wanted to set the flat on fire so we could die together.”
Maybe he hears the boy’s voice ringing in his ears, a kind of private, radiant sonar.
“You said you were my home, and I was yours.”
These words are true.
But these ideas are all simulation, are all romantic projection.
The BBC runs the headline: Ren Hang: Death of China’s Hotshot Erotic Photographer.
It is all romantic projection.
He is not an erotic photographer. He is, unapologetically, a se qing photographer, an artist of the bizarre and the beautiful, unmarried to any creed or movement, an artist brazenly throwing forth pictures of a violent peace, an artist, an artist, an artist. A mere observer of his world.
And he is, by no means, a hotshot. He is simply a student of the human condition—what his lover calls, “a kid who loves life, but lacks the skills to live it.” He is only human, diseased and obsessed, incurable and in love.
So more than likely,
When Ren Hang steps into the sky,
He does not take note of the clouds reflected in the windows of the office building tearing through space, or the dusky thrush floating above him. He does not see his mother’s stern face or hear the voice of Huang Jiaqi.
More than likely,
He thinks of nothing.
When Ren Hang steps into the sky,
He refuses to become the brightest light.
The brightest light is too fast.
Kendra Clark is a New York-based editorial content creator and part-time residential student in the creative writing master’s program at the University of Cambridge. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming in Into the Void magazine, The Evansville Review, Emrys Journal, and more.
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LA Confidential - nice read and pictures 👌
Corduroy jacket, $2,730, and pants, $795, both at Ermenegildo Zegna; rollneck sweater, $185, by Mr P. at mrporter.com
Oh, it was such a sleepy, idyllic town until Armie Hammer came along with those chiseled charms of his. Eighteen months ago, the Italian city of Crema drew occasional visitors for its sweet ravioli and the Gothic 17th-century bell tower in the piazza. But then something positively scandalous happened involving an overripe hollowed-out peach, and Crema was anonymous no more. 😄
If you’ve seen Call Me By Your Name, you’re aware of the indelible moment in which Hammer plays erotic muse to last year’s juiciest moment in film. To sidestep spoilers, let’s just say that Timothée Chalamet, Hammer’s young costar in the coming-of-age drama, discovered a fruit-forward way of quenching his desire for Hammer’s character. Heaps of award nominations (including a Golden Globe nod for Hammer’s performance) and a global invasion of drosophilalike movie tourists followed.
“I went back to Crema after Call Me By Your Name had already come out, and walked into the duomo, which had been so calm and lovely when we filmed,” Hammer, 32, says, shaking his head a little in the courtyard of a Hollywood hotel. At 6 feet, 5 inches with bright blue eyes and a polished smile, the movie star in the conversation is impossible to mistake for someone else. “A few girls were standing together looking at their phones, and one of them looked up at me and just went, ‘Holly f---! There he is!’ And I thought, That’s it. Everything’s different here now.”
Donegal cableknit sweater, $595, paulsmith.com
You could say that about Hammer too. The actor noticed a change at the Oscars last year. The first time he attended, in 2011, to support The Social Network (through the magic of split screens, Hammer played both of the Winklevoss twins, who claimed the Facebook idea was theirs), he felt lost in the blur. “You’re on the red carpet looking around at all the insanity going, ‘What the hell?’” he says. “It was like being in a car accident.” But last year, the experience was one to savor. “I walked into a situation where suddenly I’d done a lot of work with a bunch of different people, and it was all, ‘Hey, how are you?’ ‘Oh, wow, great to see you.’ ‘Isn’t this fantastic?’”
Hammer’s orbit continues to widen. This season, he appears opposite Felicity Jones and Justin Theroux in On the Basis of Sex, a biopic directed by Mimi Leder about the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Hammer plays Marty Ginsburg, a husband-of-the-century type who cooked and cleaned, and also argued cases alongside his wife in support of her pioneering legal career. “I talked to a lot of Marty’s law students and family members, and said, ‘Be totally honest—he couldn’t have been as great a guy as we’re making him out to be,’ and they all said, ‘You’re right. He was better.’ What the hell do you do with that as an actor?” Hammer obviously figured it out: The role is getting early Oscars buzz in the best supporting actor category.
Hammer portrays another dedicated family man in Hotel Mumbai, based on the terrorist attacks in 2008 at Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in India. It costars Dev Patel. Hammer’s character has to make a Sophie’s Choice-style decision about whether to protect his wife or the child he’s separated from. The production shot in Adelaide, Australia, shortly after Hammer wrapped on those magical months in the Italian countryside. “I went from riding a bicycle in paradise and drinking wine at lunch to getting chased down the hallway by guys with machine guns,” he says. “At a certain point, you just go, ‘Acting is a really weird job.’”
Replica leather trench, $4,980, by Maison Margiela at Barneys New York; classic T-shirt, $335, at Louis Vuitton; wool trousers, $225, by Mr P. atmrporter.com; L.U.C XPS 1860 timepiece in rose gold, $21,700, by Chopard at Neiman Marcus; Tyler lace-up boots, $318, at Frye.
On the surface, you would think Hammer could have chosen any career—or none at all—and done quite well for himself. It’s not just that he clearly won the DNA lottery; he’s good-looking enough to attract giddy triple-takes even among the blasé hipsters at the hotel. But Hammer is also—brace yourself if you haven’t heard—part of a storied dynasty. His great-grandfather was the Russian-American petroleum baron and philanthropist Armand Hammer, whose name is emblazoned upon buildings and institutions such as the Hammer Museum and Armand Hammer Golf Course in Los Angeles. This is the tycoon who traded caviar and furs with Vladimir Lenin in exchange for American wheat shipments and later bought the company that manufactures Arm & Hammer baking soda, mainly because he got a kick out of the name. Google around and you’ll see images of adorable little Armie—born Armand Douglas Hammer—on Great-grandpa’s private jet.
What’s interesting is how the family legacy shook out. Armie’s parents, Michael Armand Hammer and Dru Ann Mobley, now divorced, relocated the family to the Cayman Islands from Texas and Los Angeles when Armie was 7 and his younger brother, Viktor, was 5. Although the Hammers are mostly of Jewish descent, Armie’s parents identified as Christian evangelicals, and, while in the Caymans, founded Grace Christian Academy, which the Hammer boys attended, and the Christian Communications Association, a not-for-profit Christian radio station. When Armie announced he wanted to pursue a life in show business and left high school to follow his acting dreams, he was effectively disowned for the decision. Ironically, Hammer’s first significant role, at 22, was in a biopic of the young Billy Graham. “When I first got into this, the reaction was basically, ‘Are you out of your mind?’” Hammer says. “But when [my parents] saw how hard I was willing to work and how passionate I was, and that this wasn’t just a fad, they said, ‘OK, we get it.’”
Hammer insists he’s been independent financially since he was 19, and that’s been a prime motivator as he’s shouldered his way through hits and misses (The Lone Ranger and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. were supposed to be his megabudgeted star vehicles; they weren’t.) “I’m so thankful that from a young age, I’ve never had to take anything from anybody. You never get to take money without something attached to it, so I didn’t want those encumbrances. I wanted to live my life without anyone telling me what to do, and that’s meant everything.”
Donegal cableknit sweater, $595, paulsmith.com; crew neck T-shirt, $55, Vince.
Hammer and his wife of eight years, food TV personality Elizabeth Chambers, have a daughter, Harper, 4, and son, Ford, 2, who travel on locations with Hammer when he’s not dadding around L.A. “I do a good portion of the school runs, and I cook breakfast for everybody every morning because it’s not like I have a 9-to-5—and also, I love it,” says Hammer, who collects vintage typewriters and won’t say no to a good cupcake (the couple owns two high-end bakeries in San Antonio, where Chambers grew up, and Dallas).
