{this is gonna be long, almost 4000 words actually, TL;DR at the end}
I have a habit of making up stories in my head. They never usually last more than a few days but for some reason I decided I was determined to write one of them down. This particular story was a Harry Potter au where Lady magic was a student and Harry was a dementor. I had encountered many creature!harry stories but never one with dementor!Harry. I also like to make up conversations, etc. and have gone over what I'm trying to write here in words many times these past few months - all of which were likely far better worded than this so bear with me here (gonna get personal so if you don't care about my personal problems which I am throwing out there for the world to see, then skip the first section. I'm too tired to be writing this really but I was hit with a flash of willpower and decided it's now or never)
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Firstly, thank you/Explaining why I don't write much
Thank you guys, so much! I know everyone says this but I never expected to get this many reads. It's honestly kinda scary, and ever since the first few thousand I have practically refused looking at the read and star count because that would require acknowledging that people actually expect me to write this thing which is a very scary thought for someone with depression, executive dysfunction, 2.5 months of school work backlog (which they didn't do because brain decided to procrastinate and make up stories instead), etc. Even now in the holidays I still have work to do and some days I only complete half a task and spend the rest of the time sitting there telling myself that I need to actually do the thing-why aren't you doing it-why are you just staring into space-just do it-!
When you write something you always hope that people will like it, you hope that you'll get lots of reads and Validation but it's very different when it actually comes true. Before I turned them all to drafts you could go onto my profile and see my other *failed* attempts at writing a story and sticking with it. The problem is: I have lots (lots) of ideas, but I can easily just make up the story in my head and then get distracted by another plot idea and then make that up and then another one comes along and- Basically it's a miracle I have even written as much as I have. Back before the lockdown I used to read on Wattpad constantly - partially because I hadn't actually discovered the wonder that is AO3 yet, mostly because whenever I had a free period at school I would spend it either reading or making progress on this book. Since school closed that obviously hasn't been happening which I think is the main culprit for the lack of updates (I certainly had enough time, I just didn't have the strength to actually force myself to write. The. Damn. Thing. And I also had a bit of a block a while ago but I eventually found a way through it (ironically because someone asked me about an update schedule and I replied with 'sorry I don't have one, don't expect a new chapter anytime soon.' My Brain then proceeded to say to me "y'know what, I'll give you some motivation, as a treat." So I uploaded the next chapter less than an hour later like the procrastinating hypocrite that I am. I actually haven't even pressed the edit button since then. No that's a lie - I did press it, several times even, then realised I had no motivation or ideas so I went back to Pinterest instead.
Don't get me wrong, I love you guys so much and reading your comments never fails to make me smile/laugh (or become confused if you're talking about a (usually anime) I don't know anything about). I do read every comment I get, and scroll through all the notifications I get too - mostly /username/ has added a deadly inheritance to /reading list/ so I'm just scrolling through like "no this isn't Drarry, you just added this story to like 10 different lists, no Harry is Male, I'm honoured that you added this to 'books I like', no this isn't drarry, wow there's a lot of different languages here, omg!this!person!is!commenting!onliterally!every!single!paragraph❤️, no this isn't my hero academia, pottah, no this isn't... undertale?"
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.
A few other things that only registered about a month ago; when I first imagined Maya, I imagined her as black. (This was also partially to try and break the overwhelming whiteness of the rest of the characters, though this was more of a benefit rather than an initial reason.) for some reason it never (until recently) occurred to me that having a poc who was hypnotised into a den of predators, bitten and enslaved to said predators, rescued by a pair of overpowered murderous white people, and then handed over to a rich, dangerous, old white guy who no one knew the identity of so he could become her master instead through his own immortal, selfless benevolence probably wasn't a good idea.
This is all on me, my fault, my own ignorance and determination to use the excuse of 'I don't agree with it but that's their culture that I just invented and in said culture it's okay and Sharpe is actually the nicest of his species and-' no! Not okay! I made that 'culture', just change it! So angry with my past self. The reason I didn't want to post part 37-54 (the latest currently) was because I finished it during the start of the BLM movement and didn't think it was appropriate to update a fantasy book with a main character like Hadrian during such a serious event. I did eventually post it a few days later because I was having those 'now or never' moments of inspiration. Didn't occur to me until the end of the month that some of the aspects of the story probably should be rewritten. Since then I have been having this turmoil about the story and have imagined myself writing this exact A/N several times. If you are reading this then I guess I finally got around to actually making it in real life. (Wooo go me! *claps*)
/////////////////////beware spoilers, skip if you want/////////////////////
Like, literally. I describe the entire plot here. Including beyond third year. Do not read if you don't want the story to be majorly spoiled
Here is the original plan for the plot (as I remember it) from when I originally came up with the story: (it was a lot less detailed than this and I added to it when originally writing plot points in various drafts <which Wattpad seems to have an annoying habit of deleting>)
Harry, lives on the streets because Luna can't teach him how to dementor if there are uncles around. Lady Magic = Luna (from a previous story focusing solely on this plot point with everything else like the official books. I wrote one and a bit chapters in an afternoon, never published). First year: normal, pretend enemies with Draco due to forest incident, straight up shoots Voldemort. Hooray.
