Hawksquill

[Hawksquill]

Welcome to my WJ!  My big WIP I'm working on is Luna Lovegood and the Forgotten Circle, an AU about Luna Lovegood founding a blood magic school for girls.  Some fun facts about the fic: 

-Luna and her mum are both Seers

-Pairing is Luna/Ginny

-Luna helps her dad search for the Deathly Hallows

-They find out some truly bizarre stuff about the Ministry, particularly the Department of Mysteries

-Luna gets really into wandmaking

-Tonks is genderqueer

-Mrs. Figg is a fairly big minor character

The story starts before Luna is born, and I'm currently 25 chapters in and we're in the middle of book 4!  I'd love to chat with anyone about my thoughts about writing Luna as a major character in fan fiction, writing complex parent-child relationships, how to put a fun spin on canon events, or anything else! 

-----

Other fic ideas I have mulling around in my head:

-Luna/Dean where Luna and Dean bond while imprisoned in Malfoy Manor together.  Also, Luna becomes Mr. Ollivander's apprentice wandmaker during this time.

-Luna/Lavender in year 8/post-battle of Hogwarts where Lavender is a werewolf and Luna is the only one who will accept her

-Luna/Harry where Harry is disillusioned with his auror job and Luna helps him find a new career path

-Fic about Gideon and Fabian Prewett

-HP/Doctor Who crossover with River Song teaching at Hogwarts because why not? 

[batsam]

Hello and welcome! I am excited to see you already have a WJ up and something in the queue!

One thing I'm curious about with your story, is does Luna found her school as an adult or a child? Because it looks like it's set along a similar timeline as the books I think that means as a child, but I'm really curious how that works

I'm excited about Luna and her dad hunting deathly hallows and learning bizarre ministry things. Are the things they learn going to be similar to the conspiracy theories she mentions in the books, or something different? Are they on the right track in their deathly hallows hunt, or taking a more, uh, looney approach?

I like that you're using Mrs Figg in a significant way! I am always interested in her character and she doesn't get used enough imo

I'd love to hear more about what makes Luna's relationship with each of her parents complex

Oooohhhhh I don't think I have ever seen Luna/Lavender and I am suddenly very intrigued

paging @Ineke to 👀 at your River Song idea

[Ineke]

Hii I need that river song fic pls and thank u! 

 

Also welcome!

[Hawksquill]

14 hours ago, sinnersandsapphics said:

Hello and welcome! I am excited to see you already have a WJ up and something in the queue!

One thing I'm curious about with your story, is does Luna found her school as an adult or a child? Because it looks like it's set along a similar timeline as the books I think that means as a child, but I'm really curious how that works

I'm excited about Luna and her dad hunting deathly hallows and learning bizarre ministry things. Are the things they learn going to be similar to the conspiracy theories she mentions in the books, or something different? Are they on the right track in their deathly hallows hunt, or taking a more, uh, looney approach?

I like that you're using Mrs Figg in a significant way! I am always interested in her character and she doesn't get used enough imo

I'd love to hear more about what makes Luna's relationship with each of her parents complex

Oooohhhhh I don't think I have ever seen Luna/Lavender and I am suddenly very intrigued

paging @Ineke to 👀 at your River Song idea

Thank you!  So Luna founds the school when she's still quite young.  Her mum has a prophecy about her restoring the "forgotten circle" of women's magic, and Luna ends up being quite the prodigy at a young age.  The group initially starts as a sort of book club/discussion group with McGonagall, Madam Bones, Mrs. Figg, the Patils' mum, and a few others and then gradually turns into something like a school. 

So it's definitely in the vein of a conspiracy theory and the Ministry in my fic is pretty corrupt!  There ends up being a lot of obscure Hallows research that leads Luna and Xeno to an unconventional way of "finding" the Hallows, but it ends up being dagerous! 

So Luna's mum puts a lot of pressure on her to be perfect and live up to this prophecy about her, but Luna just wants to be a normal kid and definitely resents this.  Her dad defends her mom a lot because of things that happened in the past that Luna doesn't understand, and that also causes resentment.  She's definitely closer to her dad but doesn't see him as much because she and her mum both live at the Circle and her dad doesn't. 

And yes!  I love both Luna and Lavender and I'd love to see more fic about them.  Be the change you want to see and all

 

7 hours ago, Ineke said:

Hii I need that river song fic pls and thank u! 

 

Also welcome!