In between the cooking and baking, Hammer finds time for Hollywood. This year, he appears opposite Dakota Johnson in a horror-thriller by British-Iranian director Babak Anvari. “I play an empty shell of a man who works at a dead-end job at a dive bar in New Orleans, which was surprisingly enjoyable to do,” Hammer says. He’s also starring in a remake of Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film, with Lily James. The film shoots in London, which, unlike that serene village in Italy from Call Me By Your Name, maybe—just maybe—can handle “the Hammer effect.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE ROSENTHAL; STYLING BY MARK HOLMES; GROOMING BY KC FEE AT THE WALL GROUP; SHOT ON LOCATION AT VILLA CARLOTTA, LOS ANGELES
#armie hammer#cmbyn#call me by your name#on the basis of sex#onthebasisofsex#notorious rbg#rbgmovie#rbg#ruth bader ginsburg#hotel mumbai#marty ginsburg#mimi leder#martin ginsburg#justice ginsburg#otbos#sorry to bother you#straight white men#armie x felicity#timothee chalamet#luca guadagnino#cmbyn sequel#cmbyn fandom#boots riley#dakota johnson#andre aciman#oliver#crema#the man from uncle#elio x oliver#la confidential
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LawPay Looks to Expand Beyond Payments, While Staying True To Core Mission, New CEO Says In Interview
Last month, AffiniPay, parent of the popular legal payments platform LawPay, named Dru Armstrong as its new CEO. With degrees in both law and business from the University of Chicago, Armstrong was previously CEO of Grace Hill, a company that provides software for owners and operators of real estate properties.
Prior to joining Grace Hill as chief product officer, Armstrong was a VP of operations at The Gores Group and a project leader at The Boston Consulting Group in the consumer and technology practice areas. She also co-founded and was CEO of Lily Pod, a smart baby monitor company.
AffiniPay was founded in 2005 by Amy Porter, who remained its CEO until last year, when she became executive chairman and Tom West took over as CEO. West left last May. In February 2020, private equity firm TA Associates acquired AffiniPay in an auction.
Last week, Armstrong joined me on a Zoom call to discuss her new role and her plans for the company. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, which I have edited for clarity, concision and continuity.
AMBROGI: I would love to hear, to begin with, what it was that attracted you to this position — why you wanted to join the company.
ARMSTRONG: What was most intriguing to me about it is it felt a little bit like a return to home. I had begun my career in the legal space. My dad had a small law firm. He had started his career as a litigator. He was on the Attica commission. He was a professor at UCLA law school, which is how I came to be raised in California. He ended up going into private practice.
So I had grown up in the household of an attorney and I had gone off to undergrad pretty certain I was going to follow in his footsteps to be a federal prosecutor. When I was in undergrad, I had worked as a paralegal for the district attorney’s office, on the Dennis Kozlowski prosecution and also then as a legal assistant for a mob defense attorney in Brooklyn.
Then I went off to the University of Chicago law school. I pretty quickly realized that the University of Chicago is a very serious law school, and that the world was a big place, and before I committed to being a prosecutor or a litigator, I wanted to get more experience. I worked at Dewey Ballantine, then I worked at O’Melveny & Myers, and then I also worked at BCG (the Boston Consulting Group), and ended up falling in love with a different kind of client service, in management consulting. But I had grown up in awe of attorneys who were so capable of solving very real-world issues for their clients.
When Amy and I talked about AffiniPay, what really resonated for me was, I’m a big believer that innovation happens when we can solve real-world problems for real people. The idea of providing such powerful technology, that’s really simple and easy to use, that helps them manage the financial side of their firm, to give them hours back in the day to take care of their clients. I saw my dad struggle in a really meaningful way with the business side of running a law firm. I was rereading the Thomson Reuters 2020 State of the Small Law Firm report. It felt in some ways like not a lot had changed, though obviously technology has gotten better.
I always think that as CEO, you need to be kind of chief enthusiasm officer, right, and you’ve got to be the one who is most excited about understanding our clients and the problems that we’re solving. And I just felt like what an amazing 15-year history this company has in solving a core challenge of how attorneys get paid and thought about what else could we do for those same law firms. So it felt, on one hand, like it was similar in terms of the technology side and having worked in technology my whole career, but then on the flip side, also like a problem set for a group of folks that really resonated with me.
AMBROGI: Other than your experience in and familiarity with the legal world, how does your career background prepare you for this position? What strengths do you bring to this position based on the work you’ve done in your career?
ARMSTRONG: The last company that I ran was similar in that they had invented the category in the real estate technology space and they had really understood the multifamily client. What I was able to do with the team and with our financial partners was say, “How can that translate into us having permission to solve another set of challenges?” In five years, we went from being a pure single-product company into a full platform business, that was really built around understanding our customers, understanding their needs and understanding what we had permission to solve as one of their longstanding partners.
I know there’s a lot of discussion about disruption from technology and outsiders coming in. I’m pretty passionate about companies like Grace Hill or AffiniPay that have earned the right to serve a market and a customer base, and then get to say, “OK, now that we’ve grown with you for 10 or 15 years, what else can we do?” So at Grace Hill, we went from having one core product to a full six products, but that were all around not just solving the training need, but solving a full team performance need. That was a big struggle for our industry.
I think here a lot of that applies. I think we know that, when you look at the data from small firms, they very much struggle with gaining new customers and then with managing their firm and getting more hours in their day back to serve their clients. Usually if you become an attorney, it’s because you have a calling to serve your clients and help solve their problems, not because you have a desire to be a firm administrator per se. Given the amazing brand that Amy and team have built, given the high growth that they’ve been able to earn, the high net promoter scores, I feel like there’s a lot more that we could do. When you look at the core problem set, I think we’ve earned the right to continue to explore what other products or services we could bring in to help give hours back in the day to our clients to serve their clients.
AMBROGI: On that point of the growth that Amy and the team have built, I think the press release announcing your hire said that the company is on track to process more than $13 billion in payments in 2021. I read that the company’s revenue grew 75% from 2017 to 2019, and that it finished 2020 with about $80.5 million in revenue on pace. Are those numbers all right? Is that an accurate statement of the revenue and the growth and the payments you’re processing right now?
ARMSTRONG: Yes, it is. I would say 2021 has been an exceptional year for us. Part of that is being driven by our customers recognizing that technology can really benefit their businesses. I love seeing the adoption of digital payment solutions in our market. I think it’s a front runner to law firms embracing more technology down the road.
AMBROGI: I understand that you just came into this job, but how much of that growth do you think was driven by the circumstances of the last 16 or 18 months – the pandemic and everything else we’ve been through?
ARMSTRONG: The company has grown organically north of 30% consistently year over year. While there was some acceleration due to the pandemic, and there were some folks that were probably fence-sitters that moved over to the technology side of the fence, which we love, it’s more about the fundamentals, having the right payments platform where you have the trust of your clients, you’re able to solve the core IOLTA challenge in the business, and it’s very easy to use, both for our clients as well as their clients. I think it’s not just because we had a COVID bump, but it’s very much the fact that over 15 years, we built the right technology and earned the trust of the industry. So we were well-positioned to gain some customers during the pandemic, but I think it speaks more to the really good fundamentals of the business.
AMBROGI: The press release quoted Amy saying that the company is poised for its next chapter of growth and expansion, and you just alluded to the potential for new products and services. Do you have any thoughts on how the company could expand, what that next chapter looks like?
