Family - Part Three - Chapter Six

Hi all,

I'm back from the Cauldron opening night a little earlier than anticipated, but that's not a bad thing. As it was a soft launch and a pop-up it wasn't up to full operating capacity and, therefore, wasn't quite as good as it could be. But it was an interesting experience - although I was a little disappointed that there appeared to be no non-alcoholic drinks on offer - I know it was open to over-eighteens only but not everyone wants to or can drink.  

I still believe it is a good idea but to execute it properly would be really expensive and to do it any sort of real justice the organisers would need to get Warner Brothers onboard to ensure the theme could be put in place - being a normal pub just isn't going to cut it, and making it a generic 'fantasy-type' pub isn't likely to attract the number of customers it needs to thrive. Using the Harry Potter fandom is a good way to draw in the crowds, but there needs to be more than a subtle nod, and we all know how aggressive WB can be with copyright infringement. 

There were several interesting 'magical' cocktails on offer (at £10 each), which as yet have no names, and we were asked to try them and suggest names for them. I tried the whisky, ginger and honey concoction - which looked like butterbeer and tasted like Lemsip - my choice of name was 'Night Nurse on the Knight Bus'. I doubt it will win, but if it does you know who chose it. 

My friend tried a rum, lime and strawberry cocktail which was set alight and had cinnamon thrown on it to cause fabulous sparks, but it was extremely heavy on the rum and wasn't really to her taste, so she didn't bother to think of a name.

There was supposed to be the opportunity to pour your own beer using a magic wand, but it wasn't working when we went up there and as it was the first of these pop-ups there wasn't much else on offer.

The organisers are arranging for magical cocktail-making courses in addition to more pop-ups to help boost the coffers and I would definitely be interested in going to one of those. 

So, onto the story.

Time has moved on again and Draco's wife, Astoria has passed away. Hermione and Sophie are there to offer their support to a grieving Draco and Scorpius.

AO3 - P3C6

FFNet - P3C6

Next week sees the start of the final part of the story. Any comments etc. are always welcome.

Have a good week.

Dx





     

The Fugitives

"Snape is a fugitive, on the run for the murder of Dumbledore. Hermione and her friends are fugitives, on the run from everyone - This is my chronicle of the events that led to my earlier story 'Grief'."

The first Harry Potter story I ever wrote was called ‘Grief’. It was written in response to my feelings about Snape’s death (and my anger that he was so badly served in Jo’s story) and featured a relationship between Snape and Hermione, although that didn’t become clear until the very end as I'd purposely kept all mention of his name out of the story (unless you read it on Ashwinder, which was a bit of a giveaway as it's a Snape/Hermione archive). 

It was a very well received story and I had many lovely reviews about it, but one reviewer questioned the timeline as I had tried to keep it canon and as she pointed out there wasn’t much chance for things to play out as they did in my story if you go by the events in Deathly Hallows (mainly because of all that camping). 

To be honest I didn’t dwell on it too much at the time, as by then I was well into writing other stories and really it had just been a release mechanism for my own grief at the Potion Master’s untimely and unfair death (hmmm, guess I didn’t really get over that). However, four years later I suddenly realised that actually, what I had written was entirely plausible, if a little unlikely (but hey, it’s fanfic, right?) So I sat down and wrote the complete story of Hermione and Snape’s relationship (which actually fulfilled another request in the reviews for a prequel). 

I have removed ‘Grief’ from the archives as it now appears as the final chapter of this story and see no point in keeping it up. I mention this as a warning for those of you who read ‘Grief’ in its original incarnation, just so you don’t start getting feelings of déjà vu or think I’m plagiarising someone else’s work. ‘Grief’ was all mine and still is, just with a new name and a lot more background, although obviously the identity of Hermione’s lover is no longer in any doubt. 

I have posted the complete story on both Ashwinder and FanFiction.net as they were where the original story was housed.

As is always the case I am interested to hear what you think of the story, through reviews or via this blog, especially if you read the original story when it was first published. Do you think I managed to tie up all the loose ends? I certainly hope so.

I have a new Draco/Hermione story which I will start posting shortly (probably over the weekend sometime) called 'Changes' which is set post-epilogue. Apart from that there will be a slight break of service while I take part in NaNoWriMo so I won't be around much. But have no fear, I'm actually using the time to write a Lucius/OFC fic rather than anything original as I only decided at the last minute to take part and thought it would be a good time to tackle a story I had been considering for a while but not actually got round to doing anything with.

As ever, enjoy reading. I'll speak to you again soon.

Dx