Haha thank you!  River is one of my favorite characters so if I can find a way to shoehorn her into Hogwarts I will ❤️ 

[Ineke]

2 minutes ago, Hawksquill said:

Thank you!  So Luna founds the school when she's still quite young.  Her mum has a prophecy about her restoring the "forgotten circle" of women's magic, and Luna ends up being quite the prodigy at a young age.  The group initially starts as a sort of book club/discussion group with McGonagall, Madam Bones, Mrs. Figg, the Patils' mum, and a few others and then gradually turns into something like a school. 

So it's definitely in the vein of a conspiracy theory and the Ministry in my fic is pretty corrupt!  There ends up being a lot of obscure Hallows research that leads Luna and Xeno to an unconventional way of "finding" the Hallows, but it ends up being dagerous! 

So Luna's mum puts a lot of pressure on her to be perfect and live up to this prophecy about her, but Luna just wants to be a normal kid and definitely resents this.  Her dad defends her mom a lot because of things that happened in the past that Luna doesn't understand, and that also causes resentment.  She's definitely closer to her dad but doesn't see him as much because she and her mum both live at the Circle and her dad doesn't. 

And yes!  I love both Luna and Lavender and I'd love to see more fic about them.  Be the change you want to see and all

 

Haha thank you!  River is one of my favorite characters so if I can find a way to shoehorn her into Hogwarts I will ❤️ 

Have her take over History of Magic

[Hawksquill]

19 minutes ago, Ineke said:

Have her take over History of Magic

Ooooh I was thinking Ancient Runes or Astronomy but HOM also works! 

[Ineke]

2 minutes ago, Hawksquill said:

Ooooh I was thinking Ancient Runes or Astronomy but HOM also works! 

Oooh, those are also excellent, esp ancient runes, tbh... she might even be able to substitute dada if need be

[prideofprewett]

Your Luna fic sounds absolutely fascinating! I've not explored any fanfics with her in them, but this is definitely one I will be checking out! 😌 Also, I love that you're making Tonks genderqueer I really feel like with her being a Metamorphmagus in the books there would have been an opportunity to explore this more. However, given what we know now that we otherwise didn't then about our dear author... 🙄 But I love that you're going this route, and can't wait to see it! And I love that you included Mrs. Figg in some way too! I am a sucker for giving supporting/fringe characters more of a storyline.  

And gahh another lover of my favorite Prewett twins! I cannot wait to see what you have planned for them! I'd love to write something centering on them one day. Most of what I have thought up about the Prewett family centers on Molly, but I'd love to branch out from that and look deeper into Gideon and Fabian's lives. 

 

[Hawksquill]

45 minutes ago, prideofprewett said:

Your Luna fic sounds absolutely fascinating! I've not explored any fanfics with her in them, but this is definitely one I will be checking out! 😌 Also, I love that you're making Tonks genderqueer I really feel like with her being a Metamorphmagus in the books there would have been an opportunity to explore this more. However, given what we know now that we otherwise didn't then about our dear author... 🙄 But I love that you're going this route, and can't wait to see it! And I love that you included Mrs. Figg in some way too! I am a sucker for giving supporting/fringe characters more of a storyline.  

And gahh another lover of my favorite Prewett twins! I cannot wait to see what you have planned for them! I'd love to write something centering on them one day. Most of what I have thought up about the Prewett family centers on Molly, but I'd love to branch out from that and look deeper into Gideon and Fabian's lives. 

 

I absolutely love Luna as a character, and I absolutely think Tonks and Mrs. Figg are underused in canon, so I hope you enjoy it if you give it a read!  The first 4 chapters are up on the HPFT archive now, and I plan on posting the rest of what's on AO3 and FFN gradually. 

Oh my gosh, hello fellow Prewett fan!  I've always been fascinated by what we see of the Prewetts in canon.  I've never written about a canon character we have so little info about, so it's a bit intimidating.  But I hope I'll attempt it one day!  Do you have any particular ideas about Fabian and Gideon?

 

[prideofprewett]

1 hour ago, Hawksquill said:

I absolutely love Luna as a character, and I absolutely think Tonks and Mrs. Figg are underused in canon, so I hope you enjoy it if you give it a read!  The first 4 chapters are up on the HPFT archive now, and I plan on posting the rest of what's on AO3 and FFN gradually. 

Oh my gosh, hello fellow Prewett fan!  I've always been fascinated by what we see of the Prewetts in canon.  I've never written about a canon character we have so little info about, so it's a bit intimidating.  But I hope I'll attempt it one day!  Do you have any particular ideas about Fabian and Gideon?