ARMSTRONG: We are very focused on helping our customers drive financial wellbeing and manage risk in their business. We have a payment solution that is IOLTA compliant and that is very easy to use and administer. We’re looking at everything that could wrap around that, that could help our clients further have that financial stability and manage risk into their business. We’re open to a number of different avenues. The other thing that we think a lot about is that at our heart, we’re serving small law firms. We want to make sure that we’re not giving them too much technology or technology that’s too complex. The last thing that we’d want to do is burden them, right, with too many wizzy woos and buttons and all of that. So I think the nice thing is that we are very cognizant of who our customer is and what their need set is. That’s going to be our north star as we think about what the next chapter looks like.
AMBROGI: Does that mean, even as you grow, you stay focused on the core product, or do you expand that core product into more of a platform as you’ve talked about before?
ARMSTRONG: We’re going to look at expanding out of just payments. But I think we’re also going to think about — in the last company I ran, when we announced an acquisition or a new product, I would hate for our customers to be confused. If the customer says, which sometimes happens, “Wow. I wouldn’t have thought about that, but that really makes sense,” it’s not that it has to be completely obvious. Hopefully we have some ability to see ahead and read some tea leaves. But on the flip side, I do like to have the gut check. AffiniPay is their core installed payments platform. We work with the rest of their tech stack. We work with no tech stack. So as we think about expanding, I’d always want to, at the end of the day, make sense to our customers, because, at the end of the day, it should work better together with any new products or services that we add.
AMBROGI: LawPay is one part of AffiniPay, which is in a number of verticals. Do you see expanding into additional verticals as part of the company’s growth plan?
ARMSTRONG: Yes. We have been very successful in identifying other professional services markets where there’s a lot of similarities. We’ve had really great success launching our CPACharge brand and the growth trajectory for that brand is outpacing LawPay in its early days. We also came out of the association space — that’s where the name AffiniPay came. Obviously, we’re committed to those markets, and I think we’re open to others.
I would say my first priority, though, is really understanding, in the markets that we’re in and the customers that we serve, how do we continue to be the best in breed, and then how do we expand and add additional products or services that, frankly, make our payments platform even better. I would say the first order of business for us is more expansion into the markets that we’re already in, though obviously were keeping our eyes peeled on other complementary markets, and would move in where it made sense and where it felt highly complementary.
AMBROGI: In legal, does that include expanding up market into larger firms? I know the company acquired ClientPay last year. Is that part of how you grow within the legal vertical?
ARMSTRONG: We’ve had tremendous success – and I think it really speaks to the strength of the platform – since we’ve done that acquisition in winning new large firm accounts. One of the nice things about having a payments platform is that, from the beginning, we designed it to play well with others. We are not looking to build a walled garden. We are much more about playing well within the ecosystem. So, I would imagine even if we add products, there may be partners that have more robust, more built-out products that our clients will graduate to, or certain segments will say we actually need all of the software because our business is that complex, that large. So, our view is, we absolutely want to continue the ClientPay history of serving the enterprise segment. It’s an area where we’ve continued to invest and will continue to invest. The nice thing that we’ve found is that our platform, given how legal focused it is, it fits very well for those clients, especially given the investments we’ve made in integrations to able to fit with the rest of their technology stack.
AMBROGI: You talk about wanting to best in breed. One thing that has happened since the founding of LawPay is that the market has become much more competitive for electronic payment solutions in the legal area. For a long time, LawPay almost had the market to itself. Now, over the last few years, we’ve seen a number of other companies spring up. How does that change the equation for LawPay? How do you respond to that greater competitiveness in the market?
ARMSTRONG: It’s interesting. I went through this at my last company, and one of the things we used to say is that people wanting to come into your space and go after your opportunity is usually a validation that you’re playing in the right part of the market. If you’re the only one, you’re like, Where’s the party? Look, we have 98% gross retention, we have an NPS (net promoter score) of 72 with our customers. Payments is, on one hand, software, but on the other hand, is a very different type of software product. I’ll admit I’m learning it, but the great thing is we have so many payments experts here at AffiniPay.
So, while we’ve seen the rise in competition, usually we see it more in the form of folks who want to add it to complement their software versus really wanting to build a fulsome payments offering. That’s allowed us to continue to differentiate and really be the market leader. I think ClientPay was our only kind-of point solution direct competitor. So far, it’s been great, right, we’ve really not had many challenges. If anything, it’s opened our eyes to the appetite that the market has for us to potentially bring in some software into our offering. We’re still figuring out what that is, but we’re going to use our clients’ pain points and needs as our north star.
I’m usually not concerned about what competition is doing and very concerned about us having a unique mission in the market that really is around serving our clients.
AMBROGI: You talked earlier about walled gardens and a lot of those others on the market are set up that way. They’re meant to work with, as you said, a specific product, not to be product neutral.
ARMSTRONG: One of the things that makes our payments platform really unique is that about half our clients integrate it with another software stack and half of them don’t integrate it with anything and they use it fully standalone. Even for those that do integrate it, they’re still running, on average, 40 to sometimes 50% of their payments on our standalone payments platform. That’s because they’re embedding it in places like their website. So, what I’ve seen in this market so far – and Amy and the team here have done an amazing job educating me – is a lot of our attorneys are looking for technology that directly solves their problems, but they’re still running a small business, so they may not need a very large, multi-application platform. When you have something like LawPay, where it perfectly fits in where you want it to be, standalone or with other technology, you build a really nice loyalty, in terms of our platform.
AMBROGI: How much of the company’s overall business is the legal portion?
ARMSTRONG: It’s like 85%. We’re still very focused on the legal market. I would say we think about it every day, all day long. It’s very critical for us to make sure that we don’t lose sight of what our attorneys want from us.
AMBROGI: I know that Amy stepped into a higher role a couple of years ago. Will her role change now that you’ve come aboard, or does she stay as executive chairman?
ARMSTRONG: Look, I am so blessed to have Amy as such an active founder and executive chairman of the board. The plan is for her to absolutely continue in that role. We work incredibly closely together and she’s very much the heart and soul of AffiniPay. You’ve got to give her so much credit for having such a clear vision and building this business over the past 15 years. Myself and the entire team here feel very honored that she chose to trust us with her baby and to invite us to dream bigger and put together a plan for a new and bigger chapter.
I’m very fortunate that she’s still so generous with her time and that she’s still so involved. On the flip side, I think she’s excited for myself and Christian and Meg and the rest of the executive team here, along with our new board members, to all collectively define what this new chapter is going to look like, because I think the sky’s the limit for this business.
AMBROGI: Are you going to be looking for any outside investment going forward?
ARMSTRONG: You don’t get a better software investor than TA. The great thing about TA is they are incredibly supportive. We are a very strong platform investment for them out of their payments practice. So, at this point, there’s no plan to raise outside funds. If anything, they’re very happy to give the team time to stay the course and invest more in the business, which I think is great news for our team, it’s great news for our clients. We’re in a really sweet spot in terms of having really nice runway in front of us in terms of being able to not only dream about the next chapter, but go execute on it.
AMBROGI: In the few minutes we have left, anything else you wanted to say?
ARMSTRONG: I’m just very excited to be joining. I think, there’s so much opportunity for this business and I’m going to be very focused on putting the right team together and making sure that we don’t lose sight of our customers that we’re serving. Hopefully, a year from now, you’ll be even more impressed by what were able to do.
AMBROGI: Sounds good. I’ll check back with you then.
from Law and Politics https://www.lawsitesblog.com/2021/08/lawpay-looks-to-expand-beyond-payments-while-staying-true-to-core-mission-new-ceo-says-in-interview.html
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All botanical asks. I’m a slut for plants
‘Aight cool
baby’s breath: 5 things you associate yourself with:
-Blades
-Ledges (Like, to sit on)
-House Slytherin
-Video games
-The color blue
-Water
bleeding heart: what makes you heart go mushy?
