A Deadly Inheritance [on hiatus/probably discontinued]

A/N apology/confession?

Also the reason I have actually got round to writing this is because someone commented on my profile that they can't wait for an update (❤️❤️❤️!!! ILYSM btw!!!) So I guilted myself into doing this.

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The problem with formatting the way I have

* It's hard to differentiate between the different sections of year 3.

* The first three chapters and year 3 are formatted, set out, structured, and paced very differently.

* I initially intended to do all chapters in the style of the first three but decided people didn't want to wait forever for a chapter, and that people wouldn't want to read ridiculously long chapters which spanned well over 100 pages (on mobile) and might be tedious to read / keep track of where you are in the text if you lose your place. So that's why I decided to split up the third year and post as I wrote it.

* The problem of that I then felt that I had more 'space' to write and therefore needed to add more story because there would now be more chapters and they would be pretty unexciting /rushed otherwise.

* The result of this was while new plot elements that were thrown in there to make the year less 'empty' event-wise. Unlike the original story, I never had any plans for where I wanted the story of these characters to go and was making it up as I was going along. This led to a lot of development and a very long chapter which barely covered a week of the story's year and had practically no actual main story development.

* Each chapter has a lot of information that is good to remember for context reasons but hard to actually remember (eg all the nicknames) so I decided to start writing a 'notes' chapter with notable information from each year, sorted into categories (by person) and with new information in bold. I did make some progress in this (the notes for the lead up to Hogwarts is complete) but then had to go to dinner and never continued it. I intended to release each of the notes at the same time so it would be nice and even and organised and you wouldn't get some chapters with notes and some without. Whenever I then posted a new chapter, there would be a notes chapter with it. I still intend to do this but it's not a priority right now.

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The original plan for the plot and the problem with Maya and Sharpe

Maya, Sharpe, and the Creature Clan weren't in the original plan for the story. They hadn't even been invented yet. I only threw them in because I decided 'let's add some subplots, hmmm what story do I use, I know the Creature Clan! What a great idea!' <sarcasm> this succeeded in creating more characters and plot, but at the cost of actually writing the story.

There are many stories featuring vampire!Snape but I decided okay, but what if yes but actually no? The result was Sharpe, whose "relationship" with Snape was always intended to be like that - not saying I approve, merely that immortal creatures like Sharpe and Luna don't really place much value in human life. Luna and he were always intended to be founders of the Clan, Luna created it to 'steal' souls from Death so they would go into her domain once they died and serve her / give her power. Note: at this point, Maya did not exist.

After introducing the existence of the Clan into the story I decided that I needed to actually have them do something. So I decided that a student should be attacked by one of the creatures in the forest, I just expositioned vampire law that I made up on the spot so why not have some lower class vampires attack her so an upperclass - Sharpe - can be introduced and save her. Then I realised 'oh, I'm gonna have to subplot with Maya now.' So I made her a friend, then decided he would know her secret despite specifically saying that no one else can find out, then decided okay he should probably be panicking now... okay that's enough panicking, time for class. Then introduced her to the main group. The scene of them falling asleep and the following morning was one of the few that I had written beforehand, and figured that that was a good place to slot it in. I then decided - while writing hogsmeade - that Draco should fall in love with Maya for some unknown reason. I guess it never registered that a 13 year old probably wouldn't be giving a courting gift to a 12 year old.