 

Well I know what I will be doing tonight before bed then! 😉

I agree, it IS intimidating! Especially if people have particular headcanons about them that don't align with your own. And I briefly touched on them on a probably pretty rough return to the world of fanfiction in a story called We Were Only Kids. It's not on here because I'm a newbie. 😌 But I basically just established that they were younger than Molly, similar to Fred & George in some ways, but not total carbon copies because I don't think that would be realistic. I also had Gideon as having a closer relationship to Molly because he's more even tempered where she's a bit of a hot head. And Fabian is a bit like Molly in that way too. But beyond a few scenes with them, not a lot else. I'd love to dive deeper, but I don't have any stories in mind yet. But you never know.

Do you have any particular headcanons about them?

[Hawksquill]

Ooh I love the title of that fic!  If you post it here, let me know and I'll give it a look.  And I'm also new here, too

I don't have particular head canons in mind in terms of personality for them, I was sort of thinking of writing about them as political activists? I have no idea why, haha.  I mostly have a title so far - Noble is the Struggle, Great is the Hope, from an old Greek song.  I've just always loved that line and it makes me thinks of revolutionaries and suffragettes! I think I'd have Gideon and Fabian be a bit older than Molly, so maybe they're around for the beginning of the first wizarding war.  

[prideofprewett]

5 minutes ago, Hawksquill said:

Ooh I love the title of that fic!  If you post it here, let me know and I'll give it a look.  And I'm also new here, too

I don't have particular head canons in mind in terms of personality for them, I was sort of thinking of writing about them as political activists? I have no idea why, haha.  I mostly have a title so far - Noble is the Struggle, Great is the Hope, from an old Greek song.  I've just always loved that line and it makes me thinks of revolutionaries and suffragettes! I think I'd have Gideon and Fabian be a bit older than Molly, so maybe they're around for the beginning of the first wizarding war.  

That is a great headcanon! I may or may not post that fic here...I feel like I ought to revise and edit it a bit because there were some things in it I looked back and was like WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING? 😂 But I actually wrote Molly's Mum as working for a political organization as well that supported equality of witches, squibs, etc. So I also see the Prewett family having leaning towards that. And that title is fantastic! I can't wait to read it! 😊 And yeah I've seen them both as older and younger, so that detail doesn't really bother me because I feel like you can work it out either way?

[Hawksquill]

1 hour ago, prideofprewett said:

That is a great headcanon! I may or may not post that fic here...I feel like I ought to revise and edit it a bit because there were some things in it I looked back and was like WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING? 😂 But I actually wrote Molly's Mum as working for a political organization as well that supported equality of witches, squibs, etc. So I also see the Prewett family having leaning towards that. And that title is fantastic! I can't wait to read it! 😊 And yeah I've seen them both as older and younger, so that detail doesn't really bother me because I feel like you can work it out either way?

I get it, I seriously spend more time editing my current fic than I do writing, like at least twice as much time!

It's amazing that you had Mrs. Prewett being a political organizer, what an amazing coincident

[Aphoride]

hey hey hey!  i have a few questions for you because your luna story sounds absolutely fascinating  

1. what is it about luna that you love most? other than that she's a really cool, interesting character  

2. tell me more about this blood magic shebang  

3. Seers! so in a bunch of my stories gellert is a Seer, too! how do you write your Seers - there's so many different versions and i always love reading about other people's different takes on it  

4. tonks as genderqueer - yes. yes. yes. yes. (this wasn't a question sorry!  )

5. i love that you write primarily more minor/underused characters, like luna, tonks, mrs figg and the prewett brothers. any reason why, or is it just coz you like them all? (which is totally legitimate as an answer ) 

[Hawksquill]

On 9/6/2020 at 6:03 AM, Aphoride said:

hey hey hey!  i have a few questions for you because your luna story sounds absolutely fascinating  

1. what is it about luna that you love most? other than that she's a really cool, interesting character  

2. tell me more about this blood magic shebang  

3. Seers! so in a bunch of my stories gellert is a Seer, too! how do you write your Seers - there's so many different versions and i always love reading about other people's different takes on it  

4. tonks as genderqueer - yes. yes. yes. yes. (this wasn't a question sorry!  )

5. i love that you write primarily more minor/underused characters, like luna, tonks, mrs figg and the prewett brothers. any reason why, or is it just coz you like them all? (which is totally legitimate as an answer ) 

Thanks so much for asking these amazing questions!  I'll just answer in order so my rambling mind doesn't lose track haha

1. I think what I love most about Luna is how open-minded she is.  It makes her goofy and gullible sometimes, but she's always open to something new and it also makes her kind and compassionate.  I'm sort of riffing on this with my current WIP because Luna's ability to think outside the box, trust her gut, and dare to be wrong is what leads to the (re)discovery of some very old forms of blood magic that have fallen to the wayside of conventional magical studies. 