Close friendship, cheesy romantic shit, etc.
bell flower: what’s the title of the song that makes you want to jump around out of joy?
I don’t really have one tbh
evening primrose: what’s your sleeping playlist (give me 5 songs)?
I don’t really listen to music to sleep???
forget-me-not: who is your favorite blog who isn’t following you?
Hmmm. I dunno, probably synnesai I guess, even if she’s not active anymore
daffodil: what is one plant that you want to have but can never get?
I’m not really a plant kind of guy tbh
calla lily: are you more of a sunny day or a rainy evening?
Rainy evening, because I’m emo (also I just like how rainy weather feels)
foxglove: what is your favorite color and in what shade?
Black, in black.
lavender: what is something that you’ve always wanted to be/have/get but can never have?
A SWORD.
Unfortunately, I’ve never had the money or legal rights to buy a sword.
(But that changed on July 19 this year)
love in a mist: what is the latest dream that you remember?
Long story short, the best part of that dream was when I found myself saying:
“Is this a prank bro? This better be a prank–because, lemme tell you, I’m going for a better knife right now, and if it’s not a prank, you’re gonna fucking regret it.”
daisy: what is your favorite flavor of cotton candy, ice cream, and juice?
-I didn’t even know cotton candy had flavors
-Cookies and Cream
-Apple
painter���s palette: are you more of a singer, dancer, painter, or instrumentalist?
Out of all of these, I suck at singing the least, I guess
tulip: what is your most favorite make-up product? do you like it more natural, dark, or etc?
I don’t really know anything about makeup tbh
waxflower: are you a bee or a butterfly person? a dog or a cat person?
-Butterflies
-Both!!
sugarbush: do you have sweet tooth? if yes, what’s your favorite sweets? if no, why?
YES, I’M ALWAYS A SLUT FOR CHOCOLATE
sunflower: would you like to be a fairy or a mermaid?
Fairy, I guess
sweet pea: what would you like to call your significant other?
I don’t really know?
sea lavender: can you swim? which strokes can you do?
Nope!
windflower: list 5 of your favorite blogs and explain why i like them
-punk-rock-pixie: He’s my best tumblr bro and we talk all the time and I feel safe trusting him, so he’s like, my best friend tbh
-slightlyunofficial: We’re OC Bros™ and Sparks is a basically a walking shitpost, so she’s awesome
-prickly-papaya: I’m not sure if we’re still friends since we don’t really talk anymore, but she and I got along super well when we still chatted often, so that’s cool
-plaant-prince: I’m not sure if we’re friends either, but I’ve known him since, like, 2011, and even if we’ve never met face to face, he was still a close friend, and I hope he’s doing okay.
-delearyus: They sent me a comforting message two years ago when I was feeling really shitty, and I’ve never forgotten about it. Also, their blog title reminded me of my undying love for the song “Doctor Worm”
golden rod: are you more of a baker or a cook?
I mean, I suck at both
bloom: what is something that you would like to tell your children?
“Your dad’s a government agent.”
“Yeah, exactly like in the movies.”
peony: what is something that you wish your parents could’ve told you?
I dunno, maybe a better compliment than “That is acceptable”
prairie gentian: do you have a significant other?
Kinda?
september flower: are you more of a sunshine or sunset person?
Both, but I’m only ever awake for sunsets.
bird of paradise: do you wake up early? do you sleep early?
I sleep late and wake up early
marigold: what’s your favorite tea?
I don’t really like tea
peruvian lily: what are the names of your pets?
I haven’t had pets ever since my family accepted its bad luck with animals
hyacinth: do you name your plants?
I don’t even have plants, dude
lilac: would you rather sleep and be cozy or hang out with your friends?
Sleep, tbh
poppy: do you like to dip your fries or do you like it as is?
Depends on what the fry is like
dandelion: any special talent that you have?
An unusual sense of calmness
Like, something exploded on the ground near me, a firework because the shrapnel or debris or whatever that flew out of the bushes didn’t hurt anyone, and gave me temporary noise-induced hearing loss in one ear once
But I didn’t even fucking flinch
Just kinda
Kept walking
Like a fucking movie
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There Once was a Town in Maine, ch10
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Emma’s greeted the next morning by a trail of bloody feathers leading to a very upset bird with its foot trapped under her windshield wiper.
She makes an unsteady attempt to free it, which is only met by extremely loud squacking and pecking at her hand.
“Ouch!” She yelps, pulling her hand back.
“Not very experienced handling birds?” A voice comes from behind her.
Emma jumps, and turns to find Mary-Margaret standing, watching her.
“Can’t say I am” she says, gesturing at the injured bird.
“Here” Mary-Margaret says, smiling. She goes to her own car, and pulls a cardboard box and a towel from the trunk. In one swift movement, she places the box on top of the bird, lifts the windshield wiper trapping it’s leg, and throws the towel over the box before it can try and fly away.
“Ok, I’m impressed” Emma admits, “where did you learn to do that?”
“David used to work at the animal shelter before…” she breaks off, steadies herself, then continues, “And I still pick up shifts on weekends. They don’t have enough people, and it’s the only place in town. We got it all, birds of all kinds, foxes, rabbits. You just need to learn the right touch”.
She takes the box and puts it on the passenger seat of her car.
“I’ll drop it off before heading to school today.”
“I owe you one,” Emma replies.
Whereas Emma started off her day with an injured bird, Neal starts off his with combing the woods in search for the rest of Pinocchio’s parts.
He finds a leg, weathered, and the fingers of one hand. He wraps the pieces in newspaper and puts them in the car’s back seat, unsure of what to do with them.
When he picks Henry up from school, he suggests that they should try to put him back together.
“I’m not sure how to go about that, kid”.
“Let’s look at the library then. They make all kind of stuff out of wood, repairing it can’t be that hard.”
And so back to the library they go.
A few days later, Emma gets a text at the office.
It’s from Mary-Margaret.
“Can I call in that favor today?”
Emma eyes the clock, and the sheriff’s emergency phone, before texting back.
“OK, “
When she gets to the school, Mary-Margaret’s class is returning from a field trip after the rest of the school has gone home, and Emma is surprised to see Lily among them.
Mary-Margaret grabs her by the arm, and pulls her aside.
“She ditched class to sneak on the trip to the hospital with us. I can head off the absent call at the office if you can get her home before the mayor leaves her office. She’s usually out the door by 4:30. Don’t let her see you”.
Emma doesn’t say a word, and ushers Lily and Henry into the car before heading down to the street with the Mayor’s house as fast as she can. Lily exits with a speed Emma’s never seen her reach before, and she’s inside and upstairs so fast it was if she’d never been there.
They pass Regina’s car the next block.
“She’s been sneaking onto every class’s volunteer days so she can see Graham.” Henry confides in Emma when they reach the apartment. “She can usually convince the teacher’s to tell the office so her mom doesn’t get called. But we were late today and Mrs. Nolan didn’t get a chance and she was scared she would find out before she could.”.
“Doesn’t anyone say anything?” Emma asks.
Henry shakes his head.
“Everyone knows how badly Mayor Mills treats her. They all feel bad for her, but worry about what will happen to them if they try to help. Everyone in this town is so scared of everything, anything that might change things. I guess it’s the curse”.
“That’s a lot more regular human nature than you would think kid” Emma says quietly.
“Do your homework until Dad gets back,” she gestures at the Pinocchio remains Neal has managed to locate, “He’s out seeking woodworking tools. I’m going to go and wait for Mary-Margaret to get back.
He picks up an envelope from the table.
“Hey! Tiana wrote me, it’s been a while!”
“Read it first, but homework after ok?” Emma says, before shutting the door.