Year two: Katie Wind came from another story of mine (as all ideas do) where Lady magic kept reincarnating as humans and her favourite name was Katie Wind. One of these Katie's happened to be Tom Riddle's best friend in Hogwarts. She taught him everything he knew, even warned him against horcruxes. They spent 90% of their time in the room of requirement whose consciousness Katie has fondly named Charlie many lifetimes ago and often duelled recklessly. Katie would make sure never to fatally wound him while making sure that all fatal spells he fired at her were neutralised (goddess of magic can control magic obviously). They would often try and catch each other off guard and on one occasion Katie startled Tom so much that he accidentally fired off a killing course at her. Since she was so surprised and so close to him to start with, she didn't have enough time to neutralise the spell and subsequently died. She woke up in her next life smiling at how far he had grown. He blamed himself for her death and swore he would do anything to get her back, going insane, plans spiralling out of control to taking over the world and then using all that power to find a resurrection spell of some kind. This might take some time So immortality was necessary, and with each horcrux he began to lose sight of his original motives, morals and ideals, turning into Voldemort. Katie hopes that reuniting his soul as one and her being there could help return him to the Tom she knew and they could be friends again and not try and take over the world. (It would have worked too, but when I decided to add this to a deadly inheritance I decided that voldy had to die so that wasn't possible). Year three: normal official book plot, Harry knows Remus is a werewolf, also knows Sirius is innocent, Peter gets captured, trial, Sirius pardoned. Everyone expects him to get custody of Harry so he does and Harry moves in. There would have been this whole inner turmoil with Harry worrying about the two dogs not accepting him for being a dementor, so he would try and keep it a secret for as long as he could (as he often does in many peoples books). Year four would feature the tri-wizard tournament pretty much the same as it did officially. Harry wouldn't be affected by Fleur and so the two would become good friends. I was either going to have Harry going with her or Luna to the Yule Ball. Can't remember how Harry passed the first task but not by broomstick as he isn't on the team. Second probably by a bit of spellwork, scouting beforehand, shadow realm use, and how being a dementor means you don't have to breathe. At some point I decided that I didn't like Dumbledore so let's get rid of him in second year. McGonagall would become headmistress so who would take over her classes... I know! Moody! That way the students can notice something is off during fourth year and we can have Remus stay on another year as defence teacher! Genius! The maze task would be easy for Harry who could just shadow walk to the cup, sense it was a portkey, touch it anyway, let voldy be reborn, let Luna try and repair his soul (All horcruxes have been collected by now), fail, and be left with no other choice but to kill him. Claim Harry died in the process because I don't know the plot to books 5,6,7 very well/at all and I'm lazy, and I have no clue where to even start with trying to adapt year 7.