2. So the whole idea is that witches and wizards can use their blood to perform magic (by giving some of their own blood and concentrating on their intention) and also to add extra oomph to existing spells and potions.  I basically got to thinking about what witches and wizards did before the invention of wands, or what witches did who didn't have access to a slew of special magical ingredients or who had to be covert during the witch trials.  Blood is a powerful magical substance for a few reasons.  Since I like to imagine that it's the blood of witches and wizards themselves (both literally and metaphorically) that carries their magical ability, you're essentially using the raw source of magic itself rather than channeling it through wands and ingredients.  But the theme I'm really trying to explore through the blood magic system is that all magic comes at a cost.  With blood magic it's more literal, in the sense that the boundaries of your power is equivalent to how much of your blood/body you are willing to sacrifice for the spell.  It makes you really think carefully about every spell to make sure it's worth the sacrifice.  It also puts an upper limit on the magic most people are willing to do, which is something I don't think is explored enough in canon with magic other than extreme cases like horcruxes.  Anyway, that will be explored later in the story  

3. Ooh I love the idea of Grindelwald as a Seer!  I basically write Luna's Sight as both an inherent/instinctive ability and also a learned skill.  Her powers manifest in many ways - dreams, visions, reading the runes, even water scrying.  Sometimes she interprets the visions incorrectly, or sometimes what she predicts simply doesn't come to pass.  I also explore Luna learning how to fake prophecies to get what she wants, through cold-reading and learning to anticipate what other people expect from her.  There are also occasions when Luna temporarily loses her Seer abilities for various reasons, but I won't spoil that too much! 

4. Ahaha yes I'm glad someone else is onboard with genderqueer Tonks!

5. I think I tend to write minor characters because there's so much possibility.  Usually with the characters I choose, we know enough from canon to be intrigued, but not enough that the character feels so fleshed-out that there's not much I could add.  Like Luna is such an interesting character, what do we think her childhood was like?  We know Mrs. Figg is a squib but is also involved with the Order - how did she even get to know Dumbledore in the first place?  What must it be like to grow up as a Squib in the Wizarding World? (I touch on that in my fic too!) These questions make writing minor characters more fun and often allow me to add different dimension and texture to the world beyond what we get to see in canon.  In general, to be honest, I'm least interested in fics about Harry and the trio during the canon timeline.  I feel like we've read that, we've had that perspective.  And I try to write things that provide different perspectives and parts of the world that we didn't get to see because the canon story is framed through Harry's perspective.

Thanks again for asking these questions!

[Hawksquill]

I'm back with a whole bunch of links to fics I've transferred over to the archive, plus a few new ones thanks to HPFT challenges and events! 

Luna Lovegood and the Forgotten Circle - this is the Seer!Luna blood magic fic described in my first post.  Rated M.  The first 5 chapters are up on the archives but more are published on AO3 and FFN.  This is my primary WIP and the longest thing I've ever written.  I started working on it in 2016 and then abandoned it until last year, and I've written over 100,000 words since I picked it back up again.  I'm probably getting to the end of the middle and it feels SO good to have the end in sight.  I just hope I can do the story I've had planned for so long justice.  I do get self-conscious about it sometimes but I'm overall very proud of it

Beyond Measure - Luna/Ginny Christmas fluff written for a Tumblr gift exchange.  Lots of fun to write and I hope also fun to read!  Rated T

How I Would Like to Believe in Tenderness - Character study of Petunia and the swirl of emotions she must have felt in the days after Harry arrives on her doorstep.  Rated M, note the specific warnings in the story notes. Definitely not meant to redeem Petunia, but to explore her pain more directly than we see in canon. 

Beneath This Mortal Earth - Magical realism retelling of the Demeter and Persephone myth with Andromeda and Tonks after the battle of Hogwarts.  Written for the spice up the archives challenge, my first challenge submission!  I'm really, really proud of this one.  I wanted my prose to sort of mimic the strange descriptive style of ancient poets, so there are a few Classical references sprinkled throughout.  Rated T.  Most of my more serious stories deal with the angst of accepting trauma and death, and because of the premise I'm able to address it more directly in this one. 

Artistic differences - Luna/Dean fluff drabble written for the Battleship event.  I've never written Luna/Dean before but it's a pairing I've wanted to explore for a while and I'm pretty happy with it! Rated all audiences. 