She then mutters to herself, “How does mail even work here?”
Mary-Margaret’s just getting home when Emma comes out.
“All go well?” she asks, and Emma nods.
“Good”, she sounds relieved, pulling out cups to make them both tea.
“Henry says she’s done this before. Did you know about that?”
The other woman nods.
“I don’t think any of us...I don’t think any of us had any idea of how close she was to Graham.”
“Closer to him than her so called mother any way”.
Mary-Margaret shakes her head.
“We’ve always known she was cold. But not letting her have friends, or go outside….it’s cruel, but not illegal, and even if we tried, Mayor Mills is the authority in this town.”
“We’ll see if she has any recourse for the authority outside of this town.” Emma says grimly, sipping her tea.
“Is this something you should be telling me about?” Mary-Margaret asks.
Emma sets down her cup.
“You would call us friends right?”
“Of course”.
“So can I trust that you won’t tell anyone this?”
Mary-Margaret nods, but looks apprehensive.
Emma takes a deep breath.
“I don’t know who my parents are. I grew up in foster care. None of my foster families ever wanted me, they all treated me like I was there to give them a government stipend and nothing else. When I was thirteen I finally accepted it and started running away.”
“God, you were thirteen? How…”
Emma shook her head.
“I didn’t have an easy life. But that’s not the point. I hopped a bus to Minnesota. Nearly got busted for shoplifting, but another girl got me out of the jam, and we became friends and tried to watch each other’s backs. That girl was Lily.”
“But if you were thirteen then…”
“It sounds crazy and I have no rational explanation, but it’s her. I knew the minute I saw her here, and so did she. She remembers exactly what I do. “
Emma fixes Mary-Margaret with a stare.
“Her name is Lilith Page. She’s from Minneapolis, she was adopted as a baby by James and Priscilla Page. She disappeared without a trace when she was fourteen. There is absolutely no evidence that Regina is in any way her legal guardian “
“Oh my God.”
Emma closes her eyes.
“Lily and I….we had such similar backgrounds, it was no wonder we were friends right off the bat. I grew up. I fell in love and made my own family. She never even got the chance.”
She squeezes her fists.
“And if she stays here, something tells me she will never get the chance”.
When Mary-Margaret leans forward to put her hand atop hers, Emma can barely look her in the eye.
She returns to the apartment with a heavy heart. But whatever was on her mind then, it’s wiped from it when she sees Henry still sitting at the table, with tears dripping down his cheeks.
“Hey, hey, what happened?” Emma asks, sitting down.
He gestures at the paper in front of him.
“Tiana hasn’t written in a while because her dad died.”
“Oh” is all Emma can say. She sits down and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s just, with all this stuff about curses and fairy tales, it’s easy to forget about the outside world.”
“Hey” Emma says, reaching over to give him a hug, “We’re doing our best. It’s all we can do. This place is weird, and consuming, but you haven’t forgotten her, and we haven’t forgotten each other.”
Henry wipes away some of his tears.
“Do you know when Dad’s going to be home?”
Neal was, at the moment, at the library checking out a stack of books on woodworking.
“That all for you today?” Kathryn asks, handing him the stack.
“That’ll do” Neal replies.
“Can you hang back a minute? It takes two people to close the security gate, and I don’t want to call Ms. Belacqua down from her apartment, she’s been having a pretty bad day. “
“No problem”.
When she emerges from the library, she has a large duffel bag over her shoulder.
“Packing a little heavy today?” Neal asks as he helps her pull down the gate.
“I finally applied to law school. I’m driving down to Boston tonight to drop off some documents.”
“Congratulations” Neal says, smiling despite the tiny speck of fear ruminating in his gut.
“Thanks, it was actually meeting you and Emma that gave me the push. Living in this town, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. Anyway, I’m not actually moving out yet, I should be back on Monday.”
Neal smiles again and leaves.
In the car, he texts Emma.
“I think something’s going to happen this weekend. I guess we’ll see”.
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Ariana Grande Reveals DETAILS About Pete Davidson's Proposal & Plans to Change Last Name
Ariana Grande Reveals DETAILS About Pete Davidson's Proposal & Plans to Change Last Name
Jeremy Brown - Latest News - My Hollywood News
Ariana Grande Reveals DETAILS About Pete Davidson’s Proposal & Plans to Change Last Name, Hollywood Celebrity News 2018.
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How was Bambi’s dad die?
After the death of Bambi’s mother, the Great Prince finds Bambi and explains to Bambi what happened to her. He calls for Bambi to come along with him, revealing himself to be Bambi’s father. Later, when Bambi is a young adult, Man returns to the forest. After an incident with Man and his dogs, Bambi is shot.
What does Mulan’s name mean?
In the original poem, the heroine’s name is “Mulan.” According to the Chinese- English dictionary, the name means “lily magnolia.” Mulan is often given a last name, “Hua,” which means “flower.” The Chinese pinyin spelling of the name is “Hua Mu-Lan.”
Who runs Hollywood World?
Robert A. Iger is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Hollywood Company. As Chairman and CEO, Mr. Iger is the steward of one of the world’s largest media companies and some of the most respected and beloved brands around the globe.
Ariana Grande finally revealed some details about how Pete Davidson proposed, but it wasn’t as extra as you may have thought.
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As we all know by now, SNL comedian Pete Davidson popped the question to Ariana Grande back in June after a month-long whirlwind romance, but we’ll be honest… details about their engagement have been super secretive. That is… until now.
On Friday, Ariana was a guest on the Zach Sang Show, where she divulged some details about the proposal, and honestly, it sounds like Pete kept it reeeeaaaal simple.
Ariana said, “It was just really simple and sweet. We were just like hanging out and he had a ring and he just asked me. It was really sweet. He didn’t get on the knee or anything, thank God… oh my God, that would’ve been so googly.”
Ari also explained that she’s not a very traditional person and that she never thought she’d get married at all. When she started dating Pete, however, her feelings about marriage began to change.
She said, “I was like ‘What’s the point?’ And then I kinda understood it when it was like, with the right person.” Aww… so cute!!
When it comes to wedding plans, though, don’t hold your breath. Why? Because it sounds like it could be a while before these two officially tie the knot. During an interview for Apple Music’s Beats 1, Ariana was asked if the wedding was going to be, QUOTE, “less than five.” She responded by saying, QUOTE, “Months, more. Years, yes.” So basically, the wedding will happen sometime between five months and five years from now! We know what you’re thinking: That’s a BIG window.
Whenever the wedding does happen, however, you should know that Ari is planning on changing her name. That’s right! Apparently, she’s planning on legally hyphenating her name and becoming Ariana Grande-Davidson. Hmm… it’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Ari didn’t reveal too many more details about her future plans, other than the fact that she does want three kids when the time is right, so it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see how Ari and Pete’s love story continues to unfold.
In the meantime, let us know what you think about Pete’s proposal and Ari legally hyphenating her name! Thanks for watching! Please click to the right to watch another new video and don’t forget to subscribe to our channels. I’m your host Amy and I’ll see you next time!
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Walt Hollywood created a short film entitled Alice’s Wonderland, which featured child actress Virginia Davis interacting with animated characters. After the bankruptcy in 1923 of his previous firm, Laugh-O-Gram Studios, Hollywood moved to Hollywood to join his brother, Roy O. Hollywood. Film distributor Margaret J. Winkler of M.J. Winkler Productions contacted Hollywood with plans to distribute a whole series of Alice Comedies purchased for $1,500 per reel with Hollywood as a production partner. Walt and Roy Hollywood formed Hollywood Brothers Cartoon Studio that same year. More animated films followed after Alice. In January 1926, with the completion of the Hollywood studio on Hyperion Street, the Hollywood Brothers Studio’s name was changed to the Walt Hollywood Studio. Hollywood Celebrities Recut Latest Story, Ariana Grande Reveals DETAILS About Pete Davidson’s Proposal & Plans to Change Last Name.