It would then fast forward in time a couple years, there would be a funeral for Harry, no celebration for Voldemort finally being gone because the official story is that he was killed by crazed followers trying in vain to resurrect their leader, bla bla bla bla bla. Then, the muggles finds out about the Wizarding world (not quite sure how, probably some politician or wizard getting drunk or bribed). Muggles fear what they don't understand, and try to destroy what they fear. Nuclear war kills off all life on Earth. All important Wizarding locations are basically copy-pasted into a separate plane of existence by the deities for safe keeping. They restart the world, speeding through history at a record pace before slowing down and going at normal speed for the next 10,000 years. As each location is built they subtly place in the corresponding magical location (eg when grimauld place was built they added in Sirius's house) but sealed them behind countless wards so only those with magical blood could enter - and even then the deities could choose not to if they didn't feel it safe. The current day would be early 2000s and basically the marvel universe prior to iron man 1. Magical blood would appear in the form of mutants. (Not that I know anything about any character that hasn't been in a movie yet but hey, that was the plan). There would be a team of SHIELD agents dedicated to finding these magical places with one member of their team being a mutant who could see through the invisibility wards. They discovered Azkaban which had been frozen in time with one occupant - the only one unable to enter Death's realm. Their entrance would wake him up, shenanigans, Harry eventually joins the team about a month later. They have no idea he is related to the dementor in Azkaban but over the course of the story the eventually work it out. Bla bla bla bla bla, Loki is mind controlled, bla bla bla, Harry knows this and likes him but no one believes him, bla bla, story story story, to help with 'rehabilitation' Loki is placed with a team of SHIELD agents to prove that he can be a good guy. Since he is magic they decided to put him on the team Harry joined. Loki is a frost giant. Loki likes cold. Harry is cold. Loki snuggles with Harry at every possible opportunity, successfully proves that he is not the person he was at New York. Best friends not romance Harry is ace it's in the tags I mention it in the story as much as possible this is not drarry!!!! I'm not mad or anything just facepalming exhaustedly at everyone who is shipping Harry in this story. But that's okay, you do you, if you wanna do that then feel free to do that I personally don't but it's okay if you do. (Drarry is fine, I like reading it too sometimes, but its not this story, I'm not hating I promise please don't kill me)
The problem with the above plan was that I would get the Harry Potter section out of the way because that was basically an extended prologue and not the main focus of the story. Then I realised that I don't actually know the timeline of events in the mcu that well, not do I know the plot of agents of SHIELD, nor do I know anything about mutants. Writing hp is so much easier. And also I don't like phase 3 that much (but this is not the place to have that discussion) so I would have to redo it.
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The elements of post Hogwarts and pre third year have remained mostly the same. (Not that I've written that far, merely that I haven't changed my ideas for what the future will hold)
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Solutions?
I don't think Maya should be in the story (possibly a background character, but not a subplot or anything.) and the Creature Clan and Sharpe should just be something that exists in the background but doesn't actually affect the story or Hogwarts. (Basically going from what it is currently to 'hey there's this secret organisation and they've been around since forever and they've got this really powerful vampire for a leader but they won't mess with Hogwarts because they don't feel they need to. Vampire lore? What's that? Who knows? Not the reader. Because it and the Creature Clan have no impact on the story🙃)
There are other solutions like removing these elements entirely, or rewriting it so the subplot is much more spread out over the year (tried to do that originally, so I don't know how I could do it any differently to succeed but hey) and Maya and Sharpe don't have any connection. Perhaps Maya just has a vampire inheritance and Sharpe doesn't even know of her existence.
The shadow realm and the dark realm (the one Hermione dreams about) were originally different places with the 'real world' being the light realm and the shadow realm being a layer of it that most couldn't access, but I think it makes much more sense to just have them be the same place. Also since you all seem to hate Hermione I might make the shadow creatures attempt to drive her insane so no one will believe her rather than enlighten and redeem her like they are supposed to be doing currently.
Also, I don't think that Luna should have that Katie Wind connection, I can easily find a different solution to the Tom riddle problem in second year and fourth year would need basically no changes. It just needlessly complicates things. There's just too much information about the world in this book in such short space and it's nearly all thrown at the reader via exposition, so I should probably try and cut that down a bit as well. Possibly even stop with the nicknames (or have fewer of them)
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TL;DR
* I love you all very much, read every comment, and chuckle when you accidentally add the book to the wrong reading list
* I have no upload schedule
* Excuses are Procrastination, depression, lack of motivation, being stuck on a particular part of the story and *conveniently* forgetting I could leave that for later and carry on writing what comes after, internal turmoil about certain aspects of the story, etc.
* Basically this story needs an overhaul
* And a lot of elements need to be changed/removed.
* Sharpe is problematic
* Maya very problematic because she's a Black person but also technically a slave to a really old white guy who treats her nicely and- Yeah, it's not good.
* I'm really sorry about her I will try my best to be better in the future (I know this sounds standard and minimal effort but what else can I really say here other than: I'm really angry at my past self for being twisted and oblivious [the twisted aspects I don't have *as much* of a problem with I just wish I hadn't been so oblivious and ignorant and inconsiderate about it] and I am very very sorry and will try and be more considerate <glares at imagination> in the future)
* I would continue the Maya argument into talking about house elves but that is a whole other matter entirely and the lore is all due to JKR and literally the only mention of house elves in this story is noting that they exist in the kitchens and dobby's two brief appearances so I don't think I need to address that.
* The story of third year has changed drastically from my original plan and now I just make it up as I go along and pray for the best
* What should I do about Maya, Sharpe, Creature Clan; change relation to main characters, remove entirely, etc?