Nightmares and gifts - another Luna/Dean drabble, this one exploring their friendship with Mr. Ollivander after being imprisoned at Malfoy Manor together.  Also really happy with this one, this specific concept is something I want to explore in a longer fic so I'm glad to have the practice.  Rated all audiences. 

-

In terms of what I'm working on now, I'm currently editing chapter 27 of Forgotten Circle.  I'm also signed up for another challenge due in November but for now I really want to concentrate on finishing Forgotten Circle as soon as possible.  All these challenges have really inspired me to get better at writing drabbles and oneshots and not having every fic turn into a massive sweeping novel, though! 😛 

[inmyownlittlecorner]

Hi there! I'm excited that you started a writer's journal, and I"m very interested in this Luna story.

1. What do you find easiest about writing Luna? What's more challenging?

2. Could you tell us a little about the relationship that Luna has with Xenophilius (I'm assuming that this is the complicated father/daughter relationship you were mentioning)?

3. So I know the school is based around blood magic. How...gorey is the blood magic (asking for a friend  asking for myself who has a bit of a blood trigger)?

4. I LOVE the idea of Luna becoming Ollivander's apprentice when they are trapped together in Malfoy Manor. Could you tell us a little more about this?

5. What do you like about the Ginny/Luna pairing? What about the Dean/Luna pairing? How are they similar and/or different?

Good luck with your writing!

[Hawksquill]

Hi @victoria_anne! Thanks so much for reading and asking these awesome questions

1. Luna is definitely one of my favorite characters and in canon Ginny is one of the few people who not only defends Luna, but seems to get her.  I also imagined that because the Weasleys and Lovegoods live near Ottery St. Catchpole, they're something of family friends and Luna and Ginny were playmates growing up  - Luna being an only child and Ginny being the youngest and the only daughter.  I also just think they're sort of fundamentally similar but also different in fun ways - neither of them care what people think, and they're both pretty insightful.  Ginny is much more tomboyish and brash while Luna is more cerebral, so it's fun to write different flavors of the mischief they get up to together  

2. My headcanons about Mrs. Figg are sort of based on my headcanons about Squibs - basically I think that most Squibs are disowned by their families or sent to be educated in Muggle schools.  So I don't think Mrs. Figg is particularly close to her biological family, and I think she married a Muggle man and was then widowed before we meet her in canon.  I also think that like most Squibs, Mrs. Figg dearly wishes she could perform magic.  I don't think she falls prey to scams like Filch does, but I imagine  that her friendship with Dumbledore formed when as a young child who didn't receive a Hogwarts letter, she wrote to him asking how she could get magic.  

3. Basically the nucleus of this idea is that I was thinking about Luna (as I so often do) and how she must have bonded with both Dean and Mr. Ollivander while they were imprisoned together.  Dean and Luna are both pretty artsy and even if he thinks she's weird at first, I think they'd end up comforting each other and bonding a lot at Malfoy Manor.  I also think that Mr. Ollivander and Luna would get along SO well, so it's my head canon that he ends up teaching her about wandlore while they're imprisoned.  When they get out she and Dean sort of cling to each other and help each other cope with the trauma (eventually getting together), and she ends up working for Ollivander as an apprentice! 

4. I read woefully little fan fiction, to be honest, since I end up spending so much of my fandom time writing!  I've been really enjoying @prideofprewett's Weasley family fluff and have also read a lot of @Crimson Quill's stuff and really enjoyed that too

5. Ooh good question.  It's gotta be the Elder Wand, I think.  Not because I want to go around with an all-powerful wand killing people, but because I LOVE wandlore and would basically just want to study it and never use it 😜 

[prideofprewett]

27 minutes ago, Hawksquill said:

Hi @victoria_anne! Thanks so much for reading and asking these awesome questions

2. My headcanons about Mrs. Figg are sort of based on my headcanons about Squibs - basically I think that most Squibs are disowned by their families or sent to be educated in Muggle schools.  So I don't think Mrs. Figg is particularly close to her biological family, and I think she married a Muggle man and was then widowed before we meet her in canon.  I also think that like most Squibs, Mrs. Figg dearly wishes she could perform magic.  I don't think she falls prey to scams like Filch does, but I imagine  that her friendship with Dumbledore formed when as a young child who didn't receive a Hogwarts letter, she wrote to him asking how she could get magic.  

4. I read woefully little fan fiction, to be honest, since I end up spending so much of my fandom time writing!  I've been really enjoying @prideofprewett's Weasley family fluff and have also read a lot of @Crimson Quill's stuff and really enjoyed that too

 

I LOVE your headcanons about Squibs! I mean totally sad, but also kind of how I see it happening, especially during the beginning/middle of the 20th Century. Because you know, people weren't as forgiving or accepting of things different than them. (Shameless inserts a plug about the Muggle with Magical Abilities Orphanage I'm planning lol). I love the thought of Mrs. Figg settling into some semblance of a normal life, finding happiness there, but also still having loose ties to the Wizarding World.  