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This week on Dear Television: Lili Loofbourow and Irene Yoon talk through the third season finale of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. There are spoilers in here, so if you haven’t seen the episode, “Nathaniel is Irrelevant,” please do so, for your own sake!
LILI LOOFBOUROW: In honor of the CW officially renewing Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for a fourth season, we decided to have a yak about the season three finale and where we think the show is headed next. We also love this tremendous show deeply and consider Rachel Bloom a genius. And yet we were both … troubled … by the finale. Is that fair to say?
IRENE YOON: Totally. Paula’s song, “The Miracle of Birth,” at the top of the episode was one of my favorite moments all season. Everything from the costumes and set to the lyrics and Champlin’s delivery carried the show’s signature stamp of brilliantly over the top and uncomfortably on point at the same time. So it seemed strange for the episode to end in what felt like a rather uncoordinated jump to grounding epiphany, storyline wobble, and series cliffhanger all at once!
LL: There are issues! They might be genuine problems, or they might be hints at where the show plans to go next. SHALL WE COMMENCE?
IY: Yes! Let’s talk first about how Crazy Ex-Girlfriend usually handles finales. I want to love the trajectory that the three finales collectively suggest for the show, but I’m a little uneasy. Season 1 ends with a bewildered and vaguely horrified Josh Chan cuddling Rebecca as she waxes poetic about their love story finally taking off (in the backseat of a car, as love stories do). Season 2 ends with Paula and Rebecca holding hands, flanked by Valencia and Heather, in a reconfiguration of the thwarted wedding scene as they vow to destroy Josh together. Season 3’s “Nathaniel is Irrelevant” ends with the camera moving between close-ups of Rebecca and Paula in the courtroom. Both Nathaniel and Josh are in the room, but it doesn’t really matter. Paula silently conveys her approval and forgiveness for Rebecca as the latter pleads guilty—in a bewildering twist—to the attempted murder of Trent.
With its four-season arc (Rachel Bloom recently confirmed the fourth season as its last), the show seems to be building up to some apotheosis of Rebecca and Paula’s friendship, finally outside of the auspices of scheming for or against Josh Chan. I just wish the grounds for this moment of seeming self-awareness and mutual recognition weren’t so troubling! Namely, why on earth would pleading guilty to attempted murder by reason of insanity or pleading guilty to attempted murder by reason of needing to be, like, a better person in general be the only available options?
LL: Yes! This does seem extreme.
IY: The choices double down on the narratives of Rebecca as the under-medicated and over-invested ex-girlfriend (who, as others in the episode remind her, has shown up at a party where two of her ex-boyfriends are and thrown one of them off the roof) or the evil, scheming, dark-haired villain fueled by criminal intent. We’ve been there and done that a couple of seasons over—by the end of season three, it feels like there should be another option—from both a legal and a narrative perspective.
Also, why would Paula nod approvingly at her best friend unnecessarily pleading guilty to attempted murder? It doesn’t seem quite the proportional response to their friendship issues, but maybe that’s the point?
LL: Like, atonement, you mean? Something like that?
IY: Atonement maybe, but the show also seems invested in flagging the resolution’s own insufficiency (or excessive sufficiency? over-sufficiency?) in an interesting way. There’s so much in this episode and in all of the preceding seasons, that seems set up to make us read this courtroom scene as a moment of personal triumph for Rebecca and Paula, but it feels very purposefully off-kilter and weird.
LL: Off-kilter and weird is right! I’ve watched the finale three times now, and I agree with you that the moment Paula and Rebecca lock eyes feels pregnant (heh) with meaning: to the extent that Paula acts as Rebecca’s conscience here, it’s clear that they’ve mutually decided that this is, indeed, the Right Thing.
Which is, as you point out, ludicrous! (I had the same fears you did—I worried that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend had literally lost the plot.) But having rewatched it twice now, I think—this is my gamble—that the show knows exactly how ludicrous this solution to the problem of Rebecca’s malfeasance is. I suspect, in fact, that in preparation for a fourth season that’s ostensibly about recovery, the finale is making a point about the faux-epiphanies both our heroines are prone to—and the massive overcorrections in which they repeatedly engage.
These are both characters who struggle to Take Responsibility™. And I think the show is trying to figure out what true responsibility means within the really egregious frames we use to talk about love in this culture.
IY: Yes, absolutely! I really like that reading. It reminds me of the excessiveness of Rebecca’s affair with Greg’s dad—and the strange persistence of its spectre on the show. Her epiphany can’t stop with her recognizing that she and Greg shouldn’t be together. She needs to take it a very large and toxic step further and to berate herself publicly for it—including putting it on all three lists of wrongs she committed against Nathaniel, Josh, and Paula, respectively. The transgression didn’t really belong on any of their lists, much as it didn’t really seem to factor into any of the plotlines that followed its occurrence, but Rebecca insists nonetheless “everyone should know.”
LL: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend started out satirizing a certain script about romance; specifically, the way men always talk about their “crazy” ex-girlfriends. The brilliance of that parody was its double-edge: yes, it proved that the “crazy” ex-girlfriend in question—our Rebecca—was in fact charismatic, professional, intelligent, and lovable. But she was also excusing a million kinds of inappropriate behavior and justifying herself by referring to our culture’s toxic scripts about love.
In other words, this was always a send-up of both the kind of man who dismisses his exes as “crazy” without examining his own complicity. But it’s also a send-up of the woman who uses LOVE and a particular kind of manipulative femininity to indulge her worst impulses.
By the S3 finale, Rebecca—as the credits to this season neatly illustrate—has somehow come to occupy every position in this toxic love script. She’s the vengeful fury, the sex kitten, and the dude. (The Trent parallel really drives this last bit home.)
But the “crazy” label definitely lost some of its ironic edge this season. Granted, the “craziness” Rachel Bloom set out to satirize might not be exactly real by the end of Season 3, but Rebecca does have a diagnosis. She has Borderline Personality Disorder, and the show’s portrayal of her messy progress and messier backsliding has been entirely believable and a little hard to watch. Rebecca is willing to do as much homework as you want her to—that feels so right—but in her real life, she just keeps making mistakes. Frankly, I’m not sure “mistakes” is even the right word, especially given how much Rebecca and Nathaniel’s song lampoons that framework. That she repeatedly threatens to kill herself and blame George in order to get him to do her bidding isn’t a mistake. It’s an obvious index of how destructive and manipulative she remains. Despite the occasional sincerity of her efforts (her decision to break up with Nathaniel was heartbreaking) Rebecca hasn’t actually been in recovery. She’s been in denial.
And this episode did, after all, take the trouble to remind us of exactly how awful Rebecca has been.
IY: So true. The episode seems to want to call attention to both how awful Rebecca has been and how her behavior marks her distance from the more sincere (if fewer) moments of reckoning with her mental illness. I also like thinking of the unevenness as quite intentional here in light of the longer arc of the season and show—especially where the messiness of her (non-)recovery is concerned.
The title of the finale recalls episode 6 of the season, “Josh is Irrelevant,” where Rebecca comes to terms with her friends in the aftermath of her suicide attempt. The echoes seem particularly, well, relevant.
“Josh is Irrelevant,” like “Nathaniel is Irrelevant,” features a moment of reckoning and apology. While Rebecca is in the bathroom playing the music video viewing scene of the S3 Theme Song (cue: fury, kitten, dude!), Paula, Heather, and Valencia worry that she might be attempting suicide again. The four share a poignant and difficult moment in which Rebecca apologizes for the terrible things she had said to them earlier and the stress she’s causing now and admits that she can’t promise that she won’t ever try to kill herself again, as much as she wishes she could–one of the most powerful moments in a season dedicated to facing squarely difficult and painful aspects of mental illness. The first apologies Rebecca makes in the season finale, however, are not nearly so organic or heartfelt. Convinced that she’s begun hallucinating images of Trent as a manifestation of her guilt, Rebecca types up blanket confessions focused on alleviating her own feelings of guilt rather than responding to the hurt she caused her friends unbeknownst to them. Everything in the scene seems a little imbalanced and more than a little weird.
LL: Exactly! It’s the opposite of a true apology! She’s gambling that confessing will save her sanity. It’s really not about them.
IY: And their reactions variously underscore that. While Rebecca has done pretty awful things to everyone—including, significantly for an episode that ends with her in an orange jumpsuit, threatening the lives of people Josh and Nathaniel care about—Josh demonstrates little response to the news that Rebecca possibly tried to have his grandfather killed and father deported except eventually to punch Nathaniel; Nathaniel’s vague surprise and annoyance that Rebecca put a hit on his girlfriend subsides rather quickly. In this moment, indeed, Nathaniel and Josh both become somewhat irrelevant.
Paula, however, having read that Rebecca lied to her to get her help, rushes out of the room in a tearful rage and calls off their friendship in toto!
LL: Right, and the thing about that is that no one’s reaction here scans. The very idea that Paula’s grudge about being lied matters more than attempted murders and deportations is … well, crazy. We get it: lady-friendship matters more than any man. But this is a garbled way of delivering that message. At this point in the finale, the show itself seems dazed and lost.
IY: Yes! And the reprise of the “X is irrelevant” construction shows that we’re drifting away from anything like moral clarity rather than moving toward it. The revelation that registers as a moment of clear-sightedness and self-possession in episode 6, comes off as well, muddled and confusing in the season finale. Rebecca’s declaration of Josh’s irrelevance in episode 6 more or less sealed his irrelevance for the rest of the season: it was right. As much as I love Vincent Rodriguez III on the show, Josh is irrelevant. Instead of a similar organic declaration about Nathaniel here, we have the strange unspoken exchange between Paula and Rebecca in the courtroom.
If Rebecca’s attempts—often disproportionate, self-destructive, and unnecessarily extreme given the circumstances–to demonstrate her love and devotion to her various beaus are out, is the conclusion of season three just another disproportionate, self-destructive, and unnecessarily extreme attempt to demonstrate her devotion to Paula instead?
LL: Right, maybe this is the latest instance of her tendency to inappropriately overlove. (Kind of like how she tried to prove her love for Nathaniel by finding his “sister”?)
IY: Totally. And we have, of course, been alerted to the dangers of both overloving and easy substitution through none other than the attempted murder victim, Trent. As Trent likes to point out repeatedly to Rebecca—and as the show likes to point out to us through his repetition of her songs in a variety of refrains—he’s the crazy ex-boyfriend to her crazy ex-girlfriend. It’s in part Rebecca’s gnawing sense of guilt that this is the case that prompts her to confess her sins to Paula, Josh, and Nathaniel. But, while the season repeatedly demonstrates her willingness to contemplate endangering Josh’s family and Nathaniel’s girlfriend, she always stops short of actually allowing any of it to happen.
LL: Right. She actually does have brakes.
IY: Whereas a deranged Trent is ready to plunge a knife into Nathaniel when Rebecca runs up to them. Rebecca schemes and creates various artificial situations to convince Josh to spend more time with her; Trent actively and repeatedly blackmails her, physically marching her around her office in an uncomfortable and unwanted performance of their relationship. As deeply flawed as Rebecca is, she isn’t quite Trent.
LL: That’s a really good point.
IY: In the opening scene of this episode, where Rebecca dreams about brushing her hair in the afternoon light before her mirror, she sees herself transfigured into Trent doing the same. The fact that the opening scene calls explicit attention to Rebecca and Trent’s hair was notable given how the season opens with Rebecca dyeing her hair dark brown to indicate her vengeful rage for Josh (“I know, my hair is dark so I look evil, but I’m wearing white so it’s ironic”) and ends with Trent in an absurd orange-y wig trying to murder Nathaniel because of his vengeful rage for Rebecca.
Weirdly, the effect of the dream scene’s lighting renders Rebecca’s hair closer to the original light brown, and Trent’s an approximation of the deranged orange to come. So while the scene overall seems to suggest the doubling of their narrative arcs (and less-than-balanced tendencies toward attachment) that’s been heavily underscored by the use of both instrumental and sung refrains of Rebecca’s songs via Trent, there’s also a sense of a key divergence here when they’re examined side-by-side, literally under the same light.
LL: THIS IS HIGH-QUALITY THEMATIC HAIR ANALYSIS. I AM CONVINCED. (At some point, we ought to mention the perfection of Paula’s hair in “The Miracle of Birth” too.) You know, I wonder whether this imperfect parallel between Trent and Rebecca works is a clue re: how to read the other broken road maps in this episode. Take that amazing song of Paula’s (aka one of the most spectacular things to have ever happened on television). It lays out in excruciating detail everything Heather will undergo, but almost none of it (except for the bloody show) seems to accurately reflect Heather’s experience. She’s reading magazines throughout and sweaty but unbothered after giving birth. The same is true for other projected arcs: Trent’s Instagram story scheme doesn’t go the way he thinks it will. Neither does Darryl’s project of having everyone in the room for the delivery. Basically, nothing in this episode follows the carefully-explained plan. The messiness seems deliberate, in other words. It’s thematized, baked-in.
IY: Totally. And the stakes of baked-in messiness are really interesting where Trent as a character is concerned. Trent figures, on the one hand, as an absurd convenience for any sticky plot point, hauled out from one full body cast to move things along before being shoved (literally) into another, and on the other, as the physical embodiment of the violence and harm of Rebecca’s machinations. The last episodes of the season do make clear the ways in which Trent’s presence, in all of his obsessive and threatening behaviors, is a byproduct of Rebecca and Paula’s scheming around Josh.
LL: Trent is such a problem. I can’t work out whether he’s a useful foil or a caricature who isn’t granted the sympathy Rebecca gets, or both? I do think it matters, from a purely pragmatic POV, that Rebecca did push him, and endanger his life, and that she can admit that she did without revving up the excuse machine. Pleading “responsible” is a step that does genuinely matter–morally, even if it’s legal nonsense, and even if it’s a massive ethical hyper-correction. I’m betting that the show has a handle on this, though, and my evidence that it does is the arc we see within Nathaniel and Rebecca’s last song, “Nothing is Ever Anyone’s Fault”:
Before I knew you
I did bad things and didn’t know why
But now, I know you
And I’ve learned to look inside
I understand what makes me
Frightened and sad
So yes, I still do bad things
But are they actually bad?
No!
I love this articulation of how Rebecca and Nathaniel are basically substituting another toxic cultural script–the self-justifying self-help epiphany–for the love narratives Rebecca’s trying to leave behind. That lethal slippage from healthy introspection to nihilistic self-justification is definitely a tendency in America. And it’s one a diagnosis (like Borderline Personality Disorder) can accelerate in people built like Rebecca and Nathaniel. Labeling ourselves can become a way to shirk real responsibility. I love that the show confronts that, and I take these lyrics as a promise that it’s going to keep thinking through these metaphysical conundrums. Here’s hoping the next season tracks Rebecca’s smart and difficult climb out of this, her latest (terribly relatable) trap!