And omgawsh you're so sweet! I feel like a one trick pony writing nothing, but Weasley family stuff, but they're just so soft and fluffy and squishy (with a pinch of domestic angst) that I can't stop LOL. 

[Hawksquill]

More chapters of Luna Lovegood and the Forgotten Circle posted on the archives, up through chapter 7!  And I recently posted chapter 27 on AO3 and FFN.  It was a really hard chapter to write because it was sort of one of those in-between chapters where a lot of things need to be set up and foreshadowed.  The next few chapters will be pretty much nonstop plot significant scenes, including a sort of action-y scene, so that's intimidating in a different sort of way!  The pace of the plot is about to pick up majorly, and tons of things that I've been plotting for years are about to happen but I'm not quite sure how they'll shake out so it's exciting and also scary at the same time. 

I had an interesting experience this week where a book I was reading was incredibly similar in themes and premise to my fic!  It's called The Power by Naomi Alderman and it's speculative fiction exploring if the gender hierarchy in our society reversed basically overnight (women spontaneously develop the power to control electricity).  There's even a young girl who has unique powers and becomes something of a religious prophet!  It definitely gave me some food for thought in writing my own fic, and it made me feel good that someone with similar ideas managed to get published and win a bunch of awards, so what I'm doing must be worthwhile!  

I had a similar experience in the last year or two when I reread Hild by Nicola Griffith.  I had read it years ago and then sort of forgotten about it (even though I loved it) and when I reread it I realized how freaking similar it is to my Luna fic!  Hild's mother has a prophecy about her while pregnant with her, and she's raised to sort of fake being a seer in the king's court and becomes a powerful advisor (and later a saint) in Anglo-Saxon England.  When I read it I realized that there must have been some major unconscious influence on my own fic!  I ended up leaning into it and making Luna and the Circle study Saint Hild and even make a visit to the ruins of her abbey.  

Anyway, adventures in writing fan fic!   I should probably stop faffing around on the forums and actually work on my next chapter...

[Hawksquill]

On 9/12/2020 at 12:04 AM, la_topolina said:

Hi there! I'm excited that you started a writer's journal, and I"m very interested in this Luna story.

1. What do you find easiest about writing Luna? What's more challenging?

2. Could you tell us a little about the relationship that Luna has with Xenophilius (I'm assuming that this is the complicated father/daughter relationship you were mentioning)?

3. So I know the school is based around blood magic. How...gorey is the blood magic (asking for a friend  asking for myself who has a bit of a blood trigger)?

4. I LOVE the idea of Luna becoming Ollivander's apprentice when they are trapped together in Malfoy Manor. Could you tell us a little more about this?

5. What do you like about the Ginny/Luna pairing? What about the Dean/Luna pairing? How are they similar and/or different?

Good luck with your writing!

Oh my gosh I have no idea how I missed these questions until now, I'm so sorry!

1. I think the easiest part about writing Luna is probably her quirkiness.  I don't have any trouble slipping into her airy-fairy sort of voice where she just says off the wall things, because that's exactly how she is in canon so I've internalized that as her voice.  The flipside is that I find writing her in serious situations, where she is genuinely worried or angry or doesn't know what to do, very difficult.  I had a hard time writing Luna for a long time because I thought that I was writing her as OOC.  But I've finally just accepted that the parts of Luna's personality we see in canon are only a part of her.  She doesn't act like she does in canon all the time because no real person would act like that literally all the time!  She might not seem like her canon self all the time in my fic, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's OOC.  Just that we don't see her whole self in canon.

2. So Luna's relationship with her father is actually not as conflicted as her relationship with her mother, as is the case in most of my fics.  Her and Xeno have a loving relationship, and he sort of instinctively "gets" her in a way that her mum doesn't.  She helps him with his Deathly Hallows research and he's generally the one who's the more hands-on parent - partially just because she's been more receptive to being parented by him, so her mum has learned to back off (although Luna wouldn't see it that way, of course).  Her mother (who in my fic is called Cressida because I wanted to make it clear she was an OC with a different relationship to the world and other canon characters) is a whole different story.  Her mother can be overbearing and controlling - it mostly comes from a place of love and wanting Luna to have a better childhood and be a better person than Cressida herself, but there's almost always tension between them.  In some ways the entire fic is really about her relationship with her mother, and Cressida's prophecy about Luna represents her expectations about the person Luna should be.  Luna's resistance to the pressures of the prophecy are just a different version of every young person struggling to figure out who they are and how to make their own destiny when their parents might have other ideas.

3.  Okay so I don't have a blood phobia or squick so I don't want to overpromise or guarantee anything.  I try not to make the descriptions of the blood stuff too gory, though.  It's very bare bones description of the fact that there is blood rather than, like, torture porn level with paragraphs of detailed descriptions.  If it gives a sense of things, the fic is rated M on AO3 (the second highest rating below Explicit) and I plan on keeping it at that level.  There are some things related to the blood magic that will happen later on that are sort of theoretically disturbing but you won't see them onscreen. 

4. So this is mainly because I think Luna and Ollivander would really, really get on.  I imagine them being bored while imprisoned at Malfoy Manor and Luna ends up asking a bunch of weird questions about wandmaking and she starts learning informally from him.  Then after the war she becomes his shop assistant and apprentice, and maybe takes over the shop for him. I can see it appealing to her because it's sort of creative and allows a lot of experimentation: weird wood and core combos, using unconventional materials, etc.

5.  So for me, both pairings came out of my reading of canon.  In canon we see Ginny sort of defending Luna when everyone else was making fun of her, which of course made my little ship radar blip.  I think it also makes sense that they'd have been childhood friends, since they lived nearby and Luna was an only child and Ginny was the youngest and only daughter.  Dean/Luna mostly came out of Malfoy Manor and imagining them being sort of forever bonded by being imprisoned together.  We also know from canon that Dean is pretty artsy so I imagine they do creative projects together.  I think the main difference is that I view Linny as a friends to lovers type situation, where they've known each other their entire lives and grow up as friends, which later turns to love.  Dean and Luna I don't think would have moved in the same circles in Hogwarts at all, so I see them as being acquaintances who end up together at Malfoy Manor.  I don't think they fall in love while they're imprisoned, but I do think they grow very close and then in the aftermath of trying to get over that trauma, they fall in love

Thanks so much for the questions and sorry again for the delayed response!
 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Hawksquill
typo

[starlitcastles]

Hello there!

I thought I would drop by some questions for your Wishlist! 

1.  What inspired you to write This Prison and The Next?

2. Apart from Luna Lovegood, which canon character do you enjoy writing the most so far? Why?

3.  Has there been any of your works that have proved to be difficult but you're insistent on finishing and or going further with it? I hope that question makes sense!

4.  There's a song I heard on Youtube called Colors by Stella Jang and I was drawing inspiration from that and wanted to ask you: what color would you describe Luna?

5.   Do you have any holiday traditions? If so, what are they? If not, have you read, seen, and or heard of ones that interested you?

[Hawksquill]

On 12/19/2020 at 4:42 PM, starlitcastles said:

Hello there!

I thought I would drop by some questions for your Wishlist! 

1.  What inspired you to write This Prison and The Next?

2. Apart from Luna Lovegood, which canon character do you enjoy writing the most so far? Why?

3.  Has there been any of your works that have proved to be difficult but you're insistent on finishing and or going further with it? I hope that question makes sense!

4.  There's a song I heard on Youtube called Colors by Stella Jang and I was drawing inspiration from that and wanted to ask you: what color would you describe Luna?

5.   Do you have any holiday traditions? If so, what are they? If not, have you read, seen, and or heard of ones that interested you?

Okay finally getting around to answering these!

1. So I wrote TPatN for the overused line challenge, and the line I was given was "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."  That instantly made me think of an interrogation scene, or a scene where one character is threatening another character.  And I knew that I wanted to sort of turn the cliche on its head by having the character being threatened turn the question around into something their interrogator isn't expecting.  That made me think of the scene where Grindelwald refuses to tell Voldemort the location of the Elder Wand.  It's an interesting character moment for Grindelwald and I also can totally imagine Voldy using a super cliched line like "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" so it all fit.  Then I built the rest of the fic around that core moment!

2. I love writing Ginny!  Not just because I ship her with Luna, but also because I find it pretty easy to slip into her voice.  She's not all that similar to me so in some ways that makes her easier for me to write.  I also really enjoy writing Dumbledore, I like writing him as polite and even-keeled with a hint of menace sometimes.  I'm writing a fic where Aberforth also plays a large rule, and the scenes with the brothers together are so fun to write.  So much tension!