IY: I love that reading! It also makes so much sense insofar as the wobbliness of expectations in the courtroom scene between Rebecca and Paula is emphatically set up by the surprising reversal of Rebecca and Nathaniel’s “love” song. Nathaniel had gotten awfully nice and sympathetic by this point in the season, and, as you pointed out, Rebecca’s choice to break up with him earlier on was indeed heartbreaking. So the slide into gross self-justification in the guise of an impassioned love song was quite a surprise, though maybe it shouldn’t have been, given their joint cheating and plotting of murders and deportations, etc.
On the flip side, the show’s done a remarkable job of developing Paula and Rebecca’s friendship as one that is deeply loving and deeply flawed. I’m not sure what the next and final installation of the series holds, but I share your optimism that Season 4 won’t disappoint with any oversimplified substitutions of female friendship for romantic relationships with men or of accessible labels for messy responsibilities.
The post Fury, Kitten, Dude: On Crazy Ex-Girlfriend appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.
from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2qpkV2V
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I’m Starting The Cameran Eubanks Is Over Party
Last week onwas the hunting trip and I hope the group has all recovered from their hangovers. I know I am still feeling yesterdays shenanigans, for one. #NeverDrinkingOnASundayAgain #UntilNextSunday
Kathryn calls Whitney to catch up or get coffee. I hope she doesnt hold her breath waiting for that call to get returned. Or did we watch different season threes?
I really did not need this gratuitous scene of Thomas driving around Charleston telling Kenzie about all the buildings his family owns. Like, we get it. Youre rich and powerful.
Naomie and Craig go to a couples therapist. The therapist looks like one of those cool dad types who wears Hawaiian shirts in his off time and says things like “I’m down. I’m hip. Right, guys?”
Craig: Im not saying that Naomie shouldnt question me ever because shes my girlfriend, Im saying she shouldnt be my girlfriend unless shes willing to have a blind and unwavering devotion to everything I say and do.
That’s not alarming at all…
Honestly, Im kind of with Craig on the whole being from the North is not yelling thing, though.
Craigs denying that he called Naomie a moron. This is truly some Donald Trump level of denial. WE HAVE YOU ON TAPE. Can we roll the playback, please? Craig, welcome to your tape.
Landon show sup to some bar and orders herself a shot and a beer. Respect, honestly.
Landons wearing a flannel because shes trying to attract more lumbersexuals. Where they at in Charleston, though? Also, girl, you have a boyfriend AND another older guy you’re trying to seduce. It’s enough.
Austen asks Landon about Drew who is apparently asking Landon if she loves him. Poor guy, he has no idea whats in store for him.
Landon says shes ready to settle down again because her dog is getting old, basically. Sure, thats as good a reason as any.
Shep walks in and says Where theres smoke theres fire, and Landon and Austen are looking very amorous. Cant you just say they look cozy like a normal fucking person? Also, no they do not look amorous. They look like two people having a normal conversation. Just because you use big words doesn’t mean you’re automatically right.
Drink again because Shep described Chelsea as laissez-faire. Just call her laid back, dude. Shes a person, not an economic theory of capitalism. He also thinks that he should be dating Chelsea because they both DGAF but you cant have two people in a relationship who DGAF; thats just a recipe for disaster. SOMEBODY has to give a fuck.
Thomas visits his dad whos approximately 800 years old. He seems to work for the Museum of the Confederacy
Me:
Thomas dad is like back in the good ol days you could get a hot dog for a nickel and a slave for a dime! Those were the days.
Im sorry but Thomass dad needs his own subtitles because I cannot understand this man for shit. He asks his dad for advice and his dads like Buy low, sell high. Thanks, dad, Why didn’t you just tell him plastics? That would have been just as helpful.
Austen and Chelsea are in some American Ninja Warrior wet dream/obstacle course situation. This looks like a bad date youd see in . NEXT!
Theyre betting each other for kisses like this is fucking middle school.
Oh wow, Austen had an older sister who passed away in an accident. Thats terrible. A moment of silence. This shit is sad.
Austens sisters name was Kyle and Chelsea is like OMG Kyle? Thats my brothers name! Bitch, this is not about you.
Patricias got some bougie-ass friend visiting her who literally specifies what type of glass she wants her vodka tonic in. Come on, this is a vodka tonic, not some expensive wine. Its gonna taste the same regardless of the type of stem on the glass.
Patricia is throwing an Indian themed party to celebrate her lily white friend.
Me:
Kathryn goes into Chelseas salon for a hair cut. I smell a set-up.
Kathryn: Shep told me you were a great stylist, aka the producers are making me come here.
Kathryn: Money doesnt grow on trees spoken by the lady whos trying out modeling instead of getting a real job to support her two infant children.
JD goes over to Thomas house (or office, I cant tell, fuck it) and Thomas is like I heard Kathryn and Elizabeth are hanging out. Like, no shit, they are friends? Thomas brings up Kathryns letter and this shit is long. Like 18 pages front and back long. I’m not recapping the contents of the letter because I fell asleep.
Kathryn: If I were to see Thomas Id just want to give him a big hug.
Ive never heard that synonym for punch to the face before.
Kathryn: Thats the thing with Thomas. Hes such an asshole but hes a good person.
Me trying to figure out how that makes any sense at all:
Patricia and her friend are wearing matching dog caftans. I have no comment. I mean, my grandma (may she rest in peace) used to wear 90s windbreaker tracksuit outfits well into the 2000s, so we all have our things.
Craig and Naomie are getting ready for the party and Craig is like Therapy was great, clearly the lesson we learned was please be nice to me tonight and dont treat me like shit. Real productive session.
Landon shows up to this party alone, so I guess Drew or whatever his name is is officially over.
Patricia is explaining how to eat curry, i.e. you take the rice and you put the curry on top of the rice. Cameron says Oh snap! What, putting shit on top of rice is too much for you to handle, Cam?
Cameran would be sucking up to this lady for not letting people curse at the dinner table. Bitch, please. You asked Shep last week of Chelsea gave him a hard-on. Just because you used the word “weiner” instead of “dick” doesn’t make you a saint. Please drop the Holier Than Thou act.
Patricia brings an Indian healer aka a lady whos gonna bring everyone up into the hot seat and make unfounded speculations about each of them. Can’t wait:
SHEP HAS NO CHILL. Craig goes up there and hes like Will Craig ever admit law isnt his true passion?
Healer lady: No, because law is his true passion.
Boom, roasted by the Indian healer!
Craig asks the healer about his connection with Naomie and the healer calls them soulmates. Naomies face is like fuck you, fuck you fuck you. This is her facial expression:
Kind of an odd reaction to hearing you and your current boyfriend are going to be together forever.
I wonder how much the producers paid this Indian healer to tell Landon that she has a soulmate in this room.
Whitney is bringing up Kathryns sobriety to the healer, aka a woman who doesn’t even know Kathryn, which seems highly inappropriate. What wont these producers do for ratings?
Craig: As a completely objective third party with no personal interest in the matter, I think what Kathryns doing is fine and she should be allowed to apologize.
Cam: Im sick of this, stay out of it!
^Says the woman whos constantly all up in everybodys business.
Honestly, this high society lady getting morally offended by the word fuck needs to fuck off. Come the fuck on, bitch, You were alive when abortions werent legal and youre gonna act like you cant stand hearing the word fuck? One more time because I’m petty: FUCK!!!!
Im truly over Cameran. Im starting the Cameran is over party. Tryna talk about We need to stay out of Thomas and Kathryns business when she stirs up everybodys business. Girl, bye.
source http://allofbeer.com/2017/07/19/im-starting-the-cameran-eubanks-is-over-party/
from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/07/im-starting-cameran-eubanks-is-over.html
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