3.  Definitely Forgotten Circle!  I had the idea back in 2016 and wrote a couple chapters and then real life and grad school happened and I didn't touch it until 2019.  Since then it's been a slog at times, and really hard to keep updating consistently.  But I'm determined to finish!  Right now I have a 2 (nearly 3) chapter buffer for the first time ever so that gives me a little breathing room.  It's definitely reaching the climax so the end is in sight, I just sort of worry about doing the story justice since it's lived in my head for so long.  But no matter what happens I WILL finish it 😛

4.  Ooh good question!  I'm not a particularly visual person, actually, I don't really have a "mind's eye" where I imagine characters or scenes playing out.  But I think I'd associate my interpretation of Luna with like turquoise/robin egg's blue, and maybe mauve or lavender.

5. So probably the biggest one is that in my family we always had a sort of snacky dinner for Christmas Eve - cheese, crackers, kielbasa, dips, just a grazing table instead of a big fancy dinner.  I still do that to this day because 1) I don't want to cook two big fancy dinners two days in a row and 2) it's nice to have some lighter fare before the big, bloating meal on Christmas Day.  My husband and I have sort of merged our families' traditions and made a few of our own, things like making the same Christmas cookies as both sides of our family, but we've made a new tradition of making the same pear pudding for Christmas Day every year.   Our boring introvert tradition for New Year's Eve is getting tipsy on bubbly and playing video games, but this year we started a new tradition of making creme brulee to go with our dinner on NYE which I think we'll keep, it was so easy and so good!

Thanks for the awesome questions

.

[Hawksquill]

Okay so I FINALLY got around to posting the rest of Luna Lovegood and the Forgotten Circle on the FFT archives!  It's currently updated to chapter 32 and I'll be posting chapter 33 sometime this week, yay! 

I'm currently writing chapter 35 and things are starting to get COMPLICATED but it's a lot of fun to write.  One of my New Year's resolutions was to finish this fic and I think I'm on track to do it!

I think my next big project once I finish Forgotten Circle will be a Drarry fic that's been living rent-free in my head ever since I was trying to distract myself during a panic attack while thinking about what I'd write for ships I've never written before.  It'd be a sort of dark haunted house mystery and it's gonna be a wild ride, y'all. 

[Hawksquill]

Progress on Luna Lovegood and the Forgotten Circle continues slowly but surely.  I recently wrote and published the chapter with the BIG twist that I've been planning since the beginning.  It was very nervewracking but feels good to finally have it out of the way!  I'm writing chapter 41 right now and I feel like I must be ~25k or less from the end.  Maybe? It's hard to know exactly how I can pace some of the final plot points without it feeling rushed or dragged out.

Also, just as a note to my future self, the next time I post an update I want to revise the first chapter to add this George Eliot quote (from Middlemarch) as the epigraph: "Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous."

I've also been wondering about revising the summary for LLFC, since I feel like it's not particularly good.  But I don't want to get too distracted from finishing the dang thing, so maybe I'll put that on the to do list once it's actually done, to tie up loose ends and make it pretty before I'm done with it forever.  That feels weird to say!  Anyway, if anyone has read it and has any suggestions for improving the summary or front matter, I'm happy to hear it

 

Potential future ideas knocking around in my head:

-For the Portmantrope challenge: "There was only one soul mark" with the unlikely pairing of Werewolf!Lavender/Pansy.  I know, it sounds whack but I just love the idea.  I'm thinking sort of dystopian vibes, where the fate of the world rests upon finding two people with soul marks.  And of course everyone is heteronormative and assumes it will be a man and a woman but...it's not.

-A Regency-era romance that's a subversion of the marriage law trope.  I've always liked marriage law in theory, but not really in practice, where it's often used to literally, physically coerce two people to be together.  I think it works in a Regency setting because that was a society where matchmaking and marriage alliances were much more common, so there's a degree of social pressure but you're not literally being forced to be together.  So my idea is that there have been concerns about the effects of inbreeding among purebloods, so the Ministry has sponsored a matchmaking program during the social "season" where purebloods are thrown together with halfbloods, Muggleborns, and Squibs in the hopes of forming matches.  Our protagonist is a working class Muggleborn whose family disowned her when they found out about her magical abilities.  She doesn't get the seventh year exam scores she was expecting, and has little choice but to sign up for this matchmaking program in the hopes of making a decent match.  At the end of the season, only one bachelor remains, and it's not who she was expecting...

-Auror!Harry gets a call from Malfoy Manor about a cursed magical object that's possessing Astoria Greengrass Malfoy.  Draco begs him not to reveal his wife's affliction publicly, and Harry agrees.  But Malfoy Manor is more than it appears, and the former rivals need to team up to investigate the true horrors lurking in the house's shadows.